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wonkastarshine · 3 years

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A Willy Wonka Prequel?

Ever since the news broke a couple weeks ago, I have been thinking non-stop about this new prequel. My boyfriend and I had a conversation about it that lasted almost an hour. So many thoughts and questions have swirled around my head, but the only thing that has really stuck with me is simply this: why?

Why do we need this movie? Why is Warner Bros. thinking this is a good idea? Why is this existing when Taika Waititi is already doing another version of CATCF on Netflix?

It just honestly baffles me because the main complaints against the 2005 film were targeted at Wonka’s added backstory. Audiences said it was unnecessary and dragged the film down. I personally don’t mind it. I think it is a very Dahlesque addition. I mean think of all the nasty and abusive parents in Dahl stories from Matilda to James and the Giant Peach. John August and Tim Burton gave Wonka a backstory and people rejected it. We saw Wonka as a child, run away and then a slight glimpse of when he was on Cherry Street. The trouble with a prequel is that so much of the character of Willy Wonka is up for interpretation. Even with Depp’s added backstory, there were still so many gaps that the audience had to fill in for themselves such as the whereabouts of his mother, full motives for his father hating candy, what he did after he ran away and how he actually gained the skills and knowledge to become the genius candymaker he is. And the reason we don’t know is because Roald Dahl never intended us to.

All we learn from the book is:

Opened a shop on Cherry Street

Opened factory

Chocolate Palace

Spies

Factory Closes

And we saw all of that in the 2005 version. It’s told via exposition in the 71’ film, even though some of the stories were left out all together. So… the screenwriter will be left to either

a) stretch out what was from the book

b) completely throw out his original story

I don’t really want to know where Wonka gets his top hat from or how he gets his loans to build his candy empire. This is again where my main problem lies. I am very nervous that they will make Wonka a very boring, typical, heteronormative character to appeal broad audiences. Willy Wonka has become such an icon because his full backstory is up for grabs. They could surprise us and not give Wonka a love interest at all, in line with the book and both movie adaptations. But, the most common trope of prequels is to introduce a love interest, but this does not align with Willy’s future of becoming a recluse and hiding out in his factory. So much of the Wonka character is who he is because of his isolation from humanity. Maybe I’m being overly picky, but I’m very defensive about Willy Wonka as a character. I believe there is only so much you can do with him that still stays true to him in the book.

And it all comes down to who will play the candyman himself.

I am not a big fan of either Holland or Chalamet reportedly being in the runnings. If we are doing a new version, I want someone completely unknown. I want a fresh new face for Willy Wonka. Don’t get me wrong, I think that both of these men are fine actors, I just do not think they would be right for the part. Most likely, ⅓ of the movie will be with a child actor, as we watch a very young Wonka and then transition to the actor who will play Wonka for the rest of the movie. I just want a brand new actor to grace the face of a young Wonka. I can think of some older, adult actors who would be good as Wonka such as Taika Waititi, Oscar Isaac and Bryan Cranston (don’t @ me, I have my reasons lol). But, I honest to goodness cannot think of any young actors right now who could be the not yet reclusive candyman. Since Tom and Timothee are just rumors, I take it with a grain of salt, especially Tom because he has contractual agreements with Marvel and his schedule might not allow for it.

But besides the issue of casting, we simply cannot ignore that this could possibly be erasure of both movies, the 2005 one specifically. Because the story of CATCF has been around for over 60 years now, it’s embedded into our consciousness and culture. While the story is known, everyone loves a different Wonka, whether it be Wilder or Depp. Wilder Wonka has the advantage of being around for over 50 years now versus Depp’s 16. Due to the 2005 version still being fairly recent, all things considered, it is in danger of being erased from the public eye even more than it already has been. And that is very apparent by the Wilder vs. Depp arguments that have risen again since the announcement of the prequel. Those arguments are silly since everyone has the right to an opinion, but it also shows the really nasty side to a fandom. With the arrival of a prequel movie, I think the fandom will be split even further. Depp’s version will be ostracized more. Wilder’s could see a surge in praise, if the prequel is terrible because it has the advantage of being older and more widely accepted. It angers me, just because CATCF 2005 is so hated upon, for many times no good reason other than “iT’s nOt thE oRiGinAL.”

A prequel could serve to burn every bridge connected to 2005 and leave the fandom in the dust, with no new material to be released such as anniversary editions, box sets or a 4K blu-ray remaster, which we so desperately want. Or it could be what we see currently on social media with younger generations discovering a new version. Both Wilder and Depp could be erased and new generations could see this new Wonka as the only Wonka. That’s a scary thought. No matter which version you prefer, I would hate to see a fandom be completely obliterated by the prequel or taken over by influencers. (no hate to influencers, but sometimes they can do some damage without knowing it.)

Overall, I do think this movie will get stuck in development hell. They announced the development of this prequel in 2016 and only now in 2021 do we get a release date. I think that Warner Bros. is desperately grasping at strings. Upon seeing the general negativity following the announcement, they could be thinking twice. But, I believe this movie won’t be made. It’s a difficult story to tell and the main character has spanned generations of people. Also, with the increasing awareness regarding Roald Dahl’s anti-semetic comments and the ongoing pandemic, they could ultimately decide to shelf the film. Which is what I genuinely hope happens.

#this was too long and probably too serious lmao #but i just love willy wonka sm #abbie’s thoughts #willy wonka #tim burton #johnny depp #willy wonka prequel #catcf 2005 #charlie and the chocolate factory

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tropicaldruid · 3 years

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The Survivor’s Guide to Leaving Your Birth Religion Part 4: Tear It Down

It’s 1998 and I’m on a road trip to North Carolina with my youth group. Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water plays, and my youth pastor lowers the volume, “Have y’all ever heard the story behind this song?” he asks. None of us have.

“The man who wrote this was a drawbridge operator. He had brought his grandkids to work with him one day and despite several warnings, his granddaughter was climbing on the bridge. The man had told his grandkids how dangerous it was but the girl wasn’t heeding him and was playing in the works of the drawbridge. There was a boat full of people coming and the man had to make a choice between his granddaughter, and the lives of all those people on the boat. Rather than risk the lives of all those people he made the ultimate sacrifice…” his voice trailed off for a moment “Years later he wrote this song.”

That story stuck with me. It’s a bizarre and sad story that doesn’t really seem to have a moral that actually holds up to any kind of scrutiny. Of course, it doesn’t help that the story was also bullshit. Paul Simon wrote the lyrics to that song after committing zero bridge-related murders.

Yet somewhere along the way somebody made that story up. I think it’s inspired by the tragic story behind It Is Well With My Soul. Like Virgil borrowed heavily from Homer, someone decided that Like a Bridge needed a more palatable foundational myth and made one up for it. And apparently thousands of people know this sad backstory that never happened as if it were truth, and bellieve that it serves as a cautionary tale about listening to your elders.

Stories are so fascinating in the way they can convey some values and undermine others merely by being convincing, whether true or not. For years I believed Charles Darwin renounced “evolutionism” and accepted Christ just before he died. What a damaging idea, a simple one, but one that set my actual academic progress back by years.

It’s time to put the previous months of research to work.

It’s time to tear down some of the untrue things we’ve been led to believe over the years.

It’s time to face that we might be idiots a little bit.

Leaving my religious bubble, I was shocked at how little I knew about the real world and how it worked. How unacceptable my internalized and externalized bigotry actually was, just how bigoted I actually was.

For someone indoctrinated to believe I was a shining example of God’s love to the ungodly world, this came as quite a surprise to me.

I needed to identify and challenge a lot of problematic ideas I had, I needed to look at the stories I had learned these ideas and values from and test those stories against other narratives.

If I had ever stopped to challenge the narrative that Charles Darwin rejected “evolutionism” in favor of creationism I would have learned how absurd the dichotomy was in the first place.

So the homework for this section is to start identifying these problematic ideas. Make a list of things that maybe you’ve been challenged on in the past. Have you been called a bigot before? A racist? Write that down. Think honestly about that moment and write down what action or words on your part caused it. Google words, read articles with an open mind. Join some discourse and emotional labor groups on social media and ask polite questions. Enter these spaces with humility, you’re in someone else’s sanctuary; and although we are survivors of trauma, we aren’t the only ones traumatized by these institutions and depending on our involvement, we may be culpable in the trauma of others. Be ready to listen and learn rather than defend or explain.

Maybe that’s not something you can relate to, but you’ve always had a problem with some teaching. Often questioning the highly questionable is met with accusations of non-belief and scorn. “Those bone shaped rocks were put there by The Debbil and if you fall for his tricks then you’re a heathen too!” These ideas would be a great place to start. If you’ve got some questions like this, again google is a great place to plug in a few key words and get a ton of information. Look for academic papers, peer reviewed articles, books by reputable publishers.

Check out this article https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/fake-news.htm and learn about vetting the information you consume online and in the real world.

Sit down and compile a list, maybe make three columns. In the first write what someone else told you was problematic, or what idea you’ve had a problem accepting. In the second, write what specific issue was addressed in your words or actions (homophobia, racism, misogyny, anti-semetism, etc) or what specific detail of teaching you take issue with (Eve’s curse makes no sense because all mammals experience pain during childbirth?) Now in the third column write the specific steps you will take to find better information on the topic.

Be Honest.

Be Tireless.

This is probably the hardest part of this guide to address because it requires us to be very critical of ourselves, of truths upon which we have founded our identities . We are presented here the opportunity to grow beyond obsolete ideas, or cling to familiar ignorance.

Admitting we’ve been wrong is hard, and it’s counterintuitive when one has been surrounded by the pretense of absolute, infallible certainty for their whole lives. But facing this stage of our growth with resolve and honesty is so important. Many of these stories we have told ourselves have led to so much harm done to so many innocent people. So we begin this active stage of our growth by minimizing the harm we do to others moving forward.

When I was in basic training the drill sergeants loved the phrase “Pain is weakness leaving the body” and as much as it grates my nerves to this day, it’s a mantra that has helped in this sort of endeavor. This is a rough time to get through, but we are becoming stronger people for it. By letting go of the familiar, by challenging the things that don’t add up, we are becoming more grounded in what we believe, our beliefs are starting to line up with our true values instead of blindly and unsteadily following the path someone else laid out for us. Be patient with yourself, but be honest in your motives and intentions as you work through addressing these ideas. As you do you may need to make a second list, of people you have harmed because you have believed things that are not. While writing this list, acknowledge the harm to each person in detail. Go as far back as necessary, be as thorough as you can. Decide in each case how to address it, is an apology warranted or would the situation be better healed by a change in behavior moving forward? Commit to it. If you’ve been following along at home, you’ve got your work cut out for you. As you list the ideas and stories you need to challenge, repost this and share some of them if you feel like it. Let’s shine some light on this misinformation. I have a few I wanted to include in this post but it’s already long enough so I’ll share them later.

Blessins Y’all

#Survivor's Guide #Leaving Your Birth Religion #Apostasy #Heresy #Mythology #PTSD #Recovery

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downwithwritersblock · 6 years

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Welcome to part five of our Monthly Guide to Monsters! My dear sweet @quills-and-golden-ink and I have put together some quick and easy guides to some of the world’s most infamous creatures!

The guide will include: basic background, historical information, abilities, how to defeat them, and portrayals in media. My sets will also always come with Prompts!

For the Month of October, we will be posting two a week! I’m so sorry that I am so late for this one. Life has been a bit hectic. But no matter the date it is posted on, we promise it will be 2 a week for the rest of October, and two a month for the rest of the year.

*Warning for graphic or gruesome depictions and retelling of violence*

Without further ado, we present to you all, the Monthly Guide To Monsters #5:

Witches

Definition: One who practices the art of witchcraft. Can be good, evil or neutral.

Definition of Witchcraft: There are many meanings or definitions given to witchcraft throughout the world and through many different cultures. In some beliefs, it’s a practice usually used for healing, in others, it’s a magical ability to do mystical things far beyond normal human capacity. In cultural anthropology, Witchcraft is usually defined as the innate ability to cause harm.

Description: Just like the definition, the description of witches changes across cultures. Many legends depict them as being physically indistinguishable from humans. They are often depicted as females in folklore, but more modern media has broken that line. In some (older)media, Witches were depicted as being rather grotesque humanoids, with large noses, warts and straw like hair. (*Disclaimer Edit*: I didnt add this before, because I found it unnecessary, but apparently it is needed. This old depiction of witches comes form anti-semetic propaganda. This description is extremely racist, but is no longer seen in modern media, so I did not think I had to advice people against doing it.)

Abilities: Depending on where you are looking, the abilities of a witch can change drastically. In some cultures, Witchcraft is purely a practice that requires hard work, education, potions or special ingredients, mystical objects and sacred words/spells/incantations. In other cultures, Witches have innate magical abilities where they need only to think of something in order for it to be done. Other cultures, and most forms of media, like to mix these two ideas. So usually Witches have or use the following:

Spells are a kind of incantation with strong magical power(Older spells are often in a foreign or ancient language rather then English, so it’s not uncommon to see a witch portrayed as speaking multiple languages)

Potions made from magical or mystical ingredients and can be used for a large number of things.

Witches are often shown possessing a large amount of knowledge about other magical creatures.

Levitation and flying

Witches are sometimes said to be able to disguise themselves through transformation magic, though the extent of the transformation depends on the lore. Some are just to look ‘more human’, others can fully transform into animals.

Opening of portals to teleport

Some witches are said to control or communicate with certain aspects of nature, like animals, elements or the weather.

Necromancy is usually more of a specialized practice, but it is said that some witches can raise the dead.

Demonology is a darker idea behind witches, it’s the idea that witches can and often summon demons from hell or trade their souls with demons in exchange for magic.

Healing. This is a magical art usually given to ‘white witches’, in which a witch is able to use their own or the life force of the wounded to heal some injuries or illnesses.

They are usually immune to human illnesses, diseases, and deaths. They have a stronger immune system and usually a prolonged life.

Witches usually have a familiar, a magical helper usually in the form of an animal.Familiars help witches with spells, potions, collecting ingredients, and even help protect their witch. Familiars are usually voluntary, but sometimes they are humans that have been cursed to live as an animal and serve the witch. Familiars are usually seen as cats, owls/birds, spiders, and rats.

Testing, curing and killing witches: As many know, Witches have a very long and dark history when it comes to their treatment. So many people who were more than likely to be innocent were tortured and killed in extremely gruesome ways.

Testing:

The ‘swim’ test. The victim was often tied with a heavy rope and weight tied around their waist and then tossed into a river or lake. It’s said that an innocent person would sink, but a with would float and bob a long around the surface. Almost every person subjected to this trial drowned to death.

The Prayer test. It’s said that witches were incapable of reciting the holy scripture. A witch on trial might have been expected to recite a line or two, but were expected to do it perfectly without any hesitation or mess ups. If someone failed at this test, it’s most likely because they were either illiterate, or too nervous to talk. It's said that some people even managed to do it without problem, only to have their success be waved off a ‘a trick of the devil’ and for them to be executed anyway.

