#and obfuscates specific group demands

[rthko]

Gotta wake up early tomorrow but I just found an online symposium with literal hours of talks I want to listen to 👀

#'what happened to lesbian and gay studies' at the institute of cultural inquiry in berlin #listened to the introduction so far and it seems like it will be about the failure of queerness to mean everything #not to say deconstructions of identity are never useful but a lot of it frankly comes across at this point as 90s nostalgia #and obfuscates specific group demands

[ursie]

Brennan’s statement on Palestine :

[ ID: Statement from Brennan Lee Mulligan, on Instagram. It consists of three black squares with plain white text. The text reads as follows:

"I'm calling on my government officials to immediately demand a ceasefire and de-escalation in Gaza.

I applaud anyone and everyone calling for peace, with the understanding that real peace only exists if it deeply and honestly accounts for and fully ends violence in all its forms. Real peace addresses and corrects wrong-doing in the past and guards against it in the future. It goes hand in hand with justice and requires truth, restoration, reconciliation, reparation.

Peace cannot co-exist with collective punishment, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement. It cannot co-exist with blockades, embargoes, or with 2.2 million people, half of which are children, trapped with no hope of escape or political recourse. it cannot co-exist with murdered journalists, bombed hospitals, or years of protesters being shot and killed at the border. it cannot co-exist with illegal settlements, segregated roads, and the silent, imperial chill that settles over the gaps in the violence - the unspoken geopolitical consensus that a group of people need to unflinchingly accept permanent subjugation and occupation.

My hear breaks for every Israeli person who lost loved ones during the attacks of October 7th. It breaks for every Ukrainian person who has lost their loved ones. It breaks for every Congolese person who has lost their loved ones. I do not speak on behalf of Palestinians now because some lives are worth more than others. I speak on their behalf because I, and all Americans, have a responsibility to pressure our government because we are responsible for this. Some have said that this situation is complicated. The Unites States government clearly disagrees. It has definitively, categorically, militarily chosen a side, and I do not agree with that decision.

In wiring this, I have been wrestling with what I am sure many people like me wrestle with: There is a powerful narrative surrounding violence in the Middle East that asserts and ever-moving goalpost of self-education and study in order to even be qualified to have an opinion. As someone with a love of research, I have at times in my life fallen into the trap that I am not educated enough clever enough, or aware enough to have a worthwhile perspective, and that three more articles and two more lectures and one more book will do the trick. Unfortunately, democracy doesn't work that way - we, the citizens of any democracy, cannot possibly be experts on every aspect of the policies of our governments, and yet if we do not constantly weigh in an make our voices heard, the entire experiment falls apart. Not only do people constantly doubt themselves and the things they can see with their own two eyes, but old shortcuts for political action can fall apart as well: This specific issue exists along a raw, charged and unique faultline in American Politics. Nobody I grew up with has ever challenged me on my support for abortion rights, LGBT rights, Black Lives Matter, anti-capitalism, anti-fascism, none of it. The people in my country who would despise me for those positions are, for all intents and purposes, strangers to me. But there are people who I've broken bread with and shared honest affection with who will see the words I've written here and incorrectly conclude that I do not wish for the security, dignity and happiness of them and their loved ones, and that breaks my fucking heart. Full-throatedly condemning the actions of the Israeli government while battling rampant anti-semitism at home is an urgent moral necessity, and doing so is made unnecessarily challenging for the average person to navigate by the pointed obfuscations of cynical opportunists, bigots, and demagogues on all sides of the political spectrum who see some advantage in sowing that incredibly dangerous confusion.

