#moral truth and right over law politics and convenience but THIS time not putting up a fight for himself

[greatshell-rider]

Inda shook his head. “I won’t.” Tanrid took a step toward him, mouth thin, eyes dangerous. “It’s our honor at stake.” “Honor,” Inda croaked, “requires me to stand to the truth. Dogpiss died.” He gulped on a sob. “And it was not. My. Fault. I. Will. Not. Take. The. Blame.” ... “...Yet. I promise you, Inda, on my honor, on my soul, you will get justice.” ... Sponge’s arms closed round him, and held him, in compassionate, loving silence while he slept.

- Inda, book 1

“Yes.” Inda’s voice was so low, and tired. “Yes, Evred, I’ll stand up against the wall. Or if you’re going to flay me at the post, then do it. I won’t argue. I know what I did. Please. Just do it.” “I do not want to do it,” Evred retorted with barely suppressed violence.

- Treason’s Shore, book 4

[teruthecreator]

okay. thoughts on the grad finale

gonna slap it under a readmore bc i’m Sure i’m gonna ramble. 

uh spoiler warning for the finale of taz graduation, as well as spoilers for the season in general.

also, these are my own thoughts of how the season went, what the themes were, etc! if you don’t agree with me, that’s fine! but i don’t wanna have a convo w you in the replies about it i’ll be honest. if you want to share your opinion so badly, make your own post, alright? that good? we cool?

aight. so. finale thoughts.

to make it short: i think the finale was a satisfying end of a very good arc. 

to expand upon that, let me share what i think the themes of graduation were and why the finale satisfies those themes. 

i made a post about this a while back (here it is if you want) but my honest belief was that the theme of graduation was self-reliance: the concept that you don’t allow yourself to be governed by forces that go against your own beliefs. this concept was coined by essayist ralph waldo emerson to talk about how the american people shouldn’t allow the government to create laws that go against the will of the people. now, understandably, this feels very anti-capitalist which is what i think a lot of fans believed was reflected through the season. 

but, in reality, self-reliance has more to do with being active in your government and making sure you’re being represented the way you want to be by your representatives. that’s sort of the vibe emerson was going for in his essay, and i think. in a sense? that translates to graduation. but i took self-reliance in the more metaphorical about breaking away from those things that are controlling you. which, in graduation, was A Lot Of Things. 

the way i saw it, there were two major groups that inflicted order upon the world and the thundermen--conveniently separated as order and chaos (not the deities though, just the concepts). 

the order half of control existed mostly through the school and the HOG. the HOG created the economic reliance on the heroes and villains system, which removed all literal meaning from those terms and turned them into bureaucratic titles. society existed under these very strict checks and balances; heroes and villains supplied money to the kingdom in terms of entertainment, which then boosted that kingdom’s creditability and allowed them to contribute more to nua’s economy, which then led heroes and villains to have a higher demand, thus perpetuating the cycle. it’s important to note that this term does not represent the sort of morality we expect for heroes and villains--hell, even the term “evil” turned into an arbitrary term used to show those heroes and villains who failed the system. this is the more prominent representation of control that the thundermen break away from in achieving their own self-reliance. they don’t see the value in a system that holds no real moral code (fitzroy Especially, but i’ll get into that in a bit), and can’t help the public when there’s actually a serious situation. as we saw with althea in the beginning, the HOG had no way to help the thundermen when they were dealing with the whole Demon Prince situation (as he had already placed some of his own people in there, proving these kind of systems are easily corruptible). so this wasn’t a system meant to Actually create heroes and villains--it was just a way of boosting the economy. 

the chaos half of control existed primarily through grey and Chaos. grey represented how chaos could be controlled, through various means. he planted that tree for the centaurs to fight over because he knew it would constantly create conflict, which he enjoyed. he kept the school under a watchful eye to prevent anyone from stepping out of line with his grand ideas, and used several manipulation tactics to try and get his way (most notably, his own admittance of grooming fitzroy into joining his side, which didn’t work). grey was the perfect example of how chaos does not automatically mean a lack of control. he was very controlling in how he did things because he had an endgoal: find hieronymous and have a war. but he didn’t even realize he was contributing to a greater idea, that being Chaos’s insistence on causing general disarray. as we realize now, Chaos’s plan was both for them and Order, but i’m leaving Order out for a second because they only really rear their head in towards the end. for the most part, audiences were led to assume that Chaos was the Big Bad(TM); they were the one pulling the strings, allowing things to happen to cause general chaos and disarray. them supplying random mortals with their endless power was a way to plant chaos into the world of nua; but it was a chaos they controlled. fitzroy resisting them was not simply a refusal to bend to Chaos, but it was resisting the control put on him through his magic. 

these systems were constricting the thundermen on both sides. when they thought they’d find help in one side, they were disappointed to find that there was nothing anyone could do. the only people who could fix their problems were...them. so they forged a new path, set new ideas, and became self-reliant. that’s what i think is the most important aspect of graduation; not the anti-capitalist implications of turning over the economic and political systems in place, but the idea that if nothing that is supposed to help you is actually helping that you can just...do your own thing! 

and i think that’s what the finale really shows, at the end of the day. that these forms of control were not doing anything helpful, and were in fact ruining the fabric of space-time! that’s where i think Order comes in because Order is really...the ultimate culmination of control. they are aware that Everything being done will benefit their cause. the HOG? well, they make sure everybody’s so incompetent that they can do their work. grey? well, he’ll contribute to the plan without even realizing it. they even manipulated Chaos and enacted their own form of control over Chaos to make sure that they had no reason to believe that this plan couldn’t go wrong. but Order knew. Order always knew there was a chance for error, and that chance was very great. but they didn’t care! so long as they had control of things, they could try a hundred times to get it right. they had no care for mortals, unlike Chaos. 

the thundermen showing Chaos the truth is the final jenga piece that collapses this tower of control. which is why the finale is so great. 

travis does a phenomenal job of incorporating chaos (general chaos) into the battle mechanics. it may be stupid and slightly arbitrary, but having them change forms randomly and having to adapt to those new circumstances really does exemplify the season!!! the thundermen were constantly forced into new situations (being sidekicks/henches, fitzroy becoming a villain, being let in on the heiro dog situation, the unbroken chain trial, joining forces w grey, etc.), and in all of them they simply found a way to adapt and keep working their way. which made the finale generally interesting and also thematically interesting! 

i think my favorite part of the entire fight scene is right at the end, when argo chucks the shark’s tooth necklace at Order. and time stops. and they’re given a choice. 

the fact that they leave it to a coin toss?? oh my god...how fucking FITTING!! like, that’s disorderly. that’s going your own way. it’s new, it’s terrifying, it has DIRE UNKNOWNS ON EITHER SIDE, but it’s what they do! and...it ends up working out! i think it would’ve worked out either way, but the fact that they left it up to chance really shows how they aren’t allowing anything to control their actions. 

AND THEN WE GET TO THE EPILOGUE. MY GOD I LOVE THE EPILOGUE I’M GONNA GO OFF SO MUCH. 

first off, i loved hearing how Nua adapts to losing this very significant form of government/economic contributor and turns to more people-based work. citizens uniting together, fixing things, making amends, THAT’S SELF-RELIANCE BABEY!!! THAT’S THE WHOLE EMERSON SHIT! HAVING A SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT THAT ACTUALLY HAS THE INTERESTS OF THE PEOPLE AT LARGE!!! YEAHHHHHHHHH THAT’S THE WHOLE SELF-RELIANCE THING!

now, i’ll break it down by characters: 

fitzroy

GOD. LOVE IT. FIRST OFF, absolutely ADORED how his character arc involved him stripping himself of these self-assigned titles because he actually has an identity that is all his own and he doesn’t NEED arbitrary titles to prove his worth because HE HAS IT IN HIMSELF. not to self-plug or anything, but that’s ssoss!fitzroy’s WHOLE SHIT. I’VE ALREADY BEEN ON THIS TRAIN, BITCH, AND TO KNOW I GOT IT SO RIGHT...GOD. FEELS GOOD. 

but also, i just really enjoy how his ending went in general. the fact that he doesn’t really know what he wants to do, so he just...does stuff he likes to do? that’s so good! because, if you remember, fitzroy had a Very set schedule of life events when the campaign started. he was going to get his wiggenstaffs degree, go back knight school, get his knight school degree, and then go to goodcastle. but all of that was based on a very limited understanding of himself. 

fitzroy’s character arc has primarily focused finding himself, specifically in terms of identity. for someone who was bullied for his past, the present formation of himself was Extremely important to fitzroy. he thought that shutting out his past and taking on this grandiose title of knighthood would make him something more than himself. he would no longer be fitzroy; the poor, country kid trying to make it in a big world. he’d be Sir Fitzroy Maplecourt; respected, honored, revered, with a title to prove it. 

he explains to fauxronymous (pre-reveal grey) that the reason he wanted to be a knight was because he wanted to assist in doing good. morally good. fitzroy has Always had a very clear sense of his morality; this comes through when he refuses Chaos on the basis of many people having to die if he agreed. but being a knight also had the added of bonus of a very respectable title that no one would want to look beyond, which fitzroy felt he needed because...i don’t think he Saw anything beyond that. in himself. he wasn’t himself for a very long time, and i don’t know if he ever thought he would be again. he’d wear this new identity, start a new life, and be happier....he hoped. 

then, things changed! and he started to realize that arbitrary titles don’t do shit because plenty of people with Big Important Titles ended up being Awful People! so he started to value himself For Himself; his wit, his humor, his strength, his magical prowess. and, i think, he started to wonder what knighthood was Really about. was it about upholding a moral good? or was it just another bureaucracy filled with people who won’t do shit when things get bad. 

i think this is why him becoming a lawyer is fitting. especially because of the reasoning he gives sylvia nite. now for A LOT OF PEOPLE, i’m sure they hear lawyer and assume some corporate hotshot who doesn’t give a shit about people. but fitzroy is Not applying to be a corporate laywer. he SPECIFICALLY telsl sylvia that he wants to help people who cannot help themselves, and he wants to do good in that way. THAT kind of lawyer is more of the pro-bono, district lawyer. the ones that don’t make crazy amounts of cash, but help those who cannot afford lawyers and represent them when the government is fucking them over. those lawyers don’t rely on title, they rely on principle. 

that’s the perfect representation of fitzroy’s growth. holding his identity within himself, while still trying to do good by those who need it. 

firbolg (aka gary) 

i think the firbolg’s ending is so unique but so...right for him. his character arc has really been focused around finding his family. he had one, in the beginning, in his clan. but that didn’t end up, y’know...working out that much. so he had to go out into the world alone--something that firbolg’s are rarely--and try and navigate these foreign spaces all by himself. 

we see very early on how he latches onto the idea of groups. he likes being considered a part of the thundermen; he very much hoists himself upon the CFO title and wears it proudly. i think, where fitzroy needed to find identity within himself, the firbolg needed to find it within other people. which is completely okay! he’s still an individual, but you can tell he finds comfort in numbers because that’s what he is used to. 

him going back to his clan was, i believe, his finally severance with his identity as “firbolg”. he would never be welcomed back to his clan, and one of the few people in his life who supported him was now dead. but his father was proud of him; his father was happy he seemed to find his own clan, even if it wasn’t with other firbolgs. from that moment on, i think the firbolg begins to try finding himself within the thundermen. within his friends.

so his epilogue is neat! it definitely captures the loneliness he feels on his own, and how he feels lost with himself without others. i think it might seem silly to some that he would become a gary, but i think it’s fitting. the garys were always present in his time at school, and they were always helpful. they didn’t mind how long it took him to talk because the gary’s are stone gargoyles--what the fuck do they care about time? it was a group that the firbolg saw as familiar to him--always willing to help, slow, stony, and attuned to a larger group. 

and i think the way gary takes this idea of unity and family and puts it into financial assistance just...it just ties everything together! we saw how attached he got to the concept of finances, thanks to his very confusing accounting class. so he had all of this new knowledge--this knowledge that represented a separation from firbolgs--and this new clan. and he used it to help other clans and families!! i think the fact that the Garys financial advice works specifically with groups is what makes this so fitting. because gary wants families to feel stable within themselves; he understands how finances can create struggle and divides, and he wants to provide relief. 

giving financial advice to communities so they rely on themselves and not the government (aka inviting them to be controlled once more) is a VERY self-reliant concept. not that i think gary’s goal is to have no social networks to exist, but he wants to give communities the ability to rely on one another and foster that feeling of togetherness. so groups aren’t fighting over things, but are trusting and loving and relying. 

just like gary’s always wanted. and just like what he has with the thundermen.

argo 

argo’s ending is probably the funniest, but also the sweetest. i think that argo’s character arc revolved around finding his place. we see how argo’s early personality and motivations revolved around his past. he very much had a revenge story since the start; he wanted to enact revenge on the commodore for murdering his mother, no matter what it took. which made him very limited!! in terms of the self. he saw himself less for what he was now, and what he was then. and what he couldn’t do then. 

we see how much he finds comfort in being a part of the thundermen, but also how he feels...out of place. i think this is because a part of him is still attached to his past and doesn’t think he can do anything beyond his set plan. the unbroken chain certainly contributes to this, by not only separating him from the trio but also reinforcing his connection to his past through his mother’s involvement in the unbroken chain. 

the commodore also being a part of the unbroken chain is, i think, what causes the shift from past to present within argo. his life’s goal is standing right in front of him--attached to the group his mother once was a part of--with his friends at his side. letting the thundermen in on his history is the start of bridging these two halves of argo. and the fact that the thundermen are so willing to helps makes argo feel more a part of the team and more a part of this reality. 

when he kills the commodore, it isn’t intense. it isn’t overly dramatic (minus the fight prior, which was BADASS), it isn’t crazily staged. it is argo, staring down the commodore who lies prone on the ground. 

he kills himself unceremoniously and completes his life-long mission. 

what becomes of him in the epilogue is the culimination of both past and present. he takes what he knows and loves (the sea, the mariah, sailing) and blends it with what he’s come to love now (his friends, this adventure, and making people happy). there are SO many instances where argo uses performance to his advantage. this man is piloted by clint mcelroy, of COURSE he’s going to have a flair for the dramatic. 

so for him to open up a themed cruiseline, based on the stories of him and his friends? SO FITTING. and it isn’t forcing himself to leave his past behind or to completely ignore his present circumstances. because he’s found a place in the now, in the merging of these two sides. and by merging them, he paints a bright future for himself. a future that is partially known, partially not. partially old, partially new.

but it’s all his. 

after that, i think their final scene is just...sweet. a nice, jovial, joking send-off to a nice season. it proves these people have grown and will continue to grow, even when we no longer see their story. it does exactly what graduation does--shows you a struggle, a triumph, and a glimpse into the future. 

i’ll miss it so much, but there’s nothing more i could’ve asked of this ending. it was exactly what it needed to be; nothing more, nothing less. 