All witches were said to have a unique mark somewhere on their body that could be in any shape, form or color. Examiners rarely didn't find a ‘witches mark’ because birthmarks, moles, scars, tattoos and sores could all be seen as being the mark of a witch.

The scratch and poke test. So, witches marks were said to be incapable of pain and bleeding. If an examiner could not find a witches mark, they would produce this test, using specialized or dull needles to poke around the accused bodies until they found a spot that produced the painless, bloodless results they desired.

Pressed. The accused would be lied down, and a wooden board would be put over them, then heavy stones would be placed over it repeatedly until either they confessed to being a witch or they were crushed to death. Either way, they died.

The perfect Weight test. This one wasn't as common as some, but it still existed. Some accused would be weighed against a stack of bibles. If they weighed more than the bible's, they were a witch. If they weighed less than the bible's, they were killed. They had to weigh the exact same amount of the bibles. It was an impossible test to pass.

There was also many tests involving the accused victims, which were always faked as their victims would lie just to have the accused prosecuted.Witch trials were designed to always work in the favor of the ‘victims’, and the ‘Witch’ was almost always killed.

Killing of Witches: Because yeah, those were just the ways that accused were tested for being a witch. If that test didn't kill them, there were many other ways to do it. The most popular ways to kill a witch were:

Hanging

Burned at the staked

Real Life Witches:

Now witchcraft isn't just an old folktale. It’s considered a very real thing in many different cultures. Witchcraft was a real thing that many people actually did study and practice, many people still do. A more modern, well known descendant of witchcraft is the practice or pagan religion of Wicca

Wicca: A more modern pagan religion that while it draws on witchcraft, and has a good deal in common with it, is entirely separate. Many who practice Wicca do not consider themselves a witch, and vice versa.

Wicca is a belief system, and a way of life that focus on peace, harmony and balance with oneself, humanity, and nature.

Wicca is nothing like the old tales of witchcraft. The most stark difference being that old witchcraft was said to be to harm others, while Wicca not only avoids harming others, but strictly forbids the harming of innocent beings.

Wicca is often rather specialized, and changes little features here and there depending on the individual coven or practitioner.

Studying and becoming a Wiccan is not quite as simple as many believe

To find more about the faith(and other sects of witchcraft) I highly suggest browsing around the web, in books, and through any willing Wiccan/witch consultant. Go with multiple sources, not just one or two in order to get the best and most in depth understand of the practice. To be clear, I myself spent many years studying witchcraft and I myself am wiccan.

Witches in Media: Now over the years there have been a lot, and I mean a lot of media that focuses on witches. I’ve tried to arrange for you all a good range of some of the most popular witches in media.

The Craft(Movie, 1996)

Hocus Pocus(Movie, 1993)

The Harry Potter Series(Books and Movies)

The Blair Witch Project(Movie, 1999)

Practical Magic(Movie,1998)

Halloweentown(1998)

The Crucible(Play by Arthur Miller, Movie; 1996)

Kiki’s Delivery Service(1989)

Bewitched(Movie;2005, TV show 1964-1972)

The Witches of Eastwick(1987)

The Wizard of Oz(Movie:1939)

Wicked(Book1995, Musical 2003)

Charmed(TV show 1998-2006)

Charmed(TV show 2018 reboot airing)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer(TV show, 1990s. Now I included this because although it’s not primarily about Witches, one of the main Charcters: Willow, is one of the most famous witches in modern media)

American Horror Story: Coven (TV show)

The Secret Circle(2011)

Sabrina The Teenage Witch(TV show 1996-2003, and there are rumors of a new,darker retake of sabrina coming soon to netflix)

Prompts:

“What are you gonna do, huh? Curse me again? I’ve spent the last three centuries with you, there’s nothing left for you to threaten me with”

“Okay so, I think you gave me the wrong shopping list,?I don’t think the local grocery store carries dragons scales or fairy tears? They might have the pigs tongue though...”

“You love that cat more then you love me” “This cat has been with me, helping and protecting me for the last four hundred and twenty seven years. Of course I love him more then you.”

“We arent all bad you know. Look at me. You know me. I would never, ever hurt you. My magic isnt evil. It doesn't come from anywhere bad or dark. My magic is a gift. It comes from the earth. My magic can help you. Please just trust me about this.”

“You turn one person into a toad one time by accident over six hundred years ago and nobody ever lets you live it down!”

“I’ve been crushed, hung, stabbed, drowned in freezing rivers, crucified and burned alive. So go ahead, try me. Read all the weak, half-assed incantations you want. Call every priest in the state Torture me all you want. You don’t scare me in the slightest. There’s nothing you can do to break me, I have endured worse for centuries.”

Hope you enjoy, and find it useful :)

and if you like my work and would like to support me, consider buying me a coffee?

https://ko-fi.com/I2I1L0Q2

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asklittlepip · 5 years

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Thanks for the reminder of how fucked everything is. tbh, the last half-decade or so has really opened my eyes to just how shitty most people are. At this point I sorta fantasize about a nuclear war wiping out humanity because by and large, we deserve it. My post-apoc fantasy is being a raider now, finishing what the nukes started: solving earth's problems, one fresh corpse at a time.

I’d argue otherwise.

One thing that has never changed (besides war, except when it does), is that it’s always a few assholes ruining things for everyone else. I mean, think about it. Growing up, wasn’t it always just a handful of other kids, if not just one, who caused a whole classroom or other group to get punished for their misdeeds? Rare was it for everyone, or even a majority, to actually be at fault.

The same goes for laws, including the making of and breaking of them. The richer and more powerful you are, the more things you can get away with. Money and power they wield compared to literally millions more combined. And this extends to other aspects like pollution as well.

Literally all these issues can be traced back to like, the same thousand-ish (or so) individuals who are manipulating everybody else. There isn’t some “deep state” or other hidden, increasingly anti-Semetic conspiracy at play here. These fuckers are in plain view, and are either elected unopposed for decades or just do whatever they want, because screw the rules, they have money!

tl;dr: Most people aren’t terrible, nor is humanity as a whole. Those who are horrible, however, are very good at ruining things for everybody not in their favor; and thus, ordinary folks look the other way (or worse, participate) until it’s too late. There’s plenty of books on this subject, as it happens..

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memequeenjojo · 5 years

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you'd think after all the apologies hexd probably learn but nah he's just gonna keep being racist because he's racist, jan

Yeah, no. I’m gonna stop you there, bud.

I’ve recently started watching him again and (thankfully) skipped all the drama about him dropping the n word and the thing about him “promoting” the anti-semetic channel.

First and foremost: Those claims are false and can get you in trouble if you publicly state that. Felix said over and over again that he does not promote racism. At all.

You may have read articles from the Vice or any media for that matter, but probably didn’t watch any of his videos reacting to what he did and thus only got one side of the story (if you want to catch up I’d recommend his “Twitch Drama”-series and “Rating Youtuber apologies”.)

But let’s begin from the start, do we?

https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/2/17/14613234/pewdiepie-nazi-satire-alt-right

(I’ve picked this article simply to have some examples of how he misbehaved.) Yes, he said bad things, I’m not arguing about that. From August 2016 to the 10th of February of 2017 Felix featured Nazi imagery of himself doing or editing various things. Be it adding audio from Hitler, bowing over a swastika or including Hitler saying “Sieg Heil” (keep in mind I took these examples out of context), many things were wrong.

A particular video posted January 11 (taken down) showed two Indian Freelancers holding up a sign saying “Death to all Jews” which he paid to do (they didn’t know what it said and got off the hook).

For both cases he made he apologized, once with a post and once with a video. To me, this is the point where he realized his wrongdoings and wanted to speak up about them.

The Tumblr post explaining the case with the Indians shows, that this was to prove his point, though he did not expect them to actually go through with this. He says he understands, that such jokes are offensive. But let’s look at the video, shall we?

The video got taken down, I can only imagine because Felix got fed up with the media attacking him for him attacking back. He made another one later on the 24th of February (I recommend watching it!), in which he basically shows, that the Wall Street Journal article, written by three people, has an author who is a plain hypocrite, who publishes anti-semetic posts himself on Twitter (@benfritz). All in all he just talks about how most media is basically out for blood, even going as far as severing the ties between Pewds and Disney or other sponsors without contacting Felix himself first to get answers. Also, just to mention, his style is (obviously) an imitation of Himmler (leading member of the Nazi party) and an idol for multiple neo-nazi websites which he (again, obviously) knows.

Yes, he is the bad guy!

Alright, enough of that old stuff, let’s get back to the more recent things, like the “n word accident” 09/10/2017. While live-streaming Playersunknown’s Battleground game mode “Last Man Standing” he shouted “What a fucking n****r”. Now,that clearly accentuates his racist side, don’t you think? His own statement to this is, that there is no excuse to even say that in the heat of the moment. That’s right, shame on him. While most forgave him because, really, it can happen (but shouldn’t), others instantly jumped on what happened months ago, doubting that he learned anything. The developers of Firewatch, Campo Santo, even took down Felix Let’s Play of it because they didn’t want to be associated with his channel in any way, be it now or in the future.

Now, to make this not as long as I could I want to include the most recent one including him being called a racist:

PewDiePie promotes an anti-semetic channel!

Both media and himself published a statement. All of this started when Pewds wanted to promote smaller channels he liked, one of them called E;R who puts hidden, anti-semetic messages into their anime reviews. Felix himself did not notice them because he is not well versed in the history of The Third Reich, but after he came to understand he instantly deleted E;R from the recommendations. He did not want to promote any of that and distanced himself from that quite quickly.

Now, that was a lot, right? I just want to add a bit of a personal opinion on this.

Felix has learned his lesson, he knows that it is wrong. I, myself, had to read into this whole mess as well just to write an appropriate answer.

In my opinion this whole racism thing should’ve ended with his apology video in February two years ago.

He said the n word? Oh my god, so do million others each day, but he knows that it is wrong AND said so immediatly after. Did the media care? No.

Oh my god, he likes anime reviews! Does one of the journalists or anyone else for that matter tell him from person to person / via E-Mail yadda-yadda, that E;R put such jokes into their videos? No.

Yes, he did do wrong, nobody says otherwise. But you know who doesn’t want to let go, wants to squeeze as much as they can out of him?

The Media, simple as that.

Now, I know for certain who send this ask to me and I remember you telling me that you don’t want a discussion…

But if you can’t do at least some research and listen to both sides, then you are clearly no better than those who wronged Felix.

#pewdiepie #this is all i will say about this

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agameforgoodchristians · 6 years

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“Following God’s commands not being that difficult” (Deuteronomy 30:11-14)

Sometimes it is difficult to know exactly what a biblical writers means: the point of a passage can be rather opaque. At other times, it feels like the biblical writers are trolling us, calling us idiots.

This is one of those times.

Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.

~ Deuteronomy 30:11-14

tl:dr =

But, as always, we think context is important.

New Country, New Rules

The book of Deuteronomy begins explaining the setting, the characters, and a summary of what will follow:

These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan—in the wilderness, on the plain opposite Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Di-zahab. (By the way of Mount Seir it takes eleven days to reach Kadesh-barnea from Horeb.) In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses spoke to the Israelites just as the Lord had commanded him to speak to them. This was after he had defeated King Sihon of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon, and King Og of Bashan, who reigned in Ashtaroth and in Edrei. Beyond the Jordan in the land of Moab, Moses undertook to expound this law as follows…

~ Deuteronomy 1:1-5

Moses is with the people at the tail-end of their journey from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land. Here he reminds them of the law (Torah) previously given to them: a refresher before they move forward and claim the promise.

As will all things biblical, especially in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, there are arguments over when things were composed, by who, and how our current text came to be. Chapter 30 of Deuteronomy is no different. Scholars argue that this section of Deuteronomy comes from a tradition separate from the surrounding verses (vss. 1-10 & 15-20) and has been edited/redacted to fit their context.

A Slight Editorial Problem

[The next few paragraphs are nerdy, but stay with us. This is going somewhere.]

In short, vs 1-10 calls to mind the various blessings and curses previously laid out by God, through Moses, but it specifies that the people will eventually receive the curses. i.e. the people will turn away from God and will receive their just deserts (read: punishments) at the hand of God. However, it also speaks to the people’s eventual return from sin and God’s provision as a result. These verses display themes of repentance, redemption, and restoration.

The problem is that these words are at odds with verses 15-20, which repeat the call for repentance and exhortations to obey God’s command. However, the specific threats of curses given in this section do not neatly mesh with what vs 1-10 says— they seem to be positing a different reality. For example, vs 3-5 says that the punishment is exile from the land, while vs 18-19 prescribe utter annihilation. While either of these passages work well with vs 11-14, they don't all play well together.

An interesting solution to this comes from biblical scholar Richard Elliott Friedman. He proposes that 29:29 naturally flows into our passage, 30:11-14, and the intervening verses could be simply be cut out. When applied, it's easy to see his point:

The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever, to observe all the words of this law. Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.

~ Deuteronomy 29:29 and 30:11-14

Okay, so why should you care about any of that? Why is that speculation important?

Friedman's reading draws the eye to the clear parallel established in the text: there are things hidden and known only to the God, but there are also things that are readily reveled to humanity.

A New Story: Easy Access to the Almighty

The commandments given by God through Moses fall into the second category: the law (Torah) is freely given to us so that we may live as God intended, and without the hassle of a fight to obtain it. Thus the use of rhetorical questions-- "Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” & “Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” -- is significant for two reasons.

First, it highlights the ease of revelation of God's commands. Second, there is a comparison being made between the way YHWH acts, and the way of the deities in all the surrounding nations: all those people mentioned at the beginning of Deuteronomy and throughout the Exodus journey.

Moses knows, they all know, that the land that they are in, and the land to which they are going, has stories different from their own. Stories of heroes who must travel great distances on perilous adventures. Those heroes cross land and sea, ascend to the heavens, plunge into the underworld, fight nature, monsters, and gods, often to obtain a prize, tangible or abstract. Among these tales are journeys to gain special, hidden knowledge from the gods; Great odds and perils must be overcome to obtain words from the divine. The Egyptians, Ugarities, Sumerians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Canaanites of various stripes across the Levant, all have mythos of this sort.

But the Hebrew story is different.

God went to humanity with his knowledge instead of expecting humanity to struggle obtaining it

Despite what some may argue, God was very generous and very clear with knowledge in Eden: they only got in trouble when they believed that something was hidden from them: that they had to search for something other, better. God brought them what they needed, they tried to take more.

After-which God went to the First Family and then to Cain with words of warning. God went to Abraham with promises and knowledge. God went to Moses in a burning bush and sent he and Aaron to the people. Throughout the rest of the Scripture he pattern continues: God keeps sending prophets and priests, judges and kings (a couple of whom didn't suck). God lives among the people in the Ark, the tabernacle, the temple. In Jesus. In the Kingdom of God. The pattern is so clear we won't keep belaboring it. This is at the root of Paul's words in front of the Areopagus in Athens. That the God who made the world and everything in it, who gave all things things life and breath, who made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, figured out our times and locations, specifically so we can have access to a God who is so close by, we could find Him by simply reaching out our hand like a man groping in the dark (Acts 17:16-28). Here Paul is also responding (in part) to gnostic claims that divine knowledge (gnosis) is held in reserve for only special people. This is a thought that the writers of John's gospel and epistles, as well as other New Testament writings were also firmly against. God's revelatin is open to all.