So, I'm calling my representatives. I'm having hard conversations with friends and family. I'm here, talking to you. I should have done it sooner. If you're Israeli and hurt by this statement, know that I want freedom, dignity, security and peace for you, and that every ounce of my political awareness believes whole-heartedly that the actions of your government are not only destroying innocent lives, but doing so to the detriment of you and your loved ones' safety. If you're American and feel lost and confused - I understand and empathize. This, the whole country, only works when we get involved. I am constantly haunted by the specter that maybe I missed some crucial piece of information on this, or any, important world event. I'll just have to make my peace with that self-doubt and trust my gut by going with Jewish Voice for Peace, Amnesty International, the Geneva Conventions, the United Nations, etc. And if you're Palestinian and reading this: I unreservedly support your right to life, to freedom, to happiness and human flourishing, to full enfranchisement and equal rights, to opportunity, prosperity and abundance, to the restoration of stolen property and land, and to a Free Palestine." End ID ]

#if anyone wants to do the id I will love you forever btw #brennan lee mulligan #d20 #dropout #free palestine #dimension 20 #I babble

[thatshirleylee]

brennan's statement on instagram

I'm calling on my government officials to immediately demand a ceasefire and de-escalation in Gaza.

I applaud anyone and everyone calling for peace, with the understanding that real peace only exists if it deeply and honestly accounts for and fully ends violence in all its forms. Real peace addresses and corrects wrong-doing in the past and guards against it in the future. It goes hand in hand with justice and requires truth, restoration, reconciliation, reparation.

Peace cannot co-exist with collective punishment, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement. It cannot co-exist with blockades, embargoes, or with 2.2 million people, half of which are children, trapped with no hope of escape or political recourse. It cannot co-exist with murdered journalists, bombed hospitals, or years of protesters being shot and killed at the border. It cannot co-exist with illegal settlements segregated roads, and the silent, imperial chill that settles over the gaps in the yiolence - the unspoken geopolitical consensus that a group of people need to unflinchingly accept permanent subjugation and occupation.

My heart breaks for every Israeli person who lost loved ones during the attacks of October 7th. It breaks for every Ukrainian person who has lost their loved ones. It breaks for every Congolese person who has lost their loved ones. I do not speak on behalf of Palestinians now because some lives are worth more than others. I speak on their behalf because, as an American, my government is actively championing and financially funding their mass slaughter and forced displacement.I speak on their behalf because l, and all Americans, have a responsibility to pressure our government because we are responsible for this. Some have said that this situation is complicated. The United States government clearly disagrees. It has definitively, categorically, militarily chosen a side, and I do not agree with that decision.

In writing this, I have been wrestling with what I am sure many people like me wrestle with: There is a powerful narrative surrounding violence in the Middle East that asserts an ever-moving goalpost of self-education and study in order to even be qualified to have an opinion. As someone with a love of research, I have at times in my life fallen into the trap that I am not educated enough, clever enough or aware enough to have a worthwhile perspective, and that three more articles and two more lectures and one more book will do the trick. Unfortunately, democracy doesn't work that way - we, the citizens of any democracy, cannot possibly be experts on every aspect of the policies of our governments, and yet if we do not weigh in and make our voices heard, the entire experiment falls apart. Not only do people constantly doubt themselves and the things they can see with their own two eyes, but old shortcuts for political action can fall apart as well: This specific issue exists along a raw, charged and unique faultline in American politics. Nobody I grew up with has ever challenged me on my support for abortion rights, LGBT rights, Black Lives Matter, anti-capitalism, anti-fascism, none of it. The people in my country who would despise me for those positions are, for all intents and purposes, strangers to me. But there are people who l've broken bread with and shared honest affection with who will see the words l've written here and incorrectly conclude that I do not wish for the security, dignity and happiness of them and their loved ones, and that breaks my fucking heart. Full-throatedly condemning the actions of the Israeli government while battling rampant anti-semitism at home is an urgent moral necessity, and doing so is made unnecessarily challenging for the average person to navigate by the pointed obfuscations of cynical opportunists, bigots, and demagogues on all sides of the political spectrum who see some advantage in sowing that incredibly dangerous confusion.

So, I'm calling my representatives. I'm having hard conversations with friends and family. I'm here, talking to you. I should have done it sooner. If you're Israeli and hurt by this statement, know that I want freedom, dignity, security and peace for you, and that every ounce of my political awareness believes whole-heartedly that the actions of your government are not only destroying innocent lives, but doing so to the detriment of you and your loved ones' safety. If you're American and feel lost and confused - I understand and empathize. This, the whole country, only works when we get involved. I am constantly haunted by the specter that maybe I have missed some crucial piece of information on this, or any, important world event: I'Il just have to make my peace with that self-doubt and trust my gut by going with Jewish Voice for Peace, Amnesty International, the Geneva Conventions, the United Nations, etc. And if you're Palestinian and reading this: I unreservedly support your right to life, to freedom, to happiness and human flourishing, to full enfranchisement and equal rights, to opportunity, prosperity and abundance, to the restoration of stolen property and land, and to a Free Palestine.

