#who are now dealing with pro-birth propaganda

[hairtusk]

At risk of sounding like an alarmist, I'm worrying more and more that when Western countries begin to experience the drop in birth rates currently being experienced in East Asian countries like South Korea and Japan, we're going to see a huge decrease in women's fertility rights. It already seems to be happening, slowly, at governmental levels (the overturning of Roe v Wade being the big indicator), but I feel like anti birth control rhetoric is creeping into our pop cultures, turning young women away from the best methods of controlling our fertility. The rise in 'homesteading' influencers, 'natural cycle tracking', and anti-pill advocates leaching from right-wing circles into the mainstream is incredibly worrying. I only fear that most young women won't realise until it's too late, and we have no way of controlling our own fertility, and choosing if and when we have children.

[trollocks-in-my-bollocks]

Genuinely wondering why you would advocate for eugenics and aborting autistics. Because they're hard to raise? They are hell on the parent? So they're not allowed to live then? Breeding out "undesirables" from society is not going to fix anything. It is horrific. Everyone is one accident away from becoming disabled. You're all for aborting disableds. so what, you're also for killing those who become disabled later in life? is that it? So no one has to suffer and live in pain and be a burden to their parent? How about, instead of falling for nazi eugenic propaganda, you focus on making society more liveable for the "undesirables." We deserve to live

Hello Anon, I waited a bit so we could both calm down, and maybe see the gray parts of this situation, not only the blacks and the whites. I also read into the controversy around Autism Speaks and although I already knew they were shady but oh boy. I fully understand why you'd never willingly collaborate with this given organisation in their "research". The quotation marks were intentional. No, we shouldn't bio-engineer a perfect society. Yes, it is horrific.

At the same time, as someone who lives somewhere women's rights are being cut away gradually, it was astonishing to read how some people on tumblr.com essentially say that in some circumstances a person shouldn’t be allowed to have an abortion even though they want one.

I'd love to live in a diverse, accepting society but I can't change mine singlehandedly. I keep speaking up (sometimes it's more like shouting) even in a hostile environment every single time someone blames the mother for their child's situation. It may sound unbeliavable, but I've been told several times by male relatives in my twenties to not to do this or that because I'd end up giving birth to an autistic baby. I've done cutting away some of ties there but this is just the state of our society, I'd love to seal myself away hermetically, if I could. I've seen divorces leaving mothers alone supporting children who require constant care. Right now our social system doesn't support people who stay at home to take care of their disabled relatives adequately. There are undiagnosed, untreated children everywhere because their family straight out refuses the possibility of autism because it's still such a heavy stigma and also because our school system is not equipped to deal with children with special needs.

For me, this was the hardest sentence to read in your reply.

"So no one has to suffer and live in pain and be a burden to their parent?"

Please look up some pro-life propaganda on the internet, you'll find it very similar to what you've just said, even though I'm sure it wasn't your original intention.

So overall, yes, I do my part in making society more liveable (why did you straight out insinuate that I don't?) for everyone, but I'll be always on the mother's side. I believe that we should have the right to terminate a pregnancy when we feel unsafe about it because of our direct environment/society and supporting research to develop prenatal tests will save already existing lives (especially here, where statistically a woman dies in domestic violence every_single_week). I'd prefer mothers having the right of making this decision instead of just straight out not doing research because it's unethical. Their bodily autonomy supersedes that of a clump of cells.

I hope next time we communicate you'll hit a less passive-agressive tone and to encourage this I'm disabling anon but feel free to reply with your username.

[papirouge]

does it bother u that the line pro-forced-birth americans tend to take is that all abortions should be illegal, so all women who have ectopic pregnancies should die?

if so, how do you fight against this while being a pro-lifer, but still not believing that 1-2% of all pregnant women deserve to die?

Listen, if you want to lump every prolifer into the same basket regardless of their country/politics, I am goin to lump you, as an American, with all the evil crap your country did.

Why did make an illegal war against Irak, LYING about mass destruction weapons, killing countless of innocent?

Why didn't you stop Abu Ghraib? we didn't forget. Never will.

Why are you guys degenerate BEASTS who can't help killing and torturing people?

Why don't you free Assange? He told the truth.

Why did you bomb Nordstream? yea we know it's you, idiots. You claim being Europe allies but if anything you are our biggest ennemy. Your NSA spying European leaders and shit.. In an ideal world Europe would ally with Russia and China and propel your demonic country out on orbit. Worldwide peace +10000%

Now,

abortion and dealing ectopic pregnancy are 2 different things and the latter isn't illegal, it's just abortionist fearmongering propaganda.

I wish America would treat better pregnancy and healthcare, but I have no head in American health policies, I'm a french citizen.

No woman deserve to die. But you know who else doesn't deserve to die, child in the womb who always keep out of the conservation. If life was so important to you, you'd fight along us to advocate for solution so that no one has to die.

[funnuraba]

A Rough Moral Overview of Archie Comics: Teen Propaganda Machine

Part 1: The 1940s

1941: Archie first appears in a small feature near the end of PEP Comics #22. His popularity builds rapidly, with the audience apparently writing in to express immense interest in the short monthly Archie comic.

At first the Archie story isn’t even mentioned on the cover, but Archie himself slowly starts appearing on the cover, always with PEP’s big star at the time, The Shield. The Shield on the cover is at first much larger than Archie, but he shrinks over time, and after Veronica’s introduction, she and Betty start to feature on covers as well. The Shield continues shrinking...

And by issue #49, the magazine is PEP Comics: Starring Archie Andrews! Archie quickly becomes its own imprint, and the only one of PEP’s lineup that survives into the present day. Ads in the magazine advertise an Archie radio show that was spurred by what was a apparently a massive outpouring of interest from PEP’s teenage subscribers. The concept of teenagerhood itself was a new invention dating from 1944. Archie’s reality included things like school, dating, and modern teen problems like trying to maintain a car and deal with wartime rationing.

Also, sending your dog to fight Nazis. (Note: the above are two separate stories; no Nazis ever actually invaded Riverdale. Oscar, Archie’s dog, gave birth on at least two occasions, including during her army tour, and eventually faded from existence.)

At this stage, minstrel-style caricatures of black men appear on occasion in Riverdale (as train attendants and no-account bums who steal clothing out of the trash), and Yellow Peril-style caricatures of Japanese people are a regular fixture in other PEP features like “Captain Commando and the Boy Soldiers”. As a side note, Chinese people are depicted quite differently in Captain Commando. At this point in US history, they were seen as important potential allies in the war against the Japanese. In Captain Commando, they’re drawn like actual humans in comparison to Japanese soldiers. One story shows a Chinese warrior who’s been bamboozled by foolish Buddhist ideals of peace, but finally snaps out of it and gets his followers to join up with US forces in resisting Japanese occupiers. Chinese-Americans were depicted less frequently, but also running in PEP for a time was a rather remarkable depiction (for the time) of a Chinese-American hero: Fu Chang, International Detective. Chinese people would later be collapsed into the Yellow Peril phenomenon in US pop culture and there were some very racist depictions within Archie Comics, but in the 40s there was a different perspective on display for a while.

(Captain Commando and his Boy Soldiers have since lapsed into the public domain; evidently the heroic quality of child soldiers lost its gleam after WWII and reviving the property was never deemed profitable.)

Also in the 40s, many, many stories end with a quite literal punchline in which Archie gets taken out to the woodshed and beaten by his father for causing trouble. This was PEP’s light-hearted humorous fare that apparently spoke quite deeply to a teenage audience of this era. The depiction of corporal punishment is neither “pro” nor “anti”, it’s simply an unavoidable consequence handed down from on high. Archie’s misadventures lead inevitably to physical punishment from an authority figure, no matter how much or how little he’s to blame for things going wrong. Mr. Andrews himself is sometimes a figure of fun during this period, but the 40s and 50s are the time when he most often feels like a self-insert for the writers and artists, who would have been closer to his position in life than Archie’s.

Archie’s position, though, isn’t entirely as the object of abuse. It’s pretty safe to assume that the writers and artists also grew up with corporal punishment and can sympathize with the experience--though they’ve now entered the stage of life where they understand that it was done only for their own good. Archie at the end of these stories is both resentful and rueful; he wishes it hadn’t happened, but there’s no room in the pages of PEP to contemplate a world where it doesn’t have to.

Violence was much more accepted in the 40s, including against the girls themselves--for their own good, in this case, but it’s still jarring to see a man give Betty and Veronica black eyes. Their crime in this case was, of course, being so silly and man-crazy that they nearly drowned him and themselves.

Often the violence was more cartoonish in nature, but it was only in the 40s that you’d see Betty showing up at Veronica’s door with Moe Szyslak’s weapon of choice.

The porter in this panel is one of the kindest portrayals of a black man in this period; the others (and the one depiction of a black woman that I noticed) are frankly unreproducible without heavy content warnings. Also in the 40s, fat and/or ugly women exist only as an object of fun or outright cruelty.

Vague “reducing plans” were advertised in the pages of Archie in the 1940s. This particular method was, as the name suggests, seaweed pills that were also marketed as chewing gum.

You may notice in some stories that the “ugly” and undesirable woman has very nearly the same face as Archie himself; the irony here is very likely unintentional. It’s rarely (seriously) suggested that there’s anything morally wrong with Archie aspiring to a girl much prettier than he is, but an ugly girl expressing interest in any boy is a figure of fun right up into... well, the present day. The Gabby pictured in the panel above her was a semi-recurring character, one of the only plus-size recurring characters ever depicted in Archie. As her name suggests, she was a gossip and one of the undesirable girls, but she was sometimes allowed to be friendly with Veronica or Betty without immediate karmic punishment. She’s also notable because she’s not only one of the only plus-size characters, she’s one of the very few plus-size female or teenage characters. Mr. Andrews, Mr. Weatherbee and Pop Tate all survived the 40s, but Gabby didn’t.

Betty at the inception of “Archie” (the comic) was just Girl. She rather liked Archie and he liked her, and he would try to impress/date her but end up having his monthly funny adventure. But only once Veronica was introduced did she start to gain more dimension, this time as Other Girl. Veronica was rather nice to begin with and it took a short while for them to start getting played off each other as “characters”. There was still little difference. Veronica was always rich and as a result became snooty fairly quickly, but her flaws were the flaws of an object. They existed to create difficulties for Archie, in his struggle to impress her, and Betty was differentiated only by not being snooty.

When Betty and Veronica were allies, it was because Archie had blown it somehow, and they were naturally compelled to be allies by virtue of both being girls. (When they didn’t like each other, it was also because they were both girls, and such was the natural state of being girls.) The panel above--both in the same pose, their identical faces lifted in scorn towards all men--would be echoed in other later stories, whether by chance or by accident.

Their posing in the 40s was frankly pretty ludicrous and transparent in its intentions.

Sexual attraction wasn’t explicitly commented on in the 40s comics in the way we understand “explicit” today, but it’s allowed to exist more openly than in later years. The va-va-voom effect highlighting the breasts would have to become more euphemistic as the decades passed.

In general, there was very little pretense in the 40s.

Artists had no qualms about showing the girls nearly in the nude (I cropped out a panel of Veronica in the bath above), nor about showing adult men leering at them. Even Mr. Weatherbee was occasionally moved by their charms. Generally adult men were “punished” for showing visible attraction, but only in humorous ways. It was more common for the teenage boys to drool over the girls, but the only disapproval shown when grown men did it came from women their own age, playing the role of scold or prudish spinster. There was also the occasional gag in which an adult man was misunderstood as a “masher” or peeper and received undeserved punishment from the supposed target.

