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theboombutton · 1 year ago

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Bad Fictional Data vs Fictional Bad Data

WARNING: This post will include discussion of a name that might be Alice Dyer's deadname. I won't be calling Alice by this name or using it in the context of that name being a pointer to Alice, but I will be using the name, uncensored, when talking about where and why the name appeared in chdb.xls .

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You may know that as part of the ARG, the sleuths on Statement Remains uncovered a document called chdb.xls, allegedly a list that has something to do with The Magnus Institute. There's a list of names, ID numbers, first and last names, dates of birth, and information apparently related to each person's "score" in an assortment of psychological/personality tests. Three of the names in particular have stood out in a lot of analyses: Samama Khalid, Gerard Kaey [sic], and Connor Dyer.

You likely don't know that the commonly linked version of the spreadsheet, ported to Google Docs and linked in the TMAGP ARG Masterdoc, is presented out of order. (I'm guessing they didn't lock down editing until it was already all out of order from various people messing with it - totally understandable, this is not a callout post, thank you for making this easily accessible to people.)

But let me tell you about something I discovered by looking at the spreadsheet in its original order, and the almost certainly incorrect rabbit hole of theorizing it has sent me down.

Bad Fictional Data

Until episode 2 I had the same thought about the Dyer listed in the spreadsheet that I think most people did: that it was Alice's deadname, and that she had therefore been one of the Institute's young subjects. But after Alice had absolutely no reaction when Sam mentioned the Magnus Institute to her in episode 2, I now think this is significantly less likely.

Don't get me wrong: it's still reasonable to think that the Dyer listed in chdb.xls is Alice. Maybe she had some kind of supernatural experience that wiped her memory. (It probably wasn't that Alice was too young to remember, as the Dyer on the spreadsheet is listed as being at Piaget Stage 3, which occurs from 7-11 years old; but it's always possible that the Magnus Institute was using the names of legitimate psychological tests to hide their tracks when recording more esoteric data.) The point is, this isn't hard evidence that Alice has no connection to the Magnus Institute; it just made me go looking for more evidence.

I went back to the spreadsheet to look for more clues about whether or not this was Alice's deadname. What I found instead was some extremely sloppy fake data at the bottom of the spreadsheet.

For context, here are first ten names in the spreadsheet:

Note how each ID begins with the name's first and last initial.

Now check out the last ten names:

Not only do these IDs no longer always match their subjects' names, they occur in order: CD, EF, GH, IJ, KL, MN, OP, QR, ST, UV. The first names of each pair match the first letter of each ID, but many, though not all, of the surnames don't match the second letter.

My first thought was that whoever Rusty Quill had contracted to generate these names had gotten sloppy at the end of the list, created the IDs all at once using this alphabetical pattern, and picked names to fill in that roughly matched the IDs. But hey, we could use this to our advantage! Any name that was filled in as part of a series of IDs with an alphabetical pattern like this could be removed from consideration for red string analysis - we'd know they were meaningless fakes added by a lazy contractor, and not clues or characters that might show up again later.

Scrolling back up the spreadsheet, we can see the person generating the data having more care the earlier we go. We find the beginning of the AA/BC/DE/FG/HI pattern at line 136, but at first, the names mostly conform to the initials they've been given. JK09874 "Josie Jordan" at line 154 is the first break from the "first two letters of the ID are their initials" pattern; and breaks occur more often the further you go down the sheet.

Scrolling up to before line 136 (AA09911 - Aaron Atkinson), while the pattern isn't yet at AB/CD/EF/GH levels of obviousness, the first initials are still in alphabetical order. Zoe Hart follows Yara Logan follows Xavier Freeman follows Wyatt Edwards. The data creator skips a few letters - for example Niamh Fenton is followed by Phoebe Emmett, and S and T are together in the same line in Skye Travers.

We can follow this less-obvious version of the alphabetical pattern up to an abrupt break right at line 118, above which the IDs don't follow an alphabetical pattern at all. (They might follow a different pattern, but it's not one that I've found yet.) So that means we can discount all the names in line 118 and below as purely fake, generated lazily by a contractor, and not worthy of our attention for the purposes of red-stringing. Right?

What the fuck?!

(highlight is my own, it is not present in the original document)

My first thought was that the sloppy data generator had done the funniest thing imaginable, sending everyone on a wild goose chase about Alice's deadname just by having the name "Dyer" on the brain while looking for a surname that started with D. This would be Very Funny. No plot relevance, no implications, just the brain fart that launched a thousand theories.

My second thought was that maybe Connor Dyer was the last legit name on the list, and whoever started filling the rest of the sheet in with alphabetical junk data was inspired by the "CD" initials in the first place - whoever it was went on from there.

These are both valid thoughts! But I prefer my third thought:

What if it's on purpose?

Fictional Bad Data

There is a very obvious break between the set of data that doesn't look obviously* fake, and the set of data that is immediately identifiable as such. If we assume that this was intentional - and I want to reiterate that it all being unintentional is still a very real possibility here - why would someone at Rusty Quill want the data to be structured like this?

If the sharp dividing line between reasonable-seeming data and obviously fake data is intentional on RQ's part, it would suggest that we should take the data above row 118 as in-universe real data, and the data below row 118 as in-universe falsified data. It suggests that someone, either at the Institute or after its demise, was adding nonexistent children to the roster of The Magnus Institute. Why would someone want to do that?

There are all kinds of possible reasons, but here are a few off the top of my and my theorizing buddies' heads:

Financial fraud (institutional edition). If the Magnus Institute received funding on a per-child basis, they'd have an incentive to inflate their numbers.

Financial fraud (researcher edition). One or more people on staff were blowing off their child-analysis sessions and recording fake numbers for fake children. This would be ballsy as hell if they could be fired for it, but it was the Magnus Institute, so there's decent odds they couldn't be.

Scientific fraud (faking conclusions edition). The Magnus Institute in the Protocolverse claimed to be doing research on giftedness in children, which is the kind of thing that you'd normally publish in a scientific journal. It's not unheard-of for dickhead academics to falsify data to generate statistically significant results, since statistically insignificant results aren't going to get you published.

Scientific fraud (obscuring paranormal bullshit edition). If the Magnus Institute was using legitimate psychological test names to record Fear-related test results, it's possible their results showed different patterns from what you would expect from the real tests. They could have added the fake children to balance out the dataset as a whole.

Pseudonyms. The children are all real, the Institute just started using fake names for them for privacy purposes. They couldn't go back and change the names they'd already written properly for some reason. Probably something paranormal.

Those are all pretty interesting possibilities, and if we could narrow them down, it might tell us something about what things were like at the Magnus Institute before it burned down!

And the other big question is: why did RQ make the dividing line between the two sections, the first likely-fake entry, Connor Dyer?

One straightforward reason could be as a troll, a red herring to watch fans get in a lather over. And once the community inevitably noticed all the obviously falsified entries, RQ could eat popcorn and watch us lose our minds over whether or not that's even a real entry! (That sounds really fun, I would absolutely do that.)

But let's dig a little deeper, and look at what Connor Dyer being on the border between the real and fake entries would mean in-universe. Because of its position as the border between real and fake, it would be very easy for that entry to be accidentally included in the wrong group - a real research subject discarded as fake, or perhaps more interestingly, a fake research subject accidentally reclassified as real.

Remember, if a name is fake in the context of the Magnus Institute's research, that doesn't mean that the name itself is made up. If I was trying to think of a name that fit the initials CD, and those were the initials of my next door neighbor's kid, I might just write their name in as a lark. Especially if it was my first time trying to get away with falsifying information: this is a kid that verifiably exists and lives in the area.

My theory, supported primarily by my love for The Implications instead of actual evidence

Twenty years on, after all institutional memory of the fraud was long gone, trans icon Alice Dyer applies to work for the OIAR - an institution that (according to this theory) has an unofficial preference for hiring former Magnus Institute kids.

They are very confused when Alice proceeds to act nothing like a former Magnus Institute kid. It doesn't occur to anyone that her entry might have been falsified. What reason would anyone have to do that?

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* Of course people with a background in data analysis or statistics will see immediately that even above line 118 this is a wild-ass dataset that would raise red flags for falsification, but at least it's not "the alphabet over and over" levels of obvious.

#tmagp theory #alice dyer #tmagp arg #chdb.xls #tmagp speculation #tmagp #the magnus protocol #cw deadnaming

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tiffanybluesclues · 1 year ago

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this type of incorrect statement is why DC has a disclaimer at the bottom of the article btw 🙄

like, that phrase "the math is not mathing" applies here so hard

Even measuring from 1st appearance to now, and even ignoring both Stephanie AND Damian's time as Robin, that's 08/1989 to 06/2024, and even rounding up to make it 1989-2024 (inclusive!) that's 36 years.

If we're being more accurate, but still generous, going from Tim's first appearance as a character intended to eventually be Robin, up to the first issue of Red Robin, then that's 08/1989 to 08/2009. 20 years.

Add to that his return to the mantle (in 2019, I believe), continuous to now, that's about 6 years, so 26 years total.

Even ignoring elseworlds, flashbacks, retellings, adaptations, and anything outside of DC Comics main continuity, the character of Dick Grayson and the character of Robin were one and the same from 04/1940 to 02/1984. 44 years and 10 months.

36 years > 44⅚ years?

26 years > 44⅚ years??

I guess if you ignore the Golden Age version of Robin and only measure from May-June 1952, then you could say Dick spent less than 32 years as that version of Robin. & I guess if you then also ignore the decade or so where Damian was DC's official one and only main continuity Robin, then you can count everything from Tim's debut to now and say he was Robin for 36 years...🤔 Orrrrr we could just not say random things that require ignoring the 1st 12 years of the original Robin's existence and also ignoring that 2009-2019 happened.

Literally the only way that statement makes sense is if you argue that since Robin wasn't yet a mantle when Dick was Robin that he couldn't have maintained the mantle and only his successors could. That argument becomes weaker in situations like the one above though, where longevity is cited as one of the reasons fans passionately defend someone as their Robin. Because if that's the case then removing Dick from the discussion is ridiculous. He originated the identity, he maintained it for longer than anyone else, and yeah you'd think his fans wouldn't feel the need to passionately defend him as their Robin (because he is the blueprint), but sometimes someone is wrong on the Internet and we've gotta post on Tumblr about it.

Note: in-universe pre-Crisis Dick was Robin from age 8 to 19, so approximately 12 years. I don't recall if those ages changed post-Crisis, so they are my reference point. Tim was 13 when he first appeared. So even in-universe the only way he's maintained the Robin mantle longer is if DC acknowledges that he's at least 25 now and if he was only Red Robin for like a few months.

So yeah. He had a very long run as Robin and clearly is very special to many people, but it's semi annoying seeing people just say whatever to try to rewrite history and hand out accolades that don't apply instead of just celebrating the ones that actually do apply (like the first Robin solo title).

#you can argue that only successors can 'maintain' a mantle but that just seems like an excuse to exclude the originator #dick grayson #i'm not going to tag tim because maybe this could be seen as a character-negative post?#i'm really just baffled at the article author's math #this is the kind of thing that's annoying. these statements that flat out aren't true that gain traction because people just say whatever #arghghhh #anyway shout out to the legacy of robin. you will always be famous #tiff.txt #dick grayson robin

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samwisethewitch · 4 years ago

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Pagan Paths: Reclaiming

Many pagans and witches are also political activists. Pagan values — such as respect for the planet and for non-human forms of life, belief in equality regardless of race or gender, and personal autonomy — often lead people to social or political action. However, as far as I know, there is only one pagan religion that has actually made this social activism one of its core tenets: Reclaiming. Reclaiming combines neopaganism with anarchist principles and social activism.

This post is not meant to be a complete introduction to Reclaiming. Instead, my goal here is to give you a taste of what Reclaiming practitioners believe and do, so you can decide for yourself if further research would be worth your time. In that spirit, I provide book recommendations at the end of this post.

History and Background

Given Reclaiming’s reputation as a social justice-oriented faith, it’s not surprising that it grew out of activist efforts. Reclaiming began with well-known pagan authors Starhawk and Diane Baker, who began teaching classes on modern witchcraft in California in the 1980s. Members of these classes began protesting and doing other activist work together, and this pagan activist group eventually grew into the Reclaiming Collective.

Out of the founders of Reclaiming, Starhawk has probably had the biggest influence on the tradition. Starhawk was initiated into the Feri tradition by its founder Victor Anderson, but had also been trained in Wicca and worked with figures such as Zsuzsanna Budapest (founder of Dianic Wicca). These Feri and Wiccan influences are clear in Starhawk’s books, such as The Spiral Dance, and have also helped shape the Reclaiming tradition.

Like Feri, Reclaiming is an ecstatic tradition that emphasizes the interconnected divinity of all things. Like Eclectic Wicca, Reclaiming is a non-initiatory religion (meaning anyone can join, regardless of training or experience level) with lots of room to customize and personalize your individual practice.

However, to say that Starhawk is the head of the Reclaiming tradition, or even to credit her as its sole founder, would be incorrect. As Reclaiming has grown and spread, it has become increasingly decentralized. Decisions are made by consensus (meaning the group must reach a unanimous decision) in small, individual communities, which author Irisanya Moon calls “cells.” Each cell has its own unique beliefs, practices, and requirements for members, stemming from Reclaiming’s core values (see below). Some of these cells may stick very closely to the kind of paganism Starhawk describes in her books, while others may look very, very different.

As with any other religion, there are times where a governing body is needed to make widespread changes to the system, such as changing core doctrine. When these situations do arise, each individual cell chooses a representative, who in turn serves as a voice for that cell in a gathering with other representatives from other cells. BIRCH (the Broad Intra-Reclaiming Council of Hubs) is an example of this.

At BIRCH meetings, representatives make decisions via consensus, the same way decisions are made in individual cells. While this means changes may take months or even years to be proposed, discussed, modified, and finally passed, it also means that everyone within the tradition is part of the decision-making process.

Core Beliefs and Values

Like Wicca, Reclaiming has very little dogma. Unlike Wicca, the Reclaiming Collective has a public statement of values that clearly and concisely lays out the essentials of what they believe and do. This document, which is called the Principles of Unity, is not very long, so I’m going to lay it out in its entirety here.

This is the most recent version of the Principles of Unity, taken from the Reclaiming Collective website in February 2021:

“The values of the Reclaiming tradition stem from our understanding that the earth is alive and all of life is sacred and interconnected. We see the Goddess as immanent in the earth’s cycles of birth, growth, death, decay and regeneration. Our practice arises from a deep, spiritual commitment to the earth, to healing and to the linking of magic with political action.

Each of us embodies the divine. Our ultimate spiritual authority is within, and we need no other person to interpret the sacred to us. We foster the questioning attitude, and honor intellectual, spiritual and creative freedom.

We are an evolving, dynamic tradition and proudly call ourselves Witches. Our diverse practices and experiences of the divine weave a tapestry of many different threads. We include those who honor Mysterious Ones, Goddesses, and Gods of myriad expressions, genders, and states of being, remembering that mystery goes beyond form. Our community rituals are participatory and ecstatic, celebrating the cycles of the seasons and our lives, and raising energy for personal, collective and earth healing.

We know that everyone can do the life-changing, world-renewing work of magic, the art of changing consciousness at will. We strive to teach and practice in ways that foster personal and collective empowerment, to model shared power and to open leadership roles to all. We make decisions by consensus, and balance individual autonomy with social responsibility.