[transsexualhamlet]

so about norman’s ethics

The thing that a lot of people don’t understand about Norman is that he doesn’t believe in the like, political sentiments that he acts on in the slightest. Yeah, this doesn’t make it ok that he did a bunch of shitty stuff, but it’s a misconception to say norman like, genuinely believes fucking eugenics are a good thing.

And yet, he decides to act on the idea to degenerate and genocide the demons and seems not to understand why Emma wouldn’t agree with him. People’s explanations of this seem to be pretty much one of two minds, either:

His morals are corrupt: Norman wants all the demons dead because what they did makes him think they’re all bad and don’t deserve the respect humans get, which is understandable but still wrong, or

His morals are intact but he ignores them: Norman feels bad that he’s doing a bad thing and does it anyway because he can’t find a better way out, which honestly makes what he did worse, though Tragic.

The second one is more accurate, but still doesn’t completely explain his ideas.The truth is that, in my opinion, he just barely understands the concept of morals in general, and what’s ‘messed up’ is simply his priorities. That sounds like I’m saying he’s a twisted cycle path but I swear I’m not, it’s just like him having low empathy. This is another, autism thing, and it’s another thing that I have, so I’ll try to explain it as best as I can?

Personally, I understand and try to follow sociatal expectations for moral things like, you know, do not kill people and what not. Because it’s bad or... whatever. And although I can cognitively understand the reasons why people think so, I don’t value it in the same way. Obviously I wouldn’t kill a person, there’s no need for me to in a world like this, and it would be inconvenient and probably make me feel bad despite not understanding why it is bad. But I’ve known from a very young age if I had the power and reason to kill someone, I absolutely would, no questions asked. Not even the necessity, just a logical reason. Most of the time this means nothing and isn’t applicable in the real world, because most of the people around me would be negatively affected by it. But it means nothing to me personally, and if prompted I could change at the slightest reason.

This is what I think we’re dealing with in Norman’s situation. 

Norman, in grace field, has no reason to violate any intagible laws of right and wrong, in most cases, until the escape arc happens. Yeah, I do believe Norman probably lied significantly more than the average child, because he didn’t see any reason not to, but I doubt it hurt anyone bad, they lived in, well, basically a neverland. He’s just a slightly off white little man. But when he is faced with a risky and dangerous situation, he might look Correct on the outside but the closer you look the more you realize his actions are directly impacted by the situation around him, completely independent of any internal moral compass. 

Ray wants to only escape with those three, because although he feels extreme guilt for being the way he is and completely understands it’s a selfish and terrible thing to do, he’s too cynical to accept any other options. Norman initially agrees with him, because Ray explains the risks. Emma then insinuates she wants to bring the other kids, giving ideas as to how. Norman then switches to Emma’s plan because he believes it can be achieved and he wants Emma to be happy, not because it would be wrong to do otherwise. At the same time, he later ships himself out, without much consideration to the others’ wishes against it, because now that it’s gotten impossible to have both, Emma’s and Ray’s safety is more important now than their happiness. Though he can understand that they’d not like that, it’s not that important to him in the long run. He will choose the path that offers them the greatest chance, if the one his friends want isn’t good enough.

When he was shipped out and taken to lambda, what happened is he was put in a situation where the stakes become much higher. There’s a different kind of situation, and the idea of simply running away from the demons is obviously not an option. When he escapes, and basically adopts the lambda kids- now he’s surrounded by people with the opposite morals and ideas as Emma. These kids want revenge, they would be happy to kill the demons, their ideal situation involves that and trying to reach any compromise would be unsatisfactory. The overwhelming majority of the kids agree with killing the demons, and that idea makes him seem stronger and gives him more certainty and control over the situation, even if it’s difficult and hurts him personally, making him a “Bad Person” to Emma. 

Norman harbors no personal hatred towards the demons, nor any specific desire to kill them. He just doesn’t see any viable reason not to, and killing them provides both him and the people he cares about with a more beneficial situation. Emma is now the minority, and even though she provides an idea that could work, Norman, after seeing so much pain and suffering, is no longer willing to take the risk for her, like he was in grace field. He is incapable of understanding why she values a sense of right and wrong more than the actual statistics of how well one or the other could work- yes, they had different experiences, but she lost other people because she decided to take risks, and she still believes in it? It simply doesn’t fucking compute.

An important aspect to consider is that it still does make him feel bad not to follow a more traditionally accepted route. He might have low empathy but he’s not an emotionless robot. Not understanding morals doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a concience, though it’s much more ambiguous and generally equates to any other thing, such as the actual convenience, details, or certainty of a plan. It’s not of any more importance, and he is in a situation now where it’s inconvenient to pay attention to, more so than in grace field. So not following a Nicer route does take a toll on his Feelings TM, same as it takes a toll on his literal body, but that’s a sacrifice he’s fine with, it’s a sacrifice that’s significantly smaller than the chance that someone he cares for could die.

Generally, most Lukewarm Takes on Norman can be disproven with this idea (pretty much anything that insinuates he would see the demons as less or like, he’s doing it because they did awful things to him, understandable but hey this isn’t tokyo ghoul and he’s not that kind of character), though everyone is obviously free to have their own takes and I doubt Shirai took his autistic coding into consideration, so it’s obviously my own idea.

Although Norman’s actions have correlation with Ray’s before, Norman isn’t disregarding his physical needs and trying to sacrifice himself out of any idea that it would make up for what he did, he’s doing it because it gives him more control over his own situation, he values his own well being less than his family’s, and he doesn’t understand why it would be Bad to do so. If we’re really digging deep, it’s likely he doesn’t want to have to experience any real consequences for his actions. He understands that they’re Bad, but this isn’t important to him, more than anything else. He doesn’t want to see Emma’s disappointment because it would complicate things.

After Emma and Ray, well, complicate things, ie face him and force him to see there are real consequences to his actions past Ambiguous Moral Obligations (ex. “you’re Taking Advantage the lambda kids” means nothing until he sees that it’s stopped them from being able to grow as people and forgive, “you’re neglecting yourself” means nothing until there’s an idea brought up that could fix him, “you’re trying to kill so many fucking people” means nothing until he sees that it’s hurting the human kids.) and that there’s a valid flaw in his personality past that- that it’s not a strong but a cowardly move, he can move forward and attempt to change things, possibly give himself a fucking break. 

In that situation, with other solutions that Emma and Ray have opened up actually seeming to work, he no longer finds it necessary to Be Terrible and hurt himself. This makes him feel better, because he doesn’t want to be Incorrect, it’s just a difficult thing for him to understand, when most other things come to him naturally. I think in the future he can be more cognizant of the fact that he’s more suceptible to doing generally, unacceptable things, and vows to lean more on Emma and Ray so he doesn’t end up going down the wrong path again, because to him they all look the same color.

Yes, this is my long ass way of telling Shirai why the fuck did you let Norman be a CEO. That’s a terrible fucking idea, he’ll become capitalism, guys?! Don’t let him do that. He needs to be in a job where like, he can use his skills without having to make Ethical Decisions like... an engineer or something. Computer scientist. IDK. Just not a fucking CEO, not in a management position for anything.

Honestly, it’s difficult for me to even use the alignment chart because I don’t understand morals enoughto put anyone in the Evil category because the idea of ‘evil’ doesn’t exist for me. So yeah, I’m projecting, but in conclusion I just have a bone to pick with anyone who wouldn’t call norman lawful neutral. 

[elains]

oc’s asks who??? ✨ Tell us about Ragnar & Aleksei (easy mode for now 👀)

SHDHYSHSYSYSYAT MY BOYS!!

Answer under the cut because otherwise it’d get too big ♥

• ALEKSEI

Full Name:Aleksei Konstantin Mihlsartt das Voynartion. Aleksei and Konstantin are bothtraditional names from Loriath; Konstantin in particular pays homage to afamous ancestor, Konstantin the Wolf. Mihlsartt and das Voynartion are hisfamily names, the former being his mother’s and the later his father’s.

Gender and Sexuality:Male, Heterosexual.

Pronouns:He/Him.

Ethnicity/Species:Caucasian, with some Elven Blood on his mother’s side and a distant trace of divineblood on his father’s.

Birthplaceand Birthdate: 12th March in the City of Harnov, the Kingdom ofLoriath’s ancient capital.

GuiltyPleasures: Aleksei enjoys reading poetry. A lot. He could quotemany an author on the spot.

Phobias:Not really terrified or afraid of anything. Aleksei was trained to be an elitewarrior from his childhood, and things that would frighten most people arenothing special to him. He may have a bit of a problem with traps since they werethe bane of his trainings.

What TheyWould Be Famous For: The guy who fell in love with a girlfrom a rival family and who was willing to put an age old feud to rest just soshe could be happy. If putting a (hopefully not temporary) end to the intenseanimosity between the das Voynartion and the Aelroth isn’t enough, then his ownnatural talent as one of the most promising warriors of Loriath’s newgeneration and the Crown Prince’s best friend.

What TheyWould Get Arrested For: Fighting in a bar due to an argumentGavriel started and then conveniently stepped aside, because his best friendcan’t fight hand to hand to hand to save his life, and under Lord Nikolai’sorders for placing a spell on his daughter (Which is just him being a desperatefather).

OC You ShipThem With: ALETHEA AELROTH. They’re probably my favourite ship!He fell in love with her when they were young, but due to the bad blood betweentheir families, he couldn’t just talk to her, couldn’t be her friend.Fascinated as he was, Aleksei deliberately annoyed and teased her just to havean excuse to talk to Thea, to have her attention on him. Seduction was toocheap a way to conquer Alethea, she deserved better, and even if he stopped theteasing when he realised the hopelessness of his situation, Aleksei neverstopped loving her. He’s stumped that she eventually fell in love with him too,and still doesn’t quite believe it. Alek is surprised that his family reactedand adapted much better than he ever expected to the “The Heir is in love withan Aelroth” ordeal.

OC MostLikely To Murder Them: Nikolai and Cygnus Aelroth, thefather and brother of Alethea. He’d already be in danger if he were anyoneelse, but as the heir to the das Voynartion, his predicament is even worse.Truth be told, Aleksei is more scared of Callidora’s wrath than anyone else’s.

FavoriteMovie/Book Genre: He doesn’t really have a favouritegenre, being able to enjoy the worst horror and the fluffiest romances. If I’dto say anything, I’d say the epic adventures across fantastical lands and worlds.

LeastFavorite Movie/Book Cliche: Doesn’t like the portrayal of therich and popular, mostly because Aleksei is one of them and knows that peopleare much more complex than what the books and movies show. Well, sure, thereare some people who are rotten, but it hits a bit close to home and his ownfriends. He also detests the hero who gets strong and talented quickly. No,even with natural talent it takes years of practice to get to that level ofskill. He would know.

Talentsand/or Powers: Alek is a warrior trained from childhood, whichwas absolutely expected of the heir of the das Voynartion, but he was lucky (orunlucky) to have a mother whose family also subscribed to the “Training fromHell” philosophy. As such, he’s deadly with almost any weapon in hand, andaided by his Super-velocity is credible threat. His black hair also marks arare power in his bloodline: Fear. Alek can induce fear in people or take itaway, as well as construct images straight from nightmares.

Why SomeoneMight Love Them: He’s one of the goods ones, not a VirtuousCinnamon Roll by any means, but a young man whose heart is in the right place.Aleksei is charismatic, easy going and loyal,  someone who will be there for his friends ifthey need him and call them out if they do something wrong— though he’d neverrat them out. He’s courteous and polite when in conversation and would rathernot get into pointless fights. Alek has a good sense of humour and laughseasily and truly.

Why SomeoneMight Hate Them: Aleksei is cocky and, more often than not,manipulative, knowing the effect his good looks and title have on people andusing it to his advantage. He is ruthless and underhanded when feelingthreatened, which can lead to rather unfortunate mistakes andmisunderstandings. While not one of the meanest ones, Alek doesn’t intervenes either,unless he thinks it’s too much for himself. And since connections wouldguarantee him and his friends free passes out of almost any situation, peopledo have reason to dislike and even hate him.

How TheyChange: Much of it is due to Aleteha’s influence, his desireto do right by her. Aleksei stops trying to be manipulative when he doesn’treally need to be, and to stand up even against what he deep down knows iswrong, or at least not the way it should be.

Why You LoveThem: Aleksei charmed me from the very beginning because Ican imagine him, with all his flaws and qualities, his loyalty to his bestfriend and because his willingness to bury centuries of bad blood for a girlhe’s loved since forever.

• RAGNAR

Full Name:Ragnar Gawain Verselien Nightmare Artwaltz. Ragnar is a common name within hismother’s family, as well as a reminder of their home on Earth. Verselien andArtwaltz are his mother Lyzz’s family names, and Nightmare his father’s.

Gender andSexuality: Male, Bisexual.

Pronouns:He/Him.

Ethnicity/Species:Nordic.

Birthplaceand Birthdate: 30th August, the City of Castra Aersa, theKingdom of Ekalyon.

GuiltyPleasures: Playing with his sister’s cats when she’s notaround.

Phobias:Ever since she stabbed his hand many years ago, Ragnar is terrified of his elder sister Yevgeniya. He took her threat to killhim if he tried to mess with her again quite seriously.

What TheyWould Be Famous For: Pulling a big prank on some fancy,important party (Perhaps a Royal Ball, should Toire allow it), thus causing alot of chaos in the process.

What TheyWould Get Arrested For: Blowing something up he shouldn’thave or accidentally harming people with his actions.

OC You ShipThem With: Blair Larrystein. Ragnar doesn’t care for what peoplebelieve she’s missing, to him Blair is perfect the way she is. He is jealous ofher, and this being Blair, she loves to provoke him. They’ve such a fun butlovely dynamic!

OC MostLikely To Murder Them: Yevgeniya Artwaltz, his oldersister, for messing with her and her stuff. Yeva has no patience whatsoever forRagnar’s pranks and schemes and doesn’t appreciate when they’re aimed at her.She’s violent, Ragnar knows it and decided he doesn’t want to try his luck.

FavoriteMovie/Book Genre: Horror! Delights himself inpredicting what and when and how things will go wrong, finding the despairingsituations the characters are in quite funny and wild.

LeastFavorite Movie/Book Cliche: The Pure Incorruptible Hero, or anyhero who is firmly on the white side of morality, or the lawful. BORING.

Talentsand/or Powers: Like most members of the House of Artwaltz,Ragnar has the Umbrakinesis power, being able to control shadows as he wishes.He also has a familiar like his father, a gargoyle named Czernobog, whoseagility, endurance and wildfire breath makes it a good ally to have in thefield.

