#like... so much debate over muslim girls in school specifically

[just-a-little-unionoid]

You know I think we can resolve a lot of our problems and moral dilemma by asking ourselves "does this really matters that much?"

[codename-adler]

Dear Tumblr toxicity,

Hi. Adler here. We need to talk.

- TW: mental health issues, depression, bipolar disorder, self-harm, homophobia, transphobia, coming out, xenophobia, islamophobia, racism, implied sexual content, rape, non-con, addictions, abuse, parental negligence, depictions of violence, swearing (please message me kindly if I forget anything)

- What prompted this message: The release of Skam France S7 teaser (emphasis on teaser, will get into that below)

- Where I’m coming from: I will talk from the pov of a white, cis and queer 22-years-old woman (she/her); this is the pov that affects my experiences and the opinions I will share below; but my message comes from a place of deep hurt, and love

- What this is about: My goal is to share a recurring experience that has hurt me in order to spread a message of awareness, maturity, peace and love

- Central content: Skam France, Skam Wtfock, and Skam/remakes in general

From now on I will assume people have enough information for me to talk about the topics without explaining every plotline/character. There are plenty of wiki pages to help you out and I will gladly answer any (respectful) questions asked if a plothole bothers your comprehension of my message. I’m only making these assumptions in order to alleviate the text.

January 9th, 2021.

The francetv slash YouTube channel releases an unexpected teaser video for an equally unexpected seventh season Skam France. The video features Tiffany, a white, cis female teenager, going into labour from denial pregnancy just after winning what appears to be a gymnastics championship. Overall, the video and its release are very dramatic.

The character of Tiffany, also called Tiff, was previously seen on season 6 of Skam France as a bully who persecuted the main character, Lola, both at school and on social media. Outside of this characterization, nothing is known about her. It is majorly accepted that Tiff is not a liked character; she rather poses as one of the antagonists of Lola’s arc.

Now you know the details of what happened, in the most objectively possible way. 

Now I’ll speak for myself.

Before I went digging around for people’s reaction, here is what I initially thought of this video.

1) Shock: I thought Skam France was over, so... Big, big shock.

2) Excitement: I hold this web series very close to my heart. It has gotten me through depressive episodes, anxiety attacks, coming out to my best friend. To see this new development? It couldn’t bring me more joy.

3) Curiosity: I recognized Tiff immediately. I was intrigued as to what would happen to her to set off a new season in true Skam Fr fashion. As soon as she started gripping her stomach, I knew she was pregnant and wasn’t aware of it. Big, big surprise here again.

4) Numbness/Overthinking: As I stared at my screen, motionless, my mind went off. What did it mean? How did she not know? Who is the father? Do we know him? Will the baby survive? Where are the other characters? Will Lamifex be present? What? How? When? Why? Who?

5) Disappointment: No, I did not like Tiff one bit in S6. Yes, I sincerely wished for a season on either Jo (ambiguous and funny teenage girl, cis + white), Sekou (seemingly neurodivergent teenage boy, cis + black), and my favorite, Max (mysterious and grave teenage boy, trans + white) So why Tiff? It felt to me like a missed opportunity, but I did not lose hope.

So, these were the five stages of my emotional process. And then I made the terrible mistake to go look for the fans’ reaction. I didn’t even look at the YT comments, I didn’t go on Instagram, I went directly here on Tumblr. Why? I’m still asking myself that. From S1 to S6 of Skam Fr, I kept my love for the show to myself and only looked at ig and video edits. I tried once, and only once, to look it up on Tumblr, and was greeted by fervent agressivity, disrespect and hate. Why did I ever forget that after watching the S7 teaser? I still don’t know.

The reactions on this platform were wild. People are furious (I get that). People are disappointed (I get that). People are anxious (I get that). People are also verbally agressive, insensitive, hateful, disrespectful and bullies. I don’t get that.

Comments along the lines of “What she gonna do with a fucking baby?”, “Are we gonna watch the baby do nothing all fucking season?”, “Wowwww, teenage pregnancy, so new and relatable!” (note the sarcasm made in the comment here), “Who gives a shit about Tiff?”, etc. 

And then all the mistakes Skam Fr ever made flooded back onto the feed. The wlw misrepresentation, the whitewashing, the overdramatization, the dubious sex scenes between minors, all of it.

Let’s take a break here. Do I condone these mistakes? Nope. Am I a white-bully apologist? Nope. Did I forget every horrible action Tiff has made in the past? Nope. She manipulated a whole school against Lola, she profited from Lola’s mother’s death, she bullied her, harrassed her, pushed her deeper into mental distress. Tiff was a despicable character that I never once liked. The way she was played by the actress made it clear that Tiff was not intended to be a good guy. If I could replace her as the main of S7, I would, in a heartbeat. I’d choose, as I said, Jo, Sekou or Max.

Skam France deeply lacks diversity and made mistakes when attempting to diverse the issues represented. This is not an opinion, it’s a fact. 

Poc representation is very, very low. Only one season has a woc of Islam beliefs as mc (Imane, S4) with poc entourage/family. Only 2 other characters not related to Imane were poc (Sekou and Sarah, S1-S2). These 2 characters were very in the background and served to further the mc’s plotline, they had no real content. (I am not a poc, and so my opinion does not matter here. If you are not poc, your “opinions” don’t matter here, this point is not for you to debate. These are facts.)

While I do not particularly find the wlw representation bad, I do understand how it hurts/bothers other queer women. From my perspective, the bar was very low regarding my expectations of the Lola/Maya pair (none of them died *yay* they had a happy ending *yay* they were not typically overfeminized or overmasculinized *yay* Lola  and Maya were respectful of each other, understood each other, accepted each other with all their flaws and their beauty *yay* I truly believed in their love and it gave me confidence and hope *yay* I ould really go on but this is not my main point so I’ll stop here) Regardless of my opinion on Mayla, I understand that to some queer women, it was bothering/hurtful. (If you are anything other than a woman / wlw, this point is not for you to debate. Keep your “opinions” to yourself, it does not matter here. These are facts.)

Like every remake of the original Skam where the S4 was given to Sana/Imane, the Muslim community was not represented at its best, at its most beautiful and respectfully. The character of Imane, although she is my favorite girl of the series, was not portrayed in a way that respected the majority of the Muslim community. (If you are anything other than Muslim, this point is not for you to debate. Our opinions do not matter here. These are facts.)

And so the same goes for the portrayal of sexual assault and child pronography in S2, of mental illness and homophobia in S3, of disabilities in S5, of addiction, transphobia, self-harm and neurodivergence in S6. Again, if you are not part of these communities, your opinions do not matter on these issues. These are facts that are not up for debate.

In other words, Skam France, as well as the original Skam, Skam Wtfock, Skam España, and probably all the others I haven’t watched in their entirety, are NOT perfect shows. They (maybe) tried their best to portray issues of the younger generations that are ugly, shameful, taboo, hard-to-swallow-pills. Of course they made mistakes. Of course they have to be held accountable. Of course they can and should do better. Of course it must be spoken about.

Here is my problem.

The so-called “fans” shamelessly SHITTING on the WHOLE show because of ONE TEASER TRAILER. (btw, this is where I get angry)

I am not talking about the fans making fun of the show and this season’s premise like “Better MCs than Tiff for S7: a romance between the car that almost hit Lucas S3 and the car that hit Arthur S5, or the school’s nurse, or Imane’s dad, or Elu’s rabbit” (that shit’s funny and I’d watch all of these).Or the joke about Wtfock and Skam Fr shaking hands while signing the same contract to disappoint the fans with white MCs (it’s funny cuz it’s trueeeee).

I am not talking about the fans criticizing the producers’ choice of Tiff as MC. There is a difference between shitting on issues and adressing/discussing them. I WANT to talk about how this season’s issue would have been so much better if a woc, specifically a black woman, had been the MC, because black women and doctors are a whole different level of issue than white women and doctors. Add on top of that an unplanned teenage pregnancy? It would have been IMMACULATE. I WANT to talk which wlw couple was better represented, Mayla or Croana/Crisana, and why is that. I WANT to talk about disabilities in black and poc communities. I WANT to talk about headcanons, AUs, to rectify the missed marks. I WANT to talk about our takes on seasons about Max, Sekou and Jo, instead of Tiff’s.

I DO NOT WANT TO TALK ABOUT YOUR SHITTY, NEGATIVE, UNHELPFUL, HURTFUL COMMENTS.

Just because the protagonist is white, doesn’t give you ANY right to dismiss the issue that is unplanned teenage pregnancy. This is a problem that affects countries WORLDWIDE. Do you know how many deaths are related to minors giving birth? Do you know how many babies die at birth from these pregnancies? Do you have any idea the trauma it puts you through, to go into labor without even knowing you were pregnant in the first place, and then giving birth, and then having to care for a defensless human being? The dilemma of keeping it, or giving it away? The fear that lives in every person able to give birth, that one day they’ll become pregnant, because society turns sych a shameful look to that? No matter your ethnicity, your gender identity, your sexuality, your political stance or whatever shit you bring up to justify your disgraceful and downright degrading comments, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO SAY THAT A MINOR GIVING BIRTH IS NOT AN ISSUE. 

You think the topic has been covered plenty before? Yeah, because shows like “16 and pregnant” and “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant!” are such good examples and show the reality with such an objective point of view! 

Bullshit. Teenage pregnancy is still a taboo, it still kills, and people are still morons about it. 

“Well I guess everybody is secretly pregnant now!” No, Jessica, but you wouldn’t know about it, would you? Because I wouldn’t tell you shit if you were my “friend” and I was going through it. The whole message of all the Skams is not that it presents super relatable issues of teenagers, although it is a big topic of the show. They present some issues that affect the youth in an authentic light, but that’s not it.

Tous les gens que tu rencontres mènent un combat dont tu ignores tout. 

Sois indulgente. Toujours. x x x

//

Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.

Be kind. Always. x x x

THAT’S THE MESSAGE. THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT OF THE SHOW.

And you all missed it.

All of you making dead baby jokes and death threats, degrading people who give birth, shaming teenagers for their pregnancies... Listen to yourselves.

“Well she deserves it, she was such a bitch!” No, Michael, you shit stick. Let’s rewind a bit for you, yeah? It was a GOD DAMN TEASER. We literally know nothing! Nothing at all! Why are y’all getting mad when we saw 3:25 minutes representing a whole ass season! Listen to yourselves. Y’all judge so fast for people pretending to love Skam and its authenticity and its motto.

You say Tiff is irredeemable?

Emma cheated on her boyfriend.

Manon lied and manipulated her friends.

Lucas was homophobic and prejudiced agaisnt mentally ill people.

Imane was homophobic too and went behind her friends’ back to get what she wanted.

Arthur cheated on his girlfriend too.

Lola dragged Elliot down with her in her addiction, lied, was verbally abusive, etc.

ALL THE MAINS ARE PROBLEMATIC.

Any guess why?

BECAUSE THEY ARE TEENAGERS. THEY ARE STILL GROWING AND LEARNING.

Yet we still loved them all. 

So don’t you dare tell me that Tiff deserves this, that her baby deserves to die, that teenage motherhood is irrelevant. Motherhood is not a curse in the first place, nor is it something to wish to inflict upon anyone. Motherhood is different for every single person and nobody except the person living with it can have an opinion on that. We don’t even know if the baby survived, for God’s sake!

There is no excuse for this kind of behavior..

It makes me so angry. Women are discriminated against in a fandom I thought was safe, again and again and again. 

I have to stop here because, well, this is just too much. There is much wrong with Skam (the original AND all the remakes), but there is even more wrong with the fans. I’m done.

You don’t support the show anymore? Fine, then don’t watch it! If I really am wrong, the number of viewers will go down and the show will die, just like you wished. There is no need to be vicious about it. 

I hope y’all are proud of your misogyny. 

Sincerely,

Adler.

[tlbodine]

Literary vs Genre Fiction

The divide between literary and genre fiction is one of those topics that gets endlessly debated in writer circles. You’ll see it making the rounds on social media every time a book gets some buzz for busting out of its category. You’ll hear it in MFA programs across the country. But what even is literary fiction? How is it actually different from genre fiction? Is one better than the other? Why does anybody care?

A lot of smart people before me have thrown their hat in this particular ring, but I’m going to try tackling this one anyway. 

First Off: What Do We Mean When We Say “Literary Fiction”? 

Defining the thing is almost the hardest part of this whole discussion, and that may be part of the reason why people argue so endlessly about the literary vs genre divide -- if you don’t have a clear definition of the categories, that divide can be drawn up just about anywhere. 

So before we dig into characteristics of literary fiction, let’s look at some clear examples. The Booker Prize is a literary award specifically given to works of literary fiction, so it stands to reason that winners of that award would be the best examples of the category, right? Here are some recent Booker Prize winners (as pulled from Powell’s bookstore): 

Margaret Atwood - The Testaments The sequel to A Handmaid's Tale, told as testaments from three female narrators in Gilead, a dystopian setting where women have been stripped of their rights.

Bernardine Evaristo - Girl, Woman, Other Twelve central characters, mostly black British women, lead intersecting lives with struggles of identity, race, sexuality, class, etc.

Anna Burns - Milkman A girl identified as "middle sister" catches the unwanted attention of "the milkman," a local paramilitary, and has to deal with the threat of violence and spread of rumors.

George Saunders - Lincoln in the Bardo A father-and-son story about Abraham Lincoln and the 11-year-old son who died of illness in the midst of the civil war, leading to them both struggling in a type of purgatory.

Paul Beatty - The Sellout A satire about an isolated young man who ends up at a Supreme Court race trial after trying to reinstate slavery and segregate the local high school in an attempt to put his town back on the map.

One thing becomes immediately clear about literary fiction when skimming through the titles and summaries of these award-winning books: These novels are well-nigh impossible to summarize in a way that actually sounds enticing. 

So okay. What are some genre fiction books, for comparison? There are genre fiction awards, like for example the Hugo award for Sci-Fi/Fantasy: 

Mary Robinette Kowal - The Calculating Stars A cataclysmic meteor collision in 1952 causes an accelerated effort to colonize space, leading to a woman fighting to join the astronaut team in this alternate-history book.

N. K. Jemisin - The Stone Sky The third in a trilogy of post-apocalyptic novels about two women with the power to avert destruction of mankind.

Cixin Liu - The Three-Body Problem Against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project makes contact with aliens whose civilization is on the brink of destruction, leading them to plan a takeover of earth.

There’s also the Edgar Award, which is given to mystery fiction (it’s named after Edgar Allan Poe): 

James A McLaughlin - Bearskin A man on the run takes a job as a park ranger, but runs the risk of being found by the men he's hiding from when he tries to expose some poachers.

Walter Mosley - Down the River Unto the Sea After spending a decade in prison for a crime he was framed for, former-detective King works as a private investigator whose investigation of his own frame-up leads him to cross paths of a journalist with a similar story.

Sujata Massey - Widows of Malabar Hill In 1920s India, Bombay's only female lawyer investigates a suspicious will on behalf of three Muslim widows, a case that takes a murderous turn.

These aren’t the best summaries in the world, but there does seem to be a stronger sense of both plot and character in the story concepts. At least, when someone asks, “What’s that book you’re reading about?” the genre fiction ones will have a somewhat easier time explaining it. 

So What REALLY Separates Literary From Genre Fiction? 

There are a lot of battle lines drawn between genre and literary fiction. I’ve heard it argued that literary is about character while genre is about plot; that literary is about the quality of the prose while genre is about the story; that literary is about experimenting while genre is about adhering to formulas. That literary is about expanding horizons while genre is about escapism and comfort. That literary is about realism and genre fiction is about fabulism. 

I think there’s a nugget of truth in all of these, but I’m not really happy with any of them. 

So I’m going to toss out my own hypothesis: I think the difference between literary and genre fiction is the way tropes are employed. 

“Okay, great, but what are tropes?” 