#free palestine #brennan lee mulligan

[nimas-li-kvar]

Can we begin to have a real conversation about the intersection of radical feminism - especially feminist or lesbian separatism - and left-leaning zionism?

Both are ultimately movements that demand space and protection — separatism — from males, from gentiles.

Both make their demands in context of a long and violent history. Both demand an ending to an underlying hatred that has been passed down for generations, yet is currently being revised and erased.

Both face a regressive Western left that views most separatism as "exclusionist" and therefore inherently wrong.

Both women - relabeled as "cis women" - and Jews are viewed as being extra-privileged and an oppressor class (again, revisionism), and thus not entitled to a safe space.

Both terms have been redefined as movements led by an oppressor class (e.g., zionists colonized the middle east, radical feminists are killing transwomen) that revise history and erase the real oppressors.

For both, this has been done to create an oppressor for the group deemed to be oppressed - women for trans-identified men, jews for arabs - obfuscating the real threats and powers at play who are less vulnerable (men, british colonialism).

These leftists also often place all their energy on reinvisioning specifically the most powerful males within that class as somehow the most oppressed or righteous (autogynephile predators, terrorist gunmen) and somehow convince themselves to identify with and find compassion for the very men using an oppressed people (palestinian citizens, gender non-confirming people) to justify their violence.

For both, they've reenvisioned the oppressed in ways that become almost mystical or magical, e.g., "trans people have always been here," (which conflates gender non-conformity with modern trans ideology), revising biblical figures as Palestinians, etc.

For both, these misunderstandings (e.g., zionists are white europeans, terfs are gender essentialist bigots) reflect a deep ignorance of real zionism and real radical feminism, yet are spoken about with an absolute confidence and used as propaganda.

Screaming "fuck terfs/zionism" is used to virtue signal yourself as having the correct politics - often with other slogans that lack actual meaningful opinion (e.g., screaming free Palestine, or trans women are women ad naseum) for the sole purpose of useless political posturing.

For both, consideration that perhaps "radical feminists and/or zionists aren't evil" is viewed as a thought-crime and even as literal violence.

Both are wielded — either by their original term or by nonsensical acronym — as insults or as stand-ins for pure evil (fuck zionists, fuck terfs, etc.).

Both targets—feminists, Jews—are able to see the bigotry—anti-Semitism, misogyny—when these insults are hurled at us by the Western left.

Both face a reality in which the left has regressed so far, that some have sought refuge with right-wing Christians who share none of our values, and cause more damage than they are worth.

Identification with either will de-platform you. To exist in a leftist space, you have to rename your views to discuss them at all.

If you are a radical feminist screaming "fuck zionism" or a leftist zionist screaming "fuck terfs," ask yourself: are you examining the movement you hate with the same intellectual dishonesty that the regressive left shows you?

#radical feminism #jumblr #zionism #radfems #gendercritical #ישראבלר #western leftist idiocy #regressive left #radfems please interact #israel #israel palestine conflict #israel palestine war

[lesbianfeminists]

Feminism and the Far Right. Let Women Speak by Jeni Harvey

On Sunday 18th September, a group called Standing For Women lead by campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, hosted a public event in Brighton under the banner of Let Women Speak. The event, attended by up to 200 people, was live streamed by white nationalists. A freelance writer known for her extreme right wing views was also among those who stood up to speak.

This follows a pattern of seemingly increased links between the far right, the American Christian right, and certain gender critical activists and organisations. The aftermath of the event saw many angry discussions around feminism, racism and free speech; around inclusivity and responsibility. It gave rise to many questions. Had Hearts of Oak, a far right movement promoted by Tommy Robinson, former UKIP members, and the anti-feminist YouTuber Carl Benjamin been specifically invited? If not, had nobody thought to question who they were given that they were filming from right in front of the stage? Organisers and attendees were asked if they were now prepared to distance themselves from those known to espouse right wing and racist views. In fact, why were they not falling over themselves to do so? Askers were met with a wall of denial, obfuscation and abdication of responsibility. They were met, in some cases, with downright hostility.