Our tradition honors the wild, and calls for service to the earth and the community. We work in diverse ways, including nonviolent direct action, for all forms of justice: environmental, social, political, racial, gender and economic. We are an anti-racist tradition that strives to uplift and center BIPOC voices (Black, Indigenous, People of Color). Our feminism includes a radical analysis of power, seeing all systems of oppression as interrelated, rooted in structures of domination and control.

We welcome all genders, all gender histories, all races, all ages and sexual orientations and all those differences of life situation, background, and ability that increase our diversity. We strive to make our public rituals and events accessible and safe. We try to balance the need to be justly compensated for our labor with our commitment to make our work available to people of all economic levels.

All living beings are worthy of respect. All are supported by the sacred elements of air, fire, water and earth. We work to create and sustain communities and cultures that embody our values, that can help to heal the wounds of the earth and her peoples, and that can sustain us and nurture future generations.”

The Principles of Unity were originally written in 1997, to create a sense of cohesion as the Reclaiming Collective grew and diversified. However, the Principles have not remained constant since the 1990s. They have been rewritten multiple times as the Reclaiming tradition has grown and the needs of its members have changed. Like everything else within the tradition, the Principles of Unity are not beyond scrutiny, critical analysis, and reform.

For example, in 2020 the wording of the Principles of Unity was changed to affirm diverse forms of social justice work — including but not limited to non-violent action — and to express a more firm anti-racist attitude that seeks to uplift BIPOC. This was a major change, as the previous version of the document explicitly called for non-violence and included a paraphrased version of the Rede (often called the Wiccan Rede), “Harm none, and do what you will.” This change was made via consensus by BIRCH, after a series of discussions about the meaning of non-violence and the need to make space for other types of activism.

Aside from the Principles of Unity, there are no hard and fast rules for Reclaiming belief. As Irisanya Moon says in her book on the tradition, “There is no typical Reclaiming Witch.”

Important Deities and Spirits

Just as with belief and values, views on deity within Reclaiming are extremely diverse. A member of this tradition might be a monist, a polytheist, a pantheist, an agnostic, or even a nontheist. (Note that nontheism is different from atheism — while atheism typically includes a rejection of religion, nontheism allows for meaningful religious experience without belief in a higher power.)

The Principles of Unity state that the Goddess is immanent in the earth’s cycles. For some, this means that the earth is a manifestation of the Great Goddess, the source of all life. For others, the Goddess is seen as a symbol that represents the interconnected nature of all life, rather than being literally understood as a personified deity. And, of course, there are many, many people whose views fall somewhere in between.

In her book The Spiral Dance, Starhawk points out that the deities we worship function as metaphors, allowing us to connect with that which cannot be comprehended in its entirety. “The symbols and attributes associated with the Goddess… engage us emotionally,” she says. “We know the Goddess is not the moon — but we still thrill to its light glinting through the branches. We know the Goddess is not a woman, but we respond with love as if She were, and so connect emotionally with all the abstract qualities behind the symbol.”

Here’s another quote from The Spiral Dance that sums up this view of deity: “I have spoken of the Goddess as a psychological symbol and also as manifest reality. She is both. She exists, and we create Her.”

In that book, Starhawk proposes a perspective on deity that combines Wiccan and Feri theology. Starhawk’s Goddess encompasses both the Star Goddess worshiped in Feri — God Herself, the divine source of all things — and the Wiccan Goddess — Earth Mother and Queen of the Moon. This Goddess’s consort, known as the God, is similar to the Wiccan God, but includes aspects of Feri deities like the Blue God.

For some, this model of deity is the basis of their practice, while others prefer to use other means to connect with That-Which-Cannot-Be-Known. Someone may consider themselves a part of Reclaiming and be a devotee of Aphrodite, or Thor, or Osiris, or any of countless other personified deities.

Reclaiming Practice

As I said earlier, Reclaiming began with classes in magic theory, and teaching and learning are still important parts of the tradition. The basic, entry-level course that most members of the tradition take is called Elements of Magic. In this class, students explore the five elements — air, fire, water, earth, and spirit — and how these elements relate to different aspects of Reclaiming practice. Though most members of the tradition will take the Elements of Magic class, this is not a requirement.

After completing Elements of Magic, Reclaiming pagans may or may not choose to take other classes, including but not limited to: the Iron Pentacle (mastering the five points of Sex, Pride, Self, Power, and Passion and bringing them into balance), Pearl Pentacle (mastering the points of Love, Law, Knowledge, Liberation/Power, and Wisdom and embodying these qualities in relationships with others), Rites of Passage (a class that focuses on initiation and rewriting your own narrative), and Communities (a class that teaches the skills necessary to work in a community, such as conflict resolution and ritual planning).

If you’ve read my post on the Feri tradition, you probably recognize the Iron and Pearl Pentacles. This is another example of how Feri has influenced Reclaiming.

Another place where the teaching/learning element of Reclaiming shows up is in Witchcamp. Witchcamp is an intensive spiritual retreat, typically held over a period of several days in a natural setting away from cities. (However, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, some covens are now offering virtual Witchcamps). Because each Witchcamp is run by a different coven, with different teachers, there is a lot of variation in what they teach and what kind of work campers do.

Each individual camp has a main theme — some camps keep the same theme every time, while others choose a new theme each year. Some camps are adults-only, while others are family-oriented and welcome parents with children. Typically, campers will have several classes to choose from in the mornings and afternoons, with group rituals in the evenings.

Speaking of ritual, this brings us to another important part of Reclaiming practice: ecstatic ritual. The goal of most Reclaiming rituals is to connect with the divine by achieving a state of ecstasy.

Irisanya Moon says that Reclaiming rituals often use what she calls the “EIEIO” framework: Ecstatic (involving an altered state of consciousness — the transcendent ecstasy of touching the divine), Improvisational (though there may be a basic ritual outline, there is an openness to acting in the spirit of the moment), Ensemble (rituals are held in groups, often with rotating roles), Inspired (taking inspiration from mythology, personal experience, or current events), and Organic (developing naturally, even if that means going off-script). This framework is similar to the rituals Starhawk describes in her writing.

There are no officially recognized holidays in Reclaiming, but many members of the tradition celebrate the Wheel of the Year, similar to Wiccans. The most famous example of this is the annual Spiral Dance ritual held each Samhain in California, with smaller versions observed by covens around the world.

Further Reading

If you are interested in Reclaiming, I recommend starting with the book Reclaiming Witchcraft by Irisanya Moon. This is an excellent, short introduction to the tradition. After that, it’s probably worth checking out some of Starhawk’s work — I recommend starting with The Spiral Dance.

At this point, if you still feel like this is the right path for you, the next step I would recommend is to take the Elements of Magic class. If you live in a big city, it may be offered in-person near you — if not, look around online and see if you can find a virtual version. Accessibility is huge to Reclaiming pagans, and many teachers offer scholarships and price their classes on a sliding scale, so you should be able to find a class no matter what your budget is.

If you can’t find an Elements of Magic class, there is a book called Elements of Magic: Reclaiming Earth, Air, Fire, Water & Spirit, edited by Jane Meredith and Gede Parma, which provides lessons and activities from experienced teachers of the class. Teaching yourself is always going to be more difficult than learning from someone else, but it’s better than nothing!

Resources:

The Spiral Dance by Starhawk

Reclaiming Witchcraft by Irisanya Moon

The Reclaiming Collective website, reclaimingcollective.wordpress.com

cutewitch772 on YouTube (a member of the tradition who has several very informative videos on Reclaiming, told from an insider perspective)

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triciaisonline · 6 years ago

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A(N ESTIMATED ) TIMELINE FOR SHERLOCK

PLEASE NOTE: John’s Blog and the show contradict each other at times, in these cases, the show will be taken as canon. In times where the show contradicts itself, if other media cannot solve the mix up, then estimates based on what makes the most real world sense will be used to find an answer.

ADDITIONALLY: I don’t want to get flooded with everyone's headcanons for things where estimates had to be made; but i greatly welcome canon information that might have been missed or ( ie: The Game is Now Escape Room ) have been unable to experience. I also do not consider interviews with cast and crew as reliable sources for the most part, as these answers have also changed throughout the years. It will only be given consideration if nothing else contradicts it and was said without the air of taking the mickey out of us as many interactions with fans have. They like to say things just to get us going. So I consider this less of a word of god and more of a word of the clown.

BIRTHDATES

DATES OF MAJOR EVENTS

NOTES

TL;DR

SOURCES

THIS VERSION IS THE REBLOG FRIENDLY VERSION OF A TIMELINE MADE ON MY OTHER BLOG ( SEE TAGS )

BIRTHDATES:

SHERLOCK HOLMES: January 6th, 1981 ( stated in The Casebook ); making him younger than the actor playing him. However, this does conflict slightly as Sherlock states he was nine years old when Carl Powers drowned, and the article claims it was in 1989, which places his birth in 1980 instead. This was before they gave Sherlock a canonical birthdate in any media, however, and for the purposes of this, we’ll be using the casebook age, and claiming Sherlock was either rounding or misremembering due to the fact his childhood memories are not entirely factual. Additionally, the headstone image shown in The Sherlock Chronicles says 1977, but the previous date is the one considered to be Canon. ( See Notes )

JOHN WATSON: unknown, but somewhere in the 70′s. A popular fandate is March 30th. Judging off of the actor’s age, possibly around 1971, but maybe younger as many actors are playing younger than themselves.

MYCROFT HOLMES: Exact date unknown, but he is seven years older than Sherlock, which puts him to be born around 1973-1974. Which makes him canonically younger than the actor playing him. 02/25/19 EDIT: According to sources, Mycroft is given a birthdate in the Escape Room based on the series, October 20th, 1968. While the October date works fine, year for this doesn't fit the "Seven Years Older" claim on the show. The oldest birth date given for Sherlock is 1977 and that would make Mycroft nine years older than Sherlock, not seven. The year given falls closer to Mark Gatiss' actual age, and leaves me inclined to think that perhaps year for the game isn't entirely factual. That being said, there's still no reason he couldn't have been born October 20th. Based on the "Seven Years Older" claim, stated in show, the best guess is October 20th, 1974.

EURUS HOLMES: Exact date unknown, but she is a year younger than Sherlock, which makes her born somewhere in 1982-1983 depending on when she was conceived.

MARY WATSON: Unknown, but based on the actress’ age, likely 1974; but maybe younger as many actors are playing younger than themselves.

ROSAMUND “ROSIE” WATSON: January 2015. We can infer this because based on how far along Mary was at her wedding, Rosie would have been conceived Mid-April, and if she was relatively ontime, she’d be born late January.

DATES OF NOTE:

REDBEARD / THE MUSGRAVE FIRE: Between 1988-1989 roughly; there is no clear indication on the show as to when these events took place. We can only summarize based on what we know about other events. We know that Sherlock "began" solving crimes at age nine ( see below ) due to Carl Powers; and we know that Sherlock had to be younger than ten years old during the events told in The Final Problem. Assuming that the tragic events of Carl Powers triggered something in him, making him take extra notice due to his own past experiences with Eurus and Victor; but still allowing time for all the events to take place and enough time to have passed for Sherlock to have rewritten the story so completely in his head where he can be suspicious but not fully triggered; I'd place him as seven or eight during these events.

THE CARL POWERS DEATH: 1990

*see notes for Sherlock’s birthday

UNIVERSITY: Sherlock attended the same school as Sebastian Wilkes in the early 2000s. Exact years, and if they were at school for the same duration of time is unknown; but he last saw the man roughly eight years ( if Wilkes can be trusted for accuracy ) prior to The Blind Banker, which would be somewhere in 2002/2003

SHERLOCK AND JOHN’S FIRST MEETING: January 29, 2010

CASE: A STUDY IN PINK: January 30th, 2010

CASE: THE BLIND BANKER: March 23rd-March 27th; inferred by Sherlock deducting the incorrect date on Wilkes’ watch and the on-screen passage of time.

Sherlock traveled to and from Minsk sometime between the events of The Blind Banker and The Great Game; based on the dates given, as well as the close air dates of the two episodes, it’s to be believed that Sherlock left and returned from Minsk on March 28th. This is also made plausible due to the funding Sherlock seems to have for himself, his impatience and the fact that it is a three hour flight each way.

BAKER STREET BOMBING: March 28th; evening

CASE: THE GREAT GAME: March 29 - April 1st; we know this based on both the blog posts and Sherlock updating his website with the case answers. However, the blog post was edited from the original date of April 6th after it’s initial publication. The reason for this is unknown.

DURATION OF SERIES ONE: January 29th, 2010 - March 29th, 2010: three months exactly.

MISC: John and Sarah go to New Zealand for a week and breakup ( April 2010 )

TRIP TO BUCKINGHAM PALACE ( A SCANDAL IN BELGRAVIA ): September 15th, 2010

IRENE MEETING: September 15, 2010

BAKER STREET CHRISTMAS PARTY: December 25th 2010

IDENTIFYING IRENE’S BODY: December 25th, 2010

IRENE REVEALS SHE’S ALIVE: December 31st, 2010

JOHN PUBLISHES THE CASE: March 12th, 2011;

We don’t know the exact amount of time transpiring between New Years Eve and this point. Based on his track record, it’s likely January 15th is meant to be the date that Sherlock is told Irene is in Witness protection ( John seems to publish immediately, regardless of how tasteful it might be to reveal details of recent cases ). This gap would cover everything from Irene arriving at Baker Street, Sherlock going to the airfield, him beating Irene at the game, and saving her in Karachi. It’s likely, considering how erratic Sherlock is by early March with no cases, that the day John tells Sherlock the lie, is around late January / early February. Allowing Sherlock enough time to have done all of this as well as get riled up in time for Baskerville, which had to have occured before March 16th

CASE: THE HOUNDS OF BASKERVILLE: Early March 2011; by best estimates given as John doesn’t take too long to post his accounts of the events, and he had already finished typing up the case prior.

BASKERVILLE CASE POSTED: March 16th, 2011. This is also the same date Moriarty hacks John’s blog with a video of him inside of their flat. Suggesting he’s already free from his interrogation shown at the end of The Hounds of Baskerville.

The dates surrounding Sherlock’s death and The Reichenbach Fall are highly questionable as the episode, the blog, and logistics for certain events all contradict each other. Joe Lidster, who wrote John’s real world blog, has comically said that Moriarty hacking the blog gave it a virus that messed with the dating system, as a tongue in cheek explanation. Meaning if we were to take that as fact, all the dates in the blog could be false. The newspapers shown in the episode, have dates that suggest different things. I’ve chosen the one which makes the most sense, based on the news reel clip on John’s blog, the statement that he went to therapy three months later, the school holiday schedule for the abduction of the Ambassador’s children and several other people’s attempts to sort this all out. An alternative version can be found here.

MORIARTY’S ROBBERIES: Late March, by best guess. Possibly a bit earlier.

MORIARTY’S TRIAL / RELEASE: April 2011

MORIARTY’S PLAN TO RUIN SHERLOCK: June 12-June 14th, 2011

MORIARTY COMMITS SUICIDE / SHERLOCK FAKES HIS: June 14th/15th; the 15th is the more commonly believed date.

