#forcing our perspectives and expectations on them could push them further and further from transitioning

[zo1nkss]

heyyyyyy why are we calling xlov she/her and making estrogen jokes abt them 😅 Have we not been listening to trans women literally beg us to stop doing shit like that?

Genderless =/= genderqueer in this context and xlov has been really clear about that because they were worried western fans would approach it in exactly this way.

We don't even know if any of them are queer. What we know is that they are intentionally pushing back against the social rules restricting what men can and can't do with their gender expression. And yes, that is an inherently pro-queer approach to the concept — but that doesn't mean they're queer. It's a little early in the game to start throwing around egg jokes (shouldn't be doing this at all) and she/her pronouns. Thats the kind of thing we should wait for one of them to innitiate, especially considering their concern for how western fans would view the group's concept.

They haven't even had a chance to establish themselves, or a solid image for their group yet. Can we at least let them breathe and step into their own before we start with this kind of thing?

[bokutoslittlebird]

Awakened

Alpha!Osamu x reader x Alpha!Atsumu

Author’s note : Fantasy AU based on two pieces of fan art of the twins as fox yōkai, but I hope it’s to your liking! ; their names are never directly said to reader-chan, so their names are what they call each other.

Warnings: bullying (brief, not from the twins), naive and innocent reader, knotting, double penetration, backshot, face fucking/blowjob, dubcon/noncon, blood, biting and licking, cunnilingus, creampie

There’s a legend that runs deep in the roots of your village, one that’s told to many and encourages children to stay away from the forest. It was proven effective — no child dared to enter the forest, holding onto that fear into their adult years. The legend revolves around two mischievous fox spirits that would always be in competition. They always had someone who would win, but then a terribly evil spirit came upon the clearing they played in, forcing the two spirits to push differences aside and fight off the evil spirit that entered the territory. It was a combined effort, the two spirits realizing they worked better when they worked together. It taught children that sometimes it was better to ask for help; however, it also taught children that they couldn’t go into the forest. The spirits resides in the forest, protecting the village from evil spirits as a combined task and if anyone dared trespass in their forest, then destruction would come to the village.

It was a legend some teenagers dared to challenge, entering the forest and coming out, saying “nothing bad happened to them!” but then their luck would turn sour sometimes. It always put things in perspective, seeing them suddenly fall into a mud puddle after entering the forest, or having their pants suddenly fall. It made people laugh, but it really made you feel like the forest was alive and watching. You never dared to go near the forest. At least, not until your pride was at stake.

“Go get a stupid stick, [Y/N]!” Jocelyn sneered, her eyes narrowed. Her arms were crossed and she was tired to repeating herself. You were dared to go into the forest, get a stick to bring back for proof, and you would no longer be a coward. It was simple in words, but not so simple in action. You feared the bad things that happened after people entered the forest, but you were considered a coward for those beliefs. “You’re just a big, dumb baby!”

“No I’m not!” You shouted back, puffing your cheeks. You let out a heavy breath and turned to the brown and green image of the forest. They wouldn’t be able to see you enter the forest, but they just needed a stick as proof. Sucking up the courage to go, your legs moved towards the foliage. You could hear the other girls’ jeers as your pace slowed, the forest closer than you had ever dared to let it. The forest itself looked peaceful, but the legend of the spirits scared you, halting your footsteps. Instead of going in, you were going to pick up a stick on the outskirts, but there was no stick. Nothing but grass lay before you, the shadows of the trees outlining what was the forest and what was not. There was a stick you could see, the light seeping through the leaves illuminating it as if you were on a quest to get — well, you kind of were.

Sucking up any inhibitions you had, you entered the forest. Picking up the stick, you noticed a lack of any other stick lying in the fallen leaves. Clutching the stick to your chest, you turn to go when you find a small piece of cloth, hidden in the leaves. You pick it up, looking at the designs and feeling how soft and silky it was. It was a robe that your ancestors adorned, but the fabric told you it was either brand new or kept in pristine condition. With it in your hands, you found yourself turning to flee once again. The howling of the wind sent your legs running out of the forest and up the hill, as fast as you could. If you had listened closer, you would have heard the howl of a beast as you fled.

Deeper into the forest, a pair of eyes watched as you obtained the stick and plucked the ceremonial robe from the earth he presented to you. When you chose it and fled, he smiled. His eyes turned from your retreating figure and moved to leap from the tree he perched himself on. As his body was that of a grey fox, he was much better at hiding than if he was in his more human form. Transitioning between into his human form, he smiles once more, a finger on his chin.

“What to offer her next, I wonder?” He ponders aloud, with only the wind around to hear him and carry his voice.

Your lungs are burning as you arrive back at the little picnic you were attending, the girls giggling as you finally come back. “Did ya see a ghost or somethin’?” Akira asks. You’re heaving as you present the stick, perfectly in tact and big enough to feed a fire. Everyone’s cheers are perceived as mocking to you, as you move on. The picnic is no longer something you want to attend, instead preferring to take a bath and sleep. With your worries placed on the forest and the spirits within, you find yourself wondering if you’ll be able to sleep or shall an entity come and judge you for trespassing.

The next day, you find your gaze drawn to the forest, as if it calls you down. Ignoring the calls are hard, you legs involuntarily moving as you think. On the edge of the forest, you see inside to find a small temari ball. It looks as if a young child once played with it, as you get closer to the object. Looking around the forest, you expect to see a child lost or crying, but you find nothing. With the lack of an owner, you decide to leave the ball. Turning to leave, you reprimand yourself for entering the forest again.

The sound of leaves rustling has you swiveling around, almost falling over when you realize the temari is following you. Moving back, it continues to follow you. A quick glance around proves that no one else is around, so you pick up the temari. As you did yesterday, you flew out of the forest and hope you didn’t take a malevolent being’s toy.

Another pair of eyes watch as you flee, his temari offering close to your chest. A wickedly mischievous grin spreads upon his lips, his form emerging from the shadows where he was hidden. With sharp canines peeking from his smile, warm brown eyes look to the path you had just taken. “I’m glad she likes her present. I can’t wait for what tomorrow will bring,” he chuckles, moving further into the forest. With each step he takes, a thick fog permeates the forest floor, providing a barrier past the stream.

You don’t know what it is. The growing urge to enter the forest gets stronger as the day continues on, the urge barely quenched upon nightfall. Even in your bed chambers, you find yourself looking through your open window, into the forest. Mist seeps from the greenery, an ominous feeling settling in the pit of your stomach. A howl from the forest startles you, eyes finding the gaze reflecting back at you. As you hold the gaze, feeling yourself rooted in place, another set of eyes joins. You shut the window, deciding to never go back to the forest.

When morning comes, the feeling of needing to go to the forest is even stronger. Feeling ill from the image of last night, you decide to stay home for the day. When a knock comes to your door, you assume it to be the milk delivery. Upon opening the door, your eyes widen at the two boys on your doorstep.

“Can you go get my ball?” The first one says, a bright smile on his face. The one currently sniffling nods in agreement. They look like twins, not that you’d recognize them.

“I didn’t mean to kick it so hard, please don’t tell my dad!” He cries out, holding onto his brother. You smile warmly at him, getting to eye level. Running your hand through his hair, his sniffles lessen.

“I won’t tell anyone, you’re fine. I’ll be right back,” you smile at him, wiping his tears. You shut the door, telling them to stay put as you go searching for the ball. As you look around, you become confused. Where is the ball? Moving further along your backyard, you hear a hushed whisper from the forest, wide eyes turning to sound. With an apology already on your lips, you turn to enter your house when you find yourself unable to move. As if an invisible barrier prevents you from progressing towards your house — which seems proven true as you inch towards the forest and suddenly cannot go back to where you were. With the unsettling pit in your stomach, you enter the forest once more.

Entering, you find the mist from before still evident, yet it parts for you. Curiosity sets in as you are further urged into the forest, stopping as you hear water trickling. A stream lays in front of you, waters more calm than your heart beat. You inhale, deciding to risk it as you wade through the stream. The water seeps into your shoes, the bottom of your dress becoming saturated. Progressing further into the mist, now a heavy fog, you find a large temple inside. It’s stable and perfectly standing, as if it isn’t centuries old. The two erected statues tell you the temple belongs to the spirits of the legend, finding a chill run through your blood as you realize your situation. Before you step foot onto the stairs, you turn to leave but are halted.

“Where do you think yer goin’?” A rough voice speaks. You whip around to see a tall, but handsome man. The hair is a dark grey color, eyes to match. What stuns you is the pair of grey fox ears, a tail that matches in color swishing behind him. His clothes remind you of the robe you found amongst the leaves.

“I-I’m terribly sorry, really!” You begin to plea, pulling on your wrist. “I-I didn’t mean to- to trespass!”

“What’d’ya mean? This is your home, y’know?” He seems genuinely confused, another stun to your body as his words settle. Home? This temple? Before you can refute him, another voice joins in.

“Ah, ‘Samu, I told ya humans are different. They don’t know the offering ritual, but I made sure to get our offerings. Our silly little human forgot about them,” he chuckles, looking at you. With the robe you found on one arm, the temari in his hand. “This was my offering, you know,” he gestures to the ball. “A precious item to me, it is. I’m glad you took care of it and cleaned it up. What a perfect little wife you’ll make,” his grin makes his words more sinister than they originally were. Fear spikes through your veins, your limbs suddenly shaking as you feel your legs give out. The one dubbed ‘Samu catches you, holding you bridal style as you find yourself hesitant to hold onto his robes.

“‘Tsumu, y’know I’m not watching humans like you do. That’s weird,” he cringes, nose scrunching up in disgust. ‘Tsumu seemed to get ticked off at that, growling. Only then did you notice how animal-like the both of them were, sporting fox ears and a tail to match. While ‘Samu had dark grey, ‘Tsumu spotted a saturated yellow hair color and slightly lighter ears and tail. So caught up in the view, you didn’t notice that the brothers has started walking, heading towards the temple.

“W-Wait, I can’t go with you! I’m— I’m not who you’re looking for!” Sputtering out the first things to pop into your mind, the two don’t stop.

“Of course yer who we’re looking for! You’re meant for us, meant to know your place with us. After all, why else would enter our domain, smelling so delicious as you do?”

“Smell— what?”

“‘Tsumu, stop bein’ cryptic. He’s saying you entered the forest during your heat cycle,”

“Well, ovulation in humans. Apparently, they’re not like us special spirits,”

“You’re ready for us, we can smell it. You’ll be the perfect mate for us to breed,” although ‘Samu seemed uninterested, you could feel how his chest seemed to heave as he inhaled deeply. The growling accompanying his final word sent slick between your folds as you held onto him close, afraid of falling.

Arriving at the top of the temple, you saw a cot that has been lain out, the soft cushioning big enough for the three of you. The sight of it had your brain going into overdrive, panicking as you attempted to leave ‘Samu’s arms. He complied, but his hands stayed firmly on your hips. “Time to get dressed,”

Before you could ask for an explanation, your clothes were practically torn off of you. Blood spilled onto your ripped dress, your side burning from where the claws caught you. The shreds fell to the temple floor, your hands flying to cover the exposed skin. While one hand covered the area between your legs, your arm held your breasts close to your chest. ‘Samu clicked his tongue, easily removing your hands from your body while ‘Tsumu slid on the robe, his claws lightly grazing your skin. He didn’t hide the fact he was admiring the view, either, his dark eyes gazing over each inch of skin you presented to him. Once the robe was on, you were released from ‘Samu’s hold, left to cover yourself up with the fabric. You’d deny it aloud, but the robe fit you perfectly.

“You’re gorgeous,” ‘Tsumu growled, shedding his own robe. Your hands came in front of you, hoping to somehow deter him when ‘Samu brought you backwards, to the cot presented. ‘Tsumu wasn’t far behind, dropping to his knees while you lay against the cot. It was softer than expected, more plush than it looks. ‘Samu had stripped of his own clothes, his robe hanging loosely on him by the ribbon around his waist. ‘Tsumu was different, his robe open and letting you see every inch of skin, but his arms still through the sleeves as if he was cold.

“I don’t—“ you began, your words interrupted by ‘Samu’s lips on yours, his tongue brushing against your closed lips as he deepened the kiss. ‘Tsumu’s touches had begun to litter your thighs, spreading your legs as he inhaled deeply. A finger touching your entrance had you jumping, only to be held firmly down by ‘Samu’s hands.

“You’re so wet, it’s hard to hold back,” ‘Tsumu growls out, his tongue lapping at your folds. You squirm and make a noise of displeasure, but ‘Samu is there to keep your focus on his lips and kisses. The more he kisses you, the hotter your body gets and the more you feel your resistance melt away. ‘Tsumu has his face between your thighs, licking and sucking on your clit, claws digging into the skin. It has you clenching around nothing, the hot pleasure from his tongue and burning sensation on your thighs. It isn’t until he removes himself from between your legs do you feel relaxed and at ease, as if your body is jelly. Your resistance is no more, a small whine coming from you when ‘Samu and ‘Tsumu remove themselves to admire their handiwork.

It’s a sudden change, the relaxing touches and breathless kisses are gone, replaced by the feverish touches of both men as they paw and scratch at your skin, ‘Samu’s teeth sinking into hot skin and lapping at the blood while ‘Tsumu presses less destructive kisses to your neck. With the air much too hot for your liking, a breathless moan leaves your lips when ‘Tsumu pulls your head back by your hair, spitting into your mouth and then kissing you. With his tongue tracing your teeth and his growls being swallowed up by your mouth, you’re oblivious to ‘Samu. With his cock in one hand, he kneads your thigh with his other hand as he rubs along your folds.

“‘Tsumu, move off,” ‘Samu growls, pushing the fox spirit off of you, his large frame colliding with the wooden planks of the temple. You find yourself on your hands and knees, ass in the air while the robe is promptly stripped off of you, lain underneath you. ‘Samu licks his lips, lining himself up with you entrance while ‘Tsumu gets his balance back. The first press in has you screaming, but it isn’t just because he’s big. His thickness is something you never expected, but with his calloused hands on your hips, bringing you back into his hips with no regards to adjusting you. A guttural groan comes from ‘Samu, head thrown back as he basks in the pleasure of being buried in your cunt. ‘Tsumu is now back to you, his hard cock in front of your face.

With another rough thrust, one that has you practically bouncing off ‘Samu’s cock, ‘Tsumu has you wrapping your lips around his. You can’t take it all in, that’d be impossible. With a pair of hands on your hips, you’re brought to ‘Samu while the pair of hands tangled in your hair pulls you towards ‘Tsumu. Lips pressed firmly against ‘Tsumu’s cock as your tongue runs under the length, running over the bulging veins and ridges you find. Your eyes are screwed shut, unable to stay open while ‘Samu splits you on his cock, somehow forcing himself deeper and deeper inside of you. It isn’t until you’re finally bouncing flush against him do you feel something strange on his cock. It’s only then do you open your eyes, looking at ‘Tsumu’s cock that has a large bulb at the base of it, growing in size the more you suck on him. Hollowing out you cheeks has ‘Tsumu groaning, claws digging into your scalp as he forces himself down your throat. He doesn’t force the bulb in your throat, thankfully, but he does coat your throat in his cum.

“Your mouth is fucking hot, little human. It’s like you were made to take us,” he breathes out, panting. You’re coughing, feeling Samu’s thrusts speed up as he brings you close to him, but he pulls out at the last moment to spill all over your back.

“With our scent on you, you’ll be stuck by our side until you pass,” ‘Samu is in a similar situation, chest heaving as you’re flipped over. You’re then placed on ‘Tsumu’s lap, his cock rubbing between your folds as he grinds into you. “But we’ll take you together first,”

“So no hard feelings, right ‘Samu?”

“Right, ‘Tsumu,” the agree, Tsumu’s cock rubbing into you and then prodding at your drooling cunt. He slips the tip in, the feeling similar to ‘Samu’s thick cock. Speaking of ‘Samu, he’s quick to stick his own tip back in, stretching you out farther then you expected. A silent scream comes from you as tears spill down your cheeks, both of them thrusting into you as your cunt burns.

Split open on their cocks, you’re helpless. Nails digging into ‘Samu’s shoulders as his hands once more find themselves on your hips. ‘Tsumu’s hands are keeping your legs spread, the view of you sucking in both their cocks on display as they thrusts in tandem. When one pulls out, the other thrusts in and vice versa. The rhythm they set is one that works, their lips finding opposite sides on your neck to kiss and lick, teeth grazing the skin. You feel a buildup of your own orgasm as they plow into you, your walls squeezing them as they pick up the pace. Their rhythm gets sloppy, short growls from each as their bulbs start to grow again.

When ‘Tsumu sinks his teeth into you, your scream is one of pleasure as you reach your high, coating both of their cocks a milky white cream, the liquid falling to their base and dripping down. ‘Samu sinks his teeth into your skin on the opposite side as they both push into your tight cunt, a scream and shiver running through you as the do, their bulbs inflating inside to stretch you even more.

You’re completely stuck, their cocks inside you as they lap at your wounds. It’s only when you squirm do they start talking. “You’ll get used to it,”

“After all we have a week,”

“You’ll be able to take our knots with no problem,”

“All your holes will be used to taking us,”

Their words don’t ease you concern, but the fact that once they leave your warm cunt, they’re still hard and readying you for round two. The heat encompassing your body refuses to leave, their skin as sweaty and hot as yours. With their relentless stamina and obsession with pumping all their seed into you, you’re positive you’ll get pregnant.

[astrologicalnonsense]

Eclipses in Astrology

Our ancestors relied heavily on the steady cycle of nature - the changing of seasons, how night followed day. So much so, that up until the birth of Christianity, they viewed time as circular - thus, when that cycle was disrupted, they expected chaos. No wonder then, that eclipses brought terror upon them. They believed the Sun was eaten by angry gods, being the first sign of apocalypse, and it didn’t help matters that eclipses were often accompanied by natural catastrophes.

Eclipses are potent lunations (Full Moons and New Moons), but they aren’t as unusual as we would like to believe. There are 3-7 occasions each year, mostly happening in clusters. However, it turns out are ancestors weren’t too far off when it comes to eclipses: they are intense turning points that bring abrupt shifts, surprises and crisis. They push the forward button on our lives to force us into significant changes and growth. The decisions made at this time have long-lasting effects and implications, that can be felt up to 6 months after the date of the eclipse. Eclipses are karmically charged events, always activating the Nodal Axis, and one of the Lunar Nodes in particular. The South Node represents the past, whereas the North Node stands for the future - in case on an eclipse, the Moon always conjuncts one of the transiting Nodes. Everyone is impacted by the eclipses - to what lenght, it depends on the natal chart. The house an eclipse falls in (in case of a Lunar Eclipse or Full Moon, take the house of the Moon into consideration) is the area of life where the effects of the eclipse will be felt, and if it conjuncts a natal planet that planet will also be activated. The sign of the eclipse shows us the type of events we could expect, and the theme of the phenomena.

Solar Eclipses ☼

A Solar Eclipse is a charged New Moon - a time of the month when the Sun and the Moon are in the same zodiac sign, and the same degree. It’s when the Moon is between the Sun and the Earth, covering the Sun from us. New Moons are traditionally connected to beginnings, starting fresh, and a Solar Eclipse is no different. However, these changes are much bolder, and the opportunities being presented to us this time are unexpected. The energies inspire us to be expansive and adventurous, but since the Sun (the logic, the ego, the masculine, the upfront) is covered from us, the effects begin internally. Often Solar Eclipses take something away from us, something familiar and habitual, forcing us to consider approaches and opportunities we otherwise wouldn’t. This prompts us to leap into a new territory, which usually means something that is out of our control. But this is exactly how we experience the major growth eclipses have in store for us. It is a good time to put yourself out there, make a big reveal and take a leap of faith.

An Annular Solar Eclipse means that despite the Moon being right on top of the Sun, the ring of the Sun remains visible. A Total Solar Eclipse happens when the Moon obscures the whole Sun.

Lunar Eclipses ☽

Lunar Eclipses are Full Moons with a twist: these times, the Earth is perfectly wedged between the Sun and the Moon, and the latter reflects back the Earth’s shadow (=umbra). This gives the Moon a red tint, and that’s why Lunar Eclipses are often called ‘Blood Moons’. The shifts of a Lunar Eclipse are external (contrary to Solar Eclipses), and we began to see people, things, and ourselves in a different light. This change in perspective allows us a glimpse into our own shadow, and that of others; because of that, the view’s not always glamorous. Yet, these can be moments of powerful self-discovery, where we could see where we need to grown, and have an opportunity to release what no longer serves us. It is a time of endings, but also, healings.

A Prenumbral Lunar Eclipse is when only the prenumbra, the more diffuse, outer shadow of the Earth that falls on the Moon, resulting in a less noticable, subtle tone. A Partial Lunar Eclipse happens when the umbra covers only a fraction of the Moon. Throughout the eclipse, it grows and recedes, never reaching fullness. When the umbra (the inner part of the Earth’s shadow) is what falls of the whole surface of the Moon, is when we talk about a Total Lunar Eclipse.

Recommendations

Despite (or exactly because of) eclipses are such potent events, it is ill-advised to act on a whim and make a decision on the days of the eclipse. Rather, use the following week or so to gound and centre yourself, and allow the energies to unfold. The Universe will provide you with the message you seek, but you won’t hear it if you keep running around, creating noise around you. For further information about today’s Solar Eclipse in Sagittarius, check out Cafeastrology’s article.

