#Weaponizing | Safety | Propaganda

[xtruss]

“Fascist Pro-Isra-helli Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Advocates” Are Weaponizing “Safety” On College Campuses

Some Schools are Acting on the Misbegotten Notion that Palestinian Freedom is a Threat to Jewish Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Safety.

— Natasha Lennard | March 28, 2024 | The Intercept

People gather to protest the banning of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace chapters at Columbia University on Nov. 20, 2023, in New York City. Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Two Weeks Ago, the Columbia chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine publicized an email leaked by an anonymous student at the university’s social work school. In the email, a professor, who was also not named in the screenshot, raised the issue of a Palestinian flag emoji that the student had placed next to her name during Zoom meetings.

“On an unrelated matter,” the professor wrote, “it has recently been brought to my attention that geopolitical emojis” — the Palestinian flag — “used at the end of name info has caused trauma reactions, making it difficult for some to remain present and not dissociate during class session.”

The professor asked for the student’s “continued partnership in ensuring our class space remains a safe one for all.” In an excruciatingly polite response, the student asked for permission to discuss the issue collectively, with the class.

It’s the stuff of far-right parody: an absurd example of “woke” culture. An Ivy League professor, invoking the language of “trauma response” and safety, in an email that refers to class members as “folx,” suggesting the removal of an emoji.

Yet the professor’s email speaks to a broader problem of student safety being flattened into a question of whether students feel safe. And these aren’t the reactionary tropes of left-wing “snowflakes”: “Safety” is being invoked by pro-Israel students, many conservative and center-right, who believe that protests targeting the nation state constitute inherent attacks on them as Jews.

The same dynamic played out in the fall at the same university. Last November, Columbia banned its chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, as The Intercept reported, because an “unauthorized event” put on by the groups “included threatening rhetoric and intimidation.” When challenged to name the threat, Columbia Senior Executive Vice President Gerald Rosberg said only, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of the student groups, that “accusations that Israel was ‘a racist state committing genocide’ and ‘is an apartheid state’ could upset some people and ‘seem … like an incitement of violence.’”

New York City’s Upper West Side isn’t the only setting for such thin complaints. A staggeringly imbalanced feature in The Atlantic this week, written by Stanford sophomore Theo Baker, offered up a supposedly neutral narrative that treats the “conflict” on his college campus as a battle between imperiled Jewish students and unreasoned pro-Palestine zealots.

Right-wing GOP culture warriors and conservative Zionist groups are using similar claims about campus incidents nationwide. “Safety” is the latest weapon in the culture war, being deployed now to deal a blow to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, known as DEI, and to silence criticism of Israel.

“People Are Taking Their Feelings of Being Uncomfortable With Information As The Same As Physically Being Unsafe.”

The result has brought us to our intolerable status quo, with students and faculty risking grave consequences for protesting a war in which Israeli forces have slaughtered over 31,000 people. Israel’s U.S.-backed assault has razed to rubble every single university in Gaza, but the concern as relates to intellectual life in this country focuses instead on the inoculation of Israel’s young supporters from bad feeling.

“People are taking their feelings of being uncomfortable with information as the same as physically being unsafe,” said Layla, a Palestinian American graduate student at Columbia’s School of Social Work, who asked to withhold her last name for fear of harassment. “As a Palestinian student, I’ve lost family in Gaza. Frankly, I get uncomfortable when Zionist students are chanting ‘no ceasefire’ on campus. That makes me feel uncomfortable. That makes me feel unsafe. But I know that it is not a physical threat to my safety. That is free speech.”

Feeling Safe Vs. Being Safe

The need to distinguish between feeling safe and being safe is both urgent and undeniably fraught. Antisemitism is rising. There have been instances, including on campuses, of Jewish students harassed and targeted solely for wearing a kippah or being otherwise identified as Jewish. Islamophobic, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian violence is surging. And a American-supported genocide is being carried out halfway around the world in the purported name of Jewish safety. Yet this is no time for cowardice.

Writing as a professor and a Jew, with a profound commitment to my students’ safety and well-being, I see an imperative for them to learn to distinguish between genuine threat and paranoia — that their judgments of the world be grounded and attentive to the workings of power, propaganda, and ideology.

Instead, a perfect political storm, driven in large part by sustained campaigning from pro-Israel groups, has produced structures of feeling — a map of collective emotions at historical junctures — that are resistant to challenge. The elements include the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism, pushed evermore fervently by Zionist groups in the last decade; the equation of feeling unsafe with being unsafe that has been normalized in the oversimplified liberal discourse; and the weight of intergenerational Jewish trauma combined with very real antisemitism in the present.

I have no doubt that the students’ feelings of fear are real, but educational institutions should not be validating a psychic block that precludes seeing support for Palestine as anything other than a threat.

One way universities are validating these feelings as proof of real danger may be out of their hands: through Title VI complaints and, in some cases, official investigations. Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance. By statute, universities are duty-bound to take these complaints seriously, but that doesn’t mean they’re always serious.

In the post-October 7 campus battles, the complaints in question consistently center on claims of campus antisemitism — referring to Title VI’s protection from discrimination based on national origin.

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has 80 open Title VI investigations that have arisen since October 7 that fall under the category of “shared ancestry” discrimination, which also covers incidents of Islamophobia and other religious discrimination. And just one man, Zachary Marschall, the editor of the right-wing site Campus Reform, is responsible for 10 of them, according to a database of the complaints and investigations put together from public data by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

To file a complaint, a person need have no affiliation with the institution in question. Marschall, an outspoken critic of DEI, has no connection with any of the universities against which he is the Title VI complainant, but claims to be filing the complaints on behalf of campus figures who are often not publicly named.

While details of the federal investigations are not public, Campus Reform’s coverage of reported antisemitism on campus offers clues about Marschall’s approach. His posts on the site consist largely of alarmed responses to Palestinian solidarity slogans, calls for ceasefire, and vocal anti-Zionism on the part of left-wing Jewish student groups.

Consider, by way of example, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, against which Marschall filed a Title VI complaint. Campus Reform wrote about the school too. A November post cited as evidence of anti-Jewish animus the fact that a faculty open letter in support of a Gaza ceasefire was commended by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group that Campus Reform alleged is connected to Hamas — a common attack against CAIR that the group has denied as a “smear.”

Marschall may well think the discrimination he is alleging is very real, but it hangs on a thin reed. To have the desired impact, though, the Title VI complaints don’t necessarily need to be sustained. The Department of Education might rule that Marschall’s complaints fail to show civil rights violations, but the investigations themselves can still have a chilling effect, forcing universities to act out of fear of losing federal funding.

The investigations can and have drummed up publicity, putting other university funding in the crosshairs. The effects of similar pressure campaigns are already being felt: Elite universities have appeased wealthy pro-Israel donors, who have since October 7 threatened to withhold their money if anti-Israel speech is tolerated on campus.

Pro-Israel protesters argue with pro-Palestinian protesters during a demonstration near Columbia University on Feb. 2, 2024, in New York City. Getty Images

Antisemitism As Cudgel

Using antisemitism for political ends is not a new tack. Efforts like Marschall’s play into a pattern of reporting on antisemitism that obfuscates rather than clarifies material antisemitic threats. Frightening statistics, leading to sensationalized headlines, about soaring campus antisemitism are compiled by conservative, agenda-driven watchdogs that conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism as policy.