Returning to the passage at hand, we see the reason both verses end with the same rhetorical question: “get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” The answer is, "no one." The God of the Bible, unlike other gods, gives divine law freely to all. It is given, not achieved through heroic deeds or specialized positions.

You're on Your Own: Suck Less

The diction and direction of Chapter 30 of Deuteronomy revolves around two words: shema שְׁמָע ("hear"/"obey") and shuv שׂוּם ("turn"/"repent"). These words are vital to biblical concepts of holiness, and appear all over the chapter (shema vs. 2, 8, 10, 12, 13, 17, & 20 / shuv vs. 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, & 10). The people must hear and obey God. They must turn themselves toward God and away from their own desires.

This passage comes near the close of the Torah, and the end of the Moses’ life. It is presented as preceding Moses’ final words to his people. Soon they must live with these guidelines without him. They must walk before the Lord their God by themselves. Moses will not ascend any mountains to bring them the word, he will not cross the Red/Reed Sea with them as God’s emissary. Moses will no longer be the voice to remind them to shema and shuv. They are on their own. But, thankfully, it's not that hard.

But this is not only an Hebrew Bible/Old Testament concept "good chrisitians" can ignore because the law has passed away, or been fulfilled, or some other supersessionist, steeping in anti-semetic, bullshit sentiment to get them out of their moral obligations as human beings. The New Testament, doubles down on this idea. Think about it: What is the definition of sin in the New Testament? There are two of them. Really simple.

1. "All wrongdoing is sin" (1 John 5:17)

You know that thing is wrong? Yes? That's a sin.

2 "Anyone who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin" (James 4:17)

You know that thing is right, but you're not doing it? Yes? That's a sin.

The Bible gets us coming and going.

Perhaps holiness is the hardest thing there is. Not because we don't know what to do, what not to do. Not because we need someone to patiently explain to us right and wrong. Not because we need someone to bring us a set of divine revelations to act like decent human beings. But because we simply make excuses.

Perhaps that's the point.

Perhaps striving to suck less in all our endeavors-- by not doing the wrong thing, and doing the right thing-- is exactly what we and this world needs.

Perhaps when we fail, we should get up and make better choices the next time.

But what do we know: we made this game and you probably think we're going to Hell.

#Deuteronomy 30:11-14 #Law #d #Holiness #You had one job #Divine Revelation #Moses #holiness #Reading comprehension

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judyjetsonhookah · 7 years

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If your comedy has to punch down to get laughs and put people who are in a minority position -- or victims of a crime -- in a place where it makes them feel shitty about themselves, it’s not good comedy and you need to find another gig ASAP.

Wanda Sykes has a ‘rape joke’ about how a woman’s worth is attached to her vagina that makes a joke of rape culture and how women are treated, but does not make fun of victims of rape or make a joke out of them. You can “joke” about the homeless plight while making fun of the rich who lead to these circumstances. You can make sexist “jokes” while making fun of a patriarchal society. People in the LGBT group can make jokes about themselves/people sharing their sexuality/gender identfication, but someone who’s cisgender and gay shouldn’t mock a transgender person for the sake of ‘humor’. POC can make fun of their own cultures, but it’s gross when other POC/white people make fun of it. Making fun of a well-known author’s work is vastly different than making fun of a teenage fanfic writer. A lot of ‘dark’ things can be funny depending on who says it and the framework of the joke, who it’s directed towards

If your brand of comedy punches down at other marganlized people and/or groups, you are lazy, uncreative, and pathetic. There’s a comment by Finley Peter Dunne that says to “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”. You’re trying to prove yourself to be an edgelord, raging against the machine, you don’t play by society’s rules or whatever when you “punch down” and make jokes out of marginalized groups. But the afflicted have enough crap to deal with without you adding to it and it’s easier to make fun of someone on the outside with less than it is to make fun of someone on the inside and has more. Which is why it is lazy and uninspired humor and taking cheap shots because you’re “being funny”, but lack the talent to make actual commentary.

And nobody who makes those kinds of jokes should expect respect from people who are uncomfortable with it ( @markiplier, who I doubt would be making videos saying we should respect someone who said “Death to Asians” as a “joke”) because respect is earned and not given. You can be polite to someone by default, but if they show their ass, there’s no reason in the world to force yourself to be kind and respect them if you don’t want to do that and a person shouldn’t be shamed for not wanting to respect someone who hurt or offended them.

And then people go and say PewDiePie’s “joke” was dark humor!!! It was satire!!! People always joke about these things, it’s those darn SJWs that ruin things and get offended!!!! If something like “Death to (insert group here, but we’re specifically referring to Jewish people here”) is funny to you, maybe, maybe you have an issue with that group. And if you’re defending the right to say that, you’re part of the problem as well.

I’m really bothered by @markiplier saying we should respect PewDePie’s right to say what he wants and then Mark played ~put upon victim~ over people not being okay with this, because Mark has shown himself to be a charitable person with a big heart, so it’s disappointing he wouldn’t listen to people and shut them down.

I’m disappointed in general because it’s 2017 and Anti-Semetism is on the rise with Nazis out in full force and we have to talk about this shit like it’s brand new.

#aka attoseconds #i needed to get this out #bye

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nothingman · 7 years

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Recently, Profound Lore Records announced a new 12-inch EP from Disma, an American death metal band that’s existed for well over a decade. The band’s frontman Craig Pillard is considered a pioneer of the genre due to his work in Incantation, one of the early innovators in New York City’s death metal scene. He is also considered a fucking Nazi.

Sturmführer’s Ich Kämpfe album cover

Outside of Pillard’s main gig, he has a solo project called Sturmführer, a name derived from the paramilitary rank within the Nazi army that best translates to “assault leader.” Under the Sturmführer name, Pillard has released records that feature swastikas in the artwork and are put out on labels like Satanic Skinhead Propaganda—an imprint that, before closing in 2013, handled records by other metal bands that traffic in overt racism. But by becoming part of the Profound Lore fold, Pillard is no longer just on the cultural fringes. And his involvement there says something striking about modern metal’s ongoing Nazi problem.

Profound Lore, along with labels like Southern Lord, specializes in some of the most progressive, interesting metal being made today. Glance over its discography and you’ll find releases that rarely adhere to one sound but often push boundaries—be it Full Of Hell’s abrasive noise-metal, Krallice’s experimental black metal, or even Dälek’s off-kilter hip-hop. Come March, you’ll also find the new album from Pallbearer, a Georgia metal band with potential to be a huge, Mastodon-style crossover act. If so, it could similarly bring more mainstream exposure to Profound Lore, which only makes the label’s seeming lack of an ethical line all the more troubling.

If Disma were an isolated incident, it’d be easy to chalk up its signing as an outlier. But Profound Lore has, time and again, supported artists lacking any moral compass. After Cobalt kicked out its vocalist, Phil McSorley, for making homophobic and sexist statements on the Facebook page of his other band Recluse, it then welcomed Lord Mantis’ Charlie Fell into the band. Unfortunately, Lord Mantis had released the infamous Death Mask, an album featuring controversial cover art (drawn by the similarly provocative Jef Whitehead) that was labeled as transphobic. When confronted about it in interviews, Fell shrugged it off by saying he sees all people as “laughing, eating, smoking, dick sucking, cum loving, piss-in-the-mouth monkeys.” It seemed Cobalt had merely swapped one ill for another.

Deathkey’s Hammer Of Aryan Terror album cover

But metal’s ongoing problem with bigotry extends well beyond Profound Lore and its roster. Black metal pioneers Mayhem spent this past winter touring with Inquisition, a critical darling who’s also been lumped in with the white power movement. Most of those accusations stem from frontman Jason “Dagon” Weirbach, whose side project, 88MM, boasts a name that alludes to the preferred artillery of Germans in World War II—and even more symbolically, evokes the “88” code employed by neo-Nazis, as a stand-in for “Heil Hitler” (“H” being the eighth letter of the alphabet). 88MM also once released a song titled “14 Showerheads, 1 Gas Tight Door” on the Satanic Skinhead compilation Declaration Of Anti-Semetic Terror, and it once released a split with Satanic Skinhead’s founder, “Antichrist Kramer,” who has a well-documented history of association with openly racist and anti-Semitic bands preaching fascism and ethnic cleansing. Put it all together, and you’d make a reasonable case that—at the very least—Weirbach has a real blind spot when it comes to cultural sensitivity. You might also accuse Weirbach of being a fucking Nazi himself.

Plenty of people did just that in 2014, after Decibel ran an interview with Daniel Gallant, a one-time Canadian skinhead who abandoned the movement and has since worked to expose the tactics used by white power groups. Gallant says that, while driving a tour bus for Inquisition, Weirbach and drummer Thomas “Incubus” Stevens both gushed over his swastika tattoo (which he’s since had removed), with Gallant claiming Stevens even talked about his own beliefs in white supremacy. In a separate interview with Decibel, Weirbach denied he had any Nazi associations—“I’m not a Nazi,” he said flatly—though he had a slightly more muddled response when asked how he would describe his reaction to seeing Gallant’s tattoo, as well as to what it represented:

I can honestly tell you that I never flat-out said I thought it was a horrible thing, or that I was against it, but never did I say I was with it and that I believed in it. What I have always told people is I understand it. I understand that when you look at history and what was happening at the time, whenever you put yourself in everybody else’s shoes—and if you’re smart enough, and you have... maybe common sense is not the word, but you have an understanding of why things happen in history and in humanity the way they do, it doesn’t matter how ugly it is to you or how great. It’s simple physics. It’s nature. Things happen. Earthquakes happen. You know? Bad, good—things happen.

Echoing this “hey, shit and Holocausts happen” attitude, Weirbach similarly shrugged off whether he might be attracting Nazi fans with his music (“[If] they like the music we’re doing, then they like it”), as well as any questions about Kramer:

If I knew he was a white supremacist, truly, would I work with him? Well, there’s a fine line, because even though Inquisition is not a white supremacist band, it gets into the area of, well, here’s a friend who may have evolved into something that is not my business, but now is working for the band. So, for the band, of course, I would not have worked with him. We would not have… it would have been very difficult. It would have affected maybe our friendship or something, because people don’t like being judged, even though ironically we’re talking about everybody judging each other.

Amid all this prevaricating, Weirbach said he also believed Kramer couldn’t be a white supremacist because he had a black friend, defended his signing with the German label No Colours because “it was the only reputable label in the underground willing to sign us,” and claimed that his sampling of Hitler speeches in his music was “neutral,” seeing as, come on, he’d also sampled the line “Hitler is dead.” The No Colours affiliation is notable given that it’s often regarded as a National Socialist black metal label (NSBM, for short), having released records by bands like Absurd, the band responsible for the murder of Sandro Beyer, later putting Beyer’s grave on an album cover and seeing member Hendrik Möbus describe Beyer as a “leftist faggot.” All told, despite his saying “I’m not a Nazi,” the interview did little to clear up the lingering question of whether Weirbach and Inquisition are, in fact, Nazis, or whether they merely flirt with Nazism for shock value like so many other assholes on the internet right now (and, in some cases, in the White House). Because you can say you’re not a Nazi all you like, but repeated actions to the contrary are far more indicative of the truth.

Weirbach’s tourmates in Mayhem have a similar history of harboring some disgusting views, though these have long been given a pass because of the band’s legendary status—and also because it is riddled with clearly insane people. Still, its almost cartoonish extremity doesn’t excuse stuff like drummer Jan Axel Blomberg, better known as Hellhammer, saying this in black metal history book Lords Of Chaos: “I’ll put it this way, we don’t like black people here. Black metal is for white people.” Nor does it give him a pass on his championing Emperor drummer, Bård Guldvik Eithun (known as “Faust”), in the documentary Until The Light Takes Us for killing “a fucking faggot.” Then there’s Varg Vikernes, the poster boy for racist metalheads, who played in Mayhem before he murdered its guitarist Euronymous, and a man who has openly propagated Nazi ideology—and has even been convicted of inciting racial hatred against Jews and Muslims.

Marduk’s Frontschwein album cover

While Vikernes is an extreme example, many of these black metal musicians—as well as their fans—tend to adopt Weirbach’s attitude that adopting Nazi imagery is purely an aesthetic choice, one that comes with the sort of implicit air quote that’s become all the more recognizable beyond the music scene. As Stereogum’s Doug Moore pointed out in a recent column, many of these attitudes read like the defenses of 4chan “edgelords,” whose own spreading of gas chamber and “greedy Jew” GIFs are just their way of being provocative—“shit-posting” the world, hoping to trigger a few normies. For some black metal fans, the offensiveness is just as easily dismissed as part of the package, and if you’re triggered by it, that just means it worked. Moore notes that a recent San Francisco show shut down by protests over Swedish black metal band Marduk—a group that’s demonstrated a two-decades-long fascination with Nazism—was just a blip in an otherwise-unimpeded tour in front of fans who, if they’re not embracing that, tend to rationalize it away. For the most part, those within the black metal community seem to shrug that it’s all just inherent to the art.

Granted, it’s already easy to regard black metal as being a purely fringe interest, appealing to just a select few anyway. It’s intense, jarring music that can also be totally goofy, and it doesn’t garner a quarter of the press that bands like Metallica and Mastodon pull. Still, black metal’s Nazi problems just represent the most radical, unabashed expression of a bigotry that bubbles under even crossover acts within the broader genre. Deafheaven guitarist Kerry McCoy used homophobic slurs on Twitter before his band enjoyed crossover success (which was all swept under the rug once the group became favorites of the press). Even Slayer’s Tom Araya recently went after “snowflakes” while offering up some gay slurs (the brief controversy over which hasn’t seemed to affect its booking a tour alongside the politically charged Lamb Of God).

And when metal musicians do get punished for saying and doing deplorable shit, it’s usually comparably light—and quickly forgotten. Pantera’s Phil Anselmo having a festival appearance by his band Down canceled after he yelled “White power!” and threw up a Nazi salute on stage led to a self-flagellating apology video and a Rolling Stone interview where he tried to refute decades worth of racism accusations, but ultimately did little to damage his current career. Disma was only kicked off the Maryland Deathfest and Chaos In Tejas line-ups after other bands threatened to drop out; meanwhile, it’s promised more live dates this year to back up its Profound Lore release. As for Inquisition, it seems posing next to a swastika flag and working with known white supremacists is fine so long as you give an interview where you say you’re just interested in, like, exploring all the world’s political philosophies.