[magical-agatha]

god my fuckin temperament is too weak to handle thinking about inguinal hernias anymore today. this: http://transhealth.ucsf.edu/trans?page=guidelines-testicular-pain is still the only link i can find that has any confirmation of it as a danger to trans women who tuck. but it doesn't go into detail about how the actual hernia is occurring and what the relationship is with tucking. but at least it confirms a correlation so i know that it is in fact a danger and not just wild speculation or something based solely on one person’s experience, which may or may not reflect the rest of the community. from what i can guess its probably like? pushing the testicles into the inguinal cavity is distending it and weakening the muscles, which is allowing the intestines to slip through into the cavity. i wonder if theres like, something in this to do with like, physical exertion, bc it could also be that tucking is creating a weakness that is getting exacerbated by a moment of physical exertion? or maybe by moving in a way that like, affects the muscles in there? idk. there really isnt a lot of info about this and im not a doctor so the best i can do is speculation. but i dont think the idea that tucking is distending the inguinal cavity which is weakening the associated abdominal muscles is too extreme of a jump. this is one of those times where i really really wish there was more medical information and research about trans bodies, bc most of what there is is sporadic and incomplete and the rest is sourceless uhh, whats the word, when its just based off a persons experience being recounted without any like, reliable research or info. starts with A. im very tired lol. point is i wish there was more info out there cuz there really isnt a lot and im scared ppl are going to get hurt bc of that. this is also like, opening my eyes a lot about how uncertain the information i have in general about like, my body and the bodies of other trans women. bc im finding inconsistent info about things i thought were facts, like for example tucking has always been held up to be perfectly safe, but ive never been able to do it without it hurting, and apparently like?? the whole ‘hrt will turn you infertile’ thing might be inconsistent too? apparently it happens to some but not others. and the thing about like, ‘you WILL lose the function of your dick’ (with the implied ‘but thats a good thing’ that has always pissed me off) and my dick still works, it works differently and i cum and orgasm differently than i did before hrt but it still very much works, it just seems to follow different rules? and i still cum and i can still get hard, both of those things were supposed to stop happening but they didnt. it just like.. went through a process of being reprogrammed so it behaves differently now. cuz there was a period where i couldnt orgasm and i couldnt cum, but then i could again, and now my orgasms are totally different than they were when i was pre hrt. instead of it being like, sudden and intense and overwhelming, it builds up slowly to a peak, then gradually declines from there and leaves you feeling warm throughout and very very soft. and my hen leaks precum constantly when im aroused, and then when i cum it shoots a little bit out then like, leaks goo for the next half hour, not a little bit either. its a mess.

there was something else i wanted to say here but i forgot it. all in all im just. mad that the only ppl who care about the health of trans ppl are some doctors and trans ppl themselves. and that information about our bodies is inconsistent even between professionals. i cant be sure that my doctor actually knows how my body works and whats best for me. it makes it so much harder to trust doctors and feel safe when i see them. what a nightmare. i want to help ppl. i want to find and compile info about our bodies to keep us all safe but i can barely look after myself and i cant commit to doing that. i have to focus on myself. so all i can rly do is like, give advice and try to warn ppl of potential dangers and do what research i can. which is what we’re all doing. the danger is when personal biases conflict with caring for the safety of other ppl, which is the root of all the problems with trans medical stuff i think. whether its doctors enforcing their biases on trans ppl thru medical advice/medicine, or trans ppl themselves giving advice that is warped by their personal beliefs. it leads to misinformation and inconsistency and thats dangerous. that means people getting hurt. so i have to be careful when i give advice to be aware of my own personal biases. such as like, i hate tucking, but i cant tell ppl to just not tuck bc its not my body, i dont know if theres a way to tuck safely or not, so instead i have to tell ppl to be careful and to be aware of potential risks, and to listen to their body bc pain and discomfort are important indicators of harm being done. but im scared that will be lost in the tide of ‘tuck or you arent a real trans woman, you need tucking to pass, it cant hurt you’ that has been spread among us for a really long time.

i feel like this is like, tied to another big problem which is the like, necessity and obsession with passing. which are two very different things. necessity is like, passing to be safe, which i feel like has room to accept that tucking might not be totally safe and comes with certain risks, because it isnt about affirming self worth or identity, only about staying safe. then obsession, which might not be the best word but it will do for now, by that i mean ppl who feel they Have to pass at all costs, bc they think that if they dont they arent a real woman or something like that. they tie passing to self worth and identity, if they dont pass they are worthless or incomplete or like, inferior to cis women, and they will do anything to pass, with little to no regard for personal safety. they will do risky things like skipping meals or tucking unsafely bc they want to pass at any cost. but they spread their perspective on this through advice to other trans women, telling them they need to tuck and they need to wear makeup and they need to do voice training and get implants and srs and all manner of things or they are a trender. a faker. they put insecurities into other trans women and bully each other to propagate their personal biases and force other trans women to conform. most trans women pre hrt are extremely vulnerable and lost, which is when these obsessive trans women give them bad advice and twist them to their world view. that happened to me. i got sucked into that when i was trying to figure out my identity and needed validation. luckily i got out of that and i know better now. its really fucked. ive talked about like, versions of this idea before. that there are two kinds of trans ppl, those who love being trans and those who hate is and want to be cis. and i think as im getting a bit older and learning more and getting further thru my transition im starting to put together a bigger picture of the interplay between all of this stuff. like, the interactions between cis society and its expectations of trans ppl, how trans ppl deal with those expectations and how they deal with living and moving in a cis society thats hostile to trans ppl. this is all one big mess. and thats not even touching on the interactions between terfs, transmeds, and the various levels of trans communities both online and irl. its an absolute nightmare. and then as well there’s like, further interactions with like, nb and gender diverse ppl, gay vs straight trans ppl, intersex ppl, exclusionists, and the mess that the current lgbt+ community online is. i could write a book about this. im living in a nightmare. a massive roiling chaotic community thats fighting itself and the world around it and trying to survive and destroy the parts of itself that it thinks arent ‘valid’. which sounds like a metaphor for my experiences as a trans woman. god and theres more i keep forgetting. im so scatterbrained tonight. i havent had enough sleep to be trying to talk about something so complex as this. and im destroying my hands by typing this much. time to stop. i can sort all this out later. what a mess.

[crimethinc]

The Movement as Battleground: Fighting for the Soul of the Yellow Vest Movement

In response to Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to increase the tax on fuel for “ecological” reasons, France has experienced several weeks of unrest associated with the yellow vest movement. This grassroots uprising illustrates how the contradictions of modern centrism—such as the false dichotomy between addressing climate change and considering the needs of the poor—can create social movements that offer fertile ground for populists and nationalists. At the same time, the increasing involvement of anarchists and other autonomous rebels in the unrest raises important questions. If far-right groups can hijack movements, as they did in Ukraine and Brazil, can anti-capitalists and anti-authoritarians redirect them, as well?

“The yellow vests will triumph”—but what will triumph with them?

Yesterday, the Macron government offered its first concession, delaying the fuel tax for six months. At the same time, protests and police violence around France continue unabated; another day of action has been called for this Saturday, with the authorities promising a massive crackdown in response. The involvement of truck drivers and high school students signals that the story has not yet reached its climax. The model has already spread to Belgium and there are demonstrations called in Germany and Spain. As seems usual these days, no one on any side of the conflict seems to have any strategy in mind except to continue escalating.

But who will benefit from this escalation? Will it radicalize ordinary people, equipping them to defend their livelihoods against neoliberal austerity measures by means of direct action? Will it offer the police state a new justification for further repressive laws and measures? Will it bring a far-right nationalist government into power in place of the government of Macron?

Likewise, if this internally contradictory movement spreads to other parts of Europe, what aspects of it will spread? Will it supplant nationalist populism with economic populism, preparing the way for a revolt against capitalism? Will it serve as a vehicle for the far right to create a surge of grassroots nationalism, opening a new era of fascist street violence? Will it continue to be a battleground on which nationalists, anarchists, and others vie to determine what form the opposition to centrists like Macron will take in the coming years?

Let’s get some perspective on the situation.

In the United States, in less reactionary times, the Occupy movement saw some of the same conflicts emerge: legalistic liberals, leftist pacifists, insurrectionist anarchists, far-right crypto-fascists, and unaffiliated angry poor people all converged in the space of the movement and fought to determine its character. At first, it was unclear whether Occupy would be most useful to middle-class democrats, right-wing conspiracy theorists, or the genuinely poor and desperate; in fact, during that time, some of the same pessimism circulated about Occupy that we have heard from a few anarchists about the yellow vest movement. However, after a few weeks, anarchists and other militant opponents of capitalism and white supremacy seized the initiative, especially in Occupy Oakland, focusing the movement on confronting the root causes of poverty in capitalism and ensuring that many of the people who were radicalized during Occupy adopted emancipatory rather than reactionary politics.

We saw the opposite process play out in Ukraine two years later, when fascists gained the initiative via the very same approach anarchists had used in Occupy Oakland—taking the front lines in clashes with the police and forcing their political adversaries out of organizing spaces.

Today, the far right has made considerable gains since 2014, and conflicts around the world are playing out at a much fiercer pitch than they were in the days of Occupy. France has a long history of movements for liberation, including many powerful struggles over the past decade and a half. Hopefully, these have created powerful networks that will not let nationalists take the lead in determining what social movements in France will look like.

But even if we understand the movement itself as a battleground, that only poses further questions. What is the best way to fight to determine the character of a movement? How do we engage in this struggle in a way that doesn’t weaken the movement in a way that offers the advantage to the police? How do we remain focused on connecting with other ordinary participants in the movement, rather than getting mired in a private grudge match with fascists?

The fog of war.

In order to explore these questions in greater detail, we present the following update from France. This report picks up where our previous analysis left off, in the aftermath of the yellow vest demonstration of November 24.

The Aftermath of November 24

A week ago, total confusion reigned about the yellow vest movement—and within it. The self-proclaimed “leaderless,” “spontaneous,” and “apolitical” movement against the increase of taxes on gas had reached its first impasse. How could the movement remain unified when people from across the entire political spectrum were participating with completely contradictory views about how to address the government, what sort of tactics to employ, and what narratives to rally around? At the same time, how could the movement resist the attempts from political opportunists and party leaders to coopt it, while continuing to push ? The yellow vest movement was fracturing over these issues.

The yellow vest movement is a battleground for the entire political spectrum.

The day after the Parisian demonstration on Saturday, November 24 that saw the avenue of the Champs Elysées transformed into a battlefield between demonstrators and police, part of the movement voted to elect eight official spokespersons. In doing so, they hoped to reintroduce some good old-fashioned hierarchy and centralization into the movement, so as to establish dialogue with the government.

Once again, with these elections, it was not easy to maintain the appearance that the yellow vest movement was “apolitical.” Two of the newly elected spokespersons had connections with the far-right:

Thomas Mirallès ran for the Front National (now Rassemblement National) in the 2014 municipal elections. To defend himself, he describes this political experience as “a youthful mistake” and emphasizes that since that election, he “has never campaigned again.”

On social media, Eric Drouet has shared videos against migrants and expressed arguments used by the xenophobic far right. Knowing that this could tarnish his new “respectable” image as a spokesperson of the movement, he deleted all his Facebook publications up to November 18.

However, these elections were rejected by another part of the movement that refused to fall into the traps of representation and negotiation. Some yellow vesters explicitly reject the concept of representation: rather than having a spokesperson, the idea is that every participant should speak for himself or herself. Moreover, after the intense confrontations that took place during the November 24 demonstration in Paris, several local organizers decided to distance themselves from the movement.

The conflict within the movement didn’t stop some determined yellow vesters from calling for another day of action on Saturday, December 1, in order to increase the pressure on the government to rescind the tax—or simply to destabilize the government itself. The tone was set!

State power, destabilized.

The Government Tries Dialogue

It is clear now that the French government was not expecting the demonstrators’ rage to escalate, producing hours of rioting in Paris. When another call appeared to demonstrate in Paris the following weekend, the government realized that they were losing the control of the situation. This is why, after weeks of expressing contempt towards the yellow vest movement, members of the government changed their strategy in hopes of pacifying the situation. In this regard, the decision to elect official spokespersons for the movement was a strategic mistake, in that it facilitated the government’s efforts to establish a “dialogue” in which politicians would dictate terms to representatives who would then dictate them to participants.

On Tuesday, November 27, President Macron made a public speech in order to present the creation of the Haut Conseil pour le Climat (the High Council for Climate), the purpose of which is to “provide an independent perspective on the Government’s climate policy.” During his speech, President Macron changed his strategy by directly addressing some of the demands and concerns of the yellow vesters, presenting himself as a pedagogue willing to listen to what people have to say. This political masquerade failed; many members of the yellow vest movement rejected the so-called “helping hand” offered by the president and criticized his hypocrisy, as Macron had categorically refused to meet some yellow vesters just that morning.

Later that day, at the request of President Macron, the Minister of Ecological Transition, François de Rugy, received the leading figures of the movement. This meeting was supposed to establish some kind of dialogue between the government and the movement in order to find an exit from the situation. However, after two hours, the deadlock remained. Unconvinced by their exchange with the minister, the two spokespersons reaffirmed their intention to demonstrate on Saturday, December 1.

Understanding that the situation was escalating as more and more yellow vesters rejected the idea of dialogue and committed to gathering in the streets, the government tried one more time to re-establish dialogue. On November 30, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe invited the eight spokespersons of the movement to a meeting. This meeting was a failure, too: in the end, only one spokesperson out of eight met with the Prime Minister and the Minister of Ecological Transition. A second spokesperson, Jason Herbert, left the meeting shortly after it began.

Yellow for all.

A Fertile Ground for Populists

That same week, the self-proclaimed “legalist” and “official” part of the movement, including the elected leaders and spokespersons for the yellow vests, presented traditional media outlets with 42 demands. Looking at this list, it is easy to see the confusion within the movement, but also to identify some of the political influences that its protagonists share.

The list includes demands from every position on the political spectrum. There are social demands such as increasing minimum wage, fighting homelessness, and increasing financial assistance to handicapped people. But there are also reactionary demands, including deporting immigrants who haven’t received the right to asylum, blocking migration, developing a policy of assimilation for those who want to live in France, increasing the presidential term from 5 to 7 years, and providing more funding to the Justice department, the police forces, and the army.

Alongside these demands, we saw the now “classic” opposition to the increase of taxes on gas, as well as some ecological, protectionist, and nationalist arguments. The “legalist” or “official” part of the movement was playing a dangerous game in giving populists from the left to the far right reason to support the movement, if not enabling them to coopt it completely.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the leftist populist party France Insoumise, publicly denies that his party has engaged in any efforts to coopt the movement; in reality, the populist leader, who is obsessed with the idea of a coming “citizens’ revolution,” is hoping that the anger in the streets will weaken Macron’s government. This is purely opportunistic, as the leftist populist party aims to increase its ranks by attracting “angry” voters in the 2019 European elections.

On the other side of the political spectrum, emboldened by the wave of far-right victories in the US, Italy, and Brazil, nationalists know that this movement of collective anger represents a great opportunity for them to gain power and confirm their status as a “real political alternative” to the current government. Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, leader of Debout La France, has been supporting the movement from the beginning, and some yellow vesters are members of his political party—Frank Buhler, for example, whose video became viral online.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the Rassemblement National, believes that the yellow vest movement represents what she’s been describing for years as “the France of the people left behind.” The nationalist party believes that [yellow vesters] “look like our voters. Unhappy and unlucky people because they are usually invisible, and who have a strong contempt for politicians.” This explains why the Rassemblement National has been extremely cautious in terms of strategy. They fear that if they attempt to coopt the movement too obviously, they could turn the demonstrators against them. They decided instead to offer verbal support to the demonstrations without their leaders marching in the streets alongside protestors. They have concentrated on communicating and defending some of the “42 demands” in corporate media outlets. Marion Maréchal Le Pen, niece of Marine Le Pen, said that she was present at the Champs Elysées on November 24 and described herself as “an ardent moral support for the yellow vesters’ suffering,” claiming to have “a lot of empathy for them.”

December 1 in Paris.

Preparing for the Unknown

Frustrated at having failed to neutralize the movement through dialogue, and fearing that, for the second week in a row, images of chaos in the streets of Paris would dominate the airwaves, the government decided to take every possible measure to maintain its precious republican order during the demonstrations of Saturday, December 1.

To secure the capital city, prevent or contain confrontations, and deal with the infiltration of radicals and “extremist elements,” the government arranged 5000 anti-riot police (Gendarmes and CRS) for the day. Their mission was to control all the access routes to the Champs Elysées, the meeting location of the demonstration. To ensure that no dangerous objects or possible projectiles would be brought inside the demonstration, the authorities filtered the access points, searching every single person who wanted to enter the perimeter. These controls were to be in effect from 6 am on Saturday, December 1 until 2 am on Sunday, December 2.

In order to protect the most important buildings, symbols, and organs of power, the authorities designated restricted areas where freedom of movement would be limited. All access to the Elysée (the Presidential palace), the Place Beauvau (the Ministry of the Interior), the Hôtel Matignon (the Prime Minister’s office), or the National Assembly was sealed off completely for the day.

Another reason the government took all those safety measures was that the yellow vests were not the only group demonstrating that day in Paris. At 10 am, railway workers were supposed to gather near the Saint Lazare train station to defend their status; they planned to join the yellow vesters after their action. At 12 pm, other trade unions were gathering for a traditional annual march against unemployment and precariousness. At 1 pm, several collectives of Parisian suburbs and antifascists decided to gather at Saint Lazare to join the yellow vest movement.

In short, on the eve of the December 1 national day of action, all the elements were combining to make for a truly explosive mixture in the streets of Paris.

All cops are bastards; all cars are barricades.

The Fuse Is Lit…

Due to the dramatic scope of what happened on December 1, we cannot provide an exhaustive list of all the actions and confrontations that took place in the streets of Paris that day. This is only an incomplete overview of the course of events. Also, in reference to the images and stories presented herein, it bears saying that some of the protagonists may be members of the far right.

Early in the morning, the first demonstrators began to converge on the Champs Elysées. Police were already deployed and on the alert; all yellow vesters were searched before entering the perimeter of the demonstration. The trap set up by the government was in effect. During the first few hours of the day, police arrested several individuals on accusations of possessing weapons and projectiles.

This map depicts the zones that were declared forbidden or restricted.

This map depicts the part of Paris where the clashes took place. In blue, the restricted area controlled by police forces; in yellow, the areas where yellow vesters circulated; in red, the major confrontation zones, including the route taken by some anarchist comrades in their report.

Surprisingly, the safety plan set up by authorities protected the avenue of the Champs Elysées, but not the Place de l’Etoile—the large traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe. Proposed by Napoléon I in 1806, the Arc de Triomphe was inaugurated in 1836 by Louis Philippe, then King of France, who dedicated the monument to the armies of the Revolution and the Empire. In 1921, the French government buried the Unknown Soldier of World War I beneath it. The flame of remembrance is revived everyday and official military commemorations take place annually in front of the flame. The monument is a symbol of French glory.

Aware that the Arc de Triomphe was not under police control, and knowing that, to access the Champs Elysées, they would have to submit to a search and have their identities checked, demonstrators began to gather around the monument, just outside the police perimeter. At 8 am, about a hundred yellow vesters were already on site, while the official beginning of the demonstration was due at 2 pm. Shortly after, around 9 am, the first confrontations began when yellow vesters tried to force their way through a checkpoint to enter the Champs Elysées. Police responded immediately with tear gas, which only escaladed the clashes.

From this vantage point, it is not easy to confirm precisely who initiated the first confrontations or who took part. As during the previous week, the confrontations included everyone from neo-Nazis and other fascists to anarchists, anti-capitalists. and anti-fascists, not to forget angry yellow vesters from many other different backgrounds and political tendencies.

As is becoming usual with the yellow vest movement, the situation was quite confusing. Some protestors gathered around the Unknown Soldier’s flame as if they were paying tribute to war, nationalism, and imperialism. Others started singing the Marseillaise—the French national anthem. Meanwhile, the more determined protestors were throwing cobblestones at police forces, erecting barricades in the neighboring streets, and setting cars on fire.

Soon, the entire traffic circle was enveloped in tear gas. The situation continued to escalate. Every time the police line got too close, rioters welcomed them with a shower of cobblestones and other projectiles. In the meantime, the first tags appeared on the Arc de Triomphe; this imperial symbol was finally profaned! Sadly, although some of the tags were clearly inscribed by anarchist and anti-statist comrades, others were written by fascists.

The Arc de Triomphe.

French taxes at work.

The presence of organized fascist groups during the clashes around the Place de l’Etoile during the morning of December 1 is undeniable. Several mainstream media outlets covering the yellow vest movement mentioned their presence among the yellow vest movement. In one article, the journalist says: “Several police vehicles had to leave the Place des Ternes hastily after being attacked by tens of individuals wearing visible far-right symbols.” In another article, the author reports the presence of monarchists, traditionalist Catholic groups, and nationalist and fascist groups, such as the GUD (Groupe Union Défense), a far-right student union—backing up these claims with photographs.

In their personal report about the yellow vest demonstration, anarchist comrades also mention the presence of the far right near the Place de l’Etoile:

“When we arrived at the Place de l’Etoile around 12 pm, it had been already a huge chaos for almost three hours. According to some comrades we met on site, the confrontations had been extremely violent underneath the 8Arc de Triomphe* during the morning. It seems that a lot of people had been injured. It was also in this sector that radical far-right groups were most present during the day. The GUD was there. We saw a good amount of walls covered by Celtic crosses. The far right in its “legalist” tendency also appeared to be well represented among the demonstrators. It seemed to us, and according to several other testimonies as well, that these fascist tendencies stayed present all day long around the Place de l’Etoile. Nevertheless, it was difficult to really quantify them.”

The Arc de Triomphe was the focal point of confrontations throughout the morning. Police repeatedly tried to repel protestors from the historical monument, but not without difficulties, as evidenced by this scene in which a group of demonstrators charged an anti-riot police unit that was trying to protect the edifice. During the charge, one policeman was isolated from his unit and beaten up by yellow vesters.

Clashes at the Arc de Triomphe.

This event illustrated once more the confusion and disagreement within the movement. While some yellow vesters were attacking the police officer, others helped him to escape from his attackers, so he could rejoin his unit. Later, another yellow vester even returned an anti-riot shield to the police after demonstrators had seized it.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the French capital, other people in yellow vests gathered in the district of Bastille and walked along the large street of Rivoli, passing in front of the main City Hall of Paris, with the objective of entering the Champs Elysées from the opposite side—via the Place de la Concorde.

The museum under the Arc de Triomphe.

…Now It’s Time to Explode

The following section draws on this narrative published by anarchists, complemented by information from corporate media and other sources.

Around 1 pm, while the Arc de Triomphe was still surrounded by massive clouds of tear gas, a group of comrades decided to change their strategy and create a new dynamic by starting a wildcat demonstration and leaving the stalemate around the traffic circle behind them. Rapidly, a procession of 800 individuals left the square and entered the streets of wealthy Parisian districts. The crowd was quite heterogeneous, but the atmosphere seemed friendly.

On the Hoche avenue, the wildcat demonstration ran into a large procession of railway workers who were heading towards the Saint Lazare train station in order to join the afternoon call made by suburban and anti-fascist collectives. Without thinking twice, the two processions united and continued to march towards the meeting point. This development shifted the horizon of possibility for the rest of the day.

When all the processions converged in the luxurious Opéra district, thousands of individuals were marching through the streets. Over a century ago, during the Belle Epoque era, anarchists such as Emile Henry demonstrated the concept of propaganda of the deed in this neighborhood by attacking the rich and their symbols in their own luxurious district. Here, in contrast to the ambience around the Arc de Triomphe, the atmosphere was comfortable. Within this large procession, there were anarchists, anti-fascists, queer radicals, collectives against police violence, railway workers, garden variety yellow vesters, some people we might describe as rioters without adjectives, and many others, including the simply curious. For the first time, it really seemed that some kind of anti-capitalist and anti-fascist force could gain a foothold within the troubled waters of the yellow vest movement.

Heading south, the large procession finally arrived at Rue de Rivoli—a large street that connects Bastille to the Place de la Concorde, the highly restricted area near the Presidential palace. At this point, part of the crowd decided to go east and continue marching towards the City Hall of Paris—where they were welcomed by police forces with tear gas. The rest of the procession, about 1500 individuals, were determined to go the opposite way and force their way through the police checkpoint near Place de la Concorde.