They assert without compunction that calls for Palestinian liberation are a threat to Jews. The statistics then take on the imprimatur of official narrative, stoke further fear, and resist dispute — any such challenge is open to charges of antisemitism denialism.

Meanwhile, three Palestinian students wearing Keffiyehs were shot last November in Vermont, leaving one paralyzed from the waist down. An Arab Muslim student at Stanford was hospitalized in a hit-and-run in November that authorities are investigating as a hate crime. (The latter incident went notably unmentioned in Baker’s viral Atlantic story detailing threats at Stanford.)

And there have been physical dangers at Columbia, too — for pro-Palestine students. Those attending an on-campus Palestine solidarity rally in January were sprayed with a noxious chemical by two veterans of the Israeli military, also Columbia students. Numerous students — including Layla, the Palestinian social work student — were hit with the foul-smelling spray, believed to be Israeli-developed chemical weapon known as “skunk.”

Fifteen students had to seek hospital care for nausea, burning eyes, and irritated skin. While the NYPD is investigating the incident and the assailants are currently banned from campus, the university’s initial response was to chide the injured students for holding the protest in the first place.

Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students at Columbia and elsewhere have seen their faces and names projected on “doxxing trucks” circling campus. A vocally pro-Zionist business school professor, Shai Davidai, has faced complaints that he used his X account to target individual Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students by linking them to Hamas. (Davidai has denied going after particular students, though in January he promoted a form letter that singled out a student by name and, in March, accused a student of being “pro-Hamas” while linking to a tweet that identified her.)

In response to dozens of student complaints, the university launched an investigation into Davidai’s behavior; he has decried the probe as “retaliation.” His outrage make sense, I suppose, in a universe that gives credence to a Palestinian flag emoji as a potential trigger for a “trauma response.”

“The Absence of Any Real Threat”

The disparity of the stakes — felt safety and its material counterpart — become ever starker when one’s gaze is turned to where it really belongs: Palestine itself. Students speaking out for Palestine are not doing so to shore up campus safety for Palestinian students — which the Palestinian students, of course, deserve — but because they are desperate to see an end to Israeli assault on Gaza.

“I question why our focus is on the elite college campuses and their use of language over the horrific injustices being committed against the Palestinian people,” wrote Maryam Iqbal, a freshman at Barnard College and among the students hospitalized after the Columbia chemical attack, in the college newspaper. “There is absolutely no reason to be centering the feelings of privileged college students over the victims of an actual genocide.”

Iqbal told me that she hoped that following the chemical attack, the university administration’s attitude towards what constitutes threat and safety, and where risks lie, would change. “Nothing has shifted,” she said.

Instead, attacks on expression continue. Last month, Barnard banned students from displaying any decorations on dorm room doors, to avoid “the unintended effect of isolating those who have different views and beliefs.”

There are, without question, students who feel hurt and unwelcome when faced with protests and speech condemning Israel as a genocidal apartheid state. Many Jewish people struggle to square such realities with the idealized notion of Israel we were raised with: that it is a noble and necessary state for Jewish safety.

I know, too, that there are Jewish students who fear that antisemitic groups and individuals are simply using opposition to Israel as a guise for anti-Jewish hate — there’s certainly historic precedent. And there are, as I noted, examples of genuine heightened antisemitism on campus. When Jewish people are targeted for being Jewish, we need to act with severity. Fear, however, does not make a protest against Israel, even a protest against its maintenance as a Jewish ethnostate, a protest against Jews.

“Treating Feelings of Fear and Discomfort Seriously Does Not Mean Reifying Them.”

Institutions of higher education should be in the business of demystification, even when it involves challenging certain sensitive received wisdoms. We fail as educators if we permit the false lesson of all too many Zionist upbringings — that Palestinian freedom is a threat to Jewish safety — to persist for our students.

As Joseph Howley, a classics professor at Columbia who has been perturbed by the treatment of pro-Palestine protest on campus, told me, “Treating feelings of fear and discomfort seriously does not mean reifying them.”

Howley, who is also Jewish, noted that, by the same logic, we would not want to validate the fear felt by a white student, conditioned under racist assumptions, who called the police because they felt afraid in the presence of a Black student.

“Capitulation to this sort of language of fear and unsafety in the absence of any real threat,” he said, “is a real betrayal of our actual responsibilities as teachers to the social emotional development of our students.”

Students and activists protest Columbia University’s decision to suspend the student group chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace for holding pro-Palestine events on campus, in Manhattan, N.Y., on Nov. 15, 2023. NY Daily News via Getty Images

More Than a Feeling

We might be tempted to hand it to the anti-woke right, who warned against the proliferation of “safe space” language and “therapy speak” as organizing forces at American universities. Such criticisms, though, rely on bad faith framings of anti-racist and diversity work — only the worst liberal iterations, although too common, exemplify the right-wing caricature of colleges privileging “snowflake” student feelings.

It is a different, more rigorous exercise entirely when students and professors proffer materially grounded, historically informed opposition to oppressive speech and discriminatory treatment on campus.

When the Hillel student group at the New School in New York City, where I teach, invited a lieutenant from the Israeli military to come speak on campus in early March, I was among several colleagues who signed a letter to our administration, requesting the planned event be canceled.

Among the reasons listed was that many students, above all Palestinians, would feel “utterly unsafe” to have an active-duty Israeli soldier on campus. This, I thought, was true, but a weak argument; the students might feel unsafe, but they would not be unsafe.

The letter’s far stronger claim was that, as a university founded on antiwar ideals and a purported commitment to liberatory principles, the school should not offer “a platform for an army that continues to violate international law and is actively engaged in perpetrating human rights abuses and the murder of Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank.” It is, I believe, valid to oppose a university hosting an active ranking officer of an army that has obliterated every single institution of higher education in Gaza.

Citing the importance of free speech, the university permitted the talk to proceed.

I’ve long argued against an absolutist approach to free speech on campuses and beyond; some oppressive speech, even if constitutionally protected, should not be platformed. Decisions about canceling speakers and banning certain speech, however, should not be a question of privileging certain peoples’ feelings and fears over others, however visceral the feelings might be.

Rather, we must — without presuming answers in advance — interrogate whether structures of oppression and violence are normalized and upheld in our educational institutions through these choices. The decisions will be imperfect and contested, but at least they will be based on more than feelings.

#The Intercept #Pro-Isra-helli ​🐖 🐷 🐗 Advocates #Weaponizing | Safety | Propaganda #College Campuses #Palestinian 🇵🇸 Vs Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 #Antisemitism As Cudgel | Weapon of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 #Absence of Real Threat

[redjaybathood]

You know, it's kinda funny to see the "Ukrainians are white so they are more privileged compared to Palestinians" posts right when there's another air attack alert in Kyiv. Will my low chances of being shot dead at traffic stop in USA help me survive a Kinzhal rocket dropped at my house?

"You're white so this is why the racist media supports you" - sure, if you disregard a campaign to smear Ukraine that's being going since 2013. Yeah, before the war started.

"You're white and that's why governments support you, so don't whine" ironic seeing yet another refusal to give us more weapons. More ironic is, our victory is crucial to the world's stability and food security - your, my friend, safety and ability to feed yourself. Even more ironic, that countries that oh support us so much, and who rely on us to keep them safe, are dragging their feet so we die, die, die... How white of us.

"You're white, you don't deserve to be treated with basic empathy. You don't deserve respect, your life is worth nothing" from one side, and from another, it's "You are subhuman, you don't deserve basic empathy or respect, your life is worthless..." from another.