One popular response was that women were not to bother themselves with anybody’s politics. Politics didn’t matter. Instead we were to direct a laser like focus on just one single issue: that men are not women.

But for many of us politics is the point. It is the whole entire point when objection to gender self identification being made law and replacing sex in all aspects of public policy is rooted in an analysis that sees female people as historically oppressed by males on account of their sex. When women’s reproductive and domestic labour is a resource to be extracted and exploited, gender based stereotypes serve only to reinforce and naturalise that sex based inequality. Feminism has always been a political movement and the fight for women’s liberation can never, and will never, be compatible with racism and religious fundamentalism. Women with no rights to bodily autonomy are not free people. Women discriminated against on the basis of race do not enjoy equal rights.

If all that is required in order to be welcomed into the gender critical movement is a belief that male people are not female people just because they say so, then that is a wide umbrella indeed, one that could potentially shelter anybody. The necessary question then becomes whether there are any boundaries at all around who we are prepared to associate with. I’m sure that Donald Trump, Jayda Fransen, Andrew Tate, and the ghost of Jeffrey bloody Epstein could all agree that male people are not female people. I don’t doubt that all manner of fascists and undesirables might like to step in out of the rain. But women can hardly expect to stay safe and dry keeping that sort of company.

Five years ago, when I first attended and had the privilege of speaking at those early Women’s Place UK meetings, I remember being filled with excitement and hope at this burgeoning new women’s movement. We had all of us come together around a shared determination to preserve our sex based rights; around a recognition that the demands of males to access our safe spaces, utilise our resources, and prevent us from organising politically was just more of the same centuries old oppression, wrapped in a new shiny bow. I have watched with increasing dismay as large chunks of the now so called gender critical movement have broken off into a mass, populist affair, in thrall to the cult of personality and ready to bat eyes at anyone offering crumbs of attention. Racists, anti-abortionists, religious fundamentalists, thugs: all are welcome so long as they are prepared to adhere to the one and only principle. So called allies can spew bile about immigrants and single mothers all day long so long as they are prepared to say men aren’t women.

But those that would have you back in the kitchen will never be there to fight for your rights. There is no such thing as single issue feminism. No such thing as a decent fascist.

Given the increased platforming of right wing speakers by groups such as Standing for Women, events at Brighton last Sunday were predictable enough. Shoulder shrugging, disingenuous pleas of ignorance, and aggressive attempts at justification under the guise of free speech miss the point. Which is that we are at a dangerous cross roads. A movement supposedly for women and girls can allow itself to be co-opted by nationalists, racists and woman haters, therefore damaging it irreparably and rendering it unfit for purpose. Or it can draw a line.

As an individual I have drawn my own line. There is a strong feminist case to be made against gender self identification that is rooted in a wider principle of left wing, class based analysis and is inclusive of all female people. I believe in women’s liberation from men’s oppression. I believe in a better world for everybody and to that end I can never, ever be part of any movement that sits on the same side of a police line with fascists.

If I am divisive, then good. I do hope so. It was always the left that we needed to persuade, after all, and there is no chance of that while we are busy becoming everything they say we are.

#rightwing #radical feminism #standing for women

[blog-cosmosuniverse1]

Why the WHO Is a Corrupt, Unhealthy Organization

Story at-a-glance “TrustWHO,” a documentary film produced by Lilian Franck, reveals the clandestine influences that are controlling the World Health Organization, to the peril of public health Bill Gates is WHO’s No. 1 funder, contributing more to WHO’s $4.84 billion biennial budget than any member-state government Pharmaceutical companies previously influenced WHO’s 2009 pandemic declaration; experts later called swine flu a “false pandemic” that was driven by Big Pharma, which then cashed in on the health scare WHO has strong allegiance to China, and its investigation into COVID-19’s origin was a “fake” investigation from the start Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, WHO released a statement that it had been in discussions with Facebook to “ensure people can access authoritative information on vaccines and reduce the spread of inaccuracies” WHO’s history clearly illustrates its allegiance to Big Pharma and other industries, including downplaying the health effects caused by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster and collaborating with opioid giant Purdue Given the strong and ongoing evidence that WHO is heavily conflicted and controlled by industry, its usefulness as a guardian of public health needs to be seriously reevaluated