Why SomeoneMight Love Them: Ragnar is intelligent and creative, being ableto come up with new ideas and ways out of a situation easily. He’s witty and funny,able to lighten any mood if he so wishes. Mysterious and adventurous, but overallnice to any person.

Why SomeoneMight Hate Them: … However, most of the time Ragnar wants tospread chaos and mayhem and have a good laugh. He lives for it, and nicenessmay just be a means to an end. He’s not particularly careful, or thinks aboutthe repercussions of his actions, how they’ll hurt whomever he targets. He’smore interested in discovering if he can achieve whatever he set out to do andget away with it. Ragnar isn’t really sorry for using people to a certain goal,since he thinks he’s doing nothing bad, nor does he rarely intend to screw themover later.

How TheyChange: There’s more to life than pranks, and if he trulywishes to be someone who can stand by Blair’s side and aid Victoire, there arethings which needs to change. Ragnar learns what is the meaning responsibilityand of consequences, and how his “innocent” pranks can cause people harm.

Why You LoveThem: My Dark Marauder! Honestly, Ragnar is such a funcharacter, one of the few of mine whose Chaotic alignment shines through AND ILOVE IT. He’s loyal like a dog, perhaps a bit insane and at the same timeclever, and I love him.

[nationalistic]

Confronting SJW’s with facts:

In answer to the first moronic assertion by @feminismandmedia that most European Muslims don’t want Sharia, I present the actual statistics:

WZB Berlin Social Science Centre: 65% of Muslims in Europe say Sharia is more important than the law of the country they live in.

Center for Social Cohesion: 40% of British Muslims want Sharia to be enforced under threat of violence

NOP Research: 68% of British Muslims support the arrest and prosecution of anyone who insults Islam

MacDonald Laurier Institute: 62% of Muslims want Sharia in Canada

Pew Research (2010): 82% of Egyptian Muslims favour stoning adulterers 70% of Jordanian Muslims favour stoning adulterers 82% of Pakistanis favour stoning adulterers

Pew Research (2013): 81% of South Asian Muslims support amputating limbs for theft

2015 (Jyllands Posten): 77% of Muslims in Denmark believe the Quran's instructions should be 'fully applied'

Syarif Hidayatullah State University Study (2017): 80% of Islamic education teachers favour enforcement of Sharia; 89% say non-Muslims "should not be accommodated" in Indonesia.

Now as for the second crybaby @meljane7, and another brilliant addition by @feminismandmedia asking “How is Islam misogynistic??”.

Yes, real people actually wrote that.

But luckily for them, I have in fact read and studied the Quran in depth, for this exact reason. I can now quote the vile book directly too you and it does the work for me! Isn’t that great?

In Islam, a man is given the right to beat his wife until she obeys (Sura 4:34, Bukhari 8.73.68). According the Qur’an, “Men are in charge of women, because Allah has made some of them to excel others…and those on whose part you fear rebellion, admonish them, and leave them alone in beds apart, and beat them.” Oh and just in case you were considering defending spousal abuse in the name of tolerance, the Arabic word for beat used in the Qur’an is the same word used for the treatment of slaves and animals.

Muhammad himself was a degenerate, licentious and vile man, he had thirteen wives, two forced concubines/sex slaves, and four other women with whom he had regular sexual relationships.

Not to mention, by the way, that one of Muhammad’s wives was six years old when he married her, but nine years old when he consummated his marriage with her, so that’s okay, right? (See Aisha)

Also of interest, Muhammad married his daughter-in-law Zainab (Bukhari 9.93.516-518). He arranged for his adopted son Zaid to divorce her simply so he could marry her. Faced with the refusal of Zaid to dissolve his marriage, Muhammad had another convenient revelation from Allah, which not only commanded Zaid to give up his wife to Muhammad, but also decreed that there was no evil in a father-in-law taking his daughter-in-law away from his own adopted son (Sura 33:36-38).

Sura 2:223 explains that “Your wives are your fields, so go into your fields whichever way you like.” Is this how husbands should think of their wives? Is this an example of the perfect divinely inspired revealed truth dictated from Allah to Muhammad? 

No, feminists don’t support bigoted & hateful women, they are bigoted and hateful women.

Now for the sake of @themixedfeminist let’s quickly compare what we have read so far to the Christian teachings about women, shall we? Y’know, the same Christian teachings you call misogynistic and that @meljane7 blamed for the problems in France and Europe today. Also, bear in mind Islam is hundreds of years more ‘modern’ than Christianity is, so of course Christianity will be even more barbaric and sexist, right?

Wrong.

Firstly please read this article, it details everything Christianity has done to improve women’s rights throughout history.

Secondly, two books of the Old Testament are named for (and are about) women. Women play an even more venerated and prominent role in the New Testament, especially in view of the low status afforded women in the culture in which Jesus lived. Read Matthew 5:32; 1 Corinthians 11:11-12; Galatians 3:28; Ephesians 5:25-33.

There are 21 notable women mentioned favourably in the New Testament. While the Bible teaches different roles for women than for men, the New Testament elevates women in many ways. It teaches, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own selves. “He who loves his wife loves himself.”

In stark contrast, let’s quickly go over some more Muslim attitudes to women:

Prostitution is common in many Muslim countries, especially countries in Africa. Muslims justify prostitution by marrying the woman for the night, which seems to be ‘okay’ as long as they stay within the limit of four wives at one time.

Genital mutilation of women is also a widespread practice in Muslim countries. In some countries 90% of women are so mutilated.

The Qur’an and hadiths teach that it is morally acceptable to force women to have sex with their captors (Suras 4:24,  70:29-30; also Bukhari 8.77.600; 9.93.506; also Muslim Hadiths numbers 8:3371 and 8:3433).

Islam teaches that the majority of people in hell are women (Bukhari 1.2.28, 1.6.301, and 2.18.161). According to the prophet of Islam, “I looked at Hell and saw that the majority of its inhabitants were women.”

Passages from the Quran, Hadith and Sira:

Quran (4:34) - "Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great." 

Quran (38:44) - "And take in your hand a green branch and beat her with it, and do not break your oath..."  Allah telling Job to beat his wife (Tafsir).

Sahih Bukhari (72:715) - A woman came to Muhammad and begged him to stop her husband from beating her. Her skin was bruised so badly that it is described as being "greener" than the green veil she was wearing. Muhammad did not admonish her husband, but instead ordered her to return to him and submit to his sexual desires.

Sahih Bukhari (72:715)  - "Aisha said, 'I have not seen any woman suffering as much as the believing women'", so Muhammad's own wife complained of the abuse that the women of her religion suffered relative to other women.

Sahih Muslim (4:2127) - Muhammad struck his favorite wife, Aisha, in the chest one evening when she left the house without his permission. Aisha narrates,

"He struck me on the chest which caused me pain."

Sahih Muslim (9:3506) - Muhammad's fathers-in-law (Abu Bakr and Umar) amused him by slapping his wives (Aisha and Hafsa) for annoying him. According to the Hadith, the prophet of Islam laughed upon hearing this.

Abu Dawud (2141) - "Iyas bin ‘Abd Allah bin Abi Dhubab reported the Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) as saying: Do not beat Allah’s handmaidens, but when ‘Umar came to the Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) and said: Women have become emboldened towards their husbands, he (the Prophet) gave permission to beat them."

Muhammad saw that women were becoming emboldened toward their husbands, and decided that beatings in a Muslim marriage are necessary to keep women in their place.

Abu Dawud (2142) - "The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: A man will not be asked as to why he beat his wife."

Abu Dawud (2126) - "A man from the Ansar called Basrah said: 'I married a virgin woman in her veil. When I entered upon her, I found her pregnant. (I mentioned this to the Prophet).' The Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) said: 'She will get the dower, for you made her vagina lawful for you. The child will be your slave. When she has begotten (a child), flog her'" Basically, a Muslim thinks he is getting a virgin, then finds out that she is pregnant. Muhammad tells him to treat the woman as a sex slave and then flog her after she delivers the child.

Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 969 - Requires that a married woman be "put in a separate room and beaten lightly" if she "acts in an inappropriate manner toward others." According to the Hadith, this can be for an offense as petty as merely being alone with a man to whom she is not related.

Finally, Kash-shaf (the revealer) of al-Zamkhshari (Vol. 1, p. 525) - [Muhammad said] "Hang up your scourge where your wife can see it" just so your wife is aware of what awaits her lest she refuses her husband sex or goes outside without permission.

This is the belief system you are defending, you, as a feminist, are advocating the subjugation of women for the sake of political correctness.

Open.

Your.

Eyes.

[kantianbioethics]

Persona 5′s Critical Miss

There are critical moments in Persona 5. There are moments where it grasps, clutches, claws at becoming more than a a nice daydream in the sun, to become politically moving. No stranger to polemic, Persona 5 starts mad as hell and its rage stays constant even as it targets exponentially larger and larger evils in Japanese society. All the while, Atlus does everything in its power to make your vicarious vengeance upon them as slick and stylish as possible. Not only are you righteous, you are cool.

You're in shoot-outs with demons and executing their echo in the collective unconscious to serve own power, while at the same time your inbox is filled with messages of girls you should be so lucky to be with and your cat makes sure you get a good 8 hours of sleep every day throughout it all. Persona 5 is very much a power fantasy then, but it is a power fantasy meant for those most in need of power. It is a power fantasy for the young and disenfranchised,  most in need of the very idea that they could one day hold power, or already do. It's all incredibly exciting stuff, but even if it is after dozens of hours, the question does come:

Where is this all going?

Changing the hearts that have grown putrid and venomous for the good of all is incredibly satisfying and, in the palace heists the Phantom Thieves take on, almost undoubtedly just, but the thrill of it is just as much the product of its impossibility as its karmic delight. If we're not going to be fucking up the 1%'s mind palaces like some bottom-up psychic Batman, what can we mortal children do?

Questions about the Phantom Thieves' pursuit of justice continue to arise with talk of extra-judicial justice in the sixth palace. “Justice to those the law can't touch” becomes the motto of team-member Makoto and the Phantom Thieves by extension, but why is such justice necessary in the first place? Is it not because the systems we have in place have become corrupt and unjust? Are these tumors of society not the product of a cancerous societal immune system?

The palace owners blame society for putting the pressures on them that made them the way they are, spinning classic yarns of the exploited becoming the exploiter. As much as they are making excuses for their own awful behavior, they are still partly right to do so. Sae, for example, was shaped by the misogynistic, cutthroat environment of  her persecutor's office, Kaneshiro became ruthless to claw his way out of squalor, and even Madarame mentions the starving artists life he resents and many of us know too well as the source of distortion. Sae's image of the justice system as a fucking casino is an angry one, but in the context of Persona 5 it's a corruption of an otherwise just system by personal desire, rather than revealing an evil system for what it is and the palace owners its enforcers.

In the palace of Masayoshi Shido, the human mastermind of Persona 5, is some of the most scathing criticism Persona 5 has to offer. There,those that deserve to be saved (ie those he finds useful) can join him in a life of luxury while the rest of Japan drowns. His public persona as a man of the people is an unnecessary mask for his spiteful, cold-hearted, self. His true conduct is just a touch more honest and illegal than the leaders we are already blessed with. The more important fiction in his rise to power, is that it takes a genius conman for evil to take the reigns of power. Trump went in dick first, brain never, and he won our presidency. The reason for that, to be beyond brief, is that there were systems in place that allowed that to happen and people that had a vested interest in keeping those systems tipped in their favor, systems Persona 5 is afraid to do more than question.

In a surprising moment of clarity, Shido's confession of guilt for his many crimes is not enough to sway the fickle public of Persona 5's Japan. Having finally been confronted with, not just a bad person, but a person whose evil implicates everyone who voted for him and the very office he occupies, the public grasps for a more convenient truth and those vested interests I mentioned rush to make sure they find one. Shido was the biggest head, but he's still just one part of a hydra, and that vision of a life of luxury at the expense of everyone below is most certainly not one he held alone.

Here, in its final hours, Persona 5's Phantom Thieves finally, finally realize they have to change the structure of the world they live in. The structure they find is that of Mementos, the collective subway system of Tokyo's distortions, a non-manifestation of public ill will. Yet, although this structure and its ruler are both told to be the product of collective, human attitudes, there is no structural  output to match. Individuals go in to fuck about, they find a lonely room w/ a particularly ornery shadow to send back and exit again, one person changed. Now though, comes the idea to dismantle the structure all together, everyone's distortions undone at once.

Because, as insistent as Persona is on pointing out that people see the world differently, if in ways that might be equally valid, it does  imply that there is an objective or at least more pure truth to be reached for through these differing views. In this way the protagonists can come to understand their true selves in Persona 4 and the changing of hearts in 5 becomes less a Jungian overwrite by the phantom thieves than a long, hard look in the mirror they force on villains. This in turn allows the changing of lesser scoundrels in Mementos becomes morally permissible and the final confrontation between the phantom thieves and the collective consciousness of society to become a lot less authoritarian than it might feel in the moment. Instead of forcing a limited personal justice on the whole, the phantom thieves' aim is to wake Tokyo from its blind stupor. Persona 5 has the remarkable trust that pursuing the justice of its heroes, the disenfranchised, will lead the way to true justice.

What the phantom thieves hope to undo before Persona reveals its traditional antagonist from outside human form is national apathy, that cool malice that would rather see us drown than itself inconvenienced. If that were the final boss that would still be pretty cool. What is great about the persona series is that all its supernatural evils come from and are us, in the collective sense. This allows it the vocabulary to make nebulous concepts very concrete on one hand and the big scary figures cleverly polysemic at the same time: you're not just fighting a big moon monster, you're fighting depression and death and this dude you like quite a bit. I am not saying the series takes advantage of this as much as it could, but there is always at least the groundwork for some truly effective writing.

Long story shorter: the great cosmic evil behind the scenes at the end of every Persona game is kind of fucking great this time. First taking the shape of the holy grail, then the demiurge jaldaboth, a figure from gnostic Christianity that is said to have created this world as an artificial prison to take us from the true God and world. They show tyranny in its deceit, granting the wishes of the masses, and its truth as their jailor. They are a triumph of order, structure, power over the lives of the underprivileged, held up by the wishes of the masses trampling over their own freedom. They are the few goading the apathy of the many.

The grail fucks up the phantom thieves and pushes its vision for the world onto reality. As I said though, there is a truth in Persona 5, one the phantom thieves can see and the populace not yet. When the holy grail intrudes upon reality it is revealing the pure pursuit of order to be a hellscape, not just imposing its own image of order upon the world. In the climax of the final fight, the people of the world finally see their prison for the what it is and quite naturally decide to side with the party that doesn't look like an art deco kaiju. Yet, because the populace has been so fickle in the past, it plays more like a convenient set-up for a satanic spirit bomb than them finally rejecting the horrors of the system in which they live.