When they approached the square, numerous police trucks and a water cannon blocked their way. Uninterrupted and intense confrontations followed between radicals and police forces. Barricades appeared on different fronts, projectiles were thrown at police, while a rain of tear gas canisters fell on protestors and the water canon attacked them at full blast. Eventually, however, the water canon seemed to have some technical issues. Some demonstrators seized this opportunity to set a car on fire for use as an additional barricade.

A barricade.

Further away, near Saint Augustin, about 3000 individuals had been gathering at a major intersection since 3 pm, building numerous barricades in the area to block traffic. People were joyously expressing their desire to overthrow President Macron. The fences of a nearby construction site were used to erect new barricades, while others were set on fire. A little further away, police forces were already blocking the streets. At this point, mounted police also appeared. Not thinking twice, protestors began breaking up the asphalt and throwing projectiles at the police. For over an hour, a confrontation continued at this intersection. This shows how determined people were that afternoon. In the meantime, a nearby bank was thoroughly damaged, while other demonstrators flipped a truck over. Law enforcement finally cleared the area of protestors with a massive tear gas attack.

Christmas comes early to Paris.

Several different parts of Paris were completely chaotic. Three cars were burning on the fancy Haussmann Boulevard, named for the reactionary urban planner who attempted to make Paris insurrection-proof after the revolution of 1848. Several streets further, an empty police car was destroyed, looted, and set aflame. A crowd of radicals arrived at Place Vendome, well known for its luxurious jewelry stores, the Ministry of Justice, and the infamous column that the Communards once destroyed. Plastic Christmas trees found in the nearby streets were piled up as barricades and set on fire.

While a thick cloud of smoke enveloped the Opera district, the anti-capitalists decided to move towards the Bourse, the historical stock market building—another symbol of capitalism and state power. Granted, since 1998, no more financial transactions are made inside this building. Nevertheless, several windows were smashed, the front doors were opened, and fireworks made their way inside the hall. Then the rioting crowd left the area, attacking another police car in a neighboring street on the way. They used urban furniture and construction equipment to block traffic, destroyed the front windows of several banks, and disappeared into the early night.

One day, all that money will just be burning garbage.

The evening of December 1.

The emergence of some kind of anti-capitalist and anti-fascist bloc was an important development within the yellow vest movement. Likely drawing on years of experience in demonstrations such as the May Day and Loi Travail protests, the bloc took advantage of the general confusion to carry out multiple actions throughout Paris with clear objectives and intentions.

In addition to the clashes with police, there were also several confrontations with fascists. Members of the GUD were seen on a barricade with a Celtic cross flag. In another instance, protesters recognized Yvan Bennedetti—a well-known Nazi and former president of the ultranationalist Oeuvre Française, which disbanded after the killing of antifascist Clément Méric in 2013. He was effectively forced out of the area, if not out of the movement as a whole.

On Saturday, December 1, an insurrectional wind blew through the streets of Paris. Many thousands of people unleashed their rage against symbols of power: police were constantly harassed; banks and insurance agencies were systematically destroyed; numerous stores were looted, some even set on fire; cars and urban furniture were used to build barricades; several private mansions were vandalized and set on fire; historic monuments and republican symbols were occupied or attacked, including the Bourse and the Arc de Triomphe. Demonstrators succeeded in entering, looting, and destroying the museum located beneath the historical monument.

Scenes from December 1.

In view of such determination, the government and police forces were completely overwhelmed. There are several explanations for this. The first reason is the wide range of people taking part into the riots. It was not just anarchists and anti-capitalist radicals attacking police forces, but also a great number of other angry people in yellow vests including far-right activists and other rioters. Secondly, the protests continued to change and develop throughout the day, assuming unpredictable new forms. Finally, the extreme mobility, diffuse organization, and determination of the protestors made them a match for the officers, who were pinned down by their task of defending predefined areas. Indeed, as most police forces were assigned to positions around the restricted areas or busy dealing with confrontations near the Champs Elysées, they couldn’t respond to the developments in other districts of Paris. Nevertheless, on several occasions, members of the BAC (Anti-Criminality Brigade) were seen in the streets haphazardly shooting rubber bullets at every demonstrator in view.

Many officials and media agree that Paris hasn’t experienced such riots since 1968. To this assessment, we must add the following figures.

Altogether, 412 individuals were arrested and 378 of them were put in custody.

It is difficult to tell how much ammunition the police used; numbers vary widely between sources. However, it appears that they deployed about 8000 tear gas grenades, 1000 sting-ball grenades, 339 GLI-F4 stun grenades, 1200 rubber bullets, and 140,000 liters of water during the confrontations.

In the end, during the Parisian demonstration alone, 133 individuals were injured, while the authorities counted 112 cars, 130 pieces of urban furniture of one kind of another, and six buildings set on fire for a total of 249 fires.

The total amount of property destruction could reach 4 million euros.

The clashes around the Arc de Triomphe continued well into the night.

The police unloading even more ammunition.

Some of the consequences.

If you want us to spend more on gas, you may spend more on cars.

Fire Spreads on the Wind

Paris was not the only place in France were yellow vesters expressed their anger with actions. In various cities, protestors gathered for this third nationwide day of action; some of them were as determined as those who took the streets in Paris.

In Nantes, the first actions took place at the airport, where demonstrators succeeded in entering the tarmac. In the afternoon, about a thousand yellow vesters gathered in the streets of Nantes. The demonstration didn’t last very long; as soon as protestors tried to enter to the shopping district, police deployed massive quantities of tear gas to disperse the march.

In Toulouse, intense confrontations took place between yellow vesters and law enforcement. In Narbonne, yellow vesters set fire to a toll collection point. In Bordeaux, clashes erupted between police and protesters when the crowd of yellow vesters arrived at City Hall and tried to enter by force.

In Tours, a demonstration drew about 1300 individuals. Shortly after the beginning of the march, participants began smashing shop windows, and confrontations with police escalated. One yellow vester lost his hand as a consequence of a grenade thrown by police.

In Marseille, the confrontations began at the end of the day. Protestors burned trash containers, smashed several shop windows, looted stores, set a fire in front of the city halls of the 1st and 7th districts, and finally set a police car on fire in front of the Canebière police station. It appears that 21 individuals were arrested after these actions. An 80 year old women was killed when a tear gas grenade hit her in her face as she was closing her shutters.

Finally, about 3000 individuals gathered at Puy-en-Velay. Yellow vesters entered the courtyard of the local Prefecture with tires and refused to leave. Some of them set fire to the tires. Police forces tried to disperse the crowd by using tear gas, but this only increased the anger of the demonstrators. Numerous confrontations followed. The prefect himself tried to discuss with the protestors in order to bring back order but without any success. In the end, dissatisfied with the situation, yellow vesters burned down the Prefecture.

A day of chaos.

The Aftermath

The day after the demonstrations, the government knew that it had reached an impasse of its own. President Macron was on a trip to Buenos Aires for the G20; as soon as he heard about the situation in Paris, he returned to France immediately to deal with this major political crisis.

On Sunday, December 2, President Macron met with some of the policemen and firemen who had been in the streets the previous day. He also made a small tour of the damages caused by hours of insurrectional confrontations before heading back to the Elysée palace for an emergency meeting with all of the government. The President asked his ministers to cancel all their business trips for the next two days.

President Macron did not make any official declaration after the meeting. Nevertheless, he personally asked the Prime Minister Edouard Philippe to see all the political leaders of the different parties the next day, as well as the spokespersons of the yellow vest movement.

In the meantime, the left populist Jean-Luc Mélenchon requested that every political group in the National Assembly opposed to the government should make a vote of no confidence to denounce the “catastrophic management of the yellow vest issue.” At the same time, the far-right leader Marine Le Pen demanded the dissolution of the National Assembly. Once more, it is not difficult to see who wants to take advantage of the situation.

On Saturday night, the Minister of the Interior said that he was willing to consider all possibilities to ensure republican peace and order in France, even re-imposing the state of emergency to deal with the yellow vest movement. This is gratuitous: in the new antiterrorist law adopted on October 31, 2017, many of the elements that constituted the exceptional aspect of the state of emergency are now fully integrated into ordinary French common law—for example, the creation of restricted zones during events.

Nevertheless, on Sunday, December 2, yellow vesters determined to push their movement further were already planning a fourth round with the government, calling for another national day of action on Saturday, December 8. It happens that on the same day, the global climate march will take place in Paris. For the occasion, radicals have made a call for an offensive contingent. We will see whether it is possible for these two movements to establish a connection.

On Tuesday, December 4, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said that the government had decided to suspend gas tax increases for the following six months. In addition, the government is also suspending new tougher rules on vehicle checks for the same amount of time, and committing not to increase electricity fares until May 2019. In addition, the Prime Minister announced that a debate about taxes and public expenses at a national scale would take place between December 15, 2018 and March 1, 2019. In making these concessions, the government aims to show that it is open to dialogue with yellow vesters.

Nevertheless, it seems that part of the yellow vesters are not willing to give up the fight. The spokespersons of the yellow vest movement rejected the invitation from the Prime Minister to find a way out to the current situation; several local yellow vests groups are calling to continue their actions.

So far, the government’s announcement does not seem to have had much effect upon the ranks of the yellow vest movement. Since the beginning of the movement on November 17, the number of demonstrators has dropped as the intensity of conflict has escalated. Yet even if some yellow vesters have dropped out due to the increasingly confrontational strategy, the last day of action showed that some demonstrators are determined to continue forward.

We still have an unknown horizon before us—and so many dawns yet to break.

Revolutionary optimism.

Some Reflections

As we hoped, an anti-capitalist and anti-fascist front has emerged within the yellow vest movement. In Paris on December 1, this created a convergence point and catalyst for people who do not identify with nationalist narratives. Hopefully, this will help to spread a discourse that identifies the structural causes of Macron’s programs, rather than framing them as the “betrayals” of a politician who should simply be replaced with a more nationalistic populist.

In only three weeks, the yellow vest movement has gone from blocking traffic to demolishing the wealthy districts of Paris. This illustrates the efficacy of direct action, horizontality, and the refusal to negotiate. In the era of globalized capitalism, any movement that is to face down the neoliberal assault on the living standards of ordinary people will be forced to radicalize rapidly in this manner, and to resist all attempts to control, represent, or placate it.

As many anarchists have emphasized before, effective resistance to capitalism requires the participation of a wide range of people, not just those who share a common ideological framework. This means that a movement must spread beyond the control of any one group or position. Indeed, we can understand the yellow vest movement as a widespread popular appropriation of the confrontational tactics that anarchists and other rebels have been employing in France for years—for example, in the protests against the Loi Travail and on May Day.

Yet the widespread appropriation of confrontational tactics is not necessarily a step towards a better world unless people also absorb the values and visions that accompany them. The rise of Trump and grassroots nationalism in the US has been marked at every step by the far-right appropriation of left and anarchist rhetoric and tactics, which they have used to advance their own agenda.

What happens inside a movement against the reigning government is just as important as what happens in the conflicts between that movement and the police. This is why we have emphasized the importance of fighting on two fronts—against Macron’s police and likewise against the fascists who hope to impose their own authoritarian agenda.

United colors of resistance?

There’s No Such Thing as an Apolitical Movement

From the outset, the yellow vest movement has claimed to be an “apolitical” space open to all. This has offered fertile ground for populists and nationalists to promote their ideas. In most cases, they have not been the ones taking action in the streets, but they have often set the discourse online. Fascist groups have gained visibility, too, even if their number seems comparatively modest; they are better organized now than they were at the beginning of the movement. We must not abandon the streets and the movement to the far right.

No social movement is a monolith; each is a heterogeneous space of perpetual change and tension. It is foolish to deem movements worthy or unworthy, standing in judgment like the Pope and relinquishing the ones that do not meet our standards to the influence of our adversaries. Instead, we can aim to intervene in movements in ways that enable the liberating currents within them to gain momentum and become distinct from the reactionary currents. The challenge is to offer other participants models for how to solve their immediate problems and to connect those with emancipatory visions of long-term change—and to do all this without creating tools or momentum that fascists, authoritarian leftists, or other opportunists can capitalize on.

We need to think more about the relationship between street battles and the battle of ideas. Historically, anarchists have often assumed that those who are willing to take the most risks will be better positioned to determine the character and goals of a movement. On the ground, this is often true—for example, if you escalate conflict with the police, it can force centrists and legalists to withdraw. But we should also remember all the times that rebels from oppressed groups have been the ones to take the most risks and suffer the most repression, only to see authoritarians take advantage of our sacrifices to consolidate their power. This is a very old story, from the French revolutions of 1830, 1848, and 1870 and the Italian Risorgimento to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.

We should bear all these lessons in mind when we weigh whether the best way to gain leverage within a movement is to be the ones who take the most risks within it. How can we make sure that our adversaries within the movement cannot force us to take the majority of the casualties while they simply—take power?

A decade ago, in less complicated times, some anarchists and autonomists imagined that, rather than being connected by a common set of values and aspirations, people in revolt could be connected simply by behaving ungovernably in relation to the prevailing authorities. It is still possible to find examples of this “anti-ideological” attitude in France today, despite all the evidence that at least a few of those who wear the yellow vest are simply fighting to enthrone other authorities who will be just as dangerous if they come to power. It would not be the first time that rebellious street violence brought a new oppressive government into office.

Yes, the order that reigns must be undermined by any means necessary. The same goes for the proponents of rival ruling orders. Driving Yvan Bennedetti out of a demonstration is just as important as defending it against the police.

At the same time, it must be clear to all the newly mobilized and politicized participants in these movements that we are not simply robots acting according to a pre-programmed ideological framework, but that we genuinely hope to connect with them, exchange ideas and influences with them, and work together to create solutions to our mutual problems. Our opposition to authoritarians is not a tenet of a religion, but a hard-won lesson about what it takes to create spaces of freedom and possibility.

In this regard, the moments of dialogue between strangers that take place in the street are just as important as the courageous acts by which people hold police at bay and force out fascists. Let’s not be naïve, let’s not disavow our opinions or abandon our convictions, but let’s remain open to the possibility that we could become stronger and more vibrantly alive by working with others we have not yet met, who share our problems but not our reference points.

The Long Game

Sooner or later, this moment of crisis will pass—either the leaders will cut a deal with the state and the police will succeed in isolating those who refuse to cooperate, or Macron’s government will fall and be replaced by another that promises to solve the problems that drove people into the street.

And what then? Will the far right be able to claim that they were the ones who scored the victory against Macron? Most of the aforementioned 42 demands are compatible with both leftist and far-right populist programs; it would not be surprising to see the movement split in two and be coopted by the two populist parties. Since the riots last weekend, both populist leaders have been galvanized by the demand to oust President Macron and his government. It is entirely possible that a far-right government will come to power after Macron. What should we be doing right now to prepare for that situation, to make sure that people will continue to come together in the streets against them?

As we fight—in France, in Belgium, and everywhere else that neoliberal governments are forcing austerity measures on us—let’s be thinking about how to come out of each fight more connected, more experienced, and with a sharper way of identifying the questions before us. Good luck to each of you, dear friends.

Further Reading: Comparing the Yellow Vests with Ukraine and Italy

Gilets Jaunes et Extrême Droite: Les Leçons de Maïdan

Les Gilets Jaunes à la lumière de l’expérience italienne

Uncertain futures.

[tanikawrites]

‘Don’t Forget To Smile’

‘The Promised Neverland’ Episode 2 Review

The Pilot of The Promised Neverland was very much based on emotion, the emphasis on the horror setting our expectations for the events to follow at such a height that one couldn’t be sure the next episode could match up. Thankfully, it does not fail to deliver, and in many ways actually tightens the tension further. We have been able to digest the nightmarish reality that Emma, Norman, Ray and the other thirty-five children live in the orphanage as ravished meat, so the narrative now focuses on becoming more calculating; morphing into a cat-and-mouse dynamic, the orphanage becoming a chess board in the fight for survival. 

 SPOILERS AHEAD

Much of the episode is focused on how the kids come to answer many of the questions posed in episode one, the artfulness of the narrative being shown through how this then only creates more layers and complications in the bid to escape. We learn from Norman and Emma’s deductions that the reason the kids are made to take those tests is to deduce which is the best meat, the piece de resistance then being the brain. It seems then that the children you are younger are shipped out earlier when it appears that their brains are not getting any riper and so would be best to consume before they go bad altogether, the age limit of twelve perhaps being set for a similar reason. Watching this all unfold is already debilitating enough when you also realise how children are being forced to consider the legitimacy of themselves as delicacies, and it would be difficult not to appreciate the possible connotations of these transactions. 

Indeed, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to suggest that the anime serves as a vegan allegory, as we are to forced to wonder whether sheep or cattle are also aware or contemplate their demises before being ‘processed’ - to put it in PG terms. Now you could argue that such a thing is ridiculous - that animals could never be as astute as human children. But animals are intelligent creatures, and humans are not supreme, just as adults - as this episode brilliantly establishes - are not necessarily superior in intelligence to children. If we really did believe this, then the resonance between us and monsters or demons becomes painfully obvious, and so the anime is incredibly ingenious to put this cruelty into perspective.

 The characterisation in this episode definitely becomes more pronounced, as we not only continue to empathise with these kids’ plight, but we additionally start to invest and relate to them more. Their efforts to play the game evoke simultaneous pity and admiration, as they are burdened with forbidden knowledge in a sinister coming-of-age tale. Norman and Emma forcing themselves to smile at the start of the episode highlights their initiative, especially since the jaws-like opening with Emma’s dream explicitly reveals how this ordeal is taking a psychologically heavy toll. Norman, however, is the one to snap her out of dwelling in her emotions and advocating to reason. Indeed, his presence definitely becomes more pronounced for whilst he may seem like the one who always manages to stay calm and in control, there are moments which highlight that this is not always possible even for him, and so we become more drawn towards how he is still trying to persist despite the overwhelming pressure. This again evokes the reality that they are more than characters - they are just children, Norman’s fear being epitomised in the biggest scare moment of the episode when Mom appears out of nowhere next to Emma - her face inches away and looming awfully into hers. 

You can see how the anime is taking advantage of how transitions in the manga are less fluid as panels sometimes jump from one perspective to the next, but here this only serves as an advantage to heighten the unexpected and its resultant terror. Norman clearly hadn’t precedented this as you see him shaking around the corner, clearly as fearful of how Emma will handle the situation as we are. This then highlights even his naivety, especially since he earlier states his belief that he doesn’t think Mom knows exactly who left bunny at the gate - which to us again is obvious with Norman and Emma being the eldest are thus the only ones ballsy enough to tug the line. But we forgive this as they are children after all, and we wouldn’t blame Emma for losing her cool now as she, with what once was abundant love for Mom, has been the one struggling with the facade the most. Thankfully however she sports her mask with ease, even exceeding expectations as she not only gives Mom a hug. But, she casually ponders: ‘I wonder what Conny is doing now?’ 

Emma then becomes magnified in our esteem as she is not all hearts and playfulness, but harbours steel beneath her skin - and if anything, this moment shows how her love for others is not her weakness, but rather something we can take indulgent pleasure in as she can use this as her weapon.

What is perhaps the most endearing part of the episode then if finally seeing this golden trio come together, as Ray is finally let into the fold and we can more fully appreciate the different dynamics between the three. In fact, as dry and blunt as Ray self-confessedly is, his intervention actually provides some lightness and comic relief, such as his directness in admitting that he’d never believe the truth should it have come from Emma alone, along with how Emma’s immovable resolve in saving all the children exasperates Ray to the nth degree. Ray after all is the party that is the most realistic, border-lining into the inhumane in his insistence that saving everyone is downright impossible - this being all the worse because we know honestly that he’s probably right. The metaphor he evokes of the plan being akin to a boat made of mud is actually effective in stimulating our excitement further, as Norman insists on how mud can harden when applied with enough pressure. The Odyssean resonance of this whilst accompanied with a particularly stimulating score then grants a majesty to the moment, especially as we see Ray smile properly for the first time in the show when asked if he’s on board - as if he would be anything else. 

Unfortunately, just as hope seems to be rising to the surface again, so in turn do the obstacles rear their ugly heads. The episode ends with a new baby arriving at the House, along with, terrifyingly, Sister Krone - another adult. Whilst it is interesting to note that Mom could think the children enough of a threat that she would need reinforcements, the ticking clock accompanying the focused shots of Emma and Co's faces before the screen turns black emphasises how this is tantamount to their chances being cut in half. 

The narrative then continues to build the stakes in time with how the children build up more resolve or find new solutions, especially as Ray highlights another danger that poses as a more subtle threat - the world outside. Ray believes that what they’ll have to survive on the outside is a world ruled by demons, this information actually being effective in stewing food for another line of thought rather than just plain horror. After all, if this is true, where are the humans? Are there humans? Is the world outside a dystopian world where humans are the subservient race? If so, how did it come to be like that? The second episode then is able to rope us in further as it not only appeals to our want of thrill but also to philosophy and contemplation, encouraging us to reign in again on the third instilment as we wait to see whether the pressure will actually surpass hardening their boat, instead pushing it to crack.

Tanika Lane

Image Credit: nicorobins, mobpsycho100, becauseilovedher

[thegaitguys]

Hey, Bourdain, I would have loved that roll.

“I will never be a young man or younger than I am today. I will never be faster or more flexible. I will never win a competition against a 22-year old wrestler in my weight class. I will never be a black belt. None of these things will happen but none of that matters anymore.”

– Anthony Bourdain/Parts Unknown Season 6. Episode 4

I mentioned sparring (rolling) with Chef Anthony Bourdain about 2 years ago on my other blog, TheGaitGuys.com.  It never happened, and now, it never will.  At the time, Bourdain and I were both blue belts in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Bourdain did not know me, nor I him, but we had some things in our lives rooted in common ground. His death to me was a bold punch to the gut, one that doubles you over and makes you stumble backward.  I think his choice of an early life departure in 2018 hit some of us hard because we felt some inner connection, perhaps jealous aspiration, to him and the life he appeared to have commandingly by the tail.  Bourdain and I had some commonalities, the love of good food, a late life start into Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, writing, art, and creative outlets.  His broad palate of creative works was an inspiration to me. I also enjoyed what he said, but more so how he said it; his descriptive and colorful command of the English language spoke to me. Bourdain's death was a tragedy to us all, the world has lost another creative talented soul.

I recently was presented with my purple belt in Brazilian JiuJitsu from one of the art's legends, my mentor, my brother, 4x World Champion, Professor Carlos Lemos, Jr.  Some consider the purple belt as a transition in the art where the basics start to congeal into something more clear and meaningful. (I refer the reader here to my previous post on "the language" of jiu jitsu LINK). It defines the completion of a long base of fundamental work, and of stronger resistance, heavier responsibilities and bolder headwinds to come. 