Let me be clear. Whatever issues you have with white people, we didn't do shit to you. We were the colonized people, we were enslaved. We are experiencing genocide - yet again from the hands of the same empire. You don't have a higher moral ground here - you have a social media acceptable target. Our whiteness makes it okay to call us names, be happy when we die, manipulate data, pictures, to show how unworthy we are of the help we managed to get. Spread propaganda justifying our genocide. Spread narratives that become barriers to us receiving said help we are, in your merry-world, entitled to. Justify why you personally call for people to stop helping us.

We didn't do shit to you. You are doing it to us. You are punching down. And that's your privilege, being an arrogant and ignorant cunt somewhere a bomb is not going to drop on you, whatever your skin color is.

#to say nothing about our Ukrainians of color who are under the same danger se are #to say nothing about silent deportation Crimean Tatars experience #i am so sick of it

[jewishvitya]

[This post was originally written in response to someone tagging me and claiming that a free Palestine would mean all Israeli Jews will be kicked out and where will I go, and how they can't understand why I'm so against Israel being our ethnostate. OP blocked me, so I'm reposting with a few edits, because I already wrote this and I might as well.]

Look. I understand your mentality. We're traumatized by a history of violence against us. We were shown that so many in the world want us dead, and so many others won't stop them. I get it. But I refuse to let myself silently become the face of similar oppression for other people.

Israel benefits from antisemitism and maintains myths that got Jewish people killed in the past, like double loyalty. It weaponizes it for propaganda reasons. It's supported by antisemitic Christian zionist organizations with terrifying motivations. It started out with violence not only against Palestinians but against Jews too. Israel isn't motivated by our safety, it abuses that idea. It manipulates and weaponizes our trauma to make us feel justified in causing so much suffering to innocent people.

You're right that I'll have nowhere to go if I'm kicked out of here. This is where I was born. My parents come from other countries that I won't feel safe in. But all of this is hypothetical. The ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians is not hypothetical, it's REALITY. It's happening RIGHT NOW. And I don't understand how, as a Jewish person who knows what this kind of suffering and loss of life means, you seem unable to prioritize that. I tell you I'm witnessing a genocide happening right next to me and you keep telling me "but what if they hurt you instead."

The assumption that Palestinians will pull some sort of reverse ethnic cleansing against us is racist. This assumption is the reason Israel feels comfortable calling the carpet bombing of a civilian population "self defense." Killing them based on a this is not self defense, it's a racially motivated crime against humanity.

And I'm calling it an assumption because I'm not willing to pull from the Hamas charter that they've since replaced. Hamas isn't Palestinians. The only reason they became this powerful is Israeli funding, and Israeli violence giving Hamas free PR as the only ones who will stand up to the state that will keep them trapped and dying.

We control every aspect of their lives. Israel created a place that breeds radicalization. No group of people, living under the conditions forced on Palestinians, would be peaceful. They would fight back. Because peaceful attempts to have the human rights that Israel denies them got nothing. We stomped on every single one. We blocked all other routes and left them with only violence, which Israeli politicians have been using as an excuse for over 15 years to make a show of force with military campaigns whenever they wanted a boost in popularity. We created living conditions with such low life expectancy that half of the population is children because so few adults survive. They don't deserve this. No one deserves this.

Palestine was a land with people living in it. One plot of land can create multiple groups of people, especially when we've been separated for 2000 years. Our connection to this land does not cancel out theirs. Removing them to create our own country could never be right. It's not an argument saying that our connection to Israel gives us the right to move here to live ALONGSIDE Palestinians. That's not what we wanted. We wanted a country that enforces Jewish majority and legally prioritizes Jews. You're justifying this when I repeatedly state that the only way for it to exist is through ethnic cleansing and genocide. There's no way to make this concept into a reality without killing, displacing, and oppressing whoever's left in various different ways, from apartheid to other kinds of discrimination.

I'm not against safety for us. I want to be safe. I want my children to grow in a safe world where we can be openly and joyfully Jewish. I'm not willing to pay for that with the lives and freedoms of other people.

So I will be loud about this: Palestinians deserve to be free in every part of their homeland, even if it's our ancestral homeland too.

If safety for us means we're the ones committing the genocide, maybe we should rethink what safety looks like.

I'm terrified for the lives of millions of people in Gaza. Right now, all I can think about is this, and it baffles me to see people so willing to transfer the horrors of our history to other people.

I had a lovely conversation in DMs in response to the first post, about how zionism encourages us to isolate rather than build bridges in the places where we live all over the world. We can't ignore the way antisemitism saturates culture, but we should also remember the places where Jewish communities thrived for centuries, the places where our neighbors protected us. We're hated, and we're loved. Each form of oppression is unique, so no other group experiences what Jewish people do exactly, but we're not alone. We have a long and rich history of solidarity with other marginalized communities and involvement in liberation movements. We're actively working to make the world safer, and we have people fighting with us. I'm just participating in this fight where I am. The struggle for liberation is a human struggle. You can't use the trauma of antisemitism to silence me about other kinds of bigotry.

Never again. To ANYONE.

#riki babbles

[ahaura]

im sure its been said already but as the election draws near more and more liberals will come out of the woodwork to shame people with a conscience to give away their vote to the democrats for free. i'm already seeing posts saying "why aren't people more concerned about a trump presidency?" you want to know why? it's because people already know he's bad. everyone already knows what he is and what he's done and what he'll do. there's nothing to discuss. he's a racist despotic worm of a man. there's nothing else to say.

biden is currently president. the genocide is happening under his watch. he's the one funding isra*l and arming them; he's sidestepped congress more than once to give them weapons. by oct. 27, the biden administration already knew that "Israel was regularly bombing buildings without solid intelligence that they were legitimate military targets." the state department/biden have engaged in atrocity propaganda, cast doubt on the legitimacy of the death toll recorded by the gaza health ministry, and so on. the united states is currently in the process of trying to pin the "war in gaza" on netanyahu (see sen. schumer's speech) after months of backing blatant genocide as a means to act as if they're "doing something" about the genocide (Instead of, say, threatening to cut off all aid to israel with the condition that all hostilities in gaza, the west bank, and occupied jerusalem are halted immediately and permanently, allowing palestinians freedom to travel, allowing aid into gaza, etc etc etc.)

the long and short of it is that liberals view their own lives as being worth more than palestinians'. that's it. they'll vote for another 4 years of the guy ushering in genocide and supporting apartheid + settler colonialism because he isn't outright attacking them (despite various laws and rulings happening both at the supreme court level and at the local level all over the country that will endanger people). they'll settle for the illusion of safety and security and shame anyone with a conscience and accuse them of "supporting the republicans" when in an actual democracy you would be able to use your vote as leverage to extract concessions from those who want to be elected. that's how it's supposed to fucking work.

democrats are not owed people's vote. if biden loses, it will be biden's fault; it will be his campaign's fault; it will be the democrats' fault. trump is bad; the republicans are bad. we already know this. this is not an endorsement of either. but if democrats are too cowardly and feckless and servile to the motivations of the american empire and never do anything for their constituents then why the fuck should anyone vote for them. you want to get mad at someone, why don't you do something useful and stop worrying about team-sports with a purely selfish basis and start hounding the people in power who are supposed to serve you, the voter.