I’m so glad you asked. Fiction tropes are a type of shorthand. They are things that we the audience have seen before, so we know immediately what they mean. Tropes exist in characters, plot points, settings, concepts -- you name it. Here’s a sampling of tropes you might be familiar with: 

The tough lady-cop whose dad was a police officer 

Thanks to a mix-up, two people with hidden romantic feelings book the last available room at a hotel but there’s only one bed 

A man goes on a quest for vengeance but destroys himself in the process

The wise old man who teaches the young hero valuable lessons but then dies before the pivotal battle

And so on, and so forth. Every genre has its own tropes -- a formula, if you will. In that sense, genre fiction is formulaic, but that doesn’t make it easier to write; actually, a big part of the challenge is in giving fresh twists to familiar tropes. Readers of genre stories demand certain tropes; the author has to deliver on those demands in a fresh way.

By comparison, I would argue that literary fiction does not rely upon tropes. There certainly are tropes and conventions that emerge in literary fiction -- a middle-aged academic struggling through divorce, for example -- but these tropes are more often than not met with irritation, not delight. Readers of literary fiction are looking for fresh insights and innovations, not familiarity. 

Tropes are powerful tools. They are the mythic seed of storytelling. They are the archetypes that pass down through generations. They are a sacred backbone of mythology and folklore. Genre fiction, at the end of the day, carries the torch for storytelling in a long and (ha, ha) storied tradition from our prehistoric days huddled around a campfire. 

Literary fiction, on the other hand, eschews tropes -- with their agreed-upon meanings -- in favor of assigning fresh meanings to things. Literary fiction is chock full of metaphors, but it’s the author, not convention, that determines what those metaphors mean and how they’re employed. Literary fiction reinvents the wheel. When it succeeds, it hits on depth and emotional resonance that can be life-changing for the reader. When it fails, it comes off like so much navel-gazing nonsense. So it goes. 

Fiction Wars and Gatekeeping

The problem with the literary vs genre fiction divide is that it never stops with “This is how these categories are defined.” The problem is that people will insist on ascribing moral significance and hierarchy to them. 

Literary fiction is viewed as being smarter, deeper, more meaningful or more valuable than genre fiction. If a genre fiction story manages to break out and gain wider appeal, suddenly people will start ascribing to it literary attributes (whether or not the book and many others in the genre had them all along). And that is all a bunch of nonsense. 

It’s the exact same thing that happens in horror fiction -- when a horror story goes mainstream, suddenly it becomes a “psychological thriller” or a “dark drama” or anything other than horror, because “horror” is an inferior genre. 

The fact of the matter is that literary fiction gets elevated over genre fiction for systemic reasons: 

Most MFA programs focus on writing literary fiction, which means that a lot of lit-fic authors come out of those programs, which means that literary fiction is often the domain of upper-middle-class, frequently white, people who can afford to graduate from those programs

A focus on dense prose and “difficult” writing means lit-fic books must be analyzed and interpreted; it’s hard to read, making it exclusionist to people who lack formal education 

Lit-fic dominates awards, gets pushed heavily onto book clubs, is talked about more often on daytime TV and so forth (because it is perceived as being better/more important, thus creating the ongoing cycle)

Basically, lit-fic gets held up as an example of Fine Culture. And any time something is designated as Fine Culture and High Art, it is subject to a completely arbitrary classist distinction meant primarily to keep out an undesirable element (women, BIPOC, poor people, you name it). 

That’s not a problem endemic to lit-fic itself. It’s really a problem of the culture surrounding it, and attempts to hold it to a higher esteem than genre work. 

Cross-Pollination Is Inevitable and Desirable 

How do tropes get made? 

Someone comes up with a new metaphor, concept, character, or idea that resonates so deeply that others who follow borrow that same thing and its meaning, and it gets repeated enough times that it becomes a stock trope. 

In other words, every single piece of genre fiction exists because someone writing in some other established tradition decided to experiment and go off on a tangent to create something really fresh and new -- and knocked it so far out of the park that people were compelled to follow. 

People like to pretend that the overlap and blurred lines between genre and literary fiction are somehow a new trend, but the fact is that this has been the trajectory of fiction-writing for the whole history of storytelling. 

Literary agents have a term for this: Upmarket fiction. Books that “transcend” genre definitions to appeal to readers on either side of the aisle. And those are highly sought-after books, because they have the potential of bringing in double the readers. 

So, snobby gatekeeping aside, is there any real reason to argue about the definition of literary vs genre fiction? 

I’d say...no. Not even a little bit. I’ve got a mix of both on my shelves. I incorporate a mix of both in my writing. And I don’t see that changing any time soon. 

A Final Note 

I mentioned above that lit-fic tends to be written by people in MFA programs, and I wanted to touch on that again as an MFA drop-out and someone who was once warned by a teacher not to bring “any more of that genre nonsense” into the classroom. 

I can understand, from a teaching perspective, why writer’s workshops would want to focus on lit-fic. From the perspective of learning how to write, forcing writers to derive stories from their experiences, to dig deep into themselves and ascribe unique meaning to things, to develop their own metaphors and hone their craft at the sentence level -- all of that makes a lot of sense. Banning genre tropes is a way to force writers to hone their craft without leaning on the work of generations of storytellers before them, and as a teaching tool I think that’s actually really valuable. 

But I think it’s pretty important that we keep that in context. The lit-fic focus in writing classes should be a teaching tool first and foremost. It should not be the end-all and be-all of writing classes.

This post topic was voted on by my Patreon subscribers. If you would like to vote for future posts and get early access to posts before they go live on tumblr, you can become a patron here: https://www.patreon.com/tlbodine

[skammovistarplus]

is islam homophobic? can you be religious and believe in science?

LUCAS: Hi everyone, I wanted to upload a video speaking of a specific topic, but because it was going to be a Little difficult for me to talk about this alone and stuff, I thought about bringing a very special person. Ta-dah!

AMIRA: I hope this looked cool.

LUCAS: No, I just really wanted to do this, I always see it on the internet.

AMIRA: Yas.

LUCAS: Anyway, this is Amira. She’s a Muslim and wears hijab.

AMIRA: What’s all this…

LUCAS: And you’ll wonder, what are a Muslim and a boy who just came out doing, recording a Youtube video together?

AMIRA: Now that you mention it…

LUCAS: It sounds like a joke.

AMIRA: The typical setup.

LUCAS: We go to the same classes. Well, some of them, because we’re both on the Science track.

AMIRA: And one day, we were talking about how, since he came out, he’s had to listen to hundreds of comments that are a bit… And of course, as a hijabi Muslim, I know what it’s like for people to talk about you behind your back.

LUCAS: You must’ve heard all kinds of things, no?

AMIRA: Phew, son, the first day I wore it I got to school and people thought I’d gotten hitched, and there was a… I mean, I HEARD… Something about Ramadan and how maybe I hadn’t washed my hair, no? That kind of thing…

LUCAS: Your hair wasn’t dirty?

AMIRA: [fake cough] No.

LUCAS: So this is what we came here for, to talk about prejudices. I have to admit that the first thing I thought when I saw you with the hijab was that I couldn’t tell you I’m gay.

 LUCAS: I mean, that isn’t the case anymore because I know her, but the thing is I used not to talk to her at all, we just saw each other in class and that was it. And afterwards, Amira started hanging out with Eva and stuff, and if you don’t know who she is, she’s a girl I recorded a video with, I’m leaving a link in the description box. And then we started talking, hanging out, and now we’re buddies.

 AMIRA: Let’s see, it’s true that the topic of homosexuality in Islam, people like aren’t super clear about it, because they mix up Islam with what happens in Islamic countries, Muslim-majority countries, whatever you wanna call it, and it’s not exactly like that. It’s true that Arab countries are super homophobic, but that has nothing to do with religion. A religion doesn’t tell you you have to be homophobic, that’s nonsense.

LUCAS: What do you think about it?

AMIRA: Like this? We go all in from the jump?

LUCAS: All in.

AMIRA: I, as any other Muslim person, would tell you we can’t judge anyone for who they are, I mean… the person who judges someone for their sexuality doesn’t understand Allah’s message, they don’t really understand what being Muslim is. I’ll tell you, Islam is based on love, and respect, and affection for each other, so it doesn’t follow that…

LUCAS: Right, but anyway, outside of not judging me, you couldn’t be a Muslim and homosexual at the same time, no?

AMIRA: Yes.

LUCAS: Yes, you can.

AMIRA: I mean, you’d just be a Muslim and homosexual.

LUCAS: Okay… I don’t know if I get you. Okay, so then, a homosexual Muslim can have a significant other, marry, lead a normal life…?

AMIRA: Let’s see, that depends on the relationship that person has with their religion. It’s true that at a 100% level, a homosexual person can’t, I mean, a homosexual Muslim can’t have relationships with homosexual people. But it can happen, I mean, it depends on how rigorous you are about your religion. People also say Muslims can’t drink alcohol and some drink. There are Muslims who drink, who eat pork and who… you know? It depends on your take on it.

LUCAS: Like with Catholicism, no? How you can’t fuck if you didn’t get hitched.

AMIRA: Right, for instance.

LUCAS: Okay okay okay, I’m starting to get it. But then all the hate crimes against… Homosexual people?

AMIRA: I am aware of those hate crimes, but uh, Islam doesn’t justify any sort of violence and least of all over sexuality.

LUCAS: But it still happens?

AMIRA: Right… But that’s because people know that faith is a very powerful thing, it’s something between yourself and… something, and it’s very personal. If someone comes around who’s supposed to know more about it, and they tell you certain things, you blindly… I mean, people say faith is blind, that’s what they mean.

LUCAS: Do you mean that they take advantage of people’s belief, to make them think that they actually need to focus on certain things when that’s not the case?

AMIRA: Yeah, and it’s been that way throughout history. Usually because people were illiterate and so on, long ago. And that has been built upon, and that’s the reason why, to this day, there’s still that belief that…

LUCAS: Right, so then it’s more or less like Catholicism, no? A lot of people say that… It’s homophobic, but supposedly it doesn’t have those specific messages.

AMIRA: People who are homophobic are homophobic, it doesn’t have to do with religion or with…

LUCAS: Look, the thing is I don’t know a lot about religion either, so it’s not a topic I…

AMIRA: No? Why?

LUCAS: I’ve never liked that something or someone I’m not completely sure exists tells me what I have or don’t have to do, and besides, being on the Science track…

AMIRA: I’m also on the Science track, though.

LUCAS: And that’s exactly what gets me, you know, dude? You can be so rational and then such a believer.

AMIRA: The thing is I don’t see the problem, I’m comfortable with both of them. Why do I have to choose between science or religion?

LUCAS: Right, but the Quran doesn’t explain the creation of man using the theory of evolution either.

AMIRA: No, but I don’t have a problem with thinking that God or Allah have created the theory of evolution. Everything that can be proven scientifically is also something I believe in. I mean, why couldn’t Allah create the theory of evolution?

LUCAS: So then why is it that it was explained to me with the story of Adam and Eve? I mean, isn’t that in contradiction with evolution?

AMIRA: Hey, I also had it explained to me that way, Adam and Eve are in the Quran.

LUCAS: How is the Adam and Eve story in the Quran…

AMIRA: It is. You didn’t know?

LUCAS: No…

AMIRA: I don’t see an issue with being a believer and liking science. I mean, like, they complement each other, one helps the other.

LUCAS: No one can get you, huh?

AMIRA: I mean, don’t think that either, I don’t have an answer for everything.

LUCAS: You don’t? What don’t you have an answer for?

AMIRA: When I started wearing hijab, it was an impulse decision, like I didn’t know why I did it, I was in the mood and it was the right moment and I felt it had to be right then and I wore it. But, as time passes, I know the reason why and I’m prouder and it reminds me of being a Muslim and, you know? It’s like… I feel that I’m finally me.

LUCAS: That’s so cool. Damn, when it comes to that part I’m actually really jealous, dude.

AMIRA: Really?

LUCAS: Yeah, because… There are many things about religion that I, somehow, don’t like, but then I see you, and I see you as a confident person, I see you’re happier, you know? So sometimes I too would like to have something to believe in, like you do.

AMIRA: I mean, you’ll find it. It might not be a religion, but I dunno. It’s true that for me Islam was a guide, a sort of light, so… I’m sure you’ll find yours. Look at this channel, for instance.

LUCAS: What about this channel?

AMIRA: You didn’t dare make it before. And I’m sure you’ll be bashed, I mean, like I will, right, we’ll get, you’ll see, the comments… But that makes me us more… It makes us stronger about our causes, no?

LUCAS: Dude, and it doesn’t happen t you that people sort of think you’re a Muslim encyclopedia?

AMIRA: Yeaaaah.

LUCAS: Because it kinda happens to me that everyone thinks I’m the gay Wikipedia!

AMIRA: And to me too, I get asked all the time, hey, in Saudi Arabia something? And what about the Sahara stuff? I don’t know, I’m… I’m from Spain, ask me about cocido, you know? How would I know!

LUCAS: What happens to me most of all is that people think I have an infallible gaydar, because after all, the gaydar exists, you know? But it’s not like you see someone, a dude, and you say, he’s gay for sure.

AMIRA: And I get asked… Right, and you aren’t hot in that? No, actually, that’s not why I’m hot, it’s because it’s 45 degrees C, you know? And now that it’s Ramadan, they’re all… Aren’t you hungry? And no water, dude, you can’t even drink water?

LUCAS: Are you healthy?

AMIRA: Right. Because I like you, okay? Otherwise I would’ve left.

LUCAS: No no no, I obviously wouldn’t tell you that, you know? It’s a comment…

AMIRA: It’s just a comment…

LUCAS: Yeah, yeah.

AMIRA: I think I would also ask those questions. Or I’d google them.

LUCAS: I love it, because every time you say something, you go… Anyway, guys, I hope you liked the video a lot. We’ve started talking about prejudices, and in the end, we’ve gone off on tangents a little, but… It’s been cool, no?

AMIRA: Yeah yeah. I’ve liked it. I’ve had a super gay time.

LUCAS: Super gay.

AMIRA: Good. Super good.

LUCAS: Super gay!

AMIRA: Look, I mispronounced it.

LUCAS: Welcome to my world!

AMIRA: But we’ll keep on debating, okay?

LUCAS: Oof. I’m a bit afraid, dude. And all of you, thank you so much for still being here, watching the videos. And I’ll remind you you can still go on the comments, where you can debate and talk about what you thought and so on. Anyway, queers, cheers to all of you.

AMIRA: Queers! A queer!

LUCAS: A queer!  Cheers to all of you and I’ll see you next video. Laters!

[lightsandlostbells]

Druck season 3, episode 1 reaction

WE DID IT, KIDS. When Druck’s first season aired, I knew shortly after Matteo’s introduction that I could not wait for his season. But with that came a lot of apprehension that we would ever get Matteo’s season - Druck S1 got less attention than some of the other remakes, and for a long time, the fandom didn’t know if the show would get a S2, let alone S3. Months went by with no official news of when the show would return. Many people thought the show had been quietly cancelled. 

And then, finally, Mia’s season was announced. Ratings and subscribers grew substantially. Druck trended frequently on YouTube and Tumblr. Then finally, we got confirmation that S3 was in the works. So here we are, and to put it politely, my ass is on fire. 

Episode 1

Clip 1 - Matteo’s miserable night

Party time! This opening is pointedly sexual, with the music (”You’re turning me on”) and the dancing, with the closeups of boobs and butts and writhing bodies. Sara gets freaky with a banana. The presence of sex makes sense to highlight Matteo’s alienation, as we see him sitting on the couch, not participating. He’s disengaged from the flirtation and seduction, this isn’t something he wants to be a part of.

Is the guy dancing with Hans the turtleneck dude, or is that someone else? PLOT TWIST: he was never Matteo’s love interest, despite fan theories. He was Hans’ love interest all along!