It took me 5 years to get my purple belt in jiu jitsu. This is far longer than it will take many to get to this stage, many will be into their brown belt by this point, yet still far from the coveted black.  In Brazilian jiu jitsu, purple does not even mark the half way point to the multi-tiered black belt. Thus, my mere five years still represents a kind of adolescence in the journey.   Many will not get to this purple stage, they will quit before they reach this pivotal point in this most difficult art.  Trust me, I almost gave up as well, I too found all kinds of excuses to abort, but for me the trick was to make myself go to the academy on the days I truly did not want to, when I was finding something else that I could, should or wanted to otherwise do. When we are uncommitted, it is easy to find excuses not to follow through. We might use our marriage, our work, our kids, money, time, injury, these are all excuses that will be victorious if one lets them grow into such a thing.  If one is weak enough, an individual can let one of many forms of resistance grow into a plausible victorious excuse, one that trumps commitment and personal growth. I know this problem all to well, it is part of my past and my every day.  Wishing and hoping are like dreams, they are not real, it is only execution that makes anything real. How badly do we want it, that is the greater question.

The color purple, the color of resistance?

I am slow at learning what many already know, that the stuff in life that seems to matter is the stuff that is difficult. It is the stuff that we have to work hard at. It is not the stuff that comes easy, it is not the gifts and not the handouts. It is often the stuff that makes us weak and tremble. It is the stuff that actually ask something more of us, it is sort of a sacrifice to step into an unknown void.

I recently had a patient come in who is a recovering heroin addict. As I was working on his shoulder and he rambled into a dialogue about feeling lost in life. I have known this young man since he was a little boy.. He said he was looking for some relief and an easier time in life. I asked him why he was looking for that and he said he was tired. I asked him to at least consider if perhaps he needed something else that was difficult and hard to embrace, something else that would ask him to make a different kind of sacrifice in life, a different set of choices. He looked blankly at me.  I expanded my words, sharing with him what a jiu jitsu lifestyle looked like; mental and physical struggles, fitness, rewards, commitment, loyalty, purpose, brotherhood, family, leadership, general well-being. He said it sounded like just what he needed. It is never hard to give out the phone number for that recipe.

I'm not sure I fully deserved this purple strip of heavy cotton around my waist. I am not where I should be in my opinion, but I am where I am. In any chapter of life, it is about accepting where we are. To my mentors perspective and wisdom, I think maybe, just maybe, this was a message to step forward, to step up, and accept the responsibility of where I should be and force me into the responsibilities I have been shirking. And if that's the case, the point was made, loud and clear; step into the resistance, accept active responsibility. Take action, instead of making excuses. These are easily comments made on many of our lives.  Easy doesn't pay the bills. Easy doesn't generate growth, or insight. Easy doesn't add to a quality of life and a sense of achievement. The dis-ease of "easy" has led most into regret upon their last hours of a life.

I will never be a young man or younger than I am today. I will never be faster or more flexible. I will never win a competition against a 22-year old wrestler in my weight class. I will never be a black belt. None of these things will happen but none of that matters anymore.” –Bourdain

Bourdain was right on some things, many things in fact, this could be noted if you followed his work over the last decade. He is right in that I will never be a younger man than I am today, but with constant pressure against resistance at the age of 51 I do feel better than I did a decade ago. This year I will work to be faster, stronger, and more flexible than I was last year. The alternative path will not get me to a better place, so I will meet those resistances head on. As Bourdain eluded to, I too may not win a battle with a 22 year old, but knowing what I know now, it just might now be fun to try. As for Bourdain's feelings on a black belt, I do not care much either. I have more deeply discovered that meeting the path of resistance head on in the moment, and facing the responsibilities and expectations that confront me as I press through the dominance hierarchy (thanks Jordan Peterson) is the true journey.

I was getting lazy and complacent as a blue belt in arguably the toughest martial art that exists. Having purple firmly tied around my abdomen, and all of the responsibilities that accompany it, was a lesson I needed to feel deep in my being. I believe that if one is not struggling and moving forward into more difficult winds, they are being held back, in fact losing ground, being further pushed back by one's own laziness in accepting that place of mere perceived comfort. Nothing good comes from complacency, even though we feel stable and safe, that is the deception of the moment, we are in fact becoming more fragile.  Lesson learned. I was the clay pot, never to meet the heat of the furnace.

" A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot . . .

 it has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain."  - Mildred WitteStouven

I am still on the adolescent scale on this martial art's journey of lessons. These are just a few things I have gleaned to this point that might help those a few steps behind me, maybe even beside me:

Purple. It might just be the true color of resistance in this art form.

If you choose to give up on jiu jitsu, make it a real good reason, because it just might turn into later regrets. I quit for 2 months early on, and I am ashamed of that. If you say it is because of your work, your marriage, your school, your whatever, have a good talk with yourself.  Make time for something this important. This is not supposed to be fun or easy all the time, if it is not hard at times, you are doing it wrong and you are not being forced to grow.

If you disappear after a year, you missed the message. This is a journey, a marathon, a lifestyle, a grand path inward, and outward. If the journey showed you the destination too soon, the pot of gold, the long path to enlightenment would be missed.

If you are not getting what you want, don't leave or give up. Those things might not be what you need. Be patient with the lessons of jiu jitsu, often you will be surprised that what you needed was far different than what you thought.  This goes for our training, and our lives.  Let the art deliver its message and lessons to you. Most things in life do not turn out how we hope or plan, but often the best things in life are the surprises.

If your focus is the color or your belt or the number of stripes on it, you are missing the point. This is an investment, a lifetime journey and insurance policy on our soul. Forget about the color of the cloth around your waist, or around another's waist for that matter.

Persistence always wins. Even if you lose, you win. I've been here 5 years now. I'm still here. I have seen more people leave, disappear, or give up, than have persisted. Pace yourself and stay the course, sprinters do not get very far. Be the tortoise, not the hare.

Look beside you. One of the people on either side of you won't be here in 6-12 mo. The problem is, we forget that the person beside us is saying the exact same thing about us. Don't give them the satisfaction of not being present on the mats in a year, persist, prevail. Stay the course.

Stop trying to win each time you spar. There's very little value and feedback in winning. The lessons are in the losses, the meaning is found between the arm bars and chokes. The lessons are in the smallest of things, and often in the sharing afterwards. Stop trying to win. Be a step ahead of the guy trying to win, be the observer, be this listener, you will learn more.

It is all relative, see your journey as where YOU are at this moment, not where others are. The beauty of this art and it's journey is that you cannot and should not compare yourself to others. Let others help to be a measuring stick for your own progress, but more importantly, mostly compare yourself to your yesterday's self. What do I mean by this? Let me help.  I am a mere footstep into a Purple belt.  I cannot compare myself to other purple belts that have been here a year, let alone one that is 20 years my junior. Nor should I compare myself to a youthful 25 year old blue belt who is just 3 years out of a college wrestling program. I cannot compare myself to a 200 pound white belt. I cannot compare myself to a 60 year old black belt.  I am my own unique package, a 51 year old, 155 pound doctor who trains a few times a week who's hands are raw and pummeled by most Tuesdays. I cannot compare myself to anyone else other than the person I was yesterday, nor should you. Trust me on this, I speak from experience.

Most things in life that are worth anything do not come quickly or easily. This is about choices, habits, routine, commitment, struggle, fear, pain, and sacrifice. This is about meeting resistance every day.

Do not be afraid to fight for worthy things in life. (This is a good time to remind the reader of the all too important, yet mostly sarcasm piece, here on this blog which I wrote in 2016. My first post, The death of the schoolyard fight: The great unravelling of our modern day social fabric.)

Close your mouth. Open your ears. Show up. Practice. Be patient. Share the story of your journey, it might save someone's life.

In life, if one steps back far enough, and often enough, enough to see the forest instead of just the trees, the messages and lessons become more clear. "Once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things."-Miyamoto Musashi

Dear Chef Bourdain, I would have loved that roll, but maybe in another lifetime it now seems. However, I am going to imagine that a few threads within the tapestry of this purple belt are yours brother, just as there are threads within it of my fellow academy brothers and sisters. Through them I have reached this stage of the journey.  Bourdain, rest peacefully until we meet old man. Save a little sweat for me, and a heavenly street side "meat in tube form" with all the fixin's, for I am a fan as well.

Sometimes we need a "band of brothers" to shine a light of truth on our ways, leading us back to the  honest path. Thank you Professor Carlos Lemos, my fellow teachers, and all those who paved my path to this point. The struggles, pain, sweat and defeats were worth it, and continue to be.  Being completely honest with myself, I can see the woes of my ways in finding peace in comfort and complacency. I feel that I did not honorably serve the blue belt previously wrapped around my waist to the level I should have. That weighs heavily on me. And because of that, this purple wrap now too weighs heavily upon my hips, and with it, a bigger target on my back. Lesson again learned. It is time to make things right.

-Shawn, purple belt, Brazilian JiuJitsu, ("the gentle art"),

Gracie Barra Downers Grove,

Professor Carlos Lemos, Jr. 4x World, Brazilian, European, American & Pan-Am Champion

[kisaragizan]

Vanguard Rant [Blue Waves]

This is a dozy. I intended this to be an updated deck profile regarding Blue Waves but I’ll do that via video rather than through text because I feel as though it’d be easier to explain my choices by referring to this.

A general synopsis, is going to be me talking sharing my thoughts on Blue Wave and why many people feel unsatisfied with the newest support and overall what the deck has transitioned into ever since it’s first conception. There may be some possible theories as to why Blue Waves have a lot of negative feedback but overall, just general thoughts regarding the topic and things that could’ve improved it. This is the “Rise and Fall of Blue Waves”.

As a disclaimer, I’d just want to say if you are a huge fan of Blue Wave - like a really ride or die fan, or even a user of Blue Wave: this is not to deter you from playing the deck or even liking the deck. If you feel content or even enjoyment from what Blue Waves are or have received as support, then please continue to do so as this isn’t to judge the players or the fans of the deck regardless if you’re a casual player or a competitive player, nor this is not in any way, shape, or form bashing or trashing this deck since, again, I’ll also be providing an upgraded deck list after taking another look at the deck and figuring out some stuff. This is just me looking back on the archetype from start to finish, and trying to decipher “What happened” or “What went wrong” from the perspective of those who do not like what Blue Wave ended up as a deck and archetype as a whole. With that further ado, let’s start from the beginning.

History of Blue Waves

Without going as far back as Tetra-drive Dragon, which was the only “Blue Wave” card at the time: Blue Wave’s were a sub archetype of Aqua Force revolved around the aforementioned Tetra-drive Dragon and the idea of re-standing after a specified number of attacks - usually fourth battle from rear-guard to opposing Vanguard. Blue Wave introduced the idea of abilities triggering whenever the Vanguard attacked either during or at the end of the battle, to increase your offensives or generate resources. This is best exemplified through the following units:

[ACT](RC):[Put this unit on the top of your deck] If you have a vanguard with "Blue Wave" in its card name, choose up to one of your vanguards, and until end of turn, it gets "[AUTO](VC)Wave-2nd time or more:When this unit attacks a vanguard, draw a card.". Shuffle your deck.

[ACT](RC) Generation Break 1:[Counter Blast (1) & Put this unit into your soul] Choose one of your vanguards with "Blue Wave" in its card name, until end of turn, it gets "[AUTO](VC)Wave-2nd time or more (Active during the specified battles of each turn):When this unit attacks a vanguard, draw a card." and "[AUTO](VC)Wave-5th time or more:When this unit attacks a vanguard, this unit gets [Critical]+1 until end of that battle.".

[AUTO](VC) Generation Break 2 Wave-2nd time only(Active during the specified battles of each turn):When this unit attacks a vanguard, this unit gets [Power]+5000 until end of turn, choose up to one of your rear-guards, [Stand] it, and it gets [Power]+10000 until end of turn. [AUTO](VC):During your turn, when your unit named "Blue Wave Marshal Dragon, Tetra-boil Dragon" Stride, choose one of your vanguards, until end of turn, it gets [Power]+3000, and "[AUTO](VC)Wave-2nd time only (Active during the specified battles of each turn):When this unit attacks a vanguard, choose up to two of your rear-guards, [Stand] them, and they get [Power]+3000 until end of turn.".

Needless to say, the more of these benefits you had stacked onto your Vanguard the more powerful your turns were both in strength and defense, easily making milestones being abruptly stronger than Lambros, Aqua Force’s sole finisher at the time, and being one of the best re-standing Vanguards: outclassing Dragonic Overlord the Ace, Viktplasma, and Homura Raider. As I’ve mentioned before in many of my posts on this page (though sadly I cannot remember which ones to be exact), Blue Waves had a “everything you can do, I can do better” moment with all of the other Aqua Force builds: Ripples (Post Ban List), Maelstrom, and especially Thavas. While the three builds shared the same end game via Lambros (although Maelstrom had an invincible attack through cross break ride) Blue Wave’s had Tetra-boil in addition to Lambros which meant that they had three guaranteed shots to end the game. I would comment the early game but each variant, except Thavas somewhat, had a relatively strong early game presence since Ripples had Odysseus, Maelstrom still had “Blue Storm” 10k/12k beaters, and Blue Wave’s having Foivos, it’s debatable to say which one was truly superior so I’ll end it off by saying that: Blue Wave with just a Stride and 4 main deck cards, one per grade + trigger, was a pretty solid deck.

The next time Blue Wave would receive another set of support was during Set 9′s Divine Dragon Caper, which at this point: a lot of things happened. The G zone expanded, our meta shifted a lot, we had to deal with the hand traps known as Denial Griffin and Defeat Flare, it was a roller coaster of swapping between Blue Waves and Thavas, myself making a hybrid called “Divine Storm”, in fact that deck profile can tell you more about my thoughts and my approach to the meta in a nutshell. It was a time period where I dabbled in both Thavas and Blue Waves as both were solid decks with specific strengths that led me to believe they were equally powerful and it came down to a matter of which deck was better against the most recent support until Set 9. Now, I’m sure you’ve heard me state this before: my thoughts on Divine Dragon Caper for Aqua Force was not good, I’d say it was one of the worst sets beyond getting two valued things: Wailing Thavas and a Reprint of Commander Thavas. We had one Maelstrom support after it was advertised that Maelstrom was going to be featured and the “Wave” support was okay but nothing truly impacting since we was still using the same units in our deck. Blue Wave support was I believe the worst because not only did any of the main deck support not make it in decks beyond 2-3 cards; it came in as a “surprise” since it felt like the attention was being directed to both Maelstrom and Thavas yet Blue Waves took over and got support that they didn’t even need. I’m not going to go through each and every Blue Wave card since most of them speak for themselves as to why they weren’t getting played but yeah. So from there, we got Wailing in our deck and nothing really changed our main deck for any Aqua Force build, but because of this: Blue Wave (or any hybrid that included Anger-boil) was the “better” if not the best Aqua Force deck because you had more options to approach your opponent, either Lambros, Tetra-boil, and now Wailing Thavas. In addition, the Blue Wave early game being stronger than Thavas’ only supported Blue Wave’s standing since the meta-game at the time was all heavy Generation Break decks like Nightrose, Luard, Gear Chronicle, Wiseman, etc. which gave Blue Wave an edge to hit them hard and fast before they set up and overpowered you. Sadly, it would remain like this until Set 11: which began a huge control spike through Kagero and Nubatama. It was at this time, where I personally, also switched to Thavas and started to drop Blue Wave because the game was reaching a point where the first stride was what determined the game whether if you began your multi-attacking or if you secured resources to guard and/or set up for your stronger plays. With Blue Wave needing a G-guard otherwise needed to survive into second stride to go into it’s infamous power play, it was not an effective strategy per se especially when you needed to finish them that turn or hope to god you stacked 2-4 Brutal Troopers on your vanguard to generate the hand needed to guard the more explosive plays and with nothing that could be done to make the first stride Commander Thavas an optimal push outside of sacking, it was looking more like Thavas was the better deck for the meta because Skyros and Resist gave stability against control, Thavas has an inherent draw engine through Melania and Petros, and Commander was better utilized in Thavas (as he’s always had) than in Blue Waves, especially considering Melania. Now, I know people are going to say “Why not put Melania in Blue Waves?” That is a good point and I did try that, however, unless you stride into a Thavas unit: Melania was useless if not a booster and the front row was still open to control which nine times out of ten, were units you desperately wanted like a Tidal Assault, Foivos, etc. My logic was simply: Thavas and Blue Waves, while neither were dominating the meta-game, even regarded as Tier 2, were equal to each other but the key difference was who could approach the meta better? Because of Resist and being able to draw/resource as soon as you stride and the ability to control made Thavas a better pick, despite glaring weaknesses, over Blue Waves who would do better in slower formats where their early game would dominate other decks and could make up for their sub par first stride into a decently good mid-to-late game. This moment in time can be better explained through another one of my deck profiles; Ultimate Storm which was, again, where I started to drop Blue Wave and the beginning of the meta shift. I wrap up this section by ending it off with: at this point in the game, it was the first time that Blue Wave would “need” support not only to be a rival to Thavas for “face of the clan” but to be a competitively viable deck as it originally was. 

Set 13′s Ultimate Stride, was packed full of expectations and wonder as to what Aqua Force was going to get. I kinda already ran through this in my “Ultimate Stride” Discussion, so I’m not gonna rant about the goodness of this set for the entire clan, but namely for Blue Wave. We had no idea what Blue Wave was going to do until we saw a quick glimpse of what Valeos was able to showcase in his fight against Shion, especially when Flood Hazard Dragon entered the battle. A first stride re-standing vanguard to make use of those Brutal Troopers early on was something we wasn’t expecting and it seemed perfect in addition to the rear-guards and Valeos himself...until the cards came out. There were restrictions upon restrictions, that watered down the support as a whole, no pun intended. Restrictions that I’ll explain in the next segment because I feel this “History of Blue Waves” is getting pretty lengthy now but it’s also the fact that, even designing the cards and their effects: it actually caused the archetype to split into two because it would be very conflicting to all of these cards together and have them synergize perfectly beyond them sharing the Blue Wave name. With that, I’m going to close this segment and discuss the problem, but to recap: Blue Wave started off really strong, brimming with potential and as the game progressed, they tried to as well but really couldn’t all that much especially in the control metas to now not knowing what they want to do.

The Problem

So with all of that history dump out of the way, I’ll just jump straight into the issues. Originally, after Set 9, Blue Wave’s issue was really a solid first stride to either push the opponent or to safely get them to their second stride and their main boss: Tetra-boil Dragon. This is an issue because Thavas’ was able to have a better and stable first stride and go safely into the next turn aiming to finish or devastate the opponent. In Ultimate Stride, they gave us Flood Hazard Dragon which was intended to be our “new first stride” that, in theory, pushed the opponent and gave us some resources. And somehow, they screwed it up. The Problem with Blue Wave is the newest stride Flood Hazard Dragon!

[AUTO](VC):[Counter Blast (1) & Choose a face down card with the same card name as this unit from your G zone, turn it face up, choose two cards from your hand, and discard them] At the end of the battle that a rear-guard with "Blue Wave" in its card name attacked, if you have a heart card with "Blue Wave" in its card name, and it was the fourth battle of this turn, you may pay the cost. If you do, [Stand] this unit, and it gets drive-3. [CONT](VC) Generation Break 3:This unit gets drive+1, and all of your rear-guards in your front row with "Blue Wave" in their card names get [Power]+2000.

Disclaimer: I love the art and the name: it’s a really cool card to have but to use in actual game play, that’s a different story. Now you’re probably looking at this and are thinking: “How can a stride ruin it when it re-stands and triggers Brutal Trooper?” Simple, it costs too much that it actually becomes starved for Brutal Trooper. You have to discard two cards and you get no extra drive checks, barring Generation Break 3. This is horrible: Tetra-boil at the very least, while Twin Drive, made you discard one and still get two extra cards on his second attack. You literally only get one card not including anything from Brutal/Dagger/Draw Triggers, which is hardly anything to survive off of. Sure you can refund by grabbing a Grade 3 through Arsenal or Bright Shooter, but a Grade 3 will pay for stride but it can’t guard and your hand size isn’t changing (unless you used Brutal Trooper). In a game state where you want to either getting as much resources or mounting an assault on your opponent on first stride, this isn’t exactly the best thing to do. Offensively, however, it does it’s job as it’s still a +26k attacking twice, however the only issue is that the final attack can be easily guarded with at minimum 20k shield. Sure you can eliminate power ups with Valeos’ heartbeat skill, but all of your attacks are worth 5-10k guards minimum. The way I see it, it’s effective when your opponent is sitting at 3-5 damage because all of the attacks have to or will need to be guarded to a certain extent. “Okay, so why not rush them down?” Well that’s the other part of the problem, Blue Wave’s early rushing is gimped because Foivos is their only early rusher as Tidal has been seeing less play in the deck due to “Tidal is not a Blue Wave”. Foivos requires another rear-guard in addition to the vanguard to fulfill the first and second waves so he can re-stand on third wave: getting four battles. This also requires a counterblast which, if you’d allow me to backpedal to Flood Hazard: his “optimal turn” requires three counterblast: one for himself, one for the re-standing rear-guard of choice, and one for Dagger Master. If you decide to early rush, the appropriate response of the opponent is to rear-guard hate you because it’s Aqua Force and you need counterblast. So rushing early, may not be the best thing to do which ironically enough was what Blue Wave’s did best compared to Thavas. Of course, with Valeos’ heartbeat and nullifying damage triggers and power ups, you can get six attacks in to make up for the non-existent early game but again, easily guarded attacks. The only way I’d ever imagine this is if you are running Tidal Assault, but there’s still the chance of being rear-guard hated while effectively being counterblast denied. The only way I can effectively see Blue Wave getting the opponent to 3-4 or even 5 damages pre-stride without early rushing is playing a high amount of critical triggers, possibly twelve, however this complicates issues because unless you’re checking Brutal Troopers to use on Flood Hazard later, you’re missing out on drawing necessary cards that you may or may not be missing: stride fodder, guard, rear-guards, essential stuff, which as I’ve said before: in my recent deck profiles: you want to play draw triggers now because drawing into those cards are important so that not having one of those cards can determine your ability to survive and/or counterattack. Most Blue Wave players have gone with a more draw heavy approach: 6 draws 6 criticals, I’ve even tried the Nova Grappler approach of 8 Draw 4 Critical but, it just didn’t feel like I was closing the game and drawing 5ks rather than pieces or resources.