#i think i already said this and frankly idc #uspol #📁.zip #to me personally it's abhorrent and vile to tell palestinians 'biden is facilitating the murder of your people culture and history but you #still have to vote for him!!1' like how is that not unbelievably callous and ghoulish #frankly speaking. a lot of this 'you should be concerned about trump' is going to turn into #blaming palestinians and arabs and muslims and anyone remotely with a conscience for biden's loss #instead of doing something productive like pushing for people in power to do something they'll nitpick and belittle #and tell palestinians + arabs and muslims + everyone who understands that genocide is bad that they SHOULD #settle for a decrepit genocidal monstrous freak who is CURRENTLY facilitating genocide because #it makes THEM feel better and they aren't personally threatened (yet) by the guy currently in power #any and all 'you're not taking trump seriously' comments should be met with extreme skepticism #because i promise i PROMISE that the vast majority of people unhappy with biden are not going to turn around and vote for trump #and if they do? well guess what THAT'S BIDEN'S FAULT! nevermind the vote uncommitted campaign that was very successful and #will be replicated in the near future. but liberals only care about asthetics and superficial and not #about real material change which is why they'll dress up their callousness and racism in a 'you hate gay people if you dont vote for biden' #like this country is already going to shit we are rapidly descending into fascism and i dont see biden doing anything to even remotely #challenge it do you???? once agian. NOT an endorsement of the republican party but my GOD when the 'lesser evil' #is DOING the evil or normalizing the evil then you cannot settle for 'the lesser'! end of story.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jay Kuo at Think Big Picture:

For years, critics of Vladimir Putin have been warning that the Russians have taken over parts of the Republican Party. They raised the alarm as Republicans defended the Russian leader, parroted clear Kremlin talking points, and became mules for disinformation campaigns. In recent weeks, that criticism has shifted to include not just Republicans who have left the party, including former representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, but current GOP members. Recently, two powerful Republican chairs of the House Intelligence Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee warned openly about how Russian propaganda has seeped into their party and even made its way into speeches on the House floor. Other members are now even openly questioning whether some of their fellow officials have been compromised and are being extorted. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) suggested in a recent interview that the Russian spies may possess compromising tapes of some of his colleagues. It’s unclear where he’s getting his information or how accurate it is.

And then there’s this: According to a report by Politico, a number of European politicians were recently paid by Moscow to interfere in the upcoming EU elections by Russians pretending to be a “media” outlet called “Voice of Europe.” The Kremlin-backed operation used money to influence officials to take pro-Russian stances. Authorities have conducted some money seizures and launched an investigation into which members of the European Parliament may have accepted cash bribes. This in turn raises an important question for our own politics: Are the Russians doing the same with U.S. politicians, directly or indirectly? This piece walks through the three types of compromise—disinformation, extortion, and bribery—to give a sense of what we know and what we don’t really know, and, importantly, where we should be on our guard. As this summary will show, from the 2016 election till now, there’s enough Russian smoke now to assume there is a fire, one that compromises not only the integrity of our own system of elections, but the safety and security of the free world. Duped.

Over the past year, we have witnessed two distinct kinds of Russian propaganda in action. Both use our own elected officials and intelligence processes to amplify and even weaponize disinformation. The first kind originates online through Russian-backed internet channels. Information operatives begin spreading false rumors, for example about Ukraine, that then get repeated within right-wing silos before reaching willing purveyors of it within the halls of Congress. A chief culprit in Congress is Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Among the Russian-originated false narratives she has uplifted is the patently false claim that Ukraine is waging a war against Christianity while Russia is protecting it. On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Greene even claimed, without evidence, that Ukraine is “executing priests.”

Where would Greene have gotten this wild, concocted notion? We don’t have to look far. Russian talking points have included this gaslighting narrative for some time. The twist, of course, is that, according to the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, it is the Russian army that has been torturing and executing priests and other religious figures, including 30 Ukrainian clergy killed and 26 held captive by Russian forces. The Russians have also targeted Baptists, whom they see as U.S. propagandists, according to an in-depth Time magazine piece on the violence and death directed toward evangelicals. The Congressional propaganda mouthpieces for Russia aren’t limited to the U.S. House. Over in the Senate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance was also recently accused of spreading Kremlin-backed disinformation about Ukraine, this time over spurious allegations that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy siphoned U.S. aid to purchase himself two luxury yachts.

[...]

The accusation that Russians are presently extorting and blackmailing U.S. politicians into supporting Russia’s agenda has some broad appeal. It would help explain some mysteries, including why people like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) suddenly is no longer as supportive of Ukraine as before and constantly kisses the ring of Donald Trump these days—after presciently saying in 2016 that the GOP would destroy itself if it nominated him. 

The problem has been that these accusations aren’t supported by much evidence. That means that political extortion by the Russians is either not a very prevalent practice, or it’s so effective that no one dares expose it. Either way, we’re left without much to go on. The Russian word kompromat came into common parlance around the time that Buzzfeed published a salacious story about another intelligence report back in early 2017. In that instance, the author, a former British intelligence officer named Christopher Steele, was concerned Russia had compromising data on the soon-to-be president, Donald Trump.

That report never wound up being substantiated, and its sources and funding came into question as well. But intelligence agencies are in general agreement that obtaining kompromat is standard practice by Russia, and someone like Trump could have been an easy mark considering the company that he kept (e.g. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell) and the projects he was involved with (e.g. the Miss Universe contest). Lately, the notion of kompromat emerged once again, this time not from Democratic-paid outfits but from within the GOP itself. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) is one of the more “colorful” characters within the GOP, primarily known lately for being one of the eight members who voted to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and even for getting into public jostling and shouting matches with McCarthy.

The Republican Party (or at least its pro-MAGA faction) is compromised by Russian kompromat.

#Trump Russia Scandal #GOP Russia #Russia #Donald Trump #Marjorie Taylor Greene #J.D. Vance #Volodymyr Zelensky #Tim Burchett #War Room #Stephen Bannon #Mike Turner #Michael McCaul #Christopher Steele

[intersectionalpraxis]

I need more people to understand the gravity of this.

⚠️Content warning: mentions of Nazism and the Holocaust⚠️

Zionism and Fascism -sometimes the lines blur.

We have yet another haunting display of (neo)Nazis marching out in the open -something we have seen an increase of across the globe (but especially in Western and European countries) over the past decade, and has especially heightened during the pandemic with recruitment being done online very quickly, alarmingly so [The Southern Poverty Law Center is a great resource to continue your research on this as well].

We have seen an increase in young white men being radicalized and joining (neo)Nazi groups and many extremist white supremacist affiliations because they see everyone who does not look like them as a threat, and they have been historically and are currently violent and murderous.

For those of you who still think Israel is in the right, despite being an occupational force breaking COUNTLESS international laws and has been ethnically cleansing Palestinian people for decades and has been mass accelerating a genocide against Palestinian people since October 7th of this year... please take a look at these (neo)Nazis, -with whom operate under the belief that they are a superior race, and invoke ultranationalism, racism, and xenophobia to normalize their dangerous and oppressive rhetoric -and with whom vilify, threaten, and perhaps actually harm ANYONE who tells their their ideologies are violent and depraved... think about these parallels to the 'goals' of Zionism, please.

You have Nazis out at the same time as Zionists are... each, respectively so, filled with genocidal apologists... it's terrifying.

To the Israeli Jewish people who support Israel; to those who see Palestinian people as a direct threat to their safety and security -I'd check your own neighborhoods first. Because THIS is what anti-Zionist Israeli Jewish people and pro-Palestinian liberation Jewish people and activists all around the world have been saying all along -and so many of you are still SO ignorant to the real dangers -real Nazis and white supremacist terrorist groups that do active harm... and it's just so disturbing.