Matteo gets up, trying to escape this scene that makes him uncomfortable. But Sara pulls him into a dance (much like she’s going to be playing the role of Emma this season, pulling Matteo back into an attempt at a straight relationship). They kiss, and he’s soooo not into it, hugging her and staring over her shoulder into space like she’s his great-aunt who smells like mothballs and he can’t wait to get the fuck out of this family reunion.

He escapes into the bathroom where the boy squad is smoking weed. Carlos showing the boys a sex position on his phone. I’m sure Matteo loves hearing about that. He’s getting high as the boys debate the mechanics of this man-woman sex position. The proper response, honestly.

Oh my God, Carlos just called Kiki a catheter. He meant cathetus. I don’t think you’re ready to integrate catheters into your sex life, dude. 

Matteo looks dead. I know he’s getting high, but this kid looks fucking deceased. Someone revive him already.

When he realizes he has three calls from Kiki, Carlos pulls up Jonas and Abdi, saying they’re going to go hook up with girls. An activity that I’m sure Matteo wants to participate in. Matteo lingers behind. He just seems so wiped. He looks at himself in the mirror and it’s as if he’s disappointed in what he sees.  (The way it’s shot makes his mirror image divided down the middle, like he’s a fractured person.) I’ve seen some later episodes by this point and Matteo seems like he’s really struggling with anxiety, like he just needs to escape sometimes, it all gets overwhelming.

The girl Jonas is dancing with kinda reminds me of Sonja (similar-ish haircut).

HOLY FUCK DID MATTEO JUST PUT THE WEED IN AMIRA’S BACKPACK???? Matteo, that is TOTALLY the worst an Isak has been about this, planting weed on on a person rather than a vase. I guess he assumes a Muslim girl in hijab seems like an unlikely candidate to have drugs, but ... dude. Asshole move. And I wouldn’t trust the authorities not to search the Muslim girl’s belongings for discriminatory reasons, anyway, which would have made it even worse.

Photoshop Markus is at this party and Matteo tells the cops Markus is the renter, LMAO GOD. Matteo is just snaking all over the place tonight. The cops tell everyone to turn the music down, which is pretty reasonable and not nearly as bad as them telling people to break up the party. Or maybe I’m just old. Carlos salutes as the cops leave, heh.

Amira just walks out with her backpack … and the weed. Lol, she might’ve just left because the cops showed up and she figured better to bail now, not wanting to get in trouble, or because she had a curfew or something, but part of me wants to believe she knew Matteo stuck weed in her backpack and she’s walking out to make him suffer. In that case: he deserves it, make him suffer.

Mia wasn’t at the party. I guess she and Alexander were making their own fun, but her presence is missed.

Clip 2 - Survival camp

Matteo’s new room is already a little messy, with beer bottles and remnants of the party. He wakes up and checks his phone, he’s got a Bible verse from mom. One that sounds normal and non-threatening enough, not like it’s about sin and hellfire, but you know. All religious texts are probably loaded coming from Matteo’s mom.

Matteo rolls over and Jonas is conked out in bed next to him. Oh nooooo, my heart. Matteo watches him and then reaches out and slooooowly lowers his hand to lightly touch Jonas’ curls, closing his eyes a little. GODDAMMIT.

If he doesn’t do this to Gereven at some point, touch his hair without having to be secretive about it, then I’m suing Druck.

You can tell Matteo is indulging in this fantasy that Jonas is his boyfriend and he’s waking up next to him, and the fantasy is broken when he looks down and sees that Jonas has a phone number with a little heart written on his arm. A girl. Jonas will never be his boyfriend.

Although I almost don’t think this is specifically about Matteo pining over Jonas - I think there’s definitely some lingering feelings, enough to be disappointed that Jonas might have a girl, but I also think it’s just the wish that Matteo can have this experience with a guy at all, he can wake up next to a boy who’s not just a friend, who he can touch and show affection to. 

The fantasy is further interrupted when Hans walks in (the dreamy music cuts off) and Matteo rolls on his back like he’s totally not staring wistfully at Jonas. Hans throws himself on the bed between them in a perfect face plant, lmao. 

Hans asks Matteo to buy rolls, saying Mia would’ve done that. Hans, if you are expecting Matteo to be a Mia substitute, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. I don’t think Matteo will lovingly wipe your vomit off the tub. (I mean. Maybe when he falls in love and is in just that good of a mood.)

Jonas asks why Hans is in Matteo’s bed, and Hans says he could ask Jonas the same question (DAMN) but Jonas is like … I’ve waited for you. He and Hans stare into each other’s eyes. Lmao, the way their gaze holds without comment or them breaking it off. I’m sure Matteo just loves seeing them “flirt.” But I don’t think the fantasy of Jonas in his bed involves Hans, sorry Hans. Matteo gets up to buy rolls, just to get away from the JoHans lovefest, I guess.

Linn comes in and says she wants to make pancakes but doesn’t know where the pans are, and she doesn’t know how to make pancakes either. Everyone in this flat is screwed without Mia. But Jonas offers to make pancakes, so all is saved! Matteo grumpily leaves Jonas, Hans, and Linn to take a selfie of their “survival camp” to send to Mia, showing they’re totally making it on their own. They look so perky, heh. They won’t be so perky when Jonas leaves and takes his pancake-making skills with him.

Matteo steps outside and gets a text from Sara about whether he slept well. I feel bad for Sara. She’s not just the Emma equivalent, she’s a character we’ve seen in the past who has been entertaining and likable. I don’t want to see her either make Emma’s mistakes like outing Matteo OR get her heart broken by him.

 Hans throws Matteo’s wallet out of the window, beaning him in the head, which is truly the perfect gif.

Clip 3 - Will you surrender?

Matteo goes into school on a rainy Monday morning. We start with some passionate straight kissing in the foreground, coupled with a pic and text from Sara, just to show the kind of shit Matteo is dealing with. A heterosexual assault from all angles. 

He meets up with the boy squad. Jonas is looking to get with Linn’s friend, who is “Emma Watson but blonde.” Sucks for Matteo to hear yet more girl talk, and girl talk from Jonas specifically. The heterosexuality strikes from another corner.

Adding another unwanted conversation topic, Abdi asks about the weed. Matteo seems like he wants to get the hell out of there, so he bails and goes up to Hanna and Sam, asking where Amira is. She’s out sick, so solving the weed dilemma will have to wait another day.

Hanna glances over at Jonas, who finally seems to have snapped out of his S2 funk as he talks about his new girl … does Hanna know yet Jonas has a new flame? Or is she just suspicious?

Man, I keep saying it, but Matteo seems like he’s sleepwalking through life, like this kid is just. Legit depressed. He has no energy for anything. Not even to fake being OK.

Continuity snarl: Matteo puts up his hood as he rounds the corner after leaving the girls, but it’s down a moment later.

The music is kicking in and there’s still almost a minute of clip left, is Matteo going to like … literally run into Beanie Boy/Gereven?

YEP

Well, they didn’t do a rom-com Meet Cute collide into each other or anything, but they passed each other in the hallway! In slow motion!

The big moment: Matteo and Gereven are coming at each other from different sides (like different ~walks of life? ooooo). They lock eyes and then look back at each other once after they’ve passed.

The scene goes into slow motion as soon as Matteo lifts his head and sees Beanie Boy. Matteo is just ambling his way to class and meandering through life, but when he sees that guy, that’s when he starts to feel present in the world, like it’s not just around him but including him. And then Gereven comes into focus as they pass each other.

I adore the music choice for this moment. It’s beautiful, and the lyrics are so lovely. “Will you surrender?” when we see Gereven and Matteo looking at each other, because Matteo’s seeing the boy who will make him give in and stop hiding who he truly is, who will make him surrender to love. And I suspect the same is true for Gereven, that Matteo will make him surrender as will, let go of his fears. 

So I reaaaaally don’t think Beanie Boy was trying to get Matteo’s attention like Even was. There’s nothing about it that suggests so. My prediction is that Beanie Boy, like Matteo was trying to keep his head down and get through life, and they just happened to walk by each other. I mean, Matteo’s just walking down a school hallway, it’s not like Beanie Boy parked his ass deliberately somewhere so Matteo could see him, he couldn’t predict Matteo was going to walk down that hallway at that particular time. I feel like Beanie Boy is very much like Matteo in that he’s lonely and an outsider. He’s not trying to attract attention, he’s not seen smiling or laughing at someone at the beginning. Our first glance at Even was his brightness. Our first glimpse of Gereven (from Matteo’s POV, not the brief moment of him last season which is more of an Easter egg, really) has him in dark clothes, headphones on. I feel like he and Matteo are just checked out of life. And I think that’ll be an interesting take on Even, not so much that Beanie Boy has Even’s confidence and swagger in drawing Matteo to him, but that Matteo and Gereven are both outsiders and recognize their loneliness in each other.

That’s what really makes me love this scene. It’s just a mundane occurrence. Two boys walking by each other. Something that happens all the time. Something that Matteo no doubt does every day, walk by other boys whose faces don’t register. But this time, there’s ... something. Physical attraction? Sure, that’s part of it. But even more I think it’s a sense of connection, something inexplicable that draws them to look back at each other even when the moment should have ended. A gut feeling that this person is also lost, that he would understand. 

Clip 4 - Everyone’s favorite reluctant friendship begins

It’s the first remake to focus on the teacher’s nipples! Matteo is staring at them instead of listening to her talk about their exams. 

Amira comes in and Matteo just gets up from where he was sitting and sits next to her while the teacher is talking. Lol, is that allowed? Is this a study session or something?

Amira coolly ignores Matteo even when he tries to get her attention. Eventually she says she found his weed and how fucked up it was for him to do that, she could have gotten in trouble. A bit of a change because Sana was upset that Isak almost fucked over Eva, causing a demonstration of Sana’s loyalty to her friends. With Amira, it was personal, a risk to herself. Matteo acts shitty too, he’s just like come on, it wasn’t personal, it wasn’t a big deal. Dude! If you want your weed back, that’s not the best course of action. You need to grovel.

The teacher calls on Matteo and Jonas shoots him an entertained look, like ha ha, you got in trouble. Or probably, more ha ha, check out our teacher’s nips. Nice display of Jonas going for that hetero bro bonding that Matteo would love to avoid.

LMAO, when Matteo asks for the week back and Amira says, “What will I get for it?” Matteo is like “IDK, blowjob?” THIS KID. His mind went to that, huh. Remember Even was all “yeah, we had to suck dicks” without two minutes of meeting Isak? And then later Eskild told Isak that talking about sucking dick when you meet someone is a sign someone’s gay? Yeah. 

Amira says she’ll give the weed back if Matteo and his boys join the abi-prank committee. Didn’t they do that last season? The copies of the boobs and butts and Jonas’ dick, didn’t that count as the prank?

The teacher makes them study partners. So far, she’s not a racist, at least? Anyway, Amira and Matteo look positively thrilled to be paired together; meanwhile Jonas is flirting with his seat partner. Oh, maybe that’s what the Look was about. Matteo continues to be pelted with heterosexuality like rotten fruits and vegetables.

Clip 5 - Matteo gets a prom date

Matteo and Sara sit on opposite sides of the bed, texting their friends, on their phones. LMAO, sounds about right, tbh. Truly scorching chemistry. Nah, it’s very Isak and Eskild.

The boys’ group chat has Jonas saying he’s getting laid on Friday. That rotten hetero produce comes in the form of eggplant emojis. Matteo sure loves hearing about Jonas banging chicks!  He’s like, yeah, I’m totally having sex with a girl as well.

Sara asks his opinion about a dress. Subtle (“subtle”) hint about the prom? Yes, as it turns out. But she suddenly leans over and kisses him after he’s like yeah, that looks nice. He looks as excited as you’d expect. He was actually staring into space before she did that.

Sara gets a text, Matteo wants to know what they’re talking about, and there’s some “flirting” until Sara caves and tells him that Leonie likes the new guy from their PE class. GEE I WONDER WHO THAT COULD BE. Matteo offers to investigate for her. Yeah, I’ll bet he’s gonna enjoy that more than he knows. He’s going to become one of the Hardy Boys.

Sara somewhat nervously asks if they should go to prom together, and when Matteo is agrees, she asks whether they’re a thing. It makes me sad how clearly vulnerable she is right now, like she really likes him and is hoping to say yes, but she isn’t sure. Matteo says they’re a thing. Not conveying how utterly miserable this must make him, but not exactly jumping for joy, either. Like Isak tried hard to impress Emma, he could turn on the charm, but Matteo is just sleepy about it.

Sara kisses Matteo again, but before they go further, he asks if she wants to watch a movie with him. Smart move.

I’m sure Matteo will end up going to prom with Gereven. Sara and Leonie can go together? Realizing their love for each other at last. Or just as friends. (But preferably girlfriends.)

Clip 6 - Make a wish

Matteo goes to the abi-prank meeting, looking like he gives nary a fuck. Amira shoots him a nod and he gives her a “what more do you want from me” look. The girls are at the meeting, the rest of the boy squad is not, obviously. I see Photoshop Markus but not Beanie Boy.

All the girls are looking beautiful by the way. Look at Amira, she’s radiant!

Kiki literally goes Fight Club on this meeting. I have to say, if you asked me which Druck character would be a member of Fight Club, it would be Kiki. Her clumsy nervousness is a total front for bloodlust.

Matteo is being rude as hell just taking out his phone while Kiki is talking. The boys text why they aren’t there: Jonas has a date, Kiki is still mad at Carlos (dude, that’s why you need to come, it’s a way to get back on her good side) and Abdi just forgot.

They suggest a flash mob. Lmao, good luck getting Matteo to dance. Or they suggest just randomly hugging teachers. That could get all kinds of awkward, judging by the last teacher we saw with the power nipples. I’m just imagining some short kid going for a hug and getting their face mashed into the teacher’s areola.

Photosohp Markus has a suggestion. I love this dude, sorry. He loves hugging! He wants to practice with Kiki. Kiki realizes in an instant why the hugging prank might not be the best idea. But she’s like, we can group bond instead. Kiki wants everyone to hold hands and Matteo just peaces the fuck out. This prank meeting is pretty depressing, honestly. Way more so than kosegruppa. Kosegruppa might have been uncool or whatever but I got the sense the people involved enjoyed it. This meeting was just excruciating, and barely anyone is there. Look at that tiny circle.

Oh shit! As Matteo exits the room, Beanie Boy is going into it, and Matteo stops him. No, don’t go in there, it’s dangerous! Or actually it just sucks and they’re doing a trust circle where they hold hands. Beanie Boy obviously does not want to hold hands in that room, since Matteo is out here and not in there.

Aww, I love that Matteo has a slight smile? Just the tiniest when he talks to Beanie. Beanie is kinda doing the talking with his eyes, he’s definitely considering Matteo.

Shit, it’s Matteo who offers weed! Matteo is the one being the initiator! The bolder one. I love the idea of maybe having a shyer Even, like it does drastically change their dynamic, but I’m fine with that as long as the show does a thorough job of adapting their interactions, not just a cut and paste. Beanie Boy is the new kid and probably didn’t expect someone to make overtures of friendship (or more…).

And I love Matteo doing this when we’ve seen him sleepwalking through his interactions with Sara and … everyone else, kinda. He’s actually found some courage. Like he could have just let Beanie Boy go off and do his own thing, there was no real reason to offer a joint once he’d warned him off the meeting. But he somehow just felt the need to keep talking to this dude.

Holy fuck, MATTEO putting the joint behind his ear. This role reversal is so much fun already. And it’s even more amusing if you think that this is how some of Evak played out from Even’s POV? We thought Even was this charming, suave, mysterious dude when he stuck that joint behind his ear, because we were in Isak’s POV and Even was some handsome stranger. Later we realize what a huge dork Even is and that he was super desperate to get Isak’s attention and had been pining since the first day of school. So this is like how Even actually was - we know Matteo is a big dork and not a suave dude, but maybe that’s how he comes across in Beanie Boy’s eyes. 

