#this is about covid and oppression and a hundred other things

[thatdiabolicalfeminist]

Humans are very much a social species. We look to each other without even always noticing, for cues about how to interpret the world around us.

Unfortunately this often leads to people thinking stuff just isn't that serious because if it were, the people around me would be taking it seriously!

But the people around you do not always have the best view of the situation, and they can be wrong.

Some things you have to decide for yourself whether they're worth being concerned about, or worth acting on.

[spacelazarwolf]

Can i ask why people seem to only refer to black and brown people? I'm east Asian, and it can feel kind of bad not really being included in the language surrounding talk about racism. We're one of the groups that faces the most discrimination and hate crimes, especially with how covid started. Me and nearly every Asian person i know has faced racism over our lives and many of us have very pale skin. It feels very alienating to be, in a way, left out of the discussion. I understand that often we're included somewhat implicitly, but it doesn't look like it when the language doesn't represent it.

so before i get into it, i'm giving two caveats: 1. even though i'm jewish and my family and i have had a complicated history with being racialized as non white, i'm still racially white. so while i always try to take into account all the things that my family has experienced and that the people of color i know have taught me, that's still the individual perspective i'm speaking from. 2. i live in the us, so that's the culture and society i'm talking about. it may apply to different places in the west (or even outside the west idk) but it may not so like inb4 "#american centric" bc i am literally talking abt america.

re: your actual question of why people seem to only refer to black and brown people, i think it's mostly used to talk about issues that affect darker skinned people of color, but sometimes used as another variation of "people of color" that's meant to encompass all nonwhite people. i've definitely used it that way before without really thinking about it, but i can see how that could make groups who may not see themselves as being black or brown feel left out of a conversation that still absolutely pertains to them. i think we as a society are currently struggling with what vocabulary to use when we talk about racial issues. there's a bunch of different acronyms and phrases people use, and listing out all the different racial and ethnic groups we can think of always leaves someone out.

but i also think our struggles with vocabulary are caused in part by the way our view of race has become very black and white. especially when it comes to east asians, i think people fall way too easily for the model minority myth + think lighter skin = less oppression, so they think east asians don't need as much advocacy as other groups. but as you said, especially since covid, there's been a massive spike in anti asian racism, and that's something i don't think people are really taking seriously. there's this one scene in station 19 (cw for discussion of anti asian hate crimes) that i feel like addresses this so well. people are afraid to downplay the severity of anti black racism (which is understandable considering that anti black racism has been downplayed for hundreds of years), but they end up gaslighting other racial and ethnic minorities or even themselves about the other kinds of bigotry that exist. and as one of the characters states in the clip, "it's all bad."

and like, as a jewish person, i definitely feel a lot of solidarity with east asians because our struggles are dismissed in similar ways. for those of us who are light skinned, we're often told (in my experience, usually by non black people) that basically our skin is too light for people to care because "black people have it worse." people use any success our communities have had as a reason why what we experience Can't Possibly Be That Bad. but what they're missing is that it's all connected. the same people who are perpetuating anti blackness are likely perpetuating anti asian racism and antisemitism too. you can't get rid of anti black racism without dismantling white supremacy, and part of dismantling white supremacy is addressing anti asian racism and antisemitism. we can't just keep hacking away at one brick and expect the entire wall to come down. we have to bulldoze it all.

[binickandros]

Hey, fun fact! As a swing state voter whose state went to Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020, I voted Dem in both those elections. But if Biden is the nom in 2024 I will be voting 3rd party, since enabling a genocide should be a red line for anyone with even a shred of morality. If Trump wins because of that, that sucks, but I'm not willing to put my comfort and safety above the right of Palestinians to exist.

So you truly think Tr*mp would be better for Palestine, or any other oppressed peoples on the face of the planet? Genuinely. Is that what you think? Do you have amnesia? Have you suffered a head injury?

You can’t reverse 70 years of diplomacy in just a few weeks. You just can’t. If you think that Joe Biden, a man who lost both his wife and his son, doesn’t personally mourn the genocide happening right now while also being handcuffed by 70 years of American diplomatic policy, then I don’t know what to tell you. And if you Tr*mp gives a flying *fuck* about anything other than flattering his own ego, then once again. I don’t know what to tell you.

For all of you out there saying you’re going to vote 3rd party because of this and if Tr*mp wins “so be it,” do you think he would be a better choice in this situation? He wants to give drug dealers automatic death sentences. He wants to end birthright citizenship. He wants to reinstate his Muslim ban. He wants to put the guy who invented the child separation policy back in charge of ICE. But you think that guy would be doing a better job during a diplomatic and humanitarian crisis? The same guy who let hundreds of thousands of Americans die of covid just because he didn’t want to admit there was a problem?

We have no idea what’s being said behind closed doors. What we do know is that the Israeli government is a further right, more conservative, more anti-Palestinian government than they’ve ever had before. They’ve been itching for an excuse to do this exact thing, and very little short of full-on invasion is going to stop them.

Comparing what’s happening now to any of the bullshit Israel has pulled before doesn’t work, because Israel has never had a government so hell-bent on wiping any memory of Palestine off the face of the planet before.

I get you’re sick and upset and horrified by what’s happening in Palestine, and that you hate our government’s reaction to it. I feel the exact same way. But saying “my own comfort” like the things Tr*mp wants to do with a second term are tra la no big deal is…I’m sorry. It’s naive and childish. He wants to end Democracy as we know it. He wants to become a dictator. Would checks and balances stop him? Mostly, probably, IF Rs aren’t controlling the House and Senate too.

So I mean sit at home or vote 3rd party if that’s what you need to do, but when this country turns to absolute HELL (and I don’t say that lightly) for women, minorities, queer ppl, disabled ppl, poor ppl…at least you’ll sleep well knowing Tr*mp cares about Palestine.

OH wait no he fucking does not.

[thatbadadvice]

Help! I Am Experiencing The Highly Predictable and Eminently Logical Consequences of My Decision Not To Get Vaccinated And People Are Acting Like It's All My Fault!

Ask APW, A Practical Wedding, 20 August 2021:

My best friend is getting married outside of the US. I am her only bridesmaid/maid of honor and we have been best friends for 15+ years. Because of covid, things have been rocky. I have not been vaccinated. She has. The border is only letting vaccinated US citizens in. Therefore I cannot go. She basically hates me because I won’t get vaccinated. I’ve tried to explain my reasoning, but she honestly doesn’t care and has tunnel vision for the pro-vax. I feel like I am losing my best friend because of this. I plan on scheduling a photo shoot for us in her wedding dress and me in my bridesmaid’s dress for when she returns. I’m just not sure what else to do.

Dear (Former) Maid Of Honor,

It's reportedly been a rough 18 months, hasn't it? You see just hundreds and thousands of news reports — who knows if you can believe them! — about a "global pandemic" killing "millions" of people, supposedly over 700,000 people in the United States alone, but it's a little hard to square that with your personal gut feeling that COVID is just not that big of a deal! So it's really hard to know who to trust right now — on the one hand, we have near-universal agreement from medical experts and professional and governmental entities from around the globe that deadly COVID can largely be prevented with a very safe vaccine that is accessible widely in the United States, but on the other hand, this email forward from your brother-in-law's buddy says that mainlining a horse dewormer is the only way to protect yourself from the worldwide vaccine cabal! (And by the way, have you invested in the gold standard? Just something to think about, no pressure to buy now!)

Your bestie is honestly being a pretty big baby about not wanting to subject herself or others to a likely carrier of a deadly disease, or at least, that's probably what doctors and other sheeple would say. Some people, sadly your bestie included, get all het up about "the best medical science and knowledge available," and totally ignore the grainy meme their best friend saw on Facebook. And to top it off, she's letting this so-called peer-reviewed research that shows vaccines prevent serious COVID in the vast, vast majority of cases dictate the way she hosts a sizable group gathering of potential carriers and victims and everyone they know or even interact with? Come on! Talk about tunnel vision blocking out what really matters — having a party with you at it!

You made the free and full decision not to get vaccinated and that is simply not your fault, and you should not be held responsible for making this decision just because it's a decision you made on purpose, based on your own judgment, as a result of something you wanted specifically to do. What's more, your best friend, of all people, shouldn't try to make it your fault by having a destination wedding in a country that sounds like it is also going out of its way to oppress you personally by asserting some kind of sovereign right to govern itself. No one here is looking at the big picture, except for you — which means you're the only one seeing and standing up to the mass global vaccine conspiracy, engineered by hundreds and maybe even thousands of evil masterminds across time and geography and politics. Come to think of it, it sort of sounds like your best friend might be in on it. Why else would she decline to put herself and her loved ones at risk of contracting a dangerous virus? What other reasons could she possibly have to conduct her own fucking wedding on her own fucking terms, if not because she hates you personally for being so smart and free? She's being manipulated by the jab squad! This has deliberately engineered, decades-old pro-vax scheme written all over it!