There were various write-ups of celebrity activity in the 40s and 50s, and there too the attitudes towards women were pretty much what you’d expect, but even in the late 1940s the realities of life were not entirely veiled from teenage eyes. There was room for what would now be considered adult jokes.

Also in the 40s, Archie cross-dressed, like, a lot, in a way that noticeably vanished once the 50s rolls around. It’s always as a gag, and it’s usually noted that he makes an ugly girl, but in this era it seems to have been an idea that could be poked fun at without threatening the moral fiber of all America by the mere suggestion.

In fact, one semi-famous 1948 story, “The Battle of the Jitterbugs” (reproduced more fully elsewhere) revolves entirely around the girls and the boys competing in a “fair contest’ to see which sex is better at dancing--since boys only lead and girls only follow, it’s impossible to determine who can dance better overall. The obvious solution is for two girls to dance with each other and two boys to dance with each other.

Crucially, the idea is suggested by Reggie, the prankster of the group, framing it as a joke from its inception. Archie, the main character, follows through with it as a means of asserting male superiority. There’s also no possibility that two boys could dance, or two girls could dance, without the conceit of one performing the role of the opposite gender. But in practice, the whole thing does involve a lengthy depiction of two boys dancing together, and indeed, jokingly flirting with each other.

Again, the joke-flirting comes in the form of mocking from Reggie, both en femme and en homme. Archie, the protagonist and everyman, is uncomfortable throughout and finally throws Reggie right out Pop Tate’s door after Reggie goes too far in impugning his masculinity.

At this stage, the usual band of crones step in to punish him for imagined crimes against women, and he finishes the story sitting in bed with a broken leg, making a pronouncement that stands out rather sharply to the modern eye: “Confidentially, Jug! I’m no longer interested in women... or dancing!”

Veronica and Betty are significantly more comfortable with each other. In fact, it’s a rare 1940s story where they don’t quarrel with each other at all! Veronica’s femininity is seemingly unthreatened by the hat and pants, even though Archie Comics would continue issuing dire warnings against women in pants up through the mid-1970s.

It’s hard to imagine they lost after this! The tone of this page is downright celebratory, a rare occasion of early Betty and Veronica working together and coming out the victors of the story, not by one of them winning Archie, but by both of them showing their own skill at something without trying to show the other up. “Battle of the Jitterbugs” is a true rarity in these early years, a depiction of female triumph that doesn’t exactly defy the era’s pop culture as a whole--women were creating their own art even in the 1940s--but it does defy nearly every other Archie story up to the mid-1970s.

[thegeminisage]

i know it’s really weird to say without context “the devil’s half-human kid” jack so let me add some context to this. this was originally going to be a post about season 13′s opening but there’s too much explanation involved so we have to recap the end of s12 first (non non-mary parts, which, frankly, every piece of television ever written is inferior to the mary parts of supernatural)

so to recap:

during season 12, during the non-mary parts that weren’t important and again don’t really matter, lucifer, who escaped hell’s cage in season 11, decides to have himself a kid with a human woman to create an archangel’s nephilim, which would be more power than any being that ever existed besides god. he also possessed the president to do this but that’s horrible writing and UTTERLY besides the point. i am focusing on the good parts here

the woman lucifer impregnated (her name is kelly kline) tries to kill herself in order to the baby bc hello it’s the antichrist

(they did rip off this whole antichrist thing from @cambionverse​ they were READING OUR FIC i know only 12 people have read our fic but i know this in my heart. sorry anyway)

but ANYWAY then the unborn baby SAVES HER LIFE by healing her wounds and she realizes there might be good in the child after all and that he might be able to help her

this sounds like pro-life propaganda but i was actually a big fan of their execution on this - til now she had basically been used as a human incubator with no agency at all, and suddenly she has the world’s most unexpected ally in this unborn kid who didn’t ask to be here anymore than she did

so together kelly and her unborn child manage to escape the demons and run into castiel, who had been looking for lucifer’s baby mama in order to uh. take care of that whole situation. and when the bad guys catch up to them the kid decides he likes cas, cas is good people, and he lets him borrow a little power (angels all got nerfed back in s9) to smoke the holy hell out of them. and cas also realizes this kid is Good, or has the potential to be good, and he decides to run off with kelly to protect her from both lucifer and his demons and also the winchesters who are UH ALSO LOOKING TO TAKE CARE OF THAT WHOLE SITUATION

dean is PISSED at cas and he thinks the baby is brainwashing cas and kelly both and is only acting to protect its own life and that it’s definitely going to be evil and kill everyone. if you heard about dean and cas almost getting divorced in season 12, this is why. it’s like. peak d*stiel content imo. also this is after cas’s no-homo “i love you......all”

anyway the baby has a bunch of omens happening to herald his birth, like storms and shit, and one such omen is that he tears a rip in the fabric of space-time, opening a portal to a world where john was never brought back to life and mary never had kids and so they could never save the world from the apocalypse in s5. this is important to mention for later

so the winchesters and lucifer catch up to cas and kelly at the same time, right as she’s having her baby. the birth kills her because lol classic sexist horror trope, but in the fight, castiel gets killed (shanked by lucifer right in front of dean’s eyes), and while mary DOES get to punch the devil in the face, she winds up jumping through the portal with lucifer into this alternate dimension right as it closes, trapping them both there

so the season ends with the baby being born, and cas’s body getting cold on the ground, mary and lucifer GONE, and sam has to leave dean alone with cas to go upstairs and check on the antichrist. pan to EXTREMELY ominous glowing eyes, cut to black, credits. that’s the season

and then the season 13 trailer looks like this:

TELL ME this doesn’t look like classic spn and scary as shit. you can’t. this is such a fucking sexy trailer. like, the big question of that particular part of season 12 is: is this kid gonna be dangerous? is he gonna fucking kill us? we are dealing with the antichrist here!

and then we go into season 13 with dean on the brink of despair, half his family dead, and sam and dean dealing with this antichrist kid all alone and uuugh i’m going to make a separate post this has gotten too long but listen to me. look me in the eyes. it’s good. no one believes me but it’s good

[feuilly-cakes]