I was also going to post this earlier today (I wrote this the other day then THIS happened):

Auschwitz Memorial... just supported the genocide of millions of Palestinian people. They regurgitated Israeli propaganda and lies, called Israel the sole and perpetual victims despite being a violent settler colonial force, with whom has used weapons of mass destruction against defenseless civilians. Israel has committed and is committing war crimes, and is NOT self-defending -they are executing a Zionist plan which involves ethnically cleansing Palestinian people... and the audacity to say Hamas is exploiting the 'people of Gaza,' when Israel uses Hamas as an excuse to BOMB the hell out of everything in sight, and kill over 12,000 Palestinian people... it's just... how out of touch of reality are these privileged and bigoted people?

In the span of a few days, seeing Nazis take to the streets, and the Auschwitz Memorial is more preoccupied with this... I'm baffled.

End the occupation, ceasefire now, and free Palestine!

#feminist #feminism #israel is an apartheid state #palestine #social justice #freepalastine🇵🇸 #free gaza #free palestine #israel is committing genocide #anti zionisim #history #israeli settlers #israel is a terrorist state #israeli apartheid #settler colonialism

[wariocompany]

I normally don't talk about stuff of this nature and least of all on Tumblr where there are like three active users but here.

UniMelb, my university, is having an occupation right now of one of our buildings, by students protesting UniMelb's alleged ties with weapons manufacturers currently being used by Israel. It's called Arts West and as the name implies a lot of Arts subjects are held there. My German, Korean, Chinese and Japanese classes all have at least one held there a week. This is an escalation of the encampment after the protesters provided an ultimatum (cut ties or we won't talk to you anymore).

Classes in the building were cancelled because of this occupation, citing safety concerns. The University has not helped teachers find new rooms, to my knowledge. My German teacher held the class outside, and all the others are online. The Aussie media is having a lot of fun with this, as I believe this is the biggest protest in the country of this nature since October 7.

The media is not being honest.

What's being said: the students seized the building violently.

The truth: they just kind of went in there and sat down. There are a few tents.

What's being said: the students are threatening people.

The truth: to my knowledge, no one has been threatened. Avi Yemeni and some cronies came to harass them around two weeks ago, and another group threw bottles, fire extinguishers and other projectiles at the protesters, but no retaliation has occured so far, as far as I have heard.

What's being said: classes were cancelled because of the occupation.

The truth: this is true, but the protesters have repeatedly said that anyone may enter and have class. I have been in the building several times to test this out, and no one even spoke to me, let alone told me to leave. I made a little coffee in the kitchen here:

The University has turned off the lifts and taped them, as well as locked the doors. I am not sure why one of them remains open, but I am led to believe the protesters opened it so people could come and go as they pleased.

Since the beginning the little "front desk tent" has had a massive "Palestinians and Jews in solidarity" sheet across it. All the propaganda stickers by them are of a similar nature: one says "Not in our name, Jews for a free Palestine", and another says "Palestinian and Jewish solidarity" with a dove on it. They hold Shabbat there as well. They also do the call to prayer for Dhuhr, and possibly all of the prayers, but I'm not on campus for Fajr, Isha etc (for obvious reasons).

I don't want people reading the news and thinking being at UniMelb is hectic right now. It's really fine. Nobody even really talks about it much. Classes in other buildings are quite normal.

[smartycvnt]

Stark Mad

Title: Stark Mad

Pairing: Peggy Carter x Reader

Prompt: 19. "Try not to break this one, these aren't easy to come by."

NR

WC: 917

Peggy sat on the edge of Y/n's desk as she watched the younger Stark try to fix what Peggy had broken. It was one of Howard's inventions, which Peggy had come to realize were just as fragile as the man's ego. She preferred the things and trinkets that Y/n left for her. Peggy had once held Y/n in the same light as Howard, as little more than a womanizer and egomaniac, but Peggy soon realized how wrong she was. Y/n had been through more than she let on, more than even Howard knew. After losing Steve, Peggy had been pretty closed off, but Y/n had gotten her to open up more.

They had spent a little bit of time separated, but whenever Howard tried returning to the United States as a fugitive, they had been thrust back into each other's company. Y/n had matured, and with that, her feelings towards the government and all of their little crusades had grown stronger. Y/n always made it clear that she wasn't helping the government or their supposed enemies, but rather Peggy or whoever it was that came to her needing something. It had given Y/n Stark quite the reputation as a radical, one that Congress was really trying to push propaganda about.

"Alright, I think I've just about gotten this fixed," Y/n said as she held Howard's invention up to inspect. Peggy scooted off of the desk as Y/n took aim at a little target across the room. Just as Peggy suspected, whatever Peggy had done was not actually fixed. She had knocked something off in the firing calibration, but Y/n managed to make the blasts twice the size than what they had been before. It was impressive, but it also meant that she had destroyed the little laser gun completely by firing it. "We might need to call on Howie."

"I came to you so that I did not have to deal with that little miscreant," Peggy sighed. Y/n nodded as she tried to collect the pieces of the laser gun. Peggy watched Y/n try again and again to fix it, only to come up unsuccessful each time. Y/n was brilliant and made great weapons, but they lacked the discretion of Howard's. Y/n had an eye for weapons of mass destruction, things that shouldn't be in anybody's possession for the safety of humanity.

"Maybe he can just send me the blueprints," Y/n hoped aloud. Peggy highly doubted that Howard would be that forthcoming, especially whenever it came to Y/n asking. There had always been a bit of tension between the two of them, especially when it came to their inventions and ideas. Peggy knew it wasn't either of their faults. They had been pit against each other as siblings, and it had only continued on into adulthood whenever they set out to make their fortunes. Howard's had come easily, and Y/n attributed a great deal of it to the fact that he was a man. Y/n had pulled things out that would put Stark Industries to bed, and yet, she rarely ever got recognition. Every blueprint of hers was ridiculous until she managed to pull the working item out of a hat.

"Don't worry yourself about it darling." Peggy leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of Y/n's head. Y/n knew that she should have just listened to Peggy, but instead, she had called her brother to ask for the blueprints. In typical Howard Stark fashion, he had shown out rather than just showing up, and bestowed upon her an improved laser pen. Y/n had held onto it for a couple of weeks, just long enough to maybe pretend that she hadn't traded in a favor with Howard for it.

"What did you want to show me?" Peggy asked as she made her way into Y/n's lab. It looked messier than normal, which meant that Y/n had been working on something big. Peggy had just barely been able to get a moment of Y/n's time, so she had dropped everything to come over when Y/n called. Sitting on Y/n's desk was a Stark Industries pen, one that Peggy was certain worked just like the one before it. "Oh, you are magnificent!"

"I am, aren't I?" Peggy's lips were barely a couple centimeters away from Y/n's when she heard Howard's voice. "Try not to break this one, these aren't easy to come by. Especially not this model. You know-,"

"Shut up and show me how to use this," Peggy said as she handed the pen over to Howard. Y/n stood back awkwardly as Howard walked Peggy through how to use the pen. Howard had teased Y/n about her apparently obviously feelings for Peggy, but he still hadn't known that they were together. Their near kiss was definitely more than enough confirmation for Howard to know that he had put the correct pieces together. "Great, now what exactly are you doing here?"