HIS NAME IS DAVID. A perfectly excellent name, tbh. I was worried they were going to call him something like Daniel or Noah, names that already exist in the Skam universe, which would be confusing as hell when those Noorhelm seasons are concurrently airing. “I can’t believe that thing Noah just did in this clip.” Uhhhh which Noah are you talking about, untagged post? Or God forbid, another Lucas, although David’s actor is named Lukas so I figured we would dodge that bullet.

Although it does occur to me that we have do have a David, the Skam France director, soooo … fuck.

I want to make a disclaimer: as fandom knows, David is played by a trans actor. There’s no guarantee that this character will be trans yet, but I think it’s unlikely that they won’t bring it up. The nature of this show seems like they’ll incorporate it into the story rather than let the opportunity pass to talk about trans issues, and I know that trans Druck fans campaigning for a trans Even had a ton to do with this decision, so I believe their input would weigh on the story itself beyond the casting. So I’m going to make speculation and comments with the assumption that David is trans and how that will affect the plot. There are things in this conversation that are potentially relevant to that, for instance. I don’t want to overstep, but I also don’t want to ignore moments of possible foreshadowing or pieces that might be relevant to his characterization.

So for instance, I don’t know if they have replaced Even being bipolar with David being trans. To be clear, NOT because being trans is a mental illness but more as an area of societal marginalization that the character has to deal with, that might be hidden from the other characters and the audience. We don’t know when we will learn that David is trans; while I write this we’re several episodes in, but I don’t know if we’ll learn three clips from now or three episodes from now. I don’t know if David will be trans and bipolar, or just one of the two. I don’t know if the reveal will end up being casual and non-dramatic, or if it will be a big thing like the end of episode 8. I have some guesses about where the story might go, but I’m keeping in mind that there’s a new element that none of the Evak seasons have tackled before, and that may cause big changes to the story. 

Matteo asks David about being new so close to Abi, and David says he killed someone and had to go into hiding. That could be a reference to his dead name. I don’t know if that term is the same in German, but seems like a possible hint. He does say he killed his parents, but that’s after Matteo asks if he had stress with them, so he’s just riffing off what Matteo said. Or just the fact that when Matteo asks about him being new, David wants to know why - maybe he’s wondering if Matteo knows something or heard a rumor. 

Isak asking about Even transferring in his final year got cut off because Emma showed up. Here Matteo just kinda accepts David’s joke and doesn’t question him further.

Matteo is super into him, of course. Look at that body language, he’s all angled toward David. David, too. Tarjei and Henrik had masterful body language so this is very promising.

David points out an eyelash on Matteo’s face and you fucking KNOW later in the season he probably won’t ask, he’ll just brush it off himself. Matteo is like, can I make a wish now? JFC, Matteo is flirting so much, he is intensely looking at David when he says that. Honestly, it’s really exciting to see this dynamic kinda flipped, mixing and matching Isak and Even elements between Matteo and David. David says it was just an eyelash. Maybe he’ll be more of the realist rather than the romantic? God, if Matteo is the more romantic one, I will lose my mind (in a good way).

David does ask what Matteo’s wish would have been, and Matteo is like, IDK, go on holiday or something. David says he knows the feeling and Matteo asks where he would go. Matteo would get in a car and just drive away. David says to go directly to Detroit. David, I’m fond of you already but unless your car turns into a submarine that is not gonna work.

David has been pretty chill so far, but he perks up and smiles when mentioning Detroit at the very end, so Matteo gets hit with the ray of charm. That’s when the music kicks in, too, because Matteo has seen David smile. No turning back now. I presume we are going to be hearing music from Detroit artists this season?

LMAO, I was like oh, Sara’s not there at the meeting so she can’t interrupt their moment, and yet SOMEHOW she managed to anyway. And she kisses Matteo so David knows Matteo has a girlfriend right off the bat. David takes this as his cue to exit.

Why was Sara there, anyway? Did she show up late for the Abi prank meeting? Didn’t she just do a big prank where she photocopied her boobs for the school to see? Or did she just know that’s where Matteo was headed tonight and she waited around for him?

For Matteo, Sara’s arrival cuts into this charged moment with David. With David, it’s a little less intense than Isak finding out about Sonja? Because he’s only shared a few minutes now with Matteo instead of stalking him for a week and then spending hours at his house, although obviously he could be crushing on him for a while already. Though personally I think they might eliminate that part of the story. Anyway, this is like … a spark of hope getting extinguished REALLY early and it makes me wonder how the rest of this story is gonna go. Matteo is the one with the girlfriend, the “obstacle.” Is he going to run hot and cold, go back to Sara after getting with David? 

Matteo looks sad as David goes, obviously. Making it worse is that of course that’s the dude Leonie likes. Matteo takes a drag of the joint before replying that he thinks it’s somebody else. Well, David was someone somebody else liked (ahem), so I guess that does make him somebody else. But clearly David is going to be so much more to Matteo than just “dude Leonie likes.”

Anyway, I love how quiet and down to earth that scene was, how it wasn’t instant smiles and conversational bliss but a little rough, testing each other out. And I think it’s good that Matteo seems to be more proactive around David, because they both seem kinda like chill stoner/emo kids, and two sleepy guys is not going to be that exciting of a dynamic, honestly. Matteo being the instigator gives the story a fresh take, and the contrast between Matteo with David and Matteo with everyone else is really, really important. We can already see that David is the person, the one who makes Matteo slip into a different mode of his being, one that’s happier and more comfortable. The one who makes him wake up.

Social Media/General Comments:

Jonas says he’s better about the Hanna situation than he was before. We’ll see how long that lasts. I hope his S2 attitude leaves a trace this season, like it was such a big deal and had an affect on Matteo feeling adrift from his best friend, so it should play a role in their relationship.

Abdi refuses to get on Instagram, which is convenient for the show’s social media content creators, lol.

As explained in the texts, a pipe broke in the apartment, so Mia, Hans, and Linn had to move out, and Linn found them a new apartment but one with an extra room, so they needed another roommate fast. Mia suggested Matteo as she heard through the grapevine that he wanted to move out. It’s pretty sad because he was looking to leave, so we can assume things are very bad at home. At least it didn’t escalate to him sleeping in a basement.

I’m glad they found a way to move Matteo into the apartment neatly and quickly with the small gap between S2 and S3. I think Matteo living on his own is a pretty big contributor to his feelings of isolation and instability, and assuming Hans plays a similar role as Eskild with his “guru” advice, it helps a lot if they’re living under the same roof. However, it does create a different setup for the two, though, because Hans didn’t “rescue” Matteo like Eskild did with Isak. Living with Hans will give them more opportunities to bond than living apart would, but Hans didn’t nurture and shelter Matteo to the degree that Eskild did for Isak. Hans is like a new acquaintance, and it will take more effort to build them to a point where Matteo feels like he can trust Hans and go to him for advice. Unless it’s solely like “well, he’s the only other gay guy I know” which would be understandable but a bit underwhelming. Hans has a depressing family life, as shown in S2, with relatives who don’t accept his personality, to the point where he adopts a “straighter” persona to interact with them, and it would be amazing to bring in his background to the Pride clip.

LET’S GET SOME MIA/MATTEO CONVERSATIONS ABOUT SEXUALITY GOING, TOO. They made Mia bi but many people think they could’ve done a better job of addressing it, so this is their chance! Don’t just sleep on it by following the OG story structure - make use of those changes.

The only non-confirmed LGBT person in the flat is Linn and you know, they could remedy that this season.

Linn apparently took care of a lot of the move, so that’s progress for her, she got something done for once, lol. 

With the other girls, Hanna and Mia are furtive about why they don’t think it’s serious between Matteo and Sara. I love them for keep their mouths shut about his sexuality.

Seeing Matteo flirt with Sara and make plans to go to the movies with her has me yelling like I’m in the movie theater for a horror film. DON’T GO UPSTAIRS! GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!

There are pictures of Matteo and Amira looking smiley and happy because The Incident happens, heh. Matteo looks like he was having a decent time earlier in the evening and then descended into sadness and fatigue. And, you know, getting drunk and high.

Sara posts a pic with Leonie being like #theonewhounderstandsme and if that isn’t screaming for a Sara/Leonie endgame...

Linn super loves flamingos. 

Kiki and Carlos fight because he was in the bathtub getting high and ignoring her texts.

Mia is absent a lot because she’s hanging with Alex, that’s why she missed the housewarming party. The girls miss her. Come back soon, Mia! Don’t just disappear because Noora went to London!

We got a sappy chat between Mia and Alex to remind us that they’re around, at least. Alex misses Mia even though she’s sitting across from him. I guess they’re in their little couple bubble now.

Matteo checks in with Amira and asks if she’s feeling better or still sick, and Amira’s answers make me suspect she knows exactly what bullshit Matteo pulled on Saturday.

When Matteo invited Sara to study at his place on Thursday, I found myself wishing that maybe Hans could save the day and just be so intrusive and annoying that he drove Sara away without Matteo having to make out with Sara or blow her off rudely or whatever. Alas.

I’m laughing how Markus is “Photoshop Markus” even in the group chat. No one else appears to have a nickname, just him.

Leonie and Sara chat; Leonie has her eye on Gereven and Sara is trying to figure out where she and Matteo stand as a couple. I’m really fond of them and I hope they don’t become Emma and Sonja, honestly. Again, just ... nip those relationships in the bud. Let them go to prom with each other, not the boys. Even if they aren’t together romantically, they seem to be the most important people in each other’s lives.

Matteo zips his lips when Jonas asks if he banged Sara, which conveniently doesn’t mean he has to say no. A very Isak technique.

Mia wasn’t in this episode at all, which is strange when she, you know, lives with Matteo and goes to school with him and we saw all the other girls. In-universe the explanation is that she’s with Alexander, but I wonder if they were filming parts of S2 at the same time, maybe? Reshoots? And that’s why we haven’t seen either Mia or Alexander, because the actors were busy. The other explanation is just that Mia is not here because Noora was not there, and Druck felt the need to follow that story. I’d find that really disappointing. 

This is a really promising start to the season, and I already love the tone. It has a very down-to-earth, painfully vulnerable feel. Matteo’s misery is palpable in basically every scene, except the ones with David, where we get glimpses of his better self. I can sense this kid’s internal struggle all the time. There’s also pining and longing in the simplest moments, from Matteo brushing Jonas’ hair while he’s sleeping, to that one look in the hallway with David causing a spark, to the way they look at each other while smoking, David pointing out the eyelash on Matteo’s cheek. It’s quiet, raw, and real. And that is exactly the atmosphere I want from a S3 remake.

I’m not German so feel free to correct me on translations or cultural notes.

If you got this far, thank you for reading!

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Marvel Team-Up Volume 4 #2 Thoughts

Things get a little better and a little worse this issue

 With the shakey set up out of the way Eve Ewing gets to dive into what she and fans were actually looking forward to from this arc, Freaky Friday with Spidey and Ms. Marvel.

 The results are again...mixed.

 The art work is again nice and the typical Freaky Friday tropes played with in the story, whilst modest and not explored nearly as much as they could be, are touched upon enough to illicit a laugh or two.

The best moment is probably seeing Peter in Kamala’s body appreciate seeing Kamala in his body have fun with his powers. The subtext is it gives him some perspective on how cool it is to be Spider-Man really.

Another area the book succeeded in was deciding to dedicate the whole issue to the 2 protagonists living through one another’s lives as opposed to having other stuff distract from that.

The positives kind of end there though.

Like last issue Ewing pulls the dirty trick of introducing us to some important information about Spider-Man’s life that’s never (to my recollection) been mentioned before.

As bad as it was to say Peter had an old friend we’d never heard of last issue, this issue establishes that he took precautions to never again have his body swapped like in Superior Spider-Man.

There are a few issues with this.

First of all, whilst it’s nice and would be in character for Peter to do that, it makes him look foolish and irresponsible in the main titles for seemingly never doing that. indeed I can all but guarantee this piece of information will be forgotten or ignored in the main titles if anything akin to a body swap occurred again. Prior to this issue we presumed Peter didn’t take precautions but also that he didn’t do that because there was no way for him to do so.

Second of all, it’s really, really disingenuous for something as important as that to have just happened off panel without a mention until now and a mention in a title that is neither a Spider-Man centric title and isn’t even edited by the Spidey office.

Third of all it doesn’t even make sense. Doc Ock never actually swapped his and Peter’s minds literally. He created copies of their minds, uploaded his into Peter’s body and vice versa. The implication from this story seems to be that in fact Peter and Kamala are literally having their consciousnesses transferred back and forth.

Speaking of which, maybe issue #3 will address this but the fact that Peter and Kamala are swapping back and forth seems...contrived; as does Kamala’s neighbours happening to be away for awhile and happening to give her a key.

It seems like a conceit of the story invented just so that Peter wouldn’t have to pretend to be Kamala in front of her parents.

On the one hand that robs us of a lot of potential comedy and shenanigans. On the other the idea that Kamala’s family will be able to deduce something is seriously wrong is very likely and needs to be addressed.

However rather than go that contrived route I don’t see why Ewing didn’t just cut out the middle man and either have the swap happen on the weekend when Kamala could more reasonably not have to spend a night at home or, if she really wanted to have Peter go back to school, have the swap happen after Kamala leaves home at the start of the day but before she gets to school.

Off the top of my head you could have it be that the explosion doesn’t immediately swap them but that they wake up or en route to school/work get hit with the swap. Or have Dr. Rosario’s lecture occur in Jersey thus giving Peter a reason to be there and then Peter as Kamala has to get back to school for the rest of the day.

Putting all this aside perhaps the biggest sin of the story is the fact that it does the Freaky Friday trope but doesn’t really explore much of the obvious issues in this specific scenario.

Typically the Freaky Friday trope occurs between people of the same genders, and somewhat less typically of the same race.

Here the focus is upon the different AGES of Peter compared to Kamala.

Okay sure that’s a dynamic in play in this scenario, but surely Peter reliving High school or Kamala being thrust into the adult world of bills and job interviews is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay less significant than Kamala reacting to how different it is being a white man with a penis or Peter reacting to how different it is being a Pakistani, Muslim girl with breasts and a vagina.

I’m not saying the story should be graphic about this but it’s really disingenuous and unrealistic to set up this scenario and then pretend either of these characters would be more focussed upon being younger/older than being different genders, races and how they get treated differently as a result.

I’m not asking for a sermon about racism, sexism, privilege etc, but just...I’m just asking the story to be believable and realistic. Realistically those issues would not just pop up but be much bigger concerns.

They don’t even try to raise the question of consent in this scenario. We focus more upon secret identities than even giving a throwaway line about Peter and Kamala consenting to let one another use their bodies to change clothes or go to the bathroom. That just happens and we don’t mention it.

Again, this doesn’t have to be graphic, it can even be funny without being crude, but like...just talk about it. Even that Ultimate Spider-Man arc with Wolverine and Spidey swapping bodies kind of touched on these topics a little and that was over 15 years ago.

The most we get is Peter noticing he got one racist comment and having a period, but it’s just glossed over a scene later. Peter meanwhile doesn’t get to teach Kamala about the perils of adult life, which is weird because at face value this is both their stories so you’d think Ewing would keep things ‘even’ in that way. More significantly really this is Kamala’s book but it leans towards Peter learning about being a girl of colour?????* Shouldn’t the focus be more on Kamala in this regard?**

What’s also weird is that the book tries and fails to give Kamala a taste of what being a man is like by painting the perils of shaving as the closest male equivalent to a period.

Let’s put a side a debate about whether that’s true, or indeed how the comparison is cliché.

My bigger question is...Kamala just...knows how to shave?

My even bigger question is...Kamala shaves incorrectly and it causes her to bleed...on a time delay?

Huh?

Yeah in the issue she starts bleeding during an interview because she cut herself shaving but that’s not how that works.

Yeah you can bleed AGAIN later if you cut yourself shaving but it’s written to imply she didn’t start bleeding until that moment when...surely she would’ve been bleeding beforehand when she initially cut herself.