Now, I know I should be talking about some of the other Blue Wave units such as Galleas/Arsenal fleet/Valeos vs Foivos/Anger-boil because this has been a focal point in Blue Wave discussions that have caused the idea of there being two separate decks but honestly, regardless of what units you use won’t change Flood Hazard’s effectiveness. I still feel like they designed the units poorly but it’s not like you have to use any of these effects but can consider them as options, more so speaking for Galleas, Arsenal fleet, and Foivos. Their effectiveness change depending on the situation regarding which stride, which heart, your damage, your field, your hand, etc. However, I should explain that the idea behind not mixing Anger and Valeos came about because the skills of Galleas, Lucianos, Arsenal-fleet overlap with Anger-boil’s GB2 and his heartbeat skill for Tetra-boil dragon since they all trigger on Wave 2. If you throw Foivos in the mix, then it complicates the Waves even further because if you allow Galleas, Arsenal, Lucianos to attack Wave 2, the vanguard is forced to Wave 3 because a rear-guard has to attack on Wave 4 in order for the Vanguard to stand. The vanguard also can’t attack on Wave 1 if you use Dagger Master/Brutal Trooper. So it’s understood that you have to prioritize which re-stander and which boss grade 3 you value more: Tetra and Anger, or Valeos and Flood. Valeos is valued more because his heartbeat skill can be used on any Blue Wave stride, however I still feel Anger-boil is still something to consider because he does get you a free column and of the two: Anger-boil + Tetra-boil is a stronger and more resourceful re-stand combo especially when your opponent is backed into a wall, compared to Flood Hazard is resourcing lower than Tetra-boil (regardless of Tetra’s heart) and getting the same value on Generation Break 3. In addition, Anger’s ability to stand two units when Tetra-boil attacks on Wave 2, not only increases the offensive power but at your bare minimum, you’re able to trigger a re-stand, which was another key feature of Blue Waves: the boss stride only needed 1 re-standing rear guard or two attackers (for 1 counterblast), Flood Hazard has to spend at minimum two counterblast to re-stand. Whichever rear-guards you decide to use really doesn’t matter as long as you’re able to re-stand your vanguard, the issue still boils down to Flood Hazard, no pun intended, the “ideal” first stride being the worst first stride and the worst re-stand as well. The only time the rear-guards are at fault is when it involves non-Blue Wave strides, which I’ll get into in a moment. However, it’s safe to say: that truly the issue does lie within the first stride not really doing much, even with Valeos, along with costing too much and relying on too much to stabilize safely into the next turn.

Lastly, I wanted to point out that: in my Blue Wave deck profile, well the first one after G-BT13, I made a “second deck” within that profile using the idea that both Valeos and Anger shouldn’t be played in the same deck: specifically meant for Anger-boil which is basically what Blue Wave’s have been using but with some of the newer cards. You can see more of what I’m talking about in the deck profile itself, but the deck is able to be a lot more flexible and have a variety of options to go into, still giving the Blue Wave feel of “anything you can do, I can do better” except the issue with this deck is that like Blue Wave’s before; does not have a lot of Resist and lacks an inherent draw engine as early as first stride (unless you G-Guard). Thankfully you are able to play Bubble Edge so you can draw off of that with a first stride Alexandros which is somewhat able to compensate but not entirely, in my opinion. Again, you could throw Thavas pieces into the deck to get a hybrid of sorts but the problem then comes down to Thavas himself needing to be on the Vanguard. If you ride Thavas, you lock yourself out of re-standing the Vanguard and rear-guards with Blue Wave (though technically you can just go into Flood Hazard and rear-guards will still re-stand and you’ll get a Quad Drive), and if you ride the “intended ride” Anger-boil or Valeos even, you have to stride into a Thavas to make those “Thavas pieces” work, which at that point put’s you back to playing the same way we’ve been playing up until Set 13. Needless to say: if you hybrid; you get more out of it riding Thavas than you do riding Anger-boil as the re-standing Vanguard may not be worth it if you’re stabilizing and resourcing to go into the next turn and finish the game with whatever finisher of your choice being Lambros, Alexandros, or Wailing.

So to recap on the “problem” (at least from my perspective), Blue Wave’s newest re-stander plays a big role in the problem, as well as the rear-guards but not as much as the first stride since this game is at a point where your first stride needs to be either pushing or resourcing so that you can safely go into the next turn, which Flood Hazard is only able to do both if you get the correct pieces especially to compensate for his costs, otherwise you go minus and will just die against any aggressive deck or won’t be able to make a comeback.

The Solution

Well I can’t kinda say a “Solution” since Set 13 was the last set for Aqua Force as far as the G-series goes. Also when I say a solution, I’m going to give the most realistic one and that’s simply just to use a better first stride or hope to G-Guard into Tetra-boil as you really want to be on Flood Hazard when you’re on Generation Break 3, unless you’re on Anger-boil then it’ll probably be better to just stay on Tetra-boil. Aqua Force did get a universal first stride in Alexandros, which is currently the best stride in Aqua Force, however he’s not perfect in Blue Waves because as I mentioned briefly before: the rear-guards. So, one of the two main differences between Thavas and Blue Waves is that Thavas had better flexibility in attacking pattern which allowed for cool combos like Bubble Edge drawing two with little to no complications since it would be the Vanguard to have a restriction on when it needed to attack to enable plays. Also, very quickly: when I say “restrictions” I mean units that have “Wave #th-only” clause indicating that they only work on those specific Waves vs a “Wave #th or more” as those are still flexible to work with. Blue Wave did the opposite: the Vanguard could essentially attack in whatever order, (though other skills benefited from attacking in certain patterns), the rear-guards were the ones with the restrictions. This is important to note because when you have a vanguard with a battle restriction trying to work with a rear-guard with a battle restriction in the same Waves, you can get really awkward battle patterns that can work sometimes but other times are artificial, like you know they aren’t really meant to work together. A big example of this is Alexandros and any of the Blue Wave re-standing rear-guards: most of them attack on Waves 2nd/3rd and by the time Alexandros attacks, some will either be standing or won’t be able to use their skill because of this overlap. Foivos is the safest one, which is putting it mildly, because he can just attack first then Alexandros second and upon Waves 3 and 4, he’ll keep his power up and luckily for us, you can give power to another unit that is still standing but not being able to attack multiple times with huge power is underwhelming in a sense. Your other first stride options are as followed.

[AUTO](VC):When your rear-guard with "Blue Wave" in its card name attacks, that unit gets [Power]+3000 until end of that battle. [ACT](VC)[1/Turn]:[Soul Blast (1)-card with "Blue Wave" in its card name] Look at seven cards from the top of your deck, search for up to one grade 3 card with "Blue Wave" in its card name from among them, place it on your (VC) as a heart, and shuffle your deck. If you placed one or more cards, put all of your heart cards other than the card placed due to this effect into your drop zone.

[ACT](VC)[1/Turn]:[Choose a face down card named "Storm Dominator, Commander Thavas" from your G zone, and turn it face up] Choose up to one of your rear-guards, until end of turn, it gets [Power]+5000 and "[CONT](RC):This unit can attack from the back row.", and until end of turn, this unit gets "[AUTO](VC) Generation Break 3 Wave-4th time only:When your unit attacks a vanguard, choose three of your opponent's rear-guards, your opponent chooses one rear-guard from among them, and retires it.".

Aritom decent because he can fix your heart, if you ride Arsenal fleet, you can drop zone him to pick him up later via his skill. The problem is that for starters, he doesn’t flip anything so you have to G-Guard if your intention was to Flood Hazard on GB3, Wailing Thavas’ retire, or even Megiddo. However, luckily for Blue Wave: the original boss Tetra-boil Dragon is only Generation Break two and is still worth going into over Flood Hazard. The other issue is that he doesn’t re-stand: so your more than likely sitting on Brutal Trooper until next turn, however the bonus is that you can still get 5-6 attacks with the proper set up, which is pretty solid especially if you’re on Valeos. He’s seen play as a “I don’t have the resources to Flood Hazard first stride beyond going minus”, which ironically enough he was released in Divine Dragon Caper and is one of the three cards I felt was something to look at and see competitive play.

Commander Thavas is like taking a step back but it certainly must be better than Drive-3, Discard 2, Counterblast 2, right? You have some flexibility in attack pattern and can give a 5k power bonus but since he’s not Blue Wave, Valeos can’t use his heartbeat, which was a point I forgot to bring up when talking about Alexandros: Valeos can’t use his heartbeat either so you’re very open to damage triggers. And unlike Artiom, your next stride is Generation Break 3+ (depending on G-Guards).

Now I feel like I can talk about some “hypothetical” solutions. Again, the word is hypothetical as I doubt Bushiroad would care too much even with a petition, to consider going through with this since Set 13 has been out for a month in ENG and longer in JPN, and considering Set 13 was the last G-Set for Aqua Force (unless Aqua Force support in the new season), I highly doubt this solution is worth arguing since at this point it’s too late and it is what it is but I thought I’d share just because why not. Errata Flood Hazard Dragon. How? Simple: Remove either Drive-3 or the Discard-2, preferably the Drive-3, I feel the discard two is fine as it is very reminiscent of Tetra-drive Dragon and is decent cost. As I said before, with the effect how it is: your first stride is only getting you 1 card, going from GB2 and the second attack on GB3 (meaning Drive+1 is active), you get 2 cards, and GB3 from the start means you get 3 cards. If you remove the Drive-3 completely: I feel people would say this is “broken” or is doing “too much” as you’d be getting 4 cards on first stride, to 5 cards with second attack being GB3, and 6 cards with GB3, so I’d say possibly adjust it to Drive-2. With that your numbers go: 2 cards for the first stride, 3 cards if you’re on GB3 for the second attack, and 4 cards if you started on Generation Break 3 making Flood Hazard an even break as Tetra-drive originally was. The other solution is giving Flood Hazard more power to make up for the loss Drives so he isn’t just a static 26k for two swings. A simple skill text of “This unit gets [Power]+2000 for each battle that your unit attacked this turn, until the end of turn.” If you have Flood Hazard attack on Wave 2, he’d be 30k which is the same value of guard as a 26k attack, but his final attack would be 36k which is significantly better than 26k and is actually worth the loss of Drives because it means your opponent is dropping even more cards. These idea’s came from looking at two very similar units as Flood Hazard but done correctly: Chronodragon Gearnext and Bravest Peak, X-gallop. Gearnext goes from 3 Drives to -3 either hand or field, to Drive -2 but on Generation Break 4, will get +10k and Drive+1. He’s still getting three cards but the +10k makes up for the loss drive and serves as a +1 (as the other 5k). Bravest Peak, released two sets after Flood Hazard: has Quad Drive, Re-stand but gets Drive-4. The biggest difference is the power needing to be 80k to Re-stand. The power makes up for the lack of drives because 80k is a very high guard to say the least. However, these two units both use the concept of loss of drives and have skills to make up for it. Now I know people will say “but Flood Hazard has Aqua Force’s multi-attack and damage trigger nullification via Valeos”, but my retort to that is Gearnext is in a clan that multi-attacks and tutors everything while Bravest Peak is rewarded by hitting specific powers via free perfect guards, free draws, or guard breaks. Flood Hazard can multi-attack but it’s not tutoring nor is he getting anything for free beyond Brutal Trooper which is at this point a necessity to make the play not be a minus.

I feel like the main issue with Flood Hazard is that, they saw how Tetra-boil was and said “Let’s make a stride that rivals it”, which was done by making it triple and even quadruple drive check and by making it a re-stander on the first stride. However, they probably figured that making an “opposite Tetra-boil” would either invalidate Tetra-boil or literally ruin itself, and Bushiroad went for the second option by ruining itself. A theory of mine is that I feel perhaps Flood Hazard was intended to be release earlier than it’s actual debut, which would be Set 9. Now I don’t work for Bushiroad nor know their R&D department so this is just headcanon at this point. But it just feels weird to me that they would create a really sub-par re-stander like this. Like we look at other older re-standers that we consider “bad” like Dragonic Overlord the Ace, Viktplasma, or hell even Spectral Blaster Diablo; these re-standers were pretty strong at their time but have aged into the game to where they’re sub-par or aren’t really the “go-to option”. Note: I’m not calling these cards “trash” or “bad”, I still see value in all of these re-standers especially Spectral, I’m saying over time they became less powerful than how they originally was upon release. Flood Hazard, upon release made as much of an impact on the meta game as it’s doing now, not much: and it’s not to say re-standers are bad, quite the opposite: I still feel re-standers are pretty strong looking at the aforementioned examples of Gearnext and Bravest Peak, or even Siegenburg, and Bladermaus all “recent” re-standing Vanguards and are still making an impact in their decks/clans even after sets. So I don’t ever think the power of re-standing Vanguards will ever not be strong because it’s two vanguard swings. Flood Hazard feels like was meant for an early point in time where Drive-3 wasn’t so bad because you could get away with whatever cards you got from Brutal/Dagger to survive off of. Although, this would require testing in me playing Flood Hazard into Set 9 meta which I kinda don’t really have time for sadly. I’m also inclined to believe when designing this they probably didn’t want the G-zone to be filled with eight really good re-standers as an automatic “must play 4 of” so, perhaps weakening one was better rather making them relatively equal or having Flood Hazard be a vastly superior re-stander compared to Tetra-boil since Tetra-boil at it’s time was regarded as one of the best re-standers, and to top that in addition to making Flood Hazard a first stride may actually caused Blue Wave to be too aggressive, so that’s also a possibility and wanted to avoid a situation like this. And with that I’m going to wrap this up with a conclusion.

Conclusion

This was a very lengthy rant, about two to three hours worth of typing but I feel it was worth me pouring or trying to address what went wrong with Blue Waves, since as I’ve stated before: they started off brimming with amazing potential being one of the best Aqua Force decks and even one of the top decks of it’s meta, holding onto one of the strongest if not the best re-standing Vanguards in the game at the time (until Spectral Blaster Diablo could rival it). And even during Set 9 with little to no support, was still rivaling Thavas as the “deck of the clan”, which personally was it’s main appeal because while most clans only had 1 deck that carried the clan: other clans had two - Aqua Force being one of them. But sadly, Blue Waves started age by newer support for both other clans and Aqua Force and effectively becoming unreliable in the competitive scene due to many different internal issues with the deck in addition to the control meta. Again, this is in no way, shape, or form of me saying the deck or it’s cards is “trash” or “garbage” or that you shouldn’t play it because even now it’s still a playable deck and when everything works as it’s supposed to: you can be successful with this deck because you have many great cards supporting the archetype such as Brutal Trooper, Valeos, Anger-boil, Tetra-boil and Flood Hazard himself to an extent just to name a few. I just feel that Blue Wave is struggling among it’s fan base and wanted to address what could be the reason why that may be the case. I will still post my deck profile for Blue Wave’s shortly via video format, again, I just felt it was better to write down my thoughts here and be able to refer back to this as a means of explaining my choices. 

I’d like to hear more feedback, some thoughts, and opinions about this rant and even about Blue Wave itself on whether or not there is an issue, is there something that can be fixed, or is this just people over-reacting or comparing it to Thavas too much, which is another issue separately. This is Zane Kisaragi, signing out.

[endenogatai]

Automattic pumps $4.6M into New Vector to help grow Matrix, an open, decentralized comms ecosystem

Automattic, the open source force behind WordPress .com, WooCommerce, Longreads, Simplenote and Tumblr, has made a $4.6M strategic investment into New Vector — the creators of an open, decentralized communications standard called Matrix. They also develop a Slack rival (Riot) which runs on Matrix.

The investment by Automattic, which is at a higher valuation than the last tranche New Vector took in, extends an $8.5M Series A last year, from enterprise tech specialists Notion Capital and Dawn Capital plus European seed fund Firstminute Capital — and brings the total raised to date to $18.1M. (Which includes an earlier $5M in strategic investment from an Ethereum-based secure chat and crypto wallet app, Status).

New Vector’s decentralized tech powers instant messaging for a number of government users, including France — which forked Riot to launch a messaging app last year (Tchap) — and Germany, which just announced its armed forces will be adopting Matrix as the backbone for all internal comms; as well as for the likes of KDE, Mozilla, RedHat and Wikimedia, to name a few.

Getting Automattic on board is clearly a major strategic boost for Matrix — one that’s allowing New Vector to dream big.

“It’s very much a step forwards,” New Vector CEO and CTO and Matrix co-founder, Matthew Hodgson, tells TechCrunch. “We’re hopefully going to get the support from Automattic for really expanding the ecosystem, bringing Matrix functionality into WordPress — and all the various WordPress plugins that Automattic does. And likewise open up Matrix to all of those users too.”

A blog post announcing the strategic investment dangles the intriguing possibility of a decentralized Tumblr — or all WordPress sites automatically getting their own Matrix chatroom.

“This is huge news, not least because WordPress literally runs over 36% of the websites on today’s web – and the potential of bringing Matrix to all those users is incredible,” New Vector writes in the blog post. “Imagine if every WP site automatically came with its own Matrix room or community?  Imagine if all content in WP automatically was published into Matrix as well as the Web?… Imagine there was an excellent Matrix client available as a WordPress plugin for embedding realtime chat into your site?”

Those possibilities remain intriguing ideas for now. But as well as ploughing funding into New vector Automattic is opening up a job for a Matrix.org/WordPress integrations engineer — so the Matrix team has another tangible reason to be excited about future integrations.

“One of the best and the biggest open source guys really believes in what we’re doing and is interested in trying to open up the worlds of WordPress into the decentralized world of Matrix,” adds Hodgson. “In some ways it’s reassuring that a relatively established company like Automattic is keeping its eye on the horizon and putting their chips on the decentralized future. Whereas they could be ‘doing a Facebook’ and just sitting around and keeping everything centralized and as locked down as possible.”

“It’s a bit of a validation,” says Matrix co-founder and New Vector head of ops and products, Amandine le Pape. “The same way getting funding from VCs was validation of the fact it’s a viable business. Here it’s a validation it’s actually a mainstream open source project which can really grow.”

New Vector co-founders, Matthew Hodgson and Amandine le Pape

While the strategic investment offer from Automattic was obviously just a great opportunity to be seized by New vector, given ideological alignment and integration potential, it also comes at helpful time, per le Pape, given they’ve been growing their SaaS business.

“The business model that we’re looking at with New Vector to go and drive — both to fund Matrix and also to keep the lights on and grow the projects and the company — is very, very similar to what Automattic have successfully done with WordPress.com,” adds Hodgson. “So being able to compare notes directly with their board and our board to go and say to them how do you make this work between the WordPress.org and the WordPress.com split should be a really useful tool for us.”

While Matrix users can choose to host their own servers there’s obviously a high degree of complexity (and potential expense) involved in doing so. Hence New Vector’s business model is to offer a paid Matrix hosting service, called Modular, where it takes care of the complexity of hosting for a fee. (Marketing copy on the Modular website urges potential customers to: “Sign up and deploy your own secure chat service in seconds!”)

“Some of our highest profile customers like Mozilla could go and run it themselves, obviously. Mozilla know tech. But in practice it’s a lot easier and a lot cheaper overall for them to just go and get us to run it,” adds Hodgson. “The nice thing is that they have complete self sovereignty over their data. It’s their DNS. We give them access to the database. They could move off at any time… switch hosting provider or run it themselves. [Users] typically start off with us as a way to get up and running.”

Talking of moving, Hodgson says he expects Automattic to move over from Slack to Riot following this investment.

“I am very excited about what New Vector is doing with Matrix — creating a robust, secure, open protocol that can bring all flavors of instant messaging and collaboration together, in the way that the web or email has its foundation layer,” added Automattic founder, Matt Mullenweg, in a supporting statement. “I share New Vector’s passion for open source and the power of open standards. I’m excited to see how Automattic and New Vector can collaborate on our shared vision in the future.” 

Mullenweg was already a supporter of Matrix, chipping into its Patreon back in 2017. At the time the team was transitioning from being incubated and wholly financed by Amdocs, a telco supplier where New Vectors’ co-founders used to work (running its unified comms division), to spinning out and casting around for new sources of funding to continue development of their decentralized standard.

Some three years on — now with another multi-million dollar tranche of funding in the bank — Hodgson says New Vector is able to contemplate the prospect of profitability ahead, with ~16.8 million users and 45,000 deployments at this point (up from 11M and 40k back in October).

“I think there’s also a high chance — touch wood — that this injection gives us a path straight through to profitability if needed,” he tells us. “Given the macroeconomic uncertainty thanks to the [COVID-19] pandemic, the opportunity to say we have this amount of cash in the bank, assuming our customers follow roughly the trajectory that we’d seen so far… this would be a way to get out the other side without having to depend on any further funding.

“If things are on track we probably would do additional funding next year in order to double down on the success. But right now this at least gives us a pretty chunky safety net.”

The coronavirus crisis has been accelerating interest in Matrix “significantly”, per Hodgson, as entities that might have been contemplating a switch to decentralized comms down the line feel far greater imperative to take control of their data — now that so many users are logging on from home.

“As lockdowns began we saw sign ups increase by a factor of about 10,” he says. “It’s tapered off a little bit but it was a real scaling drama overnight. We had to launch an entirely new set of videoconferencing deployments on Jitsi’s offering, as well as scaling up the hardware for the service which we run by several times over.

“We’re also seeing retention go up, which was nice. We assumed there would be a huge spike of users desperately trying to find a home and then they wouldn’t necessarily stick around. In practice they’ve stuck around more than the existing user base which is reassuring.”

In some cases, New Vector has seen customers radically shrink planned deployment timescales — from months to a matter of days.

“We literally had one [educational] outfit in German reach out and say that tender in September — we want you to go live on Monday,” says Hodgson, noting that in this instance the customer skipped the entire tendering process because of they felt they needed a secure system school kids could use. (And privacy concerns ruling out use of centralized options such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams.)

“The biggest impact from a New Vector perspective at least has been that a lot of our slower moving, bigger opportunities — particularly in the public sector with governments — have suddenly sped up massively,” he adds. “Because it was previously a nice to have premium thing — ‘wouldn’t it be good if we had our own encrypted messenger and if everybody wasn’t using Telegram or WhatsApp to run our country’ — and then suddenly, with the entire population of whichever country it might be suddenly having to work remotely it’s become an existential requirement to have high quality communication, and having that encrypted and self sovereign is a massive deal.”

In terms of competing with Slack (et al), the biggest consideration is usability and UX, according to Hodgson.

So, over the last year, New Vector has hired a dedicated in-house design team to focus on smoothing any overly geeky edges — though most of this work is yet to be pushed out to users.

“We’ve actually pivoted the entire development of Riot to be design led,” he says. “It’s no longer a whole bunch of developers, like myself, going and hacking away on it — instead the product owner and the product direction’s being laid by the design team. And it is an unrecognizable difference — in terms of focus and usability.

“Over the coming year we are expecting Riot to basically be rebuilt at least cosmetically to get rid of the complexity and the geekiness and the IRC hangovers which we have today in favor of something that can genuinely punch its weight against Slack and Discord.”

In another major recent development New Vector switched on end-to-end encryption across the piece in Riot, making it the default for all new non-public conversations (DMs and private chats).

“It’s the equivalent of email suddenly mandating PGP and managing not to break everything,” says Hodgson of that feat.

A key challenge was to “get parity” with users of the non-encrypted version of Matrix before it could be enabled everywhere — with associated problems to tackle, such as search.

“Typically we were doing search on the server and if the messages are encrypted the server obviously can’t index them — so we had to shift all of our search capabilities to run client side. We went and wrote a whole bunch of REST that allows you to basically embed a search engine into Riot on the client, including on the desktop version, so that people can actually reach their encrypted message history there and share it between devices,” he explains.