But at a time when fascism and Nazism aren’t just things kids play with for shock value—when they are, hard as it is to believe, actual growing concerns here in America and abroad—metal bands should no longer get a pass on this stuff. Yes, Motorhead’s Lemmy collected Nazi memorabilia and even David Bowie flirted with fascist imagery. Yet neither of them were releasing songs called “Crush The Jewish Prophet,” nor were they commissioning album artwork from known white supremacists. There’s an important difference between extremism for art’s sake and art that actually promotes extremism. Metal’s tight-knit community would only be strengthened by kicking out those members who are hurting what has become such an increasingly progressive form of music with such ugly and regressive views. And wouldn’t it be nice if they could pick up a record about death, violence, and apocalyptic doom without also worrying they’re supporting a bunch of racists?

via A.V. Club

#IFTTT #Feedly #Nothingman uses feedly

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newagesispage · 6 years

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MARCH 2018

PAGE RIB

*****The Stones win best trad blues album at the Grammy’s : Blue and Lonesome. Keith says, “It’s about fucking time.”**The Stones are doing 11 more dates on the No Filter European tour. ** Keith Richards made news with his comments in the WSJ. “It’s time to snip. You can’t be a Father at that age. Those poor kids.” He said about Mick Jagger. He could say the same about Ron Wood. He has since apologized.

*****UK parliament is debating the legalization of weed.

***** West Virginia teachers marched across the state and finally got a raise.

*****Kevin Smith, 47, had a heart attack on Feb. 26. Colin Quinn also had a heart attack on Valentines day. Get well soon.

*****Black Panther has 2 record setting weekends.

***** Three billboards were hijacked by street artist Sabo. They say: And the Oscar for biggest pedophile goes to…/ We all knew and still no arrests / name names on stage or shut the hell up. The artist previously altered a movie sign to make it seem like Al Franken was grabbing Zendaya.

***** The anti- defemation league reports that anit-semetic incidents are up in the US by 57%.

*****It looks like ABC is giving Alec Baldwin a talk show.

***** Celebs are jumping on board to stand with the kids in the March for our lives. Fallon and Goldberg will be there.

*****Michelle Obama’s memoir, BECOMING, will be here in November.

*****Studies show that so many animals found or turned in to find new homes are not given the 7 days that most people think. So many animals are simply euthanized immediately. Adopt if U can!

***** Daryl Hannah’s first full length directorial effort, Paradox is coming in March. The western stars Neil Young, , Willie, Micah and Lucas Nelson.

***** LA to Vegas on Fox is really so fun!!

***** Brad Pitt is joining the Tarantino/ DiCaprio movie that is in the works.

*****It is surprising that the department store Bergner’s has lasted as long as it has. It is the end of an era though that the Sheridan Village branch in Peoria, Il. will close its doors. Bergner’s was founded in Peoria 130 years ago. The Sheridan Village branch opened more than 60 years ago. The parent company Bonton has had financial issues and is closing 7 stores.

*****Lebron James was speaking out as is his right and Laura Ingram told him on the air to “shut up and dribble.” The NBA star replied, “Laura who?” She wants him to go on her show. Why would he want to help her ratings? Why does Fox news believe in free speech for themselves but nobody else?

***** Jake Shears ,formerly of the Fab Scissor Sisters has gone solo and has also released a book, Boys keep swinging. Woo Hoo!! He is also playing Charlie Prince in Kinky Boots.

*****Indonesia is looking at outlawing sex before marriage.

*****Recent articles tell us that George Washington’s teeth were pulled from the heads of slaves.

*****Russia was behind the hacking in Korea during the Olympics.

*****The US was 4th at the Olympics with 23 gold medals.

***** The latest accused: Ryan Seacrest. ABC and E! are standing by him. Bellamy Young, for one wonders why he does not step down from his Oscar red carpet hosting duties. Seacrest has not mentioned any of this on his Live with Kelly show. I think the red carpet and Live would be better without him.

*****Do people get just how hard it is for sexual abuse victims to come forward? Do we see the pattern of victims who are not believed or shut up by powerful agendas already in place? C’mon Congress, priests, teachers, police and everyone please speak up. The Nassar Olympic doctor had an unbelievable 265 victims. Open your hearts and your ears and show compassion. **Scary Clown tweets that lives are being destroyed and what happened to due process? WTF? You can’t have it both ways. What about the women who claimed you assaulted them? What about Al Franken and how he was pushed out? ** And Sara H. Sanders and Kelly Ann Conway should be ashamed of themselves and the way they support these abusers. What about the grace of Sorenson and Porters alleged victims? These women had to be interviewed, disrupting their lives when these men wanted these WH positions. They told their truth but added that the men were good at their jobs. They tried to do right by men who they say abused them. It is unbelievable that our President discards them and sticks up for his buddies. As a woman we are used to this sort of behavior but it does seem time for this to end. ** Now even Trump’s celebrity spokespersons are having sex issues like Scott Baio. Why are these good old boys just allowed to go their merry way? **Brendon Fraser claims the former President of the Hollywood foreign press, Philip Berk, groped him in 2003. The’ me too’ movement gave him confidence to come forward.

*****The DOJ is cracking down on phone scammers who target the elderly. Now that is a worthy cause. I hope they get somewhere with this because this is a huge problem.

***** Olya Borisova and Sasha Sofeev of Pussy Riot have disappeared in Crimea.

*****Michelle Wolf will host the White House correspondent’s dinner.

***** Thanks for this reminder Mia : Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. ….. Shakespeare

*****James Comey tweeted: American history shows that in the long run, weasels and liars never hold the field, so long as good people stand up. Not a lot of schools or streets named for Joe McCarthy.

*****Have Senators from Michigan and Wisconsin raised a red flag about abuse with voting machines? As Streisand reminds us, Gore ‘lost’ by 537 votes . Paper ballots please!!!

*****Atlanta will be back on March 1.. Woo Hoo!!** Donald Glover got a standing ovation on Colbert. He so absolutely deserves it!! He also bought a lot of girl scout cookies.

***** Ellen DeGeneres surprised Jimmy Kimmel by dedicating a children’s hospital room to his son.

*****Poland has passed a bill that will give citizens up to 3 years in prison for accusing the Polish state or people of involvement in the Holocaust.

*****Netflix will bring us Amber Tamblyn in Paint it Black.**Ryan Murphy is moving to Netflix . FX and Fox will still bring us AHS, Feud, American Crime story and the new Pose about the transgender community in the 80’s. Word is that Murphy was unsure about the Disney/20th Century Fox/ Comcast talks. ** Netflix cancelled Disjointed.

***** What I love about politics is the balance of power and how people who are completely different can use this beautiful government as it was set up by fairly coming to a compromise. It is not the first time but it has gone off the rails. This President pays no attention to rules. I am not always a big lover of rules but damn if we don’t need them for the running of this country. I mean he really, truly does not seem to give a fuck about this great country. ** VOTE!! The most important thing we can do is vote! Funny or Die is giving a big push to sign up voters by going to the most important races and educating citizens.** Again, Paper Ballots please.. everyone should insist on paper ballots!

*****Mandy Patinkin got his star on the Hollywood walk of fame.

*****Zach Braff is in a new series called Alex Inc.

*****Aniston and Theroux have split.

*****Wes Anderson is back with Isle of Dogs.

*****Amy Schumer married chef Chris Fischer.

*****Another shooting and we must vote these fuckers out. Go Go Sen. Chris Murphy from Connecticut who called himself and his colleagues out. Some NRA lovin’ are trying not to trot out the same old tired line but with a twist, ”I won’t say it’s not time to talk about it but” and then talks on about the emotion involved and the gun issue should be set aside. Some blame video games. Others talk of metal detectors and arming teachers. Apparently our kids should walk into fortresses. Teachers don’t have enough worries with teaching our children and figuring out how they can afford supplies. Now they want educators to have firearm training. This is better than a little gun regulation? The Parkland shooting took place about 40 miles from Mar A Lago. The shooter bought an AR 15 in the last year after Trump signed a bill revoking an Obama era gun check for people with mental illness. The FBI did not look long and hard enough at complaints about the shooter. They get about a thousand tips a day. Police were called to his home at least 20 times. Scott Peterson, a deputy with a gun who was there to help prevent this did nothing. There is a lot of blame to go around.** This isn’t the first time that authority has dropped the ball. What is with all the incompetence? Patty Hearst’s name was on a list of people the SLA wanted to kidnap and nobody told her. Priests are simply moved around after they are found to be child molesters. Police who have been given warnings about racism and excessive force are left on the job. Domestic violence gets a slap on the wrist until they kill the family. Enough!!!**Big Kudos to the savvy kids who know what the fuck is going on. The young folk are not brainwashed, they want change. They haven’t had as many years to get as angry as we are, but they are just scared.** The shooter has pictures of himself online with a MAGA hat on. Gee.. did not see that one coming.** One cannot help but think of the young people getting killed in Vietnam and the mistreatment of so many that caused students to mobilize against the war and organize for civil rights. I think the women’s march, Black lives matter, me too , impeachment rally’s and march for science have set good examples for these kids. They were paying attention but we did not do enough, we must stand with them.

*****March 24, 2018: The March for our lives! These savvy kids are taking action. They blitzed the Sunday morning circuit on the 18th with their message. They have had it with the same old shit. They want to march and with Generation Z, minorities, women and millennials we could change this country. They want comprehensive gun control and are using the words of politicians past to get their point across. ‘You are with us or against us ‘and ‘they have blood on their hands’ are just some of the lines they are using. These students do not care about republican or democrat, they care about results. Neither party has been doing them any favors lately. They plan to give out badges of shame to those who accept money from the NRA. Go Go GO!!** Another idea floated has been to stop sending kids to school until reasonable laws are put in place.** And I always wondered about this ratings system they have. These politicians are proud to have an A+ rating? I mean who the fuck are they?

*****The NRA gave the kids a couple of days and then they came out swinging. The NRA used a Parks and Rec GIF of Leslie Knope as they thanked Dana Loesch for being the voice of the NRA at the CNN town hall. Creator Mike Shur responded, “I would prefer you not use a GIF from the show I worked on to promote your pro slaughter agenda.” He added, Amy Poehler isn’t on twitter but she texted me a message, ‘Can you tweet the NRA for me and tell them I said fuck off.’** Many companies have severed ties with the NRA.** Scary Clown won’t talk gun legislation. ** Hey Hey NRA: You can’t be the PTA!** Over a dozen different victims of the Florida shooting have received death threats. WTF?** An armed social studies teacher in Georgia fired off a shot after not allowing students into his classroom. He later surrendered.

***** Dick’s sporting goods are pulling assault weapons from their stores permanently. The owner says the law isn’t doing enough so he is taking the steps. Wal mart stopped selling them 3 years ago. Both have now decided to raise the age in the stores to 21. Wal Mart is taking out toys that resemble assault rifles.** On the last day of February Trump said: “Take the firearms first and then go to court- take the guns first, go through due process second.” Hmm!? So now Trump is calling out the NRA a bit. Lawmakers make it so obvious that they just did not want Obama to get any credit for helping with this problem. They claim the slippery slope but they knew he and other dems did not want to take anybody’s guns away. We all want common sense and either they never listen to other view points or they just want all the credit. Take a look at yourselves. Will Trumps hard core base like this new no due process take and how long will that point of view last? It does seem that this time businesses and states are just going ahead with their own agenda.

*****The new face on Face the Nation is moderator Margaret Brennan.** Thanks for your spotlight on the mass homicide in Syria in your first broadcast as host.

*****The Polk award winners are Jodi Kantor, Megaze and Ronan Farrow.

*****While the world was talking about the shooting and the bravery of the children for speaking up and the new revelations of Russia, Fox news spends the day in remembering of Billy Graham. RIP

*****Wendy Williams is taking time off due to a diagnosis of Graves disease.

*****A recent billboard: When will they love their kids more than their guns?

*****This whole ‘memo’ bullshit is bogus yet so dangerous. After the Dem memo, Trump tweeted a denial of phone calls.

*****Let us thank the conservatives for first funding this Russian dossier. ** Now we are hearing about a Playboy playmate that Scary Clown allegedly had a 9 month affair with. ** And hey.. Didn’t the signature red tie thing belong to Dangerfield? Stop it Trump!!

*****The Paramount network has brought us the great mini series: WACO with Michael Shannon and Rory Culkin. The biggest revelation: J. Edgar Hoover was on the Mickey Mouse Club.

*****Jedediah Bila married Jeremy Scher.

*****The 4 hour HBO doc, The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling will grace us on March 26.

*****The 5th season of Arrested Development is completed for Netflix. David Cross said in an interview that the cast stands behind Jeffrey Tambor after his firing from Amazon. Arrested will be out later in the year.

****Missouri Governor Eric Greitens was indicted for felony invasion of privacy.

*****Heather Locklear was arrested for domestic violence and battery on a police officer on Feb. 25.

*****Trevor Noah’s ‘ Born A Crime will be adapted to film and will star Lupita Nyong’o.

*****The BAFTA’s were handed out. Much love was given to Three billboards outside Ebbing, Mo. For film and also to Frances McDormand , Martin McDonagh for original screenplay and Sam Rockwell. Adapted screenplay went to James Ivory, it was so good to see him honored again. Gary Oldman and Guillermo del Toro also won.

*****Snoop Dogg has a new gospel album.

*****The talk show of Harry Connick Jr. is winding down.

*****Check out This is not happening with Roy Wood Jr. I am in when he is involved. It is a sort of tell all with stand ups. The amount of liquor bottles behind them in the bar is straight out of Bob and Ringo’s (refer to Grandview USA).

*****Hulu is giving us Castle Rock with …hell yea.. Sissy Spacek.

***** Somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars on the hopeful face of a young child.. Lyndon Johnson

*****After the Rob Porter mess Priebus and other flunkies were on the Sunday shows. The kiss ass idiots said a lot of’ I don’t knows’ and ‘from my point of views’. Why were they even on when they have no info? We heard a lot of, ‘I’d never heard of that’ and ‘I didn’t know who he was.’ These selfish, stupid men tripping over their words who seem so afraid of Trump. White men at the top of the food chain and they are not happy with that. They are bitter and mean. Men put in prominent positions who know nothing.. well done WH. I ask again, what does he have on these people?** But why was Porter and at least a hundred others still working with sensitive material without clearance? ** David Axelrod made a good point saying, “Everyone thought John Kelly would rub off on Trump but Trump has rubbed off on Kelly.” Or perhaps he mused, that we are finding out who these people really are. ** It seems they all think they are so smart and they are the first to ever be in the WH. There are others who know how this all works and it is good they call them on it, even though it isn’t nearly often enough.** Chris Wray contradicts the WH on the timeline of the Rob Porter investigation. The FBI tells us that their work was completed in July and new info was sent in January which closed things down. The President can clear anyone he wants so he can disregard that info. The WH keeps telling us this is all normal but other administrations disagree. The Obama team did top assistance clearance 6 months in advance. ** Jared Kushner was stripped of his high level security clearance. About 3 dozen others are in jeopardy as well.