Additionally there is this odd panel where Kamala is admiring Peter’s muscles in a mirror and being upbeat about being an adult...Maybe I’m being dense but how does that translate. I’ve got huge manly biceps...being an adult is awesome. What? It’s a twin of another panel on the same page where Peter as Kamala starts skipping for joy because...he’s young? And this is referred to as ‘the thing’?

Is that a thing?

Do teenagers typically skip for joy to school or anywhere for that matter?

I think the implication is that he’s relishing youthful energy as in an earlier panel he’s happy his knees aren’t aching. But that still doesn’t add up. As Spider-Man his powers afford him a lot of energy and that includes immense leaping abilities. Skipping isn’t something he couldn’t do or that would hurt him. it doesn’t even jive in the issue as Kamala never complains about aches and pains an clearly relishes her newfound acrobatic prowess.

Oh and on this same double page spread Kamala as Peter buys five scratchcards. What the Hell Kamala? When did Peter give you permission to waste his obviously limited funds? Like on the same two pages she took notice of his bills and his job interview.

There is also this weird characterization thing whenever Peter is in Kamala’s body where he suddenly becomes less like Spider-Man and more ‘the intellectual who speaks in a more high brow way but it’s funny because his appearance is at odds with that’. Like he puts his thumb on his chin as he thinks about and postulates about science stuff and talks about the nectar of the Gods when applying lip gloss. What gives?

Finally there is a bit of mischaracterization regarding one another’s secret identities.

Kamala in Spider-Man’s body immediately unmasks in spite of Peter’s protests, then he does the same against her protests to keep things fair.

Now not to be too harsh on Ewing in this scenario inevitably Kamala and Peter would need to unmask one another. In this sense you can cut Peter a little slack as he probably knows it’s going to be next to impossible to go about in Kamala’s body without seeing her real face.

But Kamala seems...rather out of character here. No expert on her character but given how she has her own secret identity would she really so cavalierly violate someone else’s...when they are asking her not to...and then she employs a double standard and asks them not to violate her own identity?

I really don’t buy this at all.

Again you could argue Peter’s actions were a little more justified but at face value it seems he was just being petty.

All in all...I guess this is worth a read for a few laughs and if you just wanna see some of the wackiness with this kind of scenario but over all it has a lot of problems.

P.S. Another issue with this...er...issue, as well as the last one was Ewing for some reason having dialogue that plainly should be though captions just spoken out loud. Why?

*Also is it just me or is it really weird that from now on its canon that Spider-Man knows what a period feels like and loves the taste of cotton candy flavoured lip gloss? If nothing else that’s gotta be something that will be on Spidey listicals in the future right?

**And yet in other ways the focus is more on Kamala, everything happens in Jersey City, it’s rooted in her status quo and supporting cast. Which again is a problem in one sense since this is at face value both her and Peter’s story but more realistically it’s her story, this is her secondary title.

[urfavmurtad]

Something I find interesting is that the bible says that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was not caring about the poor and needy, greed, pride and xenophobia. Does the quran mentioned any of that?

Yeah I’ve seen the arguments from more liberal Jewish/Christian groups that say that all those sins were the reason for Sodom’s destruction, rather than homosexuality. I find them…. half-convincing. The story of Sodom in the Quran is very similar to the one in the Bible, but unfortunately there are a couple of added lines that make it very difficult to pass it off as “not about homosexuality”.

All the basic elements of the story are the same. Lot is in Sodom with his wife and daughters while Abraham is living elsewhere with his wife Sarah. Some angels visit Abraham and inform him that Sarah will give birth to a son. They enjoy some pleasant tea and small talk. They then tell Abraham “it was nice seeing you, we’re gonna go destroy your nephew’s city now. Have a pleasant day!”. Abraham is sad. “No offense but can you maybe consider not doing that?”, Abraham asks. “…………….No” the angels reply. So he shrugs and they depart to go bring The Doom to yet another hapless community.

They meet up with Lot, who takes them in. But Lot is nervous, because he knows that the people of Sodom will want to take the angels–who have the appearance of really hot guys–and molest them. A mob gathers outside the room they’re staying in, and Lot’s fears come true when the mob demands he turn the mysterious visitors over to them. Lot offers his young daughters to the mob to placate them, but the Sodomites tell him that they don’t want the girls, they want the men. But the angels, being… angels, aren’t particularly worried since they know all their asses will be dead soon anyway. The city is wiped out, with Lot’s household (minus his wife) being the only survivors.

Sodom is a city of depraved homos. Beyond Lot’s immediate family, there aren’t any women or children mentioned in the place. As in the Bible, the Sodomites are evil in just about every way possible–they’re disbelievers, they’re robbers, they’re rapists, they don’t respect the rights of guests and visitors. Lot tries to get them to stop, but they don’t listen to him. The difference between the Bible and the Quran there is that the Islamic Lot is specifically named as a prophet, whereas he isn’t in the Bible. But it doesn’t really matter, because he (like most Islamic prophets) is woefully incompetent and fails in converting even a substantial minority of the population.

The Quran has a bunch of stories that go like this:

Allah sends a prophet to a disbelieving community.

“Stop being disbelievers,” the prophet says.

“Naw,” the disbelievers respond, menacingly.

“O that’s how it’s gonna be, huh?” Allah thinks.

Everyone dies horribly.

The prophet skips off into the sunset.

So the people of Sodom’s refusal to listen to Lot would probably have been enough to doom them, even ignoring the robberies and such. In fact, Lot’s wife dies for that exact reason. But the Quran adds a line to let us know a part of the Sodomites’ behavior that specifically displeases Allah. The Quran repeats the story a bunch of times, so there are different dialogue options here, all boiling down to the same thing:

And Lot! (Remember) when he said unto his folk: Will ye commit abomination such as no creature ever did before you? Lo! ye come with lust unto men instead of women. Nay, but ye are wanton folk.

And Lot! when he said unto his folk: Will ye commit abomination knowingly? Must ye needs lust after men instead of women? Nay, but ye are folk who act senselessly.

What! Of all creatures do ye come unto the males, And leave the wives your Lord created for you? Nay, but ye are froward folk.

And Lot! (Remember) when he said unto his folk: Lo! ye commit lewdness such as no creature did before you. For come ye not in unto males

Those are in the 7th, 26th, 27th, and 29th chapters of the Quran. The language doesn’t give much room for interpretation here–their “immoral behavior unlike anything [committed] before you, in all the worlds” (the literal meaning of “abomination such as no creature ever did before you”) was to sexually pursue men instead of women. In other words, their crime wasn’t just the “lust” part, even if you interpret that as rape or sexual assault (which is not what it means). It was the gay part. Given the severity of the condemnation, it’s very difficult to argue that their homosexuality was just incidental and irrelevant to the story.

Every school of Islamic jurisprudence views gay sex (“liwat”, the Arabic version of “sodomy”), as a sin for this reason. It is not something debated, though nowadays some “liberal Muslim” groups do tragically try to grasp at straws over it. (My favorite attempt says this actually “may have had to do with getting DNA, from angles/extraterrestrials”. Why do y’all do this to yourselves?) It’s just…. kinda an open-and-shut thing. There are plenty of matters that the various schools of jurisprudence disagree on, but gay sex being unacceptable ain’t one of them.

That shouldn’t be particularly shocking. I mean, it’s not like Mohammed made the connection up himself. Remember, the guy was just listening to Biblical stories, often with rabbinical writings, commentaries, and non-Biblical texts mixed in, and then repeating what he heard. So, yeah, it’s true that the Sodomites’ gayness is not outright stated (but is implied) in the Genesis version, and it’s also true that early Jewish and Christian commentaries didn’t make homosexuality the focus of the story. But that doesn’t matter in Islam’s case, becauseby Mohammed’s era the connection between Sodom’s punishment and the sin of homosexuality was already firmly established. And so that interpretation is what made it into the Quran, and it’s impossible to get rid of it unless you say “uhhh Allah changed his mind and loves the gays now after hearing Troye Sivan’s latest single”. O well!

[theamazingsallyhogan]

ROY MOORE MASTERPOST

I post this not expecting many to read it all. Skim and decide if you think this information should spread.

On December 12 2017, voters in Alabama will pick their Senate representative. 

The Democratic candidate is Doug Jones, the prosecutor that brought to justice two KKK members responsible for a 1963 bombing that killed four black girls.   

His Republican opponent, Roy Moore, is expected to win. In the Senate he would make laws for the whole country.

Who is Roy Moore? This is going to be long, but skip to any portion and tell me it’s not important. Try it.

1947- Born.

1969 - Graduated from the Military Academy at West Point. Deployed to Vietnam.  In his command position, Moore was seen as both reckless and excessively strict, even demanding troops salute him on the battlefield (he had been trained not to do that since it makes it easier for enemy to identify a command target).  In his autobiography Moore stated that he believed his own men hated him so much they intended to kill him if given the chance.

1977 - Moore graduated from the University of Alabama School of Law.  Former staff and students recall him as an unusually inept and argumentative student, who had difficulty formulating arguments based on existing law. One teacher said “If Moore's analysis of a case was tantamount to thinking 1 + 1 = 3, and his classmates reasoned otherwise, there was no backing down by Moore ... Moore never won one argument, and the debates got ugly and personal.” He became an Assistant District Attorney in Alabama.

1977 - Moore allegedly sexually harassed 18-year-old Gena Richardson.

1978-1979 - Moore allegedly sexually assaulted Beverly Young Nelson, a 15/16 year old girl.

1979 - Moore allegedly sexually assaulted Leigh Corfman, a 14 year old girl.  He was 32.

1970s-1980s - According to former mall-workers, Moore was ultimately banned from a shopping mall because he harassed teen girls there.  Phyllis Smith claimed that Moore had such a bad reputation that staff would draw straws to decide who would see him in his official capacity whenever a customer’s check bounced.  Wendy Miller, who worked as a “Santa’s helper” at the mall when she was 14-16, claims that Moore tried to get her to go out with him. 

1985 - Moore married.

1991 - Moore allegedly sexually harassed Tina Johnson.

[Nine women have made claims against Moore, including of sexual assault and sexual harassment.  The youngest was 14 at the time.]

1992 - When a County Circuit Judge died, Moore was given the vacant position by the governor.  Moore hung a wooden copy of the Ten Commandments behind his bench, and opened proceedings by asking everyone in court to pray with him. At least once he had a clergyman lead the Jury in prayer. He informed USA Today that no Muslim or Buddhist would pray in his court because “they do not acknowledge the God of the Holy Bible upon which this country is established.”

1995 - Moore was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which argued that the prayers and Moore’s Ten Commandments display amounted to a public official using his position to force his faith on others. The case was eventually thrown out on a  technicality.

1995 - Moore addressed the “Council of Conservative Citizens,” a White Supremacist group (the Nation’s largest) that Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof cited as an influence.

1996 - Alabama’s governor explicitly banned same sex marriage.

1996 - In a divorce case, Moore ruled that a woman should lose all custody of her children to their father and should be barred from ever seeing them again without court supervision, because she’d had a gay affair.

1997 - Moore claimed that teaching evolution results in increased crime like drive-by shootings. “They’re acting like animals because we’ve taught them they come from animals."

1999 - The American Family Association (a hate group that, among other things, claimed that the Nazis were actually homosexuals... yes really) encouraged Moore to run for the Alabama State Supreme Court. Moore's campaign emphasized religion, claiming that reduced influence of Christianity on society “corresponded directly with school violence, homosexuality, and crime.”

2001 - Moore became Alabama’s Chief Justice, and installed a monument within the state judicial building.  A granite block weighing over 5000 pounds, it was covered with quotes from the Declaration of Independence and the Founding Fathers, and on top - the clear centerpiece - were two large carved tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments. Which he copyrighted.

2001 - The ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and others sued to have the monument removed  since putting it in a government building indicated a clear government endorsement of a specific religion. Moore stated that yes, he really was endorsing Christianity, saying that it was the one true religion, and that the entire country was founded upon that religion. He was pretty up-front on this.

2002 - Chief Justice Moore’s duties included managing justice system funds. When he didn’t get the funding he wanted no cuts were made until the courts went broke. He suspended all civil & jury trials until given new funding. Alabama had the highest paid judges in the US. He’s bad at budgeting, basically.

2002 -  Moore ruled that a lesbian mother and her partner shouldn’t be given custody of her three children.  The children’s father had admitted to slapping them and bugging their phones to record conversations with their mother. Moore cited Biblical law, including the stories of Sodom and Gommorah. Moore called homosexuality “an act so heinous that it defies one's ability to describe it” “an inherent evil” and “abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature, and a violation of the laws of nature." 

He specifically stated that homosexuals should lose custody of their children, and argued for the most extreme punishments for homosexual parents.  “The state carries the power of the sword, that is, the power to prohibit conduct with physical penalties, such as confinement and even execution. It must use that power to prevent the subversion of children toward this lifestyle, to not encourage a criminal lifestyle.”

2002 - The monument case went to Federal Court. Moore lost.  The monument was declared unconstitutional.

2003 - He was ordered to remove the unconstitutional monument.  He refused. He was removed from office for failing to comply with a Federal Court order.

2004 - Moore created the “Constitution Restoration Act”.  If it became law, it would make it legal for government officials to use their position to explicitly endorse Christianity and say that God is the source of all American law, liberty, and government.  The Act would also make it illegal for the Supreme Court or any Federal Court to hear cases about government officials using their position to show favoritism to Christianity over other religions.

2003 - Moore and his wife founded the "Foundation for Moral Law," an organization devoted to Christian Right court cases. In 2005 it accepted a contribution from a Neo-Nazi Holocaust denying group. Multiple irregularities were found in its finances. Moore at one point lied by saying that he had no salary from the organization, when in fact he had collected more than a million dollars, far more than the organization had declared on its taxes. His 2011 salary of $453,000 for 20 hours a week meant 83 cents of every dollar given to the group went to him.

And it employs his wife and at least two of its kids. And there’s major overlap between the "charity" work and his political activities. And it hasn’t filed correct tax forms for 2015 or 2016. And it hosted an event with a speaker from the League of the South, a hate group that wants to bring back the Confederacy.

2004 - Alabama considered passing an Amendment to repeal the portions of the state constitution that mandated racial segregation in schools and imposed a poll tax for the right to vote. Moore opposed the Amendment and it was not passed - the state constitution still mandates segregation and a poll tax. 

2005 - Moore said that homosexuality should be illegal.

2006 - Moore said homosexuals should not be allowed have government jobs, specifically stating his disgust about openly-gay ambassadors.

2006 - Moore supported death sentences for minors.

2006 - In response to the election of Keith Ellison - the first Muslim elected to Congress - Moore wrote an article titled “Muslim Ellison Should Not Sit in Congress.”  In addition to arguing that Muslims should not be allowed to be elected officials in America, Moore compared swearing someone into office on the Koran to be like swearing someone in using  Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

2007 - Moore argued that only the “higher law” of God had allowed for prosecuting Nazi war criminals.

2007 - Moore said there is no right to a painless death penalty (regular exonerations indicate that many death row inmates are wrongly convicted). 

2007 - Moore objected to “hate crime” legislature, especially when extended for gay individuals.

2007 - Moore opposed preschool, saying preschool students were “much more likely to learn a liberal social and political philosophy,” and said sending kids to preschool was molding children’s minds like something done by Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin.

2008 - Moore was a leading voice for the “birther” conspiracy, saying he didn’t believe Obama was a U.S. citizen and demanding investigation into Obama’s place of birth.

2009 and 2010 - Moore’s “Foundation for Moral Law” hosted “Secession Day Commemorations,” featuring individuals tied to hate groups, organized by Patricia Godwin, whose racist acts include regularly celebrating the KKK’s founder’s birthday.

2010 - Moore spoke in favor of “nullification,” which would allow State governments to ignore the Federal government (favored by those that want to ignore Federal Civil Rights Laws). Moore stated that unless more is done to increase states’ rights people will find themselves “totally disarmed, under UN Guard that's stationed at every house.”