Another focus for the e2e was the verification process — which is also now built in by default.

“When you now log into Riot it forces you to scan a QR code on an existing login if you’ve already logged in somewhere. A bit like you do on WhatsApp web but rather than just using it to authenticate you it also goes and proves that you are a legitimate person on that account,” he says. “So everyone else then knows to trust that login completely — so that if there is an attack of some kind, if you admin tries to add a malicious device into your account to spy on you or if there’s a man-in-the-middle attack, or something like that, everybody can see that the untrusted device hasn’t been verified by you.

“It’s basically building out a simple web of trust of your devices and immediate contacts so that you have complete protection against ghost devices or other nastier attempts to go and compromise the account. The combination of using QR codes and also using emoji comparison rather than having to read out numbers to one another is I think almost unique now, in terms of creating really, really super robust end-to-end encryption.”

The e2e encryption Matrix uses is based on algorithms popularized by the Signal protocol. It was audited by NCC Group in 2016 but plans for the new funding include a full stack audit — once they’ve ironed out any teething issues with the new default e2e.

“[We want to] at least pick a path, a particular set of clients and servers — because we can’t do the whole thing, obviously, because Matrix has got 60-70 different apps on it now, or different clients. And there are at least four viable server implementations but we will pick the long term supported official path and at least find a set which we can then audit and recommend to governments,” says Hodgson of the audit plans.

They’re also working with Jitsi on a project to make the latter’s WebRTC-compatible videoconferencing platform e2e encrypted too — another key piece as Jitsi’s tech is what New Vector offers for video calling via Matrix.

“We partner with Jitsi for the videoconferencing side of things and we’re working with them on their e2e encrypted videoconferencing… They [recently] got the world’s first WebRTC -based e2e encrypted conferencing going. And they plan to use Matrix as the way to exchange the keys for that — using also all of the verification process [New Vector has developed for Riot]. Because end-to-end encryption’s great, obviously in terms of securing the data — but if you don’t know who you’re talking to, in terms of verifying their identity, it’s a complete waste of time,” adds Hodgson.

So when Jitsi’s e2e encryption launches New Vector will be able to include e2e encrypted videoconferencing as part of its decentralized bundle too.

How much growth is New Vector expecting for Matrix over the next 12 months? “We’ve tripled almost all of the sizing metrics for the network in the last year, and I think we tripled the year before that so I’m hoping that we can continue on that trajectory,” he says on that.

Another “fun thing” New Vector has been working on, since the end of last year, is a peer-to-peer version of Matrix — having developed a “sufficiently lightweight server implementation” that allows Matrix users to run ‘riot’ in a decentralized p2p space via a web browser (or via the app on a mobile device).

“We turned on the peer-to-peer network about a month ago now and they’re at the point right now of making it persistent — previously if all of the clients on the network went away then the entire network disappeared, whereas now it has the ability to persist even if people start restarting their browsers and apps. And it’s very much a mad science project but as far as I know nobody else is remotely in that ballpark,” he says.

“The nice thing is it looks and feels identical to Matrix today. You can use all of the clients, all of the bridges that people have already written… It just happens to be that the Riot is connecting to a server wedged into itself rather than talking to one sitting on the server… So it’s a total paradigm shift.”

“We weren’t sure it was going to work at all but in practice it’s working better than we could have hoped,” he adds. “Over the next year or so we’re going to expect to see more and more emphasis on peer-to-peer — possibly even by default. So that if you install Riot you don’t have to pick a server and go through this fairly clunky thing of figuring out what service provider to trust and do you want to buy one from us as New Vector or do you want to a Swiss ISP. Instead you can start off bobbing around the ocean in a pure peer-to-peer land, and then if you want to persist your data somewhere then you go and find a server to pin yourself to a home on the Internet. But it would be a completely different way of thinking about things.”

Those interested in dipping a toe in p2p decentralized IM can check out this flavor of Riot in a web browser via p2p.riot.im

How Automattic wants to build the operating system of the web

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[mrlnsfrt]

Tips for Personal Spiritual Growth

“that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:17-19 NKJV

If you’ve been seeking God it is likely that you have read passages like the one above. Passages that describe an intimate relationship with God and an experiential knowledge of His love. I have often long for this and sometimes I feel closer to it, while at other times I feel light-years away.

Our relationship with God, like any other relationship, can feel like a roller-coaster ride, with extreme highs and lows. Churches tend to be good at programming, and programs can be awesome. But what happens when you can’t attend one, or none are available for months at a time, or when you go off to college or you chase your career to a place without vibrant church events? How do you continue to grow spiritually on your own?

I am not saying that these steps I will describe below should replace corporate worship, but rather they can help you between events, and these are practices you can take with you wherever you go. Events can still provide a spiritual boost, but you won’t be dependent solely on them for your personal spiritual growth.

“You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand, beware lest you also fall from your own steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked; but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” 2 Peter 3:17-18 NKJV

Peter warns us about falling from our steadfastness in 2 Peter 3:17 (different translations). You can know about God but fall away from a relationship with Him. The best way to avoid falling from your secure position or stability is to continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus.

A little bit about myself so you can better understand where I am coming from. I grew up in a Christian home, my father is a church pastor and my mother often stayed at home to care for my sister and I. I grew up with my parents having family worship, reading from devotionals, studying the Sabbath school lesson, reading from Bible story books and the Bible itself. As I grew older, I was strongly encouraged to read and study for myself. I have been reading and studying the Bible my whole life. Throughout my life I have tried different approaches and my devotional life has gone through several changes and adjustments as I attended public high school, when I studied theology for my undergraduate degree, then as a full time associate pastor and husband, then as a student at the seminary for my master’s degree in divinity, then as a youth pastor and new parent, then as the pastor of a two church district and father of two very young children and now as the pastor of a church with a school and the parent of school-age children. As I have moved through different stages in life my devotional life had to change and adapt. This post is about my current approach. I believe this is an improved approach since it has been shaped by years of experience and adjustments. However, I can see how changes may need to be made to adjust it to your life stage as a student, professional, parent, retired, or wherever you may be in life. One thing I do want to stress is that you make time to invest in your spiritual growth because it is vital! Your spiritual growth, or lack thereof, will shape every aspect of your life.

Prayer

Jesus told his disciples a story about how they should keep on praying and never give up: Luke 18:1 Contemporary English Version

I have some posts on prayer you might find helpful, Always Pray, Ask, Some of my Favorite Bible Verses on Prayer, Spiritual Warfare. I am passionate about prayer and emphasize it strongly at my local church. I believe spiritual growth begins with prayer. We should pray before reading the Bible and prayer also helps set the mood for the day, for your personal devotional, prayer is crucial for spiritual growth.

Tips for prayer:

Don’t make prayer about bringing your wishlist to God, but rather approach Him as you would a friend, and tell Him all about your day, about your night, how you slept, your dreams and fears, your plans for the day, for your life, for your career, family, etc. Talk to God, don’t limit your prayer to requests. Also, don’t feel like you have to use archaic or flowery language when you come to God in prayer.

You learn to pray by doing it. Push yourself to pray longer prayers. Have a prayer list, pray for specific people with specific problems, name them in your prayer. Go through your prayer list, talk to God about the people and issues/challenges in your list. You would be amazed at how good it can feel after having a long talk with God. Do not limit yourself to praying prayers you have heard others pray.

If you think some structure might help you, here is one I often use.

Praise

Begin your prayer by praising God for who He is. List His qualities, talk about His power and goodness and love and patience and willingness to forgive and save. This helps you become aware of who it is you are talking to. A praise session at the beginning of your prayer will also boost your faith.

Thanksgiving

Transition to thanking God for what He has done. He has given you another day of life, think of what else He has done for you or your family and loved ones in the past. Remembering what God has done will also build your faith. Thanking God will also change your attitude towards Him and life. Being thankful can really help you feel better, we all have things to be thankful for, it is just a matter of making the effort to count our blessings.

Confession

Confess your sins. Humble yourself before God. He already knows, so just turn to Him and tell Him the areas where you are struggling, confess, ask for forgiveness and deliverance. Bare your soul to God. He is your only hope of victory over those struggles. Prayer should be part of every recovery program, of every battle against addiction, of every therapy session, make God an integral part in every area of your life. God uses professionals and medical advances and medicine but that does not mean that we leave Him out of the picture. I would strongly recommend you to include Him in all you do. Confessing your sins is also beneficial because being reminded of your failures, rebellion, and shortcomings also puts things into perspective as you approach God and as you deal with others. Confession keeps you humble.

Requests

Now you are ready to bring your requests to God. After spending time praising God, thanking Him and confessing your sins, you are in the right frame of mind to bring your requests before Him. Be specific, tell Him your plans and desires, your struggles and weaknesses and fears. Ask Him to be your Strength and the Source of all your victories. This is also a great opportunity for you to claim Bible promises. I have a list of Bible verses that help me with this (Some of my Favorite Bible Verses for Prayer). I would like to encourage you to create one as well. I still add move verses to my list as I come across them as I read the Bible.

Closing

I would recommend you end your prayers by asking God to answer according to His will. It is important to understand we don’t always know what is best or what to ask for. Sometimes we ask for things that are too small and He wants to give us so much more. Other times we are asking for things that are not beneficial and it would be better for God to answer with a “no.” And sometimes we are asking for the right thing, only at the wrong time, and God will answer, in His time. So asking for His will to be done is the best way to end a prayer. I would also add a “Thank You!” This is by faith, I thank God for listening and for answering my prayer according to His will, His plans for my life, and His power and grace, recognizing He is able and might just answer in a way I never expected.

Bible Study

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Hebrews 4:12 NKJV

I could say a lot on this one as well but I will keep it brief for now.

Begin with a prayer asking God to speak to you and keep the distractions away as you study.

Translation

Make sure you are reading from a version you understand. King James Version is beautiful and poetic, but if you have no idea what you are reading I am afraid you will miss out on blessings that come from having a better understanding of what you are reading. The Bible is already a challenging book to read, don’t add to the challenge by reading it in a language that is not familiar to you. Go to a place where they sell Bibles and read the same passage in different translations and see which one you like, do some research online, there are so many English translations, find one you like. If you want you can message me and we can talk about this further (there should be social media links on the top right of the screen on my blog) or you can leave a comment on the bottom of this post.

Journal

This is a new addition for me. I keep it really simple. I simply write down the passage I read, followed by a brief overview of what the passage was about and a brief description of what I took away from it. Summarizing what I read in my own words helps me internalize what I just read, and having to write at least one takeaway from the passage forces me to reflect on what I read. I find that this simple habit of journaling has helped me listen more carefully to God as I read His words. I read and think, what is God telling me in this passage?

Relationships

And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10:24-25NKJV

If you believe you can experience spiritual growth all by yourself you are gravely mistaken. One cannot grow spiritually in a vacuum because spiritual growth is deeply relational. It is all about loving God with all your heart and soul and might and your neighbor as yourself.

Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:37-40 NKJV

I strongly believe that the way you treat those around you, the quality of your relationships, is the ultimate test of your spiritual health. Those around you should be first ones to notice your spiritual growth, not from your theological exposition over meals but rather by your behavior, by the amount and quality of the love you have in your life. A healthy spirituality, an honest and sincere walk with God will shine from your soul and impact those around you. You will begin to experience the fruit of the Spirit in your life.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. Galatians 5:22-23 NKJV

This is where the rubber meets the road. Schedule this in your day. Your personal devotion cannot be just something you do when you have time. If you do not make this a priority and intentionally carve out time it will not happen as often as it needs to. You need this daily. Your personal devotions are not a hobby, your relationship with God is not something you do on the weekends as you have free time, it is the most important thing in your life. That’s the thing with God, He is either #1 in your life or He is nothing.

And God spoke all these words, saying:

2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

3 “You shall have no other gods before Me. Exodus 20:1-3 NKJV

When God wrote the 10 Commandments with His own finger on tablets of stone He began with a command for us to not have any other gods before Him. Guess what, whatever crowds God out of your life has replaced Him as God.

Allow me to elaborate.

If ever since you joined social media you have not had time to do your personal devotionals like you used to, it has become a god in your life. If ever since you started college you have not had time to spend in prayer or Bible study, your education has become your god. Your new job, relationship, pet, favorite TV show, streaming service, sport, you name it. Here is the truth, you have time to do what you believe is important, whatever doesn’t get done didn’t get done because it was not important enough.

Let that sink in.

If you “don’t have time” to invest in your relationship with God it is only because you do not think it is important enough. I am not saying you have time to do everything you want to or even need to, what I am saying is that when you decided to leave out your devotional time you made a mistake. Yes, if you are too busy you will have to remove some things from your day, you will have to make changes, but you cannot afford to not make time for God.

If you are willing to say that your personal relationship with God is the most important thing in your life, then make sure it happens every day.

Maybe you feel like it doesn’t make that much of a difference, maybe you have done it one day and skipped a few and everything seemed the same. I would like to compare it to eating. Choosing to eat a healthy meal instead of eating junk may not feel like it made a difference, choosing to drink water instead of soda today may seem insignificant, but what happens when I stop drinking soda or eating junk for a week, a month, a year? Same with exercising. Skipping the gym one day may not seem to make a difference, but if you skip a week or a month, a year, it begins to make a difference. The same way, going to the gym once a week or a few times a month or eating healthy three times a month will not have the same impact of doing it every day. Working out or eating healthy inconsistently is just frustrating, it always feels like a chore, it never becomes enjoyable and you never get to experience the benefits you would experience if you were more intentional and consistent. Consistency is the key, and consistency will never become a reality if you are not intentional about it.

It is very possible to go through your devotional routine on autopilot, and by that I mean, without really listening to God, without really opening your heart to Him. You need to make this real, be real with God and expect Him to come through and speak to you. Don’t do your personal devotion as if it were a good luck ritual. Don’t make it a mindless activity, rather look at it as the key to happy and successful life. Your day, your week, your year, your life will rise and fall on the quality of the time you spend with God. Without God your greatest achievements will become sand in your mouth. With God even your biggest defeats will be full or hope and incredible growth to the point of you being able to thank God and be at peace even when everything seems to be going wrong. When you are close to God you become unstoppable, nothing in this universe will be able to keep you from achieving what God has planned for you. Look at the life of Paul as an example.

From the Jews five times I received forty stripes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness— besides the other things, what comes upon me daily: my deep concern for all the churches. 2 Corinthians 11:24-28 NKJV

You could look at the list above and see a life full of suffering and you would be correct. But I also see a man that Satan could not stop. The government could not stop Paul, religious groups could not stop Paul, neither could the weather, or poisonous snakes. Paul simply could not be stopped until he had fulfilled the mission for which God called Him.

I never said it would be easy, I just said you would be unstoppable. When you find yourself in God’s will you can depend on Him to take care of all the struggles and challenges you ever face. Imagine going through life with the assurance that in the end everything will workout.

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28 NKJV

So when you have your personal devotions come to God expecting to hear form Him, expect His help, ask Him to guide you and to reveal Himself and His will to you. Don’t just go through the motions but make it meaningful, open your heart, tell Him everything and open yourself to His will and his guiding influence.

The picture above has a recommendation. This is my personal daily routine. You don’t have to follow it, or you could use it as a template and modify it to fit where you are in life. I just find that in the morning my mind is sharp and fresh, okay fine, sometimes drowsy with sleep but that’s why I added the water part. Also mornings are quieter, no phone calls, no kids asking for things, no noise. Also having my devotional in the morning allows be to begin my day with God, and that make it that much easier to face all the challenges that lie ahead.

[thewebofslime]

Maj. Gen. Dawn Dunlop, Office of the Secretary of Defense Special Access Programs director, poses for a photo in front of an F-22 Raptor at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., Feb. 1, 2019. Dunlop was accompanied by more than 80 fellow female aviators to film an Air Force Recruiting Service television commercial. (U.S. Air Force photo by Kenji Thuloweit) PRINT | E-MAIL EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AFNS) -- In early February, roughly 80 female pilots gathered together on Edwards Air Force Base, California, to take part in the video filming of an Air Force Recruiting Service commercial. The commercial was made to coincide with the release of the new film “Captain Marvel,” which also involved filming at Edwards AFB. One of the Airmen showcased in the recruiting video was Maj. Gen. Dawn Dunlop. Dunlop currently serves as the Office of the Secretary of Defense Special Access Programs director. She is also the highest ranking female fighter pilot in the Air Force today. Earlier in her career, Dunlop served as the 412th Test Wing commander, the first woman ever to command a Test Wing. “It was really quite remarkable,” Dunlop said. “My first thought was how appropriate it was that this event was taking place at Edwards (AFB), a base known for many firsts, and my second thought was how proud I was to see so many talented young women aviators making a positive mark on our Air Force. It is always special for me to come back to Edwards (AFB) and walk the flight line where I’ve spent much of my career as a test pilot.” The men and women at Edwards AFB have enabled virtually every breakthrough in U.S. military aviation history from the first jet aircraft, to X-planes on the edge of space, to today’s F-35 Lightning II development. Dunlop said she thought it was appropriate that the Edwards AFB flight line became the stage for so many women aviators, representing just how far the service has come since it first opened the doors for women pilots in 1980 and combat pilots in 1993. In 1988, Dunlop was the top graduate in her class at the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB. Dunlop then became the first woman to become a fighter test pilot and the first woman to fly the F-22. She said the test pilot environment at Edwards AFB during that time contributed to her success. “With only a few women pilots across the service, change took time. To put this in perspective, from 1993 until 2015, I was the only woman pilot in many of my squadrons. I was fortunate in my first operational squadron to meet a few great, and forward thinking, men; often with daughters or sisters, who were instrumental in paving the way for my acceptance, and ultimately my success,” she said. “And I’ve had other assignments where I felt completely on my own. The test pilot world had fewer cultural barriers to overcome, which was one of the attractions for me to make that transition.” The diversity seen in the Air Force’s recruitment video highlights the positive effects diversity has had on the Air Force, effects that may not be easily seen. A more diverse force affords the Air Force and military in general to better recruit the most talented and innovative people possible, she said. “Today there is much data on the correlation between diversity and success in an organization and much has been written on the value of diversity in the workplace to include improved productivity and innovation, increased retention and broader success,” Dunlop said. “Being more inclusive, casting wider nets for the best talent and measuring what matters are just as important for the military as they are for business. “It took some time, but I think it is well understood that high standards and strength in diversity are complementary, not competing, objectives. And to remain the best Air Force in the world, we need to harness the strength that comes from diversity of thought, perspective, experience and approach.” According to the Air Force Personnel Center’s current demographics information, women comprise about 20 percent of the total force, while only 6 percent of all pilots are women. Dunlop says that while becoming a female aviator is still a relatively unique career choice, she hopes young people understand that joining the Air Force is a viable opportunity for everyone. “I think we’d all like for every girl and boy to know their future is unbounded and that with hard work and education and talent they can be whatever they can imagine,” Dunlop said. “Unfortunately, I still come across too many children who, at a young age, have limited their goals based on careless comments from the adults in their lives. As one of the most respected professions in the country we can play a powerful role in shaping our military future and our nation’s future by being a visual representation for today’s children; that there are no limits on what they can imagine for themselves.” Dunlop said while being a woman aviator today is still a very unique career choice, today’s women seem to find more acceptance and support, which she expects will lead to increased opportunities and better retention. “At the beginning, there was a lot of discovery on where Air Force policies had gaps and we just had to do our best to fill in the blanks,” Dunlop said. “When I arrived at (RAF) Lakenheath in 1995 there was one big changing room for everyone and some of the combat gear didn’t fit well. I could work around these issues, which were easier to manage than the negative attitudes about women in combat that made the job more difficult than necessary.” While some may consider Dunlop and her contemporaries as trailblazers, she attributes her success to friends and supervisors who helped shape her career outlook. “I consider myself very fortunate in the timing I’ve had as well as the opportunities, but it was truly my friends and supervisors who stretched my thinking and my aspirations who allowed me to achieve more than I expected,” she said. “Perhaps by definition a trailblazer, but just as the WASPs (Women Airforce Service Pilots) or Tuskegee Airmen, I was fortunate in my timing to be able to pursue a profession that allowed me to serve, that challenged me, shaped me, and provided a great sense of purpose. “It also ultimately helped to open doors that needed to be opened. As a nation which prides itself on equality, opportunity, excellence and innovation, we cannot remain best in the world if we don’t allow everyone to compete and reach their full potential.” For young people thinking about joining the Air Force, Dunlop said she urges them to consider it. From someone who didn’t come from a military family, she attributes some of her career success to mentors who have helped push her. “I’d say to them, ‘we need you; we need your talent and your innovation to help keep our nation strong and our future secure. And in exchange we offer you unbounded opportunity as part of an exceptional team of like-minded Americans, doing important work, delivering solutions to today’s complex challenges, and sharpening each other to become the best you can be,’” Dunlop said. “I didn’t come from a military family and had no grand Air Force aspirations. I only had great mentors who showed me what was possible, and the desire to be my best.” Dunlop said with this approach, in a career spanning 30 years, she’s found herself flying F-15 Strike Eagles on the deck in Europe; flying the F-22 Raptor at 60,000 feet at Mach 2; teaching lieutenants to fly in the T-38 Talon; working in the Senate and with the White House and responsible for 6,000 people working to deliver 316 programs to help further strengthen the military. “My advice for young people: always give your best, communicate your goals and seek feedback on how to reach them, and don’t easily accept a ‘no’ answer from someone not empowered to give a ‘yes,’” Dunlop said. “I’ve had a hugely rewarding career, and if I can do it anyone can.”

[thegloober]

Australian encryption-busting Bill would create backdoors: Cisco

Despite the Australian government repeatedly claiming that its Assistance and Access Bill would not involve the creation of backdoors, networking giant Cisco has accused Canberra of doing just that.

In a submission [PDF] to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security — which is currently reviewing the legislation as the government attempts to ram it through Parliament — Cisco called out Canberra for not allowing greater transparency on disclosing notices and requests from Australian authorities to access encrypted communications.

“We have defined a ‘backdoor’ to include any surveillance capability that is intentionally created and yet not transparently disclosed,” Cisco said.

“To the extent that the Bill would require via a [Technical Capability Notice] the creation of a capability while simultaneously preventing the [communication providers] from documenting the existence of that capability, the law would result in the creation of backdoors.”

The networking giant pointed to statements made by its CEO Check Robbins in October 2016 when addressing rumours that American companies had cosy arrangements with Washington intelligence agencies.

“We don’t provide backdoors. There is no special access to our products,” Robbins said at the time.

Cisco said in its submission that in order to maintain customer trust, any “form of surveillance technique” in its products must be publicly disclosed.

“Cisco is most certainly not alone in having foresworn the existence of backdoors in technology products and services. As such, this issue is a significant concern that should be promptly addressed via an amendment to the Bill,” the company said.

It further warned that other governments would likely follow Australia’s lead if the Assistance and Access Bill is passed in its current form, and that it does not customise its lawful communication interception capabilities for any nation, and all such capabilities are described in product documentation.