Breaking Dawn - 3* review

Oh boy was this a long one. Okay, I really don't know how to feel about this book, because on one hand I had lots of fun revisiting my old favourite and picking it apart but on the other hand I had a very big issue with a major part of the plot. If I were rating based on each book within this book, I would give book one 4*and book two and three 3*. It starts out strong, then gets progressively harder to keep track of, but then maybe my short attention span is the problem here. I learned many interesting facts and character traits in this book, and I also figured out something important to do with imprinting that's been vaguely introduced in the previous book but is explored in-depth here. Stick around if you want to see what that discovery is. As usual, I'll be putting interesting and relevant facts and things I found particularly offensive under sub-headings, but I'll be saying a lot about each book as if it's separate before then, because Breaking Dawn as a whole is too long to talk about with any coherency. So without further ado: There are only spoilers ahead. Book 1: Bella First let me just say that these books have such amazing prologues/prefaces that immediately grab your attention. If you didn't know she was going to get pregnant, it would probably seem like she's talking about Edward being the one killing her. Anyway, this book was shorter than I expected, but far more enjoyable. This one seems to be more family oriented in the language used than previous in the series; while before any of the Cullens would be described as 'Edward's adopted -' , in this they are simply his mother, his brothers, his sisters. Even Jasper, who always seemed to me to be the outsider of the bunch, uses the term "We Cullens" and it just feels more like a family than a vampire coven pretending to be a family. This is helped along by Bella suddenly knowing so much more about the history of the Cullens and their extended family the Denalis. She's ready to fit right on in there. This book deals with the wedding and the honeymoon. Bella reflects on how she told her parents, freaks out about getting married, has her wedding, abruptly changes her stance on said wedding, then they shoot off to the honeymoon and things occur. Basically, she gets pregnant. It's a huge commotion. Backtracking, both Charlie and Renee were weirdly supportive about the engagement and handled it super well, with Renee and Bella having such a lovely conversation I nearly teared up. She's a great mother even when she's not physically there for Bella. Bella, on the other hand, is doing that thing again where she's selfish and a bit mean without realising she's being that way. Poor Edward is stressed to his eyeballs about the honeymoon and the very real possibility of hurting and even killing Bella, and she just brushes him right off. More on that later, but that's not the responsible way to do things, Bella. Fast forward to the honeymoon, and Edward is now the one being dramatic, refusing to sleep with her again because he bruised her and not listening to her when she says she's perfectly fine. The way it happens is very funny. Then we get to see random things happening that oh so subtly turn out to be pregnancy symptoms, like strange dreams about vampire babies who look human, oversleeping, mood swings, strange eating habits, and last but not least, morning sickness. It wasn't subtle. When they figure it out Edward loses it and says he's going to arrange for her to have an abortion. Bella asks Rosalie for help, and screen fades to black. The big theme here is that Bella changes her mind. She doesn't want to be married until she suddenly does at her wedding, she doesn't want to stay human until she decides she can afford a few extra years, and she doesn't want kids until she's already pregnant. Even with Rosalie, their slowly evolving relationship wasn't going to be proper friendship until Bella asks her for help. She's changing so quickly it's like getting whiplash, but it's not unrealistic. That's how I make most of my big decisions too, like it simmers away unnoticed until it's ready to be addressed. Relatable, really. Book 2: Jacob Book 2 takes us through Bella's pregnancy from Jacob's perspective, as he goes from planning to kill the Cullens to becoming their biggest protector and an Alpha of his own pack. As much as I love multiple POVs in books this is one I couldn't get behind, and here's why. One of the main themes in this book is imprinting. I don't like it. While I adore soulmates as a concept, and even more so platonic soulmates, it's made clear that this isn't what that is, and it's icky. We get 4 pages of Quil interacting with his imprint Claire, who is 3. The whole time Jacob has a running commentary on how Quil is more devoted than a parent would ever be, how he wants to make her so very happy, how it's so very different from that of a parent, and how Quil has to wait like a "monk" for "a good fourteen years" until Claire was his age. This was never platonic, it was a waiting game. It's also grooming. This was also around the time it became apparent just why Quil imprinted on Claire in the first place: it was all a set up for Jacob's eventual imprint. It had to be a part of the story before it happened so people wouldn't question it, and for the most part it worked. Both Quil's story and Jacob's interactions with a pregnant Bella prove this: "the hold she had on me only got harder to break. Almost like it was related to her expanding belly" and "It feels... complete when you're here, Jacob. Like all my family is together." I hated reading that. He should've imprinted on that nice girl Lizzie, from the park. Surely Stephenie Meyer could've come up with something else to keep Nessie alive? Onto similarly disturbing things but less revolting in the long run, Bella's story here seems to be an attempt at pro-life propaganda that backfired. The reason? Bella makes a choice about her body, and though most of them don't like it, they don't force her to do otherwise. People seem to forget that being pro-choice also means the choice to stay pregnant even when it's best not to. Bella makes that decision and she's absolutely sure of it, at the expense of her life and health, but it's hers to make. She is pitted against Edward, who would absolutely force her to have an abortion if he had backup, and who is also losing his damn mind. He insists to Jacob that Carlisle would help him if not for Esme, and that Rosalie doesn't care about Bella's life, only the baby's. Carlisle himself tells Jacob he would never take the choice away from Bella, and context shows that Rosalie is protecting Bella's choices and bodily autonomy, and carrying out her last wishes to ensure the baby is brought into the world healthy. Remember that Rosalie had all her choices taken from her, and all she wanted for Bella was for her to make the right ones. Edward doesn't change his stance until he discovers the baby has thoughts that can be read, and loves Bella. Once again, this seems to have been an attempt at showing that babies have thoughts and feelings in the womb, but it does almost the opposite as Bella is a day away from full term and not once has anything been picked up by either him or Jasper before that point. It's safe to assume there was nothing to pick up on. The pregnancy ends with a truly horrifying birth scene that made my hands go numb and my ears ring from the violence of it all. Bella dies, Jacob imprints on a minutes-old baby and begins his journey as a child groomer, and then Bella comes back and begins her transformation. Book 3: Bella. Or as I like to call it: It all goes downhill from here. Bella has the most unrealistic yet brutal experience ever, and is now a super sexy, super perfect, super powerful, super smart vampire. She has a perfect baby, perfect control of her bloodlust, and somehow the perfect life. But oh no! The Volturi are threatening that peace! Who could have predicted that the last remaining villains would appear in the last book? Now Bella and the rest of the Cullens have to find their friends to stop the Volturi in their track, but peacefully of course, because they are the good guys really! Just a misunderstanding! I'm so glad that was addressed in story, because I would not have been able to deal with a pro-police/pro-dictator story in this political climate. The most unrealistic part of this is when the Volturi don't simply assert their vampire dominance over them by killing them all without taking their own witnesses. I didn't like how Bella suddenly became perfect and good at everything in this book. It's so unrealistic. Less than a month to become the strongest shield ever and be able to scare the ancient Volturi? Perfect control on her first hunt? I think not thank you. There was also a missed opportunity to have Bella be a psychic of some kind since she dreamt of the future accurately many times. Renesmee was very sweet though, and that's all I'll say on that. Now onto my lists! Differences between book and film This was mostly pretty accurate in terms of plot. - Edward's backstory that we see pre-wedding isn't a thing in the book. It actually isn't a thing in any of the main books, but I can't speak for the others. - Bella knows about the immortal children before the book even starts, and she's the one to realise that Irina thought Renesmee was one herself. - The wedding is inside. The film had it outside I'm pretty sure. - The whole part where Jacob freaks out and borrows a very fancy sports car to go and try to find his imprint was never in the films, and I think that's a tragedy. Vampires - The appearance of the nicknames Em and Jazz for Emmett and Jasper. It's not at all important I just thought it was cute. - Half vampire babies use their teeth to escape the womb. Also, Renesmee was trying to be careful to not hurt Bella while she was still inside her. She started reading when she was under 3 months. If I saw a baby read aloud in full sentences I'd never sleep again. - Edward called Jacob "Jake" in book 3. It's weird how their relationship changes throughout the book. - Poor Renesmee knows it's because of her that the Volturi are coming, and says "This is my fault." She's just a few months old at this point, and she's already going through a whole lot. - The volturi look like someone threw baby powder on them because they sat still for so long they started "petrifying". - There are 32 Volturi members, considering they took the whole coven with them to Forks. - Fun Bella fact: she was going to let Charlie assume what was up with her because she thinks he will never decide on vampire. Red Flags Most of these have been discussed in depth so I'll just mention them briefly. - Edward, pre wedding, is described as having a "panic attack" by Bella at the thought of hurting her, and instead of reassuring him she brushes him off and thinks "He wasn't getting out of this deal. Not after insisting I marry him first." This is beyond selfish and even cruel, because he has a point and genuine concerns that should have been discussed properly. - "We're going to get that thing out before it can hurt any part of you." Edward has decided this for himself, without Bella's input. - Jacob contemplates suicide over the thought of having to see Leah. This is absolutely not something that should be talked about like it's nothing. - The imprinting of Quil and Claire. - Every bit of foreshadowing about Jacob imprinting on Renesmee, and the act itself. - Rosalie calls the place in South America where the half vampire myths originated "a disease-infested swamp with a medicine man smearing sloth spit across your face" in relation to giving birth there, and it's more than a little racist. How would she even know what it's like? - "the Egyptians all looked so alike, with their midnight hair and olive-toned pallor, that they could have easily passed for a biological family" The white, blonde Denali sisters were never ever described this way, so why are the non-white people described as such? - Bella had "never met any vampires less civilized" than the Amazons. They have long black braids, so we can assume they aren't white. Why are only the non-white vampires being described these ways? - Bella describes the rough area where she met 1 person, who was working for J Jenks and happened to be Black, but was well dressed in rich clothes, as the "ghetto address". Upon googling, I learnt that this refers to low income areas of a city that are occupied by minorities. She met one person. How could she possibly know if it was the "ghetto"? It was described as the "downtown office" by Max, the man in question, so why wouldn't she just use that term? - Jacob gives Renesmee the Quileute equivalent of a promise ring. I want to throw up, because we all know what a promise ring symbolises. - Lastly but certainly not leastly, when learning Renesmee will be full grown at age 7, Bella feels a "shudder" from Jacob. I hate it, it's gross, it needs to burn. Disgusting. And that's that, sorry it's so long, I had a lot to say. If you have any opinions on this review, feel free to discuss with me!

[venkaissad]

How can a lady with a gun in her pocket not be pretty? [SCENARIO | NAKAMOTO YUTA]

Inspired by a kdrama Mr. Sunshine

WARNINGS: Mentions of death and stimulants

SUMMARY: You had everything a young lady could wish for. Loving husband, smart son and a warm house. People were jealous of how perfect your life seemed to be, but they didn’t really know what you were up to lately. As they drank expensive coffee, cheated on their lovers and earned big money, you were risking your life for the country their abandoned.

You felt cold air slowly wrapping around your trembling limbs. The coat that was given to you, definitely wasn’t enough to keep anyone warm during the winter. The thin fabric didn’t really cling to your body, as it freely moved around with every gust of wind. It was problematic, as it made quite a bit of noise. Oh, how much you wanted to just go back and never do anything like that again. Just about an hour ago you were peacefully lying on a warm, soft mattress. Harsh hands of you husband slowly moved around your waist, careful to not produce too much movement. Johnny probably wanted to do many things with you that night, but your son was sleeping right in between of you two. His small arms were wrapped around your thigh, as he was way too small to cling onto most of other parts of your body. So Seo remembered to keep his distance, although he was clearly displeased with the current situation. He hummed along to the melody which was strongly engraved in his mind. It was your favorite song, the one you two heard when you met each other for the first time. In 1897, the year in which Korean people started believing in better tomorrow. Joseon no longer existed, but they still dreamed about true freedom which in their opinion was about to be given to them. You started going out more, enjoying life and not worrying about politics. Your father always reminded you to be careful though. He saw and experienced more, so he didn’t believe any of the propaganda you were presented with. On the other hand, your mother wanted you to just enjoy life without any worries. She probably also didn’t trust the government’s assurance that the great times were about to come. But her youth was ruined by the fear constantly taking over the minds of her family members. Thought of you ending up in the same situation as she did, was more heartbreaking than possibility of your death. So she let you do anything you wanted to. You went out to parties, killed your insides with tons of alcohol and cigarettes. Visiting various cafes and diners was also a part of your daily schedule. But the place which you enjoyed the most, was the local pub. You remember when you went there on a hot summer night with your girls. Your body was covered by an expensive French dress, which beautifully enhanced your curves. People constantly complimented you, not to even mention how many lustful gazes you received. But you already set your eyes on one person. A tall, handsome man with soft features. He was sitting in a corner of the room, surrounded by other dashing young fellas. You first caught his gaze when you turned around to buy drinks. His eyes were eating you up, slowly ripping your expensive dress apart. You didn’t let him dominate though. Your gaze was just as strong as his, making him develop a bright blush after a few seconds. Smile slowly crept up on your pretty face, as you got up and made your way towards him. The man immediately stood up as well and practically ran towards you. He slowly outstretched his hand in your direction, to the confusion of people around you. You were in a pub. People didn’t usually dance in places like that. But you did it. You placed your soft hand in his rough palm and let him lead you between the tables. You remember innocent kisses you shared that day, his giggles, and the way he introduced himself to you. 

’’My name is Youngho. But you can call me young, rich and not engaged…or Johnny.’’ 

It was a bit cringy and over the top, but it made your heart flutter. You didn’t come from a rich family, but you didn’t think about the struggles it could give you in the future. At that moment you only saw his eyes. His big, dark eyes sparkling underneath the dim light of an old chandelier. The place in which you met was mediocre, quite ugly in your opinion as well. But because of the memories which you made there, it became a true miracle for you two. After that night you continued to meet with Johnny. At first, you just kept trying to bump into each other in the pub. You clearly remember spending whole night in there, just to finally leave home after he didn’t come. The next day he was waiting there with a big bouquet of roses, ready to punish himself for not being the one who waited for such a long time. Later on, you started writing letters and going out on walks. After five months, morning coffee and evening tea became a tradition without which you couldn’t manage to go through your day. You were dating like that for two years, ignoring what was happening around you. The situation in your country was becoming worse with every day, but you only had eyes for each other. For that reason, you finally got engaged after pleading your families for almost seven months. You got pregnant right after the wedding, and later on gave birth to your beautiful son. That was the moment in which you started paying attention to the world. You stopped looking at life so carelessly, as now your son was going to deal with the aftermath of your decisions. The corruption and lack of independence in Korea finally got to you. The thought of your son suffering later on because of the incompetence of your government made you boil with rage. Unfortunately, your husband didn’t understand your way of thinking. He didn’t know anything. His life began and ended on his wife and son. Some of your friends told you that you picked a narrow-minded and selfish man. That you weren’t a really compatible couple, especially considering the difference in your wealth and education. Youngho was a typical son of a rich family. It was hard to introduce him to your less well off friends. He looked down on people with a worse background. Johnny always asked about their families, wealth and in which business they were in. He also studied abroad and didn’t really care about the country. Politics were a distant topic for him, as he never even bought the newspaper. He just worked, played around with your son and bothered you with useless stuff. With every year your situation was becoming worse. The fact that he let the Japanese humiliate him on a daily basis became normal. Caring was too bothersome, scary. So you took it upon yourself. You had to save your family’s honor. As a Korean woman, you couldn’t imagine just trembling in fear of the occupant. It was humiliating. Not doing anything to protect the legacy of the nation’s progenitors seemed just too shameful. Your son had the same mindset as your husband. Everything was great as long as the family had money and a comfortable place to live. They didn’t care about what was happening to your country. You could understand that your kid, as he was practically a baby, didn’t even think about his nation’s despair. Moreover, you were quite happy that he didn’t intend on doing anything dangerous. The one who frustrated you the most, was indeed Johnny. You asked him for help countless times, but the only thing he ever did was laugh at you. When you told him that you joined the insurgents, he pointed out that women like you should just take care of their kids. You understood that he was just worried, but his words still cut you like a knife. That’s why you started to hide your undercover missions from him. It was better this way. Today was no different. You slipped away from his warm embrace, moved your son up, so he won’t fall out of the bed, and slowly changed into your usual dark coat. It provided you with camouflage, which was much-needed considering the nature of your tasks. You were a killer, cold-blooded murderer who was in charge of getting rid of pro Japanese officials. This night, you were supposed to take out one of the most important men in Japan. You couldn’t help but to tremble, even though you were used to carrying out important missions. Your footsteps have gotten much lighter, as you were getting closer and closer to your target. You slowly climbed up the wall, careful not to slip, and lied down on the hard, cold surface. The target was visible through the open window. He was talking to his group of ’’friends’’, surrounded by men he paid big money to protect him. You knew very well who was in charge of guarding this scum. They were like a small mafia, as they worked much smoother than a random band of thugs. They trusted their boss more than themselves, which made them more deadly than any of your usual enemies. You were aware of that fact, but for some reason you let your guard down. Only when you heard a loud creak, you instantly realized that you are indeed in a too visible position. It was too late though. The soft skin of your neck was grazed by a cold metal of a blade. You instantly turned around, making the wound wider, but also getting an opportunity to see the man who was about to take your life. As soon as you saw his face, your eyes got almost three times bigger than the usually were.