"It's a long story, but there is a prototype for a device that Y/n and I collaborated on that I need you to track down," Howard said. "Y/n has the tracking device, so she'll be coming with us. I am sure the two of you won't mind sharing a hotel room, nobody will bat an eye if you can keep your hands to yourselves."

#my writing #mcu x reader #mcu #marvel x reader #marvel #peggy carter x reader #peggy carter #agent carter x reader #agent carter

[dayinadream]

🚨MORE ISRAELI PROPAGANDA

Similar to the previously staged video recorded & released by Israel’s occupational forces, we see another video of the more than 70 Palestinians detained by Israel, stripped naked and made to appear to be Hamas fighters surrendering weapons.

The truth is, these are displaced Palestinians who were gathering in the hospital for safety.

If Israel is killing thousands of children in their attempt to “eradicate” Hamas, we should know that Israel would not capture Hamas resistance fighters, but would kill them immediately, in line with their vengeful, genocidal war conduct.

The occupational army besieged Kamal Adwan Hospital and detained more than 70 people sheltering inside it, and the wounded patients were evacuated to the Shifa Complex at gunpoint.

The IOF also bombed the hospital’s water tanks and is preventing the entry of water, food and medicine into it .

Via wissamgaza

#palestine #free palestine #gaza #israel #signal boost #social justice #human rights #propaganda

[rottenpumpkin13]

Pumpkin! Thoughts on the First Soldier pt. 1 finale? What did you think? Rosen’s death? Miniroth? The locket? Adult Seph? Glenn?

Thoughts on getting young Angeal and possibly Genesis? 👀

Also Hojo…

(I didn't play the First Soldier 🥲) But I do have thoughts! Wall of text incoming

It was really good to see Sephiroth form a bond with Matt, Glenn and Lucia, since everyone kinda had the idea that Sephiroth didn't have any friends before Gen and Angeal came along. But the trio were his first real friends :') Uncle Glenn was the best older brother figure, and it sucks that they didn't have that much time together.

I like the glimpse we got into Sephiroth's personality/life as a youngster, especially since it confirmed things like him wishing he knew more about his mother with the photograph, his reaction to being called a cyborg hinted at a possible struggle with his humanity from a very early age. Overall he portrayed the lack of experience and awkwardness you'd expect from a teenager who grew up isolated from kids his age, trained to be a weapon. I saw people on Twitter say they woobified him in FS, but he's literally just being a child?? A child who didn't have any experience interacting with the outside world at that.

We got confirmation that Sephiroth was abused by Hojo, and the teaser we have for chapter 2 kinda leads us to believe we're gonna see more about that. It feels like I'm strapped onto a rollercoaster going 200mph in the "Hojo is a creepy abusive bastard" direction and I don't like it.

Another thing I noticed is that Sephiroth's tendency to prioritize the safety of those he cares about over Shinra's orders was evident even from a young age. I'm curious to see how this trait will unfold when Angeal (and hopefully Genesis) roll around.

The thing with Rosen's death: Sephiroth was ultimately cornered into an inescapable situation, but I think what happened in Rhadore could've only ended in Sephiroth's losing his friends or them all dying. Glenn's unwavering determination to save Rosen and leave the island likely would have overridden any attempt to listen/adhere to Rosen's wishes. It's doubtful he would've even considered Rosen's reasoning, which could've ended in disaster.

It's still mind boggling to me that it was Glenn of all people who ended up being responsible for losing the locket again lol. I think we're gonna see it resurface again but this time without Lucrecia's photo. (because that would be mean to Sephiroth) (Square loves torturing Sephiroth 🙃)

Speaking of which, what really stuck out to me about the cutscene with adult Sephiroth is how— despite his involvement in Shinra's war crimes and every vile thing he did for them—he still tried to do good in his own way. AND THE WAy he mentioned Glenn when he was going on about compassion being able to counteract evil, hinting that Glenn planted that seed in his heart....🥲🥲🥲💔💔💔

Sephiroth never aspired to be a hero, he was forced into it, but he had a deep desire to help people, and it makes his pre-Nibelheim personality as a whole so bizarre. (Bizarre in a good way because he was a cinnamon roll stained with the blood of Shinra's enemies). Despite Shinra's (and Hojo bitch ass) attempts to mold him into a weapon, he retained that genuine kindness within him. When he saved the troopers you could see the genuine pride he felt in his actions. But the moment a camera appeared his joy was shattered, I guess because he knew that his act of heroism would be twisted into Shinra propaganda, and he would once again be celebrated not for the good he did, but because it played into this untouchable celebrity image they stuck him with.

I hope we see more Glenn in part 2 (before he dies) (ouch). I wanna see how his, Matt's and Lucia's desertion unfolded and how he ended up joining Wutai's side. Another burning question I have is whether Glenn and Genesis ever crossed paths. Considering Glenn's comment to Sephiroth about "looking for a friend," it seems he knew about Genesis' desertion in Wutai. But I wonder if there was an interaction between them where Glenn shared his own experiences of desertion and possibly even encouraged Genesis to do the same. It's just a theory I have that won't even be touched on BUT I WISH, OKAY? A Glenn + Genesis interaction about Sephiroth is all I ask for lol.

I'm dreading Glenn's death because it's going to be utterly heartbreaking for Sephiroth, especially considering he's already grappling with Genesis' desertion based on the timeline.

Another mini theory I have is that the introduction of Angeal and Genesis could mirror Sephiroth's initial encounter with Glenn, Matt, and Lucia, who eventually deserted. It seems like a parallel storyline, and by the end of chapter 2, we might dive into the Crisis Core storyline that explores Angeal and Genesis's desertions. Idk it's just a theory, since Sephiroth befriending people who later abandon SOLDIER is a pattern 🙃

That coupled with Glenn's death sets up a scenario where Sephiroth loses everyone he cares about in a very short span of time.

Also,

FUCK HOJO

No actually don't fuck Hojo, fucking Hojo and people in white coats is what lead to the entire FF7 storyline.

Thank you for letting me rant lol ❤️

Btw the thing I'm most excited for is Baby Angeal idc. If you couldn't tell already by this blog, I'm a Crisis Whore big fan of Crisis Core :)

#ff7 #ffvii #final fantasy 7 #sephiroth #the first soldier #ff7 ever crisis #final fantasy vii

[ohsalome]

Sorry to bother you again, but as another russian atrocity happens, people keep writing to me, saying, why are you so confident that it was russians who sent the missile, or, which is worse, "Why do you never talk about missile attacks by ZSU?". I usually reply that (at least in russian space) that ZSU attacks have already been talked about too much. But what do you commonly say in this kind of cases. I wonder what others do too. It's been in my mind since the first months of the war.

I'm not sure if I understood you correctly, but if a person is unable to distinguish between, say, terrorist attacks on malls and blowing up weapons depots, they are clearly not making a good faith argument, in which case "хуй будеш?" is the most appropriate answer.

On a more serious note, the correct answer that Ukraine is fighting a defensive war, and we only attack valid military targets, which includes all enemy soldiers on our soil, training bases, weapons depots, oil storage facilities, etc. Even if we were the cannibalistic bloodthirsty nazis russian propaganda paints us, we still would have no use of doing an "eye for an eye" and terrorising civillian russian population, as they still have a missile advantage over us; and cannot afford wasting our ammo on targets that would not give us any military advantage. But if ukrainian missiles worry russians so much, they can ask their generals to be useful and calculate the furthest distance Ukrainian artillery can reach and just move away to the safety.