Said spirit bomb takes the form of a bullet with which you shoot the ancient definition of structural injustice and also sometimes, God, in the face. This is fucking awesome, but does not give us a real target or a real answer for our tribulations. What's missing is a tie to real world structures to the subconscious substrate of Mementos. Jaldaboth could be a representation of what order pursued over humanity leads to in the abstract sense, but also a more concrete symbol of that drive as responsible for the real evils of this world. Then it becomes a switch, not from real villains to fantasy, but from individual to structural evil, no longer hidden behind its impersonality thanks to the magic of metaphor. Otherwise, Jaldaboth becomes just another manipulator outside the system, the way the previous villains it now has no link to are coded. If our prison is the panopticon is the state, then that is something  we can struggle against; if our jail is the magical representation of our subconscious, then a bullet to the face of God remains as impossible a solution as it is a satisfying one.

To come out and say, “the institutions meant to help us live our lives are fucked up and we can do something about them” is a ballsy thing to say for a game as high-profile as Persona 5 is, but so much of Persona 5 already is that ballsy. Our heroes are already called the Phantom Thieves; there is already an implicit acknowledgment that illegal activity can be just. It is dishonest, intended or not, not to take that step.

It is especially frustrating, because the game seems to realize the emptiness of its climactic victory. In its denouement, it starts to prop up a real solution that does not rely on magical alter-egos. When the protagonist is jailed as a fall guy at the end of the game, the force of his charisma inspires your confidants into nothing less than social activism: gathering testimonies, searching for evidence, doing everything they can to overturn the ruling of an unjust system. The confidants that grant you metaphorical superpowers in the Palaces give you real leverage in this world. Persona 5 finally makes real the importance of your fellow man, not just to yourself, but to the world. The very act of being together lays the foundation for a force which can change the world for all of our good. We rally together, put pressure on our representatives, diminish their necessity where we can, shout the injustices from the rooftops, and dismantle the structures keeping misery in place.

The final insistence that one should live “free”, in context, should not be some naive assurance that the systems in which we live our lives do not affect us, but a promise to the youth that they can be undermined, fought against, changed.

If I have done my job in this article, I have made the need for it seem very vague. After all, all the bits and pieces for Persona 5 to be successful in the thing I am asking from it are in the game and written about as such. What I am missing though, is that lynchpin or at least for that lynchpin to be clear in the language the game uses. Persona 5 is not a subtle game and in becoming subtle to the point of muddling its message for the very thing tying them bits and bolts together is a disservice to what could have been a hugely impactful message on a huge audience.

It still looks cool as hell though.

[chinkyguy]

The NOW: Thoughts on the never-ending quarrels between the past and the present

I’ve stumbled across a lot of articles, and pieces about how particular periods in our past were a lot better than the present. I see mostly disdain, disgust, and rage. People are angry. Angry at the current state of politics, literature, and even debates. They seem to keep insisting that there is this shallowness in the present generation of individuals, that seem to cut out the beauty of the world. It seems like technology, human advancements, and creations of the later generations wiped out intellectual movements and conversations and turned them all to savagery and animalistic behaviour in this man-made feat called social media. They said this advancement has brought about the retardation of intellect in society. In a society attached to technology, while continuously blurring the line between privacy and info sharing, it is indeed almost impossible to catch a glimpse of proper arguments over a particular issue. Every post turns people into animals, seemingly commenting their thoughts without filters. This new technology has brought about an opportunity to be so liberal that even the animalistic urges in society are being normalised, and triggered. And so they say this killed wisdom in society. All people are right now are shallow zombies, gnashing out at each other every opportunity because of the convenience of firing destructive comments from miles away. And so they say, this is a scary and terrifying reality. Technology has brought out the worst in people. The best minds and skills of people brought out the cruel, and ruthless savagery innate in human beings if civilisation, laws, good customs, and bureaucracy, were to be extinct. And in this open world called the internet, policing is even slower than human policemen responding to a real incident. In a world running and processing information per second, it would only take seconds as well to damage a person. And before policing could be done, due to its openness, it is indeed possible for things to be worse. And so they say this. And so technology suddenly was the cause, the primary root of all this evil in the world. And so they say that human intellect has been retarded by shallowness.

But they want a renaissance. They want to bring back the old days where teenagers are radicals, all driven by political thought and ideologies. They want to bring back the old days where people speak their thoughts out instead of merely limiting their reactions to a bunch of doodles of yellow faces, a thumbs up, or a heart. They want the old days where philosophy, arts, literature all thrive in the midst of a chaotic society where people write stories and books that matter and music was all so genuine, true, and deep. They want to bring back the old days where rights are being fought for, and where people use legitimate arguments with credibility. Or so they say.

I am unwittingly trapped in between. For people in my generation agree with the elders. They agree that this advent of technology and these modern times have degraded the level of discourse in society, and the level of thinking and rationality. They, too, agree that we have been given an avenue where purpose and value is determined by what we get form people rather than what we actually make for ourselves. And so they think that value these days are no longer genuine, for people no longer value themselves and rely heavily on the value placed upon them by society. And so I am entrapped for I am bewildered by the question: What truth do I accept?

While they both have points, it is difficult to say with certainty that one provides the truth better than the other. For you must also ask yourselves, what is better? In the old days, these thinkers, these revolutionaries we recognize until today were mere nuisance to people as well. People of the earlier generations do not unanimously believe in them and the ideologies of their generation, as well as their culture, their way of life, and their philosophies. They probably did not believe so either. But now, we glorify these individuals, these revolutionaries and wish for them to come back and save our generation from rotting. But who’s to say it is rotting? Intellectually, maybe there is something more to see but we choose not to accept because we are so entrapped and so infatuated with the earlier norms, earlier moralities, and earlier beliefs that we view these phenomena as something revolutionary as well. This changing landscape, this savagery we see, it is hard to determine if it is indeed savage or if it is only savage because of our preconceived idea of savagery brought about by the earlier times. And now you see, there is a need to doubt and put into question whatever we feel towards our current world and our current society. Shakespeare was, indeed, scoffed at for being too sensual, too provocative. But he is now regarded as one of the greatest writers the world has ever seen. Nietzche was a madman, an oddity of the earlier times now his thought is prevalent among the thinking people, the lovers of philosophies and literature. And so what if there is a wisdom among these things we experience but choose to ignore because our minds have individual standards and criterions on things. And so the only way for us to maybe live in the now is to rid our minds restrictions. Rid our minds of standards. Strike down the preconceived ideas brought about by earlier periods. I never said ignore them. Learn from them, but free yourselves of them and learn from the now. 

[kemetic-dreams]

The Psychology of Soft Slavery

Gary Z. McGee, Staff Writer Waking Times

“When a public is stressed and confused, a big lie told repeatedly and unchallenged can become accepted truth.” ~George Orwell

The idea of slavery is one of those concepts that has the tendency to be uttered in black and white terms. But slavery is anything but black and white. There are many shades of gray that people tend to neglect, usually out of indifference, but also out of ignorance, or by side-stepping the idea as, “just the way things are.” It was a copout during the times of hard slavery and it’s a copout now, during these times of soft slavery.

Here’s the thing: hard slavery is overt, it’s apparent and self-evident. Nothing is hidden. Who the slave and the master are is very clear. Soft slavery on the other hand, is covert. It is neither apparent, nor self-evident. Everything is hidden behind comfort, apathy, security, convenience, indifference, and the illusion of freedom. Who the slave and the master are is not clear and is typically obscured by an unhealthy hierarchy that leads to public confusion between authority based on fear and authority based on free and transparent leadership, which in turn, can lead to a political cognitive dissonance and the pathetic stance of, “It’s just the way things are.”

The Modern Day House Slave

“History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” ~Mark Twain

Unfortunately, the spirit of the times under the rule of statism, is one of soft slavery. Statists, living in a world ruled by nation states and deceived by the illusion of freedom, are more akin to the house slaves from the times of hard slavery than to free human beings. The house slave of today is the typical state citizen just going through the motions, unaware of the extent of their own slavery. So caught up are they in the “rules” and the “laws” of the land, they cannot see how desperate their situation really is. And to the extent that they can see, cognitive dissonance kicks in to squash the uncomfortable information in order to keep the comfortable world view in tact. Indeed, the all too typical cognitive error of “It’s just the way things are,” gets them off the hook for having to do any real deep thinking and envelops them in a warm blanket of indifference.

Some might say I’m being too harsh in my judgement of the system, but I’m not one to pull punches. Had I lived during the times of hard slavery, I’d like to think I would have put my foot down and declares slavery immoral, rather than copout with the cowardly cliché: “It’s just the way things are.” Similarly, I put my foot down now, regarding the soft slavery of the modern era. People’s delicate sensibilities be damned!

Political Cognitive Dissonance

“Truth is a staff rejected.” ~Unknown

There is perhaps no more precarious an arena for cognitive error than the arena of politics, especially regarding civics and the psychology of power. This is because human beings are to the conditioning mechanisms of their own culture as fish are to water. The difference? Humans can think abstractly. But such thought victimizes itself when it comes to cognitive dissonance; to the extent that new knowledge, even knowledge backed by solid evidence, is ignored in order to maintain a sense of comfort and security within the cultural milieu. Maintaining comfort and security in one’s culture is just fine if that culture is healthy and not corrupt, but when it is both unhealthy and corrupt, such maintenance is tantamount to ignorance and one is more likely to become a victim of cognitive dissonance.

So what are we to do? How do we prevent political cognitive dissonance from making victims of us? We begin by questioning things; rules, laws, cultural norms, even the truth as we know it. It requires getting uncomfortable. We must be able to dig down deep and question our political perceptions and weigh them against morality, health, freedom, and love. We must not be afraid of getting uncomfortable, even at the expense of our security. Hell, even the house slave during the era of hard slavery had “comfort” and “security”. And so even now, the citizen living in the era of soft slavery should question both their comfort and their security.

The Difference Between Courage-Based Leadership and Fear-based Authority

“We may have democracy or we may have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” –Louis Brandeis, Former Supreme Court Justice

Those with the courage to get uncomfortable despite the comfort and security of the state, tend to become leaders who question authority. People tend to think that anarchy means no rules and thus no leaders, but it really means no rulers and thus no masters. There are still rules, of course. But those with the courage to question their culture’s politics realize that such rules are only valid if they are based on natural order, health, the golden rule, the golden mean, and the non-aggression principal. Otherwise, tyranny and violence become the rule and Krishnamurti’s words become all the more poignant: “It’s no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

As it stands, we are suffering at the hands of fear-based authority the world over, due to the rampant overreach of nation states ruling over us using outdated laws that propagate a culture of soft slavery, which keeps the rich richer (powerful) and the poor, poorer (powerless). And behold, our soft slavery has become a plutocracy despite the free democracy we all yearn for.

True leaders question authority. Indeed, the leadership of a free people must be a courage-based leadership that dares to draw a line in the sand against fear-based authority. It’s not only freedom that hangs in the balance, but the future of our species. If we cannot get over this evolutionary hump of statism and soft slavery, then we are doomed as a species and no better than unthinking fish, ignorant to the water they breathe.

[Editors’s Note]

Recently author Gary Z. McGee ran into a bit of trouble with the law here in the land of the free, and has reached out for support in this temporary ordeal. Please read his message and share it with anyone that may be able to assist. ~WT

If someone came to the house Negro and said, "Let's go, let's separate," naturally that Uncle Tom would say, "Go where? What could I do without boss? Where would I live? How would I dress? Who would look out for me?" That's the house Negro. But if you went to the field Negro and said, "Let's go, let's separate," he wouldn't even ask you where or how. He'd say, "Yes, let's go." And that one ended right there.-Malcolm X

[empoprises]

So what did Christine Quinn actually say?

The sound bite, of course, is bouncing all over the place:

“When a woman is pregnant, that is not a human being inside of her.”

But it’s good to resist cherry-picking, so I found the complete transcript of the discussion between Quinn, Chris Cuomo, and Rick Santorum. And as you can see, after this discussion ended, Cuomo moved on to a REALLY controversial topic. 