Regardless of whether your best friend has been brainwashed by a vast and wide-ranging medical conspiracy, the bottom line is this: choosing not to get vaccinated is your personal choice, and nobody else has the right to make any choices related to your decision, because that would be a violation of your freedoms. Everybody has to like everything you do, and if they don't cheerily accept and accommodate your refusal to do one easy and free thing to keep yourself and the people around you healthy and safe, they're selfish, short-sighted assholes who hate you personally. There is literally no other reason not to want to travel internationally with and spend time in close quarters beside a willfully unvaccinated adult in the year 2021. (The photo shoot is a super cute idea, BTW — out of an abundance of caution, you might want to check on your local ICU's visitation rules before booking the photographer.)

[rainbowsky]

I am a straight turtle and it makes me sad to see toxic straight antis bashing WY and XZ. I think that has to do with their narcissistic cancerous personality and desire to ''own'' a celebrity and not with their sexual orientation. I would support them if they were asexual, pansexual, trans, bi or gay. I don't fantasize about dating them or objectify them. please know that not all straight fans are the same. I support the right to love whoever someone wants.

Hi Anon.

[ CW/TW talk about homophobia and homophobic violence ]

I don't think that people behave that way because they're straight, they behave that way because they are heteronormative and homophobic. That tends to skew toward straight people, but not because of who they love, rather because they have no concept of queerness in their lives and therefore no empathy for queer people.

That also comes with ignorance about what it means to be queer. Too often people think - because this is what's taught in our society - that queerness is about lust and perversion and promiscuity. They can't get their head around the idea that we are just like them, loving the people we love, wanting nothing more than to just be left to love and live in peace.

It's not helped at all by the way a lot of turtles talk about GGDD. The constant oversexualizing. The organizing of an entire fandom around top-bottom dynamics. Sometimes I can sort of see where some of the solos are coming from when they speak so hatefully about turtles.

If GG and DD had just been a fake CP for promo purposes, none of this would have mattered all that much. But the fact that they are real people in a real relationship - that just makes this so awful beyond words. It's incredibly creepy and homophobic for people to go to war over - let's be really clear about this - which one of these real human beings they think sticks their dick in the other.

Maybe someone can answer me this question because I can't imagine the oversexualizing is happening in straight CPs. Not nearly to the degree that it does with GGDD. But is this a fixture of all CPs, or just gay ones? I have a hard time imagining that Dilraba and Yang Yang CP fans are making posts focusing around the sex they think they're having. Not the kinds of posts they're making about GGDD.

I mean, GG grabs an endorsement for bedding, and DD endorses a detergent, and there are all these people online tittering about how 'handy' that is for them given their 'likely activities' when they are together. WTF people.

This really tweaks something inside me, as a queer person.

People might not realize, but it's exactly this type of oversexualizing of queer relationships that facilitates and even underpins a lot of the oppression and hate we experience. We are treated as debauched and uncouth and inherently perverse and obscene, and that has direct implications for how we are treated every day.

When a guy goes to his parents and says, "I love men. I have a boyfriend and we plan to get married," a lot of the horror that many parents feel comes directly from the thought that their kid is a pervert. Because queer relationships aren't treated as inherently romantic and sacred like straight ones are, they are treated as inherently sexual and perverse.

Why don't we talk about the AIDS crisis that killed hundreds of thousands of gay men in the 80's and 90s? Were you around during that time? Old enough to understand what was happening? Society let thousands of people die, and treated them monstrously in the process, because of the sexualization of the entire thing in people's minds. The world didn't approach this as a medical crisis, they approached it as a sexual, moral one.

The lengths that queer people had to go to in order to be seen as human beings by society at large, were extreme. They ended up bringing actual corpses of people who had died from AIDS, in open caskets to protest rallies. I mean, imagine this happening with COVID. Imagine people having to bring the ashes of loved ones to scatter on the White House lawn in order to get their voices heard and in order to inspire an appropriate response. This is what AIDS activists had to resort to.

How people think and talk about queer people - about anyone for that matter - has real implications for how those groups end up being treated. How people think and talk about targeted groups is usually a reflection of the value they are given by those people and by the world at large.

When I hear people saying homophobic things about a queer celebrity, those comments don't just land as hate speech against that celeb, they land as hate speech against me as well. Because those messages aren't just attacking that individual, they are attacking queerness as a class of people.

So if I get ranty about some of this stuff, I hope people can understand why this stuff matters, and the ways in which it all creates a climate and an environment that is unpleasant for queer people, and helps reinforce and perpetuate some very harmful ideas and behaviors aimed at queer people. And I hope people can understand why it's frankly triggering sometimes to hear people oversexualizing a real life gay couple to this degree.

It feels hostile at times, the constant barrage of sneering offhand remarks, comments about them 'walking funny' the day after they get together (such homophobic BS), interpreting every single thing they say or do as being somehow connected to sex, and then arguing over who they think is the top or bottom.

Every single visibly queer person has had these kinds of comments leveled at them in their daily lives. Depending on where someone grows up, these kinds of comments and ideas might have been a soundtrack playing in the background of every hateful, painful beating or traumatic encounter they had with people hostile to their existence.

And while we shouldn't necessarily be expected to conduct ourselves based on how one or two people with particular sensitivities might be affected, we should definitely consider how our words might land on others. We should definitely consider where our ideas come from and what they say about our attitudes, and about the sociopolitical realities around us. We should think about what we are reinforcing and helping to perpetuate with our attitudes and behavior.

And I would argue that when it comes to queer people, it's not just 'one or two people with particular sensitivities', in fact I'd argue that most queer people will experience a lot of this stuff as homophobic, hurtful and alienating. Many of us have been mercilessly bullied, sexualized and sneered at through our entire lives. These things are a continuation of all of that. They reflect the roots of all of that.

I know I'm not the 'target market' here. I am well aware that most of the fandom are women, many of them straight or else sexually inexperienced, and that it's inevitable that my comfort zone is going to be different from theirs, but god, how can anyone expect all this to be anything other than hostile for queer people, particularly queer men?

It's not solos who are creating this environment, it's turtles. So before we get too excited about what solos are up to, we should think about what's happening in our own backyards.

People don't think they're being homophobic, because they don't understand what homophobia really is. They think it's overt, monstrous hate. They think it's fear. It's so much more than that - it's dehumanization. It's 'othering'. It's objectification.

And oversexualization... that's among the biggest and most serious acts of homophobia. One of the most damaging. It is at the very rotten root of some of the worst oppression and hate in existence. It's why parents don't want their kids to be gay. It's why people fear hiring queer people, or having them live in their apartment building. it's why they don't want their kids going to school with queer people.

A little empathy goes a long way. A little respect goes a long way. A little restraint and self-reflection goes a long way.

[teasty]

speak up about the hate crimes against asian americans

whether or not you are in america or another country, the words need to be spread and i will be so entirely grateful to you if you reblog this post. whether you have one hundred followers or one, it doesn't matter.

since the up-rise in covid cases, there has been major discrimination against asians in america. this including murder, bigotry, sexual assault and hate crimes against asian americans. this has only started to become a major problem in the past few months (it has always been a problem, but people have taken the pandemic as a chance to spew their racist, bigoted and oppressive beliefs and aggression), but it's starting to drastically go up in ranks.

as a white american woman, i stand with those who are being oppressed, as it would be hypocritical of me as a fan and educator of asian culture to not speak up about such matters. if you are a fan of any asian person, have it be kpop, jpop, cpop, tpop or any other asian during this time, please spread this information shared below. if you have any benefit from asian culture (anime, kpop, ramen, anything) then spread this information to spread awareness of the terrible things happening in both my own country and others.

racism is never something to be tolerated. ever. the spread of information and educating people on such matters will help resolve this.

there's so much more than this came from. if you have the time, i wholeheartedly ask for you to research these matters to help educate yourself and others.

as a kpop fan, anime geek and a friend of many asian americans, please spread this information. this is important for not only me, but for all of us.

sources:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/12/covid-19-fueling-anti-asian-racism-and-xenophobia-worldwide#

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/asian-americans-face-a-wave-of-discrimination-during-the-pandemic

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/10/975722882/the-rise-of-anti-asian-attacks-during-the-covid-19-pandemic

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/02/27/asian-hate-crimes-attacks-fueled-covid-19-racism-threaten-asians/4566376001/

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/study-shows-rise-of-hate-crimes-violence-against-asian-americans-in-nyc-during-covid/2883215/

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/there-were-3-800-anti-asian-racist-incidents-mostly-against-n1261257

[vkelleyart]

For well-meaning white American friends/followers struggling to understand black anger.