“TrustWHO,” a documentary film produced by Lilian Franck, reveals the clandestine influences that are controlling the World Health Organization (WHO) — and that have been since the very beginning. Founded in 1948 by 61 member states whose contributions initially financed the organization, WHO was quickly infiltrated by industry.From Big Tobacco to the nuclear industry and pharmaceuticals, industry has historically dictated WHO’s global agenda and continues to do so in the present day, putting profits and power ahead of public health.1Bill Gates Is WHO’s No. 1 Funder In April 2020, Donald Trump suspended U.S. funding to WHO while the administration conducted a review into its “role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.”2 This clearly propelled the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation into the WHO’s No.1 funder slot. Upon election, President Joe Biden reversed the Trump administration decision, restoring U.S. funding to WHO.3However, Bill Gates is still the No. 1 funder, contributing more to WHO’s $4.84 billion biennial budget4 than any member-state government. As revealed in a preview copy I received of “Vax-Unvax,”5 Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new book, which will be released in November 2021, “Gates has used his money strategically to infect the international aid agencies with his distorted self-serving priorities. The U.S. historically has been the largest direct donor to WHO.”However, Bill Gates contributes to WHO via multiple avenues, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as well as GAVI, which was founded by the Gates Foundation in partnership with WHO, the World Bank and various vaccine manufacturers. As of 2018, the cumulative contributions from the Gates Foundation and GAVI made Gates the unofficial top sponsor of the WHO, even before the Trump administration’s 2020 move to cut all his support to the organization. And in fact, Gates gives so much that Politico wrote a highly-critical article6 about his undue financial influence over the WHO’s operations in 2017, which Politico said was causing the agency to spend:“… a disproportionate amount of its resources on projects with the measurable outcomes Gates prefers … His sway has NGOs and academics worried. Some health advocates fear that because the Gates Foundation’s money comes from investments in big business, it could serve as a Trojan horse for corporate interests to undermine WHO’s role in setting standards and shaping health policies.”Plus, Gates “also routes funding to WHO through SAGE [Strategic Advisory Group of Experts] and UNICEF and Rotary International bringing his total contributions to over $1 billion,” Kennedy explains in the book, adding that these tax-deductible donations give Gates both leverage and control over international health policy, “which he largely directs to serve the profit interest of his pharma partners.”As noted in the featured film, when it was founded, WHO could decide how to distribute its contributions. Now, 70% of its budget is tied to specific projects, countries or regions, which are dictated by the funders.7 As such, Gates’ priorities are the backbone of WHO, and it wasn’t a coincidence when he said of WHO, “Our priorities, are your priorities.”8“Gates’ vaccine obsession has diverted WHO’s giving from poverty alleviation, nutrition, and clean water to make vaccine uptake its preeminent public health metric. And Gates is not afraid to throw his weight around,” according to Kennedy’s book. “… The sheer magnitude of his foundation’s financial contributions has made Bill Gates an unofficial — albeit unelected — leader of the WHO.” Pharma & WHO Cashing Checks in Previous Pandemics During the 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic, secret agreements were made between Germany, Great Britain, Italy and France with the pharmaceutical industry before the H1N1 pandemic began, which stated that they would purchase H1N1 flu vaccinations — but only if a pandemic level 6 was declared by WHO.The “TrustWHO” documentary shows how, six weeks before the pandemic was