*****Hope Hicks is out!** Josh Raffel is out!

*****Melania’s parents have just become US citizens, part of the migration plan that Trump wants to kill.** Melania made a nice speech in the East room of the WH on the 26th. Why is there nothing in the news feed about that? OK it is funny that she wants to stop the negative social media with what we see from the hubby on a daily basis. But she did address the opiod crisis and encouraged the kids from the school shooting to speak up. Well done!

*****Jessica Ford has made yet another attempt to gain access to the White House. She was charged with possession of a gun which I guess they don’t like? She sure wants to make herself known in Washington.

*****The children who were rescued from the notoriously evil parents recently were each given a guitar from Fender.

*****A judge has sided with John Oliver and HBO after they were sued by Robert Murray. Murray, a coal exec was told by the West Virginia state court that the humorous jabs were satire and the other statements were based on judicial opinion and government reports.

*****Red Fawn Farris took a plea deal from charges related to Standing Rock. She pled guilty to civil disorder and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Sentencing will sometime after April.

*****I wonder if any journalists are trying to get interviews with the first lady? I would like to hear what she has to say.

***** Steve Martin and Martin Short: An evening you will forget for the rest of your life is coming to Netflix. Their tour continues and this night was taped in South Carolina.

***** The WH revolving door continues: Rob Porter out.. Rachel Brand out.. David Sorenson out..

***** Word is spreading that law enforcement is identifying some citizens as ‘black identity extremists’ which gives police license to monitor protestors. Just when the public calls out harsh treatment, they find another way in.

*****Can we all promise to never use the phrase ‘nothing burger’ ever again?

*****Putin is reportedly so happy with all the mess he has caused in this country. With no sanctions being imposed, Turkey and China are now getting in the ‘fuck with the US elections’ game.** 13 Russians have been indicted and no Americans , so far, were involved. The operatives were supposed to do anything they could to hurt Hillary. It shows you how scared Russia was of her. So far, it looks like Trump campaigners helped unwittingly. ** Russia is now putting pro gun messages out there to add chaos to the Florida shooting.** Dozens of Russians were at the National prayer breakfast. Really? We need a unified Russian strategy. The elections are closer every day. Trump just keeps acting like a cult leader and making it all about him. Children are dead and he just keeps tweeting his ‘innocence’ in the Russian investigation. ** The History channel is taking on Putin with a new special, America’s biggest threat: Vladimir Putin**Alex Van Der Zwann, a lawyer who was part of a Ukranian ministry has been indicted for false statements to the FBI.**Top Trump aide Rick Gates has pled guilty to secret foreign lobbying, lying to the FBI and helping Manafort cheat on his taxes. It seems he committed another crime as he was making the deal!** Admiral Mike Rogers says they are not doing enough to stop the sustained aggression of Russia and he does not know why. Scary Clown says he is weighing several options.

*****No wonder so many put up with the way the WH tries to ‘handle’ us. Fox , the NRA and much of the conservative movement has been grooming us for generations. They aren’t all as honorable as John McCain. Many churches spoon feed their congregations what they want them to believe, how they want them to vote. The term’ fake news’ fits right in with all this. Stand up and investigate on your own, don’t just BELIEVE anyone!

*****Just when I start to get used to Meghan McCain, she is on camera rolling her eyes at the raw emotion of the kids and parents in the town hall meeting. ** The rumor is that Joy and Meghan fight a lot behind the scenes. I am not there but I think they probably get it out onstage. What is it about some conservatives that they seem to have such a problem with peace, love and compromise?

***** A complaint from whistleblower Helen Foster says that Cindy Carson, Ben’s wife pressured officials for big money to redecorate. $31,000 of taxpayer money was spent on a dining room set for Ben’s office. Federal law requires congressional approval to furnish or redecorate if costs exceed 5 thousand bucks. When Foster refused to comply she was demoted and transferred. The Department of housing and urban development has cut money for the homeless, the elderly and the poor.

*****Thank goodness for the Carl Reiners and the Ian Stewarts of the world who brought us wonderful art. They put their egos in check and approached things different than they had originally intended. The world needs more of this.

*****Wal Mart is really such a terrible place. I am much happier since I no longer give them money. I should have listened to my friends and done it a long time ago. Sometimes it has to hit me right in the face for me to see it.

***** One has to wonder if Rosenstein et al like it when Trumps doings shines a spotlight on them.

*****Andy Richter came thru his knee surgery ok.

*****So happy for The Philadelphia Eagles but what the fuck is the matter with those fans? With celebrations like that and all the injuries, it might be good to see the end of football that has been predicted.** It did seem a strange choice to me to have Justin Timberlake sing. Why not some diversity? Some other kinds of music genres? I mean.. boring!!

*****The Dow had its biggest 1 day drop ever. People have started to worry about inflation.

*****Jim Carrey is urging others to do dump Facebook stock and delete accounts. He called the Trump presidency a botched Russian black op.

*****Check out the committee to investigate Russia online. Rob Reiner is on the advisory board talking to John Brennan and James Clapper.

***** Bastille day? Really? Our dictator wants a North Korean military style parade? Is he fucking kidding? How many homeless vets could be helped with the millions it would take to give him this parade?

*****A new HBO doc, Elvis Presley: The Searcher is coming. Director Thorn Zimmy had complete access to Graceland archives. The score is from Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready and includes some deep cuts and alternate mixes.

*****Tribeca’s opening night will premiere a Gilda Radner doc: Love, Gilda.

*****Lenny Dykstra, a former buddy of Charlie sheen claims that Sheen is about to be brought down by the Feds. A Former inmate and Mets and Phillies team member, Dykstra is looking to make a documentary so some see an ulterior motive in talking. The charges he leveled were Sheens involvement in a murder, beating his pregnant x-wife, tax and wire fraud and knowingly spreading HIV. Lenny himself has been accused of being a racist and homophobe as well as indecent exposure, sexual assault and grand theft auto.

*****CNN’s The Radical story of patty Hearst is great. This is a story which will never go away and this is full of all the flashpoints. I am a bit sickened to listen to Bill Harris tell his story. He acts like he telling some cool story from a high school party or something as he tells of his role in the kidnapping and brainwashing of a woman. He looks so comfy and satisfied with himself.

*****Sam Waterston was back on law and Order SVU as Jack McCoy!!

*****Gerber chose Lucas Warren, the first down syndrome child ever picked as their spokesbaby.

*****Why was a tiny little company hired by FEMA to deliver meals? The 50 million needed in Peurto Rico were suddenly reduced to 50 thousand. They claimed nobody missed a meal.

*****It may have started in Florida with the Marlins but in baseball spring training all the teams will wear Stoneman Douglas caps. Some of the major leaguers graduated from there. They will sign them and sell them to aid the victims.

*****So Jeff Sessions has taken back Obama’s memo that allows Native American nations all the same rights as legal Marijuana states to go into the weed biz. They are shutting them down one by one. The state of California is no help by locking tribes out of the market. How many times do you think this country has to kick our native brothers and sisters in the head? How much longer will we torture these people?

*****Kathy Griffin has done the pixie cut in support of her sister who died of cancer in September. Kathy says: “When you’re a woman, you get one fuck up and Its all over.”

*****The Berlin International film fest gave the top prize, the golden bear to Touch Me Not. Best director went to Wes Anderson for Isle of Dogs, best actor went to Anthony Bajon and best actress to Ana Brun.

*****Days alert: Ok.. Days, I do wish all soaps could be a bit more original than one night stands that produce babies and then the origin of said baby is hidden. I wish people did not always come back from the dead or good characters didn’t suddenly act evil when they could have told family and friends they were being blackmailed and got their help. OK that said and suspending disbelief we watch Days anyway cuz it is great. Anna is back and I hope they keep her around. I am so glad Eric and Jen found each other again. Please someone kill Stefan. MORE LUCAS! Let’s get the Raif/Hope/ Sami thing resolved so they can move on. When did Kerry get so hateful? And Eli should apologize to his Mother since he is going to lie to his child and for much lamer reasons than she did.** Where the fuck is Adrienne?** Nice call back as Stefan was reading the Kimberly Brady Donovan book about split personalities.

*****R.I.P. Dennis Edwards, Louis Zorich, Christopher Cattrall, John Mahoney, victims of the Taiwan quake, victims of the Florida shooting, Reg E. Cathey, Johann Johannsson, Asma Jahangir, Sue Barton, Levone Bennett Jr., Jim Downing, Nanette Fabray, the victims in Syria, Sridevi, Emma Chambers and Benjamin Melniker.

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how2to18 · 7 years

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THE GERMANS TRIED to destabilize the United States government in the 1930s, and founded groups like Friends of New Germany (FNG) and the Silver Shirts to sow internal discord. But a counterintelligence ring in Los Angeles infiltrated these groups and helped bring them down. Their leader, Leon Lewis, was said to be “feared more than the entire FBI put together,” but he has largely remained unknown, mainly because his work was so discreet and effective. He is the spymaster who remains in the shadows.

Lewis rightfully predicted that his agents could best hinder the Nazis by working in secret. His men were able to foil plots before they got off the ground, and there were no dramatic stand-offs or shootouts. Lewis was not always believer in the ponderous gathering of courtroom evidence through surveillance; he thought it best to never allow a Nazi plot to develop past the planning stage. Lewis would risk dumping information and exposing his spies only when it could permanently damage a hate group.

The story of this courageous anti-Nazi espionage — based in Los Angeles, no less — has been recounted in two new studies: Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America by Steven J. Ross and Hollywood’s Spies: The Undercover Surveillance of Nazis in Los Angeles by Laura B. Rosenzweig.

In the early 1930s, fascist groups began to reach out to disgruntled World War I veterans (one-third of them resided in Southern California) who felt like they hadn’t received their promised benefits. While the population in Los Angeles was climbing, so was the poverty rate. In addition, a large portion of Angelenos began following nationally known hatemongers like radio personalities Gerald B. Winrod and Father Charles Coughlin, whose program had a reach of 14 million. Also on the rise: A fascist organization known as the Silver Shirts, headed by former Hollywood screenwriter William Dudley Pelley.

The popularity of fascism led Pelley to run for president in 1936, forming his own party only to get shellacked. Six years later, Pelley would land a 15-year stretch in prison for sedition. Pelley wasn’t the only concern, as the soul of Los Angeles was in jeopardy of being taken over by any number of radical leaders hoping to prey on those eager to belong in a city quickly becoming a melting pot.

Identity was also a concern for Hollywood, which became a booming industry over the previous decades and drew a wide range of newcomers to the city. Many of the studio’s founders were immigrants from Europe. The film studios migrated from New York to Southern California as a way to dodge Thomas Edison’s patent attorneys and to enjoy weather that allowed for year-round filming. Assimilating into the United States culture was not easy for many of the Jewish moguls who worked to keep their faith under the radar of rising anti-Semitism. By the 1930s the West Side of Los Angeles had a large Jewish population, including the Hillcrest Country Club in Beverly Hills — one of the only safe places for Jews to meet in the area. For these Hollywood Jews, the desire to belong to their heritage as well as a newfound identity as an American was an inner struggle for many in the film industry.

No one was more aware of the rising threat to Jews in Los Angeles than Leon Lewis. His law office on 626 West 7th street was only blocks away from several fascist hangouts for groups like the Silver Shirts, American Warriors, American Nationalist Party, and the KKK. Lewis recruited a team of volunteers from the Los Angeles Jewish Community Committee (LAJCC) to keep an eye on them.

Lewis had been involved in faith-based causes before: he worked for the Anti-Defamation League, founded B’nai B’rith Magazine, and helped create the Hillel Foundation to help Jewish kids on college campuses.

His first spy, John Schmidt, was both a former German military cadet and former US Army captain. Schmidt had a perfect background to fool Nazi sympathizers as a disgruntled veteran, though he had to keep a tight lid on his feeling that Nazis “ought to be lined up against the wall and filled full of lead.”

Schmidt, along with his wife Alice, joined the Friends of New Germany (FNG) in 1933 and quickly gained the confidence of the pro-Nazi crowd. Schmidt regularly hung out at the Deutsches Haus, a mansion on 634 W. 15th street, which held the Aryan Bookstore and was a FNG hub of activity full of anti-Semitic books and magazines. They quickly learned that the FNG was a pro-Nazi paramilitary outfit.

Alice Schmidt was invited to become a secretary at the Aryan Bookstore, where she “typed key documents, overheard key conversations, and then went home and typed reports to Lewis on what she had observed.” Lewis gathered proof that the FNG’s real agenda was to help take over the United States. Germany sent regular orders through the ranks to get maps of armories and to dump anti-Semitic pamphlets in highly populated areas (commonly referred to as “snow storming”).

Lewis arranged for two other spies (Bert Allen and Carl Sunderland) to “betray” John Schmidt so that he could testify against the FNG and expose their real motives. But crucially, it wasn’t a criminal case. Lewis arranged a civil suit that would pit several German organizations against the FNG, which could in turn allow Lewis to call Schmidt to testify on his findings. Motivated primarily by publicity, the courtroom proceedings were heavily covered in the papers and made the Nazi conspiracies in Los Angeles public in spectacular fashion.

On the fifth day in court, Schmidt was listening to another testimony when a man sat down next to him. “We’ll kill you Schmidt, you son of a bitch,” he said before leaving the room. It was clear that Lewis’s work was far from over.

Lewis knew regular funding would be a major hurdle, and turned to his friend Mendel Silberberg, who mined his Hollywood contacts and organized a gathering at the Hillcrest Country Club for dozens of the film industry’s most powerful figures. Attendees were shown copies of Liberation and Silver Ranger, venomous anti-Semetic publications made and dispersed by Silver Shirts that attacked Hollywood Jews. Warner Bros. and MGM soon chipped in thousand of dollars. MGM co-founder Louis B. Mayer appointed a committee to oversee continued financing of Lewis’s work, which included Emanuel Cohen, Jack Warner, and Harry Rapf. Radio star Eddie Cantor and Warner Bros. stars Paul Muni, Al Jolson, and Edward G. Robinson sought funding from actors and actresses around town.

German conspirators were not the only problem. Los Angeles Police Captain Jesse Hopkins and Los Angeles County Sheriff James Foze were both suspicious of Jews and felt they were all communists. Each man made anti-Semitic comments to Lewis employee Robert Carroll, such as Foze saying “all Jews ought to have their nuts cut out and kicked out of the city.” Communists, rather than Nazis, were the law enforcement obsession of the day. The newly formed House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) put their focus largely on Reds.

By the mid-1930s, anti-Semitism was mainstream in the United States. In September 1935, Los Angeles Times readers opened papers to an anti-Semitic flyer titled “The Proclamation.” The flyer pushed for a boycott of all things Jewish: “BUY GENTILE! EMPLOY GENTILE! VOTE GENTILE.” Three years later, Hollywood residents saw a flyer announcing, “Hollywood is the Sodom and Gomorrah where international Jewry controls Vice-Dope-Gambling,” and “where young gentile girls are raped by Jewish producers, directors, [and] casting directors who go unpunished.”