Disclaimer: I’d like to begin by saying that this message should not in any way be interpreted as implying that all looting/violence has been committed by protesters, especially since criminal gangs, anarchists, and white power groups have been caught coopting violent protest with the intent to undermine the struggle for racial justice. Nor is it meant to diminish the tragic effect that looting/violent protest has had on the very marginalized communities that need the most help. It is simply a window into a perspective you might not have considered or explored, which I offer in hopes of cultivating empathy.

It may make you uncomfortable to read this. Please bear with me.

Systemic racism is a term you want to get familiar with. It's larger and more insidious than black people being killed and brutalized by law enforcement, which should give you an idea of just how big a beast we're dealing with. Now, this is important: We ALL are immersed in systemic racism every day of our lives and, especially if you are white, you will not be able to see the ways in which you benefit from the oppression of black people.

I can feel your tension from here––the voice within saying “not me.” This is not what you wanted to hear. You're not a racist, you think to yourself. You have friends of color. Maybe family, too. You'd never intentionally harm a black or brown individual on the basis of their skin color. 

You're a good person. I'm not here to argue that particular point.

That said, please integrate this concept. If you are white, you are benefiting from systemic racism, which hurts black and brown people. It is sewn into the fabric of our culture. It's entrenched in everything you take for granted, from your property to your education to your access to healthcare and food. Moreover, systemic racism is specifically constructed to protect you from being able to see its effect on your life and the lives of people of color. 

In other words, you have a blind spot, by default. It's not your fault you have it. You were born into this culture made to shelter you from its evils. 

It also doesn’t invalidate any trials or injustices you have experienced as a result of any other marginalized facets of your identity, since discrimination can also happen due to class, ability, gender, orientation, etc. But it does mean that your skin color doesn’t compound your risk of being killed/brutalized/imprisoned within a definitively racialized justice system.  

Now that you know this, it's imperative that you realize you are not an authority on the experiences of people of color. You have not lived it. You do not know. To pass judgment on the despair of black people is to reinstate and protect white dominance. Which is a definitively racist thing to do, even if you’re not aware of it.

Follow me here.

One way systemic racism oppresses people of color is by codifying the law in such a way that literally prevents people of color from overcoming their own oppression. By extension, law enforcement historically has functioned as the arm of white supremacy, enforcing laws that by and large serve to protect white dominance and insulate white culture from its own racial self-awareness. 

Consider the ways police once functioned to enforce Jim Crow laws and segregation. These patterns didn't just erase with legislation. After the Civil Rights movement, bigoted lawmakers buried inequality deeper into the law, coated it in sanitized legalese, and assigned punishments designed to disproportionately imprison black bodies compared to whites.

This is the legal system that police enforce regardless of whether the officers themselves are white or black. That alone would be enough to indict law enforcement for their hand in perpetuating systemic racism, but it's clearly worse than that. "Bad apples" abound, with FBI investigations revealing the infiltration of KKK and other white supremacist organizations into police forces across the United States. There is very little leadership when it comes to finding these bad apples, prosecuting them, and preventing their existence in the first place. 

Now try to understand that the problem is bigger than bad apples who will brutalize black individuals and execute them without a trial. You need only compare how meek entire swaths of police officers were in the presence of armed white men spitting in their faces demanding the end of the COVID lockdowns to the ferocious way they tear gassed and pelted with rubber bullets the black lives protesters who were on their knees.

When you lack ancestral wealth, when you are born into a world that resists your right to agency, independence, access and dignity in every single possible way, and then makes it impossible for you to stand up for your right to all those things, these are the conditions that spawn violence. 

Looters who say this is about more than George Floyd are correct. It's not just about George Floyd. It's about forced subjugation in all ways, shapes and forms, being denied the right to exist in public, being denied access to wealth, prosperity, healthcare, etc.

It's about knowing, hundreds of years post-slavery, that your body still does not belong to you. To walk with a target on your back. Every. Single. Day. To struggle to protect your children from a world that does not value their promise. 

In the comfort of your home, try now to imagine the despair. The hopelessness. The abject terror. The anger over trauma that began in your childhood but keeps happening over and over and over again and therefore can never heal. 

White people can never fully understand because it is not our lived experience––it's theirs.

When you are white, you are safe, seen, protected, and included in a legal system built to insulate you at the *direct expense* of black individuals. That's why all this sounds so radical. Only people of color have insight into this reality, but instead of listening, we keep telling them to stop interrupting our lives with their desperation to be seen.

How many of you have either said or heard someone say these things? Each one reinstates white dominance:

"How could he kneel during the national anthem? That's so disrespectful!"

"How dare they stop traffic and make me late for work!"

"Listen to that thuggish language! If they want equality so badly, they should rethink the way they talk to us!"

Now is the time to silence your judgment. You have no right. You have no clue. People of color do not owe you their patience, their kindness, their time, or their obedience. You've taken from them your whole life and yes, you were unaware, but you were complicit.

What you can do (which will have the long term effect of mitigating violence) is amplify their voices. Support their businesses. Post their bail. Vote them into office. Use your protection, your privilege, your voice to demand change like YOU are the one in the crosshairs. Nothing will change without good white people owning the struggle for equality, and in a racialized world, we cannot expect the courtesy of being asked nicely.

ETA: This barely scratches the surface, I know. There is so much more to say regarding how racism overlaps with homophobia, ablism, sexism, transphobia, to oppress and endanger black lives. Wherever you reside on the spectrum of privilege, I just hope this provides an inroad to further introspection before you share a critical meme or pass a sweeping judgment on the anger of your POC neighbors. <3  

[atauruswithtoomuchcaffiene]

lil nas / christian cry babies

Dude.... I don't know how many times we'll have to go through this same conversation, but since it's come up again, I want to give my take on it. I live in one of the most conservative cities in Colorado. When I was in high school, my country became the teen suicide capital of the nation. Of. The. Nation. When it was first happening, nobody really knew what was going on. In my school district alone, we had 3 suicides within two months. One of them including a middle school boy. When it started happening more, people were able to draw connections. One of those connections was that a large portion of these kids were heavily involved in New Life / Young life- a HUGE church in my city. Another connection was that those same kids were in the LGBTQIA+ community. Even after this came to the attention of the public, people made excuses. Whether it was people saying, "you can't prove it had anything to do with the church", or, "they just didn't believe enough", people made excuses. It was heartbreaking and exhausting to watch. Just last year, one of my friends from high school committed suicide. They were queer, and had recently come out as non-binary. COVID was at its height, so a small memorial for the family was planned. However, they were a huge part of the community and I wanted people to be able to say goodbye, so I hung up a pride flag with their name and a sharpie, left some flowers. Hundreds of people came and said their goodbyes. It is so frustrating to watch people dismiss the harm that the Christian community has caused the LGBTQIA+ community. While I understand that religion is a huge part of some people's life, it should not be applied to those around them. Religious freedom is the freedom for YOU to choose what YOU believe in, and want to follow. It is not, "I believe in this, so should you, I'm going to treat you like shit and make laws against your existence based off of it". There's an awesome thing called separation of church and state that's supposed to keep all of that from happening. Unfortunately, a lot of states don't give a *single* shit about that. This all came to my mind due to the Lil Nas video getting so much negative attention from Christians. While I understand why they would be offended, there's a few reasons why I just...do not care. a) People use religion for art all the time. And not just Christianity. So I'm not sure why Christians are acting like they're oppressed because someone decided to dance on satan for a music video. b) Context and culture are what it's all about. You have to acknowledge that Lil Nas has been put through absolute hell for his queer identity, including (but not limited to) the Christian church. While I understand taking offense to the video, what I absolutely cannot wrap my head around is what they AREN'T upset about. There are people getting harassed, beat, and killed for their queer identity to this day in the name of Christianity. And I could be wrong, but I'm pretty damn sure that nowhere in the bible does it say, "make sure to call gay people f*gs and murder transgender people". Yet people do it. All. The. Time. Using Christianity to back it up. And yes, there are many other religions that do "not agree" with homosexuality or being trans, but in the United States, Christianity is what people most commonly refer to when defending their homophobia/transphobia with religion. The majority of our lawmakers, if religious, are Christian. So it wouldn't really make sense for Lil Nas to talk about other religions that have not directly affected HIM.