 ’’Nakamoto Yuta.’’ you whispered. The shock was apparent in both of your faces, which meant that he also recognized you. He used to run errands for your father, who provided him with food and a clean place to stay at. At first, you didn’t really care about him, but later on you started pitying him. He was an orphan, little boy who lost his parents because of a conflict. You started sharing your sweets with him, which helped you with gaining his trust and sympathy. Nakamoto was your first true friend, one who didn’t care about the fact that your family wasn’t that great and influential. He was just happy that he had someone to talk to and give him food. He possessed that simplicity which you were so attracted to. You were surrounded by rich men who couldn’t see the world outside their fortune. Yuta was different. He played around in mud with you, stole bread from the kitchen and taught you how to hunt birds with stones. After your mother chased him out after he stole one of her ornaments, your world came crashing down. This Japanese boy was your only true source of happiness, and now he was gone. You thought that you won’t be able to move on, but with time you started to forget about the fact that he existed in your life. You met him only once after he left your house. He suddenly approached you after your wedding. Yuta mingled in with the crowd, which in the end allowed him to talk to you alone. He wrapped his arms around you, completely ignoring the fact that you just became someone’s wife. You didn’t return his gesture of affection, staring off into the space. Nakamoto asked you a lot of questions back then. He also mentioned that he got into a business, that he will make a lot of money and take you with him to a better place. You refused. You told him that you are satisfied with your current life and do not wish to ever see him again. Yuta didn’t respond to you back then, he just disappeared amongst the other guests after exiting the empty room into which he dragged you earlier. You thought about him later on. Your mind focused mostly on what kind of business he could’ve gotten into. He was a Japanese orphan, there weren’t many possibilities for him. But despite that, you believed that he still was the same good kid you knew from your childhood. You never expected to meet him under such circumstances. His cold, dark eyes scanned your face as if he was hoping that you would turn into another person. That was your chance. You immediately took out your trustworthy handgun and pointed it at his head. Yuta chuckled as he realized his mistake. He let his feelings take over him for a moment. 

’’Damn, I always thought you were rather mediocre. But now, how can a lady with a gun in her pocket not be pretty?’’ he chuckled biting his lower lip. His sword was still at your throat, while your gun was pointed straight at him. Your cold eyes pierced right through him, while his warm gaze slowly grazed over your determined being. You both knew that you were the scared one, as you couldn’t stop trembling. Not to say anything about how suddenly you lost your ability to speak. 

’’I don’t think your husband is that good if he lets you do stuff like that, you know? I would die before I’d do anything to risk losing you.’’ he said as he slowly lowered his sword and knelt before you. You couldn’t even move, you felt as if your gun followed him on its own. His gaze was filled with pure love and admiration, as he slowly got closer to you. Yuta’s temple collided with your weapon and a wide smile appeared on his handsome face. 

’’Do it Y/n. Shoot me and go back to your life with which you are so satisfied.’’ his words made you unable to even swallow your spit. You missed him. His cute smile, charming attitude and weird sense of humor. You would probably throw yourself at him, if only you were dumb enough to not understand his intentions. Yuta made it seem like he was ready to sacrifice his life for you to go on, but that was not the case. If you shoot him now, the politician you were supposed to kill will be alarmed and run away. This way his comrades would be safe and get their pay, and you would probably end up dead or exposed. Your whole body became as cold as a stone. If you don’t shoot him, you will have to give up and go back home while bearing the shame of failing your mission. You also would be responsible for letting go a member of the mafia who already saw your face. It was a threat to the whole rebellion. You could either both live or both die, there was no other solution. And no matter what you will choose, Yuta still will be the one who will benefit from the situation. You slowly lowered your gun, watching as his expression became softer. His eyes focused on your face, as you dropped the weapon and put your left hand up to his cheek. 

’’I would never be able to do it.’’ your voice was sweet like honey. It slowly wrapped around his feelings for you, which still were very much alive even after such a long time. Your hand slowly caressed his pale cheek, as he looked at you with so much affection and trust. The corners of his eyes shined with tears.

 ’’I missed you so much Y/n. I worked so hard to make you proud because I knew in the end you will come back to me.’’ your right hand found its way to his waist. Your fingers toyed with the fabric of his clothes. Yuta’s breath was slowly getting faster. He completely lost the rest of his common sense as he focused only on your presence. You pressed your lips to his, feeling how soft and warm they are. Nakamoto almost instantly deepened the kiss and pressed you closer to himself. You pulled away after about a minute, breathless and definitely less composed. 

’’I love you.’’ he said as your hand finally found what it was looking for. You wrapped your fingers around the hard handle, as you pulled a small knife out of his pocket and stabbed the side of his neck without any hesitation. 

’’I love you too, Yuta.’’

[soul-music-is-life]

I've seen some of your post on the bullshit heartbeat bill in your state and I'm just wondering how you're dealing.

I have stared at this ask for a while, wondering whether or not I wanted to get in depth into this conversation. But I do have a lot to say on the matter. A while back I drafted a blog post that I toyed with sharing, but ultimately held off. Until now.

There’s…a lot to be covered.

First, thank you for sparking me to put this out there. I feel as though it’s important enough to say what I have to say on this. And though this platform is usually used for fandom stuff (I use other platforms for my political stuff), I’m not afraid to get real now and again.

Second, let me state that I have a background in medicine and a family heavily involved and working in politics…so I know how this goes.

I’m going to pre-empt this by saying that I am not going to argue with anyone who is pro-life who reads and disagrees. If you agree, great. If you disagree, there is no point in trying to fight me…because we will never see eye to eye.

This is strictly an argument based on why I’m against politics and religion in medicine. I am not looking for a debate here. There is no debate to be had. If you can’t look at things without religion, or if you can’t understand scientific/medical facts it’s a moot point.

It’s a long one. Saddle up.

Religion vs. Medicine:

Christianity should have no place in medicine (the bible condemns polyester blends, playing with pigskin, gambling, and divorce, but Christians still shop til they drop, support football, play the lottery, and divorce their spouses). Yet we get lawmakers constantly using the bible as a talking point (”Thank God” and “As God intended”) for this argument and ignoring testimony from physicians with degrees in science.

Men (with the exception of those whose sperm fertilized an egg in a consensual act) should have no say in what happens inside of a uterus that does not belong to them (and even then, it should be a discussion between those two people and their doctor, not a government made up of religious zealot white women and white-boys without uteri).

The government should not infringe upon individual rights of medical privacy via HIPAA.

Basically:

If you can not argue without the basis of religion (or you keep using “God” or The Bible as your baseline) or if you are not someone who has a uterus or in the medical profession or a woke dude/lady, you have no fucking say.

If you are a Christian forcing your beliefs upon the population based upon a magical book that has absolutely no proof, you have no fucking say. (see Separation of Church and State).

If you are a politician forcing your agenda upon every person with a uterus based upon something you can absolutely never experience, you have no fucking say.

If you do not have a background in science and you’re basing your opinions upon a movie (”Unplanned”) that is nothing more than political propaganda (and a pro-life “advocate” who saw dollar signs and a means to fame) then you have no fucking say (and yes, I’ve seen the film, which was nothing more than a religious backed, over-dramatized flick poorly representing abortions and relied heavily upon cheap emotional manipulation and inaccurate CGI). As someone who has seen medical procedures…it was exaggerated in the film. It is absolutely not a representation of safe and legal abortions. It also does not address the confidentiality between patient/doctor (See HIPAA and the testimony of physicians in this matter).

The fact of the matter is that people who are informed, intelligent, and know about the subject in depth are against these abortion bans, because they know it’s extreme and infringes upon basic rights. This includes women, our allies, and in some cases…people who are religiouswho stand with the pro-choice movement (I see you all, too, don’t doubt that…this is not a reflection upon men and Christians in general. This is about the extremists).

If you fall into the extreme religious or non-medical community category or you are a politician with no medical training and you’re writing bills and arguing against basic human rights…you can shut the fuck up.

***

For the sake of facts, let’s break it down:

-Sexual education can be informative, and the preventatives used to prevent pregnancy can fail. Condoms break. The pill can fail (and let’s not even get into the horrible side effects that contraceptives have on women. Let’s talk about the fact that there was actually a birth control for men that companies tried to put on the market, but the side effects were too ‘dangerous’. Sure, like high blood pressure and hormonal imbalances are something women look forward to). But yeah, let’s put all the responsibility on the woman.

-Women are raped, and given the trauma that occurs…they should not have to PROVE they were raped in order to receive medical treatment…including abortion. It’s horrific enough as it is, and there is NO wrong way to deal with the trauma. They shouldn’t have an additional stigma to be treated medically.

-Women who tend to make the choice to have an abortion have looked at their options and have made an informed CHOICE (that’s what this is about). And it’s not always at the 6-8 week mark, because hey…there are things such as irregular periods. Cis-men hating on women, let’s talk about women’s reproduction for a minute. Have you ever spent 7 days bleeding out of an orifice of your body? Have you ever shed the lining of an internal organ? Have you ever had blood clots inside of your body that feel like fucking death? Have you ever had your panties soaked in blood? Have you ever gotten stressed and missed a period or had medical issues that caused you to have irregular cycles? No? Okay, so how about the stressors of pregnancy? How about the changes a woman’s body goes through? How about the emotional and physical toll it takes? Truth is, hetero-normal men who are so deep-set in their beliefs will NEVER view women as equal. Reality is…we women areintelligent enough to make our own decisions.

-An embryo at 6-8 weeks is not viable. The so called “heartbeat” is an electrical activity in a group of cells that is at maximum a few inches long. There is no heartbeat, because there IS no heart. It hasn’t formed. There is not a cardiovascular system. It’s a vibration in a cell. It is ONLY active because of the woman. At this point it is NOT a child. I see pro-life/pro-birth people going, “but…but SCIENCE…Life at conception!” without understanding the depth of their actual words. The medical community knows their shit. And people can challenge them all they want with their opinions upon when life is sentient, but the truth is that there is no brain activity this early because IT IS NOT A HUMAN. It is an embryo, which can not exist without the mother’s body. Yet politicians use the term “heartbeat” because they know there are uneducated people out there who will eat it up and back them.