JOHN CONFIRMS ON HIS BLOG: June 16th, 2011

JOHN VISITS SHERLOCK’S GRAVE: Mid/Late June 2011

TOTAL SERIES TWO DURATION: March 29th, 2010 ( The Pool ) - June 2011. Fifteen Months / One Year and Three Months

SHERLOCK DISMANTLES MORIARTY’S NETWORK: June 2011 - Late October / Early November 2013

MARY MAKES HER FIRST COMMENT ON JOHN’S BLOG: April 20th, 2013

JOHN POSTS OLD CASES: April 2013 - October 5th, 2013

WEBISODE ( MANY HAPPY RETURNS ): October 5th, 2013

SHERLOCK RETURNS: Late October / Early November 2013

JOHN ALMOST BURNED ALIVE: Guy Fawkes Day, November 5th, 2013

CASE: THE EMPTY HEARSE / #SHERLOCK LIVES: November 7th, 2013

JOHN AND SHERLOCK’S VARIOUS CASES: November 2013 - May 2014

Another case of Blog vs Screen; John and Mary’s wedding invites are shown throughout The Sign of Three with the date May 13th, while John’s blog states it was in August. The blog is deemed incorrect in this case, as well as his entries about the cases Sherlock reads at the Wedding

ROSIE WATSON IS CONCEIVED: Mid April 2014

JOHN AND MARY’S WEDDING: May 13th, 2014; ( see above note about The Sign of Three )

His Last Vow has the opposite problem as the series finale prior, in which next to no dates are given. We only know the dates at the end of the episode. Just that the events of John getting restless, Sherlock using again, Magnussen visiting, Sherlock being shot, Sherlock leaving early to confront Mary, Sherlock leaving to confront Magnussen, John confronting Mary, Sherlock being taken to Hospital again and being released all happen between May 13th and December 25th, 2014. It can take a couple months for gunshot victims to be released from Hospital, depending on the severity. Applying Mycroft Rules and Television Rules we know that Sherlock likely didn’t stay the time a regular patient would have. Knowing Sherlock he would have wanted out as soon as possible. We know John and Mary were at odds for a bit, reconciling on Christmas. Plus there needed to be time for Sherlock to fake date Janine, John to reach the level of restlessness there was and get Charles’ attention. So these next few dates are estimates. The majority of the scenes shown in episode are out of order and happen in two time periods, before Mary’s revealed and Christmas Day.

JOHN BREAKS INTO THE DRUG DEN / MAGNUSSEN VISITING BAKER STREET: September / October 2014

SHERLOCK GETTING SHOT: September / October 2014

SHERLOCK SNEAKING OUT OF HOSPITAL TO MEET MAGNUSSEN AND MARY: Early/Mid October 2014; presuming based on deleted scenes depicting a Sherlock who was unable to move for a while in recovery that this was maybe days or weeks later when it was deemed safe to wake him up from medically induced coma.

JOHN CONFRONTING MARY: October 2014 ( same day as above )

SHERLOCK RELEASED FROM HOSPITAL: Mid-December 2014, inferred by how the family and friends act as if it was more recent while at the Holmes’ family home.

SHERLOCK SHOOTS MAGNUSSEN: December 25th, 2014

SHERLOCK BOARDS THE PLANE / MORIARTY’S VIDEO GOES LIVE: December 31st, 2014 / January 2nd, 2015; the show itself provides two different accounts of this. Mycroft states in His Last Vow, that Sherlock was in holding for a week, placing the scene at the tarmac in Early January 2015; however, the introduction to The Abominable Bride places the scene with onscreen text in 2014 still. The only way both can be remotely accurate is if Mycroft is rounding up, and it’s December 31st, 2014.

DURATION OF SERIES THREE: Fall 2013 - Winter 2014; just over one calendar year.

CASE: THE ABOMINABLE BRIDE ( REAL WORLD ): December 31st, 2014 / January 2nd, 2015 ( see above )

The first scene of The Six Thatchers, along with the real world scenes of The Abominable Bride and the final scenes of His Last Vow are the same day.

SHERLOCK IS ACQUITTED OF CRIMES: December 31st, 2014 / January 2nd, 2015 ( see above )

ROSIE WATSON IS BORN: Mid/Late January 2015, assuming she was relatively on time.

ROSIE WATSON’S BAPTISM: March / April 2015; based on many modern traditions, the baby’s age and the style of clothing worn by the attendees.

The Six Thatchers covers the majority of one calendar year, no exact dates are given but we can surmise things based on the shown development of Rosie Watson ( whom we know to be a year old by the end of The Final Problem ). Rosie is shown to have full head support and movement before Mary dies, which is something that happens around six months. This would mean Mary’s still alive around June 2015. Allowing for time in which Mary is on the lam, leading to the aquarium, the following are my best guesses for events.

MARY IS MISSING: Summer 2015 ( how long she was gone for is unclear )

MARY IS BACK IN LONDON: September 2015

NORBURY SHOOTS MARY: October 2015

SHERLOCK RECEIVES MARY’S VIDEO / JOHN’S LETTER: Late October. 2015 / Possibly Early November 2015

CASE: THE LYING DETECTIVE: Possibly Mid-December 2015 / Early January 2016

Another case of ‘we don’t know how long’; we know Sherlock returns from hospital on his birthday, but the dates in between are unclear. Nor do we know how long John and Sherlock didn’t speak for. Sherlock would have needed a major detox, as well as treatment for his injuries. Based on the timeframe, it’s unlikely he attended any form of inpatient rehab outside of whatever the hospital had on location due to his injuries. Possibly due to either Mycroft pulling strings, or the more likely, Sherlock refusing and signing himself out when able.

We also know that the jump from The Lying Detective and The Final Problem can’t be too long. Even though Sherlock has had a magical recovery from all ailments between episodes, it’s extremely unlikely that John sat on the ‘I was almost killed by your secret sister’ tidbit for a few weeks. Meaning these episodes likely happen very shortly after one another. It also feels unlikely that Eurus would make herself known to John and then wait weeks/months to then begin acting out again once the secret was revealed.

JOHN AND SHERLOCK’S REUNITING: January 6th, 2016

JOHN’S FINAL THERAPY SESSION WITH EURUS: Somewhere between January 6th - January 13th 2016; assuming he went about once a week.

CASE: THE FINAL PROBLEM: January 13th, 2015 - January 20th, 2016; presuming John was able to tell Sherlock after ( not knowing how long he was knocked out for ); and allowing Sherlock and John some time to figure out their next move. This would also cover the attack on Baker Street and the entire event on Sherrinford Island.

ROSIE WATSON’S FIRST BIRTHDAY: Mid/Late January, 2016

OTHER NOTES:

The Entire Series spans six years.

The Sherlock Timeline runs one year behind real world time, with the show’s episodes in universe during 2016, aired in January 2017

Sherlock Holmes would be 29 in A Study In Pink, and 35 by The Final Problem based on the Casebook date. 30 and 36 by The Carl Powers age. and 33 and 39 by The Sherlock Chronicles age. All would make him younger than Benedict Cumberbatch, born 1976.

An incorrect headstone, as seen in The Sherlock Chronicles would make sense with the fact that until The Lying Detective, John states he never knew his birthdate. Which, had his tombstone had it, would make little sense. Providing an in universe reason for this odd lack of knowledge on John’s part. Perhaps John merely guessed? Maybe Mycroft knew he wouldn’t want it known, so they put a fake date? Especially as Mycroft knew he was alive. Otherwise, this is just another plot inconsistency --- which, I’m getting quite tired of.

We don’t know when Mary and John first met, but we can infer they’ve known each other about a year from dialogue in The Six Thatchers when John is attempting to propose.

Alternate timelines surrounding The Reichenbach Fall sometimes claim the following dates: Sherlock Testifies: May 9th, 2011; Moriarty is freed and visits 221B: September 20th, 2011; The Kidnapping: November 19th, 2011; Sherlock Falls: November 20th, 2011. This comes from a couple on screen newspaper clippings; but they are contradictory to the stated three month interval stated. It’s up to fans to decide which version they feel is more accurate.

More of a musing, but it’s kind of interesting how many times John immediately runs to the internet to share the details of really recent cases fresh in the public’s mind; in contrast to Watson’s monologue in The Abominable Bride about how careful he is to avoid doing that very thing. Which is even funnier if you view it through the long standing canon lens of John is an Unreliable Narrator

TL;DR:

SERIES ONE: January 29th, 2010 - March 29th, 2010

SERIES TWO: March 29th, 2010 - June 15th, 2011

SERIES THREE: November 2013 - December 2014

SERIES FOUR: December 2014 - January 2016

WEBISODE: October 10th, 2013

SPECIAL: December 2014

SOURCES:

AO3 META / SHERLOCKOLOGY / JOHN’S BLOG / SHERLOCK ( WIKIPEDIA ) / THENORWOODBUILDER @ TUMBLR / BAKER STREET WIKIA / SHERLOCK FAN FORUMS / THE CASEBOOK ( BUY / FACTS ) / THE SHERLOCK CHRONICLES / MOLLY’S BLOG / SHERLOCK’S WEBSITE ( official site no longer live, information reposted from various sites listed above ) / CONNIE PRINCE WEBSITE / SHERLOCK: THE GAME IS NOW

#TRICIA MAKES A THING*#TRICIA WRITES*#MY WRITING*#TIMELINE*#AN EXERCISE IN BREAKING MY SANITY*#WELCOME TO MY MISERY*#Sherlock #bbc sherlock #sherlock holmes #SELF REPOST*#repost from deductivereason

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thornsickle · 8 years ago

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What is the end game for Rey and Kylo Ren, and how does it connect to the ultimate fate of the Force in the sequel trilogy?

With ‘The Last Jedi’ only a month away (a month guys!), I thought I would dive into something which might be viewed as a little too far-fetched to be discussing right now, but I think it’s crucial to put this out there before we have all seen ‘The Last Jedi’. Mainly because this could very easily be torn to pieces by the end of episode VIII (which I will embrace wholeheartedly either way, as I am sure that a compelling story awaits us all). So if you think this is all just moot to be talking about at this stage, or you’d rather not think about what will be the conclusion to the sequel trilogy concerning Kylo and Rey, then by all means skip this post. For those still here, I hope you read on and let me know what you think. Oh, and be warned, this is going to be a long post.

What will happen ultimately to Rey and Kylo Ren? At this point, given what has happened these past few months, I think ‘Reylo’, in the broadest of terms, is going to happen. Heck, it’s already started in TFA.

For me the more important question now is not if ‘Reylo’ is going to happen but rather, what is to become of their futures? Will they be together or won’t they? Right now we don’t know, and I don’t presume to know either, but I would like to talk about what could happen on a hypothetical level, given what we know about what type of story this is, and the narrative line, both on a symbolic and spiritual level.

Because to answer the question of how this trilogy will end, we have to ask what it is indeed about. And in order to answer that question, we have to ask what the sequel trilogy has to do in order to further the story of ‘Star Wars’.

The sequel trilogy is, in the end, about the Force.

But you see, I think the Force is going to have a much bigger role to play now, because the lore surrounding Star Wars needs to be expanded upon. We know this is coming because Luke has been trying to find out more about this mysterious Force which the entire saga revolves around, and I think we will get a lot more backstory on it in TLJ, judging by Luke’s books and the Force Tree we saw in the trailer. Heck, he’s on Achto, the original temple of the Jedi; if that doesn’t scream history and hoards of information just waiting to be found, I don’t know what does.

There’s a reason why episode VII was called ‘The Force Awakens’.

But how exactly will they expand upon the Force and how does this connect to the fates of Kylo Ren and Rey?

“Without the Jedi, there can be no balance in the Force.”

A simple, single line, which appears in the first scene of TFA. An old saying, which finds it’s roots in the original trilogy.

‘The mission’ if you like, for this sequel trilogy, will be to deconstruct this notion, and by the end of episode IX we should be able to see that what Lor San Tekka states here is, in fact, incorrect.

‘Dust’ and ‘the Force’

The similarities between ‘His Dark Materials’ and the notions of ‘the Force’ are not surprising. Both are inspired by religious sources; for Pullman it was Paradise Lost, for George Lucas it was more general, taking inspiration from all forms of religion, but this greatly informs their ideas of their respective sources of power in their worlds. ‘Dust/the Force’, the idea of power, for both these creatives, resides primarily in the idea of faith and more importantly, ‘the consciousness‘. Why is this so?

The fantasy genre for me exists, first and foremost, because we want to tackle the morally problematic issue that is ‘power’. Magic, lightsabers, rings, wands, time travel, super powers, you name it, these are all simply vehicles used to represent the idea of power. However, what makes both George Lucas and Phillip Pullman so interesting, is that their philosophy surrounding power goes beyond that of the classic, cautionary tale about the misuse of power (Harry Potter - ‘horcruxes & Voldemort’, Lord of the Rings - ‘the One Ring’) or how one becomes ‘worthy’ of power.

The biggest similarity between ‘Dust’ and ‘the Force’ is their nebulousness and anonymity within their respective stories. The characters in both worlds have very different ideas about ‘Dust/the Force’, both on it’s purpose and what should be done about it. They are forms of power which ultimately do not belong to either the ‘good’ or ‘evil’. If I was to describe how ideas of ‘the Force’ are to change, I would say that Philip Pullman’s description of ‘Dust’ gives a pretty good idea of where I think this sequel trilogy is heading.

“Dust is a mysterious force of which the powerful people in the story seem to be afraid.”

This quote was taken directly from an interview with Philip Pullman, but what is so fascinating is that he might as well be talking about ‘the Force’ as we know it in Star Wars. In fact, this could be seen as the premise for the entire saga.

Here is the link to said video. From 1:26

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N6vzZuPy1s

In the prequels, Palpatine’s main goal was to take over the Galactic Senate and ultimately rule over the galaxy. However, he did so in a very politically strategic way; by instilling fear in the public and, by extension, fear of the Jedi. He distanced the public from ‘the force’ and shrouded it in mystery, instilling ignorance in those he ruled over. He went so far as to hide his own identity as a force user in order to do this. By taking this power away from the people, he was able to easily manipulate those around him. This is why he was able to take over and create his Empire as smoothly as he did, “with thunderous applause”. His true power was his perceptiveness; he could see into people’s weaknesses and understood how ‘power’ could be both utilized and suppressed.

Palpatine was intelligent in the sense that he knew ‘the Force’ was a powerful thing, however, as Pullman says in his quote, he ultimately feared it. We know this because, quite simply, he tried to control it; first by extinguishing the Jedi, and second, by manipulating Anakin Skywalker, the greatest force user at that time, into becoming his puppet.

In His Dark Materials, ‘the Magistrate’ exerts its power through similar means; their basic goal is to remain in power by making sure the public never learn of ‘dust’ and its various capabilities. They are responsible for the public’s general ignorance over what ‘Dust’ actually is, they only know it as something corrupt and to be feared. The Magistrate successfully created in this way a distorted image of ‘Dust’, labeling it as something ‘evil’ and ‘corrupt’ (if you like ‘original sin’). This is exactly what Palpatine did to the Jedi; you might as well exchange the ‘Magisterium’ for the ‘Empire’ and you probably wouldn’t see much difference.