[notmanagingmymischief]

00:00:00:00

Man.....I can't believe it's been a year since Unus Annus ended. Three hundred and sixty-five days have passed since that fateful day. Since the timer just...stopped ticking.

It's been, eh, quite a long year. But at the same time I almost can't believe that it's already here. November fourteenth. How's life gone? Has it gone?

Yeah. Yeah, I--I guess it has.

Covid hit hard in some areas--my town was lucky enough to not bare the brunt of it--and it's been all over the news. Hundreds of people dying, thousands being hospitalized. Tragedies all around the globe, people getting beaten and killed, all of this bad in the world. And yet through all of this we've kept our heads up.

Unus Annus taught me how to let go. Did it hurt like hell to lose it? Of course it did. It felt like losing a dear friend, a beloved family member. Like having your childhood ripped away, the rug pulled from under your feet with no warning nor care for if you fall. And boy did I fall. I cried for days over it, weeks even. Every time I went on YouTube just a reminder that it was gone. It was gone, not just on break. The channel, the videos. As if they never even existed. But I realized that what they had said all year was completely true; all good things must come to an end. Nothing can last forever, and though it took a while to accept that, I did...eventually. Gradually, I grew from the ashes of that beloved channel, learned to see things how they are. Temporary. And learned to understand, to accept, to let go.

Mark and Ethan taught me how to be free. Not to be angsty or depressing (even though this entire post is quite depressing), but I think it took them and their work to really show me that I didn't have to live in a box. They showed me that it wasn't all bad, that even through all this hell, we could still do things, we could be free. Even through the chains of oppression and such, there was still good in the world. They showed me that I could spread my wings, that I could do what I want and not have to worry about what other people thought of me. Go act like a cryptid in public, go embarrass myself with a ball gag in front of a mailman. Well, maybe not that one. It was funny, though. Mark showed me that we could take things in stride, that I don't have to be serious all the time but sometimes it's fun to be important, to be cared about. Ethan showed me that even though I'm absolutely insane, and it's hard for me to talk and to understand and to learn, that was okay. It's okay to let go and be wild, even when nobody else understands.

Unus and Annus taught me how to accept. Even though losing them was so horrible, I realized that they had prepared me for this. They had prepared me for the end ever since the first day. There was never a day when they said it would last. We always knew it would end, no matter how much we could beg and plead for them to stay. They had to go. And so will we. Just like a friend passing away, we have to let go and realize that it was always going to end. There's never a moment where we were falsely led to believe there was a possibility of a continuation. We had a year. And we used it well. It was quite possibly the best year of my life; I've never laughed and cried as hard as I did while watching those videos. I've never experienced such grief and torment while somehow still feeling like I'm on top of the world than when I was watching them. Punching a hole in the wall, freezing each other's balls off and talking about how they'd murder each other, all of that was so beautifully tragic. Just like the end. But they prepared me to accept the loss, just like how their channel taught me to let go.

I don't really...know what else to say. I don't think I'll ever be the same person as I was before Unus Annus, nor will I ever have as much fun as I did when it was alive. And now that it's gone, that it's been an entire year? It feels like so much has happened. So much, so little. So long, so short. It's hard to process, and I think today will be pretty hard for me, for all of us who were so dedicated to them. But we'll let go, we'll accept, and we'll move on. Just like we did last year. So, until we meet again.

Momento Mori.

Unus Annus.

[bitletsanddrabbles]

I’m tired.

I’m tired of feeling like I have to go to work, but that going to work makes me a medical risk to everyone.

I’m tired of going to visit relatives on their back patio, so they can have much needed human contact, and being told to put on a mask and go in through the garage rather than through the house if I need to relieve myself because who knows what I’ve picked up at work, what with the breakthrough cases and all.

I’m tire of wearing a mask.

I’m tired of people telling me not to touch their groceries when I’m wearing gloves and they aren’t and don’t look now, but a hundred other people without gloves have touched those groceries. That includes people who think Covid is a hoax and don’t wash their hands like they ought and go to parties and concerts like everything were hunky dory.

I’m tired of people insisting that the carts haven’t been sanitized and need to be resanitized. I’m especially tired of them doing this when I’m the one sanitizing the carts, so I know damn well that cart was sanitized, and doing it again, and then having them expect me to wipe the sanitizer off the handle when the entire point is to have it dry there.

I’m tired of supply chain disruptions and people complaining about limits on everything and going on and on about how they don’t understand why we can’t keep the things they want in stock, as if there weren’t thousands of other people who want the same damn things.

But what I’m most tired of is the people in the anti-mask, anti-vax, anti-Biden shirts and masks coming through and making sympathetic noises about how horrid it is for us poor workers to be forced to wear these stupid masks by the horrible, oppressive government when I am fully vaccinated and our stated had lifted the mask mandate for vaccinated people which means I had two months where I didn’t have to wear a mask until people like them brought delta variant in and made us mask up again!

So now my cousin and his family (vaccinated except for their youngest) have Covid, my other cousins are twice as paranoid about breakout cases, I’m back in a mask, and I am expected to sit there and be nice to the people who refused to do anything to make it better unless someone forced them to, and then whined about it.

I’m just....I’m so damn tired.

And when it is finally all over, I don’t get any more vacation than I would otherwise. No ‘extra time’ for us to all recuperate. Not for any of us. Just business as usual and a bunch of people celebrating the fact that they don’t have cabin fever anymore and can come and get whatever they want and gripe if we don’t have it and count on us to pack up their groceries.

[eretzyisrael]

How the West was Lost

Today the world we live in is dominated by a Western alliance that includes the US and much of Europe, along with some smaller players. This alliance is threatened by two major forces: radical Islam, whose most dangerous expression is the revolutionary Iranian regime; and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), still smarting from its oppression by the West prior to its emergence as a great power. I’ll discuss Iran first.

Last week, Iranian drones attacked a ship near the coast of Oman, killing the captain and a crew member. Apparently the motivation was a tenuous Israeli connection. More recently, a ship in the same region was hijacked, and several others were disabled, apparently by a cyberattack. Although Iran denies being connected with any of these incidents, most observers believe that the Iranian regime was responsible for them.

The Iranian regime finances and arms terrorist groups throughout the region, including in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Lebanon, which survived a brutal civil war, an attempt by the PLO to set up a “Palestinian state” within her borders, an Israeli intervention to throw out the PLO, and the systematic murders of members of its government by Syrian agents, has finally been brought to her knees by her exploitation by the Iranian-controlled Hezbollah. The Covid epidemic, and a massive explosion of a cache of Hezbollah’s explosives at the port that leveled a third of her capital city didn’t help.

Israel, which fought a vicious little war with Hezbollah in 2006, now lives in the shadow of 130,000 rockets located in South Lebanon. These rockets, which include ones with precision guidance systems that can strike within a few meters of targets anywhere in Israel, are deeply embedded in the civilian population, including private homes. Israeli defense officials have said that if Hezbollah activates its rockets, the IDF will be forced to employ massive firepower that will essentially destroy the country. The possibility of war breaking out due to escalation between Hezbollah and Israel is a constant threat.

Westerners who visit relatives in Iran or go there for business, educational, or other reasons are often arrested on trumped-up charges and held hostage, either for ransom or political advantage. Sometimes they are tortured. Conditions in prisons for Iranian political dissidents are atrocious, with torture and rape common. Hundreds of Iranians are executed every year, some for serious crimes like murder or rape, but also for “being gay, committing adultery, sex outside marriage and drinking alcohol.” Political opponents of the regime are sometimes charged with spying and executed as well.

Iranian women protesting Islamic dress codes that are forced on them are beaten, arrested, jailed, and tortured. Masih Alinejad, an Iranian feminist now living in exile in the US, was the target of a plot to kidnap her and bring her back to Iran. The plan was foiled by the FBI. Kidnapping and murdering dissidents abroad has been standard procedure for the regime since it came to power in 1979.

The new Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, has been nicknamed “the butcher of Tehran,” because of his responsibility for the execution of thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of people during a reign of terror in 1988. Raisi is considered one of the top candidates to succeed Ali Khamenei as Supreme Leader.

Last, but not least, is the regime’s plan to develop nuclear weapons, which is advancing rapidly. Whether such weapons would be directly used – something which is difficult to judge, due to the religious aspects of Iranian ideology – or whether they would be employed as an “umbrella” to shield its more conventional military aggression, it’s likely that the imminent attainment of nuclear capability would greatly change the balance of power in our region, and make war likely. The regime has consistently and explicitly threatened to “wipe Israel off the map,” and Israel takes these threats seriously.