We also haven't been hitting russian targets actively since the first months of war, so the whole argument, at least from how I understood it, reads like "how dare Ukraine resist a genocidal invasion". Because fuck you, that's why.

#response #clarification - the fuck you is directed at the hypothetica person you're talking to and not at you

[stranger-rants]

You don’t think it’s possible for someone to support Israel because they are Jewish and have a strong ethnic and personal connection to that region (his bar mitzvah was literally in Israel) without actively being full of hatred towards Palestinians? There’s this narrative going around that Noah is somehow this deeply psychotic and racist person who wants Palestinian children to be exterminated, but isn’t it far more likely that he’s just deeply connected to his culture, fearful of the rise in antisemitism, and sad about 10/7? He condemned Hamas, a terrorist org. He never said anything about hating Palestinians.

Btw I personally support Palestine and agree that Israel has gone too far in its actions. I just don’t demonize everyone on the other side which is apparently a controversial position to take

I think that ongoing support of Israel as a settler colonial state hinges on the apartheid and genocide of the Palestinian people. Noah “Zionism is sexy” Schnapp is racist as is anyone who supports Zionism because it is a racist ideology. The establishment of any nation should not require the dispossession of land and resources of an entire group of people, but that’s what Zionism does.

Israel is no different than any other settler colonial state. Noah is not more or less ethnically tied to that land than I am to America. As a person raised within a setter colonial state, I could recognize the power and privilege I have to be able to live here or I could buy into a radical ideology based on the idea that I’m inherently superior to the indigenous people here and thus I deserve this land more.

Noah Schnapp has explicitly sided with Zionism. I don’t give a single flying fuck if he has been to Israel or he had his Bar Mitzvah in Israel. There are indigenous Palestinians who can’t return to their land because of Zionism. I’ve lived here in America my whole life. My immediate family is here. That doesn’t change the violent racist history of this place.

I didn’t call him psychotic. I didn’t demonize him. I am speaking in plain and simple English here - Noah is a Zionist. Zionism is a racist ideology. Israel as a settler colonial state that is younger than my grandparents has been displacing, imprisoning, torturing, and killing the indigenous people of that land for decades on the basis that they have a right to build an ethnostate on said land.

Stop conflating Jews and Judaism with Israel. Stop conflating Jews and Judaism with Zionism. Stop using the fear of antisemitism as a rhetorical device to excuse Zionist propaganda. There are many Jews sacrificing their safety to condemn Israel. There are many Jews who have suffered because of Israel.

Israel does not represent Jews or Judaism. It is a violent settler colonial state supported by other violent settler colonial states. Jewish safety and freedom shouldn’t hinge on apartheid and genocide. That’s not true safety or freedom. The only way forward is to free the Palestinian people. Stop the genocide. End the apartheid. Build a state based on equity for all, not just some.

This isn’t a religious conflict. This is a genocide and you can either support the oppressor or the oppressed. He chose the side of the oppressor. You’re not stating a controversial opinion by arguing in his favor, for him arguing in Israel’s favor. The U.S. government argues in Israel’s favor regularly, providing billions in weapons. We all see the consequences of that.

I will remain angry with him as is my right.

#asks #free palestine #end apartheid #stop genocide

[old-school-butch]

So it's ok for israel to commit atrocities and genocides just bc other regimes are also committing war crimes? Please be serious

That’s not my argument. Never accept the ‘it could be worse’ argument since it doesn’t help you trying to make things better.

My point is that young people in the west, in particular, have been sheltered from the realities of war and how horrible it is. This has made you vulnerable to propaganda that you repeat above - that this war is full of atrocities and genocide. You can only think that if by being so unaware about what those things look like. There’s also this almost naive belief that - since the world is a fair and just place - that things you ignore can’t be genocide because no one is making a fuss about it. And if someone is making a fuss, then it must be serious. But that’s not true at all. In fact, there are forces in the world that would very much like you to ignore their genocides and focus elsewhere.

The harsh reality is that It’s extraordinarily easy to kill large numbers of people, especially by surprise and especially in small communities.

Let’s reverse the scenario, oct 7th was genocidal in intent, clearly the orders were to kill as many people as possible and kidnap as many as they could transport. In 24 hours, 3000 men killed approx 900 civilians and kidnapped another 200+. Then a military response finally mobilized and resistance started, resulting in more Israeli military deaths - around 300- and the deaths of about 2000 of Hamas fighters as they were overwhelmed.

Imagine israel attacking without warning, going house to house and just killing everyone in sight. Let’s restrict this to small arms, motorcycles and everyone wears civilian clothes or are dressed as Hamas fighters to sow confusion.

But Israel can send 300,000 fighters not 3000. In the first 24 hours the death toll would be near 90000 killed before resistance was mobilized, assuming it even tried. The entire population would be dead in 26 days using nothing but small arms fire.

In Rwanda in 1994 800,000 people were killed over 3 months with machetes and a few machine guns. The rolling Sudan genocide between 2003-2005 killed 200,000 people, 300,000 raped and 2 million people displaced. World war 2 lasted 5 years and 6 million people were exterminated - plus a peer to peer war was happening at the same time that cost another 75 million lives. The word genocide was invented to describe what happened to Jews in Europe, but systematic killing has been part of human societies forever. We just have more efficient weapons now.

The world is a bad place anon, and you should never take safety and civilization for granted. This is the larger reality I want you to see. you have to realistically look at the numbers and realize that if Israel wanted to kill everyone in Gaza it would have happened by now.

But this misinformation continues to spread, even as the UN finally admits the reports of deaths in Gaza of women and children have been exaggerated, and that in fact many of the dead are Hamas fighters. I won’t go as far as to say no atrocity has been committed by Israel during this campaign - all reports should all be investigated - but I look at the numbers and see Israel at least trying to meet a military standard of conduct against an enemy that would commit genocide if they just had more time.

[vomitdodger]

Better shut off phones just to be sure.

Reminder AP is ultimately owned by Rothschilds and is complete propaganda. When they say do something, do the opposite.

Also reminder that whatever sinister sci fi technology you think exists…it’s also at least ten years old and you just found out about it.

Eg DEW weapons. They made a promotional video of it in 2015. So it was around much longer than that and people still don’t believe it’s real.

Another example: remote vehicle kill switches. Exposed (essentially) by the killing of Michael Hastings in 2013. It progressed so sublimely that is was hidden and buried in the 2021 infrastructure bill as mandatory in all new vehicle by 2026. Done under the guise of “for your safety”. And no backlash at all.

[befuddled-calico-whump]

T$$ Military AU (summary)

(just the basic scenario; I'll edit this post if I get more ideas :) )

×~×~×

In a timeline where the US is involved in a head-on conflict with the fictional country of Ebarus, Joy and Jericho are soldiers stationed near the country's border, and Benji is a civilian contractor deployed with them. Despite the ongoing war, things are pretty uneventful at their base, and mid-tour, Benji is transferred to another unit, as his skills aren't currently needed.

One day, the unit is ambushed while patrolling a defended border, and Joy and Jericho are taken prisoner.

Their captors are after secrets about their base, and also want to use them as propaganda. The two are interrogated separately, but give up nothing, and when they're reunited to be questioned together, they initially frustrate their captors by joking around and acting like they're not taking the situation seriously.

The mood changes when their interrogator shows them a video of a beaten, terrified Benji reading off a list of demands. Joy says it's illegal to treat him that way since he's just a civilian, and their interrogator claims he was caught spying, and therefore lost any protection he would have received.