-Abortion is situational, and trying to force a law upon women based upon the preconceived notion that ALL women are using it as a form of birth control is ignorant, ill-informed, and extremely sanctimonious. There are numerous reasons for abortion, and none of them are the government’s fucking business.

Why religion and politics is a slippery slope in medicine:

Using a religious bias in a political war is against everything in the judiciary and legislative branch, and it is a slippery slope that is dangerous to patient care. When we start listening to “Gods” and evangelical people over actual physicians there is a huge problem. Ask yourself this question: if you were dying and a surgery could save your life…would you call a priest to perform the procedure? Or a licensed physician? If you choose a priest, enjoy seeing your version of the afterlife, because you’re going to die.

Abby Johnson (”Unplanned) is not a doctor. She is someone who “found God” and is using that to exploit the situation with her own views as a claim to fame. She ran a Planned Parenthood (in her own words). ONE chapter, which means it’s a FRACTION of the actual unit. She does not have a PHD. Her accusations against physicians are bullshit and is frankly an insult to actual doctors who perform safe medical procedures every day.

Politicians have no knowledge of medical protocols and treatments (and in a lot of cases know an embarrassingly low amount about women’s reproductive organs). And in many cases it is old white men (and religious white women) dictating what a woman can do with her body. If you think that’s okay, you’re part of the problem.

Religious zealots hold fast to beliefs written in a fairytale rather than learn the scientific facts associated with the base of their argument. They can’t grasp the concept that an organism can be created in a petrie dish with a “beating heart”, because of muscle contractions, not because it’s “alive” or “sentient”. They would rather blindly follow a God that may or may not exist rather than listen to educated physicians who know the topic.

Rapid fire question: if an unconscious woman and a frozen embryo were in a burning building and you could only save one of them, which one would you choose? Something that is not aware and is only a potential for life? Or the actual living breathing human?

This shit is not about “saving babies”. Politicians couldn’t give a shit about babies after they are born. It’s about controlling women/trans-folk and telling people what they can do with their body (it’s funny how Republican politicans haven’t outlawed smoking or drinking, because hey…that kills you! “AnD wE aRE PRo-LiFE!”).

Anyone who can’t see that all these abortion laws are just plays for politicians to pursue their own political pursuits is an idiot.

A Note about Georgia’s Abortion Law/Kemp

In my state, there was talks that Kemp was overheard saying that even if he wanted to veto the bill he couldn’t due to “his campaign promises”. Which is absolute bullshit, because given the polls…he knew that a majority of the people in his state are against it. This bill was co-sponsored by three men and three women who are basing it heavily upon religious purposes (if you don’t believe me, look up Ed Setzler, he’s been quoted several times leaning on religious propaganda for this bill). It was then voted through by a bunch of old white men.

Convenient how they threw the one token woman up front (but honestly, fuck her…because she should know better). The fact of the matter is that those who voted on this are a bunch of “good ole boys” with religious principles trying to bypass the fact that there is a separation of church and state. This bill has had numerous polls conducted to the constituents, and while they were divided…the PRO-CHOICE voice won every single poll. Put this up for a vote and I guarantee this would not become a law.

Kemp waited weeks to sign this (unlike the governor of Alabama).

Why?

Because he knew that most of his constituents were against this (given the polls that were conducted), but due to political pressure he couldn’t veto for fear that he’d lose the religious/deeply rooted republican votes. Even Kemp seemed to realize that this is against the moral rights of his citizens. But he doesn’t give a shit. Because as long as his pockets are lined with money and he can ignore his constituents, it’s all gravy for him.

To take this a step further, this asshole is the man who pointed a gun at a kid jokingly in an age where school shootings are rampant, as a joke…for political purposes. Cuz, ya know…violence is funny.

He’s “pro-life” but he shoots things.

This man is sponsored by the National Hunting and Fishing association, who supports killing living breathing things with a heartbeat for sport or “because it tastes good”.

I challenge anyone who is so “pro-heartbeat” to never shoot their guns again to kill something. Because hey, life is so precious to you, right? You value heartbeats so effing much, stop killing living breathing things. Nut up or shut up.

Actually, no, don’t nut up. That’s the reason for unplanned pregnancies in the first place. Just shut up.

…that will never happen. And you want to know why?

Because this is not about life. They don’t give a shit about “life”. This is about power. This is about control.

If you can’t see that an entire gender is being used for political gain then you need to wake the fuck up.

I’ll end this by saying that, yes, there might be some common ground that can be found here. In the people out there fighting every day for their rights. In the allies we have coming out of the woodworks. In the physicians who fought like hell for us in court.

I’m not an unreasonable person. I do believe in sensible laws. These bans are not sensible. They’re a power play. And that’s fucked up. And as much as I’d love to pack up and leave, I don’t have that option. A lot of people don’t (and in fact, I think the “Boycott GA” movement is so fucking stupid, because that doesn’t hurt the people in power. It hurts the PEOPLE).

So if you’re pissed off, remember this at the polls. Know who your reps are. And if they are for this bullshit, vote their asses out.

Flip their fucking seats.

I’m tired, you guys. Let’s get our rights back. Let’s take our state back.

[gracieminabox]

I hope its okay to ask this since your mostly a fandom blog but I saw something today on facebook about something called CPC's and that they arent actually even clinics at all. Is this true and if it is how can I know the difference between one of these places and a real pregnancy clinic?

This is a phenomenal and extremely important question, Nonie, and I’m super glad you asked it.

“CPC” stands for “crisis pregnancy center.” These are anti-abortion, usually religiously-affiliated organizations with a business model that is constructed on using whatever means possible to dissuade someone from having an abortion. CPC staff (many times just volunteers) perform limited ultrasounds - which are frequently inaccurate; I have stories, which I’ll detail below - and “counseling” which includes propaganda on various “dangers” of abortion. (In reality, the safety profile of abortion is exceptionally high - you run a 10-15x greater chance of complication with childbirth.) Many times these CPCs offer material assistance, e.g. diapers, if the pregnant person agrees to continue the pregnancy; rarely if ever do they actually come through. There is virtually never an actual physician on site. CPCs are also central participants in many abortion protests; many of the regular protesters outside our clinic are affiliated with a CPC in our area.

(Worse, in many states, CPCs are taxpayer-funded, and in most states, CPCs are not legally required to inform people that they do not provide abortions at their facility, further confusing the public.)

NOTE: There is exactly one exception in the country that I know of that is an exception to the rule of CPCs being absolute shitbags, and that is All Options Pregnancy Resource Center in Indiana. They are explicitly pro-choice and do actually provide unbiased counseling on pregnancy options, material assistance to people continuing their pregnancies, and financial assistance to those terminating. They are wonderful and do not deserve to be lumped in with the rest of these organizations.

How do you tell the difference between a CPC and a legit medical provider? Well, it’s hard as hell for a layperson to do, but I do have some tips.

-Look at the name. Obviously, if it explicitly says “crisis pregnancy center” in the name, run. Another frequently cited term is “pregnancy resource center.” Also, does the name sound religious? Is there a reference to god, life, or “heart” in it? It is almost certainly a CPC. (Also, “hope” is a frequently used word in naming a CPC - however, I know of one very wonderful small chain of clinics that use the term “hope” in their name, so that’s a guideline more than anything else.)

-What are the politics of your state? The redder you are, the more CPCs you have. In Texas, the CPC to legit abortion provider ratio is nearly nine to one. CPCs are crafty; they set up business where they know people are most vulnerable. Legit providers are more likely to be in urban areas. If your county is reasonably small, it is unlikely there is a provider in your county - approximately 88% of counties in the United States have no abortion providers at all - but it’s completely possible that you have a CPC in your county.

-Check the National Abortion Federation’s Find A Provider tool or abortion.com’s state by state directory of abortion providers. If they appear on there, they’re legit for sure. (Note: These directories do not include every single abortion provider in the country, so even if they’re not on here, it does not necessarily mean they’re not legit - this is more a “be reassured if they’re there, do more research if they’re not” tool.)

-Kick it old school and look in the yellow pages. CPCs will be listed under “Abortion Alternatives.” Legitimate medical providers will be listed under “Abortion Providers” or “Abortion Services.”

-If you’re looking at Planned Parenthood specifically, know that PP is always going to brand itself as such; it will never go by a different name.

-Check the website of the center. This is the website of a legitimate abortion provider. This is the website of a CPC. Note the difference in terminology; the use of the (medically inaccurate) term “unborn baby” is a huge red flag. Note, too, the discussion of “serious side effects and risks” - without context, without any discussion of the profound rarity of serious complications, and designed to scare the person reading it.

-Worst case scenario? Message me and ask; I’d be happy to look into it.

What kind of bullshit can CPCs pull? Allow me to elaborate.

-I had a prenatal patient who was a rape survivor who initially wanted abortion but was scared out of it by a CPC that promised to offer her material assistance if she continued the pregnancy. She did so, and after she gave birth, returned to the CPC asking for their help. They gave here a six-pack of diapers in a size her child could not even use plus a onesie that said “My Mommy Chose Life” on it. That was it. When she returned asking for additional assistance, she was refused.

-I was doing a pre-abortion ultrasound on a patient. After I assured her we were fine to proceed with her abortion, she asked me, “so, it’s a boy, right?” She was only six weeks pregnant; the absolute earliest I’ve been able to identify fetal sex on an ultrasound is about fourteen weeks. I told her it was far too early for that to be determined, that embryos don’t even have external genitalia at where she was in the pregnancy; she told me she’d gone to a CPC where they flipped the screen around and showed her the ultrasound and told her “that’s your son.”

-I was doing a pre-abortion ultrasound on a (different) patient. She requested to see the image, so after I got the measurements I needed, I turned the screen so she could see. She immediately panicked: “Where are its arms and legs?!” I explained that, at nine weeks, limb development is only rudimentary; arms and legs are rarely, if ever, identifiable on ultrasound. She told me she went to a CPC and was shown an image of a fetus with formed long bones that was moving on-screen - based on her description, it sounded like a 12+ week fetus.

-I mentioned above that a CPC is backing many of the protesters that stand outside our clinic every day and hurl abuse at my patients. They have a “mobile pregnancy van” that they park on the curb outside the clinic to try to lure patients inside. I am told that, inside, there is an ultrasound machine and a Catholic priest. At least four of my patients have been late to their appointments because they were confused by the presence of the van, went inside, and then were not allowed to leave, to the point of someone physically barricading the doors. (Which I think meets the legal definition of kidnapping, but none of my patients wanted to call the police - understandably so.)

-A CPC once learned where I lived (when I lived elsewhere) and I had literature about going to hell and blood on my hands and “we can help you escape!” (from working in abortion care) in my mailbox and on my car every goddamn day for two months until I involved law enforcement.

-A recent patient of mine went to a CPC. She had STI screening while she was there, which came back positive for chlamydia. The CPC refused to actually treat her. (I guess they thought it was just desserts for having sex…?) We had to treat her ourselves before her abortion.

-I have seen three patients told by a CPC they were pregnant when they were not. I have seen two patients told by a CPC that they had normal pregnancies, including an embryo/fetus with cardiac activity on ultrasound, who in reality had had, or were actively having, miscarriages. I have seen one patient told by a CPC that she had a normal pregnancy including an embryo with cardiac activity on ultrasound whose pregnancy was actually ectopic, requiring emergency surgery to save the patient’s life.