The Iranian regime, while it is economically and militarily weak, has developed means of leveraging asymmetric warfare, which along with its aggressive and even messianic ideology makes it a serious threat – not just to the region, but to the Western alliance and its leader, the US, which it calls “the great Satan.” The threat is immediate in the short term, due to its nuclear program. It is a highly repressive society, and although there is a strong domestic opposition, attempts to overthrow the regime will be (and have been) met with great brutality.

As an Israeli, naturally I am concerned about the local and immediate threat of Iran. But the PRC is a far greater threat to the Western alliance. China is already a nuclear power, and has recently been reported building up its stock of weapons. China’s military and economic power is thousands of times greater than that of Iran, and is every bit as brutal in its repression of internal dissent.

Although China does not publicly announce that the US is Satan, it is quietly moving its pieces – military and economic – on the world’s chessboard to increase its power and influence. It operates an unprecedented system of industrial espionage that has already neutralized the technological superiority of the US. It is building infrastructure throughout the world under its “Belt and Road Initiative” that will not only provide its industries access to markets, but the large debts incurred by the recipients will provide China political leverage over them.

Chinese technology that is used in the most critical communications infrastructure may contain “backdoors” that allow access to traffic on the networks. Everything from mobile phones to PCs to military communications systems have been suspected to be compromised.

The US and other developed countries are experiencing a long-term transition of their economies away from agriculture and manufacturing and toward service-based economies. Manufacturing has moved to China and to other countries, most of which are, or soon will be, in the Chinese sphere of influence. At the time of the outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic, the US suffered a severe shortage of personal protective equipment and medical devices such as masks and so forth. It was simply not produced in the USA.

China does not (as far as I know) export violent terrorism as does Iran. But it has been engaging in territorial expansionism in all directions. Chinese pressure on Hong Kong and Taiwan make headlines, while China quietly “nibbles away” at Japanese islands, territories under Indian control, bits of Nepal and Bhutan, and so on. In the South China Sea, China has built artificial islands which have greatly extended its territorial waters and provided locations for military installations, including missile silos.

I have not discussed the possible exploitation of the Covid-19 epidemic. Certainly the misinformation and disinformation that was provided by China at the time of its outbreak exacerbated the harm to Western societies. There is even a credible argument that once the disease had become established in Wuhan, authorities there – under the direction of the national government – deliberately allowed the residents of the city to travel worldwide during the Chinese New Year period, knowing that this would spread the disease.

The Chinese strategy is safer and surer, if somewhat slower than the Iranian one. But the West has done little to protect itself, either against the immediate danger of nuclear weapons in the hands of a proven rogue aggressor state, or the long-term combined economic, military, and possibly biological domination of a rising totalitarian superstate. Western nations should be confiscating the Iranian regime’s nuclear toys, reestablishing self-sufficient economies, protecting their technological intellectual property, and strengthening their military forces. They are not doing any of these things.

Instead, the most advanced states of the West are self-destructing over issues of race and gender identity.

Abu Yehuda

[1americanconservative]

📷 Michael Yon@MichaelYon 📷4 hours ago

Afghanistan SITREP From sourceOCC, 12:00 AMWestern nations race to complete Afghan evacuation as deadline loomsWestern nations rushed to complete the evacuation of thousands of people from Afghanistan on Wednesday as the Aug. 31 deadline for the withdrawal of foreign troops drew closer with no sign that the country's new Taliban rulers might allow an extension.In one of the biggest such airlifts ever, the United States and its allies have evacuated more than 70,000 people, including their citizens, NATO personnel and Afghans at risk, since Aug. 14, the day before the Taliban swept into the capital Kabul to bring to an end a 20-year foreign military presence.U.S. President Joe Biden said U.S. troops in Afghanistan faced mounting danger and aid agencies warned of an impending humanitarian crisis for the population left behind.Biden said they were on pace to meet the deadline, set under an agreement struck with the Islamist group last year to end America's longest war."The sooner we can finish, the better," Biden said on Tuesday. "Each day of operations brings added risk to our troops."Two U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was growing concern about the risk of suicide bombings by Islamic State at the airport.British foreign minister Dominic Raab said the deadline for evacuating people was up to the last minute of the month.Tens of thousands of Afghans fearing persecution have thronged Kabul's airport since the Taliban takeover, the lucky ones securing seats on flights.Many people milled about outside the airport - where soldiers from the United States, Britain and other nations were trying to maintain order amid the dust and heat - hoping to get out.They carried bags and suitcases stuffed with possessions, and waved documents at soldiers in the hope of gaining entry. One man, standing knee-deep in a flooded ditch, passed a child to man above."I learned from an email from London that the Americans are taking people out, that's why I've come so I can go abroad," said one man, Aizaz Ullah.While the focus is now on those trying to flee, the risk of starvation, disease and persecution is rising for the rest of the population, aid agencies say.1/4A U.S. Marine with the Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force-Crisis Response-Central Command (SPMAGTF-CR-CC) escorts a child to his family during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan,"There's a perfect storm coming because of several years of drought, conflict, economic deterioration, compounded by COVID," David Beasley, executive director of the U.N. World Food Programme, told Reuters in Doha, calling for the international community to donate $200 million in food aid."The number of people marching towards starvation has spiked to now 14 million."The EU said this week it was planning to quadruple aid and was seeking coordination with the United Nations on delivery as well as safety guarantees on the ground.The U.N. human rights chief said she had received credible reports of serious violations by the Taliban, including "summary executions" of civilians and Afghan security forces who had surrendered. The Taliban have said they will investigate reports of atrocities.The Taliban's 1996-2001 rule was marked by harsh sharia law, with many political rights and basic freedoms curtailed and women severely oppressed. Afghanistan was also a hub for anti-Western militants, and Washington, London and others fear it might become so again.LAND ROUTESA NATO country diplomat in Kabul, who declined to be identified, said several international aid groups were desperate to get Afghan staff out and neighbouring countries should open their land borders to allow more people to leave."Iran, Pakistan and Tajikistan should be pulling out far more people using either air or land routes. It's vital air and land routes are used at a very fast pace," the diplomat told Reuters.The Taliban said all foreign evacuations must be completed by Aug. 31, and asked the United States to stop urging talented Afghans to leave, while also trying to

persuade people at the airport to go home, saying they had nothing to fear."Foreign troops should withdraw by the deadline. It will pave the way for resumption of civilian flights," Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said on Twitter."People with legal documents can travel through commercial flights after Aug. 31."The Dutch government, echoing some other governments, said it was all but certain that many people eligible for asylum would not be taken out in time.Dutch troops had managed to get more than 100 people to Kabul airport, Foreign Minister Sigrid Kaag said, but hundreds of others risked being left behind.The U.S.-backed government collapsed as the United States and its allies withdrew troops two decades after they ousted the Taliban in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States by al Qaeda, whose leaders had found safe haven in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.Taliban leaders have begun talks on forming a government.OCC, 1:45 AMWhat Will the Taliban Do With Their New US Weapons?With its quick seizure of power, the Taliban also acquired U.S. military equipment left behind by the withdrawal or abandoned by Afghan forces.What Will the Taliban Do With Their New US Weapons? Capturing the enemy’s weapons has been a standard guerrilla tactic for centuries. The American Army could not have succeeded against King George III without seizing the king’s food and armaments. It is one thing to capture weapons and other materiel; it is another to be given the enemy’s gear on a silver platte In the images of the Taliban fighters flooding the streets of Kabul, one detail attracts attention: the lack of the ubiquitous Kalashnikov. Few Taliban appearing now carry the signature weapon of insurgent fighters, the AK-47, and its countless variants from the handmade PakistaniA Taliban fighter stands guard at a checkpoint in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, August 22, 2021.Capturing the enemy’s weapons has been a standard guerrilla tactic for centuries. The American Army could not have succeeded against King George III without seizing the king’s food and armaments. It is one thing to capture weapons and other material; it is another to be given the enemy’s gear on a silver platter. In the images of the Taliban fighters flooding the streets of Kabul, one detail attracts attention: the lack of the ubiquitous Kalashnikov. Few Taliban appearing now carry the signature weapon of insurgent fighters, the AK-47, and its countless variants from the handmade Pakistani versions to the updated Russian AK-19. Most of the Taliban in Kabul’s street seems to prefer American M4 carbines and M16 rifles with their many gadgets attached, from expensive optics to laser sights and flashlights, an uncommon picture in contrast to just a few weeks earlier. The answer to the question concerning the source of these small arms is straightforward: war looting. Another and more important question needs an answer: The fate of the extensive military materiel that the U.S. left behind during its withdrawal or that which was in the hands of the Afghan forces that melted so quickly away as the Taliban advanced. As a landlocked country, Afghanistan makes moving military materiel back to the U.S. neither an easy nor an economical endeavor. Much was removed anyway, and much handed over to Afghan government forces. What couldn’t be taken back, was left. Blowing up in situ large quantities of war materiel is cheaper than shipping it out of Afghanistan. Still, that option creates toxic legacies that would affect the local population for a long time, as happened in Iraq. Nevertheless, lack of time and unreasonable expectations on the survivability of the Afghan security forces caught the Pentagon by surprise. According to Joshua Reno, author of “Military Waste: The Unexpected Consequences of Permanent War Readiness,” recirculating weapons in the places a military force leaves when the battle is over will augment the risks that small arms or other weapons are going to fuel and intensify civil war or instability. According