CUOMO: --let me - let me pivot topics here because I don't want to leave - I don't want to leave these heartbeat bills behind. Christine, what's the concern with what just passed in Georgia, and what you may wind up seeing more of, a state passing through its legislature, a more restrictive right to reproductive acts such as - reproductive rights such as abortion? This is a six-week bill. QUINN: These so-called heartbeat bills are exactly what you said, six- week bills. They, for all intent and purposes, are an end run around Roe versus Wade, and a clear attempt to make abortion illegal in new - across the country. That's what they are. And we've seen in states where they've been passed already, courts strike them out or enjoin them. This is a clear attempt to take decisions about a woman's body and birth out of the hands of a woman and out of the hands of doctors. And that, to me, is really shocking. CUOMO: Look, I mean you don't have to like abortion. You can be dead set against it, Rick. I mean we're all coming from the same set of catechism on this particular panel tonight. But if you don't like Roe, that's one thing. But for a state to codify something that they know violates the federal standard, what do you make of that? [21:40:00] SANTORUM: Well I mean everybody that passes a marijuana law violates a federal standard, when they pass a recreational marijuana law, and they do it, and you - in, you know, sanctuary cities, they pass laws that violate it, and the court determines whether they have the right to do it or not. Look, the - the - the legislatures as well as the Congress have the right to challenge the court. And - and - and if the court composition changes, as it has over time, on a variety of issues, they have the right to go and challenge that. I just have to make a point, Chris, because you and Christine both made the point, you in your introductory, and Christine, where you basically invalidate the point of view that me and millions and millions of other Americans have with respect to this issue, which you just say this is all about choice, all about a woman's right, no. It's all about the life of a little baby. And - and you can invalidate that and say that - that doesn't matter. But to millions of Americans, it does matter, and it's not that we hate women or want to violate women, but we truly do care about the life of that child on the woman, and we think a good society protects those children. CUOMO: No. But do you care about the rule of-- QUINN: You know what? But - but Chris, wait, I want to say something. CUOMO: Hold on a second. Christine, hold on a second. You - I'll get to you. But what rules in this society, Rick, how you feel with your faith or the rule of law? What rules? SANTORUM: Yes. But the rule of law is determined - should be determined, in my opinion, in this area by the - by the collective morality of the people of this country. CUOMO: Really? SANTORUM: That's what legislatures are trying to do. Absolutely. I mean-- CUOMO: So the Supreme Court passing making-- SANTORUM: Nine people shouldn't make that decision for the rest of the country. CUOMO: Really? QUINN: But they have. And that's how our country works. CUOMO: So, you don't believe - so - so you don't believe-- SANTORUM: No, they shouldn't. CUOMO: --in the Supreme Court. SANTORUM: No. I just don't believe that they should be-- CUOMO: You don't believe it's the supreme law of the land. SANTORUM: --injecting themselves into a matter that is something that the public can handle and handle very well and did-- QUINN: Really? Then who gives these state legislatures? Who gives these-- SANTORUM: --before Roe versus Wade. CUOMO: Yes. When people were killing themselves in back alleys before Roe v. Wade? SANTORUM: People are dying now too, Chris. I mean the reality is-- QUINN: No. SANTORUM: --in fact millions of-- CUOMO: Not like that. QUINN: That - Rick, that is a big - that is a lie. SANTORUM: --millions of children are dying. QUINN: The-- SANTORUM: No, millions of children are dying, Christine. That's a reality. QUINN: You know what-- SANTORUM: Over 60 million children-- CUOMO: Because you define - you define child as born at inception (ph). QUINN: If you really - if you really - if you really cared-- SANTORUM: --have died. That's the truth. CUOMO: All right, one at a time. Christine, go ahead. SANTORUM: That's the truth. QUINN: --if you really cared about the health of human beings, you would never take an issue like this away from a woman and her doctor. SANTORUM: 60 million children. QUINN: And a six-week bill - a six-week bill takes it-- SANTORUM: 60 million children. QUINN: --makes it illegal. And this bill and - have been clearly struck down by the courts. Abortion is the law of the land. And you-- SANTORUM: And we're trying to change that because we want to protect lives. QUINN: And you are trying - you are - you are doing an end run around the Constitution and you are putting-- SANTORUM: Yes, we are. Absolutely. No, around the Supreme Court. QUINN: --and-- SANTORUM: They're not the same thing. QUINN: The Supreme Court set the law on this. And, again-- SANTORUM: Yes. And they did it wrong. QUINN: --you talk about caring about human beings lives. SANTORUM: Yes, I do. QUINN: Then why would you take away a woman's ability with her doctor to make decisions when her life-- SANTORUM: I'm taking away-- QUINN: --may be at risk. You take it away because you actually do not care about women. SANTORUM: Do you realize a baby dies-- QUINN: You take it away politically. SANTORUM: --in an abortion? Do you realize that? Are you ignoring that fact? That's a - that's a reality. QUINN: I am focusing on-- SANTORUM: This is a human life that is being extinguished. CUOMO: Not a legal fact. QUINN: It is not a legal fact. SANTORUM: It's a real - do - do you disagree that a - at the moment of conception, a child is human and alive. It's a human life. CUOMO: That's its viability. SANTORUM: It's - is it a - it is a-- CUOMO: It's - it is a viable human being. And it's not recognized-- SANTORUM: --is it a human life-- QUINN: No. SANTORUM: Answer the question. CUOMO: --under our law as a person under the law. QUINN: No. SANTORUM: Answer the question. QUINN: No. SANTORUM: Answer the question. CUOMO: You know what the answer is. SANTORUM: Is it biologically a human life? QUINN: No. CUOMO: You know what the answer is. SANTORUM: I do. I said every biology that's working (ph) in the world at conception that is a human life. You ignore that reality. CUOMO: The only thing-- QUINN: No. It is not - that is not the medical-- SANTORUM: You guys talk about being the party of science. CUOMO: Listen, hold on a second. QUINN: That is not-- SANTORUM: This is so a-science. CUOMO: There-- QUINN: --this is - that is not science. SANTORUM: This is just not reality guys. CUOMO: There is no question-- QUINN: That is not science. CUOMO: Hold on, hold on, hold on a second. Let me just set the table. SANTORUM: It is true. CUOMO: Hold on a second. QUINN: No, it's not. CUOMO: Calm down, calm down. SANTORUM: It's not - it's not a belief. It's a fact. CUOMO: Just calm down. SANTORUM: It's a fact. CUOMO: The only thing that can be created by-- QUINN: No, it's not. CUOMO: --two human beings is a human being. Period! The law recognizes a person-- SANTORUM: So, what are we discussing? CUOMO: --with rights at a certain standard. SANTORUM: So, you're so - so-- CUOMO: You are conflating the two. SANTORUM: OK, so, Chris, before - before that - before that-- CUOMO: You are doing it for convenience. That's OK. But either you respect the law, or you don't. SANTORUM: OK. Before that thing is a thing, before that thing is a person, what is it? CUOMO: What do you mean what is it? QUINN: What do you mean? SANTORUM: What's that thing in the womb that you're killing, what is it? CUOMO: There are all these different stages of cellular development. SANTORUM: But what is it? CUOMO: Go Google it. SANTORUM: So, it's called property. CUOMO: What I'm saying is you either accept the law or you don't. QUINN: Rick, you are - Rick, you are-- SANTORUM: So, it's the property of the woman. QUINN: Rick, you are - you are-- CUOMO: I'm OK with that. SANTORUM: So, I'm just asking, Chris, is it the property of the woman at that point? It's not a person? It's the property of a woman? QUINN: It's not-- CUOMO: Her body is always her property. QUINN: Yes. SANTORUM: OK. So that - but - but that's a unique human being-- QUINN: But, Rick, you-- SANTORUM: --inside that woman. QUINN: No. There is not-- SANTORUM: So is that - is that woman - is that the property of a woman-- QUINN: Rick, Rick, Rick-- SANTORUM: --so you can do whatever you want with it? QUINN: Rick, it is part-- SANTORUM: So, let's - let me ask you this question, Chris? CUOMO: Wait-- QUINN: Rick, can you stop for one second-- SANTORUM: Then let me ask you the question. QUINN: No, because you're not Chris Cuomo. SANTORUM: So, Christine, if - if - if - if that-- QUINN: You don't get to ask the questions. SANTORUM: --if the woman - if the woman-- QUINN: Let me just say-- SANTORUM: --who was carrying that child because - let's say she was blind, and she decided she wanted to have a blind baby too-- QUINN: Oh-- SANTORUM: --so she can inject that baby with something that would blind the child-- QUINN: Rick-- SANTORUM: --not kill it, just blind it-- QUINN: Rick-- SANTORUM: --would that be OK? QUINN: Rick, you are bringing up - you are bringing up-- SANTORUM: Would you say that's OK? CUOMO: I'll tell you - look, I'm going to go to Christine on the point. But I'll tell you what's not OK. I think perverting fact patterns, perverting realities-- SANTORUM: I'm not perverting anything. CUOMO: --and trying to demonize what people do, you guys make it sound like this is cheaper than condoms, this is easier than condoms-- QUINN: Right. [21:45:00] CUOMO: --so just go abort your babies. These are painful decisions for these women. QUINN: They're huge-- SANTORUM: It's still taking a life, Chris. CUOMO: These are things they live with for the rest of their lives. QUINN: --they're huge - they're huge-- CUOMO: Yes, I know. And they think about it. And they think about it in a way that you never will, Rick. So, you're projecting all these emotions-- SANTORUM: That's not true, Chris. I-- CUOMO: --and sensibilities on ethics on people in a decision you'll never make. QUINN: And, Rick-- SANTORUM: --I help and support-- QUINN: And, Rick, let me just say-- SANTORUM: --I help and support crisis, crisis and helping those (ph). QUINN: --Rick, let me just - oh, crisis. CUOMO: Help and support? It's not in your body. Christine, last word to you. QUINN: Yes. Let's be clear here, Rick. With all of your distortions and horrible tales-- SANTORUM: You didn't answer my question first. QUINN: I answered it numerous times. When - when a woman gets pregnant, that is not a human being inside of her. It's part of her body. SANTORUM: It's a lie. QUINN: And this is about a woman having full agency and control of her body and making decisions about her body, and what is part of her body with medical professionals. Those are the facts. And that is the law of the land. SANTORUM: So that - so the baby is property, chattel. CUOMO: Listen, this is-- SANTORUM: And they can do whatever they want to that. CUOMO: Look, you can-- QUINN: This is about a woman's body. CUOMO: --you can argue-- SANTORUM: So they can beam (ph) the baby. CUOMO: Listen, you can argue the - the debate-- SANTORUM: They can do whatever they want. They can torture the baby. QUINN: Rick, you're spinning fake stories. CUOMO: The - the debate is fine. The debate is fine. QUINN: You - you - you're so desperate here. CUOMO: Guys, I got to leave it there. QUINN: You're so desperate here. You're bringing up fake stories. CUOMO: No, no, no, listen-- QUINN: Not desperate. I'm just - I'm just asking questions. CUOMO: Listen, no, you're not. You're not. SANTORUM: Answer them. CUOMO: You're asking provocative things that are trying to make people angry about what's done-- SANTORUM: Because they're real. CUOMO: --and that's OK. QUINN: But they're not real. CUOMO: All I'm saying is you guys go too far when you pervert the facts. And we have the President of the United States saying that a baby is born at the end of full-term, swaddled in a blanket, and then they decide whether or not to execute it. You know that's BS. QUINN: That's a lie. SANTORUM: Well Governor of Virginia said. CUOMO: It - it divides people. Nobody said it. QUINN: No. SANTORUM: Governor of Virginia said it. CUOMO: It's not the law anywhere in this country. QUINN: Nowhere. CUOMO: It's homicide. One person said something stupid and you want to make it something that you can use to advantage. SANTORUM: They're-- CUOMO: That doesn't help your cause. SANTORUM: Talk to - talk - talk to the survivors of abortion. It's not-- CUOMO: And it certainly - and it certainly - it - it certainly-- SANTORUM: How about Kermit Gosnell of Philadelphia? I mean there's-- CUOMO: It certainly not square with your religion. SANTORUM: --there's lots of instances, Chris. CUOMO: I'll tell you that. Go ask a priest if he's OK with you arguing the case that way and see how he feels about-- SANTORUM: I will. I'd be happy to. CUOMO: You know, if you get to the-- QUINN: Well they don't believe in lying, priests, don't believe in lying. CUOMO: --if you get to the right place by lying and distorting the facts, no priest is going to like it. SANTORUM: I'm not - what am I - OK what - tell me - what did-- QUINN: No priest is going to condone lying? SANTORUM: --what did I lie about in - in the way I presented the case? CUOMO: You tell me what state allows you to swaddle a full-term baby and then have a side conversation about whether or not to kill it? SANTORUM: Look, you have - you have states that basically say-- CUOMO: Say - say none. Say none. QUINN: Where? Nowhere. Nowhere. SANTORUM: --no-- CUOMO: Say none. QUINN: Nowhere. SANTORUM: The debate say-- CUOMO: Say none. QUINN: Nowhere. SANTORUM: The State of New York allows a baby to be killed-- QUINN: No, it does not. CUOMO: Please, please. SANTORUM: --allows a baby to be killed up until the moment that-- QUINN: No, it does not. CUOMO: A full-term baby to be born and swaddled and executed-- QUINN: That is a lie. SANTORUM: --up until the moment that baby is born. CUOMO: Say none. QUINN: No. SANTORUM: That's the reality. CUOMO: That's crap. Look, I got to go. QUINN: Look, Chris, I would-- SANTORUM: That's what the - that's what the law says. CUOMO: It does not. QUINN: --I was part of passing that law in New York. CUOMO: Yes. QUINN: With the National Institute of Reproductive Health. It does not say that. CUOMO: Does not say that. QUINN: But that is a lie the far-Right has peddled-- SANTORUM: Not a lie. CUOMO: Rick, you're better than this. QUINN: --since it was passed. CUOMO: You're better than this as a Catholic and you're better at this-- SANTORUM: Not a - it's not - it's not a lie. CUOMO: --as a consumer of public thought. SANTORUM: Because, look, the-- QUINN: It is a lie. I helped pass the law. CUOMO: I got to go. I got to go. I got to go. QUINN: It's a lie. CUOMO: We'll do this again. QUINN: Thank you. CUOMO: Because they're going to be plenty more of these. SANTORUM: Good. CUOMO: But, come on, Rick, give me a break on this stuff. Thank you very much. SANTORUM: I am. I'm telling the truth. QUINN: You're lying. CUOMO: You're telling the truth the way you see it but you're distorting fact to get there. QUINN: You're lying. CUOMO: So, I don't know how that's the truth. SANTORUM: Well then you have to respect when - I think when you-- CUOMO: I respect everybody's opinion on it. But this idea that you're putting out, the President telling the crowd, and they're booing about a full-term baby, and then they decide whether or not to execute, what are you trying to do in this country? These things are hard enough without making people think crazy things. But you're going to just stoke hate in the interest of what, in the interest of what? That's what people have to ask themselves. All right, you watching TV last night? You watched today? You see Game of Thrones? I'll tell you what. I don't buy what everybody's saying about this coffee cup just left on the table. I don't think it was a mistake. What do you think of that? And I'm going to bring in D. Lemon to figure out what's brewing. Get it? Get what I did there?

[therunnelofdreams]

From The Cinematograph Act of 1918 to the present Central Bureau of Film Certification: The only visible mouthpiece of a moralistic society.