The pair agree to cooperate in exchange for his safety, but manage to convince most of the Ebarian officials that they don't know anything new about the base.

Convinced they're hiding something but unable to hurt them directly due to having an ongoing propaganda campaign with them (and y'know, it's unlawful), their interrogator tries to intimidate them through another captive: Hunter, a scout who's also been accused of spying. To further the effect, they remove Benji from the shared cell, saying they'll hurt him if the pair tries to stop Hunter's “interrogation”.

They can only watch as he's brutally beaten, but when he's tied to the cell bars to be whipped, Jericho wraps his arms around him to shield his back. This technically isn't stopping the interrogation, but the interrogators take it as an opportunity to hurt Jericho, since they can (factually) claim that he put himself in front of the whip, and it wasn't their intention to harm him.

Wanting to put the prisoners to work, the officials enlist J&J to assist in developing new surveillance drones, since that’s something that plays to both of their skillsets. They know the technology will be used against their side in the fight, but with Hunter and Benjis’ safety constantly under threat, they have no choice but to play along. Mistakes or attempts at sabotage are punished through the other prisoners.

One day, Hunter reports hearing a new prisoner further inside the compound. Jericho tries to learn more, and eventually discovers that it's a downed pilot named Kaius. Worried that he's also being tortured as a suspected spy, Jericho threatens to destroy the blueprints they have so far if the guards can't prove that Kaius is as alive and unharmed as they insist he is.

To get him to stand down, the guards throw Kaius into the cell, now shared by all five of them. In an effort to weaken their resolve, the officials restrict the amount of food and supplies going into the cell, saying they'll feed the military members, but not the spies. Since Kaius was unable to prove his rank and allegiance due to his plane and documents being destroyed, he's also labelled as a spy.

Conditions are getting pretty bad, and it seems like the guards are just having fun hurting the supposed “spies” at this point. By now the group knows they don't have a high chance of being rescued. If they want everyone to survive, they'll need to find a way to break out.

The escape plan starts in the workshop where the drone development is taking place. Joy sets the place on fire using some of the robotics components, creating a distraction and allowing Jericho to overpower one of the guards and take his weapons. They then make a beeline for the cell and release the others. When a group of guards tries to stop them, Jericho stands in front of the group, telling the guards that he and Joy are the only ones who know how to build the drone now that the workshop is destroyed, and if they kill them, all that work will be lost.

Not wanting to risk upsetting their bosses, the guards let them pass.

Escape is slow going. Hunter can barely walk, and Kaius needs to be carried due to a broken leg, but eventually they make it to a large vehicle bay and steal an entire tank. (Joy is pleased)

They spend about a week getting out of enemy territory, moving slow and careful to avoid being spotted, and struggling to survive with a lack of supplies and heavily wounded allies.

Eventually though, all five of them make it to a friendly camp, safe and alive.

#not a full huge plot #just putting the guys in a Situation #i have 3-4 comics scripted for this au and will probably cone up with more #t$$ military au #whump synopsis

[friendlylocalwhumper]

Hey there whump-fellow! I was wondering if you might help me out a bit. I'm writing an original superhero story for Camp NaNo this year and I want the main character's superpower to come with whumpy side-effects, but I am having a hard time coming up with anything even slightly original in that regard. Do you have any suggestions or examples I might play off of? Also, I am going to ask around to a few whump blogs to cast a wider net! Any suggestions as to whom I should ask?

Telekinesis/mind reading with a side effect of migraines. Agony, sensitivity to light/noise. Days-long pain after just using their powers once, which causes the pavlovian response of an awful headache starting up just at the thought of using their powers.

Fire powers that leave burns, thick scars that hurt less and less the more the powers are used but the nerves die more and more, meaning that the whumpee loses feeling in their fingers, then hands, then arms. They will miss out on feeling gentle breezes, soft blankets, holding hands with a friend.

Ice powers that cause frostbite. They can put out a fire, stop an enemy instantly, catch someone who is falling before they die… but the pain afterward is intense, and they always have to weigh the benefits of saving lives versus potentially losing a part of their own body. Or their powers give frostbite to anyone that the ice touches!

Invincibility that lasts for as long as it’s being used, but after the battle is over, in safety, all the damage hits at once. Bruises bloom in purples and blues, cuts spring forth and leave the whumpee scrambling to apply pressure and soak up too much blood before they pass out.

Invisibility/phasing that is strategically useful because the whumpee can sneak or pass through obstacles, but it makes their body have too loose a grasp on reality and their loved ones lose memories of them. They may be able to sneak into a dangerous place and get out unharmed, but their mother or partner will now struggle to recall their name.

A superpower that was desperately wished for in an hour of need, but now every time that it’s used, something precious has to be sacrificed. For the power to be used, an hierloom has to be chosen to disappear from existence, or a limb has to be chosen to never work without pain again, or a comforting memory has to be forgotten. Eventually this would leave the whumpee tougher, less sensitive to loss, but they would also have so much less comfort to come home to. This power would work great as a “gift” from a deity, fae, supernatural creature, or a naively summoned ghost.

Villain-turned-hero who used to use their powers for evil, but now that they are fighting for good, their powers keep trying to turn on them. They used to melt guards’ weapons and locks off vaults, but now that they try to melt doors shut to keep out storms or villains, the molten metal sputters and hits their skin. Or they used to make their nemesis’ armor, tools, or on their most evil day, that nemesis’ most cherished friend disappear; but now after a long hard day of protecting people, when they come home, they find that their partner is missing. They find that their car keys are gone, their fridge, their shoes. Sometimes it is a small thing they won’t even miss, and sometimes it is something so devastating to lose that they fall to their knees and sob.

The superpower of being able to compel that the truth be given after they ask a question. Very useful for a detective, a hero in a corrupt society littered with propaganda, a spy trying to work their way up in an evil organization. But if they ask a question that someone doesn’t know the answer to, it can drive that person mad. If they ask a question someone would rather die than answer, they will give the truth but then be emotionally broken from admitting that aloud. If that person would rather kill than answer…

Any power which has no direct side effects immediately after use, but which is forbidden or horrifying for some reason. Maybe it is the power to bring the dead back to life for just long enough to answer questions, which is morally complicated. Maybe it’s the power to cause intense agony without leaving physical marks. Maybe it’s the ability to travel through time, which causes alternate universes to sprout up and can cause mass deaths, confusion, or chaos in the future. Whatever the power is, it has to be used for some reason, and hiding its use and its consequences leaves the hero afraid, unable to trust anyone, and devastatingly ashamed. This could lead to angsty confessions, betrayal, abandonment, a public execution, banishment, etc.

A very subtle, pleasant power that is embarassingly weak in a time when more power is needed. the ability to numb pain, which feels useless during war when people are bleeding out and losing friends. the ability to see the future in a time when everyone knows what the horrifying outcome will be and no one can stop it. the ability to stop time, but not to move or change what is happening, which just leaves the hero stuck to think, to rely on their own mind to try to solve a terrible problem while seeing everyone frozen in a moment of pain or fear.

I’m not sure about other whump blogs you could ask, but anyone who sees this post is totally welcome to add ideas! The side effects of the superpower don’t have to be direct or ironic, so any random idea could be perfect for the story! No idea is bad!

#whump #prompts #writing prompts #story ideas #this was extremely fun to think about #thank you for asking me! #this really has me thinking about tragic powers and makes me wanna write… #i would be so thrilled if this inspired somebody to write a story with one of these powers!!!! #superhero #villain #answered #Anonymous