to a top Pentagon logistics specialist, there is no clear record of the quantity and quality of military equipment left behind. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan stated that the Taliban probably would not give such materiel back to the U.S. at the airport, adding a note of farce to an already disastrous situation. One of the immediate conclusions drawn from the less-than-optimal U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan is how the U.S. can minimize the chances of future disasters stemming out of the Taliban’s use and trade of abandoned U.S. and Afghan military materiel. U.S. military and intelligence had already walked that path in the 1990s, after the anti-Soviet mujahedeen pushed out the Soviet Union. The task at that time was to recover Stingers, highly sophisticated portable surface to air missiles. In order to have a chance against the Soviet Union’s heavily armed attack helicopter Mil Mi-24, essentially a flying tank, the U.S. had equipped the mujahedeen with Stingers in the 1980s. As soon as the war ended with the Soviet defeat, the possibility of those Stingers being employed for terrorist attacks or falling into hostile government hands ignited a hunt to get the portable missiles back. The U.S. intelligence community scrambled to buy them back, allegedly at $100,000 per unit, or obtain the portable missiles by any means. Steve Coll in his acclaimed book “Ghost Wars,” mentioned that when the Taliban seized Kabul in 1996, an estimated 600 of the 2,300 Stingers provided by the CIA during the Soviet-Afghan war remained unaccounted for. Tehran was competing in the same race to acquire as many of the wayward Stingers as possible. Providentially, the threat of a terrorist using a Stinger to shoot down an American passenger plane did not materialize, nor did the Taliban develop a successful insurgent anti-aircraft campaign with the leftovers. And yes, history repeats itself. Today’s quantity and quality of weapons that the Taliban are hoarding since their lightning advance will arguably have unintended negative consequences far from Afghan borders. Sales to hostile governments and on the black market may provide additional revenue to the Taliban and increase uncertainty and instability not only in Central Asia but beyond. Militant organizations such as the Haqqani network, already in Kabul, possess the capability to smuggle weapons from Afghanistan to the Middle East, the African continent, and even to Southeast Asia. Possible scenarios range from small arms used to foster instability in the region or night vision goggles and military-grade communication equipment reaching other militant groups, including the Islamic State. More significant items now in the hands of the Taliban, such as helicopters, can neither be maintained nor flown due to a lack of Taliban pilots and trained maintenance crews. The materiel, however, could be handed over to countries interested in sensitive U.S. technology, and that list is not short. The war looting includes armored Humvees, aircraft, and attack helicopters, as well as military scout drones. Most of the Afghan Air Force’s aircraft were used by Afghan pilots to escape into neighboring Central Asian countries as Kabul fell, but the number still parked on Afghan airfields is unknown. The fall of Kabul, predictably, has been compared with the fall of Saigon. Most of the analogies point to helicopters leaving the roof of the American Embassy. However, another analogy worth referencing is related to the North Vietnamese political commissars’ scrambling to reach the ARVN and South Vietnamese police’s archives to locate the list of intelligence officials and collaborators. In an era of Big Data and databases stored in the cloud, there is a sudden realization that deleting data from the servers and smashing hard drives is not a bulletproof solution. Moreover, there are severe concerns that hundreds of military biometric devices, abandoned in U.S. bases, left a digital breadcrumb trail that the Taliban will use to locate and target former security officials and government supporters.

Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment, in short HIIDE, devices are meant to digitally identify friends from foes via a biometric reading, against databases with fingerprints, iris scans and distinctive facial features. Similarly, social media users in Kabul left a digital trail not only on their mobile phones but also on the internet. It’s now digital proof that can be used against them when the Taliban feels confident of their grip on power and local media control. Discounting the Taliban’s capabilities in accessing actionable digital intelligence could be a mistake. Besides the probable support that the Taliban could receive from foreign intelligence services, it is not wise to disparage the ingenuity of militant groups in harnessing low-tech schemes to counter high-tech weaponry. An example is provided by the case of pro-Iranian militants in Iraq using $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to monitor the unblinking eyes of U.S. drones. The threat of insurgents intercepting drone video feeds has been patched with encrypted communication; however, examples of low-tech tactical efficiencies abound. Since a decade ago, the Taliban have been using off-the-shelf commercial drones to shoot propaganda films and provide aerial scouting and to guide kamikaze flying bombs. This is a playbook borrowed by Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The recent Taliban capture of Boeing ScanEagle drones, developed for surveillance, could add a new capability to the fighters’ growing arsenal. Also, their tactical use could evolve into alternative and deadly options. From a propaganda perspective, the videos of Taliban fighters parading in Afghan cities with their U.S. war trophies increase the criticism of the Biden administration’s withdrawal decision. Although it remains unclear how the Taliban will govern Afghanistan, the propaganda value of their white flags waving in the wind from the top of U.S.-made Humvees inspires other jihadist and radical Islamist groups to imitate the Taliban’s actions. The perception of augmented combat capabilities provided by the war looting could also push Central Asian countries to strengthen their bilateral security ties with Moscow and Beijing, no matter what, in the face of a Taliban with modern equipment. Sun Tzu, the revered author of the “Art of War,” quoted shoulder to shoulder with von Clausewitz in contemporary Western military PowerPoint presentations, states that the golden rule is to know your enemy. Probably 20 years were not enough.OCC, 2:55 AM Biden, Stoltenberg

[tomfooleryprime]

The Deep Space Nine episode “Statistical Probabilities” is my favorite Trek story of all time. Don’t remember it? That’s not surprising.

There are more than fifty year’s worth of articles listing the best episodes of Star Trek across the various series with passionate defenses. The same episodes generally top these lists, even if the order shifts around. Does “City of the Edge of Forever” or “Inner Light” deserve top billing? Or should it be “Yesterday’s Enterprise” or “Far Beyond the Stars?”

Perhaps the reason no one ever considers this episode is it’s less of a story and more of a thought experiment. In today’s highly polarized environment, this inconspicuous DS9 episode feels more salient than ever.

In 2020, social media fights devolve into reductive arguments where everyone is assumed to be either a nationalist or a socialist and depending on your worldview, one of those words is a dirty slur and the other is a badge of honor. Even everyday discourse outside of social media has seen us turn words like “patriotism” and “treason” into weapons to suit narratives, with both sides firmly believing they are the true patriots while the other side is comprised of traitors.

I get caught up in this myself. I don’t want to get into my own political views or start a “both sides” argument, so this is where I turn it over to Star Trek and Dr. Julian Bashir, who finds himself caught in an impossible situation that calls into question the very nature of patriotism and treachery and shows how easily the line between those two concepts can be blurred.

A little background if you’re not familiar—in the year 2374, the Federation is made up of thousands of member planets. War is rare, poverty has been eliminated, aliens of all different species live in general harmony with each other. Then the Dominion, an interstellar military empire run by shape-shifting aliens shows up and wants to annex the Federation under its control.

The Federation, understandably miffed at the Dominion’s plans for stripping them of their autonomy, tells the Dominion to kick rocks. A war breaks out. Unfortunately, the Federation is outclassed, outgunned, and outnumbered in just about every way. It’s tough to win a war against an opponent with a larger force, superior technology, and aliens who can shape shift into literally anything, from a table to a Federation starship captain, making them able to easily swipe any intelligence they want on a whim.

It’s also important to note that the Dominion, while an imperialist superpower, isn’t necessarily out to break, exploit, and subjugate the spirits of the people under its control. For planets willing to peacefully submit to Dominion rule, life for the average citizen probably continues on more or less the same—people probably still have barbecues and go to church and do whatever they did before—they just trade one government for another. For planets not willing to yield, punishment is swift and severe.