On the other side, the Jedi during the prequels had grown ignorant over the true purpose of ‘the force’ and what ‘balance in the force’ really meant. This is why they ultimately failed Anakin Skywalker during his training to become a Jedi. George Lucas highlights the flaws within the council and we are therefore able to understand why the Republic fell. The Jedi only used one side of the Force, and believed the ‘Dark Side’ to be completely corrupt and therefore not to be embraced. They speak of ‘fear being the path to the dark side’ but ironically, it is that very avoidance of it, that ends up instilling fear of the ‘Dark side’ in force users and therefore sends either themselves or those around them down that path, becoming the very thing they swore to destroy. Philip Pullman also shows this in his trilogy but more on that later.

“Dust is a mysterious force of which the powerful people in the story seem to be afraid.”

Once again, we return to his statement. At first it may not seem this way, but the Jedi too, in their own way, feared ‘the Force’ and it’s capabilities. Like ‘the Magistrate’, they created an order, a set of rules, a moral code, in order to restrain force users and stop them from being ‘corrupted’. Someone like Anakin Skywalker, who found extreme conflict regarding this concept, was exactly the sort of person who the Jedi feared most of all.

Like ‘the Magistrate’, they grew increasingly frustrated because of their growing lack of connection to ‘the Force’. This is shown most prominently when Yoda states “impossible to see, the future is.” And yet, Anakin sees, with painful clarity, the future and the fate of the one he loves, because unlike Yoda, he does not fully reject ‘the dark side’ and therefore it does not cloud his vision. His connection to ‘the Force’ is very much like Lyra’s ability to read the alethiometer; she sees nothing but the truth, something no one else seems to be able to do. Rey in the sequel trilogy also holds this ability; her version of this comes in the form of ‘visions’.

The Jedi do not fully trust ‘the chosen one’, which means that they do not in fact trust ‘the Force’. Like ‘the Force’, Anakin Skywalker was someone who could not be controlled and yet, this is precisely why he was ‘the chosen one’. TLJ continues these ideas, with Luke fearing not only ‘Kylo Ren’ but ‘Rey’ as well, and I would guess this is because he does not understand ‘what’ either of them truly are, whether they are ‘good’ or ‘bad’, symbols of ‘the Force’ or, if you like for the purposes of this post, ‘Dust’.

It is important to note that one speaks of ‘the Force’ or ‘Dust’, we are talking about it as a whole. The Jedi may have embraced the Force as they knew it, but they didn’t in fact do so fully. Like the Emperor, they feared what might happen if ‘the Force’ was free and unrestricted. This is why we have seen through the saga the fall of both the ‘light’ and ‘dark’ side.

In ‘His Dark Materials’, ‘intercision’ is for me the equivalent of what happens to every Force user in the saga, may they be on the ‘light’ side or ‘dark’ side.

In Philip Pullman’s books, this is of course much more extreme; essentially ‘intercision’ is a form of lobotomy. In literature, lobotomy is often used as a symbol for the loss of freedom and individual thought – just look at Tennessee Williams’ ‘Suddenly Last Summer’ as the most blatant example of this. ‘Intercision’ is essentially the Magistrate’s way of preventing children from embracing ‘Dust’ as they turn of age, stopping from maturing. Instead they transform into vegetative states, with no free will of their own. The separation of the soul and body can also be linked to the concept of dementors in the Harry Potter series.

Snoke’s manipulation of Kylo is reminiscent of this. He is trying to stomp out the very humanity out of Ben Solo – hence Lor San Tekka’s line “something far worse as happened to you”, alluding to Kylo’s almost Frankenstein-like appearance which harkens back to Darth Vader and his journey. For Kylo however, his ‘intercision’ is not yet complete.

Looking at it from a certain point of view, both the Sith and Jedi prevented their students from developing the complete use of the Force, by allowing them to only use one half of it and, one can argue, only one half of themselves. Although each respective faction states they do this because the other side is ‘corrupt’, it is clear something is incorrect about their analysis, because the Force is in constant flux throughout the saga, unable to settle, perhaps because of it’s misuse by both sides. In ‘His Dark Materials’, this is exactly what is happening with ‘Dust’. At the end of ‘The Northern Lights’ Lord Asriel is able to travel from one world to another, but only by killing Lyra’s best friend Rodger in the process. This causes Lyra to reevaluate both her image of her father, but also of Dust. Unlike Lucas, Pullman shows us from the very first book, that ‘Dust’ is not only being misunderstood by the ‘Magisterium’ but also by those we see as the ‘good guys’.

If the latest trailer for ‘The Last Jedi’ is any indication, Luke may have caught on a little, as it seems he has discovered the Jedi were ultimately wrong about their teachings and beliefs concerning ‘the Force’. Hence his line, “it is time for the Jedi to end.” In Pullman’s books, the adults have a clear misunderstanding when it comes to ‘Dust’, largely because they know so little about it, and more importantly, because they are unable to control it. This is essentially what I think Luke has discovered or will discover in ‘The Last Jedi’.

“Lyra, who has been told all her life that dust is bad, has seen the adults around her doing terrible things in the name of getting rid of Dust as they think. She undergoes a moral crisis, and thinks ‘if these people have been doing these wicked things and they say that Dust is bad, then maybe Dust is good’.

This is exactly what I think will happen to Rey in ‘The Last Jedi’.

It leads her to connect with Kylo Ren because she witnesses what she sees as the misuse of ‘the Force’. In the original trilogy, the Death Star is the ultimate symbol of misuse of power. George Lucas even rubs this in by making the source of it’s power kyber crystals, which are in themselves symbols of the Force itself. This is heavily implied in Rogue One. This is just speculation at this point, but I believe the Resistance have been mining for some form of kyber crystals on Crait, and were perhaps building a sort of Death Star of their own. I’m not sure though if Lucasfilm is gutsy enough for that, but it would make a heck of a storyline.

With Rey, she sees that the light side of the Force is not entirely what she expected, and finding herself even more lost, wonders that perhaps ‘the dark side’ is not as corrupt as she is being led to think.

Yes, these are two completely different materials, but essentially, they are tackling the same themes. In Rey’s mind at present, there is ‘the Force’, but she is not yet aware that previous force users saw different ways it could be misused. Like Anakin before her, she will discover that her use of ‘the Force’ would have been seen as ‘corrupt’ by the Jedi, firstly because, on a practical level, she has not been trained and has little control over it, and secondly, because she utilizes both the Dark and Light sides of the Force. The several examples of this during TFA (see links below for examples).

http://sakurau121.tumblr.com/post/147314934255/im-calling-it-rey-is-going-to-turn-to-the-dark

http://sakurau121.tumblr.com/post/152902112780/so-heres-yet-another-theory-of-mine-about-how

http://sakurau121.tumblr.com/post/154378487925/reys-introduction-to-the-force-in-tfa-and-the

My opinion remains open, but these just give you observations on Rey’s use of the force.

I think one of the reasons why she will struggle with Luke, is because she will find his teachings restrictive. Luke’s ‘fear’ of Rey is completely justified, because, as we have established, the ‘adults’ in the fantasy genre often fear the young because they represent what is to come – the future of power. They fear this ‘force’ because they do not understand it. This is why, as Pullman shows, power is not just abused by the ‘bad guys’ but by the majority of the characters in his stories because they seek to exert control over ‘power’ itself (in his case ‘Dust’). This is what ‘His Dark Materials’ has most in common with the philosophy of Star Wars because all the force users in Star Wars also seek to control ‘the Force’, one way or another (which turns out to be their biggest mistake).

“Everything that is consciousness – human thought, imagination, love, affection, kindness, good things, curiosity, intellectual curiosity.”

This is Pullman’s description of ‘Dust’ and interestingly, there are many elements there which refer to both the ‘light’ and ‘dark’ sides of the Force. ‘Curiosity’, for example, is something which Yoda in fact tries to suppress in Luke – “there is no why”. Luke’s natural curiosity in the world around him, the possibilities that he sees, is in fact his greatest quality and the reason why he was able to save his father and help him fulfill the prophecy of ‘The Chosen One’. So, what does that say about Yoda and what would have happened if Luke had suppressed his true self?

For Rey and Kylo Ren, they will discover, as Lyra did, that power is being misused by pretty much everybody (hence all the characters in the promotion in TLJ being soaked in red). This is unsurprising, as far as ‘His Dark Materials’ go, because most of the characters in Pullman’s books are not necessarily ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Mrs Coulter and Lord Asriel are very good examples of this. Lyra herself is wild and has an almost untameable sort of quality about her, similar, I think, to both Kylo and Rey.

The power struggle between the old and new ways of thinking is not necessarily something new. In the original trilogy, Luke defies his masters because he does not agree with them. Once again, I think this will be repeated in the sequel trilogy. After all, fairy-tales in the end are about parents and children, and how children ultimately must move on and evolve, separating from their parents. The future must prevail, and progress cannot be stopped. Change inevitably happens, and therefore, the freedom of independent thought is essential. In Pullman’s trilogy, he shows this in the most powerful way possible, and this is where we delve into what I think will be Rey and Kylo’s ultimate fate.

Their fate will depend greatly on what happens to ‘the Force’ at the end of this trilogy which is why I’ve been barking on and on about its evolution and meaning in this post. So far, the Force has remained unstable, despite the fact that Anakin Skywalker restored ‘balance’ when he destroyed the Emperor. This is actually a very important thing to remember because it indicates that perhaps ‘balance’ is not necessarily the answer.

The Force as we know it must change and take on a different form. The sequel trilogy in many ways is about wiping the slate clean. I believe this trilogy will bring an end to ‘force users’ as we currently recognize them. Like ‘Dust’, one could argue that if ‘the Force’ had been left alone to thrive naturally and was not manipulated by man, then perhaps none of the events of the saga would have happened at all.

This idea of ‘the Force’ being free, the end of both the Jedi and the Sith, can only be demonstrated effectively enough through our two ‘protagonists’. This has been done before of course, and yes, ‘His Dark Materials’ is one example. This is only a suggestion but I think it’s entirely possible that Rey and Kylo will, in essence, let ‘the Force’ be free and no longer let others control it. It returns to how it was before force users were about. And so, ‘the Force’ as we know it, disappears and yet remains. Like Lyra and Will, Rey and Kylo lose their powers, and therefore, so does Snoke. This is how they ultimately defeat him. Like Noah, they must start anew, letting go of the old world in order to create a new one. However, in order to truly demonstrate the relinquishing of power, they must do one other thing.

At the end of ‘His Dark Materials’, Lyra and Will are forced to part ways – they cannot stay together. By relinquishing power, they also realize that because ‘said power’ can no longer be controlled, they cannot control their fate either. It is often the case that characters must sacrifice so that they can restore peace and balance, returning ‘power’ back into the world, so that people can embrace it in it’s purest form.

If you want an example of this, look no further than that of Chirrut in ‘Rogue One’. He presents an alternative way of embracing ‘the Force’. Pullman has said that ‘Dust’ needs people as much as people need ‘Dust’. One cannot exist without the other. Which is why that famous line in ‘Rogue One’ makes so much sense…

“And the Force is with me”.

This idea of returning ‘power’ back to the ‘world’ is a very universal idea and can be seen in many different forms. The film ‘Princess Mononoke’ ends with Ashitaka and San returning to their respective worlds after releasing the power back to nature. The forest is no longer as it once was and each must respectively follow their own path but remain connected to one another, even when they are apart. Lyra and Will clearly embody this; they are from two separate parallel worlds but both sit on the same bench each year, aware that the other is close by but still so far away. ‘Spirited Away’ ends with Chihiro returning to the human world; Haku says that he is ‘free’ but they still must part because they have come to the end of their journey together. That film is very much about these ‘two protagonists’ regaining their sense of identity. Sound familiar?

But why must Kylo and Rey part? You may ask.

Aren’t they supposed to meet in the middle and connect to create a new group of force users?

Perhaps. But it would go against everything that I have just said up until now. We cannot forget that while they will connect to each other, they represent opposites sides of a coin, like Ashitaka and San (’man’ and ‘nature’), Haku and Chihiro (‘spirit’ and ‘consciousness’). Ying and Yang, and while both connect to both sides of the Force, they will, in the end, embrace one side a little more than the other. They are two separate beings, and by finding their true ‘identities’ at the conclusion of this trilogy, they remember the past and realize they must do better than those who have come before them.

I do not believe Kylo and Rey will begin creating a new group of force users because they will finally understand the true nature of the Force. It is not something which can be taught; it must be felt and developed naturally, like ‘consciousness’ itself, allowed to expand and mature overtime. We don’t grow up when we begin to listen and do what we are told to do; we grow up when we start to make conscious decisions for ourselves and understand the consequences that come with that. Only then do we begin to know ourselves and therefore become in touch with who we inherently are. This is something which no one can teach you; ultimately you discover this for yourself and in fact, that is the ‘true’ source of power, the true power of ‘the Force’.

Self-discovery, which is what the fantasy genre is all about.

Here’s another reason behind why I think Rey and Kylo will part at the end of Episode IX.

‘Casablanca’.

True, this is not a fantasy film, but it is a story about taking initiative and trying to make the world a better place (famously it was released during WW2 when America was already involved, and this film hailed the idea of ‘responsibility’ and ‘commitment’ during a time when the world was literally falling apart).

It is a story about ‘redemption’ and I believe that is what the sequel trilogy will be about. The return of ‘the Force’ in its purest form through the redemption of those who use it, and that applies to everyone, not just Kylo Ren.

There are, however, clear parallels between the character of ‘Rick’ and ‘Kylo Ren’, which is not surprising as Humphrey Bogart embodied many traits which harken back to the idea of the Byronic hero, or ‘anti-hero’. As Palminteri said about Bogart, “he was able to wear a white hat and a black hat. He was the killer you sort of sympathised with.” Han Solo IS Rick in Casablanca you could argue, at first passive towards the political climate, hypocritical in the sense that he says he doesn’t care, when really he does.

Naturally, his son embodies this attitude as well and by the end of Casablanca, Rick has transformed his world view after reuniting with the love of his life, who is aptly part of the ‘French Resistance’. Is it only when he pushes her away, that he becomes truly selfless and he finally recovers his true sense of agenda and identity.

This is the key when it comes to Kylo Ren. The only way I believe to truly complete his transformation is for him to do the noble thing and protect the one he loves in the most selfless way possible. This is important because it becomes an integral part of his story arc. This does not however mean that he will die. That would be easy, but the harder thing to do, would be to live with the decisions he has made. This is one of the primary reasons why JK Rowling did not kill Harry Potter at the end of her series. Of course, another reason is because it has been done before, and unlike Darth Vader, Kylo’s story is tightly interlocked with that of Rey, more so than Luke’s ever was with his father.

Ebert describes Bogart thus; “he can play that hurt, that vulnerability, that guy who will never be able to bounce back and at the same time, you see inside of him that idealism. He has this cynicism that says ‘I’ll stick my neck out for nobody’ but at the same time he sticks his neck way out and it was that transition that Bogart was so good at.”

I have a hunch that Adam Driver is good at this too, and this is precisely why Kennedy cast him as Kylo Ren. I don’t think it’s a mere coincidence that very specific expressionist cinematography was used during Kylo’s scenes in TFA; the use of film noirish side lighting to highlight his inner conflict and split-self, just as Rick is depicted in Casablanca.

Kylo and Rey will part ways but remain connected, coexisting. Ben’s love for Rey will echo the use of the Force by force-users, and therefore both must be relinquished in order to bring true peace to the galaxy. The bright side is it will leave the trilogy open-ended enough so that their story can continue and there is a possibility of them coming together once more, but I also think it makes for the most cohesive ending.