declared, no one at WHO was worried about the virus, but the media was nonetheless exaggerating the dangers. Then, in the month leading up to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, WHO changed the official definition of pandemic, removing the severity and high mortality criteria and leaving the definition of a pandemic as "a worldwide epidemic of a disease."9This switch in definition allowed WHO to declare swine flu a pandemic after only 144 people had died from the infection worldwide. In 2010, Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, then head of health at the Council of Europe, accused pharmaceutical companies of influencing WHO’s pandemic declaration, calling swine flu a “false pandemic” that was driven by Big Pharma, which cashed in on the health scare.10According to Wodarg, the swine flu pandemic was “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century.”11 In the investigation into WHO and Big Pharma’s falsification of a pandemic, an inquiry stated:12“… in order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu, pharmaceutical companies influenced scientists and official agencies responsible for public health standards to alarm governments worldwide and make them squander tight health resources for inefficient vaccines strategies, and needlessly expose millions of healthy people to the risk of an unknown amount of side effects of insufficiently tested vaccines.”While governments ended up with stockpiles of vaccines they would never use, many of those who received the H1N1 swine flu vaccine suffered from adverse effects including Guillian-Barre syndrome, narcolepsy, cataplexy and other forms of brain damage.1

The Origins Cover-Up

WHO’s investigation into COVID-19’s origin was also a “fake” investigation from the start. China was allowed to hand pick the members of the WHO’s investigative team, which included Peter Daszak, Ph.D., who has close professional ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

The inclusion of Dazsak on this team virtually guaranteed the dismissal of the lab-origin theory, and in February 2021, WHO cleared WIV and two other biosafety level 4 laboratories in Wuhan, China, of wrongdoing, saying these labs had nothing to do with the COVID-19 outbreak.14

Only after backlash, including an open letter signed by 26 scientists demanding a full and unrestricted forensic investigation into the pandemic’s origins,15 did WHO enter damage control mode, with Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and 13 other world leaders joining the U.S. government in expressing “frustration with the level of access China granted an international mission to Wuhan.”16

A couple of noteworthy points — Gates handpicked Ghebreyesus as WHO’s director general, not because of his qualifications — Tedros has no medical degree and a background that includes accusations of human rights violations — but due to this loyalty to Gates, again according to Kennedy’s book.

Further, WHO’s allegiance to China was secured years earlier, when China secured WHO votes to ensure its candidates would become director-general. A Sunday Times investigation also revealed that WHO’s independence was severely compromised and its close ties to China allowed COVID-19 to spread in the early days of the pandemic while obfuscating the investigation into its origins. According to the Sunday Times:17

“The WHO leadership prioritized China’s economic interests over halting the spread of the virus when Covid-19 first emerged. China exerted ultimate control over the WHO investigation into the origins of Covid-19, appointing its chosen experts and negotiating a backroom deal to water down the mandate.”

WHO’s China Ties Played ‘Decisive Role’ in Pandemic

On January 28, 2020, four weeks after Taiwan had alerted WHO that a mysterious respiratory illness was spreading in China, WHO had not yet taken action and continued to praise China.

Tedros even praised China for their transparency and said the Chinese president had “shown ‘rare leadership’ and deserved ‘gratitude and respect’ for acting to contain the outbreak at the epicenter,” the Sunday Times reported. “These ‘extraordinary steps’ had prevented further spread of the virus, and this was why, he said, there were only ‘a few cases of human-to-human transmission outside China, which we are monitoring very closely.’”18

Speaking with the Sunday Times, professor Richard Ebright of Rutgers University’s Waksman Institute of Microbiology in New Jersey, said it was this close connection that ultimately steered the course of the pandemic:19

“Not only did it have a role; it has had a decisive role. It was the only motivation. There was no scientific or medical or policy justification for the stance that the WHO took in January and February 2020. That was entirely premised on maintaining satisfactory ties to the Chinese government.

So at every step of the way, the WHO promoted the position that was sought by the Chinese government … the WHO actively resisted and obstructed efforts by other nations to implement effective border controls that could have limited the spread or even contained the spread of the outbreak.

It is impossible for me to believe that the officials in Geneva, who were making those statements, believed those statements accorded with the facts that were available to them at the time the statements were made. It’s hard not to see that the direct origin of that is the support of the Chinese government for Tedros’s election as director-general …

This was a remarkably high return on [China’s] investment with the relatively small sums that were invested in supporting his election. It paid off on a grand scale for the Chinese government.”