And this is where “Statistical Probabilities” comes in. Dr. Julian Bashir is tasked with working with several genius “augments” to develop a statistical model to predict the outcome of a Federation-Dominion War. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take the augments long to recognize the Federation will never win with its current resources. They determine if the Federation fights back, it will suffer the loss of hundreds of billions of casualties and Dominion reprisal for their resistance will make life very brutal for the survivors.

However, they calculate that if the Federation peacefully surrenders, there will be no casualties and no Dominion reprisals—the only thing that will functionally change is who people make out their tax checks to. Not only that, with the saved lives and resources of averting a catastrophic zero sum war, the Federation will position itself to develop technologies within a few generations to successfully defeat the Dominion and re-declare independence in the future.

So the augments recommend immediate and strategic surrender. Dr. Bashir is disheartened to hear this, but he sees the logic in temporary capitulation because he’s a medical doctor and the idea of saving hundreds of billions of lives has to fit into that “first do no harm” ethic, surely. So you know what’s coming.

So he tells his higher ups what they’ve discovered, and you can imagine how that goes.

So the augments’ next play is to go full WikiLeaks. They calculate that if they were to give the Federation’s battleplans to the Dominion, the war would be short, casualties would be minimal, and the Dominion would still treat them relatively well once all the member states learned to toe the line.

This is the part I’ve chewed on for decades. When is treason not treason, or at least, when is treason the better option?

I served in the U.S. Army. I took an oath to protect and defend the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The idea of freely giving the enemy all the actionable intelligence they need to defeat my country makes me nauseated. The only thing that makes me sicker is the thought of most of my fellow citizens being senselessly murdered if I didn’t go all Benedict Arnold on their asses.

The dictionary says treason is “the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government.” But is betraying your country and betraying your government always the same thing? A country is made up of people, and a government is made up of a few people who should, in theory, support what is best for the greatest number of citizens. So what is to be done when a few people in power decide they would rather die free than live in subjugation, even if it comes at massive cost to the citizenry they have a duty to serve? A conversation that goes like this.

As an American, I fully appreciate that many of my fellow citizens have a lust for freedom that borders on psychopathy, but I personally accept that most of life is lived in shades of gray and not in black and white. There’s a pretty wide spectrum between total freedom and total slavery and life at either of the extremes would be pretty bleak. But there’s also no apparent consensus on what even constitutes independence or oppression.

Just look at the debate over masks in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. On the one hand, you could argue being required to wear a mask is a total violation of your personal freedom. On the other hand, you could argue we wear masks so that you can be free to live your life as safely as possible. Perhaps the truth is actually somewhere in the middle—wearing a mask is a small concession of individual freedom for the greater freedom of everyone.

I’ve thought about “Statistical Probabilities” and Dr. Bashir’s conundrum a lot in recent years. Would he be a patriot for supporting his government, even if he knows it would result in unimaginable death and suffering in the name of the theoretical ideal of freedom, or would he be a patriot for betraying his government for the sake of a practical outcome, which is saving the lives of hundreds of billions of people and ensuring the quality of their lives is bearable? 

And the reality is he’ll be a traitor no matter what he does, but what kind of traitor is better? I have a sneaking suspicion that how people answer this question is probably a powerful predictor of their political affiliation, and how quickly they answer it is directly correlated to the amount of wisdom they possess.

I won’t tell you how he gets out of this awful pickle because of course he does. Dr. Bashir is fictional and exists in a universe where everyone gets a tidy copout in the end. Us mortals in the real world are rarely so lucky and we’re doomed for eternity to grapple with impossible questions, each of us more convinced than the last that our solution is the right solution and everyone else it’s everyone else who’s the traitor.

[thevividgreenmoss]

If Delhi is breaking down, what should we imagine is happening in villages in Bihar, in Uttar Pradesh, in Madhya Pradesh? Where tens of millions of workers from the cities, carrying the virus with them, are fleeing home to their families, traumatised by their memory of Modi’s national lockdown in 2020. It was the strictest lockdown in the world, announced with only four hours’ notice. It left migrant workers stranded in cities with no work, no money to pay their rent, no food and no transport. Many had to walk hundreds of miles to their homes in far-flung villages. Hundreds died on the way.

This time around, although there is no national lockdown, the workers have left while transport is still available, while trains and buses are still running. They’ve left because they know that even though they make up the engine of the economy in this huge country, when a crisis comes, in the eyes of this administration, they simply don’t exist. This year’s exodus has resulted in a different kind of chaos: there are no quarantine centres for them to stay in before they enter their village homes. There’s not even the meagre pretence of trying to protect the countryside from the city virus.

These are villages where people die of easily treatable diseases like diarrhoea and tuberculosis. How are they to cope with Covid? Are Covid tests available to them? Are there hospitals? Is there oxygen? More than that, is there love? Forget love, is there even concern? There isn’t. Because there is only a heart-shaped hole filled with cold indifference where India’s public heart should be.

Early this morning, on 28 April, news came that our friend Prabhubhai has died. Before he died, he showed classic Covid symptoms. But his death will not register in the official Covid count because he died at home without a test or treatment. Prabhubhai was a stalwart of the anti-dam movement in the Narmada valley. I stayed several times at his home in Kevadia, where decades ago the first group of indigenous tribespeople were thrown off their lands to make room for the dam-builders and officers’ colony. Displaced families like Prabhubhai’s still remain on the edges of that colony, impoverished and unsettled, transgressors on land that was once theirs.

There is no hospital in Kevadia. There’s only the Statue of Unity, built in the likeness of the freedom fighter and first deputy prime minister of India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who the dam is named after. At 182 metres high, it’s the tallest statue in the world and cost US$422m. High-speed elevators inside take tourists up to view the Narmada dam from the level of Sardar Patel’s chest. Of course, you cannot see the river valley civilisation that lies destroyed, submerged in the depths of the vast reservoir, or hear the stories of the people who waged one of the most beautiful, profound struggles the world has ever known – not just against that one dam, but against the accepted ideas of what constitutes civilisation, happiness and progress. The statue was Modi’s pet project. He inaugurated it in October 2018.

The friend who messaged about Prabhubhai had spent years as an anti-dam activist in the Narmada valley. She wrote: “My hands shiver as I write this. Covid situation in and around Kevadia Colony grim.”

The precise numbers that make up India’s Covid graph are like the wall that was built in Ahmedabad to hide the slums Donald Trump would drive past on his way to the “Namaste Trump” event that Modi hosted for him in February 2020. Grim as those numbers are, they give you a picture of the India-that-matters, but certainly not the India that is. In the India that is, people are expected to vote as Hindus, but die as disposables.

...As this epic catastrophe plays out on our Modi-aligned Indian television channels, you’ll notice how they all speak in one tutored voice. The “system” has collapsed, they say, again and again. The virus has overwhelmed India’s health care “system”.

The system has not collapsed. The “system” barely existed. The government – this one, as well as the Congress government that preceded it – deliberately dismantled what little medical infrastructure there was. This is what happens when a pandemic hits a country with an almost nonexistent public healthcare system. India spends about 1.25% of its gross domestic product on health, far lower than most countries in the world, even the poorest ones. Even that figure is thought to be inflated, because things that are important but do not strictly qualify as healthcare have been slipped into it. So the real figure is estimated to be more like 0.34%. The tragedy is that in this devastatingly poor country, as a 2016 Lancet study shows, 78% of the healthcare in urban areas and 71% in rural areas is now handled by the private sector. The resources that remain in the public sector are systematically siphoned into the private sector by a nexus of corrupt administrators and medical practitioners, corrupt referrals and insurance rackets.

Healthcare is a fundamental right. The private sector will not cater to starving, sick, dying people who don’t have money. This massive privatisation of India’s healthcare is a crime.

The system hasn’t collapsed. The government has failed. Perhaps “failed” is an inaccurate word, because what we are witnessing is not criminal negligence, but an outright crime against humanity. Virologists predict that the number of cases in India will grow exponentially to more than 500,000 a day. They predict the death of many hundreds of thousands in the coming months, perhaps more. My friends and I have agreed to call each other every day just to mark ourselves present, like roll call in our school classrooms. We speak to those we love in tears, and with trepidation, not knowing if we will ever see each other again. We write, we work, not knowing if we will live to finish what we started. Not knowing what horror and humiliation awaits us. The indignity of it all. That is what breaks us.