The Force does not need to be balanced, it needs to be set free.

‘Star-crossed lovers’, Rey and Kylo indeed literally will become I think.

But what do you think? Let me know in the comments and don’t forget to like and reblog so we can get a conversation going. Sorry for the extremely long post :D

#reylo #kylo x rey #the last jedi #star wars #reylo meta #kylo ren #rey #the force #episode IX #episode VIII

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dipulb3 · 5 years ago

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Claims that dead people voted went viral. These are the facts

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/claims-that-dead-people-voted-went-viral-these-are-the-facts/

Claims that dead people voted went viral. These are the facts

One of the supposed pieces of evidence was a list that circulated on Twitter Thursday evening allegedly containing names, birth dates, and zip codes for registered voters in Michigan. The origin of the list and the identity of the person who first made it public are not known.

Appradab examined 50 of the more than 14,000 names on the list by taking the first 25 names on the list and then 25 more picked at random. We ran the names through Michigan’s Voter Information database to see if they requested or returned a ballot. We then checked the names against publicly available records to see if they were indeed dead.

Of the 50, 37 were indeed dead and had not voted, according to the voter information database. Five people out of the 50 had voted — and they are all still alive, according to public records accessed by Appradab. The remaining eight are also alive but didn’t vote.

The sample Appradab reviewed is not representative, but the trend was clear — not a single one of the names examined was of a dead person voting.

The version of the list Appradab found has since been removed from the site hosting it.

Viral videos

Falsehoods about dead people casting ballots in Michigan began spreading through videos posted to social media late Wednesday night.

A typical clip showed a person entering a name, birth date and zip code into Michigan’s state-run voter lookup website. The videos would show the search results for a voter who, despite being over 110 years old, had supposedly requested and successfully returned a ballot.

Right-wing personality Austen Fletcher, who goes by the name “Fleccas” online, created some of the videos that went viral.

Fletcher’s first video, posted shortly after midnight Thursday morning, shows him search for a voter named William Bradley who was born in March 1902.

“Turns out 118-year-old ‘William Bradley’ voted via absentee ballot in Wayne County, Michigan,” Fletcher tweeted Thursday. “How long has this been going on?” he added.

A search of public records revealed a man named William Bradley was born in March 1902 and died in I984 in Michigan’s Wayne County. But public records also show that his son, also named William Bradley and living at the same address, is very much alive — and a voter.

Lawrence Garcia, the principal attorney for the city of Detroit, confirmed to Appradab that “a man with a nearly identical name [to the deceased Bradley] requested a ballot and voted properly in both the primary and general elections.”

“When his ballot was initially logged, however, it was incorrectly attributed to the William Bradley born 118 years ago through a clerical error,” Garcia added.

The younger Bradley told PolitFact that he reached out to the city after Fletcher’s video was posted but was told not to worry since officials check for a matching signature and date of birth.

Some prominent figures on the right, including Donald Trump Jr, actor James Woods, and activist Candace Owens shared Fletcher’s videos, which have collectively garnered millions of views across Twitter.

Others, like Juan Andres Caro, a White House policy adviser, made their own videos replicating Fletcher’s search.

Grenell retweeted Caro’s video, which has more than a million views on Twitter.

Appradab reached out to Fletcher and Caro for comment. Fletcher did not respond and Caro did not comment.

Tracy Wimmer, the director of media relations for Michigan’s Secretary of State, told Appradab that, on rare occasions, errors like this can occur with “voters with similar names, where the ballot is accidentally recorded as voted by John Smith Sr when it was actually voted by John Smith Jr.”

She added that ballots for deceased voters are rejected and that “local clerks can correct the issue when it is brought to their attention.”

Later on November 5, the Michigan Secretary of State’s office replied directly to Fletcher’s tweet, calling it “misinformation.” By then the post had been retweeted tens of thousands of times.

Errors and quirks

Clerical errors, database quirks, and genuinely long-living individuals can sometimes explain why it looks like people are casting ballots from beyond the grave.

Occasionally living voters submit ballots with incorrect birth years that make it appear as if they’re actually deceased, according to Wimmer. “In such scenarios, no one ineligible has actually voted,” she said.

Other videos Fletcher produced feature voters who returned ballots and are listed in Michigan’s voter information website as having been born in January 1900 or 1901.

Of course, that’s not what happened. There’s a much simpler and less sinister explanation.

Detroit’s Director of Elections, George Azzouz explained to Appradab that “the date of January 1, 1900 is often used in the electronic poll book as a temporary placeholder for absentee ballots arriving just before Election Day.”

“The placeholder information has to be inserted in order for the electronic poll book to accept the entry,” Azzouz added.

A 2017 report about duplicate voting from the Government Accountability Institute echoed this explanation as well.

“It is important to note that some state registration systems indicate a missing date of birth by adopting filler dates, such as 01/01/1900, 01/01/1850, or 01/01/1800,” the report noted.

“The vast majority of votes cast by individuals appearing to be over 115 years old had these three erroneous birthdates.”

A search of public records for a different voter Fletcher featured in his videos supports this. Donna Brydges, despite being 75 years old, has a voter registration entry with a 1901 year of birth.

Catherine Lewis, the clerk for the township where Brydges lives, explained to Appradab that “it is not uncommon for voters in Michigan to have 01/01/01 mistakenly listed as their date of birth in the qualified voter database.”

“The voter in question properly applied for an absentee ballot, provided her state-issued driver’s license with her application, and returned her absentee ballot in the properly signed and sealed envelope as required by state law,” Lewis said in a statement.

“The board of election inspectors, consisting of Republican and Democratic members, had no question that the voter was who she purported to be or that her signatures matched,” she added.

The fact that these birthdates showed up repeatedly by itself should have been a clue. After all, if someone wanted to steal an election using votes from dead people without getting caught, it would be silly to pick people who all happened to have been born in the same month and year, not to mention people whose incredibly advanced age would immediately raise suspicion.

Why the dead don’t vote

The Michigan Secretary of State’s office says casting a vote in the name of a dead person is almost impossible.

“In the unlikely event that someone who was alive and had their identity verified when they requested a ballot died before receiving it, and someone else attempted to vote as them, the signature mismatch/deceased flag in the [Qualified Voter File] would once again flag it for rejection,” Wimmer explained.

In fact, Appradab previously reported on a 20-year-old cancer patient in Wisconsin who voted early but sadly died before election day. Her vote was thrown out under Wisconsin law.

This assessment is backed up by research from independent organizations like the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan but liberal-leaning law and policy institute

“The consensus from credible research and investigation is that the rate of illegal voting is extremely rare, and the incidence of certain types of fraud — such as impersonating another voter — is virtually nonexistent,” the institute notes in the resources section of their website.

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vanessacp-blog1 · 6 years ago

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toraonice · 8 years ago

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@accioharo

Okay I debated I replying to this for a bit, but… here goes.

First and foremost I greatly appreciate all of your translation work for the fandom and I have for months.

That being said, I find the last paragraph of this necessary and also unfair. To accuse the other translators of ‘mistranslating’ the line when you outright admit that akashi can legitimately be translated as proof is a bit much, don’t you think? I get that you believe your translation is more correct, but as I’m sure you and the other translators are aware, language is not something all translators are going to unanimously agree on. Other translators work hard on their work, and essentially, saying that they’re mistranslating to forward a fanon agenda is unnecessary and uncalled for, in my opinion. There’s nothing to support that especially since even you’ve acknowledged their word choice is not incorrect.

Accusing their work of being fanon (especially when Victuuri, which is canon, is not remotely fanon) and yours of being canon is a further dig, I feel.

Regarding the destined from a previous life thing, I think most of fandom is not serious about that. When people are making comments about their soulmate AUs being canon, they’re well aware that Kubo is not literally saying “your fanfiction where Victor and Yuuri can’t see color until they meet their soulmate aka each other is now canon”. They’re just having fun.

We know what she actually means by soulmate. It’s still a HUGE DEAL. And yes, there is a sense of destiny to the word soulmate, in both languages, even if it’s not on some ‘cosmic’ level, a certain ‘meant to be’, and that’s powerful. And yeah, that’s making fandom very excited and I think… there’s not really a need to sort of rain on that? People know their AUs aren’t really suddenly canon.

It’s not as if your translation of the line makes it much less shippy anyway.

Lastly the ‘Japanese word for soulmate’? I was under the impression, unless she uses it at another point in the article, that she doesn’t use a Japanese word anyway, but instead the katakana ソウルメイト (sorumeito/soulmate).

Hello! Thank you for your message and for voicing your opinion in what I think is the normal way when discussing about something. I will take this occasion to make one final last post about this whole matter to try and address what apparently wasn’t clear in my other posts. I will also explain in detail why I wrote that in my opinion “proof” is not a correct translation. It’s a bit long because I don’t want to come back to this topic again, so I’m trying to make sure that I’m covering everything that could help clarifying my point.

1) Regarding my opinion of other translations. I have only clearly referred to one translation I saw for this line. It seems that there is more than one translation going around but I haven’t seen them so I cannot say anything about them (well if they say “proof” too my opinion will be the same though). Except for that, I spoke in general because in quite a few instances I have seen people translate single lines or tidbits from interviews using a kind of wording that was clearly meant to make them sound “more shippy” than what they were. Of course if you ask 10 people to translate the same line they will likely interpret it and translate it in 10 different ways, because that’s how translations are, and they might even all be correct. I cannot state that “my translations are better than others”, but if I see another translation of the same text I can say which one I think is more correct. And I can explain why of course, I’m not just going to think that mine is better because it’s mine... (And if I find my translation to be the wrong one I am ready to admit it)

2) Regarding the soulmates thing. I actually really liked that she made the comparison with “soulmates”, I just had mixed feelings when I saw some people interpret it like in “soulmates” fan fictions (as in “predestined” etc etc), and it didn’t even sound like they were joking... Also, you say that “we know what she actually means by soulmate”, but in fact we don’t. It’s not possible to guess what she means exactly with “soulmates” just from that line, and I really hope she will elaborate more on that in future interviews because that is something I’d be very interested to know. My interpretation is based on how the sentence was worded and on what she and other people said about their bond in various interviews. Also, I cannot say that my translations are “canon”, because I’m not inside the creators’ minds, but I am striving to be as unbiased as possible and only translate what is actually written, without letting my personal feelings and/or preferences affect the translation.

What I meant when I said that "sourumeito” is Japanese I already explained in another note. As there is no native Japanese word, the Japanese word for “soulmate” (as in “the word you would use to refer to it when speaking Japanese”) is “sourumeito”, so it’s not like she was “using English”. She was using the “Japanese word for soulmate”, which just happens to be "imported” from English like many other modern Japanese words (some of which even sound like English but aren’t, like “coin locker”, “skinship” etc).

3) Regarding 証 (akashi) First of all, I did list various meanings for this word, but I meant to say that, depending on the context, it can have different meanings, not that “in all cases you can use any of those words to translate it”. When you say “hard stone” and “hard exercise” it’s both “hard”, but if you translate it into another language in many cases you will need to use different terms because the meaning is different. Here we have 2 variations: “proof that they are soulmates” or “symbol meaning that they are like soulmates” Proof (quoting the dictionary) = evidence or argument establishing or helping to establish a fact or the truth of a statement. If she said that “the ring is the evidence that they are soulmates” it would sound to me like she is trying to reply to someone questioning whether they are soulmates or not, or continuing a previously started discussion on the topic, but since this topic was never raised in YOI (and the word “soulmates” itself was never even brought up until know) it doesn’t really make sense that she would suddenly say something like that when it’s not even connected to the sentence before this one. The word 証 “akashi” would be commonly used in a context like, for example, a person giving a present to an important friend and telling them これは私達の友情の証 (kore wa watashitachi no yuujou no akashi), that would be translated as “this is the symbol of our friendship”, not as “this is the proof of our friendship”, because it’s not like the person is trying to prove something. The term ソウルメイトの証 (“soulmate no akashi”) really sounds a lot like this kind of context, when there is a physical object that is meant to represent something (a bond) between two people. Also considering how the scene was played out in the anime, I think it’s fitting to say that “the ring also means to symbolize that they are like soulmates”. I actually had originally thought about “token” too, which also reminds me of what Toyonaga said about this scene in one interview I translated some time ago (it can be found here). I think his interpretation of the scene makes sense. However, he isn’t one of the creators, and that is his personal interpretation, so unless he asked Kubo and she said “you got it right” we cannot take it as “canon”. One reason I didn’t use “token” is that I couldn’t find a way to make a nice sentence with it and anyway I thought “symbol” would better convey the idea.

If after reading this explanation someone still thinks that “proof” is more fitting, well, we can agree to disagree. As you also said, it’s not like my translation doesn’t sound “shippy” anyway.

Finally, this is not just related to this interview, and it’s a message for everyone reading: If anyone believes that I translated something wrong, they are of course free to message me about it. If I think I’m not wrong I will explain why, like I did above. If people message me just vaguely saying “you are downplaying Victuuri” without providing a concrete example (like mentioning exactly which line they are referring to, and also possibly what is supposed to be the correct version) I don’t even know how to reply because I seriously have no clue what they’re talking about.

Thank you again for your message, which I think provided a chance to better explain a few things about this matter. This is most likely the last time I say something about this because I’ve said all I could and also I think it’s better that I use my time to translate more interviews (since there’s still a lot out there waiting to be translated). If anyone has questions about other parts of the interview feel free to ask of course.

#clarification #japanese nuances #wordy

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whatisonthemoonarchive · 5 years ago

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Anonymous Posters - Corrections Needed - A Request For Sources

First of all, I feel I have a responsibility to make a few corrections in a couple of recent posts on WIOTM. It's important that we keep the facts straight about the Moon Organization. Here's the first correction:

In October 1962 the Korean CIA, an extension of the CIA sent their chief Kim to meet with his U.S. counterparts. He met CIA Director Jone McCone and Lt. Gen. Carroll, head of the Defence of Intelligence Agency. Along with KCIA chief Kim was Sun Myung Moon. The most important meeting Kim and Moon had on this trip was with Nelson and David Rockefeller. Both Moon and Nelson hit it off well because both wanted to see a One World Government:

https://whatisonthemoon.tumblr.com/post/617275531885477888/re-the-freemasons-behind-the-unification-church

The correction that needs to be made here, is that Sun Myung Moon was not in the United States in 1962. If one reads the New Age Frontiers newsletter, you can find out that Mr. Moon didn't come to the U.S. until 1965. Therefore, by extension, everything else that was stated about Mr. Moon in 1962 in the above excerpt is also incorrect. Here is the New Age Frontiers article that tells of Sun Myung Moon's 1st trip to the U.S. in 1965:

http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Publications/naf/NAF-1965-02-15.pdf

Here's the correct version of the people involved, and the sequence of events that took place, during Kim Jong-pil's trip to the U.S. in 1962:

Kim Jong-Pil made a two-week official visit to the United States as KCIA director in the fall of 1962. Included in his entourage was Steve Kim as interpreter. The Korean Embassy mobilized for the occasion, and the Kennedy administration rolled out the red carpet. Lieutenant Colonel Bo Hi Pak was the Embassy’s officer in charge for Kim’s meetings with CIA Director John McCone, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and Defense Intelligence Agency head Lieutenant General J. E. Carroll.