Rosenzweig cites a national poll from Fortune magazine that showed up to 65 percent of respondents felt “Jews had too much power.” During the 1930s, pro-Nazi propaganda was distributed in major cities. As my own research shows, the first Hollywood blow to Germany occurred in April 1933 when Warner Bros. pulled their product from the lucrative foreign market in protest. However, the Jewish-run Hollywood studios still had difficulty making films that even mentioned Jews.

One man who made this difficult was Georg Gyssling, the German consul to Los Angeles, who played a complicated role. He had been sent to Los Angeles in 1933 by Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels to pressure the film industry into making German-friendly films. Any film that presented Germans in a negative light would not be imported to Germany, a lucrative market for Hollywood films. But he was no lover of the Nazi Party himself, and he outsourced most of the dirty work to an American.

The Production Code Administration (PCA) hired the anti-Semitic Joseph Breen as their attack dog. Breen was a perfect useful idiot for the Nazis, a passionate Catholic who felt Hollywood Jews were “the scum of the Earth.” Using the PCA rules against defaming other nations or religions, Breen could get the studios to bend.

Not even HUAC could continue to ignore the Nazi presence in Los Angeles. One of Lewis’s top spies, Neil Ness, told the committee in October 1939 that he had infiltrated the German American Bund and went with him to shipyards to pick up flyers, money, and orders from Germany. Now on the national stage, the German American Bund was declared by Ness “an arm of the German government.”

The late 1930s also saw the rise of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League (HANL), a group destined to connect with Lewis. And they fought using the powerful celebrity of Hollywood elite players like Eddie Cantor and John Ford, and by regularly broadcasting anti-Nazi satire and news through the Warner Bros.’s radio network. While Lewis’s spies worked underground, the HANL members drew massive crowds at events featuring anti-fascist speakers.

Warner Bros. also began producing more directly anti-fascist films, such as Black Legion, about the rise of Midwestern hate groups, and They Won’t Forget, based on the infamous lynching of Jewish factory owner Leo Frank case. Most prominently, Warner Bros. released Confessions of a Nazi Spy in 1939. The film was the first to formally go after Nazis and its release day, Ross argues, was the day “Warner Brothers Studios declared war on Germany.” The film was a watershed moment for anti-Nazi filmmakers.

The next year, Charlie Chaplin released the masterful fascist satire The Great Dictator (1940) through United Artists, Fox released I Married a Nazi (1940), and MGM produced the powerful The Mortal Storm (1940). For isolationists in the US Senate, these films were proof that foreign interests in Hollywood were trying to “rouse us to a state of war hysteria.” These accusations led a Senate subcommittee to investigate the film industry; movies were not then considered a protected form of free speech.

The motion picture propaganda investigations are not new to film historians, but Ross uncovered an ugly new detail. When North Dakota Senator Gerald Nye spoke of Hollywood and read the names of several moguls to the crowd, Louis B. Mayer, Adolph Zukor, Jack Warner, and so on, an audibly intoned “Jew” could be heard after each name. As an admirer of Nye, Joseph Goebbels couldn’t have been happier.

The anti-Semitic rhetoric of these investigations shows how prominent and passionate the isolationist movement was. Harry Warner gave an impassioned defense to the Senate, arguing that their new films were no different than their previous films — each production mirrored the world in one way or another. Wendell Willkie, an attorney for the film industry, went as far to write Nye a letter detailing that the accusations of his committee had no legal bearing.

The investigations were ultimately dissolved in the aftermath of December 7, 1941, when the United States had the next World War at its Pacific doorstep. By then, Lewis had helped the LAJCC land a powerful roster of sympathetic executives from MGM, Warner Bros., RKO, and Paramount Studios, and the Nazi influence on Hollywood had been broken for good.

Hitler in Los Angeles and Hollywood’s Spies expose a buried story about underground plots waged by Nazis against major Hollywood figures as part of a plan to win over the United States. The quiet heroism of Lewis and his allies is a too-long-neglected tale about the power of volunteers and activist citizens to make a difference in frightening times.

Chris Yogerst, PhD, is assistant professor of communication for the University of Wisconsin Colleges and is author of Headlines to Hollywood: The Birth and Boom of Warner Bros. (2016).

The post Hollywood, Los Angeles Spies, and the Underground Battle Against Hitler appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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kickoffme-blog · 7 years

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The Majesty and Horror of Alien: Covenant

New Post has been published on http://www.kickoffme.com/the-majesty-and-horror-of-alien-covenant/

The Majesty and Horror of Alien: Covenant

Alien: Covenant is a masterclass in balancing gory horror and high-minded science fiction

Beware: There are minor spoilers below…

It’s appropriate that Ridley Scott’s mutated Alien prequel/Prometheus sequel Alien: Covenant begins (and ends) with the mention and music of Richard Wagner. The wildly influential German composer’s life, writings and operas were an early and steady influence on Adolph Hitler and it’s thought that the future Fuhrer’s skewed, sociopathic philosophies on “racial purity” and his festering anti-semetism stemmed from this obsession.

“Wagner’s line of thought is intimately familiar to me”, the Nazi party leader once said.

“At every stage of my life I come back to him.”

It’s important to mention this because Scott’s remarkable and high-minded blend of splatter show and cerebral science fiction is about these very themes, of ego, narcissism, spite and jealousy fueling a quest to alter the path of creation to suit a singular agenda. Fueled by these things, Hitler inexplicably rose to power and in his quest to dominate, also murdered millions of innocent men, women and children. All in the name of a psychotic desire to meddle with natural order, to “play God” for no other real reason that to appease his obsessions.

And so it goes with David, the “synthetic” played by Michael Fassbender who we first met in Prometheus and who we are re-introduced to here, in the prologue for Alien: Covenant. The film begins with David opening his eyes and meeting his “father” Weyland (Guy Pearce).

“Am I your son?” asks David.

“You are my creation,” responds the aging, weary inventor.

As David sits down at the provided piano, Weyland tells him to randomly pick one of the no-doubt thousands of pre-programmed pieces of music that have been hard-wired into his being by his makers. He picks something from Wagner’s Das Rheingold, “Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla”, and he plays the theme perfectly. And yet he is chastised for his performance by Weyland, who notes that without the full orchestra, the piece is weak, skeletal…unfinished. As David considers this and persists with questions about his “birth” and the origins of his creator and of man, we see the seeds planted for the horror that is to come. And it becomes clear that what Scott and company are doing with this movie is something both ambitious and elemental and far from the simple Alien sequel that 20th Century Fox is marketing the movie as.

Because ultimately what Alien: Covenant is, is an exploration of the myth first etched by Mary Shelley in her oft-adapted novel Frankenstein. The subtitle for that novel was “The Modern Prometheus”, after all. And so it goes…

RELATED: Read another review of Alien: Covenant here

I’m writing this response having just left the theater after seeing the opening night screening of Alien: Covenant. Many of the people in that screening were families, parents and teenage children, elderly men and their middle-aged sons. The Alien franchise is iconic and for many film fans, it’s a rite of passage. It’s an event to have a new Alien film scream into theaters. It has meaning. And yet I know that many of those people purchasing tickets and expecting to see a film that revels in chest-bursting and men in Xenomorph costumes crawling around Giger-esque sets, menacing gun-happy humans in deep space, will be disappointed. Some may be angry. Certainly, many “purists” indeed recoiled at Prometheus, a film I admired and loved because Scott knew he couldn’t go back and just repeat the formula he invented, and instead dialed the story back and explored new themes and ideas in a sort of sister Alien universe. That film is a bit of a marvel and I’m happy to see that many of the initial confused detractors of Prometheus are now slowly, surely become reluctant fans.

Alien: Covenant sees Scott trying to please both camps, once more using that sister universe to explore ideas and philosophy and probing psychology while still providing the frissons and gory geek-show tropes that the hardcore Alien fans demand. It’s all here and things burst out of bodies and cause much mayhem. But for every exploding torso, Scott drags us into another world, introducing another element that takes us deeper into the mythology of the franchise and tunnels into completely new terrain.

Indeed, with both Alien: Covenant and Prometheus, we see an auteur filmmaker exploiting his most popular creation to mutate it and evolve it into an entirely new species.

Kind of what like David does. Life mirroring art mirroring life, repeated like a fun house mirror ad nauseum.

The plot of Alien: Covenant is familiar. A ship – the Covenant – jets through space looking for a planet to settle its 2000 strong, cryogenically preserved army of colonists, to find a new world to blaze new trails far from their own dying terrain. Among the various heroes (all essayed by a strong cast of players) is a “synthetic” named Walter (again, played by Fassbender) who has been programmed to do his duty and protect “his” humans and keep the mission on track. When they receive a phantom signal from an uncharted planet, they land and explore and of course encounter death and alien infection. But the real story begins when the humans are “rescued” by David, who has been stranded on this planet for a decade and has built a one-man (“man” being a questionable word) society where he has indulged his desire to create art…and other things.

Here, Walter and David begin having conversations which lead to new plot revelations and that’s the real power of the picture. These dialogues and the actions that spring from them that are dark, frightening and fascinating. Where science, faith, humanity and horror intersect in beautiful, challenging passages of imagination and intellect that are perverse, allegorical and cautionary. And, expertly, every-time Scott gets too heady, he flips the switch and one of those gorgeous Xenomorphs jumps out and spits its teeth out, marauding across nightmarish sets that seem ripped from the recesses of the Freudian ID. And yes, sure, the monsters are now mostly CGI tweaked creatures but set in the design of this modern film, it makes sense.

Ardent fans of Scott’s important filmography will also thrill to how concepts explored in his groundbreaking and influential 1982 Phillip K. Dick adaptation Blade Runner are also woven into the film. But we won’t touch that any further. See it for yourself.

Ultimately, if you care about modern, blockbuster filmmaking that trades in ideas and prefers to break ground as opposed to just crassly regurgitating formulas, I urge you to be open to this majestic, horrifying study in mad science gone wild in the absence of God. Come for the face-huggers, stay for the cerebellum (some of which ends up splattered on the walls, but hey, that’s okay too).

Alien: Covenant

Alien Covenant

Alien: Covenant

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The post The Majesty and Horror of Alien: Covenant appeared first on ComingSoon.net.

Read more May 20, 2017 9:32 pm

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repwincostl4m0a2 · 7 years

Text

MLS Commissioner Don Garber talks Facebook streaming deal, video-assisted refs, sports betting

MLS Commissioner Don Garber (right) is interviewed by Sports Illustrated reporter Grant Wahl at SXSW on Saturday.

AUSTIN, TX. — Count Don Garber among the folks who are looking forward to video assistant referee technology being used during Major League soccer matches.

The MLS commissioner was in Austin, Texas on Saturday for a 1-on-1 fireside chat at SXSW, the annual conference that features a bevy of top sports leaders talking about how technology is changing their respective games.

Garber, interviewed on stage by Sports Illustrated writer Grant Wahl, voiced his support for the video assistant referees (VAR), which were tested during the preseason and will be used during actual games after the MLS All Star Game this August.

The technology consists of a human referee sitting in a booth alongside the pitch with access to video feeds from different angles; he or she will provide assistance to the head referee on four “game-changing” situations: Goals, penalty calls, direct red-card incidents and cases of mistaken identity.

In the preseason tests, Garber said out of the 20 or so plays that were reviewed by the new technology, about 20 percent had a dramatic impact on the game.

Garber noted that MLS simply needed to get with the times as it relates to how other leagues like the NFL and NBA use replay technology — he said fans “deserve” it.

“We have to adapt to the way the North American sports fan consumes their sports,” he said. “I believe the lack of technology was unfair to the fan.”

The league had to work with FIFA and IFAB, two soccer governing bodies that oversee some MLS rules, to implement VAR. MLS still won’t be able to show replays on the big-screen inside stadiums because of FIFA’s discretion. Garber said the system will “ultimately evolve” and “be like it is in other leagues.”

Garber added that it always frustrated him how global governing bodies “did not understand how technology allows the fan, the player, and our technical people to get better and yet we can’t use it in the games that actually make the experience better.”

The commissioner, who shared his support of technology at the GeekWire Sports Tech Summit last year, said he’s looking forward to other tech implementations like putting microphones on the field that pick up player chatter.

“Hopefully we can have more a lot more technology in the sport,” said Garber, who became MLS commissioner in 1999 after a 16-year stint with the NFL.

Garber also talked about MLS’ new streaming deal with Facebook; the potential of sports gambling in his league; and Twitter.

Sounders FC take on FC Dallas this past July. (GeekWIre photo / Kevin Lisota)

On the streaming deal:

“It came about proactively. Our TV broadcast rights and the ability for those broadcasters to stream games lives with FOX, ESPN, and Univision. We were in San Jose for the All Star Game last year and spent some time with Facebook and Dan Reed (head of sports partnerships, formerly worked for the NBA). All the leagues are trying to figure out how can we continue to have our games available on as many platforms as possible. We were able to find very unique way to extend Univision’s relationship with us and provide those games on Facebook in English language.

There will be 22 games and we’re the first league to have an extended package on Facebook. It gives us an opportunity to really see how all these new platforms can work for us — what will the quality of the broadcast be; will more people engage with Facebook than perhaps would engage, at least in this case, the SAP function on their traditional television or platform. It’s also a good way for Facebook to put their toe deeper in the water. As a sports league, we are in the business of selling our rights — it drives the economic engine of professional sports. As the cable model changes, as broadcasters start thinking about what their revenue models look like with how subscription and ad revenue come together or go apart, how platforms come into play — you have to be in the business.”

On his social media use (Garber’s Twitter handle is @thesoccerdon): “The handle has nothing to do with the fact that I can probably recite every line from The Godfather. It was a creative way that our communications chief came up with and it’s been turned into this thing related to Tony Soprano. I actually do engage on Twitter more so than I engage on Facebook. It has been a good way to communicate directly to fans; somebody else decided it was a good way to communicate with all sorts of people in the country, so it’s proven to be true.

It’s a news source for me and allows me to get information quickly from places that I find important. It is a frustrating place to be public. I just saw a deeply, deeply anti-semetic meme that was posted on Twitter that was one of the more disgusting things you could ever see. That lives and still lives on Twitter. You have lots and lots of really bad things happening on Twitter. That’s not fun.

On legalization of sports gambling in the U.S.:

“We have a project going on now to really dig in deeply and understand it. I’ll be the third commissioner (along with NBA’s Adam Silver and MLB’s Rob Manfred) in and say I’m very open to understanding how we can get more engaged in this market in a way that I think if done properly, can be regulated and managed and controlled. I’ll join the chorus of saying it’s time to bring it out of the dark ages. We’re doing what we can to figure out how to manage that effectively.”