In 1895, for the first time a film was publicly screened. A nitrate fire at the Bazar de la Charité, Paris in 1897 killed 126, one caused due to the violently flammable nitrate films. Fast forward to 1909, after several similar cases of fires caused due to the films, world’s first Cinematograph legislation was passed in Britain. It was hoped that the legislation would ensure safety by curbing the issue of cinema licensing (without any expectations). Licenses were made mandatory for public screenings. Eventually, the authorities began to control not only the conditions in which the films would be screened but also the content of the screenings. The first full-length Indian feature, D.G. Phalke’s Raja Harishchandra, released in 1913. The Cinematograph Act was born in 1918 and with it film censorship in India. The 1918 Act gave the district magistrate or the commissioner of police the power to issue licences to exhibitors, and the government to appoint inspectors to examine and certify films as “suitable for public exhibition”. It wasn’t until 1920 that multiple Censor Boards were set up and rules were put into place to judge the appropriateness of films, both local and foreign, for release. “No generally and rigidly applicable rules of censorship can be laid down.” were the positive words that the general principles of the Bombay Board of Film Censors began with and then proceeded to lay out 43 objectionable subjects. Most of these objectionable subjects comprised of politically incorrect depictions from the perspective of the British authorities. The Indian cinematograph committee (ICC) of 1927-28, chaired by a former Madras high court judge, T. Rangachariar, was the first comprehensive inquiry into movie viewing, censoring and exhibiting habits in the country, and an acknowledgment by the British of cinema’s increasing popularity in India. It made several pragmatic suggestions regarding censorship and the Indian cinema but in vain like most of the painstakingly written reports that have followed since. Despite the earlier mentioned long list of objectionable subjects, Indian cinema wasn’t exactly prurient in the 1920s and 1930s. Hamarun Hindustan (1930) had an intimate scene with Sulochana and Jal Merchant. Film-maker J.B.H. Wadia recalled, years after the fact, Lalita Pawar kissing her co-star “without inhibition” in a film, and Jal Merchant and Zubeida “kissing each other quite often” in 1932’s Zarina (depending on which account you read, Zarina had a total of 34, 48 or 82 kisses). Actors kiss in the Franz Osten-directed Shiraz (1928) and A Throw Of Dice (1929). And there’s the famous kiss in Karma (1933), which has gone down in legend as being 4 minutes long, though it lasts only a minute and involves a snake and a tearful Devika Rani trying to bring a comatose Himanshu Rai to life. (July 14 2018, Livemint) Suresh Chabria writes in Light Of Asia: Indian Silent Cinema, 1912-1934, “Even mentioning British excesses, the Indian National Congress, self-governance, or even revolution in other countries was enough to earn your film a cut or a ban.” “It’s a strange phenomenon which we find in this country to see the Government-sponsored Indian News Parade claiming to give all the news to the Indian people while the Censors black-out the Nation’s beloved leaders who make the most news,” cine-journal Filmindia complained in 1945, noting that even framed photographs of national leaders were cut from films. Through the Film Inquiry Committee report submitted to the government in 1951, we get a picture of what censorship was like in the years leading up to, and just after, independence. Things were, to put it mildly, chaotic. The five censor boards examined films separately, and each had their own set of rules and local pressures. Often, a title passed by one would be rejected by another. In addition, the government—of India, or of a particular state—might deny a certificate to a film passed by the censors, a fate which could befall a noir or a war film as easily as it could a propaganda newsreel. In the same decade, it was made evident that film censorship in free India would depend not only on official sanction but on societal approval. It was then that the kiss disappeared from Indian cinema—a curtailment so long and stifling that it hasn’t fully returned yet. In film critic and historian B.D. Garga’s words, “Kissing disappeared from the Indian screen not because of a fiat of the censor but because of pressures brought on by social and religious groups.” Over the next few years, a Central Board of Film Censors (CBFC, renamed as Central Board of Film Certification in 1983) was set up, regional boards were abolished, and U and A were adopted as certification categories. “The Act of 1918 was repealed, but it was later replaced with a law not dissimilar in scope,” Arpan Banerjee notes in his essay Political Censorship And Indian Cinematographic Laws: A Functionalist-liberal Analysis. This was the Cinematograph Act of 1952, the cornerstone—and, in many ways, the millstone—of film censorship in India. The 1952 Cinematograph Act sets out the structure of censorship as it stands today: the chairperson at the top, then the board members, then the advisory panels (members of the initial examining committee and the revising committee, which do much of the actual examination of films, are drawn from these). Everyone, from the chairperson down to the advisory panel members, is a government appointee. And every government at the Centre has taken advantage of this, staffing the CBFC with party loyalists eager to make cuts and deny certificates to films critical of the establishment. The Emergency saw the most blatant use of this power, with Gulzar’s Aandhi (1975) and Amrit Nahata’s Kissa Kursi Ka (1977) banned, and Shyam Benegal’s Nishant (1975) stuck in a bureaucratic tangle, because they were perceived as critical of the Congress government. (July 14 2018, Livemint) What makes the Cinematograph Act such a problematic piece of legislation is the Section 5B of the Act, which states that any film that is against the “interests of [the sovereignty and integrity of India] the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or involves defamation or contempt of court or is likely to incite the commission of any offence” can be denied a certificate. Censors are tasked with ensuring that films provide “clean and healthy entertainment”; do not “deprave the morality of the audience”, endanger public order or “depict the modus operandi of criminals”, and so on. All these rules are not only vague but also convenient since no film can be released without a certificate from the CBFC, a government appointed body. In 1968, Abbas—already well-known as the screenwriter of Awara and Shree 420—made a 16-minute documentary, Char Shahar Ek Kahani, which had scenes showing prostitution in Mumbai. The CBFC’s examining committee handed the film an “A” certificate; after Abbas protested, the revising committee reached the same conclusion. After a fruitless appeal to the Central government, Abbas petitioned the Supreme Court, arguing that pre-censorship was antithetical to freedom of speech and expression. The court ruled against Abbas. “The censorship imposed on the making and exhibition of films is in the interests of society,” said the judgement, though it also asked Parliament and the government to do more to separate the objectionable from the socially valuable. Though Abbas’ suit was probably doomed from the start, it did have one useful fallout: the formation, in 1981, of the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT), a quasi-judicial body headed by a retired high court judge, which one could approach if unhappy with the decision of the CBFC’s examining and revising committees. (July 14 2018, Livemint) There have only been some minor developments in the years since—films must now carry no-smoking advisories, and (thankfully) it’s almost impossible to shoot a scene with a live animal. In addition to the ever-arbitrary demands of the board—a blurred brassiere here, a bleeped “virgin” there—censorship by mob has emerged as a disturbing issue. Starting with Bal Thackeray demanding his own cuts in Mani Ratnam’s Bombay in 1995, the Shiv Sena’s protests against Deepa Mehta’s Fire in 1998, religious organizations and fanatics demanding cuts in movies like Ae Dil Hai Mushkil and Padmaavat in the present times to delaying releases if the demands aren’t met, censorship by mob has been normalised. Though everyone in the industry is affected by it, they refuse to unite and speak against it. “Bollywood does not care,” director Dibakar Banerjee says, “because it knows it will somehow navigate through the bureaucratic red tape to survive. It’s a vestige of the licence raj.” In an interview to The Hindu in January 2002, Vijay Anand, director of Guide and Jewel Thief and the CBFC chief at the time, was asked whether the media was right to pick on the board’s decisions. “Why not?”, he replied “We are the visible mouthpiece of a moralistic society.” This is an uncomfortably honest self-assessment, but there’s some truth to the idea that the board isn’t entirely to blame. Film censorship in India can only be fixed if the rules governing it are overhauled and if there’s a change in attitude that has persisted since the days of the British: the tendency to treat the viewer as incapable. Movie-watchers should finally be allowed to decide for themselves whether a particular film will offend their sensibilities or not.

[praxitor-blog]

The Junto

The formation and ground rules of the Junto:

I should have mentioned before, that, in the autumn of the preceding year, I had form'd most of my ingenious acquaintance into a club of mutual improvement, which was called the Junto;[54] we met on Friday evenings. The rules that I drew up required that every member, in his turn, should produce one or more queries on any point of Morals, Politics, or Natural Philosophy, to be discuss'd by the company; and once in three months produce and read an essay of his own writing, on any subject he pleased. Our debates were to be under the direction of a president, and to be conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiry after truth, without fondness for dispute, or desire of victory; and, to prevent warmth, all expressions of positiveness in opinions, or direct contradiction, were after some time made contraband, and prohibited under small pecuniary penalties.

The writing utility of the Junto:

I considered my newspaper, also, as another means of communicating instruction, and in that view frequently reprinted in it extracts from the Spectator, and other moral writers; and sometimes publish'd little pieces of my own, which had been first composed for reading in our Junto.

The Junto’s discourse norms:

My list of virtues contain'd at first but twelve; but a Quaker friend having kindly informed me that I was generally thought proud; that my pride show'd itself frequently in conversation; that I was not content with being in the right when discussing any point, but was overbearing, and rather insolent, of which he convinc'd me by mentioning several instances; I determined endeavouring to cure myself, if I could, of this vice or folly among the rest, and I added Humility to my list, giving an extensive meaning to the word.

I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the reality of this virtue, but I had a good deal with regard to the appearance of it. I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbid myself, agreeably to the old laws of our Junto, the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fix'd opinion, such as certainly, undoubtedly, etc., and I adopted, instead of them, I conceive, I apprehend, or I imagine a thing to be so or so; or it so appears to me at present. When another asserted something that I thought an error, I deny'd myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appear'd or seem'd to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engag'd in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I propos'd my opinions procur'd them a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevail'd with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right. 

And this mode, which I at first put on with some violence to natural inclination, became at length so easy, and so habitual to me, that perhaps for these fifty years past no one has ever heard a dogmatical expression escape me. And to this habit (after my character of integrity) I think it principally owing that I had early so much weight with my fellow-citizens when I proposed new institutions, or alterations in the old, and so much influence in public councils when I became a member; for I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent, subject to much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in language, and yet I generally carried my points.

The business utility of the Junto:

But my giving this account of it here is to show something of the interest I had, everyone of these exerting themselves in recommending business to us. Breintnal particularly procur'd us from the Quakers the printing forty sheets of their history, the rest being to be done by Keimer; and upon this we work'd exceedingly hard, for the price was low. It was a folio, pro patria size, in pica, with long primer notes.[55] I compos'd of it a sheet a day, and Meredith worked it off at press; it was often eleven at night, and sometimes later, before I had finished my distribution for the next day's work, for the little jobbs sent in by our other friends now and then put us back. But so determin'd I was to continue doing a sheet a day of the folio, that one night, when, having impos'd[56] my forms, I thought my day's work over, one of them by accident was broken, and two pages reduced to pi,[57] I immediately distribut'd and composed it over again before I went to bed; and this industry, visible to our neighbors, began to give us character and credit ...

Franklin’s entry into politics:

About this time there was a cry among the people for more paper money, only fifteen thousand pounds being extant in the province, and that soon to be sunk.[59] The wealthy inhabitants oppos'd any addition, being against all paper currency, from an apprehension that it would depreciate, as it had done in New England, to the prejudice of all creditors. We had discuss'd this point in our Junto, where I was on the side of an addition, being persuaded that the first small sum struck in 1723 had done much good by increasing the trade, employment, and number of inhabitants in the province ...

Our debates possess'd me so fully of the subject, that I wrote and printed an anonymous pamphlet on it, entitled "The Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency." It was well receiv'd by the common people in general; but the rich men dislik'd it, for it increas'd and strengthen'd the clamor for more money, and they happening to have no writers among them that were able to answer it, their opposition slacken'd, and the point was carried by a majority in the House.

The first subscription library:

About this time, our club meeting, not at a tavern, but in a little room of Mr. Grace's, set apart for that purpose, a proposition was made by me, that, since our books were often referr'd to in our disquisitions upon the queries, it might be convenient to us to have them altogether where we met, that upon occasion they might be consulted; and by thus clubbing our books to a common library, we should, while we lik'd to keep them together, have each of us the advantage of using the books of all the other members, which would be nearly as beneficial as if each owned the whole. It was lik'd and agreed to, and we fill'd one end of the room with such books as we could best spare. The number was not so great as we expected; and tho' they had been of great use, yet some inconveniences occurring for want of due care of them, the collection, after about a year, was separated, and each took his books home again.

And now I set on foot my first project of a public nature, that for a subscription library. I drew up the proposals, got them put into form by our great scrivener, Brockden, and, by the help of my friends in the Junto, procured fifty subscribers of forty shillings each to begin with, and ten shillings a year for fifty years, the term our company was to continue. We afterwards obtain'd a charter, the company being increased to one hundred: this was the mother of all the North American subscription libraries, now so numerous. It is become a great thing itself, and continually increasing. These libraries have improved the general conversation of the Americans, made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries, and perhaps have contributed in some degree to the stand so generally made throughout the colonies in defense of their privileges.

The first firefighting company:

I began now to turn my thoughts a little to public affairs, beginning, however, with small matters. The city watch was one of the first things that I conceiv'd to want regulation. It was managed by the constables of the respective wards in turn; the constable warned a number of housekeepers to attend him for the night. Those who chose never to attend, paid him six shillings a year to be excus'd, which was suppos'd to be for hiring substitutes, but was, in reality, much more than was necessary for that purpose, and made the constableship a place of profit; and the constable, for a little drink, often got such ragamuffins about him as a watch, that respectable housekeepers did not choose to mix with. Walking the rounds, too, was often neglected, and most of the nights spent in tippling. I thereupon wrote a paper to be read in Junto, representing these irregularities, but insisting more particularly on the inequality of this six-shilling tax of the constables, respecting the circumstances of those who paid it, since a poor widow housekeeper, all whose property to be guarded by the watch did not perhaps exceed the value of fifty pounds, paid as much as the wealthiest merchant, who had thousands of pounds' worth of goods in his stores.

On the whole, I proposed as a more effectual watch, the hiring of proper men to serve constantly in that business; and as a more equitable way of supporting the charge, the levying a tax that should be proportion'd to the property. This idea, being approv'd by the Junto, was communicated to the other clubs, but as arising in each of them; and though the plan was not immediately carried into execution, yet, by preparing the minds of people for the change, it paved the way for the law obtained a few years after, when the members of our clubs were grown into more influence.

About this time I wrote a paper (first to be read in Junto, but it was afterward publish'd) on the different accidents and carelessnesses by which houses were set on fire, with cautions against them, and means proposed of avoiding them. This was much spoken of as a useful piece, and gave rise to a project, which soon followed it, of forming a company for the more ready extinguishing of fires, and mutual assistance in removing and securing of goods when in danger. Associates in this scheme were presently found, amounting to thirty. Our articles of agreement oblig'd every member to keep always in good order, and fit for use, a certain number of leather buckets, with strong bags and baskets (for packing and transporting of goods), which were to be brought to every fire; and we agreed to meet once a month and spend a social evening together, in discoursing and communicating such ideas as occurred to us upon the subjects of fires, as might be useful in our conduct on such occasions.

New clubs spawned from the Junto:

Our club, the Junto, was found so useful, and afforded such satisfaction to the members, that several were desirous of introducing their friends, which could not well be done without exceeding what we had settled as a convenient number, viz., twelve. We had from the beginning made it a rule to keep our institution a secret, which was pretty well observ'd; the intention was to avoid applications of improper persons for admittance, some of whom, perhaps, we might find it difficult to refuse. I was one of those who were against any addition to our number, but, instead of it, made in writing a proposal, that every member separately should endeavour to form a subordinate club, with the same rules respecting queries, etc., and without informing them of the connection with the Junto. The advantages proposed were, the improvement of so many more young citizens by the use of our institutions; our better acquaintance with the general sentiments of the inhabitants on any occasion, as the Junto member might propose what queries we should desire, and was to report to the Junto what pass'd in his separate club; the promotion of our particular interests in business by more extensive recommendation, and the increase of our influence in public affairs, and our power of doing good by spreading thro' the several clubs the sentiments of the Junto.

The project was approv'd, and every member undertook to form his club, but they did not all succeed. Five or six only were compleated, which were called by different names, as the Vine, the Union, the Band, etc. They were useful to themselves, and afforded us a good deal of amusement, information, and instruction, besides answering, in some considerable degree, our views of influencing the public opinion on particular occasions, of which I shall give some instances in course of time as they happened.

The academy:

Peace being concluded, and the association business therefore at an end, I turn'd my thoughts again to the affair of establishing an academy. The first step I took was to associate in the design a number of active friends, of whom the Junto furnished a good part; the next was to write and publish a pamphlet, entitled Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania. This I distributed among the principal inhabitants gratis; and as soon as I could suppose their minds a little prepared by the perusal of it, I set on foot a subscription for opening and supporting an academy; it was to be paid in quotas yearly for five years; by so dividing it, I judg'd the subscription might be larger, and I believe it was so, amounting to no less, if I remember right, than five thousand pounds.In the introduction to these proposals, I stated their publication, not as an act of mine, but of some publick-spirited gentlemen, avoiding as much as I could, according to my usual rule, the presenting myself to the publick as the author of any scheme for their benefit.