En route home, Kim Jong-Pil met secretly in his room at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco with a small group of Moon’s early activists, who had been sent to proselytize on the West Coast, and some American converts. Kim Young-Oon, beginning in Eugene, Oregon, in 1959, had moved to Berkeley, California...Kim (Jong-pil) told them he sympathized with Moon’s goals and promised to help the Unification Church with political support from inside the government. He said he could not afford to do so openly, however, which fit Moon’s plans perfectly.

https://howwelldoyouknowyourmoon.tumblr.com/post/617678940238233600/kim-jong-pil-would-see-that-the-park-regime-gave

(NOTE: This very recent post by HWDYKYM, is partly, if not wholly "timed", for the purpose of countering the misinformation that you have provided on WIOTM)

---------------------------------------

Now, to the 2nd anonymous poster:

David Rockefeller was mediating the purchase of the Belvedere estate in 1974. The seller was Rockefeller’s friend Samuel Bronfman, an owner of a whisky distillery...

https://whatisonthemoon.tumblr.com/post/617292338667077632/rockefellers-were-sponsoring-sun-myung-moon

The correction that needs to be made here, is that, "Belvedere" was purchased by the "Unification Church" in 1972, not 1974. If you read the Pioneers Progress newsletter, you will find 1972 is the correct year:

http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Publications/PioneerProg/PioneerProg-721010.pdf

-----------------------------------------

Now moving along here, not so long ago I asked an anonymous poster to respond to this post:

https://whatisonthemoon.tumblr.com/post/616647906087337984/freemasons-the-divine-principle

That anonymous poster, then responded with this post:

https://whatisonthemoon.tumblr.com/post/617275531885477888/re-the-freemasons-behind-the-unification-church

Not only did the response from this anonymous poster, not provide any concrete evidence for their "statements of fact" concerning the "Freemason-Unification Church" topic/connection...but it seems, that that same anonymous poster, has posted again about the Freemason topic, making more claims that the origin of the Unification Church comes from Freemasons:

https://whatisonthemoon.tumblr.com/post/617749897413804032/rockefeller-foundation-cooperated-with-scottish

So, I'm going to address this anonymous poster again, who I'm guessing is behind all these recent posts about the Unification Church & Freemasons (and quite possibly all the posts in question in my post here): WHAT ARE YOUR SOURCES, THAT CAN GIVE SOLID/CONCRETE EVIDENCE, TO YOUR STATEMENTS AND CLAIMS THAT THE UNIFICATION CHURCH, HAD FREEMASONS INFLUENCING OR SPONSORING SUN MYUNG MOON, DAVID KIM, AND THE OTHERS WHO SIGNED THE "PAPERWORK" FOR THE UC BACK IN EARLY MAY OF 1954?

Thank you in advance for your response to my question.

----------------------------------------

And by the way, I'd like to recommend to all the anonymous posters, that I've addressed here in this post, that you read the Jeffrey Bale article on the Moon Organization. Bale's article is arguably the most comprehensive material ever written about Mr. Moon and his unsavory connections:

http://www.8bitmode.com/rogerdog/lobster/lobster21.pdf

'til the next,

Don Diligent

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christophergill8 · 7 years ago

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SCOTUS kills Quill, giving states more leeway to collect sales tax on online purchases

U.S. Supreme Court photo by Phil Roeder via Flickr CC

Sorry most* U.S. shoppers. Whether you buy from your main street brick-and-mortar retailer or your favorite cyber mall, you're probably going to owe sales tax.

Sorry, too, may U.S. businesses that rely on online, catalog and phone sales. You're going to have to devise ways to collect and remit sales tax (or at least report) on your remote transactions.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) today ruled that the nexus standard established in 1992 by the High Court's Quill vs. North Dakota decision is "unsound and incorrect." Quill said that sellers didn't have to collect sales tax unless they had an actual physical presence in the states that levied sales tax.

That worked for a while. Then along came the internet.

Online shopping popularity growing: Shopping has forever changed. Consumers spent more than $453 billion on the web in 2017, according to U.S. Department of Commerce data. That was 16 percent increase over 2016's almost $391 billion in online sales and the highest growth rate of remote purchases since 2011.

The associated sales taxes, both collected or that escaped state and local tax department clutches, also is in the billions.

That trend is expected to continue. That's why many state tax collectors have argued in recent years that they need laws that reflect the new reality of shoppers purchasing goods nowadays from their tax homes.

Five of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices agreed. And the other four who dissented in South Dakota vs. Wayfair agreed that the interstate remote sales tax system is broken, but they don't think this instance is the best way to handle it.

Uh, hello, Congress. I think it's your turn to finally step up.

Killing Quill: At issue in today's Supreme Court ruling was a Mount Rushmore State sales tax law, which was to have taken effect May 1, 2016, that requires certain remote sellers, based on sales numbers or the dollar amount of sales, to collect and remit sales tax to the state whether or not they have a physical presence there.

The case moved through the legal system with lower courts ruling for the companies, led by Wayfair, protesting the law because the prior Quill standard remained in place.

No more.

The Court decided 5-to-4 to kill Quill.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who's been itching for years to revisit Quill, wrote the South Dakota vs. Wayfair majority opinion. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch concurred.

Thomas and Gorsuch, who before joining the High Court concurred with a unanimous three-judge panel that upheld Colorado's so-called tattletale remote sales tax law, wrote their own separate concurring opinions.

Chief Justice John Roberts dissented, along with Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. They agreed that the Court got it wrong in Quill, but contend that Congress should fix the interstate sales tax law.

Economic reality issues: Kennedy noted in his majority opinion that every year, Quill's physical presence rule "becomes further removed from economic reality and results in significant revenue losses to the States."

The nexus requirement, Kennedy added, "both as first formulated and as applied today, is an incorrect interpretation of the Commerce Clause. … Quill is flawed on its own terms."

As for the South Dakota challenge to the 1992 standard, Kennedy said:

"…South Dakota's tax system includes several features that appear designed to prevent discrimination against or undue burdens upon interstate commerce. First, the Act applies a safe harbor to those who transact only limited business in South Dakota. Second, the Act ensures that no obligation to remit the sales tax may be applied retroactively. … Third, South Dakota is one of more than 20 States that have adopted the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement. This system standardizes taxes to reduce administrative and compliance costs: It requires a single, state-level tax administration, uniform definitions of products and services, simplified tax rate structures, and other uniform rules. It also provides sellers access to sales tax administration software paid for by the State. Sellers who choose to use such software are immune from audit liability. … Any remaining claims regarding the application of the Commerce Clause in the absence of Quill and Bellas Hess may be addressed in the first instance on remand."

Bellas Hess, the other case cited by Kennedy was a 1967 case in which the Supreme Court case held that the Due Process and Commerce Clauses of the United States Constitution barred states from requiring remote retailers with no physical presence in a State to collect and remit sales tax. Twenty-five years later, Quill affirmed Bellas Hess.

Not so fast: The Chief Justice in his dissent agreed that the original nexus case "was wrongly decided, for many of the reasons given by the Court."

But arguments to overturn prior law because the "Internet's prevalence and power have changed the dynamics of the national economy" are, wrote Roberts, "the very reason I oppose discarding the physical-presence rule."

Roberts continued in his dissent:

"Ecommerce has grown into a significant and vibrant part of our national economy against the backdrop of established rules, including the physical-presence rule. Any alteration to those rules with the potential to disrupt the development of such a critical segment of the economy should be undertaken by Congress. The Court should not act on this important question of current economic policy, solely to expiate a mistake it made over 50 years ago."

That's the sentiment of many who oppose the South Dakota tax and legal challenge.

"The Supreme Court's decision to overturn Quill’s physical presence standard creates an uncertain online marketplace," said Elizabeth Hyman, Executive Vice President of Public Advocacy at the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), in a statement following the ruling.

The head of the non-profit IT trade association added:

"Congress must act fast to pass legislation that will create a national standard to clear up any confusion surrounding online sales tax collection and remittance. A patchwork of thousands of state and local online sales tax laws is difficult to navigate and especially burdensome for the small businesses that generate so much of our economic growth. Congress is best equipped to determine how states and localities can reasonably ask online sellers to collect and remit sales taxes on goods and services sold in their jurisdictions. Legislation from Congress is the best path forward to ensuring a competitive online marketplace that does not disadvantage U.S. companies, especially those small businesses that depend so heavily on the internet to sell their goods and services."

More state considerations: So what now? Will states continue to deal with remote sales taxes on their own? Or will Congress finally, as many are urging, get involved in the remote sales tax issue?

Those are the big, and still unclear, questions.

So far, 31 states now have laws taxing internet sales. Today's Supreme Court decision will have those lawmakers looking at how their remote sales tax collection rules compare to South Dakota's, which for now will be the standard.

Specifically, the states will focus (or should) on Kennedy's note that South Dakota's remote sales tax law minimizes, rather than complicates, the burden on interstate commerce. That's the standard that other states or should aim to reach in case their laws are (probably) challenged.

Enter Congress, or not: As for Congress, Wayfair could be the impetus to get the House and Senate to finally act.

Over the years, both Capitol Hill chambers have been unable to come to a consensus on various versions of federal interstate sales tax treatments.

We've seen incarnations of the Remote Transactions Parity Act (RTPA) and Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA) in multiple sessions. These laws basically would let states collect sales tax if they agree to simplify their sales taxes.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Virginia), retiring chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has his own bill that would make the sales tax a business obligation rather than a consumer obligation. The tax would be collected based on the tax rate where the company is located, but the revenue would be sent to the jurisdiction where the purchasing customer lives.

Bottom line is that if your state has a remote sales tax law in place, things are likely to continue until we get further clarification — and I use that term reservedly when it come to Washington, D.C. — from Congress.

About that asterisk: No, I did not forget about that asterisk at the very beginning of this post.

It's appended to most because there are five states that don't collect sales tax. They are, heading west to east, Alaska, Montana, Oregon, New Hampshire and Delaware. Alaska, however, lets its lower jurisdictions collect sales tax is they and their local voters wish.

You shoppers in those sales tax free five states, carry on as we in the other 45 states and District of Columbia who are or will be paying more on our online purchases quietly curse you under our breath!

You also might find these items of interest:

Maps show crazy U.S. quilt of state sales tax nexus laws

What's your state's top combined state/local sales tax rate?

Amazon collecting sales tax in all states where they are levied

// <![CDATA[ // <![CDATA[ // &lt;![CDATA[ // &amp;lt;![CDATA[ // &amp;amp;lt;![CDATA[ // &amp;amp;amp;lt;![CDATA[ // &amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;![CDATA[ // &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;![CDATA[ // &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;![CDATA[ // &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;![CDATA[ // &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;![CDATA[ (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); // ]]&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; // ]]&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; // ]]&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; // ]]&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; // ]]&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; // ]]&amp;amp;amp;gt; // ]]&amp;amp;gt; // ]]&amp;gt; // ]]&gt; // ]]> // ]]>

from Tax News By Christopher http://www.dontmesswithtaxes.com/2018/06/scotus-kills-quill-states-get-leeway-to-collect-sales-tax-on-online-remote-internet-purchases.html

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baileymarie1793 · 8 years ago

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Words Matter.

I remember reading Chicken Soup for the Kid’s Soul when I was little. (I mean, didn’t every 90′s kid?!) I remember seeing a comic strip with one story... the character was walking along the sidewalk repeating “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Then a few boxes later, after a pause, he said: “Yeah, right!”

This post is not about hurting peoples’ feelings with our written or spoken words, however. But it is about how words matter.

Really.... Words. Matter.

Recently, America has been in a bit of historical/racial turmoil... Mostly centering around the removal (or not) of Confederate statues and monuments across the US. White supremacy groups have been gathering in various forms (mostly centered around Charlottesville, Virginia) in support of keeping the monuments in their place, while those opposed (various groups and individuals) have counter-protested for their removal. It has sparked violence, protests, marches, and lots of heated arguments and disrespectful debates.

But I’m not here to comment on the state of these matters... or state my opinion on them. Frankly, just because you have the right and ability to share your thoughts doesn’t mean you always should - mostly because MANY people have YET to learn how to do so in a RESPECTFUL and PRODUCTIVE manner. But I digress...

The coverage of these events surrounding the statues is my concern at the moment. Rather than point out the national coverage, I’m going to use the coverage here locally as a SHINING example of what NOT to do.

In the county seat of where I grew up, there is a tall Confederate monument located in front of the courthouse square. It’s been there for decades longer than my lifetime. Growing up, I never gave it much thought. I never read its plaque or asked about it. It was just an unnamed stone man on a pedestal that cars circled by.

But given the renewed debate in the necessity of such statues and their place in racial history, this particular monument has become a line drawn in the sand between opposing belief systems in my county.

The county Sheriff’s Office has vowed 24/7 watch over the statue to prevent “damage to government property” and “any other violence to people or property” in the area. However, this hasn’t stopped people from gathering... and making vile statements toward one another online and in-person.

But let’s get to the point...

A week or two ago, a group of “concerned citizens” that have united together under the goal of “taking back our county,” gathered together to “provide watch” over the statue. Another group of people (not sure if they were all citizens of the area or not) also gathered to voice their disapproval of the statue’s presence, and quite possibly the presence of the statue “guardians” as well. Of course, the Sheriff’s Office was present and kept the groups separated to opposing sidewalks and hundreds of feet away from the county’s property where the statue remained.

In an effort to provide coverage and find out what was taking place (as well as to be present if anything did get out of hand) a local paper and a local TV news outlet showed up on the scene. And, of course, more curious citizens and passer-bys showed up out of pure nosey-ness to see whatever there might be to see. Photos of groups gathered on sidewalks in the yellow streetlights were shared online in real time. Dozens of uniformed officers were seen circling the statue while people yelled at each other. The Sheriff himself walked back and forth between the groups, hearing their sides and asking both to leave.

In the end, after about an hour or so standoff between the groups, the Sheriff convinced both parties to leave. Essentially, neither group wanted to be the first to leave in fear that the opposite group would do something harmful to the other or to the statue. The Sheriff convinced them all to leave peacefully at the same time.

I’m explaining this whole story to prove my point: WORDS MATTER.

After the uneventful hour of tension at the statue, both present news outlets posted their stories of the events. (***NOTE*** I would include links to both stories, but one has been taken down and the other has been edited/changed from its original format.) Here’s where the problem lies... both versions of the story were factually incorrect due to poor word choices.

YES. I am calling it out.

There is a BIG difference between the words PROTEST and RIOT, by technical definition and by their colloquial definition and connotation. By definition, a protest is “a statement or action expressing disapproval of or objection to something,” while a riot is “a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd.” Colloquially speaking, a protest is usually seen as peaceful with people vocalizing their opinions and holding signs. Meanwhile, colloquially a riot is seen as a mass gathering of looting and yelling and damage and overall violence. Riots have a negative connotation, while protests have a more positive one.

The TV news station called this event a RIOT. If you have read this far, you’ll understand why this word choice is completely WRONG. Furthermore, by using this word you’re exaggerating the facts, being factually incorrect, further inciting the “fake news” argument, and causing further arguments between people (who may or may not try to rush to the scene and actually cause a riot).