-There is also this excerpt from the phenomenal This Common Secret, a book written by Susan Wicklund, a now-retired abortion provider:

I had a patient in the clinic who really did not want an abortion but who had no resources to cover the costs of prenatal care or childbirth. She was single and without insurance coverage but made just enough money to be ineligible for state assistance. She already had outstanding bills at the hospital and with the local ob-gyn practice. No doctor would see her without payment up front.

We were willing to do the abortion for a reduced rate or for free if necessary. But she really didn’t want an abortion. Once I understood her situation, I went to the phone and called the local ‘crisis pregnancy center.’

“Hello, this is Dr. Wicklund.”

Dead silence. I might as well have said I was Satan.

“Hello?” I said again. “This is Dr. Wicklund.”

“Hello,” very tentatively, followed by another long silence.

“I need help with a patient,” I said. She came to me for an abortion, but really doesn’t want one. What she really needs is someone to do her prenatal care and birth for free.“

“What do you expect us to do?”

I let that hang for a minute.

Kinda says it all, doesn’t it?

Tl;dr - crisis pregnancy centers are fucking terrible businesses that are founded in their entirety on lying to people for the benefit of their own agenda. They do not provide legitimate medical care, they do not provide abortions, they do not provide prenatal care, they do not facilitate legal adoptions, they do not provide contraception, they do not do jack shit, other than shaming and lying to people. Under no circumstances should anyone ever be forced to encounter a CPC, but it can be very tricky to tell whether or not you’re dealing with one. I hope this helps clarify how you might try.

By all means, if you have other questions, please ask them. I will talk about this subject until I’m blue in the face.

[foolgobi65]

we can be heroes if we just close our eyes (head first, can’t lose)

k so this is chapter one of an unfinished fic i started writing 2 summers ago i’ve got like ... maybe 5/12 chapters written? its been hanging out on my shitty drive for too long so i figured id find out what you guys think!! its .... a ...... b99/avengers/megamind/amnesia fic. i know it makes no sense but it has a plot i promise. 

plEASE reblog im desperate for attention and validation and i have no shame whatsoever thanks love u all <3 <3 

“Jake’s gone and robbed another bank,” Black Widow says, filing her nails. She tosses a glance at Amy, filing away the last of her paperwork and pauses. “.....you could go stop that, if you’re in the mood, Cap.”

Captain America rolls her eyes and signs the last form. “Make sure that Holt gets this, alright?” Amy wonders whether she should put on her uniform, before deciding to just grab her shield. It’s not as if Peralta’s expecting anyone else.

“Excuse you, but I am a highly ranked Agent of this fine, international organization,” Gina says, “I’m like, second in command of all this shit. Go find a real secretary to do your dirty work.”

“You’re playing Kwazy Kupcakes,” Amy observes. Gina raises an eyebrow without looking away from her phone.

“And I snapped three necks between my thighs before 9 a.m,” Gina drawls. “I’m magical, bitch. Get on my level.”

Amy sighs, rolling her shoulders a little. “Just...make sure Holt sees the report, okay?”

“Jake’s probably robbed two banks in the time it took for us to have this little chat, but whatever.” Gina waves the fingers of her free hand vaguely in Amy’s direction. “We’re having a bit of a morale issue so don’t do any property damage, use two types of birth control, you know the drill.”

Amy does, in fact, know the drill. She strides into the elevator and checks the instructions that Gina’s managed to send her on the way down. It’s a screenshot of a series of text messages Peralta sent Gina about ten minutes ago, if the timestamp is correct. She reaches the ground floor, nods at a passing Agent and heads out to the parking lot still scrolling through the images.

stealin sme shit from the bank on prk ave

tell america 2 wear her civvies

her leather jacket is A+

she shud wer more leather less pantsuits

k the alarms r off c ya l8r sk8r

Amy looks down at her gabardine pantsuit and realizes two things simultaneously. 1) She needs to change out of her chunky heels, and 2) She’s going to have to wear her leather jacket, and Peralta will never let it go.

One change of shoes and jacket later, she’s on the road, cruising through traffic on her motorcycle. A child notices her shield strapped to her back and yells out excitedly, a young couple whistles three times before Amy is too far out of range to hear. Grandparents walking on the sidewalk salute, and Captain America Santiago switches between waving and a gentle smile, befitting her status as national icon.

Sometimes, she kind of loves her job. And then other times, she has to go fight Iron Dude in the streets of Manhattan.

“Ayyyy America!” Peralta shouts when she arrives. He’s currently occupied with throwing handfuls of what look to be hundred dollar bills from a giant bag he’s carrying in his left hand, repulsors keeping him airborne as he makes it rain money on the good denizens of New York. “Come to collect some extra cash? They can’t be paying you very well at SHIELD.”

Amy rolls her eyes, taking her gun out of its holster and shooting at the bag. Peralta moves slightly and they both watch as the bullet misses its target by inches.

“Were you even trying?” he asks laughing. Peralta throws another handful of bills into the air. Amy shrugs, grabbing some cash off the ground. Definitely hundreds, then. She readies her gun and fires again, this time repeatedly, anticipating any way he might move and meeting him with a bullet.

One of the bullets grazes Iron Dude’s hand, another three puncture the bag in quick succession. It drops on the pavement, and Amy smiles. Peralta groans, sound only slightly incongruous when filtered through the voice modulator of the Iron Dude suit.

“You’re the worst, America. All I wanted to do was even out the distribution a little, fight the power, you know?” Amy rolls her eyes.

“Then write a letter to your Congressman, Peralta. And stop calling me that.” He comes back to Earth, and steps forward.

“Stop calling you what, America? It’s your name, isn’t it? Tell me, did your parents know they were visionaries, or did they just assume they were when they named you. I mean what a coup for the propaganda: Captain America’s legal name literally being America Santiago.”

“Like I told you the last like fifty times you’ve asked me that, no my parents are not prophets, or fortune tellers nor are they actual fortune cookies you can purchase from Panda Express for three dollars,” Amy says with only a little hint of exasperation creeping into her voice. She forces down a distressing urge to place her hands on her hips. “And only my friends can call me by my first name.”

Iron Dude gasps, placing his hands over his heart. “I thought we had something, oh Captain my Captain! Was it all.....a lie? Say it ain’t so Cap-i-tan!”

Amy rolls her eyes. “I’m surprised you’ve even read Walt Whitman.”

Peralta cocks his head. “Who? I was quoting that Robin Williams movie, you know the one with the kids who stand up on their desks?”

She blinks. “The Dead Poets Society?” Peralta nods. “Yeah, that one! My eighth grade English teacher showed it to us ‘cause she wanted to like, inspire everyone to read poetry and crap but we all kind of just spun in circles and jumped up on our desks.” He strokes the chin of his helmet. “I think she got fired after the principal caught us playing leapfrog on the tables.”

Amy thinks she can be forgiven for throwing her shield. She takes a perverse pleasure in watching the way it makes stupid Peralta stumble backwards, and the hollow sound his Iron Ass makes when it touches the ground. She catches the shield when it boomerangs back and cocks her head.

“Jake Peralta,” she begins. “You have the right to remain silent, everything you say can and will be used against you in a court of--”

He rises, brushing himself off. Amy debates the merits of actually engaging in a fight, looking around for a moment as she performs a cost-benefit analysis in her head. Pros: she gets to bash in his stupid looking suit. Cons: they always manage to take down a building or two, and then Amy has to clean up the rubble while the Times takes a bunch of candids for the print edition and Snapchats the rest.

Their Snapchat following has shot up through the roof, mainly because Amy reached a deal where she’d give a quick interview while she worked if the photographers made sure not to publish the dorkiest looking pictures they take of her. She knows what she looks like in battle, and the way she grits her teeth is definitely not something she wants to see on the front page of her Sunday Edition.

Amy checks to make sure Peralta doesn’t have anything but his suit on him, and throws her shield one more time. She smirks at the satisfying bang, and hope it really hurts when he starts flying again, waving as he jets over her head.

“This was fun and all,” he says, “but I’ve really got a prior engagement. Byeeeeeee”

Amy barely resists showing her middle finger, but most of her impulse control right now is coming from the small child she can see staring across the street. She notices people staring, most likely curious at why she let a criminal fly off into the sunset.

“Money’s a little tight in Albany,” she says to the crowd. “No one really wants to pay for another fallen building...and he left the money, right?”

Everyone laughs, nodding their head at her explanation. Amy starts picking up the cash on the ground, and wonders if she should have made better life choices. Ones that wouldn’t end up with her using a very expensive vibranium shield to hold hundred dollar bills she’s picking up off the road.

“Captain America! Oh my god, Mom, it's Captain America!” Amy turns to see the little girl jumping up and down across the road. “She’s the coolest, oh my god do you think she’ll sign something for me?”

Amy smiles faintly and turns to face her adoring fan, crossing the street to give her a hug and an autograph. Maybe a little clean up isn’t the worst thing in the world after all.

She looks back at the road, notices the milling bank executives and groans.

Fucking Peralta.

[pamphletstoinspire]

The Surprising Pro-Life Message of Matt Damon’s New Film “Downsizing”

Story written by Bishop Robert Barron

Story with image:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/surprising-pro-life-message-matt-damons-new-film-harold-baines/?published=t

Paramount (Caption for linked image)

When I saw the trailer for Alexander Payne’s new film, Downsizing, I thought the movie would be a light-hearted farce, relying principally on visual gags. In point of fact, the jokes based on the contrast between regular-size people and their five-inch tall counterparts are surprisingly rare. Most of the film deals with events within the world of the downsized—so everything seems more or less normal.

And when I took in the opening scenes, and heard a lot of talk about protecting the environment and the dangers of overpopulation, I thought that Downsizing would be a propaganda piece for left-wing causes. Here I was surprised again, for the film amounts, I will argue, to a not-so-subtle critique of that ideology.

Downsizing opens in a Norwegian lab where a group of scientists are testing an experimental technique to reduce animals in size. It soon becomes clear that the purpose of these endeavors is to apply the technology to human beings. The most dramatic scene in the film is the moment when the team presents a five-inch person to a lecture hall of astounded researchers and journalists.

We then flash forward several years to discover that downsizing has become a popular trend, though the majority of people undergo the procedure for financial rather than piously environmental reasons. It appears that the dollar goes much further when you have tiny clothes, your nutritional needs are those of a mouse, and you live in a doll house.

At this point, we meet Paul Safranek (played by a rather pudgy-looking Matt Damon) and his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig in a surprisingly sober turn), who have decided to take the plunge. But on the fateful day, Paul goes through with it, while Audrey chickens out, leaving Paul stranded in the land of the tiny.

Compelled by his wife’s treachery to divorce, Paul finds himself out of his mansion and stuck in a nowhere-job and a small apartment. Just as he hits bottom (literally lying in a stupor on the floor of a friend’s apartment after a night of debauchery), he spies Ngoc Lan Tran (wonderfully incarnated by Hong Chau), a noble Vietnamese activist who had been forcibly downsized by her government and who now does menial labor, cleaning the homes of the wealthy.

Despite the loss of a leg, Ngoc has devoted herself, in her spare time, to the care of an army of the underclass of the small, who live in a sprawling slum. When she discovers that Paul has some basic medical training, she presses him into service, bringing him to suffering person after suffering person, compelling him to come out of himself. Carrying a Bible and attending enthusiastic religious services, Ngoc is un-embarrassingly a Christian, and it is unmistakable that her faith informs her dedication to those in need.