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2medAzV

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ubizheroes · 7 years

Text

New gTLDs are Like Used Cars

There may be a couple exceptions which prove the rule, but new TLDs are generally an awful investment for everyone except the registry operator. Here is the short version… Imagine registering a domain for $10, building a business on it, and then learning the renewal fee will increase to hundreds of $ a year.— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) March 7, 2017 And the long version… Diminishing Returns About a half-decade ago I wrote about how Google devalued domain names from an SEO perspective & there have been a number of leading “category killer” domains which have repeatedly been recycled from startup to acquisition to shut down to PPC park page to buy now for this once in a lifetime opportunity in an endless water cycle. The central web platforms are becoming ad heavy, which in turn decreases the reach of anything which is not an advertisement. For the most valuable concepts / markets / keywords ads eat up the entire interface for the first screen full of results. Key markets like hotels might get a second round of vertical ads to further displace the concept of organic results. Proprietary, Closed-Ecosystem Roach Motels The tech monopolies can only make so much money by stuffing ads onto their own platform. To keep increasing their take they need to increase the types, varieties & formats of media they host and control & keep the attention on their platform. Both Google & Facebook are promoting scams where they feed on desperate publishers & suck a copy of the publisher’s content into being hosted by the tech monopoly platform de jour & sprinkle a share of the revenues back to the content sources. They may even pay a bit upfront for new content formats, but then after the market is primed the deal shifts to where (once again) almost nobody other than the tech monopoly platform wins. The attempt to “own” the web & never let users go is so extreme both companies will make up bogus statistics to promote their proprietary / fake open / actually closed standards. If you ignore how Google’s AMP double, triple, or quadruple counts visitors in Google Analytics the visit numbers look appealing. But the flip side of those fake metrics is actual revenues do not flow. My own experience with amp is greatly reduced ad revenue. @Topheratl admits that weather dot com may be an anomaly in having higher ad $.— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) February 22, 2017 Facebook has the same sort of issues, with frequently needing to restate various metrics while partners fly blind. These companies are restructuring society & the race to the bottom to try to make the numbers work in an increasingly unstable & parasitic set of platform choices is destroying adjacent markets: Have you tried Angry Birds lately? It’s a swamp of dark patterns. All extractive logic meant to trick you into another in-app payment. It’s the perfect example of what happens when product managers have to squeeze ever-more-growth out of ever-less-fertile lands to hit their targets year after year. … back to the incentives. It’s not just those infused by venture capital timelines and return requirements, but also the likes of tax incentives favoring capital gains over income. … that’s the truly insidious part of the tech lords solution to everything. This fantasy that they will be greeted as liberators. When the new boss is really a lot like the old boss, except the big stick is replaced with the big algorithm. Depersonalizing all punishment but doling it out just the same. … this new world order is being driven by a tiny cabal of monopolies. So commercial dissent is near impossible. … competition is for the little people. Pitting one individual contractor against another in a race to the bottom. Hoarding all the bargaining power at the top. Disparaging any attempts against those at the bottom to organize with unions or otherwise. To be a success on the attention platforms you have to push toward the edges. But as you become successful you become a target. And the dehumanized “algorithm” is not above politics & public relations. Pewdiepie is the biggest success story on the YouTube platform. When he made a video showing some of the absurd aspects of Fiverr it led to a WSJ investigation which “uncovered” a pattern of anti-semitism. And yet one of the reporters who worked on that story wrote far more offensive and anti-semetic tweets. The hypocrisy of the hit job didn’t matter. They still were able to go after Pewdiepie’s ad relationships to cut him off from Disney’s Maker Studios & the premium tier of YouTube ads. The fact that he is an individual with broad reach means he’ll still be fine economically, but many other publishers would quickly end up in a death spiral from the above sequence. If it can happen to a leading player in a closed ecosystem then the risk to smaller players is even greater. In some emerging markets Facebook effectively *is* the Internet. The Decline of Exact Match Domains Domains have been so devalued (from an SEO perspective) that some names like PaydayLoans.net sell for about $3,000 at auction. $3,000 can sound like a lot to someone with no money, but names like that were going for 6 figures at their peak. Professional domain sellers participate in the domain auctions on sites like NameJet & SnapNames. Big keywords like [payday loans] in core trusted extensions are not missed. So if the 98% decline in price were an anomaly, at least one of them would have bid more in that auction. Why did exact match domains fall so hard? In part because Google shifted from scoring the web based on links to considering things like brand awareness in rankings. And it is very hard to run a large brand-oriented ad campaign promoting a generically descriptive domain name. Sure there are a few exceptions like Cars.com & Hotels.com, but if you watch much TV you’ll see a lot more ads associated with businesses that are not built on generically descriptive domain names. Not all domains have fallen quite that hard in price, but the more into the tail you go the less the domain acts as a memorable differentiator. If the barrier to entry increases, then the justification for spending a lot on a domain name as part of a go to market strategy makes less sense. Brandable Names Also Lose Value Arguably EMDs have lost more value than brandable domain names, but even brandable names have sharply slid. If you go back a decade or two tech startups would secure their name (say Snap.com or Monster.com or such) & then try to build a business on it. But in the current marketplace with there being many paths to market, some startups don’t even have a domain name at launch, but begin as iPhone or Android apps. Now people try to create success on a good enough, but cheap domain name & then as success comes they buy a better domain name. Jelly was recently acquired by Pinterest. Rather than buying jelly.com they were still using AskJelly.com for their core site & Jelly.co for their blog. As long as domain redirects work, there’s no reason to spend heavily on a domain name for a highly speculative new project. Rather then spending 6 figures on a domain name & then seeing if there is market fit, it is far more common to launch a site on something like getapp.com, joinapp.com, app.io, app.co, businessnameapp.com, etc. This in turn means that rather than 10,000s of startups all chasing their core .com domain name off the start, people test whatever is good enough & priced close to $10. Then only after they are successful do they try to upgrade to better, more memorable & far more expensive domain names. Money isn’t spent on the domain names until the project has already shown market fit. One in a thousand startups spending $1 million is less than one in three startups spending $100,000. New TLDs Undifferentiated, Risky & Overpriced No Actual Marketing Being Done Some of the companies which are registries for new TLDs talk up investing in marketing & differentiation for the new TLDs, but very few of them are doing much on the marketing front. You may see their banner ads on domainer blogs & they may even pay for placement with some of the registries, but there isn’t much going on in terms of cultivating a stable ecosystem. When Google or Facebook try to enter & dominate a new vertical, the end destination may be extractive rent seeking by a monopoly BUT off the start they are at least willing to shoulder some of the risk & cost upfront to try to build awareness. Where are the domain registries who have built successful new businesses on some of their new TLDs? Where are the subsidies offered to key talent to help drive awareness & promote the new strings? As far as I know, none of that stuff exists. In fact, what is prevalent is the exact opposite. Greed-Based Anti-Marketing So many of them are short sighted greed-based plays that they do the exact opposite of building an ecosystem … they hold back any domain which potentially might not be complete garbage so they can juice it for a premium ask price in the 10s of thousands of dollars. While searching on GoDaddy Auctions for a client project I have seen new TLDs like .link listed for sale for MORE THAN the asking price of similar .org names. If those prices had any sort of legitimate foundation then the person asking $30,000 for a .link would have bulk bought all the equivalent .net and .org names which are listed for cheaper prices. But the prices are based on fantasy & almost nobody is dumb enough to pay those sorts of prices. Anyone dumb enough to pay that would be better off buying their own registry rather than a single name. The holding back of names is the exact opposite of savvy marketing investment. It means there’s no reason to use the new TLD if you either have to pay through the nose or use a really crappy name nobody will remember. I didn’t buy more than 15 of Uniregistry’s domains because all names were reserved in the first place and I didn’t feel like buying 2nd tier domains … Domainers were angry when the first 2 Uniregistry’s New gTLDs (.sexy and .tattoo) came out and all remotely good names were reserved despite Frank saying that Uniregistry would not reserve any domains. Who defeats the race to the bottom aspects of the web by starting off from a “we only sell shit” standpoint? Nobody. And that’s why these new TLDs are a zero. Defaults Have Value Many online verticals are driven by winner take most monopoly economics. There’s a clear dominant leader in each of these core markets: social, search, short-form video, long-form video, retail, auctions, real estate, job search, classifieds, etc. Some other core markets have consolidated down to 3 or 4 core players who among them own about 50 different brands that attack different parts of the market. Almost all the category leading businesses which dominate aggregate usage are on .com domains. Contrast the lack of marketing for new TLDs with all the marketing one sees for the .com domain name. Local country code domain names & .com are not going anywhere. And both .org and .net are widely used & unlikely to face extreme price increases. Hosing The Masses… A decade ago domainers were frustrated Verisign increased the price of .com domains in ~ 5% increments: Every mom, every pop, every company that holds a domain name had no say in the matter. ICANN basically said to Verisign: “We agree to let you hose the masses if you stop suing us”. I don’t necessarily mind paying more for domains so much as I mind the money going to a monopolistic regulator which has historically had little regard for the registrants/registrars it should be serving Those 5% or 10% shifts were considered “hosing the masses.” Imagine what sort of blowback PIR would get from influential charities if they tried to increase the price of .org domains 30-fold overnight. It would be such a public relations disaster it would never be considered. Domain registries are not particularly expensive to run. A person who has a number of them can run each of them for less than the cost of a full time employee – say $25,000 to $50,00 per year. And yet, the very people who complained about Verisign’s benign price increases, monopolistic abuses & rent extraction are now pushing massive price hikes: .Hosting and .juegos are going up from about $10-$20 retail to about $300. Other domains will also see price increases. … Here’s the thing with new TLD pricing: registry operators can increase prices as much as they want with just six months’ notice. … in its applications, Uniregistry said it planned to enter into a contractual agreement to not increase its prices for five years. Why would anyone want to build a commercial enterprise (or anything they care about) on such a shoddy foundation? If a person promises… no hold backs of premium domains, then reserves 10s of thousands of domains no price hikes for 5 years, then hikes prices the eventual price hikes being inline with inflation, then hikes prices 3,000% That’s 3 strikes and the batter is out. Doing the Math The claim the new TLDs need more revenues to exist are untrue. Running an extension costs maybe $50,000 per year. If a registry operator wanted to build a vibrant & stable ecosystem the first step would be dumping the concept of premium domains to encourage wide usage & adoption. There are hundreds of these new TLD extensions and almost none of them can be trusted to be a wise investment when compared against similar names in established extensions like .com, .net, .org & CCTLDs like .co.uk or .fr. There’s no renewal price protection & there’s no need, especially as prices on the core TLDs have sharply come down. Domain Pricing Trends Aggregate stats are somewhat hard to come by as many deals are not reported publicly & many sites which aggregate sales data also list minimum prices. However domains have lost value for many reasons declining SEO-related value due to the search results becoming over-run with ads (Google keeps increasing their ad clicks 20% to 30% year over year) broad market consolidation in key markets like travel, ecommerce, search & social Google & Facebook are eating OVER 100% of online advertising growth – the rest of industry is shrinking in aggregate are there any major news sites which haven’t struggled to monetize mobile? there is a reason there are few great indy blogs compared to a decade ago rising technical costs in implementing independent websites (responsive design, HTTPS, AMP, etc.) “Closed platforms increase the chunk size of competition & increase the cost of market entry, so people who have good ideas, it is a lot more expensive for their productivity to be monetized. They also don’t like standardization … it looks like rent seeking behaviors on top of friction” – Gabe Newell harder to break into markets with brand-biased relevancy algorithms (increased chunk size of competition) less value in trying to build a brand on a generic name, which struggles to rank in a landscape of brand-biased algorithms (inability to differentiate while being generically descriptive) decline in PPC park page ad revenues for many years Yahoo! hid the deterioration in their core business by relying heavily on partners for ad click volumes, but after they switched to leveraging Bing search, Microsoft was far more interested with click quality vs click quantity absent the competitive bid from Yahoo!, Google drastically reduced partner payouts most web browsers have replaced web address bars with dual function search boxes, drastically reducing direct navigation traffic All the above are the mechanics of “why” prices have been dropping, but it is also worth noting many of the leading portfolios have been sold. If the domain aftermarket is as vibrant as some people claim, there’s no way the Marchex portfolio of 200,000+ domains would have sold for only $28.1 million a couple years ago. RegistrarStats shows .com registrations have stopped growing & other extensions like .net, .org, .biz & .info are now shrinking. Both aftermarket domain prices & the pool of registered domains on established gTLDs are dropping. I know I’ve dropped hundreds & hundreds of domains over the past year. That might be due to my cynical views of the market, but I did hold many names for a decade or more. As barrier to entry increases, many of the legacy domains which could have one day been worth developing have lost much of their value. And the picked over new TLDs are an even worse investment due to the near infinite downside potential of price hikes, registries outright folding, etc. Into this face of declining value there is a rush of oversupply WITH irrational above-market pricing. And then the registries which spend next to nothing on marketing can’t understand why their great new namespaces went nowhere. As much as I cringe at .biz & .info, I’d prefer either of them over just about any new TLD. Any baggage they may carry is less than the risk of going with an unproven new extension without any protections whatsoever. Losing Faith in the Zimbabwe Dollar Who really loses is anyone who read what these domain registry operators wrote & trusted them. Uniregistry does not believe that registry fees should rise when the costs of other technology services have uniformly trended downward, simply because a registry operator believes it can extract higher profit from its base of registrants. How does one justify a 3000% price hike after stating “Our prices are fixed and only indexed to inflation after 5 years.” Are they pricing these names in Zimbabwe Dollars? Or did they just change their minds in a way that hurt anyone who trusted them & invested in their ecosystem? Frank Schilling warned about the dangers of lifting price controls The combination of “presumptive renewal” and the “lifting of price controls on registry services” is incredibly dangerous. Imagine buying a home, taking on a large mortgage, remodeling, moving in, only to be informed 6 months later that your property taxes will go up 10,000% with no better services offered by local government. The government doesn’t care if you can’t pay your tax/mortgage because they don’t really want you to pay your tax… they want you to abandon your home so they can take your property and resell it to a higher payer for more money, pocketing the difference themselves, leaving you with nothing. This agreement as written leaves the door open to exactly that type of scenario He didn’t believe the practice to be poor. Rather he felt he would have been made poorer, unless he was the person doing it: It would be the mother of all Internet tragedies and a crippling blow to ICANN’s relevance if millions of pioneering registrants were taxed out of their internet homes as a result of the greed of one registry and the benign neglect, apathy or tacit support of its master. It is a highly nuanced position. Imagine registering a domain for $10, building a business on it, and then learning the renewal fee will increase to hundreds of $ a year.— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) March 7, 2017 Categories: domain names from SEO Book http://www.seobook.com/new-tlds-are-junk via IFTTT from Local SEO Guru http://localseoguru.tumblr.com/post/158192743568 via IFTTT from Tumblr http://tomeucapella.tumblr.com/post/158192779995/new-gtlds-are-like-used-cars via IFTTT

from Network Coaching http://thenetworkcoaching.blogspot.com/2017/03/new-gtlds-are-like-used-cars.html via IFTTT

from Blogger http://imlocalseo.blogspot.com/2017/03/new-gtlds-are-like-used-cars_9.html via IFTTT

from IM Local SEO https://imlocalseo.wordpress.com/2017/03/09/new-gtlds-are-like-used-cars-2/ via IFTTT

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andrew-forbes · 7 years

Text

New gTLDs are Like Used Cars

There may be a couple exceptions which prove the rule, but new TLDs are generally an awful investment for everyone except the registry operator.