“Without further amendment, we believe the net result of these changes would harm the security interests of Australia by setting a precedent that could be adopted by less liberal regimes,” Cisco said.

Read more: Australia’s anti-encryption law will merely relocate the backdoors: Expert

Under the proposed law, Australian government agencies would be able to issue three kinds of notices:

Technical Assistance Notices (TAN), which are compulsory notices for a communication provider to use an interception capability they already have;

Technical Capability Notices (TCN), which are compulsory notices for a communication provider to build a new interception capability, so that it can meet subsequent Technical Assistance Notices; and

Technical Assistance Requests (TAR), which have been described by experts as the most dangerous of all.

Tasked with overseeing Australia’s intelligence agencies, Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) Margaret Stone warned in her submission that technical assistance requests could allow for the voluntary creation of backdoors.

“This raises the legal possibility that ASIO, ASIS, or ASD could negotiate an agreement with a provider to voluntarily create or fail to remediate a ‘backdoor’,” Stone wrote.

“While it is foreseeable that many providers would decline any such request because it is incompatible with their commercial and reputational interests, the possibility appears to exist that an individual provider could be persuaded to do so, and if so, compensated in accordance with a contract, agreement, or other arrangement.”

Stone called on the government to add increased reporting provisions to the Bill that would force agencies to notify IGIS of when requests were made.

No time to weaken encryption

Amongst the 31 submission to the joint committee published late on Friday afternoon, Apple said the best way for the government to reach its objective of tracking down criminals and terrorists was through stronger encryption, and not by weakening it.

“This is no time to weaken encryption,” Apple wrote. “There is profound risk of making criminals’ jobs easier, not harder.”

Cupertino argued that by reducing security for one customer, it would also reduce the security of “millions of law-abiding customers in order to investigate the very few who pose a threat”.

“The government may seek to compel a provider to develop custom software to bypass a particular device’s encryption. The government’s view is that if it only seeks such tool for a particular user’s device, it will create no systemic risk,” Apple said.

“As we have firmly stated, however, the development of such a tool, even if deployed only to one phone, would render everyone’s encryption and security less effective.”

Apple expressed concern that one of the Bill’s few outs — preventing communication providers from building a “systemic weakness” into products to comply — could be circumvented and allow agencies to prevent certain users from receiving security updates, or prevent providers from fixing security flaws, if Canberra deemed such actions non-systemic.

See: The race to ruin the internet is upon us

The iPhone-maker called for the introduction of a provision to allow for judicial review prior to technical capability notices being issued, and said it was deeply concerned that the government could force real-time interception of over-the-top-based messages and calls.

As a company that stores much of its customer data in the United States, Apple said it could face criminal sanctions for “any unauthorised interception of content in transit” under US law, or if Canberra wanted data on EU citizens, it could face fines of 4 percent of annual turnover thanks to the General Data Protection Regulation.

“Forcing business with operations outside Australia to comply with TANs or TCNs that violate the laws of other countries in which they operate, will just incentivise criminals to use service providers that never assist Australian authorities or ones that operate underground in jurisdictions unfriendly to Australian interests,” Apple said.

“Rather than serving the interests of Australian law enforcement, it will just weaken the security and privacy of regular customers while pushing criminals further off the grid.”

A number of submissions warned the government to think of the global implications of its proposed laws.

“A rush to enact legislation in the proposed form could do significant harm to the internet,” Mozilla wrote.

“TCNs in particular present the government with capabilities that we don’t believe are appropriate, as well as being a significant risk to the security of the Internet. The bill as proposed represents a one-sided view, without adequate consideration for the broader and longer-term costs and repercussions of its implementation.”

Mozilla said that TCNs are, in effect, an “intentional introduction of a security vulnerability”, and said the Bill could harm Australian companies in the global economy.

It was a view shared by Australian email provider FastMail, which said laws removing privacy would not help Australia’s brain drain.

“To the extent that this Bill takes us further out of alignment with protections expected by the rest of the world, it hurts the ability of all Australian companies to compete in the global market.”

In a prior round of consultation, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) said the Bill’s provisions represented an existential threat to the internet’s security and integrity.

IAB chair Ted Hardie stated a method to compel an infrastructure provider to break encryption or provide false trust arrangements will introduce a systemic weakness that threatens to erode trust in the internet itself.

“The mere ability to compel internet infrastructure providers’ compliance introduces that vulnerability to the entire system, because it weakens that same trust,” Hardie said. “The internet, as a system, moves from one whose characteristics are predictable to one where they are not.”

If similar legislation where implemented by other jurisdictions, the IAB said the end result could be the fragmentation of the internet itself.

Read: Australian encryption Bill raises bar for outrageous legislation: Comms Alliance

“This approach, if applied generally, would result in the internet’s privacy and security being the lowest common denominator permitted by the actions taken in myriad judicial contexts. From that perspective, this approach drastically reduces trust in critical internet infrastructure and affects the long term health and viability of the internet,” the IAB said.

Speaking to the National Press Club last Wednesday, Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton said the changes already made to the Bill have resulted in it being compromised.

“I think there is a common-sense approach here. I think the government has crafted that common-sense approach, but it can only be enacted if it is supported in the Senate,” Dutton said. “We can’t have on key national security Bills compromises because we’re dealing with five or six or eight different senators all with different motivations, and pulling in every direction.”

Dutton said Opposition Leader Bill Shorten needs to decide whether he is on the side of Silicon Valley multinationals or with “law enforcement and intelligence agencies in this country who want to protect Australians”.

The Home Affairs minister added that tech giants need to be hounded to pay more tax in Australia, have breached user privacy for commercial advantage, and are protesting moves to force them to help law enforcement in Western countries while simultaneously doing business in authoritarian growth markets.

“It is essential. Given we are talking about nine out of 10 national security investigations now being impeded because of the use of encryption, we need to deal with it. It doesn’t go as far as some people would want, but it is a measured response,” he added.

The minister called for the Bill should be dealt with sooner rather than later.

Related Coverage

Source: https://bloghyped.com/australian-encryption-busting-bill-would-create-backdoors-cisco/

[shawnallenblog]

Hey, Bourdain, I would have loved that roll.

“I will never be a young man or younger than I am today. I will never be faster or more flexible. I will never win a competition against a 22-year old wrestler in my weight class. I will never be a black belt. None of these things will happen but none of that matters anymore.”

– Anthony Bourdain/Parts Unknown Season 6. Episode 4

I mentioned sparring (rolling) with Chef Anthony Bourdain about 2 years ago on my other blog, TheGaitGuys.com.  It never happened, and now, it never will.  At the time, Bourdain and I were both blue belts in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Bourdain did not know me, nor I him, but we had some things in our lives rooted in common ground. His death to me was a bold punch to the gut, one that doubles you over and makes you stumble backward.  I think his choice of an early life departure in 2018 hit some of us hard because we felt some inner connection, perhaps jealous aspiration, to him and the life he appeared to have commandingly by the tail.  Bourdain and I had some commonalities, the love of good food, a late life start into Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, writing, art, and creative outlets.  His broad palate of creative works was an inspiration to me. I also enjoyed what he said, but more so how he said it; his descriptive and colorful command of the English language spoke to me. Bourdain's death was a tragedy to us all, the world has lost another creative talented soul.

I recently was presented with my purple belt in Brazilian JiuJitsu from one of the art's legends, my mentor, my brother, 4x World Champion, Professor Carlos Lemos, Jr.  Some consider the purple belt as a transition in the art where the basics start to congeal into something more clear and meaningful. (I refer the reader here to my previous post on "the language" of jiu jitsu LINK). It defines the completion of a long base of fundamental work, and of stronger resistance, heavier responsibilities and bolder headwinds to come. 

It took me 5 years to get my purple belt in jiu jitsu. This is far longer than it will take many to get to this stage, many will be into their brown belt by this point, yet still far from the coveted black.  In Brazilian jiu jitsu, purple does not even mark the half way point to the multi-tiered black belt. Thus, my mere five years still represents a kind of adolescence in the journey.   Many will not get to this purple stage, they will quit before they reach this pivotal point in this most difficult art.  Trust me, I almost gave up as well, I too found all kinds of excuses to abort, but for me the trick was to make myself go to the academy on the days I truly did not want to, when I was finding something else that I could, should or wanted to otherwise do. When we are uncommitted, it is easy to find excuses not to follow through. We might use our marriage, our work, our kids, money, time, injury, these are all excuses that will be victorious if one lets them grow into such a thing.  If one is weak enough, an individual can let one of many forms of resistance grow into a plausible victorious excuse, one that trumps commitment and personal growth. I know this problem all to well, it is part of my past and my every day.  Wishing and hoping are like dreams, they are not real, it is only execution that makes anything real. How badly do we want it, that is the greater question.

The color purple, the color of resistance?

I am slow at learning what many already know, that the stuff in life that seems to matter is the stuff that is difficult. It is the stuff that we have to work hard at. It is not the stuff that comes easy, it is not the gifts and not the handouts. It is often the stuff that makes us weak and tremble. It is the stuff that actually ask something more of us, it is sort of a sacrifice to step into an unknown void.

I recently had a patient come in who is a recovering heroin addict. As I was working on his shoulder and he rambled into a dialogue about feeling lost in life. I have known this young man since he was a little boy.. He said he was looking for some relief and an easier time in life. I asked him why he was looking for that and he said he was tired. I asked him to at least consider if perhaps he needed something else that was difficult and hard to embrace, something else that would ask him to make a different kind of sacrifice in life, a different set of choices. He looked blankly at me.  I expanded my words, sharing with him what a jiu jitsu lifestyle looked like; mental and physical struggles, fitness, rewards, commitment, loyalty, purpose, brotherhood, family, leadership, general well-being. He said it sounded like just what he needed. It is never hard to give out the phone number for that recipe.

I'm not sure I fully deserved this purple strip of heavy cotton around my waist. I am not where I should be in my opinion, but I am where I am. In any chapter of life, it is about accepting where we are. To my mentors perspective and wisdom, I think maybe, just maybe, this was a message to step forward, to step up, and accept the responsibility of where I should be and force me into the responsibilities I have been shirking. And if that's the case, the point was made, loud and clear; step into the resistance, accept active responsibility. Take action, instead of making excuses. These are easily comments made on many of our lives.  Easy doesn't pay the bills. Easy doesn't generate growth, or insight. Easy doesn't add to a quality of life and a sense of achievement. The dis-ease of "easy" has led most into regret upon their last hours of a life.

I will never be a young man or younger than I am today. I will never be faster or more flexible. I will never win a competition against a 22-year old wrestler in my weight class. I will never be a black belt. None of these things will happen but none of that matters anymore.” –Bourdain

Bourdain was right on some things, many things in fact, this could be noted if you followed his work over the last decade. He is right in that I will never be a younger man than I am today, but with constant pressure against resistance at the age of 51 I do feel better than I did a decade ago. This year I will work to be faster, stronger, and more flexible than I was last year. The alternative path will not get me to a better place, so I will meet those resistances head on. As Bourdain eluded to, I too may not win a battle with a 22 year old, but knowing what I know now, it just might now be fun to try. As for Bourdain's feelings on a black belt, I do not care much either. I have more deeply discovered that meeting the path of resistance head on in the moment, and facing the responsibilities and expectations that confront me as I press through the dominance hierarchy (thanks Jordan Peterson) is the true journey.

I was getting lazy and complacent as a blue belt in arguably the toughest martial art that exists. Having purple firmly tied around my abdomen, and all of the responsibilities that accompany it, was a lesson I needed to feel deep in my being. I believe that if one is not struggling and moving forward into more difficult winds, they are being held back, in fact losing ground, being further pushed back by one's own laziness in accepting that place of mere perceived comfort. Nothing good comes from complacency, even though we feel stable and safe, that is the deception of the moment, we are in fact becoming more fragile.  Lesson learned. I was the clay pot, never to meet the heat of the furnace.

" A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot . . .

 it has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain."  - Mildred WitteStouven

I am still on the adolescent scale on this martial art's journey of lessons. These are just a few things I have gleaned to this point that might help those a few steps behind me, maybe even beside me:

Purple. It might just be the true color of resistance in this art form.

If you choose to give up on jiu jitsu, make it a real good reason, because it just might turn into later regrets. I quit for 2 months early on, and I am ashamed of that. If you say it is because of your work, your marriage, your school, your whatever, have a good talk with yourself.  Make time for something this important. This is not supposed to be fun or easy all the time, if it is not hard at times, you are doing it wrong and you are not being forced to grow.

If you disappear after a year, you missed the message. This is a journey, a marathon, a lifestyle, a grand path inward, and outward. If the journey showed you the destination too soon, the pot of gold, the long path to enlightenment would be missed.

If you are not getting what you want, don't leave or give up. Those things might not be what you need. Be patient with the lessons of jiu jitsu, often you will be surprised that what you needed was far different than what you thought.  This goes for our training, and our lives.  Let the art deliver its message and lessons to you. Most things in life do not turn out how we hope or plan, but often the best things in life are the surprises.

If your focus is the color or your belt or the number of stripes on it, you are missing the point. This is an investment, a lifetime journey and insurance policy on our soul. Forget about the color of the cloth around your waist, or around another's waist for that matter.

Persistence always wins. Even if you lose, you win. I've been here 5 years now. I'm still here. I have seen more people leave, disappear, or give up, than have persisted. Pace yourself and stay the course, sprinters do not get very far. Be the tortoise, not the hare.

Look beside you. One of the people on either side of you won't be here in 6-12 mo. The problem is, we forget that the person beside us is saying the exact same thing about us. Don't give them the satisfaction of not being present on the mats in a year, persist, prevail. Stay the course.

Stop trying to win each time you spar. There's very little value and feedback in winning. The lessons are in the losses, the meaning is found between the arm bars and chokes. The lessons are in the smallest of things, and often in the sharing afterwards. Stop trying to win. Be a step ahead of the guy trying to win, be the observer, be this listener, you will learn more.

It is all relative, see your journey as where YOU are at this moment, not where others are. The beauty of this art and it's journey is that you cannot and should not compare yourself to others. Let others help to be a measuring stick for your own progress, but more importantly, mostly compare yourself to your yesterday's self. What do I mean by this? Let me help.  I am a mere footstep into a Purple belt.  I cannot compare myself to other purple belts that have been here a year, let alone one that is 20 years my junior. Nor should I compare myself to a youthful 25 year old blue belt who is just 3 years out of a college wrestling program. I cannot compare myself to a 200 pound white belt. I cannot compare myself to a 60 year old black belt.  I am my own unique package, a 51 year old, 155 pound doctor who trains a few times a week who's hands are raw and pummeled by most Tuesdays. I cannot compare myself to anyone else other than the person I was yesterday, nor should you. Trust me on this, I speak from experience.

Most things in life that are worth anything do not come quickly or easily. This is about choices, habits, routine, commitment, struggle, fear, pain, and sacrifice. This is about meeting resistance every day.

Do not be afraid to fight for worthy things in life. (This is a good time to remind the reader of the all too important, yet mostly sarcasm piece, here on this blog which I wrote in 2016. My first post, The death of the schoolyard fight: The great unravelling of our modern day social fabric.)

Close your mouth. Open your ears. Show up. Practice. Be patient. Share the story of your journey, it might save someone's life.

In life, if one steps back far enough, and often enough, enough to see the forest instead of just the trees, the messages and lessons become more clear. "Once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things."-Miyamoto Musashi

Dear Chef Bourdain, I would have loved that roll, but maybe in another lifetime it now seems. However, I am going to imagine that a few threads within the tapestry of this purple belt are yours brother, just as there are threads within it of my fellow academy brothers and sisters. Through them I have reached this stage of the journey.  Bourdain, rest peacefully until we meet old man. Save a little sweat for me, and a heavenly street side "meat in tube form" with all the fixin's, for I am a fan as well.

Sometimes we need a "band of brothers" to shine a light of truth on our ways, leading us back to the  honest path. Thank you Professor Carlos Lemos, my fellow teachers, and all those who paved my path to this point. The struggles, pain, sweat and defeats were worth it, and continue to be.  Being completely honest with myself, I can see the woes of my ways in finding peace in comfort and complacency. I feel that I did not honorably serve the blue belt previously wrapped around my waist to the level I should have. That weighs heavily on me. And because of that, this purple wrap now too weighs heavily upon my hips, and with it, a bigger target on my back. Lesson again learned. It is time to make things right.

-Shawn, purple belt, Brazilian JiuJitsu, ("the gentle art"),

Gracie Barra Downers Grove,

Professor Carlos Lemos, Jr. 4x World, Brazilian, European, American & Pan-Am Champion

[msby]

“You’re such a bitch pala?”

by Cara Rosete (161732, 2 AB Communication)

People would say, genuinely surprised every time this five foot tall girl opened her mouth to say either her opinion or dark joke. 

I would hear this phrase constantly- from my family, friends, and sometimes nowadays, even myself. You would think that someone that seems wholesome, someone physically weak and short, someone that came from an all-girl Catholic school would only be associated with the words such as cute or friendly, yet somehow, I have earned the title of classic bitch- with a hard and rash B.

But why?

And more importantly, why does it not at all bother me one single bit?

According to Goffman and his Dramaturgical Model of Human Life as the Conceptual Framework for the Conception of the Self, we are all actors. We all have roles, which are basically the context we operate in. The audiences are obviously those who observe our actions, and attach meanings to any verbal and non-verbal cues we give them (whether it be international or unintentional). Clothing and dialogue, as well, are important factors that help the audience infer your character. Through these sign-vehicles, we create an impression that we both give and give off (Goffman, pp. 98-99).

Goffman distinguishes the two by saying that an Impression that we Give is one that is thoughtfully and purposefully constructed with intentional and voluntary actions. This is because we are aware of the meanings that are attached to these cues, henceforth, if we want to present ourselves a certain way, we are more likely to engage in that action (Goffman, pp. 100-101).

An example for me is that I come from a very educated background. I grew up in a very disciplined All-Girl Catholic school and am currently studying in one of the prestige collages in the Philippines. My class hence has me obligated to play a certain role in order to achieve coherence. I would intentionally do and say things that I know people associate with being disciplined, proper, and well-schooled. I make sure to always be mindful of my manners. I make sure to dress up accordingly and appropriately for a student. I make sure to always maintain a proper and efficient work ethic, without raising my voice or disobeying any orders. I make sure I do all that I can do to fit the ideals and values of being an Atenean and Povedan inside my identity. 

But is that who I truly am? Am I someone that is so well-behaved that I would obediently follow orders without any single objection?

Growing up, I would hear the word bitch being associated to women of power- females who assert and command themselves. This would connote her to being bossy or bitchy. It was something that I was told to avoid while growing up by my parents. I was always told to be compliant, respectful and full of grace. But how was being an opinionated and heart strong female the complete opposite of being courteous and feminine?

Goffman also talks about the Impression that you Give Off, which are the involuntary actions symptomatic to the actor. These are the actions you do unintentionally when you think no one is looking. These are the smaller gestures and more whispered words that you do not necessarily want other people to perceive you as. And this, I guess, is how I earned the title as “bitch” (Goffman, pp. 100-101).

Because I know, from the bottom of my heart, I am not meek. I am not coy. I speak my mind and defend my beliefs (even when I know it’s wrong). I am prideful. I am competitive and assertive, and have the guts to disagree and oppose. I secretly want to roll my eyes when someone says something I do not agree with or forces a statement on me without any justifiable reason. I push for debate when I believe I am right, and am disappointed when the other party simply surrenders without a single conviction. I breathe in passion, I breathe in ferver. And for some weird reason, being opinionated and commanding and a girl is not ideal. 

I always assumed that “bitch” was used for someone that is rude and uncaring of whether or not their actions and words hurt other people’s feelings. So how is being commanding and assertive automatically being a bitch? Even my family says that I’m the devil trapped in an angel’s body. I have the face of a anghel, but the heart and soul of a demonyo.

According to Grovetant and Cooper’s Model of Individuation in Family Relationship, child development focuses on the interplay between individuality and connectedness. There are four dimensions of the model: self-assertion, separateness, permeability, and mutuality. This engenders identity exploration. This model reflects a parent-adolescent relationship, and is vital interplay in order to transition from kid to teenager (Grovetant & Cooper, pp. 415-416).

Relating such concept with my life, I believe that there is a push and pull between my individuality and connectedness with my family. Most of the time, my individuality dominates my connectedness with them, thus me being labelled as the “independent” or “non-conformist” in our family of five. I was always the deviant growing up and had a hard time blindly obeying any orders from higher ups. I would always ask for reasons or explanation, and push for debate- which they absolutely hated. They thought it was me being disrespectful, I disagreed and said it was being tough. 

To add to the concept, I as well prefer to distinguish myself from my family. Both my parents are doctors and pushed for me to be an architect. However, being the rebel that I am, I went against their wishes and entered into Communication. When my family agrees on a consensus, I normally am the one that voices an opposing opinion. They find it annoying, I find it fun. And I guess, this won me the word as “bitch” in the family.

The last concept is New Media Relationship Development. Gesellschaft states that individualism does not equate to individual isolation. Humans by nature are social beings who live in social organization, which requires cooperation. However, as one’s individuality increases, individual priorities, personal goals, and interests triumph over that of the collective social group’s. In a highly individualistic society, individuals still forge interdependent relationships that are based under the following assumptions. The one assumption, however, that stands out to me the most is that one engages in an interdependent relationship mainly due to personal choice. One befriends someone because one wants to, not because they are being held at gunpoint and are forced to make friends (Greenfield, et al. p. 254).

I acknowledge such a concept, and this has allowed me to grow and shape my identity. I used to surround myself with people who were congruent with my role as an obedient and wholesome Christian. They thought I could do no wrong and would not go against any order given to me. In short, they perceived me to be a push over. This helped in shaping my identity further because the suppression of who I really was engendered the deviant in me to grow even stronger. 

People did not expect a voice out of me. In projects in Grade School, I would always watch passively and let someone else lead in fear that I would be viewed as too demanding. However, eventually, my real self gave way and peaked its terrifying head out. So you can imagine their shock when I finally opened my mouth to let out an opinion. 

Now, the people I choose to surround myself with are those who understand and accept me for who I am. Most of them, actually, are pretty similar in character. They know me beyond the goody-two-shoes I would normally be perceived to be, and know that I am willing to circumvent around rules and orders just to get things done. Surrounding myself with such accepting and similar people has encouraged me to continue being who I am today. They praise me for being efficient and leaderly. They admire and encourage my drive and passion. They do not disregard it and disguise it as being bossy or bitchy.  

Henceforth, call me a bitch all you want, I don’t care. If I get things done quickly and right, your ignorant comment will surely be the last on my mind. Actually, being called a bitch makes me work even harder now to be even more commanding and resilient. One thing I have said over and over again throughout this blog entry (which I will continue to repeat for good measures) is that I am stubborn. I am stubbornly in love with who I am. I am driven, opinionated, and filled with dark and offensive humor. I am not and was never the wholesome Povedan people peg me out to be. So, it is alright that people are surprised that I actually hold opinions and are not afraid to voice them out. This statement and their attitude towards me has shaped me to be even more competitive and strong-willed. 