[christheodore]

July 11, 2014 -- by John Pilger

The other night, I saw George Orwell’s 1984 performed on the London stage. Although crying out for a contemporary interpretation, Orwell’s warning about the future was presented as a period piece: remote, unthreatening, almost reassuring. It was as if Edward Snowden had revealed nothing, Big Brother was not now a digital eavesdropper and Orwell himself had never said, “To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.”

Acclaimed by critics, the skilful production was a measure of our cultural and political times. When the lights came up, people were already on their way out. They seemed unmoved, or perhaps other distractions beckoned. “What a mindfuck,” said the young woman, lighting up her phone.

As advanced societies are de-politicised, the changes are both subtle and spectacular. In everyday discourse, political language is turned on its head, as Orwell prophesised in 1984. “Democracy” is now a rhetorical device.  Peace is “perpetual war.” “Global” is imperial. The once hopeful concept of “reform” now means regression, even destruction. “Austerity” is the imposition of extreme capitalism on the poor and the gift of socialism for the rich: an ingenious system under which the majority service the debts of the few.

In the arts, hostility to political truth-telling is an article of bourgeois faith.  “Picasso’s red period,” says an Observer headline, “and why politics don’t make good art.” Consider this in a newspaper that promoted the bloodbath in Iraq as a liberal crusade. Picasso’s lifelong opposition to fascism is a footnote, just as Orwell’s radicalism has faded from the prize that appropriated his name.

A few years ago, Terry Eagleton, then professor of English literature at Manchester University, reckoned that “for the first time in two centuries, there is no eminent British poet, playwright or novelist prepared to question the foundations of the western way of life”. No Shelley speaks for the poor, no Blake for utopian dreams, no Byron damns the corruption of the ruling class, no Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin reveal the moral disaster of capitalism. William Morris, Oscar Wilde, HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw have no equivalents today. Harold Pinter was the last to raise his voice.  Among the insistent voices of consumer- feminism, none echoes Virginia Woolf, who described “the arts of dominating other people … of ruling, of killing, of acquiring land and capital”.

At the National Theatre, a new play, Great Britain, satirises the phone hacking scandal that has seen journalists tried and convicted, including a former editor of Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World. Described as a “farce with fangs [that] puts the whole incestuous [media] culture in the dock and subjects it to merciless ridicule”, the play’s targets are the “blessedly funny” characters in Britain’s tabloid press. That is well and good, and so familiar. What of the non-tabloid media that regards itself as reputable and credible, yet serves a parallel role as an arm of state and corporate power, as in the promotion of illegal war?

The Leveson inquiry into phone hacking glimpsed this unmentionable. Tony Blair was giving evidence, complaining to His Lordship about the tabloids’ harassment of his wife, when he was interrupted by a voice from the public gallery. David Lawley-Wakelin, a film-maker, demanded Blair’s arrest and prosecution for war crimes. There was a long pause: the shock of truth. Lord Leveson leapt to his feet and ordered the truth-teller thrown out and apologised to the war criminal. Lawley-Wakelin was prosecuted; Blair went free.

Blair’s enduring accomplices are more respectable than the phone hackers. When the BBC arts presenter, Kirsty Wark, interviewed him on the tenth anniversary of his invasion of Iraq, she gifted him a moment he could only dream of; she allowed him to agonise over his “difficult” decision on Iraq rather than call him to account for his epic crime. This evoked the procession of BBC journalists who in 2003 declared that Blair could feel “vindicated”, and the subsequent, “seminal” BBC series, The Blair Years, for which David Aaronovitch was chosen as the writer, presenter and interviewer. A Murdoch retainer who campaigned for military attacks on Iraq, Libya and Syria, Aaronovitch fawned expertly.

Since the invasion of Iraq – the exemplar of an act of unprovoked aggression the Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson called “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” — Blair and his mouthpiece and principal accomplice, Alastair Campbell, have been afforded generous space in the Guardian to rehabilitate their reputations. Described as a Labour Party “star”, Campbell has sought the sympathy of readers for his depression and displayed his interests, though not his current assignment as advisor, with Blair, to the Egyptian military tyranny.

As Iraq is dismembered as a consequence of the Blair/Bush invasion, aGuardian headline declares: “Toppling Saddam was right, but we pulled out too soon”. This ran across a prominent article on 13 June by a former Blair functionary, John McTernan, who also served Iraq’s CIA installed dictator Iyad Allawi. In calling for a repeat invasion of a country his former master helped destroy , he made no reference to the deaths of at least 700,000 people, the flight of four million refugees and sectarian turmoil in a nation once proud of its communal tolerance.

“Blair embodies corruption and war,” wrote the radical Guardianc olumnist Seumas Milne in a spirited piece on 3 July. This is known in the trade as “balance”. The following day, the paper published a full-page advertisement for an American Stealth bomber. On a menacing image of the bomber were the words: “The F-35. GREAT For Britain”. This other embodiment of “corruption and war” will cost British taxpayers £1.3 billion, its F-model predecessors having slaughtered people across the developing world.

In a village in Afghanistan, inhabited by the poorest of the poor, I filmed Orifa, kneeling at the graves of her husband, Gul Ahmed, a carpet weaver, seven other members of her family, including six children, and two children who were killed in the adjacent house. A “precision” 500-pound bomb fell directly on their small mud, stone and straw house, leaving a crater 50 feet wide. Lockheed Martin, the plane’s manufacturer’s, had pride of place in the Guardian’s advertisement.

The former US secretary of state and aspiring president of the United States, Hillary Clinton, was recently on the BBC’s Women’s Hour, the quintessence of media respectability. The presenter, Jenni Murray, presented Clinton as a beacon of female achievement. She did not remind her listeners about Clinton’s profanity that Afghanistan was invaded to “liberate” women like Orifa. She asked  Clinton nothing about her administration’s terror campaign using drones to kill women, men and children. There was no mention of Clinton’s idle threat, while campaigning to be the first female president, to “eliminate” Iran, and nothing about her support for illegal mass surveillance and the pursuit of whistle-blowers.

Murray did ask one finger-to-the-lips question. Had Clinton forgiven Monica Lewinsky for having an affair with husband? “Forgiveness is a choice,” said Clinton, “for me, it was absolutely the right choice.” This recalled the 1990s and the years consumed by the Lewinsky “scandal”. President Bill Clinton was then invading Haiti, and bombing the Balkans, Africa and Iraq. He was also destroying the lives of Iraqi children; Unicef reported the deaths of half a million Iraqi infants under the age of five as a result of an embargo led by the US and Britain.

The children were media unpeople, just as Hillary Clinton’s victims in the invasions she supported and promoted – Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia — are media unpeople. Murray made no reference to them. A photograph of her and her distinguished guest, beaming, appears on the BBC website.

In politics as in journalism and the arts, it seems that dissent once tolerated in the “mainstream” has regressed to a dissidence: a metaphoric underground. When I began a career in Britain’s Fleet Street in the 1960s, it was acceptable to critique western power as a rapacious force. Read James Cameron’s celebrated reports of the explosion of the Hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll, the barbaric war in Korea and the American bombing of North Vietnam. Today’s grand illusion is of an information age when, in truth, we live in a media age in which incessant corporate propaganda is insidious, contagious, effective and liberal.

In his 1859 essay On Liberty, to which modern liberals pay homage, John Stuart Mill wrote: “Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end.” The “barbarians” were large sections of humanity of whom “implicit obedience” was required.  “It’s a nice and convenient myth that liberals are peacemakers and conservatives the warmongers,” wrote the historian Hywel Williams in 2001, “but the imperialism of the liberal way may be more dangerous because of its open-ended nature: its conviction that it represents a superior form of life.” He had in mind a speech by Blair in which the then prime minister promised to “reorder the world around us” according to his “moral values”.

Richard Falk, the respected authority on international law and the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, once described a “a self-righteous, one-way, legal/moral screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted political violence”. It is “so widely accepted as to be virtually unchallengeable”.

Tenure and patronage reward the guardians. On BBC Radio 4, Razia Iqbal interviewed Toni Morrison, the African-American Nobel Laureate. Morrison wondered why people were “so angry” with Barack Obama, who was “cool” and wished to build a “strong economy and health care”. Morrison was proud to have talked on the phone with her hero, who had read one of her books and invited her to his inauguration.

Neither she nor her interviewer mentioned Obama’s seven wars, including his terror campaign by drone, in which whole families, their rescuers and mourners have been murdered. What seemed to matter was that a “finely spoken” man of colour had risen to the commanding heights of power. In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon wrote that the “historic mission” of the colonised was to serve as a “transmission line” to those who ruled and oppressed. In the modern era, the employment of ethnic difference in western power and propaganda systems is now seen as essential. Obama epitomises this, though the cabinet of George W. Bush – his warmongering clique – was the most multiracial in presidential history.

As the Iraqi city of Mosul fell to the jihadists of ISIS, Obama said, “The American people made huge investments and sacrifices in order to give Iraqis the opportunity to chart a better destiny.” How “cool” is that lie? How “finely spoken” was Obama’s speech at the West Point military academy on 28 May. Delivering his “state of the world” address at the graduation ceremony of those who “will take American leadership” across the world, Obama said, “The United States will use military force, unilaterally if necessary, when our core interests demand it. International opinion matters, but America will never ask permission …”

In repudiating international law and the rights of independent nations, the American president claims a divinity based on the might of his “indispensable nation”. It is a familiar message of imperial impunity, though always bracing to hear. Evoking the rise of fascism in the 1930s, Obama said, “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being.”  Historian Norman Pollack wrote: “For goose-steppers, substitute the seemingly more innocuous militarisation of the total culture. And for the bombastic leader, we have the reformer manqué, blithely at work, planning and executing assassination, smiling all the while.”

In February, the US mounted one of its “colour” coups against the elected government in Ukraine, exploiting genuine protests against corruption in Kiev. Obama’s national security adviser Victoria Nuland personally selected the leader of an “interim government”. She nicknamed him “Yats”. Vice President Joe Biden came to Kiev, as did CIA Director John Brennan. The shock troops of their putsch were Ukrainian fascists.

For the first time since 1945, a neo-Nazi, openly anti-Semitic party controls key areas of state power in a European capital.  No Western European leader has condemned this revival of fascism in the borderland through which Hitler’s invading Nazis took millions of Russian lives. They were supported by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), responsible for the massacre of Jews and Russians they called “vermin”. The UPA is the historical inspiration of the present-day Svoboda Party and its fellow-travelling Right Sector. Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok has called for a purge of the “Moscow-Jewish mafia” and “other scum”, including gays, feminists and those on the political left.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has ringed Russia with military bases, nuclear warplanes and missiles as part of its Nato Enlargement Project. Reneging on a promise made to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that Nato would not expand “one inch to the east”, Nato has, in effect, militarily occupied eastern Europe. In the former Soviet Caucasus, Nato’s expansion is the biggest military build-up since the Second World War.

A Nato Membership Action Plan is Washington’s gift to the coup-regime in Kiev. In August, “Operation Rapid Trident” will put American and British troops on Ukraine’s Russian border and “Sea Breeze” will send US warships within sight of Russian ports. Imagine the response if these acts of provocation, or intimidation, were carried out on America’s borders.

In reclaiming Crimea — which Nikita Khrushchev illegally detached from Russia in 1954 – the Russians defended themselves as they have done for almost a century. More than 90 per cent of the population of Crimea voted to return the territory to Russia. Crimea is the home of the Black Sea Fleet and its loss would mean life or death for the Russian Navy and a prize for Nato. Confounding the war parties in Washington and Kiev, Vladimir Putin withdrew troops from the Ukrainian border and urged ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine to abandon separatism.

In Orwellian fashion, this has been inverted in the west to the “Russian threat”. Hillary Clinton likened Putin to Hitler. Without irony, right-wing German commentators said as much. In the media, the Ukrainian neo-Nazis are sanitised as “nationalists” or “ultra nationalists”. What they fear is that Putin is skilfully seeking a diplomatic solution, and may succeed. On 27 June, responding to Putin’s latest accommodation – his request to the Russian Parliament to rescind legislation that gave him the power to intervene on behalf of Ukraine’s ethnic Russians – Secretary of State John Kerry issued another of his ultimatums. Russia must “act within the next few hours, literally” to end the revolt in eastern Ukraine. Notwithstanding that Kerry is widely recognised as a buffoon, the serious purpose of these “warnings” is to confer pariah status on Russia and suppress news of the Kiev regime’s war on its own people.

A third of the population of Ukraine are Russian-speaking and bilingual. They have long sought a democratic federation that reflects Ukraine’s ethnic diversity and is both autonomous and independent of Moscow. Most are neither “separatists” nor “rebels” but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland. Separatism is a reaction to the Kiev junta’s attacks on them, causing as many as 110,000 (UN estimate) to flee across the border into Russia. Typically, they are traumatized women and children.

Like Iraq’s embargoed infants, and Afghanistan’s “liberated” women and girls, terrorised by the CIA’s warlords, these ethnic people of Ukraine are media unpeople in the west, their suffering and the atrocities committed against them minimised, or suppressed. No sense of the scale of the regime’s assault is reported in the mainstream western media. This is not unprecedented. Reading again Phillip Knightley’s masterly The First Casualty: the war correspondent as hero, propagandist and mythmaker, I renewed my admiration for the Manchester Guardian’s Morgan Philips Price, the only western reporter to remain in Russia during the 1917 revolution and report the truth of a disastrous invasion by the western allies. Fair-minded and courageous, Philips Price alone disturbed what Knightley calls an anti-Russian “dark silence” in the west.

On 2 May, in Odessa, 41 ethnic Russians were burned alive in the trade union headquarters with police standing by. There is horrifying video evidence.  The Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh hailed the massacre as “another bright day in our national history”. In the American and British media, this was reported as a “murky tragedy” resulting from “clashes” between “nationalists” (neo-Nazis) and “separatists” (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine). The New York Times buried it, having dismissed as Russian propaganda warnings about the fascist and anti-Semitic policies of Washington’s new clients. The Wall Street Journal damned the victims – “Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says”. Obama congratulated the junta for its “restraint”.

On 28 June, the Guardian devoted most of a page to declarations by the Kiev regime’s “president”, the oligarch Petro Poroshenko.  Again, Orwell’s rule of inversion applied. There was no putsch; no war against Ukraine’s minority; the Russians were to blame for everything. “We want to modernise my country,” said Poroshenko. “We want to introduce freedom, democracy and European values. Somebody doesn’t like that. Somebody doesn’t like us for that.”