Here is the short version...

Imagine registering a domain for $10, building a business on it, and then learning the renewal fee will increase to hundreds of $ a year.— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) March 7, 2017

And the long version...

Diminishing Returns

About a half-decade ago I wrote about how Google devalued domain names from an SEO perspective & there have been a number of leading "category killer" domains which have repeatedly been recycled from startup to acquisition to shut down to PPC park page to buy now for this once in a lifetime opportunity in an endless water cycle.

The central web platforms are becoming ad heavy, which in turn decreases the reach of anything which is not an advertisement. For the most valuable concepts / markets / keywords ads eat up the entire interface for the first screen full of results. Key markets like hotels might get a second round of vertical ads to further displace the concept of organic results.

Proprietary, Closed-Ecosystem Roach Motels

The tech monopolies can only make so much money by stuffing ads onto their own platform. To keep increasing their take they need to increase the types, varieties & formats of media they host and control & keep the attention on their platform.

Both Google & Facebook are promoting scams where they feed on desperate publishers & suck a copy of the publisher's content into being hosted by the tech monopoly platform de jour & sprinkle a share of the revenues back to the content sources.

They may even pay a bit upfront for new content formats, but then after the market is primed the deal shifts to where (once again) almost nobody other than the tech monopoly platform wins.

The attempt to "own" the web & never let users go is so extreme both companies will make up bogus statistics to promote their proprietary / fake open / actually closed standards.

If you ignore how Google's AMP double, triple, or quadruple counts visitors in Google Analytics the visit numbers look appealing.

But the flip side of those fake metrics is actual revenues do not flow.

My own experience with amp is greatly reduced ad revenue. @Topheratl admits that weather dot com may be an anomaly in having higher ad $.— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) February 22, 2017

Facebook has the same sort of issues, with frequently needing to restate various metrics while partners fly blind.

These companies are restructuring society & the race to the bottom to try to make the numbers work in an increasingly unstable & parasitic set of platform choices is destroying adjacent markets:

Have you tried Angry Birds lately? It’s a swamp of dark patterns. All extractive logic meant to trick you into another in-app payment. It’s the perfect example of what happens when product managers have to squeeze ever-more-growth out of ever-less-fertile lands to hit their targets year after year. ... back to the incentives. It’s not just those infused by venture capital timelines and return requirements, but also the likes of tax incentives favoring capital gains over income. ... that’s the truly insidious part of the tech lords solution to everything. This fantasy that they will be greeted as liberators. When the new boss is really a lot like the old boss, except the big stick is replaced with the big algorithm. Depersonalizing all punishment but doling it out just the same. ... this new world order is being driven by a tiny cabal of monopolies. So commercial dissent is near impossible. ... competition is for the little people. Pitting one individual contractor against another in a race to the bottom. Hoarding all the bargaining power at the top. Disparaging any attempts against those at the bottom to organize with unions or otherwise.

To be a success on the attention platforms you have to push toward the edges. But as you become successful you become a target.

And the dehumanized "algorithm" is not above politics & public relations.

Pewdiepie is the biggest success story on the YouTube platform. When he made a video showing some of the absurd aspects of Fiverr it led to a WSJ investigation which "uncovered" a pattern of anti-semitism. And yet one of the reporters who worked on that story wrote far more offensive and anti-semetic tweets. The hypocrisy of the hit job didn't matter. They still were able to go after Pewdiepie's ad relationships to cut him off from Disney's Maker Studios & the premium tier of YouTube ads.

The fact that he is an individual with broad reach means he'll still be fine economically, but many other publishers would quickly end up in a death spiral from the above sequence.

If it can happen to a leading player in a closed ecosystem then the risk to smaller players is even greater.

In some emerging markets Facebook effectively *is* the Internet.

The Decline of Exact Match Domains

Domains have been so devalued (from an SEO perspective) that some names like PaydayLoans.net sell for about $3,000 at auction.

$3,000 can sound like a lot to someone with no money, but names like that were going for 6 figures at their peak.

Professional domain sellers participate in the domain auctions on sites like NameJet & SnapNames. Big keywords like [payday loans] in core trusted extensions are not missed. So if the 98% decline in price were an anomaly, at least one of them would have bid more in that auction.

Why did exact match domains fall so hard? In part because Google shifted from scoring the web based on links to considering things like brand awareness in rankings. And it is very hard to run a large brand-oriented ad campaign promoting a generically descriptive domain name. Sure there are a few exceptions like Cars.com & Hotels.com, but if you watch much TV you'll see a lot more ads associated with businesses that are not built on generically descriptive domain names.

Not all domains have fallen quite that hard in price, but the more into the tail you go the less the domain acts as a memorable differentiator. If the barrier to entry increases, then the justification for spending a lot on a domain name as part of a go to market strategy makes less sense.

Brandable Names Also Lose Value

Arguably EMDs have lost more value than brandable domain names, but even brandable names have sharply slid.

If you go back a decade or two tech startups would secure their name (say Snap.com or Monster.com or such) & then try to build a business on it.

But in the current marketplace with there being many paths to market, some startups don't even have a domain name at launch, but begin as iPhone or Android apps.

Now people try to create success on a good enough, but cheap domain name & then as success comes they buy a better domain name.

Jelly was recently acquired by Pinterest. Rather than buying jelly.com they were still using AskJelly.com for their core site & Jelly.co for their blog.

As long as domain redirects work, there's no reason to spend heavily on a domain name for a highly speculative new project.

Rather then spending 6 figures on a domain name & then seeing if there is market fit, it is far more common to launch a site on something like getapp.com, joinapp.com, app.io, app.co, businessnameapp.com, etc.

This in turn means that rather than 10,000s of startups all chasing their core .com domain name off the start, people test whatever is good enough & priced close to $10. Then only after they are successful do they try to upgrade to better, more memorable & far more expensive domain names.

Money isn't spent on the domain names until the project has already shown market fit.

One in a thousand startups spending $1 million is less than one in three startups spending $100,000.

New TLDs Undifferentiated, Risky & Overpriced

No Actual Marketing Being Done

Some of the companies which are registries for new TLDs talk up investing in marketing & differentiation for the new TLDs, but very few of them are doing much on the marketing front.

You may see their banner ads on domainer blogs & they may even pay for placement with some of the registries, but there isn't much going on in terms of cultivating a stable ecosystem.

When Google or Facebook try to enter & dominate a new vertical, the end destination may be extractive rent seeking by a monopoly BUT off the start they are at least willing to shoulder some of the risk & cost upfront to try to build awareness.

Where are the domain registries who have built successful new businesses on some of their new TLDs? Where are the subsidies offered to key talent to help drive awareness & promote the new strings?

As far as I know, none of that stuff exists.

In fact, what is prevalent is the exact opposite.

Greed-Based Anti-Marketing

So many of them are short sighted greed-based plays that they do the exact opposite of building an ecosystem ... they hold back any domain which potentially might not be complete garbage so they can juice it for a premium ask price in the 10s of thousands of dollars.

While searching on GoDaddy Auctions for a client project I have seen new TLDs like .link listed for sale for MORE THAN the asking price of similar .org names.

If those prices had any sort of legitimate foundation then the person asking $30,000 for a .link would have bulk bought all the equivalent .net and .org names which are listed for cheaper prices.

But the prices are based on fantasy & almost nobody is dumb enough to pay those sorts of prices.

Anyone dumb enough to pay that would be better off buying their own registry rather than a single name.

The holding back of names is the exact opposite of savvy marketing investment. It means there's no reason to use the new TLD if you either have to pay through the nose or use a really crappy name nobody will remember.

I didn’t buy more than 15 of Uniregistry’s domains because all names were reserved in the first place and I didn’t feel like buying 2nd tier domains ... Domainers were angry when the first 2 Uniregistry’s New gTLDs (.sexy and .tattoo) came out and all remotely good names were reserved despite Frank saying that Uniregistry would not reserve any domains.

Who defeats the race to the bottom aspects of the web by starting off from a "we only sell shit" standpoint?

Nobody.

And that's why these new TLDs are a zero.

Defaults Have Value

Many online verticals are driven by winner take most monopoly economics. There's a clear dominant leader in each of these core markets: social, search, short-form video, long-form video, retail, auctions, real estate, job search, classifieds, etc. Some other core markets have consolidated down to 3 or 4 core players who among them own about 50 different brands that attack different parts of the market.

Almost all the category leading businesses which dominate aggregate usage are on .com domains.

Contrast the lack of marketing for new TLDs with all the marketing one sees for the .com domain name.

Local country code domain names & .com are not going anywhere. And both .org and .net are widely used & unlikely to face extreme price increases.

Hosing The Masses...

A decade ago domainers were frustrated Verisign increased the price of .com domains in ~ 5% increments:

Every mom, every pop, every company that holds a domain name had no say in the matter. ICANN basically said to Verisign: "We agree to let you hose the masses if you stop suing us".

I don't necessarily mind paying more for domains so much as I mind the money going to a monopolistic regulator which has historically had little regard for the registrants/registrars it should be serving

Those 5% or 10% shifts were considered "hosing the masses."

Imagine what sort of blowback PIR would get from influential charities if they tried to increase the price of .org domains 30-fold overnight. It would be such a public relations disaster it would never be considered.

Domain registries are not particularly expensive to run. A person who has a number of them can run each of them for less than the cost of a full time employee - say $25,000 to $50,00 per year.

And yet, the very people who complained about Verisign's benign price increases, monopolistic abuses & rent extraction are now pushing massive price hikes:

.Hosting and .juegos are going up from about $10-$20 retail to about $300. Other domains will also see price increases. ... Here's the thing with new TLD pricing: registry operators can increase prices as much as they want with just six months' notice. ... in its applications, Uniregistry said it planned to enter into a contractual agreement to not increase its prices for five years.

Why would anyone want to build a commercial enterprise (or anything they care about) on such a shoddy foundation?

If a person promises...

no hold backs of premium domains, then reserves 10s of thousands of domains

no price hikes for 5 years, then hikes prices

the eventual price hikes being inline with inflation, then hikes prices 3,000%

That's 3 strikes and the batter is out.

Doing the Math

The claim the new TLDs need more revenues to exist are untrue. Running an extension costs maybe $50,000 per year. If a registry operator wanted to build a vibrant & stable ecosystem the first step would be dumping the concept of premium domains to encourage wide usage & adoption.

There are hundreds of these new TLD extensions and almost none of them can be trusted to be a wise investment when compared against similar names in established extensions like .com, .net, .org & CCTLDs like .co.uk or .fr.

There's no renewal price protection & there's no need, especially as prices on the core TLDs have sharply come down.

Domain Pricing Trends

Aggregate stats are somewhat hard to come by as many deals are not reported publicly & many sites which aggregate sales data also list minimum prices.

However domains have lost value for many reasons

declining SEO-related value due to the search results becoming over-run with ads (Google keeps increasing their ad clicks 20% to 30% year over year)

broad market consolidation in key markets like travel, ecommerce, search & social

Google & Facebook are eating OVER 100% of online advertising growth - the rest of industry is shrinking in aggregate

are there any major news sites which haven't struggled to monetize mobile?

there is a reason there are few great indy blogs compared to a decade ago

rising technical costs in implementing independent websites (responsive design, HTTPS, AMP, etc.) "Closed platforms increase the chunk size of competition & increase the cost of market entry, so people who have good ideas, it is a lot more expensive for their productivity to be monetized. They also don't like standardization ... it looks like rent seeking behaviors on top of friction" - Gabe Newell

harder to break into markets with brand-biased relevancy algorithms (increased chunk size of competition)

less value in trying to build a brand on a generic name, which struggles to rank in a landscape of brand-biased algorithms (inability to differentiate while being generically descriptive)

decline in PPC park page ad revenues

for many years Yahoo! hid the deterioration in their core business by relying heavily on partners for ad click volumes, but after they switched to leveraging Bing search, Microsoft was far more interested with click quality vs click quantity

absent the competitive bid from Yahoo!, Google drastically reduced partner payouts

most web browsers have replaced web address bars with dual function search boxes, drastically reducing direct navigation traffic

All the above are the mechanics of "why" prices have been dropping, but it is also worth noting many of the leading portfolios have been sold.

If the domain aftermarket is as vibrant as some people claim, there's no way the Marchex portfolio of 200,000+ domains would have sold for only $28.1 million a couple years ago.

RegistrarStats shows .com registrations have stopped growing & other extensions like .net, .org, .biz & .info are now shrinking.

Both aftermarket domain prices & the pool of registered domains on established gTLDs are dropping.

I know I've dropped hundreds & hundreds of domains over the past year. That might be due to my cynical views of the market, but I did hold many names for a decade or more.

As barrier to entry increases, many of the legacy domains which could have one day been worth developing have lost much of their value.

And the picked over new TLDs are an even worse investment due to the near infinite downside potential of price hikes, registries outright folding, etc.

Into this face of declining value there is a rush of oversupply WITH irrational above-market pricing. And then the registries which spend next to nothing on marketing can't understand why their great new namespaces went nowhere.

As much as I cringe at .biz & .info, I'd prefer either of them over just about any new TLD.

Any baggage they may carry is less than the risk of going with an unproven new extension without any protections whatsoever.

Losing Faith in the Zimbabwe Dollar

Who really loses is anyone who read what these domain registry operators wrote & trusted them.

Uniregistry does not believe that registry fees should rise when the costs of other technology services have uniformly trended downward, simply because a registry operator believes it can extract higher profit from its base of registrants.

How does one justify a 3000% price hike after stating "Our prices are fixed and only indexed to inflation after 5 years."

Are they pricing these names in Zimbabwe Dollars? Or did they just change their minds in a way that hurt anyone who trusted them & invested in their ecosystem?

Frank Schilling warned about the dangers of lifting price controls

The combination of "presumptive renewal" and the "lifting of price controls on registry services" is incredibly dangerous. Imagine buying a home, taking on a large mortgage, remodeling, moving in, only to be informed 6 months later that your property taxes will go up 10,000% with no better services offered by local government. The government doesn't care if you can't pay your tax/mortgage because they don't really want you to pay your tax… they want you to abandon your home so they can take your property and resell it to a higher payer for more money, pocketing the difference themselves, leaving you with nothing.

This agreement as written leaves the door open to exactly that type of scenario

He didn't believe the practice to be poor.

Rather he felt he would have been made poorer, unless he was the person doing it:

It would be the mother of all Internet tragedies and a crippling blow to ICANN’s relevance if millions of pioneering registrants were taxed out of their internet homes as a result of the greed of one registry and the benign neglect, apathy or tacit support of its master.

It is a highly nuanced position.

Imagine registering a domain for $10, building a business on it, and then learning the renewal fee will increase to hundreds of $ a year.— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) March 7, 2017

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from SEO book AnthyHayesYT http://ift.tt/2mmAVjF via Going Here

#SEO book AnthyHayesYT

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