And I’m not sure if it’s the deviant in me or me outright just being stubborn, but I like it just that way.

WORKS CITED:

Goffman, E. (1991). The presentation of self in everyday life. In J. Henslin (Ed.), Down to Earth Sociology (pp. 98-108). New York, NY: The Free Press.

Grotevant, H., & Cooper, C. (1985). Patterns of interaction in family relationships and the development of identity exploration in adolescence. Child Development, 56, 415-428.

Manago, A., Guan, S.A., & Greenfield, P. (2015). New media, social change, and human development from adolescence through the transition to adulthood. In L. Jensen (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Human Development and Culture: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (Ch. 32, pp. 519-534). NY: Oxford University Press.

[wayneooverton]

9 ways hiking in New Zealand will change your life

It’s no secret that New Zealand is a hiking mecca. With the world-renowned fiords, ancient rainforests and even more ancient birds, with towering mountains that will blow you away, and impossibly complicated braided riverbeds, a quaint and classic backcountry hut system and some of the hardest and kindest people on the planet, hiking in New Zealand is guaranteed to be a life-changer for most who are ready to hit her trails. 

While it may sound cliche these days to say that we head back to nature to get off the grid to find ourselves, it’s because it actually still rings true, especially here in New Zealand.

One of the last pristine wilderness’ in the world, with views that defy imagination and make every grunty climb and long days on your feet worth it, New Zealand hiking pretty much guarantees at least one moment that will have a profound and positive impact on you, if not many.

Here are nine ways in which hiking in New Zealand will change your life. Enjoy!

New Zealand adventure tours with Active Adventures!

1. You’ll learn humility while challenging yourself

These mountains are hard and unforgiving. New Zealand hiking is unlike anywhere else in the world. The mountains are steep, the switchbacks are minimal, and the terrain is challenging. Forget everything you thought you knew about the outdoors and prepare for a re-education. 

The razor sharp native plants will draw blood if you find yourself in the bush, the crumbling schist rock will make you question your every step, the unrelenting sun will make you thirst for shade on the exposed alpine ridges. You’ll fail over and over again. You’ll trip and stumble. You’ll find yourself lost even though you were sure of the trail. You’ll constantly second guess your abilities. But in the end, you’ll succeed no matter what.

With New Zealand hiking, you succeed when you get out of your comfort zone and push yourself to try new things. These mountains will beat the arrogance out of you and will demand your full attention and respect. You’ll come out a better person for it, trust me.

One of my favorite challenging hikes you also get to do on a Tui tour with Active Adventures is to Lake Crucible in Wanaka. Demanding but fun, challenging but rewarding, it’s full of all my favorite types of hikes, like multiple river crossings, beech forest climbs, alpine scrambles and an incredible glacial lake at the top that begs you to jump on in.

And pretty much everywhere you go makes all the suffering, makes the challenge worth it. Accomplishing something hard and doing something beyond your expectations often is one of the most fulfilling ways to travel, at least for me.  It wouldn’t taste as sweet or be anywhere near as memorable if it were easy, right?

One of the best ways to experience New Zealand’s nature is on a guided hiking trip around the country with Active Adventures. You still get to challenge yourself but you’ll be with local guides who can teach much more than you’d find out on your own and also have the planning and logistics sorted for you, freeing up your time to focus on the adventure itself.

Come hiking in New Zealand

2. You’ll gain perspective and reflect on how small you are

New Zealand’s mountains are BIG. So big it’s almost hard to fathom how dramatic the peaks are rising from the flat valleys below until you’re there in person, staring up in awe and then once again when you’re at the top looking down. You’ll need to be pinched a few times before you can fully understand this is actually real life and not some fancy CGI generated mountain landscapes.

It’s no surprise once you’re here that this dramatic land gave birth to Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to tackle Everest.

It only takes one summit, one valley, one massive flowing river to understand how big the world is and how small you are in comparison. Climb a mountain and gaze down at the minuscule valley below, the same valley floor that seemed infinite and vast only a few hours before. Suddenly your daily annoyances, your tiny struggles, and your nagging stress seem to melt away and nothing seems important enough to shake your sense of happiness and calm.

There is nothing quite so beautiful as standing small amongst giants in the wilderness.

3. You’ll be forced to be present

I’m no saint.

At times, I am guilty of being glued to my phone, unable to avoid my email, constantly checking social media over and over and over again. It’s so easy to get caught up in a virtual world while the one you’re actually living in passes you by.  If you blink, you might miss it.

What a mistake it is to live your life online and neglect the one that’s right outside your door.

Being in the hills forces you to disconnect both mentally and physically since there is rarely reception in the backcountry in New Zealand. After a while in nature, you’ll find yourself no longer impulsively grabbing your phone, opening apps without even realizing it, checking for notifications (and well, you can’t here because most of national parks don’t have even reception – thankfully).

You’ll stop caring about what’s going on in the virtual world and start being fully present in the world you’re in. You’ll start to notice little things like the smell of the grass and the call of the birds. You’ll feel time slow down. You’ll feel every minute of the day.

When you return from the mountains, you’ll return to your phone and and your emails but you’ll be a little more present and a little more grounded than before.

4. You’ll meet the crazies who make up New Zealand outdoor community

New Zealand is full of crazy people (of the good variety).

Just when you think you’ve really accomplished something by pushing yourself and hiking up a giant mountain, you’ll come across someone who has done the same thing only in roller-skates and in half the time with no water breaks. Every hike I go on and at every hut I stay in, I’m introduced to a new crazy person who has does something that is equal parts utterly insane and supremely inspiring.

You’ll meet the man who has hiked every peak barefoot, the cancer survivor who’s run a mountain marathon every day in a row for a month, or the woman who slings her 14 month old child on the front pack and the gear on the back and charges up the mountain. Or the guy that hikes to huts with sheet music and an accordion to serenade everyone in the evening. 

Each crazy you meet will change your perception on normal just a little until you realize there is no such thing as normal. You realize at the end of the day, the mountains and huts are just manifestations of all the crazy passion that fuels New Zealand’s mountain culture.

If you join in on a guided hiking tour of New Zealand, you’ll be guaranteed to meet like-minded folks and sharing life-changing experiences with them that often lead to life long friendships.

5. You’ll learn to pack light and strip down to the necessities

Have I mentioned that New Zealand’s hills are steep?

If you go for a jaunt up the mountains be prepared to get your sweat on and work hard. It only takes overpacking your bags once to learn the value of your things. You’ll stop carrying all those little extras you “might” need and strip down to the essentials. Why did I bring shampoo again?

Do you really need those extra three camera lenses? Do you really need those extra few layers of cotton long sleeves?

You’ll quickly learn to value light, moisture-wicking layers and merino that will replace your bulky and heavier items. You’ll stop carrying three liters of water and learn to locate drinkable water sources on the trail. Once you learn you have to carry everything you bring, you’ll decide what’s important in your pack.

5 Things to Know before Hiking in New Zealand

6. You’ll learn to accept responsibility

We live in a culture that often fosters a society that discourages us from accepting responsibility.

We require our coffee cups to tell us contents are hot. We need hi-viz signs to warn us about wet floors. We look for orange signs for every dip, divot or abnormality in our roads. It’s easy to blame others for mistakes that are often a direct product of our own inattention and negligence. It’s convenient to adopt the notion that our own safety is somehow someone else’s responsibility.

Even on New Zealand’s easiest trails, things can go wrong.

One misstep can lead to a twisted ankle. A quick daydream can have you flat on your ass. You can blame the sneaky tree root or the steep slopes all you want but at the end of the day, you’ll know that no one but you was responsible for your own safety. You’re bound to make mistakes but New Zealand’s mountains will make you tough and soon you’ll realize that no one but you is going to get you off the mountain top.

You’ll learn to make smart decisions, set turn-around times, and back down when things get out of control. There is no self-education quite like that of Mother Nature here.

7. You’ll learn to say YES!

New Zealand’s mountains are addicting. It will only take one hike to get you hooked. New Zealand seems to be one of the only places in the world that gets under people’s skin enough that they come back again and again. 

It’s wild and diverse, each region a completely different world, you can do coastal hikes, rainforest hikes, mountain climbs and even scurry up volcanoes. There’s something for everyone here.

With it’s awe-inspiring beauty and relatively easily accessed nature right on your doorstep, you’ll find yourself often transitioning from being a person that might be hesitant to challenge yourself or try new things to being the first person to jump off a cliff into a lake. After all, New Zealand is the country that invented bungy jumping.

You’ll conquer a few mountains and push yourself a little further than you thought you could go and suddenly, you’re filled with confidence. You’ll find yourself saying yes to more adventures, even the ones that seem a bit bigger and harder than you thought you were capable of.

Start your adventure off her by saying yes to it all!

New Zealand adventure tours with Active Adventures!

8. You’ll appreciate your surroundings

Being surrounded by a big bowl of juicy mountains will undoubtedly spark fierce loyalty deep down inside of you. You’ll soon be willing to do anything to protect the spaces that bring you to life.

Perhaps you’ll finally look into that whole climate change thing. Maybe you’ll start thinking of the status of native species around you. Maybe you’ll be inspired by the impossibly blue rivers and wonder how we can make every river in the world look that color. It might even be as small as just picking up a bit of trash every time you go for a walk outside. Who knows!

Being face to face with nature will have you appreciating the things you maybe once took for granted. 

I grew up in urban America, surrounded by a concrete jungle of malls and supermarkets and cinemas, with rivers you wouldn’t put a toe into and parks that were often trashed. It wasn’t until I moved to New Zealand that I realized how much I loved these incredible landscapes and how much we need to protect them for the future.

9. You’ll learn the struggle is always worth it in the end

Nothing tastes quite so sweet as victory over something that was really hard and you perhaps didn’t think you were able to do. Am I right?

It’s a fact that the views from a mountain top are way more rewarding to a hiker than a helicopter passenger. It’s easy to question why you’re putting yourself through the torture of walking up a mountain but that feeling always dissipates when you get to the top and get a majestic sweeping panorama. Things may not always go according to plan but it’s always worth it in the end.

How many people do a hike and regret it later? None that I know of. Even on the hardest hike I’ve ever done, climbing Mt. Taranaki here, I don’t regret it and I’d do it again. I would just bring more water and perhaps more food than jellybeans for lunch.

It’s always worth it.

Has hiking changed your life? Do you often go back to nature to reset? Have you been hiking in New Zealand? Share!

Many thanks to Active Adventures for fueling my hiking wanderlust in New Zealand and helping out with this post – like always I’m keeping it real – all opinions are my own, like you could expect less from me!

The post 9 ways hiking in New Zealand will change your life appeared first on Young Adventuress.

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[politicalfilth-blog]

Cornell Student Exposes the GMO Propaganda that is Pushed in University

We Are Change

Article Via: Alt Healthworks

My name is Robert, and I am a Cornell University undergraduate student. However, I’m not sure if I want to be one any more. Allow me to explain.

Cornell, as an institution, appears to be complicit in a shocking amount of ecologically destructive, academically unethical, and scientifically deceitful behavior. Perhaps the most potent example is Cornell’s deep ties to industrial GMO agriculture, and the affiliated corporations such as Monsanto. I’d like to share how I became aware of this troubling state of affairs.

Throughout my secondary education, I’ve always had a passion for science. In particular, physics and mathematics captured my fascination. My sophomore AP physics teacher, Mr. Jones, became my main source of motivation to succeed. He convinced us students that our generation was crucial to repairing humanity’s relationship to science, and how we would play key roles in solving immense global issues, such as climate change. Thank you Mr. Jones! Without your vision, I would have never had the chance to attend such an amazing university.

I came to Cornell as freshman, deeply unaware of our current GMO agriculture paradigm, and my university’s connection to it. It just wasn’t on my radar quite yet. After two years of school, I was rather uninspired to continue traditional study. I never felt quite at ease, jumping through hoops, taking classes and tests that didn’t inspire me, in exchange for a piece of paper (degree) that somehow magically granted me a superior life. I know many undergraduates fit right in with the university education model, and that’s fantastic. I certainly didn’t, and my mental and physical health began to suffer as a result. I was left with no choice but to take a leave of absence, and pursue another path.

Instead, I began to self-study nutrition in earnest, honestly, out of pure necessity. Luckily, I found Cornell Professor Emeritus T. Colin Campbell’s legendary epidemiological research on nutrition and human disease. His evidence was so clear that I quickly transitioned to a plant-based diet. This personal dietary shift had profound benefits, dispelled my depression, and led me to a deep fascination with the precursor to nutrition: agriculture. I became particularly interested in agroecology. I was astonished to learn that there existed alternatives to chemical-intensive, corporate-controlled models of agriculture, and that they were far safer, more effective, and more sustainable. During my time away from Cornell, I participated in three unique seasons of agroecological crop production, with incredible results. I am immensely grateful for these experiences.

It’s impossible to study and practice agroecology without becoming deeply aware of the other end of the spectrum: the genetic modification of our food supply, ruled by giant agribusiness corporations.

  Currently, the vast majority of U.S. commodity crops (corn, soy, alfalfa, sugar beet) are genetically engineered to either withstand Roundup herbicide or produce Bt toxin pesticide. These “technologies” are ecologically damaging and unsafe. The majority of these crops go to feed animals in factory farms. The remainder generally gets converted into corn syrup, white sugar, vegetable oil, or biofuels — you know, good stuff! This combined approach of growing GMO commodity monoculture crops, and feeding them to factory-farmed livestock, is one of the most ecologically destructive forces our planet has ever seen. It’s also a leading contributor to climate change. In fact, some experts believe it to be the leading cause.

As Professor T. Colin Campbell will tell you, the foods that come from this system (animal products and processed foods) are responsible for causing the vast majority of chronic disease. That’s a story for another day.

Cornell’s GMO Propaganda Campaign

I came back to Cornell a changed person, with a drastically different perspective. I was in for quite a shock, however: I sat in on a course entitled “The GMO Debate.” I was expecting members of an intellectual community coming together, with proponents and critics of GMO food each giving the best verified evidence they had to support their cause. Given all that I had learned about GMO agriculture, I was excited to participate for the “GMO skeptic” side.

The GMO Debate course, which ran in the fall of 2015, was a blatant display of unscientific propaganda in an academic setting. There were a total of 4 active professors in the course, and several guest speakers. They took turns each session defending industrial agriculture and biotechnology with exactly zero critical examination of GMOs. In spite of the course’s name, there was a complete lack of actual “debate.” Here are some of the more memorable claims I heard that fall semester:

* GMO food is necessary to feed the world * There is no instance of harm from agricultural GMOs * Glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, is safer than coffee and table salt * If you believe in science, you must believe in GMO technology * The science of genetic engineering is well understood * “What off-target effects?” … when asked about the proven biochemical risks of GE technology * Vitamin A rice is curing children of Vitamin A deficiency (even though the IRRI, the research institute responsible for rolling it out, says it won’t be ready for some years) * Current pesticides and herbicides don’t pose an ecological or human health risk * Bt is an organic pesticide, therefore Bt GMO crops are safe and pose no additional risk * Bt crops work just fine — but we are now engineering insects as a complementary technology — to make the Bt work better * “Are you scared of GMO insects? Because you shouldn’t be.” * GMO crops are the most rigorously tested crops in the history of food * “If [renowned environmentalist] Rachel Carson were alive today, she would be pro-GMO”.

It gets better. During the semester, emails were released following a Freedom of Information Act request, showing that all four of the professors in the class, as well as several guest speakers, the head of Cornell’s pro-GMO group “Alliance for Science,” and the Dean of the College of Arts and Life Sciences were all copied in on emails with Monsanto. This was part of a much larger circle of academics promoting GMO crops on behalf of the biotech industry. Jonathan Latham PhD, virologist and editor of independentsciencenews.org, documented this in an article titled “The Puppetmasters of Academia.” I highly recommend giving it a read, for further context.

Perhaps saddest of all was the inclusion of several visiting African agriculture-academics in the course. They were brought here by the “Cornell Alliance for Science. ” This organization was completely funded by a $5.6 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and appears to espouse only pro-GMO rhetoric. For those of you who are unaware, Bill Gates is a proponent of using agricultural biotechnology in Africa, India, and other developing regions. So in essence, a group of African representatives got indoctrinated into the industrial and GMO agriculture framework, and were sent home to disseminate this information … after all, who could question the expertise of an Ivy League powerhouse such as Cornell?

I then learned of Cornell’s deep historic ties to the biotech industry, which explained what I witnessed in the “GMO Debate” course. Notable examples include the invention of both the controversial bovine growth hormone, and the particle bombardment (“gene gun”) method of creating GMO crops. Both of these cases are connected to Monsanto.

To say the least, I was completely stunned.

What I’m Going to Do About All of This

You didn’t think I was just going to complain about a pro-GMO, industry-sponsored Cornell all day, did you? Good, because I have come up with a plan to create actual, lasting change on campus: a student-led, expert-backed, evidence-based GMO course.

I have decided to host an independent course on the current GMO paradigm, in response to Cornell’s course. It will be held on campus, but will have zero influence from Cornell or any biotech organization. Every Wednesday evening, from September 7th to November 16, we will host a lecture. This lecture series is completely free, open to the entire Cornell community and broader public, and will be published online (for free, forever) at my project, gmowtf.com.

There will be several experts and scientists coming in to lecture for this course. Frances Moore Lappé, of ‘Diet for a Small Planet’ and ‘World Hunger: 10 Myths’ fame, will be introducing the course on September 7, via video presentation. She will be speaking on how GMO agriculture is unnecessary to end world hunger.

Steven Druker is a public interest attorney and author of the powerful book ‘Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public,’ which Jane Goodall (in her foreword) hails as “one of the most important books in the last 50 years.” He will be giving two lectures that elaborate on the themes in the book’s subtitle and demonstrate that the GMO venture has been chronically and crucially dependent on deception, and could not survive without it.

Jonathan Latham PhD will be giving two lectures, on the dangers of Roundup Ready and Bt crops, respectively. He will also be participating in our special October 5 debate, representing the anti-GMO panel, alongside Michael Hansen PhD, a senior scientist for the Consumers Union. Jonathan has direct experience genetically modifying organisms, so his expertise is guaranteed.

Allison Wilson PhD is a geneticist and editor/science director of the Bioscience Resource Project. She will be giving a lecture on how GMOs are actually created, to dispel any industry myths of precision, accuracy, or deep genetic understanding.

Belinda Martineau PhD is a geneticist with an interesting history — she was on the team of genetic engineers that created the first commercial GM food crop, the Flavr Savr Tomato. She authored a book on her experience, titled “First Fruit: The Creation of the Flavr Savr Tomato and the Birth of Biotech Foods.” Her lecture will be a historical and personal account of the science, regulation, and commercialization of genetically engineered foods, effectively giving context for today’s GMO paradigm.

My personal scientific hero, T. Colin Campbell, who started me on this whole journey years ago, will not be speaking on GMOs per se … but will address some critically important, related topics: academic freedom and scientific integrity. He began his Cornell career over half a century ago, and has “seen it all.” He has fascinating anecdotes that will illuminate these campus-wide issues beautifully.

Jane Goodall, if you’re reading this, you are personally invited to take time out of your busy schedule to come and give the final capstone lecture. I know how passionate you are about saving our species, our planet, and all of its beautiful inhabitants. Your wise presence in this project would take it to the next level. Alternatively, please consider a short video interview. This offer stands indefinitely. Same for Vandana Shiva!

All in all, our independent GMO lecture series will focus on real threats and real solutions to our current ecological crisis … and perhaps most importantly, will feature 100% less Monsanto influence than Cornell’s course! Sounds good to me.

Taking It Further

I’m on my second leave of absence from Cornell to work on this project, and due to my experiences, I have somewhat given up on a Cornell degree … not that I was ever intensely focused on attaining one. This GMO course is by far the most important thing I can do with my Cornell “career.” However, it is just the beginning of my plan.

Remember the $5.6 million Bill Gates gave Cornell through his foundation, to push the pro-GMO propaganda? Well, to coincide with our course, we’re launching an initiative to raise the same amount of money or more to sponsor more appropriate forms of agriculture, educational outreach, and activism.

Go to gmowtf.com for more information, but in essence, this would finance:

* Continued grassroots educational activism at Cornell, and similar programs in other compromised universities (UC Davis and Berkeley, University of Florida, etc.) across the country. * A plant-based, NON-GMO independent dining hall for Cornell students. It would source as close to 100% organic and local food as possible. Ideally, it would be cheaper than Cornell’s plan (plant-based eaters won’t subsidize expensive meat and dairy for omnivorous eaters). * gmowtf.com as a permanent, free, independent, constantly updated resource for GMO science, policy, news, etc. … also the GMO course would remain online * My dream: a research farm focused on rigorous analysis of agroecological practices. There is an infinitum of fascinatingly effective agroecological techniques that are underrepresented in the scientific community (in favor of faddist, ineffective GMO “technology”). * Completely paying off student debt for a group of 10-15 undergraduates who are willing to help spread this message to the Cornell community.

Mr. Gates, if you truly care about feeding the world in a safe and sustainable manner, and if you are truly dedicated to science and to the kind of open, fact-based discourse on which it depends, I implore you to learn the important facts about which you have apparently been misinformed — and which are being systematically misrepresented by the Cornell organization you are funding.

You can easily gain illumination by reading “Altered Genes, Twisted Truth” by Steven Druker, one of our key contributors to our independent GMO course. You might find Chapter 11, on the ramifications and risks of altering complex information systems, of particular interest. You are, after all, the world’s most famous software developer!

As that chapter demonstrates, biotechnicians are significantly altering the most complex yet least understood group of information systems on earth — the ones that undergird the development and function of living organisms. Yet, they fail to implement the kind of safeguards that software engineers have learned are imperative when making even minor revisions to life-critical human-made systems. Can this be legitimately called science-based engineering?

Bill, feel free to reach out to any of the experts in our course, and don’t be hesitant to update your views on GMO agriculture in light of new understanding. A genuine scientist lives by this principle.

I invite you all to go to gmowtf.com and explore my proposals more. Please bear with the construction of the site in the coming weeks, in preparation for our amazing GMO course!

We live in somewhat of a scientific dark age. Our universities have become extensions of corporate power, at the cost of our health, livelihoods, and ecology. This has to stop, yesterday.

We cannot afford to spread lies to our undergraduate students. Cornell, please reconsider your ways. Until you do, I will be doing everything in my power to counter your industry GMO propaganda efforts with the facts.

With love, Robert Schooler

Article originally seen at AltHealthworks.com and was authored by Nick Meyer

The post Cornell Student Exposes the GMO Propaganda that is Pushed in University appeared first on We Are Change.

from We Are Change https://wearechange.org/cornell-student-exposes-gmo-propaganda-pushed-university/