2011 - Moore wrote a chapter of a “Law textbook" published by the evangelical Christian "Vision Forum," a group known for extreme sexism (especially a belief that society should be a “Patriarchy”).  The book was critical of giving women the right to vote, and in one chapter (not by Moore) claimed the Bible prohibits female leaders and says voters have a moral obligation to never vote for women. Moore worked for Vision Forum (including giving speeches to “men only” gatherings) and praised the organization (which collapsed in 2014 when its founder was accused of sexual harassment).  

2011 - Said he wanted to get rid of all Amendments after the 10th. Slavery was abolished with the 13th Amendment.

2012 - The people of Alabama elected Moore to be Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. Again.

2012 - Moore stated that the government is “the enemy of the people” because it promotes “tolerance and diversity” which he feels is evil. He also said that the legalization of gay marriage is proof the government is against "the people".  “Should we praise diversity? We’re one nation under God, that’s not diverse.“

2012 - Moore said that President Obama favors “the Muslim faith, and there is a reason for this.“

2012 - Moore stated that health insurance minimum requirements to cover family planning violate the first amendment.

2012 - Moore stated that evolution is incompatible with the Constitution.

2012 - Moore said that secular laws in America are leading to Sharia and allowing other religions to practice their faiths, stating “our religious freedom comes from God, and if it doesn’t come from God people have to realize we will lose it and that is happening in our country today with Sharia law and the allowance of religious practices for other groups but not Christians.”  He later added “Christians are being persecuted while people of a religion foreign to our country are doing what they want.”

2014 - Moore and other Alabama Supreme Court justices argued that women who have abortions should be jailed, along with women whose behavior endangers their pregnancies.

2014 - Moore’s Chief of Staff made a major push to end reproductive rights in America, outlying a plan to define zygotes as persons as a way to indirectly defeat Roe vs. Wade (elements of this plan are found in the Republican tax legislature of 2017).

2014 - Moore sent letters to the governors of all 50 states, asking them to pass a federal ban on gay marriage.

2014 - James Ware was convicted of rape, leaving his victim bound and gagged. Moore argued that DNA evidence was not strong evidence and that Ware should have been allowed to question every lab tech involved in the DNA tests that linked him to the crime, not just the lead scientist.  During Moore's 2013-2016 tenure he ruled on 16 sex crime cases, siding with the offender in 13 cases (including 10 times when the court majority disagreed with him). 

2014 - Moore stated that he believes the only religion protected under the first amendment is Christianity. “Buddha didn't create us. Mohamed didn't create us. It's the God of the Holy Scriptures.”

2014 - When a school official was convicted of raping two 15 year old girls, Moore dissented from other judges by saying the rapist should have been allowed to defend himself by bringing the girls’ bisexuality into the case.  Moore felt that it would have helped the defense argue that the girls were biased and colluding to frame the accused. Under special guidelines the man was given less than the 10-year minimum sentence he would have normally received.

2014 - When a gay man died, Moore’s “Foundation For Moral Law” fought to keep the man’s husband from inheriting anything.

2014 - Moore expressed disgust that a city council allowed a gay pride parade, and once allowed a Wiccan to open a meeting with prayer.

2015 - Moore’s Foundation used out-of-context video clips to promote the conspiracy that Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim.

2015 - Moore indicated he believes anti-gay hate crimes are just faked by gay individuals.

2015 - Moore supported the “Institute on the Constitution,” a group that teaches that the Constitution requires that public officeholders believe in God, that “the promotion of evolution is an act of disloyalty to America,” that “there is no such thing as a civil right”, and that legislative bodies lose all  “validity” if they pass marriage equality laws. Moore appeared in a video praising their work. The Institute donated to Moore.

2015 - Moore appeared at least 5 times on a show with a pastor that said homosexuality was a crime that the government should be punish by execution.  Moore was directly asked if he felt that homosexuality should be punished by death. He declined to state what punishment he thought was appropriate.

2015 - Moore argued that legalizing gay marriage would pave the way for letting the government take children from their parents.

2015 - Moore said Christians would be “persecuted” due to gay marriage.

2015 - Moore asked for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg to be impeached for her support of gay marriage.

2015 - Moore supported calls for a Federal ban on all Muslim immigrants.

2016 - When a school police officer was convicted of having sex with a student, Moore argued that since the man was not technically a school employee, he may have been wrongly prosecuted.

2016 - The United States Supreme Court ruled that gay individuals have a fundamental right to marriage, and laws prohibiting gay marriage are unconstitutional.  Moore stated that the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage was “worse” than the Supreme Court’s 19th Century decision to allow racial segregation. In direct defiance of the United States Supreme Court, Moore ordered all Alabama Judges to continue enforcing the state’s ban on gay marriage and to refuse to give gay couples marriage licenses.  Moore stated that “divine law” outranked the U.S. Supreme Court.   Numerous charges were made against Moore, who was suspended.  When he lost his appeal he resigned from his Alabama Supreme Court office... and announced he was running for Senate.

2016 - Moore repeated his belief that Obama was secretly not a U.S. citizen.

2017 - Moore keeps statues of Confederate leaders by his desk.

July 2017 - Moore supported the idea of a border wall and said that people that grew up in the United States after being brought when they were children (”Dreamers”) should be deported.

August 2017 - Moore said the Constitution was written to “foster Christianity.”

August 2017 - Moore said that September 11 happened because Americans had “moved away from God” by doing things like not criminalizing homosexuality.

August 2017 - Moore falsely claimed that there are places in Northern States where people are forced to live under Sharia law.

August 2017 - Moore stated that the U.S. has “asked for” shootings and killings (such as the Sandy Hook massacre of 28 people including 20 children) by “moving away from God” (not being Christian enough), particularly by legalizing gay marriage.

August 2017 - Moore admired Vladimir Putin’s treatment of homosexuals.

September 2017 - Moore promised to repeal The Affordable Care Act (”Obamacare”).

September 2017 - Moore's campaign page boasted of an endorsement from Matt Trewhella, a Neo-Confederate that claims it's morally justifiable to murder abortion providers, and an endorsement from Neo-Confederate Michael Peroutka, who claims all laws not supported by the Bible are illegal.

September 2017 - Moore said he would use military force to end illegal immigration. 

September 2017 - Moore said he was against transgender people being in the military and supported anti-transgender “Bathroom Bills”.

September 2017 - Moore stated that the last time America was “Great” was during slavery. “I think it was great at the time when families were united — even though we had slavery — they cared for one another…. Our families were strong, our country had a direction.”

September 2017 - Moore won the Republican Primary in Alabama.

October 2017 - Moore falsely claimed that “taking a knee” during the National Anthem is against the law.

November 2017 - Moore refused to debate his Democratic opponent Doug Jones. Though pressed that this seemed cowardly, he stated that he would not talk to Jones due to Jones’ "very liberal stance on transgenderism and transgenderism in the military and in bathrooms."  He added that transgender people “don’t have rights.”

November 2017 - Moore stated "they started [to] create new rights in 1965, and today we've got a problem" in reference to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting.

November 2017 - nine women made sexual misconduct and sexual assault allegations against Moore. The youngest was 14 at the time of the assault, another began interacting with Moore when she was 14.

December 2017 - A handwriting expert confirmed that a signature in a yearbook of one of his accusers belongs to Moore, contradicting his claim that he never knew her. The accuser said that she’d added a note listing the date and place, explaining why that part was in different handwriting, a clarification widely and falsely reported as an admission of forging Moore’s signature.

December 2017 - Donald Trump endorsed Moore and The Republican National Convention (RNC) funded his campaign, meaning that the RNC has essentially said they're okay with endorsing all of the above. Congressional Republicans have not called on the RNC to stop this support, so think of Moore as the running mate for every Republican seeking office in 2018.

[newstfionline]

Sunday, May 9, 2021

Overcrowded Border Jails Give Way to Packed Migrant Child Shelters (NYT) Biden administration officials have insisted that they have gotten better control of a surge of migrant children that has swamped detention centers at the U.S.-Mexico border. But documents obtained by The New York Times indicate that the problem has moved to other facilities, like convention centers in Dallas, San Diego and Long Beach, Calif., which are nearing capacity as funds for more space are scarce. The migrant children are far better cared for at the new facilities, operated by the Department of Health and Human Services, than they were at crammed jails run by the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection, according to administration officials. But health department officials are taking about a month on average to move the children and teenagers out of government custody and into the care of a family member or sponsor in the United States.

Washington Post says US secretly obtained reporters' records (AP) The Trump Justice Department secretly seized the phone records of three Washington Post reporters who covered the federal investigation into ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, the newspaper said Friday. The disclosure sets up a new clash between the federal government and news organizations and advocates for press freedom, who regard the seizures of reporters’ records as incursions into constitutionally protected newsgathering activity. Similar actions have occurred only rarely over the past decade, including a seizure of phone records by the Obama administration of Associated Press reporters and editors over a 2012 story that revealed a foiled bomb plot.

Major US pipeline halts operations after ransomware attack (AP) The operator of a major pipeline system that transports fuel across the East Coast said Saturday that it had been victimized by a ransomware attack and that it had halted all pipeline operations to deal with the threat. The attack is unlikely to affect gasoline supply and prices unless it leads to a prolonged shutdown of the pipeline, experts said. Colonial Pipeline did not say what was demanded or by whom, but ransomware attacks are typically carried out by criminal hackers who seize data and demand a large payment in order to release it. The attack on a pipeline operator, which says it delivers roughly 45% of all fuel consumed on the East Coast, underscored again the vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure to cyberattacks both by criminal hackers and U.S. adversaries. It presents a new challenge for an administration still grappling with its response to major hacks from months ago, including a massive breach of government agencies and corporations for which the U.S. sanctioned Russia last month.

200 years after his death, Napoleon leads a divided France into battle again (NBC News) "Napoleon is a part of us," French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday in a landmark speech marking the 200th anniversary of the emperor's death. Whether that's for better or worse has been the subject of a bitter national debate that has mirrored and stoked the more modern culture wars dividing French society and challenging its notions of national identity. Napoleon Bonaparte has been lionized by some — largely on the political right — as a military genius, a modernizer and a national hero who evokes a more glorious time. To others he's an imperialist, a warmonger and an enslaver who should be vilified, not venerated. While most present-day French leaders have shunned paying tribute to the divisive general, Macron broke with convention and urged the country to confront its history. He also laid a wreath at the foot of Napoleon’s grandiose tomb at Les Invalides, a gold-domed monument, as France uneasily commemorated the bicentenary of Napoleon's death in 1821 while looking ahead to presidential elections next year.

Sherpa guide scales Mount Everest for record 25th time (AP) A Sherpa guide scaled Mount Everest for the 25th time on Friday, breaking his own record for the most ascents of the world’s highest peak. Kami Rita and 11 other Sherpa guides reached the summit at about 6 p.m., Department of Tourism official Mira Acharya said. They are the first group of climbers to reach the summit this year and were fixing the ropes on the icy route so that hundreds of other climbers can scale the peak later this month. Rita, 51, first scaled Everest in 1994 and has been making the trip nearly every year since then. He is one of many Sherpa guides whose expertise and skills are vital to the safety and success of the hundreds of climbers who head to Nepal each year seeking to stand on top of the 8,849-meter (29,032-foot) mountain. In addition to his 25 times to the top of Everest, Rita has scaled several other peaks that are among the world’s highest, including K-2, Cho-Oyu, Manaslu and Lhotse.

India’s surge hits southern states, prompts more lockdowns (AP) Two southern states in India became the latest to declare lockdowns, as coronavirus cases surge at breakneck speed across the country and pressure mounts on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to implement a nationwide shutdown. At over 300,000, Karnataka’s capital of Bengaluru has the highest active caseload of any Indian city. But experts warn the worst is still ahead as India’s third-largest city buckles under oxygen shortages, overrun hospitals and crowded crematoriums. In Tamil Nadu state, the lockdown announcement followed a daily record of more than 26,000 cases on Friday. Infections have swelled in India since February in a disastrous turn blamed on more contagious variants as well as government decisions to allow massive crowds to gather for religious festivals and political rallies.

Bombing outside Kabul girls’ school kills at least 30 (AP) The deadliest bombing to strike Kabul in months detonated outside a school for girls, killing at least 30 people and wounding more than 50, a week after the United States and NATO began the complete withdrawal of their forces from the country. Violence has risen across Afghanistan since the start of the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces on May 1. Much of the increased violence is Taliban attacks on vulnerable government-held towns and cities, but on the eve of the withdrawal, a similarly large bombing struck Logar province just south of Kabul. Many of the dead and wounded from Saturday’s attack appear to be students.

Former Maldives President Is Critically Injured in Bombing (NYT) Mohamed Nasheed, the former president of Maldives who is the current leader of the country’s Parliament, was in critical condition on Friday after a bombing near his home, hospital officials said. The Maldives police confirmed injuries to Mr. Nasheed in the attack, which happened late Thursday night, and called it “an act of terror” that was under investigation. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. But officials, including Mr. Nasheed, have expressed concern about Islamic State recruitment in the Maldives, a small island nation and major tourist attraction south of India.

Girl's death in Japan prompts probe of alleged bullying (Washington Post) A Japanese city will reinvestigate alleged bullying that was denied by education officials two years ago after a 14-year-old girl was found dead in a neighborhood park. Saaya Hirose, an eighth grader, disappeared from her home in Asahikawa on the main northern island of Hokkaido in February. Authorities said she was found dead in the park and there was no sign of a crime. Her death and a statement by her mother that she had been bullied prompted Asahikawa Mayor Masahito Nishikawa to instruct education authorities to reinvestigate the case. Bullying is a persistent and growing problem at Japanese schools, which are often criticized for indifference to children persecuted by their peers. Last year, a record 612,000 bullying cases were reported at elementary, junior high and high schools, according to the education ministry. It said there were 479 suicides among students, a new record partly attributed to financial and psychological difficulties during the pandemic. Six were specifically linked to bullying. In Japan’s highly competitive but conformist society, school bullying often involves long-term harassment by a group of students of someone who may be seen as weak or different. Children with outstanding talent, physical handicaps or a foreign upbringing can also be targeted.

Medics: 200 Palestinians hurt in Al-Aqsa clashes with police (AP) A night of heavy clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound and elsewhere in Jerusalem left more than 200 Palestinians wounded, medics said Saturday, as the city braced for even more violence after weeks of unrest. Nightly protests broke out at the start of the holy month of Ramadan over police restrictions at a popular gathering place and have reignited in recent days over threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinians from their homes in east Jerusalem. It was unclear what set off the violence at Al-Aqsa, which erupted when Israeli police in riot gear deployed in large numbers as thousands of Muslim worshippers were holding evening prayers at the sprawling hilltop esplanade. Throughout the night large groups of protesters could be seen hurling rocks as Israeli police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades.

Respect: Is it the glue a polarized nation needs? (Christian Science Monitor) Respect is an essential ingredient in the American experiment. Amid the nation’s political polarization and widening cultural divides are millions of Americans who have lost sight of each other, caught in reflexive rituals and simplistic clichés that dismiss, demonize, or otherwise delegitimize perceived enemies. Respect is one vital way we heal and reestablish common civic ideals. According to Alexandra Hudson, curator of the newsletter Civic Renaissance, "Both civility and respect are more of a disposition, a fundamental way of looking at the world and others as human beings first, more like us than not like us. It’s a way of reflecting on what that means for what we owe one another by virtue of our inherent dignity, our irreducible worth as human beings and as fellow members of the human community.” Its original Latin root, spectare, means “to see” or “to look.” To respect is, in some ways, “to see again,” or to look back and see each other with fresh eyes. “You need strong, healthy, spiritually morally grounded conditions for civility to really work,” said philosopher and political activist Cornel West. “If everybody’s going in with massive distrust and contempt, then you’re not going to get any civility; you’re not going to get integrity, honesty, spreading joy, bearing witness to love. And when you do see it, it is going to be alien.”