According to his report, the Guardian’s reporter, Luke Harding, did not challenge these assertions, or mention the Odessa atrocity, the regime’s air and artillery attacks on residential areas, the killing and kidnapping of journalists, the firebombing of an opposition newspaper and his threat to “free Ukraine from dirt and parasites”. The enemy are “rebels”, “militants”, “insurgents”, “terrorists” and stooges of the Kremlin. Summon from history the ghosts of Vietnam, Chile, East Timor, southern Africa, Iraq; note the same tags. Palestine is the lodestone of this unchanging deceit. On 11 July, following the latest Israeli, American equipped slaughter in Gaza – 80 people including six children in one family — an Israeli general writes in the Guardian under the headline, “A necessary show of force”.

In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl and asked her about her films that glorified the Nazis. Using revolutionary camera and lighting techniques, she produced a documentary form that mesmerised Germans; it was her Triumph of the Will that reputedly cast Hitler’s spell. I asked her about propaganda in societies that imagined themselves superior. She replied that the “messages” in her films were dependent not on “orders from above” but on a “submissive void” in the German population. “Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?” I asked. “Everyone,” she replied, “and of course the intelligentsia.”

[itsoktowanttodie-blog]

Thoughts today

It is 2017. I'm a sophomore in college and the president of the United States is Donald fucking Trump. If you're finding this post hundreds of years from now you may be wondering "Donald Trump? The infamous, moronic reality star from that shitty show the Apprentice? The guy with a long history of bankruptcy, tax evasion, sexual harassment, and almost absolutely NO political knowledge or experience? How in tarnation did he acquire the most prestigious position in the country?" Well, future reader, that's a very good question. I'll be exploring that. Now, if you're reading this in modern times, then you're probably my facebook friend and you either hate me for my liberal posts, or you hype me up on my politically poised statuses, to both groups I would like to apologize for the length of this post (if you make it all the way through you're a real trooper). Either way, you probably fall into one of three categories of people who fought the good fight to elect our president for the 2016-2020 term. All three of these categories can be described as bad, there's no doubt about that, but I personally can only find a solid argument in the defense of the category I belong to, and a partial, half-ass defense for one of the others, the remaining, however, I can make almost no excuses for. You either voted liberal (Democratic) for Hillary Clinton, a slanted and shady lady with priorities being placed mostly on her wallet. Hillary isn't a truly good woman, she lies and manipulates people, but out of the two big party candidates, she is absolutely the lesser of two evils. She isn't all bad either, advocating for women and immigrants in America, and whatnot. If you didn't vote liberal then you either fall into one of the two remaining categories. You either voted conservative (Republican) for Donald Trump, a category I refuse to make excuses for, or almost just as bad as the latter of the first two categories, you voted 3rd party (Independent) or you didn't vote at all. Notice that I'm putting 3rd party voters in the same group as the 42.1% of America that didn't vote. The people in this group are just plain negligent. Not that I am usually opposed to 3rd party voting, mind you, I think that the Independent party is important and greatly under appreciated for their values and ideas, but this year a swell of 3rd party voting occurred because, of the 57.9% of America that voted, a majority of people spent months trying to figure out who they hated less and who was slightly less morally repugnant than the other (a clear choice to me but, surprisingly enough, not so clear for everyone else) but, conveniently, just a month or two (maybe three) before the voting took place 3rd party candidates like Jill Stein and Gary Johnson magically got enough funding I guess, to start making their social media and television debuts, to reel in clueless and confused voters looking for a way out of this "hard" decision between two evils. With promises of safe haven and a president with some actual political experience (as if Hil couldn't have given us those things) many new, young and uninformed voters cast their votes for 3rd party candidates, or in other words threw their vote pretty much right out the window. Although they weren't the only ones about 14,000 people wrote in Harambe (a poor gorilla shot down in his prime at the Cincinnati zoo this past year and then turned into a widely famous internet meme), and, as I mentioned previously, 42.1% of America just didn't care enough/couldn't make themselves choose/couldn't be bothered to register to vote for what could very possibly be the most influential and upsetting presidential election of all time. I know some of my closest friends aren't registered to vote and, to quote them, "understand it's a privilege and a blessing that we get to vote, they are just choosing not to exercise their right to vote" for whatever reason it was that they had at the time. I love all my friends (friends who didn't vote, I love you endlessly still, but the truth of the matter is that I am disappointed) and I'm always quick to defend them, but in this case I cannot defend their actions, or lack there of, because if half the people who didn't vote, or all of the people who voted 3rd party, voted for Hilary we wouldn't be in this mess. If you voted 3rd party or you didn't vote at all, I really can't and don't want to listen to a word you have to say about the state of our country or our new president because you are to blame just as much as the people who voted for him. And if that makes you mad or upset then so be it, because if you had been just as mad or upset as that statement just made you before he won we could have prevented that. Now that being said, Donald Trump is the president of the United States and there is nothing we can do but pray for a speedy impeachment, which is inevitable, so at least that's good, but Mike Pence and Paul Ryan are both horrible people as well so the future, at best, has a dim glow to it in my eyes. Trump has been in office for about 2 weeks now. Already he has banned immigration and travel into the United States from 7 "unsafe" and largely Muslim nations, he has moved to put the "gag rule" (regarding nongovernment corporations which offer abortion services being defunded) back in place, he has moved to start planning for the wall which is going to cost us roughly 55 billion dollars, he ordered a millitary raid without sufficient intelligence in Yemen which lead to numerous civilian deaths as well as the death of an 8 year old American girl and a US Navy Seal, he started a fight with FUCKING AUSTRALIA ONE OF THE MOST PEACEFUL COUNTRIES EVER BESIDES SWEDEN AND NOT TO MENTION ONE OF OUR ALLIES, and he announced that he plans to get rid of the law that prevents churches (cough cough Westboro Baptist cough) from political engagement because as if all the other things weren't bad enough he's just gonna shit on the Constitution and Thomas Jefferson's expressed intent of keeping church and state SEPARATE. And to top off all of the aforementioned actions, he has tweeted about most if not all of these things in a childlike and unfit manner, further proving that America is digressing instead of progressing as a country. One of the scariest things about this presidency, to me, is the ignorance it is perpetuating. Donald Trump has exhibited most, if not all, of the signs of fascism, for those of you unaware of what fascism is look up Benito Mussolini or read the book 1984 then let me know what you think. There are two kinds of Republicans in America now, there are silent Republicans, those who are conservatives at heart (almost an oxymoron haha) who are freaking out about the lack of control they have over Donald and who really just wanted a Republican life in America but are getting much more than they bargained for; and there are alt-right, die hard Trump supporters. These are the nazis. They straight up are racist, misogynistic (even the women like what the fuck what is wrong with you seriously) and zenophobic. The supporters of Trump range in their degree of support, some silent Republicans just want to hold on to the sliver of hope that they didn't completely fuck their country over and that Donald might do what they want him to do (and not just whatever the fuck he wants to do because that's super likely and he's a super dependable and honorable man, sarcasm intended). But all supporters of Trump not only perpetuate the level of ignorance they assume to defend this man but they so aggressively (and possibly unknowingly, to a certain extent) promote twisted and false propaganda and the silence of others opposed to them, that I have been seeing a new kind of human being that I didn't even know existed. I have been called every name in the book since Trump won (not unwarranted I must add, I'm a very passionate girl with a very bad Irish temper) because I have stood up for my views and morals in the wake of his election. I will not back down from fighting the good fight. I will fight for the rights of women, immigrants, minorities and the poor. I will fight for our homeless population, both civilian and veteran. I will fight for Native Americans whose land is still being ripped from them for the benefit of corporate and industrial America. I will stand up for those with mental disabilities and those who can't stand up for themselves. And because of this I am a cry baby, a pussy liberal, a whiner, a bitch, a spoiled, overprivileged millennial who throws a fit anytime I don't get what I want. I know that I am a loving and compassionate person who cares for everyone and just wants the best for ALL human beings with great respect to democracy (although I strongly identify as a democratic socialist by my own philosophies), but in the minds of the people who call me those names I may actually be all those things, and that's where I have started to notice the problem amid humanity that has arisen (and has been arising in society for quite some time now, with regards to its previous and everlasting existence throughout the development of the human race). This problem being the lack of empathy and understanding leading to the loss of humanity. People are slowly becoming more and more isolated as we are in the new age of technology. The more isolated we become the more humanity we lose. Technology makes it really easy to desert your humanity, especially when the isolationist philosophy is so widely spread by society. The idea that "I am the only one who matters because I am me, I should look out for me and only me". We see this idea everywhere, especially in my generation, the social media generation, with trends like Waste His/Her Time 2016/2017 or most blatantly obvious, the corporate world that America has created within its own society. It's easy to not care about other people's lives and problems because you will never feel the effect of the actions that cause their problems, so how could it concern you? Plenty of philosophers have said it, you really only have yourself since you live alone and you die alone, right? As Aldous Huxley said in his literary masterpiece Doors Of Perception, "From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes." How could you be expected to tend to your own universe while also tending to the 7 billion other universes functioning simultaneously around you? Just don't expose yourself to news and current events that don't affect you directly, and look out for what benefits you and your wallet the most and you'll live a happy, full life (by American standards), right? This philosophy is easy for people to adapt because caring hurts. Because giving all of your love away is exhausting, and because if they were to lose that philosophy, and still live their lives the way that only benefits them, their conscious would have a hard time ridding itself of the everlasting guilt. That is, if they really are human beings, and not sociopaths/psychopaths, which studies by Canadian forensic psychologist Robert Hare show that in comparison to the prevalence rate, 1%, of the general population that can be categorized as psychopathic, 10% of the financial services industry is psychopathic. Who cares that an estimated 1.5 million women are going to lose access to contraception because of the Mexico City policy? Who cares that an estimated 6.5 million unintended pregnancies will happen, who cares about what happens to those kids who are going to be born into terrible lives? We don't have to see them day to day, we don't have to live their hard lives. That's for them to deal with, while we march onwards toward victory for pro-life and conservatism, its not enough to take away just our funding we have to take away all funding so we can be happy and God can say good job guys! Those kids deserved to be born into poverty and famine, that mother deserved to die in childbirth, this is just what I wanted! I'm sure that child who was born won't ever wish they were never born, they'll be thankful your actions brought them into this world to suffer! Sorry this is turning pro-choice, back to the real problem. People don't think about others anymore. I always try to do things I find are common courtesy and proper etiquette, such as holding the door for people, picking up something for someone who dropped it near me, smiling at people, giving people compliments, etc. and most of the time I find that the reactions I get when I do these things are of genuine surprise and sadly enough, sometimes contempt. It's become common policy to ignore those around you, to retreat into yourself and fuss with your phone so you can avoid talking to that person in a wheelchair that just got into the elevator with you or the person sitting next to you at the doctor's office. I realize it may seem like I'm asking for a lot to some people, because not everyone is born with the innate wonder that I have about other's lives, to look at someone else and think "what kind of struggles do you go through everyday? How can those struggles be solved?" It is very easy to ignore the problems of others when we are well-off ourselves, people become blind to the truth. It is very easy to make excuses for politicians, for religious leaders, for "respected" members of society, for the elite, and especially for ourselves. But it's not easy to recognize, acknowledge, and empathize with the trials and tribulations our fellow members of the human race experience. To do that it means you have to feel, you have to open your mind, and you have to try to be able to sleep at night knowing babies are born into famine and war everyday, not only in foreign countries (which we so lovingly refer to as Third World, uncivilized societies) but in our own nation (i.e. gang culture, drug and sex trade culture, racially prejudiced culture, homophobic and zenophobic culture). It hurts, and I know first-hand from many of my own issues dealing with emotional trauma that it is easier to shut yourself off to the world, turn off your humanity and tell yourself that you don't care because it doesn't concern you. I implore you to try your hardest everyday to care about others, to care about who may suffer from the consequences of the actions of not only yourself but those around you and most obviously so now, our nation. In addition, many of the Trump supporters, or just regular conservatives, that I have been interacting with have been enacting tactics of gaslighting and selective prioritization. They attack my views by questioning my patriotism and my morals, "why don't we help our own homeless veterans before we support a bunch of foreigners? Do you not care about our citizens who are dying in the streets here? Do you want to see America attacked on it's own soil again? Are you against America since you say it was never great?" By dividing us as a human race, by telling yourself that our homeless veterans are any more important than the homeless of other nations, you are prioritizing American lives when there need not be prioritization. Both groups of people are equally in need of help, and help can be given in tandem. (I'll bypass the fact that America is literally comprised of foreigners and was started for the purpose of escaping religious persecution and immigration). These are the same people that blissfully ignore the fact that the homeless veterans they believe are more important than refugees will suffer from the economic decisions of the Trump administration, and don't do much, if anything, to advocate for that group of people. They use them as examples, but don't contribute to the resolution of the continual epidemic of homelessness. The same goes for many pro-life advocates and activists. They talk about believing in the rights of each individual human being, but yet neglect the consequences of what they advocate for. How can you be "pro-life" but ignore the lives that are ruined by taking away the option of abortion? How can you be "pro-life" but do nothing for the reform and rehabilitation of the foster care/social work system where so many of these "unintentional" or "unwanted" children end up? You are always entitled to stand up for what you believe in, but that doesn't mean that you are entitled to vilify the beliefs of others or ignore that there are more ideologies than just your system of beliefs, and just because you haven't adapted them, doesn't mean yours are the only valid views. You must take your views into account and you must try, really actively try, to take the opposing party's views into account, then and only then can you attempt to reach any kind of understanding, nonetheless resolution. The solutions to these problems don't come easy, obviously or some of them would have been solved decades, if not centuries ago. But if everyone just talks over top of everyone else about why they are right then nothing gets accomplished and more anger, frustration and hate are produced. This post has been long and drawn out but the core message that I want to convey is this, don't let the ease of apathy take over your life. Care about others, read about what they go through, don't be another silent bystander and don't perpetuate ignorance and cruelty. When you see someone spewing hate or pushing propaganda that supports the division of us as the human race, stop them, talk to them, don't sit idly by while the hate continues to grow. It's certainly hard enough for me to try to keep my temper under control and logically talk to people with such radically different views, I still have to work on it each and every single day, but I'll never stop trying because when you stop trying, when you stop caring and just give up, that is when hate and evil win. You must always be the change that you want to see in the world, no matter how hopeless it seems. Love must, and love will, always find a way.

some sources include:

http://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-psychopaths-2012-2

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/25/politics/netherlands-trump-global-gag-rule/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/us/politics/trump-johnson-amendment-political-activity-churches.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/us/politics/us-australia-trump-turnbull.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/01/world/middleeast/donald-trump-yemen-commando-raid-questions.html

https://www.indy100.com/article/donald-trump-muslim-majority-travel-ban-list-early-warning-signs-fascism-holocaust-museum-7554621