And the print article wasn’t much better... calling this event a MASSIVE PROTEST. Alright, so protest is a better word to describe this event... but massive? Please tell me how 20 or so people on a street corner staring down a dozen or so people on the opposite street corner is massive. Massive means “exceptionally large,” and although we live in a rather small community, a couple dozen people gathered compared to our 158,00+ in the county is NOT massive. In my personal opinion, the word “demonstration” (a public meeting expressing views on a political issue) would have been the better word to describe the event as a whole.

Aside from these glaring issues... there were a few more problems to fix. Both stories took the stance of “retelling the events of the night,” but NEITHER article featured quotes from either side of the opposing groups. I highly doubt that not a single person would talk out of the dozens gathered... And if they wouldn’t, I’m sure their discussions amongst each other or with the Sheriff could’ve been overheard. The TV station’s article left out half of the story, probably for the sake of simplifying what they would say on TV... But this was the web story - THIS is where the extended, in-depth, not-limited-by-time-or-word-count version is supposed to be. The newspaper’s online article was riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, run-on sentences, and incomplete ones. Its closing paragraph said simply: “additional information was unavailable at press time... check back later for more on this developing story.” Press time for a website? That’s new to me! I didn’t realize that websites had an opening and closing time that restricted the posting time. I also didn't realize that a “developing story” signified that the event was over (which it was) and that “check back for more” was code for “we’re not going to post another story.”

WORDS MATTER. That’s the moral of the story. That’s the point. As journalists we’re supposed to be the ultimate crafters of words to educate and inform the public in as non-biased a way as possible while still being factually correct and as ethically sound as possible. What happened to that?

Obviously, both outlets dropped the ball on their story coverage. And that is a crying shame.

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oldguardaudio · 8 years ago

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This Altercation in Texas Exposes the Heart of Fake News – “I’ll put a bullet in your head”?

Todays illegals are Tomorrows Democrat Voters at HoaxAndChange.com

illegals flipping USA burn flag @ Hoax and Change

Illegals – I love the USA! NOT @ Hoax and Change

Merrie Spaeth / June 09, 2017

“Fake news” has become a widespread accusation, but what does it actually mean?

Is it something that’s been invented out of whole cloth, like H.G. Wells’ planetary invaders?

Different definitions abound, but I submit that fake news, at its core, is reporting in which the journalist selectively chooses and ignores facts, and interprets or paraphrases those facts to reach an unwarranted conclusion that conveniently validates his own views.

It goes to the heart of how many reporters see their job these days.

Readers may have seen the recent “news” about a physical fracas on the floor of the Texas House of Representatives, which reported that Republican Rep. Matt Rinaldi confronted a Democrat and engaged in an aggressive verbal back-and-forth.

The report said the altercation came to a climax when Rinaldi said, “I’ll put a bullet in your head” to the “the Democrat he alleged was menacing,” in the words of the Dallas Morning News account.

For context, this was the last day of the legislative session, and a large and boisterous group of self-described illegal immigrants were holding signs that read, “Illegal and Here to Stay.”

It was in response to this protest that Rinaldi, according to the original report, said to the protesters he was calling Immigration and Customs Enforcement—prompting a physical tussle between Rinaldi and Rep. Poncho Nevarez and then the “bullet in your head” threat.

Media outlets around the country carried this report.

But what actually happened here, and which part was “fake”?

We now know that the demonstration, which was indeed loud and noisy, took place inside the Capitol building and spilled onto the floor of the Legislature, which is highly unusual and not allowed.

The “demonstrators”—or more accurately, the provocateurs—quickly outnumbered and overpowered the legislative security forces. That’s what caused Rinaldi to say, “I’m calling ICE.” (For the record, they never showed up.)

Next, the alleged altercation.

Cellphone video, which appears to have been taken by multiple people and released in the aftermath of the fracas, shows the demonstrators pushing and shoving Rinaldi, who kept his arms to his chest or at his side.

The audio only reveals grunting and the typical sounds of a physical engagement, punctuated by semi-coherent cries of “stop that.”

In the immediate aftermath, Nevarez came up to Rinaldi, got in his face, and said, “When you leave, I’ll get you.” Within minutes, he again came up and said, “You have to leave sometime, and I know where your car is parked and I’ll get you.”

At that point, Rinaldi said something like, “I’m armed and I’ll defend myself.”

Rep. Jonathan Strickland, R-Bedford, was one of two representatives who personally witnessed this and confirmed it by email. Neither is a personal acquaintance, but it wouldn’t have been very difficult to confirm Rinaldi’s version of the story.

But what did the Dallas Morning News report?

Initially, it noted that Rinaldi did tell it that Nevarez did say he would “come get” him, with just “come get” in quotation marks.

It left out the much more provocative and threatening phrases, “You’ll have to leave sometime,” and “I know where your car is,” plus the fact that Nevarez approached him twice.

Moreover, this sentence was buried in the body of the text.

The allegation that Rinaldi said, “I’ll put a bullet in your head,” came from another Democratic representative, Justin Rodriguez, who admittedly “didn’t witness the initial altercation” and only later said he heard Rinaldi make the comment.

This allegation was also disputed by a number of representatives who were present.

Despite these discrepancies, the Dallas Morning News ran a bold headline quoting the inflammatory words: “’I’ll put a bullet in your head’: Fistfight nearly erupts on the final day of a contentious legislative session.”

It should be noted that “nearly” is not the same as “did,” and the word “fistfight” overshadows the qualifier “nearly” enough to obliterate it.

Later, Rinaldi issued a statement noting that Nevarez had approached and threatened him and that he had responded to Nevarez saying he would “shoot him in self-defense.” That’s not exactly what Rinaldi remembers saying, but he let his public statement stand.

Several of Rinaldi’s staff members contacted the Dallas Morning News after the initial story was posted and asked it to change the headline, which they felt was incorrect and misleading.

According to sources with knowledge of the situation, the reporter replied, “There’s no proof he didn’t say it,” adding that because Rodriguez claimed Rinaldi had said it, this was sufficient to justify the headline. The headline remains online today.

Media Aftermath

In the hours and days that followed, dozens of media outlets picked up the “bullet in your head” quote. When the cell phone video came out, several publications did amend their stories to remove allegations that Rinaldi had assaulted Rodriguez or other representatives.

The conservative media, most notably Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, allotted six minutes to report the entire story, complete with video and images of the red-shirted demonstrators swarming the legislators on the floor. Cavuto carefully reviewed the timeline of who said what, and when.

Yet even this past weekend, the Dallas Morning News was still parsing the event and reporting that “Rinaldi acknowledged on his Facebook page that he told Democratic State Rep. Poncho Nevarez of Eagle Pass that he ‘would shoot him in self-defense.’”

There was no mention of Nevarez’s repeated threats (“You have to leave sometime.”).

In addition, the Dallas Morning News was still collecting expert quotes responding to its own description of what happened, rather than what really happened.

One quote was from Southern Methodist University professor Cal Jillson, who said, “In Asia, in places like South Korea and Taiwan, you do have lawmakers with their hands around each other’s throats and fisticuffs. But you don’t usually see that in American politics.”

But as noted above, there was no actual fighting.

Calling Out What’s Fake

This story is tainted by a number of errors.

First and foremost, the quotation, “I’ll put a bullet in your head,” which came from a clearly partisan source, should have been verified and immediately corrected upon learning that it didn’t come from the mouth of Rinaldi.

Next, the original story downplayed or omitted a key part of the story—the initial threats from Nevarez. The comments from Rinaldi were provoked and came in response to aggression from Nevarez. While the Dallas Morning News did include a tweet from Rinaldi mentioning Nevarez’s behavior, there was no mention in the body of the piece about it.

Additionally, the report painted a far more benign picture of the scene on the floor of the Legislature that was accurate. The participants were clearly organized and aiming to provoke a physical response.

Finally, and most “fake” of all, the reporter defended the “bullet in your head” quote of Rinaldi by saying, “There’s no proof he didn’t say it.”

If that’s the standard for journalism today—saying something happened because there’s no proof it didn’t happen—we’ve truly entered the land of the news novella.

What’s the lesson here for ordinary citizens?

Years ago, Erwin Knoll, editor of The Progressive magazine, penned an article titled, “Knoll’s Law of Accuracy in Media.” In that piece, Knoll said: “Everything you read in the press is absolutely true. Except the rare event of which you have personal knowledge.”

That statement proved especially salient in this case, where diving deeper into the evidence makes all the difference.

The lesson for American news consumers is to be skeptical of what you read in all media and take the time to give the facts a second look.

And there’s an additional lesson: Urge journalists to employ a little more self-examination to make sure they don’t cherry-pick the “facts,” quotes, and experts that simply ratify their predetermined conclusions.

And when they do, we should call them on it.

This Altercation in Texas Exposes the Heart of Fake News – “I’ll put a bullet in your head”? This Altercation in Texas Exposes the Heart of Fake News - “I’ll put a bullet in your head”?

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literatelobstersareliterate · 8 years ago

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Our American Pravda | The American Conservative

Our American Pravda

The major media overlooked Communist spies and Madoff’s fraud. What are they missing today?

[ARTHROPOD ARCHIVIST’S NOTE: Despite the generally lefty leanings of the circles I run in (n.b. I’m radical center myself, and often disagree with both sides) and the publication’s name, The American Conservative often manages to surprise me with very good, thought-provoking, not-necessarily-partisan commentary. This piece uses a history of major stories the American media did not cover to make the argument that we don’t have an adequate investigative press. I agree.]

By Ron Unz, April 29, 2013

In mid-March, the Wall Street Journal carried a long discussion of the origins of the Bretton Woods system, the international financial framework that governed the Western world for decades after World War II. A photo showed the two individuals who negotiated that agreement. Britain was represented by John Maynard Keynes, a towering economic figure of that era. America’s representative was Harry Dexter White, assistant secretary of the Treasury and long a central architect of American economic policy, given that his nominal superior, Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., was a gentleman farmer with no background in finance. White was also a Communist agent.

Such a situation was hardly unique in American government during the 1930s and 1940s. For example, when a dying Franklin Roosevelt negotiated the outlines of postwar Europe with Joseph Stalin at the 1945 Yalta summit, one of his important advisors was Alger Hiss, a State Department official whose primary loyalty was to the Soviet side. Over the last 20 years, John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and other scholars have conclusively established that many dozens or even hundreds of Soviet agents once honeycombed the key policy staffs and nuclear research facilities of our federal government, constituting a total presence perhaps approaching the scale suggested by Sen. Joseph McCarthy, whose often unsubstantiated charges tended to damage the credibility of his position.

The Cold War ended over two decades ago and Communism has been relegated to merely an unpleasant chapter in the history books, so today these facts are hardly much disputed. For example, liberal Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein matter-of-factly referred to White as a “Soviet spy” in the title of his column on our postwar financial system. But during the actual period when America’s government was heavily influenced by Communist agents, such accusations were widely denounced as “Red-baiting” or ridiculed as right-wing conspiracy paranoia by many of our most influential journalists and publications. In 1982 liberal icon Susan Sontag ruefully acknowledged that for decades the subscribers to the lowbrow Readers Digest had received a more realistic view of the world than those who drew their knowledge from the elite liberal publications favored by her fellow intellectuals. I myself came of age near the end of the Cold War and always vaguely assumed that such lurid tales of espionage were wildly exaggerated. I was wrong.

The notion of the American government being infiltrated and substantially controlled by agents of a foreign power has been the stuff of endless Hollywood movies and television shows, but for various reasons such popular channels have never been employed to bring the true-life historical example to wide attention. I doubt if even one American in a hundred today is familiar with the name “Harry Dexter White” or dozens of similar agents.

The realization that the world is often quite different from what is presented in our leading newspapers and magazines is not an easy conclusion for most educated Americans to accept, or at least that was true in my own case. For decades, I have closely read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and one or two other major newspapers every morning, supplemented by a wide variety of weekly or monthly opinion magazines. Their biases in certain areas had always been apparent to me. But I felt confident that by comparing and contrasting the claims of these different publications and applying some common sense, I could obtain a reasonably accurate version of reality. I was mistaken.

Aside from the evidence of our own senses, almost everything we know about the past or the news of today comes from bits of ink on paper or colored pixels on a screen, and fortunately over the last decade or two the growth of the Internet has vastly widened the range of information available to us in that latter category. Even if the overwhelming majority of the unorthodox claims provided by such non-traditional web-based sources is incorrect, at least there now exists the possibility of extracting vital nuggets of truth from vast mountains of falsehood. Certainly the events of the past dozen years have forced me to completely recalibrate my own reality-detection apparatus.

Thoughtful individuals of all backgrounds have undergone a similar crisis of confidence during this same period. Just a few months after 9/11 New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argued that the sudden financial collapse of the Enron Corporation represented a greater shock to the American system than the terrorist attacks themselves, and although he was widely denounced for making such an “unpatriotic” claim, I believe his case was strong. Although the name “Enron” has largely vanished from our memory, for years it had ranked as one of America’s most successful and admired companies, glowingly profiled on the covers of our leading business magazines, and drawing luminaries such as Krugman himself to its advisory board; Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay had been a top contender for Treasury secretary in President George W. Bush’s administration. Then in the blink of an eye, the entire company was revealed to be an accounting fraud from top to bottom, collapsing into a $63 billion bankruptcy, the largest in American history. Other companies of comparable or even greater size such as WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia, and Global Crossing soon vanished for similar reasons.

Part of Krugman’s argument was that while the terrorist attacks had been of an entirely unprecedented nature and scale, our entire system of financial regulation, accounting, and business journalism was designed to prevent exactly the sort of frauds that brought down those huge companies. When a system fails so dramatically at its core mission, we must wonder which of our other assumptions are incorrect.

Just a few years later, we saw an even more sweeping near-collapse of our entire financial system, with giant institutions such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Wachovia, and AIG falling into bankruptcy, and all our remaining major banks surviving only due to the trillions of dollars in government bailouts and loan guarantees they received. Once again, all our media and regulatory organs had failed to anticipate this disaster.

Or take the remarkable case of Bernie Madoff. His colossal investment swindle had been growing unchecked for over three decades under the very noses of our leading financial journalists and regulators in New York City, ultimately reaching the sum of $65 billion in mostly fictional assets. His claimed returns had been implausibly steady and consistent year after year, market crashes or not. None of his supposed trading actually occurred. His only auditing was by a tiny storefront firm. Angry competitors had spent years warning the SEC and journalists that his alleged investment strategy was mathematically impossible and that he was obviously running a Ponzi scheme. Yet despite all these indicators, officials did nothing and refused to close down such a transparent swindle, while the media almost entirely failed to report these suspicions.

In many respects, the non-detection of these business frauds is far more alarming than failure to uncover governmental malfeasance. Politics is a partisan team sport, and it is easy to imagine Democrats or Republicans closing ranks and protecting their own, despite damage to society. Furthermore, success or failure in public policies is often ambiguous and subject to propagandistic spin. But investors in a fraudulent company lose their money and therefore have an enormous incentive to detect those risks, with the same being true for business journalists. If the media cannot be trusted to catch and report simple financial misconduct, its reliability on more politically charged matters will surely be lower.