...But that is only one part of the story. The other part is that the man with no feelings, the man with empty eyes and a mirthless smile, can, like so many tyrants in the past, arouse passionate feelings in others. His pathology is infectious. And that is what sets him apart. In north India, which is home to his largest voting base, and which, by dint of sheer numbers, tends to decide the political fate of the country, the pain he inflicts seems to turn into a peculiar pleasure.

Fredrick Douglass said it right: “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” How we in India pride ourselves on our capacity to endure. How beautifully we have trained ourselves to meditate, to turn inward, to exorcise our fury as well as justify our inability to be egalitarian. How meekly we embrace our humiliation.

As for Modi, is resigning from your crimes a feasible proposition? Perhaps he could just take a break from them – a break from all his hard work. There’s that $564m Boeing 777, Air India One, customised for VVIP travel – for him, actually – that’s been sitting idle on the runway for a while now. He and his men could just leave. The rest of us will do all we can to clean up their mess.

No, India cannot be isolated. We need help.

Arundhati Roy

[unadulteredunpopularopinions]

Is Simu Liu Racist? Era of distrust?

Simu Liu’s tweet from 2012: I thought I was at a NIcki Minaj concert for 20 minutes before I realized I was just watching a homeless man yell at a pigeon....

Before I start, this tweet was from 2012....9 whole years ago. People really must have the patience to literally scroll through decades of tweets just to find one thing they may not like.

Now, do I find his tweet to be racist?

No. There was nothing in the comment that had to do with ethnicity at all. You can’t equal criticism to racism every time you don’t like what someone says. At most, I just found the joke to be corny. But hey, everyone has a different type of humor. In lamens terms, he doesn’t like her music. That is fine. 

Everyone has a right to their own opinion. He doesn’t HAVE to like her music and he has the right to comment on his own page just like anyone else expresses their likes/dislikes online. He said nothing about her character, her as a person. He only commented on the music. This has nothing to do with ethnicity.

I know there is tension, higher than ever, within many ethnicities right now (the tension always existed but this recent violence/increase was sparked off by a buffoon in the white house making racists feel comfortable/bold when they have no repercussions). However, this specific incident is not due to racism.

If I were to strictly make this an issue between asian and black people (because racism is really a global issue/illness), racism against black people is prevalent in the asian community. However, racism against asian’s is also prevalent in the black community. Of course, not ALL of each community is racist, but there is systematic racism prevalent in both.

As a black woman, I get annoyed when people say black people can’t be racist because racism is systematic oppression meh meh meh meh. But, asian people are oppressed just as black people are. We have the history of slavery for hundreds of years and systematic oppression against black people in America. 

Most people don’t know, but many different ethnicities were also called the N-word and compared to gorillas when they came to America for a better life/the American Dream (I can’t handle the hypocrisy of hating immigrants when the english settlers/villains were immigrants themselves or rather hailed from immigrants). The word “gook” (no offense, I know many of us won’t know what that word is) literally means country. Koreans came to America, and obviously there were communication issues between people of two different countries. But the “americans” (really english settlers/villains used that word against them as a slur. Even though they were just trying to show happiness at being able to come to America.

Asians have historically been looked over in America. There have been a multitude of media that made fun of their accents, features and food over the years. America had also removed them from their homes, sold their homes and businesses, and put them in concentration camps due to the bombing on pearl harbor. (Again this is America treating Asian Americans bad for what Asian countries did when they are actually in fact....American.)

Now, we have Asian Americans being attacked because people are mad at covid-19 which Trump bitch ass increased the temperament of the racists and made it a “china”: issue. It makes me sick to my stomach when I see the news coverage. You have people literally attacking the elderly and women. Not that I agree with people attacking anyone because it literally does not solve anything, but why don’t these cowards ever try and step to someone that looks like Dwayne Johnson?? (and if you think someone is diseased...why enter their personal space??? This proves that these mfs are dumb as fuck,)

I hate when people who also hailed from immigrants in America tell other people (who are often actually had been born in America as well) to go back to their country...sure bitch as soon as you go back to yours then. You have no more right than anyone else. Check your misplaced entitlement. You have done nothing good and contributed nothing positive to this country. Sit your ass down. And shut your ass up.

[creepingsharia]

I Now Better Understand the ‘Good German’

Apathy in the face of tyranny turns out not to be a German or Russian characteristic.

I Now Better Understand the ‘Good German’

As my listeners and readers can hopefully attest, I have been on a lifelong quest to understand human nature and human behavior. I am sad to report that I have learned more in the last few years, particularly in 2020, than in any equivalent period of time.

One of the biggest revelations concerns a question that has always plagued me: How does one explain the “good German,” the term used to describe the average, presumably decent German, who did nothing to hurt Jews but also did nothing to help them and did nothing to undermine the Nazi regime? The same question could be asked about the average Frenchman during the Vichy era, the average Russian under Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev and their successors, and the millions of others who did nothing to help their fellow citizens under oppressive dictatorships.

These past few years have taught me not to so quickly judge the quiet German, Russian, etc. Of course, I still judge Germans who helped the Nazis and Germans who in any way hurt Jews. But the Germans who did nothing? Not so fast.

What has changed my thinking has been watching what is happening in America (and Canada and Australia and elsewhere, for that matter).

The ease with which tens of millions of Americans have accepted irrational, unconstitutional and unprecedented police state-type restrictions on their freedoms, including even the freedom to make a living, has been, to understate the case, sobering.

The same holds true for the acceptance by most Americans of the rampant censorship on Twitter and all other major social media platforms. Even physicians and other scientists are deprived of freedom of speech if, for example, they offer scientific support for hydroxychloroquine along with zinc to treat COVID-19 in the early stages. Board-certified physician Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, who has saved hundreds of COVID-19 patients from suffering and/or death, has been banned from Twitter for publicizing his lifesaving hydroxychloroquine and zinc protocol.

Half of America—the non-Left half—is afraid to speak their minds at virtually every university, movie studio and large corporation—indeed, at virtually every place of work. Professors who say anything that offends the Left fear being ostracized if they have tenure and being fired if they do not. People are socially ostracized, publicly shamed and/or fired for differing with Black Lives Matter, as America-hating and white-hating a group as has ever existed. And few Americans speak up. On the contrary, when BLM protestors demand that diners outside of restaurants raise their fists to show their support of BLM, nearly every diner does.

So, then, who are we to condemn the average German who faced the Gestapo if he didn’t salute Hitler or the average Russian who faced the NKVD (the secret police and intelligence agency that preceded the KGB) if he didn’t demonstrate sufficient enthusiasm for Stalin? Americans face the left’s cancel culture, but not left-wing secret police or reeducation camps. (At least not yet—I have little doubt the Left would send outspoken conservatives to reeducation camps if they could.)

I have come to understand the average German living under Nazism and the average Russian living under communism for another reason: the power of the media to brainwash.

As a student of totalitarianism since my graduate studies at the Russian Institute of Columbia University’s School of International Affairs (as it was then known), I have always believed that only in a dictatorship could a society be brainwashed. I was wrong. I now understand that mass brainwashing can take place in a nominally free society.

The incessant left-wing drumbeat of the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and almost every other major newspaper, plus The Atlantic, the New Yorker, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, NPR, all of Hollywood and almost every school from kindergarten through graduate school, has brainwashed at least half of America every bit as effectively as the German, Soviet, and Chinese Communist press did (and in the latter case, still does). That thousands of schools will teach the lie that is the New York Times‘ “1619 Project” is one of countless examples.

Prior to the lockdowns, I flew almost every week of the year, so I was approached by people who recognized me on a regular basis. Increasingly, I noticed that people would look around to see if anyone was within earshot and then tell me in almost a whisper: “I support Trump” or “I’m a conservative.” The last time people looked around and whispered things to me was when I used to visit the Soviet Union.

In Quebec this past weekend, as one can see on a viral video, a family was fined and members arrested because six—yes, six—people gathered to celebrate the new year. A neighbor snitched on them, and the celebrants were duly arrested. The Quebec government lauded the snitches and asked for more public “collaboration.”

Snitches are likewise lauded and encouraged in some Democrat-run states and cities in America (Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti in March: “Snitches get rewards”) and by left-wing governments in Australia. Plenty of Americans, Canadians, and Australians are only too happy to snitch on people who refuse to lock down their lives.

All this is taking place without concentration camps, without a Gestapo, without a KGB and without Maoist reeducation camps.

That’s why I no longer judge the average German as easily as I used to. Apathy in the face of tyranny turns out not to be a German or Russian characteristic. I just never thought it could happen in America.