By an odd plot twist (I won’t bore you with the details), Paul and Ngoc travel to Norway to commune with Dr. Jorgen Asbjørnsen, the scientist who developed the downsizing technology, and the original commune of the small, who are living like a band of hippies along the shores of a picturesque fjord. They soon discover that this community, convinced that environmental pollution will render the surface of the earth uninhabitable, has actually resolved to retreat to a subterranean world that they have constructed. Beguiled by their romanticism and dedication, Paul decides to go with the community and he leaves the tearful Ngoc behind.

But then, just as the entrance to the tunnel is about to be blown permanently shut, Paul races out and embraces his beloved. The two of them then return to the States and Paul gives himself over to Ngoc’s work of service for the suffering poor.

A film of social commentary? You bet, but not the social commentary I was expecting. Is there a better symbol for the downsizing that is currently happening in Europe than the shrinking and disappearance of that original colony of the small

For the past roughly fifty years, the West in general, but Europe in particular, has been experiencing a population implosion, the number of births way below replacement level in England, France, Holland, and Germany. This has been prompted, of course, by a number of factors, but certainly one of them is a conviction that human beings are just bad for the planet, using up too many resources, raping the environment, etc.

Wouldn’t it be best, many seem to think, if the human race just shrank down and went away? Downsizing gives dramatic expression to this conviction and, not so subtly, makes fun of it. I laughed out loud when, at the climactic moment of Paul’s escape, the camera pulls back and reveals the “blowing” of the door as a tiny pebble falling about two inches to the ground. Talk about going out, not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Contrasted to this despairing retreat is the vibrant compassion exemplified by Ngoc. She too sees the world as a painful place, but her resolution is not to retreat but to address the pain through love. And it cannot be accidental that the Vietnamese woman’s Christian faith is clearly emphasized, while no one on the European side exhibits the slightest interest in religion.

In point of fact, it is precisely religious faith that will awaken courage and compassion, and it is precisely the lack of faith that conduces, by a short road, to spiritual and psychological exhaustion—both in the individual and in a culture.

I applaud Downsizing for making this contrast clear.

[alexsmitposts]

Hong Kong is Now a ‘Tale of Two Cities’ Before today’s election, Hong Kong had dropped out of the frontpage news while the city took a deep breath without any tear gas in the air, and both sides seem to have worked together to have smooth elections. Even Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s CEO, when asked what she thought about the election prospects said that she “hoped elections could continue as planned.” It seems everyone else had the same idea, especially the 400,000 new young voters who ran the ballot count to almost 3 million votes − a 71% turnout. This gave a sweeping win to the pro-democracy advocates who won an incredible 389 of the 452 district council slots, up from only 124 in the last election. The government’s allies held just 58 seats, a remarkable collapse from 300. A handful of independents got the rest. No violence was reported, a sign that the city may begin healing its wounds. While this was a major political shift, we must keep in mind that these are the lowest elected offices in Hong Kong, dealing with community level issues only. But from an egg grows a chicken, and once upon a time, a dinosaur. The democratic election success provides a solid foundation for expanding citizen involvement in Hong Kong affairs, but in no way is a path for vetoing Beijing’s control. Such an event was anticipated when the Hong Kong arrangement was set up, to prevent mainland China from ever losing political control other than through a revolution. Signs of a potential pro-democratic majority win were already evident during the street clearing, despite a small band of protesters still being holed up in the Polytechnic Institute, scene of some of the biggest and most violent battles, with the students making massive use of Molotov cocktails against the police. In the US if you threw one of these at a cop you would get shot on the spot, all perfectly legal under the “I feared for my life” police officer defense, which grand juries have upheld endless times. Both sides seem to tire out at the same time Days after the riots, protesters have been helping clean the streets and getting 600 polling-station areas ready for lines around the block. Voters showed up today to wait an hour to vote. Small groups of riot police were visible, but they had an uneventful day. Several long time pro-Beijing districts were won by young pro-democracy candidates in their 20’s, purely due to the losers having backed the extradition issue for criminal trials, which I suspect that Beijing looks back on as a big mistake. Although it canceled the initiative, the political damage already had been done. It lit a fire in Hong Kong, as the democracy groups expanded their demands to have broader wish list to draw supporters, and it worked. Roy Kwong Chung-Yu, who won the Pek Long constituency claimed, “The voice of the public is loud and clear: Five demands, not one less. If Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam “doesn’t listen to our voice, she must still not be awake.” The tale of the other city The tragic irony is that the pro-democracy groups had a strong wind in their sails due to Beijing’s extradition-act blunder. With the mass protests and escalating violence, the US’ exploitation of the situation to make China look “repressive” was not only wrong, but unnecessary. Despite all the US huffing and puffing warnings to Beijing to not use violence against the protesters, Hong Kong authorities showed tremendous restraint in the face of increasingly violent tactics. Man retired intel vets people saw signs that the increased violence was being orchestrated by outside infiltrators to trigger harsher tactics against the protesters which could be used for US anti-China propaganda. Protesters roast political opponent alive The real victims were those we watched on video being savaged by college age protesters. The most famous victim of their cruelty will be the unfortunate and anonymous Mr. Lee, who finally has been awakened from his induced ten-day coma to learn he has the become the face, or what is left of his face, of the barbarity of the US-backed protesters in Hong Kong. Fortunately, the monsters that did this to him wanted full credit for the deed, so they videoed it all in HD for us so see, similar to how ISIS filmed its beheadings for propaganda. I knew when I watched Mr. Lee running away in flames that the extremist protesters had just signed their political death warrants. We pray that they are disclosed to the police for proper punishment. Mr. Lee has a female victim companion, also unknown at this time, a middle-aged woman that was savagely beaten by college age young men with construction rebar steel clubs, while being videoed. What is not shown in both of these videos is the “Made in the USA” stamp on all of this. No Chinese political protester would ever do such a thing to a Chinese woman. Only hired thugs, the kind typically used by intel agencies to trigger harsher response from the authorities would perform such acts. My research found that even some of protesters had also joined the horribly burned legacy of the riots by fumbling their Molotov cocktails and lighting themselves up. They are now forever entwined on a two-headed memorial coin for these riots. Hong Kong riot police refused to overreact to protester violence The Hong Kong authorities showed tremendous professionalism and restraint in preventing injuries and death to both protesters and civilians. Although Mr. Pompeo got on the record this summer saying that the US did not advocate violence in the Hong Kong protests, he must think we can’t remember the US-inflicted carnage on Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. In Syria, the US total number given for civilians killed by US bombings, (1300), is being found in single mass graves, over and over, just inside Raqqa alone. There is a drone video tour online that takes you around the city showing you the sites and the body counts. When the interrogations of those arrested in Hong Kong are completed, we may learn a lot more about how independent the rioters really were. In my research today, I found many statements for their asking US to intervene on their behalf this summer. I suspect that the Hong Kong authorities will have extensive intelligence files on the birthing of these fire-bombing riots, timed to take place at a critical phase of the US-China trade talks and just before the election. Interference in other countries’ affairs and elections is just another day’s work for many US embassies. We can look at what is going on in South America, once again, as the descendants of the Spanish conquistadors are being supported by the US against the native Indian populations who were decimated in the early colonial period, with millions dying in the silver mines alone. There has been little protesting by the American left against this current wave to reconquer South America and economically enslave the natives in a new round of exploitation and poverty. We have all been here before As Senior VT Editor Gordon Duff has mention in his articles, since the Vietnam War protests there has really been nothing of consequence that grabbed the attention of the whole country since then to end another useless war. But we did have a major poll published last week that 60% of the US soldiers and officers that fought in Afghanistan and Iraq felt neither was was not worth it, a late admission, but one that is public now. The anti-Vietnam war protests were covered over by historically calling them “campus protests”, inferring they were civilian-student run. They were actually done by the Vietnam veterans who poured into America’s colleges on the GI bill and became the heart and soul of the anti-war movement. There were 8000 Vietnam War vets at Michigan State when Gordon was there for his graduate work. If word went out that there was a war protest at noon the next day, 6000 of them would be there; and the terrified campus police never messed with the PTSD vets. The organization of these campus protests were typically done by officers, Special forces officers. Today the officers are basically nowhere to be seen fighting against the fake war scourge, rolling over for the proxy terror wars. If you don’t think the US was willing to play with fire in Hong Kong, I will try to get Mr. Lee on the phone to explain it to you.

[living-for-fiction]

Man, looking at *pro~life* blogs as someone who used to hold that stance and is now firmly pro-choice is an Experience. Because I heard all those arguments when I was a part if their movement. And I remember seeing the “accept these consequences!” arguments and going “what no it’s about babies why would you put it that way?!” (And there were always the people I dismissed as ~fringe~ who had white-supremacist reasoning. I always tried to ignore that.)

Anyways. When I was part of the anti-choice movement, I heard all the arguments. I knew all the arguments. Even then, most of them horrified me. I was in it to protect babies, what were these tangents about punishing sexually active people or preserving ~the white race~ or making women realize they deep-down wanted to be mothers?! Even then, it made no sense to me.

So I guess it makes sense that I changed my tune. I was ~pro-life~ for arguments of personhood. And once I got free of the propaganda that “these are just people who want to kill babies!!!” I was able to see the point of people arguing for the personhood and bodily autonomy of born people. I can survive with one kidney, but I wouldn’t let some rando come take my “spare” kidney without consent. Likewise, people can survive with some rando in their uterus, but they have no obligation to lend out their uterus and sacrifice their health for 9 months.

I also got a lot of incorrect sex-ed from ~pro-life~ groups, and I resent that. Literally, in this this conservative town, the pro-life doctor refuses to prescribe birth control to me despite gynecologist recommendation to deal with my several-month-long periods. Because birth control ~kills babies!~ I’m severely anemic due to blood loss, but we can’t treat that in case of a hypothetical pregnancy.

The pro-life movement should switch to advocating for birth control and consensual organ donation. And also support for pregnant people and new mothers. And work to improve the foster and adoption systems. That would do a LOT more to save lives, prevent abortions, and increase the likelihood of people keeping fetuses until birth. But that’s not the overall goal - the overall goal is to control sexually active people, especially women, and while some people aren’t in it for that, they all play into that system.

(Pro-lifers who want to comment on this may feel free, but should know that I heard all the arguments when I was part of your movement, and rejected them over the span of years and nuanced education.)

[takebackthedream]

Trump's School Choice Plan: Religious Fundamentalism At Taxpayer Expense by Jeff Bryant

President Donald Trump is being praised for a change in tone in his recent address to Congress, but his belligerent attitude toward public education hasn’t changed a bit.

While it’s true he stopped short of repeating his claims that public schools are “broken” and a “government monopoly,” what Trump chose to highlight in his remarks about public schools was a story about a student who left them.

During his education remarks, Trump called out a guest of his in the audience, Denisha Merriweather, who, he said,

struggled in school and failed third grade twice. But then she was able to enroll in a private center for learning, with the help of a tax credit scholarship program. Today, she is the first in her family to graduate, not just from high school, but from college. Later this year she will get her masters degree in social work.

Education writers were quick to jump on Trump’s shout-out to speculate that an education tax-credit proposal, like the one Merriweather took advantage of in Florida, would be just the sort of plan Trump would try to push through Congress.