The circumstances surrounding our Iraq War demonstrate this, certainly ranking it among the strangest military conflicts of modern times. The 2001 attacks in America were quickly ascribed to the radical Islamists of al-Qaeda, whose bitterest enemy in the Middle East had always been Saddam Hussein’s secular Baathist regime in Iraq. Yet through misleading public statements, false press leaks, and even forged evidence such as the “yellowcake” documents, the Bush administration and its neoconservative allies utilized the compliant American media to persuade our citizens that Iraq’s nonexistent WMDs posed a deadly national threat and required elimination by war and invasion. Indeed, for several years national polls showed that a large majority of conservatives and Republicans actually believed that Saddam was the mastermind behind 9/11 and the Iraq War was being fought as retribution. Consider how bizarre the history of the 1940s would seem if America had attacked China in retaliation for Pearl Harbor.

True facts were easily available to anyone paying attention in the years after 2001, but most Americans do not bother and simply draw their understanding of the world from what they are told by the major media, which overwhelmingly—almost uniformly—backed the case for war with Iraq; the talking heads on TV created our reality. Prominent journalists across the liberal and conservative spectrum eagerly published the most ridiculous lies and distortions passed on to them by anonymous sources, and stampeded Congress down the path to war.

The result was what my late friend Lt. Gen. Bill Odom rightly called the “greatest strategic disaster in United States history.” American forces suffered tens of thousands of needless deaths and injuries, while our country took a huge step toward national bankruptcy. Economics Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and others have estimated that with interest the total long-term cost of our two recent wars may reach as high as $5 or $6 trillion, or as much as $50,000 per American household, mostly still unpaid. Meanwhile, economist Edward Wolff has calculated that the Great Recession and its aftermath cut the personal net worth of the median American household to $57,000 in 2010 from a figure nearly twice as high three years earlier. Comparing these assets and liabilities, we see that the American middle class now hovers on the brink of insolvency, with the cost of our foreign wars being a leading cause.

But no one involved in the debacle ultimately suffered any serious consequences, and most of the same prominent politicians and highly paid media figures who were responsible remain just as prominent and highly paid today. For most Americans, reality is whatever our media organs tell us, and since these have largely ignored the facts and adverse consequences of our wars in recent years, the American people have similarly forgotten. Recent polls show that only half the public today believes that the Iraq War was a mistake.

Author James Bovard has described our society as an “attention deficit democracy,” and the speed with which important events are forgotten once the media loses interest might surprise George Orwell.

Consider the story of Vioxx, a highly lucrative anti-pain medication marketed by Merck to the elderly as a substitute for simple aspirin. After years of very profitable Vioxx sales, an FDA researcher published a study demonstrating that the drug greatly increased the risk of fatal strokes and heart attacks and had probably already caused tens of thousands of premature American deaths. Vioxx was immediately pulled from the market, but Merck eventually settled the resulting lawsuits for relatively small penalties, despite direct evidence the company had long been aware of the drug’s deadly nature. Our national media, which had earned hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising revenue from Vioxx marketing, provided no sustained coverage and the scandal was soon forgotten. Furthermore, the press never investigated the dramatic upward and downward shifts in the mortality rates of elderly Americans that so closely tracked the introduction and recall of Vioxx; as I pointed out in a 2012 article, these indicated that the likely death toll had actually been several times greater than the FDA estimate. Vast numbers Americans died, no one was punished, and almost everyone has now forgotten.

Or take the strange case of Bernard Kerik, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s police commissioner during 9/11, later nominated by President Bush to be America’s first director of national intelligence, a newly established position intended to oversee all of our various national-security and intelligence agencies. His appointment seemed likely to sail through the Republican-controlled Senate until derailed by accusations he had employed an undocumented nanny. With his political rise having been blocked, the national media suddenly revealed his long history of association with organized-crime figures, an indictment quickly followed, and he is currently still serving his federal prison sentence for conspiracy and fraud. So America came within a hairbreadth of placing its entire national-security apparatus under the authority of a high-school dropout connected with organized crime, and today almost no Americans seem aware of that fact.

Through most of the 20th century, America led something of a charmed life, at least when compared with the disasters endured by almost every other major country. We became the richest and most powerful nation on earth, partly due to our own achievements and partly due to the mistakes of others. The public interpreted these decades of American power and prosperity as validation of our system of government and national leadership, and the technological effectiveness of our domestic propaganda machinery—our own American Pravda—has heightened this effect. Furthermore, most ordinary Americans are reasonably honest and law-abiding and project that same behavior onto others, including our media and political elites. This differs from the total cynicism found in most other countries around the world.

Credibility is a capital asset, which may take years to accumulate but can be squandered in an instant; and the events of the last dozen years should have bankrupted any faith we have in our government or media. Once we acknowledge this, we should begin to accept the possible reality of important, well-documented events even if they are not announced on the front pages of our major newspapers. When several huge scandals have erupted into the headlines after years or decades of total media silence, we must wonder what other massive stories may currently be ignored by our media elites. I think I can provide a few possibilities.

Consider the almost forgotten anthrax mailing attacks in the weeks after 9/11, which terrified our dominant East Coast elites and spurred passage of the unprecedented Patriot Act, thereby eliminating many traditional civil-libertarian protections. Every morning during that period the New York Times and other leading newspapers carried articles describing the mysterious nature of the deadly attacks and the complete bafflement of the FBI investigators. But evenings on the Internet I would read stories by perfectly respectable journalists such as Salon’s Laura Rozen or the staff of the Hartford Courant providing a wealth of additional detail and pointing to a likely suspect and motive.

Although the letters carrying the anthrax were purportedly written by an Arab terrorist, the FBI quickly determined that the language and style indicated a non-Arab author, while tests pointed to the bioweapons research facility at Ft. Detrick, Md., as the probable source of the material. But just prior to the arrival of those deadly mailings, military police at Quantico, Va., had also received an anonymous letter warning that a former Ft. Detrick employee, Egyptian-born Dr. Ayaad Assaad, might be planning to launch a national campaign of bioterrorism. Investigators quickly cleared Dr. Assaad, but the very detailed nature of the accusations revealed inside knowledge of his employment history and the Ft. Detrick facilities. Given the near-simultaneous posting of anthrax envelopes and false bioterrorism accusations, the mailings almost certainly came from the same source, and solving the latter case would be the easiest means of catching the anthrax killer.

Who would have attempted to frame Dr. Assaad for bioterrorism? A few years earlier he had been involved in a bitter personal feud with a couple of his Ft. Detrick coworkers, including charges of racism, official reprimands, and angry recriminations all around. When an FBI official shared a copy of the accusatory letter with a noted language-forensics expert and allowed him to compare the text with the writings of 40 biowarfare lab employees, he found a perfect match with one of those individuals. For years I told my friends that anyone who spent 30 minutes with Google could probably determine the name and motive of the likely anthrax killer, and most of them successfully met my challenge.

This powerful evidence received almost no attention in the major national media, nor is there any indication that the FBI ever followed up on any of these clues or interrogated the named suspects. Instead, investigators attempted to pin the attacks on a Dr. Steven Hatfill based on negligible evidence, after which he was completely exonerated and won a $5.6 million settlement from the government for its years of severe harassment. Later, similar hounding of researcher Bruce Ivins and his family led to his suicide, after which the FBI declared the case closed, even though former colleagues of Dr. Ivins demonstrated that he had had no motive, means, or opportunity. In 2008, I commissioned a major 3,000-word cover story in my magazine summarizing all of this crucial evidence, and once again almost no one in the mainstream media paid the slightest attention.

An even more egregious case followed a couple of years later, with regard to the stunning revelations of Pulitzer Prize winner Sydney Schanberg, one of America’s foremost Vietnam War reporters and a former top editor at the New York Times. After years of research, Schanberg published massive evidence demonstrating that the endlessly ridiculed claims of America’s Vietnam MIA movement of the 1970s and 1980s were correct: the Nixon administration had indeed deliberately abandoned many hundreds of American POWs in Vietnam at the close of the war, and our government afterward spent decades covering up this shameful crime. Schanberg’s charges were publicly confirmed by two former Republican House members, one of whom had independently co-authored a 500 page book on the subject, exhaustively documenting the POW evidence.

Although a major focus of Schanberg’s account was the central role that Sen. John McCain had played in leading the later cover-up, the national media ignored these detailed charges during McCain’s bitter 2008 presidential campaign against Barack Obama. One of America’s most distinguished living journalists published what was surely “the story of the century” and none of America’s newspapers took notice.

In 2010 Schanberg republished this material in a collection of his other writings, and his work received glowing praise from Joseph Galloway, one of America’s top military correspondents, as well as other leading journalists; his charges are now backed by the weight of four New York Times Pulitzer Prizes. Around that same time, I produced a 15,000-word cover-symposium on the scandal, organized around Schanberg’s path-breaking findings and including contributions from other prominent writers. All of this appeared in the middle of Senator McCain’s difficult reelection campaign in Arizona, and once again the material was totally ignored by the state and national media.

An argument might be made that little harm has been done to the national interest by the media’s continued silence in the two examples described above. The anthrax killings have largely been forgotten and the evidence suggests that the motive was probably one of personal revenge. All the government officials involved in the abandonment of the Vietnam POWs are either dead or quite elderly, and even those involved in the later cover-up, such as John McCain, are in the twilight of their political careers. But an additional example remains completely relevant today, and some of the guilty parties hold high office.

During the mid-2000s I began noticing references on one or two small websites to a woman claiming to be a former FBI employee who was making the most outlandish and ridiculous charges, accusing high government officials of selling our nuclear-weapons secrets to foreign spies. I paid no attention to such unlikely claims and never bothered reading any of the articles.

A couple of years went by, and various website references to that same woman—Sibel Edmonds—kept appearing, although I continued to ignore them, secure that the silence of all my newspapers proved her to be delusional. Then in early 2008, the London Sunday Times, one of the world’s leading newspapers, ran a long, three-part front-page series presenting her charges, which were soon republished in numerous other countries. Daniel Ellsberg described Edmonds’s revelations as “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers” and castigated the American media for completely ignoring a story that had reached the front pages of newspapers throughout the rest of the world. Such silence struck me as rather odd.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA official who regularly writes for this magazine, suggested he investigate her charges. He found her highly credible, and his 3,000-word article in TAC presented some astonishing but very detailed claims.

Edmonds had been hired by the FBI to translate wiretapped conversations of a suspected foreign spy ring under surveillance, and she had been disturbed to discover that many of these hundreds of phone calls explicitly discussed the sale of nuclear-weapons secrets to foreign intelligence organizations, including those linked to international terrorism, as well as the placement of agents at key American military research facilities. Most remarkably, some of the individuals involved in these operations were high-ranking government officials; the staffs of several influential members of Congress were also implicated. On one occasion, a senior State Department figure was reportedly recorded making arrangements to pick up a bag containing a large cash bribe from one of his contacts. Very specific details of names, dates, dollar amounts, purchasers, and military secrets were provided.

The investigation had been going on for years with no apparent action, and Edmonds was alarmed to discover that a fellow translator quietly maintained a close relationship with one of the key FBI targets. When she raised these issues, she was personally threatened, and after appealing to her supervisors, eventually fired.

Since that time, she has passed a polygraph test on her claims, testified under oath in a libel lawsuit, expanded her detailed charges in a 2009 TAC cover story also by Giraldi, and most recently published a book recounting her case. Judiciary Committee Senators Chuck Grassley and Patrick Leahy have publicly backed some of her charges, a Department of Justice inspector general’s report has found her allegations “credible” and “serious,” while various FBI officials have vouched for her reliability and privately confirmed many of her claims. But none of her detailed charges has ever appeared in any of America’s newspapers. According to Edmonds, one of the conspirators routinely made payments to various members of the media, and bragged to his fellow plotters that “We just fax to our people at the New York Times. They print it under their names.”

At times, Congressional Democratic staff members became interested in the scandal, and promised an investigation. But once they learned that senior members of their own party were also implicated, their interest faded.

These three stories—the anthrax evidence, the McCain/POW revelations, and the Sibel Edmonds charges—are the sort of major exposés that would surely be dominating the headlines of any country with a properly-functioning media. But almost no American has ever heard of them. Before the Internet broke the chokehold of our centralized flow of information, I would have remained just as ignorant myself, despite all the major newspapers and magazines I regularly read.

Am I absolutely sure that any or all of these stories are true? Certainly not, though I think they probably are, given their overwhelming weight of supporting evidence. But absent any willingness of our government or major media to properly investigate them, I cannot say more.

However, this material does conclusively establish something else, which has even greater significance. These dramatic, well-documented accounts have been ignored by our national media, rather than widely publicized. Whether this silence has been deliberate or is merely due to incompetence remains unclear, but the silence itself is proven fact.

A likely reason for this wall of uninterest on so many important issues is that the disasters involved are often bipartisan in nature, with both Democrats and Republicans being culpable and therefore equally eager to hide their mistakes. Perhaps in the famous words of Benjamin Franklin, they realize that they must all hang together or they will surely all hang separately.

We always ridicule the 98 percent voter support that dictatorships frequently achieve in their elections and plebiscites, yet perhaps those secret-ballot results may sometimes be approximately correct, produced by the sort of overwhelming media control that leads voters to assume there is no possible alternative to the existing regime. Is such an undemocratic situation really so different from that found in our own country, in which our two major parties agree on such a broad range of controversial issues and, being backed by total media dominance, routinely split 98 percent of the vote? A democracy may provide voters with a choice, but that choice is largely determined by the information citizens receive from their media.

Most of the Americans who elected Barack Obama in 2008 intended their vote as a total repudiation of the policies and personnel of the preceding George W. Bush administration. Yet once in office, Obama’s crucial selections—Robert Gates at Defense, Timothy Geither at Treasury, and Ben Bernake at the Federal Reserve—were all top Bush officials, and they seamlessly continued the unpopular financial bailouts and foreign wars begun by his predecessor, producing what amounted to a third Bush term.

Consider the fascinating perspective of the recently deceased Boris Berezovsky, once the most powerful of the Russian oligarchs and the puppet master behind President Boris Yeltsin during the late 1990s. After looting billions in national wealth and elevating Vladimir Putin to the presidency, he overreached himself and eventually went into exile. According to the New York Times, he had planned to transform Russia into a fake two-party state—one social-democratic and one neoconservative—in which heated public battles would be fought on divisive, symbolic issues, while behind the scenes both parties would actually be controlled by the same ruling elites. With the citizenry thus permanently divided and popular dissatisfaction safely channeled into meaningless dead-ends, Russia’s rulers could maintain unlimited wealth and power for themselves, with little threat to their reign. Given America’s history over the last couple of decades, perhaps we can guess where Berezovsky got his idea for such a clever political scheme.

Major References in The American Conservative:

Christopher Ketchum: The Anthrax Files, August 25, 2008

Ron Unz: Was Rambo Right?, July 2010

Sydney Schanberg: Silent Treatment, July 2010

Sydney Schanberg: McCain and the POW Cover-Up, July 2010

Philip Giraldi: Found in Translation, January 28, 2008

Philip Giraldi: Who’s Afraid of Sibel Edmonds?, November 2009

[Erratum: In my text I mentioned that Bernard Kerik, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s New York City police chief during the 9/11 attacks, was a high school dropout with ties to organized crime, who is currently still serving his federal prison sentence on related charges. This was correct. However, President George W. Bush had nominated him to run America’s Department of Homeland Security rather than to be America’s Director of National Intelligence.]

(via Our American Pravda | The American Conservative)

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