[loudlytransparenttrash]

This Week Within Our Colleges: Part 2

Classes were canceled at St. Olaf College after students protested an obviously fake “racist note” left on a student’s car. In response to this note, students blocked entrances to campus buildings, participated in a mass group therapy session and listed a set of demands for the school President. “We demand the removal of Arne Christenson from the Advisory Board of The Institute for Freedom & Community given Mr. Christenson’s political views and values as a Christian Zionist.” “We demand the creation of more programs for students of color and racial and cultural sensitivity training for staff and we demand that St. Olaf be prepared to facilitate the transition of undocumented and first generation students,” was another demand the group made. One black student had this to say, “I can't turn a corner without feeling like somebody is going to be there, waiting for me," she said. "It's just so hard, and scary.” President David Anderson consoled, "It does hurt us deeply. We are allies. We are struggling like hell to be the best allies that we can."

An open letter signed by 22 UCLA professors urges students to join them in a weekly protest against the Trump administration. “We gather there to bear witness to the Orwellian nightmare that is the presidency of Donald Trump, and to let the world know that we cannot let this become normal,” history professor Teofilo Ruiz announces. The letter concludes by encouraging students to join the group of professor’s weekly anti-Trump protest, urging attendees to “bring signs to articulate your opposition and your engagement.” 

Male students who talk too much in class are oppressing their female peers, a Wesleyan University student contends. Tara Joy, a freshman who came to Wesleyan from an all-girls high school, paints this as a manifestation of oppression and gender inequality, arguing that despite constituting 57 percent of the college population, women are consistently denied the same classroom opportunities afforded to their male classmates.

A pro-choice professor at Purdue University accused pro-life organizations of “child pornography” for using images of fetuses as a rhetorical device during a debate. Professor David Sanders argued displaying images of "a butt naked body of a child" constitutes child pornography. One attendee took the opportunity to point out that Sanders had effectively conceded that it's a child.

The president of the San Diego Community College faculty union encouraged professors to cancel their classes and take their students to the May Day protests. He even managed to tie the day’s events to President Trump, arguing that “given the threats we face from the Trump administration, it is extremely important that we demonstrate our solidarity with one another. These are troubled times. Only our unity and mutual support will get us through with minimal damage to our most vulnerable community members.”

After more than four hours of contentious debate, the George Washington University student government narrowly rejected a proposal put forward by Students for Justice in Palestine to stop the university from being associated with companies that do business with Israel. Students supporting the proposal argued that by investing in these companies, the university makes itself complicit in the terrorism that they claim Israelis commit against Palestinians.

Student organizations at American University have created a list of demands to present to the administration. The ultimatum targets food service providers, accuses the university of having a "white supremacist" curriculum, and demands various forms of segregation. “Abandon the white supremacist and colonial curriculum in all schools for a more transformative and decolonized curriculum.” Another pushed for segregated campus safe spaces, demanding “the establishment of separate resource centers for Black, Latinx, Asian Pacific Islander, Native Americans, Muslim students, undocumented students, and queer and trans students.” The list also demands increased financial aid for all students, a tuition freeze and training programs for AU faculty to “deconstruct oppressive behavior in the classroom.”

Cornell is offering a course on President Trump’s ‘xenophobic nationalism.’ The course description reads, “Donald Trump and Barak [sic] Obama give us two visions of America and of the world: xenophobic nationalism and pragmatic cosmopolitanism. America and the world are thus constituted by great diversity.” Of course, it comes as no surprise that a highly paid, far-left professor at Cornell would not only consider President Trump to be a “xenophobic nationalist” but then go and teach his political views to students, and the “oppressed, victimized students” who will be taking this course, it’s worth noting this course alone costs more than most Americans’ monthly salary. 

SB677, introduced by Republican state senator John Moorlach, aims to “ensure that students who witness activities in the classroom which violate state or federal law or regulation and/or a local agency policy are free to document and report the situation to the necessary authorities or to the media, including social media.” Senator Moorlach introduced the bill after Caleb O’Neil, an Orange Coast College student, was suspended for recording Professor Olga Perez Stable-Cox calling Donald Trump a white supremacist and his election “an act of terrorism” during a classroom rant in which she also referred to Vice President Mike Pence as “one of the most anti-gay humans in this country.”

University of Iowa hosted a three-day event called “Exploring White Identity for Effective Allyship.” “This event provides a space for white identified people to discuss Whiteness and its privileges with other White people. This can be the first step to eliminating tokenism and increasing responsibility among allies to eliminate racism.”

Student leaders wrote an open letter demanding that Clemson University create an LGBTQ safe space on campus to rectify the school’s alleged callousness toward such students. Their letter declares that “a permanent space must be allocated to the LGBTQ+ community” because “incoming LGBTQ+ and other underrepresented students enter campus with the deck stacked against them.”

San Diego State University will put employees through a sexual-assault training program devised by an organization that opposes due process for accused students in campus rape investigations. ATIXA has made a lucrative business out of helping colleges respond to sexual-assault allegations following the Obama administration’s 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter, which prescribed specific investigation protocols and ordered colleges to use a low evidence standard. In December 2014, student Francisco Sousa was expelled by SDSU after a fellow student, Alexa Romano, accused him of rape. When administrators investigated, they refused to let Sousa provide evidence that would have likely exonerated him, including text messages, social media posts and witnesses. It also named him as a rape suspect in a campus-wide email. More than two years later, the lawsuit has been settled and the university will pay damages and clear Sousa’s disciplinary record after realizing it was yet another false rape claim to begin with. 

American University blocked a student fundraiser event “Bad(minton) and Boujee” set on raising funds for a veterans group whose founder got his master’s degree at AU. It was supposed to be a badminton-themed event, using rapper Migos’ song as a play on words but the school refused to host the event because “boujee” might be seen as “cultural appropriation.” One little bitch senior, Sydney Young, had this to say to the group: “I think it was the fact that someone expressed to you that the usage of those terms could be offensive or hurt somebody or be disrespectful to someone’s culture, and that wasn’t enough for them to change it.”

A student at the University of California, Berkeley, has written an op-ed claiming that free speech is merely “a tactic used by the state,” and that Berkeley should prioritize the “safety of the marginalized” over American constitutional freedoms. UC Berkeley transfer student Juniperangelica Xiomara Cordova-Goff (that’s a mouthful) writes: “Free speech is not dead. It was never alive.” Cordova-Goff, a self-described “brown trans femme,” claims that the American ideal of “sharing perspectives and differing opinions” has “done nothing more than maintain the white supremacist, capitalistic and patriarchal nature that allowed colonizers to protect their power centuries ago and that has allowed their descendants to elect an openly racist, queerphobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic and anti-poverty administration.”

Columbia University has capitulated to student protesters who demanded an end to a politically incorrect marching band tradition that some have deemed “unsafe” and “triggering.” Orgo Night has historically been held at midnight the day of the organic chemistry final exams. During the event, the marching band occupies a room in the library and plays music while also performing a comedy skit, which often takes jabs at students and cranky administrators. Students Tracey Wang and Dunni Oduyemi called the event “an unsafe space.” “Every semester after Orgo Night, some students leave Butler feeling miserable and triggered and have to turn to one another for consolation while our peers celebrate. We ask administrators to listen to us, to acknowledge us, and to protect us. Their failure to do so is proof the administration does not care about its students of color, its queer students, or its trans students.” The administration ultimately blocked the marching band from performing in the library and instead they were forced to deliver its half-hour skit to an audience of hundreds outside the library on a freezing cold night.

[jonboudposts]

Sexual Abuse and Hate Speech: Telford

There is an emerging sexual abuse scandal in Telford that is exciting the usual suspects to ignore as many facts as possible and zero in on any involvement of Muslim men (usually of Pakistani origin) and their preying on white working class girls.

 The facts of this case are appalling, as sexual abuse always is. However, we must overcome the attempts of far right extremists, attention-seeking individuals and even respected media to whip this into a dangerous and fact-less frenzy that will most certainly result in violence.

 I am specifically referring to the edition of Woman’s Hour on Radio 4 on 13 March 2018, where the story was discussed.  The known facts were gone through with presenter Jane Garvey and guests, who began by keeping it fairly calm. It was noted what we know so far and we heard the shocking confession concerning one young girl’s abuse.

 But despite these facts of the case – known perpetrators are from many backgrounds, as are some of the victims – Garvey could not help herself; she had to underline the existence of Pakistani men among the sex abusers and make some weak comment about political correctness.  ‘There is no getting around it’ said Jane, as if anyone was trying. There are a good few things there is no getting around when it comes to sexual abuse, especially in Britain.  

 For starters there is the continual failure in this abuse case and others, such as Rotherham and Rochdale, by the authorities; chiefly police and social services.  We have repeatedly heard of how these girls slipped through the system; actually that is being rather generous.  They would be better described as actively ignored by a system that judges many of them for being poor.  We already know that some of the Telford victims were described by that terrible recurring excuse ‘being from troubled families’, as if this should have anything to with their abuse.  However, we know from experience that truth and balance are far away when discussing these crimes.

 We in Britain need to face some terrible truths, not least this one.  Fucking kids is a white man’s crime; very common in Britain and particularly within families.  The level of abusers among the ‘indigenous’ population vastly outweighs any other ethnicity.   We very likely have stomach-churning depths throughout the country’s history and institutions of sexual abuse against children.  We know public school has been a haven for it for years and nothing is ever really done there; in fact there have been defences of it as part of culture or initiation, building character even.  We are also very selective in how we examine and interpret abuse.

Now, please understand in what context I say the following; I am not having a go at Catholic people nor advocating a like-for-like hate campaign, but I must mention some important points:

When the Catholic Church sex abuse scandals broke, there was outrage but we did not see massive hate campaigns against Catholics or their church, despite the fact the abuse and violations to people’s rights ran straight through the institution.  There are even graveyards in parts of Ireland with unidentified babies.

 What we saw were priests, representatives of the church, committing sexual abuse against children and being protected in many cases; now where is the Muslim equivalent?  Where are the Imams molesting children?

 The Catholic Church was at the centre of sexual abuse; perpetrating it, covering it up; in contrast, the few ‘Muslim’ pedos we have uncovered in Britain were at the fringes of their religious community, to say the least.  In fact, they do not have a damn thing to do with their religion.

The BBC News at 6pm the next day did a similar job, mentioning the case and still making a note of the Pakistani men involved while also saying it was not exclusively them, etc. The results of this sort of reporting are already being seen.  We are not only seeing a disturbing increase in online abuse and propaganda, but actual death threats to Labour MPs who are Muslim.  

 One part that always makes me sick is the justification, also often seen online, for crimes by white British terrorists; this involves some fake concern about the victims of a far right terrorist attack where people on social media, often with egg profiles, say things like ‘this is wrong, but the sad thing is (the perpetrator) has a point’; then going on with some waffle about attacks on British culture, etc.  The sad thing is people being attacked and killed for their religious belief or appearance, not your piss-weak culture.  

 This is the same British culture that thrives on condemnation and having someone to look down upon.  A culture that de-humanises people on the basis of their colour, religion and social position among other things, which is central to why these victims are continually victimised from all sides – because our society doe not give a shit about them.  They would be better described as an underclass, who are such because one institution after another pushes them to one side and does not care about their needs. We hate these people, face it.  Social services have been cut to the bone over the last eight years or so and this has often been justified by the same old anti-working class rhetoric of over-spending in the public sphere.  On the ground, dedicated staff in social services are stretched to the point of breaking and never supported properly.

 These girls are vulnerable because we let them be and I am sick to fucking death of these racist commentators and pseudo-Libs irresponsibly throwing out this headline-grabbing, attention-seeking, fact-devoid intolerance, not least the BBC who are scared shitless of the anti-PC brigade and The Daily Mail.  

 Victims are continually blamed for their own predicament; parents who often live such difficult lives the rest of us could not imagine are condemned for ‘letting’ their children fall into being prayed upon and the police and social services have actively said that many victims had ‘made a lifestyle choice’; not the first time we have heard this.

 We need to call all this out and reject it.  Any MPs calling for more intolerance against Muslims and blaming political correctness when not getting the hate campaign they want, can be dismissed. The police must be challenged for their failure to properly investigate and protect vulnerable girls; social services must be examined too and their funding and resource requirements met.  Social service staff must be given all the support they need, including catering for their needs, such as mental health support.

 Plus, I hate to say this, but I think we need to be prepared for violence. From the far right tabloids, to Jane Garvey’s typical display of privilege and not forgetting all the Brexit bullshit, things are getting toxic out there and thuggery is threatening – we need to be ready to defend ourselves and our neighbours because no one should have to live with this kind of fear.  Middle class, racist, irresponsible people like Jane Garvey or Sarah Champion should be condemned for their abusive and unprofessional actions; I believe they should be relieved of their duties because their behaviour is unforgivable - – it will not be people who look like Jane or me, who will have to walk the streets afraid for their lives or their safety.  It is not us that could be subjected to attacks from white hate mobs intent on hurting and scaring Muslims as part of their increasingly-accepted extremism.

 We do not talk about crimes like child abuse in the same way when carried out by white men; the majority of whom commit these crimes.  It is utterly unacceptable to characterise Muslims as worthy of specific attack for sex crimes.  This is really about dark skinned men ‘praying’ on our precious white women; plain and simple, because some things never change.  It is so obvious why the press do this and so many people buy into it; you take the most appalling crime you can think of; sexually abusing and assaulting children. How can you best try to push this crime away; to not face up to knowing that people who are capable of doing these things are around you all the time?  People you share a town with; maybe shared a pint with.  Such people have done these things, sometimes to their own children. You deal with this horror by making it about the outsider; a dark one even better. Then you do not have to face the depths of human evil; you can just divorce it from your everyday life and never have to deal with it.

 Most unacceptable however is the continual letting down of the victims of these almost-unmentionable, horrible crimes.  We need to take sexual abuse more seriously and end any debate about background, shame or motive when a woman summons the courage to tell us about their sexual abuse.

 We must treat women and girls in this country with more respect and stop gutting systems and institutions that give them much-needed support.  We must stand up to these hate preachers too.

[ntrending]

Rupert Murdoch and President Trump: A friendship of convenience

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/rupert-murdoch-and-president-trump-a-friendship-of-convenience/

Rupert Murdoch and President Trump: A friendship of convenience

For decades, Rupert Murdoch has used his media properties to establish a direct line to Australian and British leaders. But in the 44 years since he bought his first newspaper in the United States, he has largely failed to cultivate close ties to an American president. Until now.

Mr. Murdoch and President Trump — both forged in New York’s tabloid culture, one as the owner of The New York Post, the other as its perfect subject — have traveled in the same circles since the 1970s, but they did not become close until recently, when their interests began to align more than ever before.

Since Inauguration Day, Mr. Murdoch has talked regularly with Mr. Trump, often bypassing the White House chief of staff, Gen. John F. Kelly, who screens incoming calls. Mr. Murdoch has felt comfortable enough to offer counsel that others may shy away from, such as urging the president to stop tweeting and advising him to improve his relationship with Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson. Mr. Murdoch also has weekly conversations with Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner.

Before the news broke that Mr. Murdoch had agreed to sell vast parts of his 21st Century Fox to the Walt Disney Company for $52.4 billion, Mr. Trump called him to get his assurance that the Fox News Channel, the highly rated cable network and frequent bullhorn of the Trump agenda, would not be affected.

More from The New York Times: Fox-Disney deal gives Rupert Murdoch his King Lear moment Diane Straus, publisher of liberal policy magazines, dies at 66 Joan Walsh’s contract at MSNBC Is not renewed

On Dec. 14, the day the agreement was announced, Mr. Trump let the world know that he had made a congratulatory call to Mr. Murdoch. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, also passed along the president’s belief that the deal would be “a great thing” for jobs — a claim disputed by Wall Street analysts.