“One of the easiest ways Trump could make good on his promise to expand [school choice],” writes Emma Brown for the Washington Post, “is to create a federal tax credit that incentivizes corporations to donate to state programs such as Florida’s. Such a credit could be embedded in a broader tax code overhaul that would need a simple majority in Congress to pass.”

Brown’s report tells you something about how these tax-credit programs work – they give individuals and corporations tax breaks when they donate to nonprofits which then distribute the money in the form of scholarships to private schools. But she doesn’t describe the school Merriweather transferred to, and what type of education the public’s money ultimately paid for.

Some would ask, “Does it matter what kind of school Merriweather attended?” True, Merriweather’s story is admirable, and she should be commended for her accomplishments.

But whenever public money is involved, the interests of the common good, not just the fortunes of a single person, must be considered. And while Merriweather certainly benefited from an education tax-credit program, it would be dangerous to project her success story into a public policy intended for all children nationwide.

Poster Person For Privatization?

First, it should be noted this is hardly the first time Merriweather’s story has been used to tout tax-credit scholarship programs.

Merriweather is not simply an industrious student. She’s also a frequent contributor and presenter for Step Up For Students, the state-approved nonprofit in Florida that helps administer the education tax-credit program she benefitted from.

According to her profile at the Step Up website, she has been featured prominently in this organization’s communications outreach since 2008. Although she isn’t listed as staff of Step Up, she has been employed as an intern.

Over the past three years, Merriweather has had the opportunity to tell her story in numerous media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, the Tampa Bay Times, and The 74 (a pro school choice media site funded by charter school and voucher advocates such as the Walton Family Foundation and the Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation.

She’s also been the subject of pro-school choice profiles in politically conservative news outlets. And after Merriweather was showcased inTrump’s speech, she was interviewed by Fox News.

None of this is to take away from the sincerity of Merriweather’s writing or the validity of her lived experience. But it needs to be noted that few public school students have had such prominent venues to repeatedly tell their success stories.

Further, the school Merriweather attended through the school choice program Trump champions is no ordinary school.

Religious Fundamentalism At Taxpayer Expense

The private school Merriweather attended and graduated from is the Esprit De Corps Center for Learning in Jacksonville, which she has described in testimony she gave last year to a U.S. House Committee as “a church-based school, a church that I actually attended.”

According to the Esprit de Corps website, the “vision for the school was birthed from the mind of God in the heart of Dr. Jeannette C. Holmes-Vann, the Pastor and Founder of Hope Chapel Ministries, Inc.”

The education philosophy guiding the school is based on “a return to a traditional educational model founded on Christian principles and values. In accordance with this vision, each component of the school was purposefully selected and designed.”

A significant “component” of the Esprit de Corps school is its adherence to a fundamentalist Christian curriculum. Its official listing in a Jacksonville directory of private schools describes its education program as a “spiritual emphasis and biblical [sic] view, which permeates the A-Beka curriculum.”

“A Beka is one of the most widely used K-12 curriculum series for home schooling and private Christian schools,” Rachel Tabachnick explains to me in an email. “This includes many private schools receiving public dollars through voucher and tax-credit programs.”

Tabachnick has collected textbooks used by voucher and corporate tax-credit schools for over ten years, including curriculum from A Beka Book and Bob Jones University Press.

In an investigative article for Alternet in 2011, Tabachnick writes, “Throughout the K-12 curriculum, A Beka consistently presents the Bible as literal history and science. This includes teaching young earth creationism and demeaning other religions and other Christian faiths including Roman Catholicism.”

An A Beka history text she reviews teaches that “socialist propaganda” exaggerated the Great Depression “so that Franklin Delano Roosevelt could pass New Deal legislation” and that the Vietnam War “divided the country into the ‘hawks who supported the fight against Communism, and doves, who were soft on Communism.'”

Tabachnick quotes a fourth-grade A Beka text that celebrates President Ronald Reagan’s presidency under a banner of “A Return to Patriotism and Family Values.” In describing President Bill Clinton’s administration, an A Beka high school history text calls First Lady Hilary Clinton’s effort to overhaul health care a “plan for socialized medicine” and describes Vice President Al Gore as “known for his radical environmentalism.”

Christ Is History, Africans Are Inferior

In her emails to me, Tabachnick shares excerpts from a newer edition of A Beka’s textbook on “History and Civil Government” that teaches, “The first advent of Jesus Christ to earth – His incarnation, birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension – is the focal point of history. History began with God and His act of Creation. It climaxed with God’s act of redemption.” (emphasis original)

In the current edition of A Beka’s 10th grade history text “World History and Cultures in Christian Perspective” Tabachnick shares with me, “modern liberalism” is described as “the desire to be free from absolute standards and morals, especially the Scriptures.”

From this text, high school students like Denisha Merriweather learn, “The beginning of the 20th century witnessed a cultural breakdown that threatened to destroy the very roots of Western civilization. The cause of this dissolution was the idea or philosophy known as liberalism.” (emphasis original)

The curriculum used by Esprit de Corps also taught Merriweather and her African American classmates about the innate inferiority of the African continent and its people.

“The textbooks teach the narrative that the people of African nations descended from Noah’s son Ham and that Ham’s descendant Nimrod led the rebellion against God by building the Tower of Babel,” Tabachnick tells me. This Biblically supported lesson is often referred to as “the curse of Ham,” which has historically been a primary justification for slavery among Southern Christians, according to numerous sources.

In the A Beka text “History and Civil Government,” Adam and Eve are referred to as “the parents of humanity” and racial variations in human kind are described as the result of “recessive traits” due to “(1) a rapidly changing environment, (2) a small population, (3) and extensive inbreeding.”

“Current A Beka texts also falsely claim that only ten percent of the population of Africa is literate and that literacy rates may drop further because of communists shutting down mission schools,” Tabachnick tells me.

A Realistic View?

On its company website, A Beka claims its textbooks teach “a realistic view of time, government, geography, and economics based on eternal truths.”

Of course, parents can decide for themselves if this is the kind of “realistic view” they want their children to learn. But why should taxpayer money pay for it?

According to a 2015 report in the Orlando Sentinel, Florida’s tax-credit school voucher programs, including the one Merriweather took advantage of, have become a cash cow for many of the state’s private schools – sending out about $544 million to families of nearly 100,000 students in the state.

Of the roughly 2,300 private schools in Florida, more than 1,500 accept voucher money, and of these voucher-accepting schools, about 45 percent rely on them for at least half of their students. About 70 percent of these schools are religiously affiliated, “including some where religion is a central focus.”

Now, Trump wants to roll that out nationwide.

[Keep up with important education news like this with the weekly newsletter of the Education Opportunity Network. Subscribe here.]

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UK intelligence gave US key tipoff about Russian hacking, report says

Donald Trump tweets defiance as New York Times sources say Britain among first to raise alarm over hacking of Democratic National Committee

British intelligence reportedly provided a vital tipoff to the US in 2015 about the extent of Russian hacking on the presidential election.

The report on the UKs involvement came after US intelligence agencies published an unclassified version of their finding that Vladimir Putin ordered a multi-pronged operation to interfere in the election in favour of Donald Trump.

The New York Times, citing two people familiar with the conclusions of the report, said British intelligence was among the first to raise the alarm in autumn 2015 that Moscow had hacked the computer servers of the Democratic National Committee.

The UKs role suggests that the compromise of email exchanges among senior Democrats was spotted when voice intercepts, computer traffic or agents picked up content of the emails flowing towards Moscow.

Over the course the campaign, British officials were as alarmed as their US counterparts over the extent of contacts between Trump advisers and Moscow and by Trumps consistently pro-Russian stance on a range of foreign policy issues.

However, those officials now say they are in a difficult position since the election, as Theresa Mays government is striving to solidify ties with the incoming Trump administration, in part to counter-balance the UKs accelerating drift from Europe.

To that end, Downing Street took the unusual step last week of briefing against US secretary of state John Kerry for his denunciation of Israeli settlements on the West Bank, although his remarks closely reflected longstanding UK policy.

Allegations about the depth and nature of contacts between the Trump camp and Moscow have been passed to the FBI but it is unclear whether they are the subject of a full investigation.

There was no reference to them in the public version of the joint intelligence report on Russian interference in the election, compiled by the CIA, FBI and NSA.

It is not surprising that the report did not reference any involvement of US persons or ongoing criminal investigations, said Susan Hennessey, a former counsel on cybersecurity at the NSA.

The government has very specific processes for making those kinds of allegation and typically only does so in criminal indictments in order to preserve the rights of citizens, who retain the presumption of innocence.

That said, the question of whether there was any criminal conduct in the United States remains a relevant open question.

A classified version has been prepared for Congress, and a top secret version has been shown to Barack Obama, Trump and a few other officials with high-level clearance.

The unclassified version makes the unprecedented claim that the Russian leadership conducted a concerted and well-resourced attempt to skew an US election in favour of one candidate.

We assess Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election, the joint finding by the CIA, FBI and NSA said.

Russias goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.

The report said Putin developed a preference for Trump because of many positive experiences working with Western political leaders whose business interests made them more disposed to deal with Russia, such as former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Another motive, according to the report, was that a Trump victory was seen as a way to achieve an international counterterrorism coalition against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

In a new series of tweets on Saturday, the president-elect said: Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only stupid people, or fools, would think that it is bad! We have enough problems around the world without yet another one.

He added: When I am President, Russia will respect us far more than they do now and both countries will, perhaps, work together to solve some of the many great and pressing problems and issues of the WORLD!

Trump has frequently derided the US intelligence community, highlighting its failings over Iraqs non-existent weapons of mass destruction in the runup to the 2003 invasion.

Biden to Trump: Grow up, Donald. Time to be an adult

After meeting the intelligence chiefs on Friday in New York, he issued a statement affirming his respect for the work of the agencies, and pledged to take the threat of cyberwarfare seriously.

However, he lumped in Russia with China and other countries in describing the threat and claimed that the intelligence report found no evidence that foreign interference had influenced the outcome of the election.

In fact, the report did not address the question of the impact on the result.

Although it made strong claims about Russian interference, the public version of the report offered little fresh evidence. Seven of its 13 pages were taken up by a four-year-old assessment of the state-owned channel Russia Today (RT) as an arm of Kremlin propaganda.

These seven pages written by the US intelligence community comprise what is perhaps the greatest and most generous Christmas gift in the history of Russian Orthodoxy, which celebrates the birth of Christ on Saturday 7 January, wrote Kevin Rothrock, web editor of the Moscow Times.

Thanks to the CIA, FBI and NSA, Russia Today can count on continued, likely expanded, Kremlin funding.

The inclusion of the 2012 annex was strange and may have actually undercut the strength of the overall document, said Hennessey, the former NSA lawyer who is now a fellow in national security in governance studies at the Brookings Institution.

My best guess is that once the classified version of the report was stripped of sensitive information for public release, the resulting document was extremely thin and there was a desire to add in something to make it appear more substantial.

The focus on RT is likely to deepen the mutual suspicion between Trumps designated national security adviser, Michael Flynn, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the current intelligence community.

In 2015, Flynn flew to Moscow at RTs expense to attend a dinner marking RTs 10th anniversary. He was seated at the same table as Putin and has been a regular guest on RT shows.

Read more: http://bit.ly/2iYlRcU

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