After decades of ups and downs, Mr. Trump now counts Mr. Murdoch as one of his closest confidants. The two titans made a show of their improved relationship in June 2016, when Mr. Murdoch visited Mr. Trump at the Trump International Golf Links Scotland before a group of reporters. They appeared together again at a black-tie dinner in May in honor of American and Australian veterans who fought side by side in World War II. Mr. Murdoch introduced the president as “my friend Donald J. Trump” before they engaged in a brief hug.

They are opposites in personal style, with Mr. Murdoch gruff and low-key, preferring schlubby newsrooms to Mr. Trump’s gilded towers and glitz. But they have much in common.

Both were born to wealth, but at a distance from the centers of power. Mr. Trump grew up in Jamaica, Queens, the son of a real estate developer content to earn his fortune in the boroughs outside Manhattan — so close but so far from glittering Midtown, where the son would make his name and his home. Mr. Murdoch, the son of a journalist who became the owner of a newspaper chain, spent his childhood in Melbourne, Australia. Mr. Murdoch, 86, and Mr. Trump, 71, are also alike in that they were both sent to military schools as boys before going on to outdo their fathers in the family businesses.

Although both men parlayed their inheritances into global power, they have stubbornly viewed themselves as outsiders at odds with the establishment. When Mr. Murdoch entered the British newspaper market in 1968, London society shunned him and his vulgar tabloids, The Sun and The News of the World, which he used to wound his enemies and advance his political interests. Mr. Trump withstood a similar wariness among the elite after he made himself a Manhattan player through his brazen deal making and hucksterism.

To make their way upward in New York, both men relied on a powerful friend, the lawyer Roy M. Cohn, a ruthless fixer who made his name in the 1950s as the chief counsel to Joseph McCarthy, the Red-baiting senator, before representing some of the city’s most powerful figures, including the mobster John Gotti and the New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.

Mr. Cohn connected Mr. Trump to Mr. Murdoch and the tabloid he bought in 1976, The New York Post. The upstart developer saw that he could benefit from the brash daily — especially its Page Six gossip column, which started a year after Mr. Murdoch became the paper’s owner.

“Trump was interested in specifically Rupert’s ownership of The Post, because Page Six is very important to his rising stature in New York City and branding efforts,” said Roger J. Stone Jr., a Republican operative who has known both men for decades.

Mr. Trump seemed to revel in the tabloid’s saucy coverage of his personal life. In 1989 and 1990, The Post turned out a series of front pages on Mr. Trump’s split from his first wife, Ivana Trump, and his affair with Marla Maples. The stream of headlines in bold block letters culminated in a quote attributed to Ms. Maples: “Best Sex I’ve Ever Had.”

Mr. Trump’s enthusiastic response to the planned Disney-Fox megadeal may have been lost in the swirl of Washington news had it not been for his vehement opposition to another recent attempt at media consolidation — AT&T’s proposed $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner, the parent company of CNN, a frequent target of the president’s “fake news” complaints. While so far making no move on the Disney-Fox plan, the Justice Department has sued to block the AT&T-Time Warner deal on antitrust grounds in a rare instance of governmental interference in a merger of two companies that do not directly compete with each other.

Mr. Murdoch, whose ideology is more malleable than his critics realize, has long gained from his knack for placing himself close to power. In the 1980s, when he was cozy with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, his London tabloids took a pro-Tory stance. In 1997, his newspapers endorsed the Labor Party leader Tony Blair for prime minister.

Lance Price, a former Blair spokesman, referred to Mr. Murdoch as “effectively a member of Blair’s cabinet.” In turn, Mr. Murdoch faced little government scrutiny as he expanded his media empire to reach 40 percent of British newspaper readers and millions of television viewers through his stake in Sky, a pay TV service. But after a 2011 phone hacking scandal at the now-shuttered News of the World put a spotlight on his remarkable political influence, he found himself facing regulatory hurdles, and his $15 billion bid for a 61 percent stake of Sky came to nothing.

Even as Mr. Murdoch enjoyed an open invitation to 10 Downing Street, he found that his overtures to United States presidents mostly fell short. And before making their alliance, Mr. Murdoch and Mr. Trump had to put their old spats behind them.

Before the recent rapprochement, Mr. Murdoch privately called Mr. Trump “phony,” and accused him of exaggerating his net worth. For his part, Mr. Trump once threatened to sue Mr. Murdoch for libel after The Post reported that the storied Maidstone Club in East Hampton, N.Y., had denied him membership.

During much of the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Murdoch — who initially swooned over Jeb Bush — stood against Mr. Trump, declaring that he was “embarrassing his friends” and “the whole country.” The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Murdoch’s crown jewel, ran an editorial calling the candidate a “catastrophe.” The Post led with the headline “Don Voyage” and declared, “Trump is toast.”

Mr. Trump on Twitter: “Wow, I have always liked the @nypost but they have really lied when they covered me in Iowa.” He also the Journal: “Look how small the pages have become @WSJ,” he wrote. “Looks like a tabloid — saving money I assume!”

The Post ended up endorsing Mr. Trump, with reservations, in the New York primary, but refrained from endorsing either him or Hillary Clinton in the general election.

More recently, Mr. Murdoch expressed exasperation with Mr. Trump’s immigration policies. In response to the White House ban on travel of people from majority-Muslim nations, his company, 21st Century Fox, released a memo offering assistance to any employees hurt by the executive order and reminding them that “21CF is a global company, proudly headquartered in the U.S., founded by — and comprising at all levels of the business — immigrants.” In August, James Murdoch, the younger son of Mr. Murdoch and the chief executive of 21st Century Fox, condemned the president’s response to the riots in Charlottesville, Va.

The man partly responsible for the détente was another moneyed outsider who craved status and respect: Jared Kushner.

When Mr. Kushner bought The New York Observer in 2006, he wasted little time reaching out to Mr. Murdoch. “He wanted to be Murdoch,” said one person close to both men at the time. In early 2016, after a presidential debate during which Mr. Trump faced aggressive questioning from Megyn Kelly, then a Fox News anchor, the candidate sent Mr. Kushner to Mr. Murdoch on a media diplomacy mission.

Mr. Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump, is close friends with Mr. Murdoch’s third wife, Wendi Deng. Mr. Murdoch and Ms. Deng attended the Kushner-Trump wedding in 2009 at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., and the Murdoch daughters, Grace and Chloe, served as flower girls.

Before Mr. Murdoch and Ms. Deng divorced in 2013, Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump vacationed on Rosehearty, Mr. Murdoch’s 184-foot sailing yacht. In a further sign of the two families’ closeness, Ms. Trump took on the job of Murdoch trustee responsible for overseeing the two girls’ $300 million fortune — a role she gave up a month before President Trump took office.

In June 2016, when Mr. Trump appeared to be the inevitable Republican nominee, Mr. Murdoch made the visit to Trump International Golf Links Scotland. Completed in 2012 over the objections of nearby residents, the course lies 35 miles from the herring-fishing port of Rosehearty, the town left behind by the Murdoch clan when it emigrated to Australia in 1884.

Mr. Murdoch arrived with the former model Jerry Hall, his fourth wife, whom he married in March 2016. Under cloudy skies, the newlyweds toured the property in a golf cart large enough for four. Mr. Trump was at the wheel, with Ms. Hall seated beside him. Mr. Murdoch, wearing sunglasses, sat on a backward-facing rumble seat as they made their way to the Trump-refurbished Macleod House, a 15th century mansion, where they had dinner.

Mr. Trump’s mended relationship with Mr. Murdoch has not gone unnoticed by Time Warner executives, who wonder why AT&T’s attempt to buy the company has run into regulatory trouble at a time when the president has smiled on the Disney-Fox deal.

“If you look at the facts of our case, even before you heard the administration’s endorsement of the Disney-Fox deal, it was hard to understand how the Justice Department could reach a decision to block our deal,” Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the chief executive of Time Warner, said.

A spokesman for the White House, Raj Shah, said that Mr. Trump hadn’t spoken to Attorney General Jeff Sessions about the AT&T-Time Warner deal and that “no White House official was authorized to speak with the Department of Justice on this matter.”

The way CNN’s parent company views it, Fox News has adopted a role similar to the one played by Mr. Murdoch’s British tabloids when they helped advance the agendas of British leaders. As Mr. Blair learned, however, even a special relationship with the media baron can sour quickly. He and Mr. Murdoch — once so close that Mr. Blair was the godfather to Grace Murdoch — are no longer on speaking terms.

During the British government’s 2012 inquiry into the mogul’s political influence, the former prime minister described what it was like when a story subject falls out of favor with a Murdoch-controlled tabloid.

“Once they’re against you, that’s it,” Mr. Blair said. “It’s full on, full frontal, day in, day out, basically a lifetime commitment.”

Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.

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Chelsea Clinton’s empowering advice for young activists in the Trump era

The author and advocate wants young people to stand up for what's right, and know they're not alone.

Image: Harnik / AP / REX / Shutterstock

It’s been quite an eventful few months for Chelsea Clinton.

From consistently taking the Trump administration to task on Twitter to announcing a new children’s book about influential women throughout history, Clinton has been increasingly vocal about the need to take action in these politically charged times.

Now, the author, advocate and mother of two is going back on tour for her first children’s book, It’s Your World: Get Informed, Get Inspired & Get Going! as it comes out in paperback.

SEE ALSO: How to find protests in your city when you don’t know where to start

“For young people, or even not-so-young people, who are now really energized in a new way, I hope It’s Your World can be a resource for the ways in which other young people have taken their sense of activation and really turned it into meaningful action,” Clinton said in an interview with Mashable.

Going on the road again w #ItsYourWorld! Cant wait to meet young people making a positive difference in our world: https://t.co/7HQZ7rVebZ

Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) February 14, 2017

The book has become a national bestseller since 2015, highlighting crucial global issues and the young changemakers working to tackle them.

That includes Haile Thomas of Arizona, who at seven years old started making healthy meals after her father was diagnosed with diabetes, and ended up launching a movement to help major U.S. hotel chains provide healthier food for kids and families. There’s also Celia Ho Yen Kei of Hong Kong, who was horrified to learn China was a major ivory market, eventually meeting with government officials and even basketball star Yao Ming to spread much-needed awareness.

“I hope It’s Your World helps young activists think, ‘Wow, Haile did this or Celia did that I can do that, too,'” Clinton said. “‘Maybe I’m 8 or 12 or 16, but I have a really valid view of what’s happening in the world.’ Because yes, you do.”

We spoke to Clinton about how young people can make their voices heard in 2017 and turn small efforts into big solutions. Here are her tips for young activists in Trump’s America.

1. You’re never too young to put things on the political agenda

Even when you’re not old enough to vote or hold office, Clinton believes you can still make sure important issues make it onto the political agenda. She encourages young people to speak out, and seek out other voices that can help elevate awareness for politicians and the world at large.

“They really can make very real differences.”

“I think we’re seeing that now in a compelling way in the United States,” she said. “Kids are going to town hall meetings for their Congress members, for their senators, and asking questions. And they’re really being listened to and heard, not only by their elected representatives, but in the broader debate.”

Clinton thinks children have extremely powerful voices, and they can use them for real change.

“They really can make very real differences at the policy level, but also just in how we think about challenges and how we tackle them,” she said. “Whether that’s in our homes, or in our schools, or more broadly.”

2. Use social media to create real-world change

We are long overdue for equality for girls & women. Grateful to all working to give girls a voice: https://t.co/m80UnjmJRX #DayoftheGirl

Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) October 11, 2016

A prolific social media user herself and especially outspoken on Twitter ever since the inauguration, Clinton hopes young people are raising their voices online and offline. She wants them to talk to their parents, grandparents, teachers and friends alike about what they’re frustrated by or inspired by.

As Generations Y and Z flock to social media, Clinton suggests they use the platforms to help organize or at least recognize efforts to organize already in progress, and join in.

“Whether that’s the ‘no ban, no wall, no raids’ protests, or going to the town hall meetings of Congress members who have what I would argue is an indefensible position on health care, education and so much else that’s being contested at this moment in time,” she said.

Ultimately, Clinton believes social media should be a catalyst for taking action in the real world.

“I think social media is really powerful for not only helping to draw attention to what we think is wrong and right, but also helping us draw together offline to show up in force in person, to stand against what’s wrong, and stand up for what’s right,” she said.

3. Even for global issues, the work begins at home

Chelsea Clinton talks with Boy Scouts volunteer Ben Esposti, age 10, while helping prepare free medical kits for children around the world.

Image: BRENNAN LINSLEY / AP / REX / SHUTTERSTOCK

It’s Your World, as the title suggests, doesn’t just focus on American-specific issues. From climate change and global health to women’s rights and education, Clinton’s book sheds light on problems on an international scale.

But that can be overwhelming, especially for youth. How can someone so young engage with these issues effectively?

Step one, Clinton said, is getting informed. Young people should use the resources available to them to read up on pressing problems and look into nonprofits doing impactful work. And to make things more digestible, they can zero in on small but meaningful actions. For example, when it comes to the more than 263 million children and adolescents who are out of school worldwide, young people can think about how they can help individual schools or efforts.

“It’s clear at the moment that the Trump administration doesn’t share that priority.”

But for kids in the U.S., a big part of taking action is getting involved locally.

“[Young people should] recognize how the decisions in Washington affect whether or not kids are going to be in school around the world,” Clinton said. “Right now, the current proposed budget has significant cuts for USAID in it, and significant cuts to some of the gender-based programs that USAID was leading to help close the gender gap for girls and women, including empowerment opportunities like school or training.”

If young people care about helping kids around the world get into school, Clinton explained, they need to find out if their own government believes it’s something in the United States’ interests.

“It’s clear that President Obama believed helping more kids around the world get into school was in our interests. And it’s clear at the moment that the Trump administration doesn’t share that priority,” she said.

SEE ALSO: 7 inspiring children’s books to motivate your young activist

She reiterated the need for kids to go to town halls, engaging with their representatives and asking them tough questions.

“Do they support cutting USAID? Do they think it is in America’s best interest to have more girls be in school around the world, and have more women have empowerment training? And if they do, then ask them if they’re going to support Trump’s budget. Because how could they, if they say they don’t believe what’s in it? I think that would be a really powerful moment for some kids,” she said.

4. Remember that you aren’t alone

This is also happening during the #GRAMMYs– and consistently thanks to the @ACLU. Thank you @ACLU https://t.co/H6yUtSdsBV

Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) February 13, 2017

As much as the current social and political climate may galvanize younger generations to take action, it’s important to note the fear many kids might feel. LGBTQ youth, undocumented youth, Muslim kids and young people of other marginalized communities are currently living in a country where the administration’s policies, the president’s harmful rhetoric, and ensuing hatred have targeted them and their families.

Clinton said it’s heartbreaking that in 2017, children as well as adults are afraid to live in the U.S. because of their identities.

“It certainly isn’t fear derived from gender identity or sexual orientation or immigration status. There is nothing inherently fearful, and certainly nothing wrong, about being a girl,” she said.

“There are tens of millions of us who think it is appalling that anyone is afraid, and think we have to work to change that.”

But she’s hopeful and takes heart in the fact that there’s a clear sense of solidarity that has cropped up over the past several months. She also said it’s inspiring that there are vital institutions, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood standing on the front lines.

“There are tens of millions of us who think it is appalling that anyone is afraid, and think we have to work to change that,” Clinton said. “We have to continue to support and love and lift up one another. And part of that comes with protecting one another.”

With that kind of widespread dedication to the resistance, Clinton urges young people to remember that people are standing behind them.

“I hope people know where they can go for that protection or for that vital information. And I hope people who have platforms, through Mashable or It’s Your World or other work we do, continue to share information so people do know where they can go in a literal sense, if needed, to be protected to know what their rights and resources are, and hopefully, on just a basic human level, know that they’re not alone,” she said.

“More of us than not in our country believe that. And we just have to continue to fight, so that the reality matches what we believe and know is true and right.”

WATCH: Across the globe, activists hit the streets one day after Trump’s inauguration

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from Chelsea Clinton’s empowering advice for young activists in the Trump era