WHO Corruption Runs Deep

Even prior to the pandemic, WHO had released a statement that it had been in discussions with Facebook to “ensure people can access authoritative information on vaccines and reduce the spread of inaccuracies.”20 At WHO’s first Global Vaccination Summit, held in Brussels in September 2019, Jason Hirsch, Facebook’s public policy manager, alluded to the censorship and media manipulation that was to come:21

“The first thing that we are doing is reducing the distribution of misinformation about vaccinations and the second thing that we are doing is increasing exposure to credible, authoritative content on vaccinations.”

Rather than putting public health first, such as pushing for safety studies into vaccination, WHO’s history clearly illustrates its allegiance to Big Pharma and other industries. WHO, for instance, has downplayed the health effects caused by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, stating that only 50 deaths were directly caused by the incident and “a total of up to 4,000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure” from the disaster.22

WHO signed an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is “promoting peaceful use of atomic energy,” in 1959, making it subordinate to the agency in relation to ionizing radiation.

WHO’s response to the Fukushima radiation disaster in 2011 was also criticized, with evidence of a high-level coverup.23 WHO once again downplayed the risks, stating “the predicted risks are low and no observable increases in cancer rates above baseline rates are anticipated.”24

WHO also received more than $1.6 million from opioid giant Purdue from 1999 to 2010 and used industry-supported opioid data to incorporate into its official pro-opioid guidelines. According to the Alliance of Human Research Protection, WHO’s collaboration with Purdue led to expanded opioid use and global addiction.25

Due to its acceptance of private money, a review in the Journal of Integrative Medicine & Therapy went so far as to say the corruption of WHO is the “biggest threat to the world’s public health of our time,” particularly as it relates to WHO’s drug recommendations — including its “list of essential medicines” — which it believes is biased and not reliable.26

Given the strong and ongoing evidence that WHO is heavily conflicted and controlled by industry, its usefulness as a guardian of public health needs to be seriously reevaluated.

[comrade-meow]

Prostitution or sex work? Language matters

This article is by Laura Biggs, from the Marxist-Feminist blog On the Woman Question.

The term ‘sex work’ has come to replace the word ‘prostitution’ in contemporary discussions on the subject. This is not accidental. The phrase ‘sex work’ has been adopted by liberal feminists and powerful lobbyists in a deliberate attempt to steer the narrative on prostitution.

Smoke and Mirrors

Superficially, the term ‘sex work’ is intended to make prostitution sound more palatable. It is used to remove the negative connotations of the sex industry and those who work within it. However, sanitising the horror of prostitution with such benign terms is a monumental disservice to the tens of millions of prostituted women around the world. Their experiences cannot be celebrated as ‘work’. The vast majority of their experiences are dirty and degrading. What a handful of relatively privileged Western women working in the sex trade may deem to be ‘work’ is perceived as humiliation and degradation by millions of others. Some argue that the term ‘sex work’ removes the stigma and vitriol directed at prostituted women, but this fails to address the problem. Prostituted women are hurt and violated by buyers because the sex trade enables abusive men — not because of the language used to discuss it. Suggesting that the word ‘prostitution’ is to blame for the suffering of prostituted women shifts blame away from the perpetrators of male violence and overlooks the institutional systems which allow it to flourish. It is absolutely vital that we do talk about the ugly reality of prostitution, and to do so we must begin by naming the issue in no uncertain terms: prostitution.

Reinventing prostitution as ‘sex work’ also masks the deeply misogynistic nature of the sex trade. The word ‘prostitute’ is one which is heavily gendered; it connotes women. The Oxford English Dictionary acknowledges this in their definition of the word: A person, in particular a woman, who engages in sexual activity for payment. So gendered is the word, in fact, that when referring to men in the sex industry, the descriptor ‘male’ is added in order to make the distinction (male prostitute). This is not an outdated, sexist misconception but an accurate reflection of the gender balance within sex trade. The vast majority of those who are prostituted are women and girls while the vast majority of buyers and pimps are men. Obfuscating the gendered nature of prostitution by rebranding it as ‘sex work’ erases the millennia of misogynistic oppression inherent in the sex trade. It is likely that commercial prostitution (separate and distinct from temple prostitution) is derived from ancient slavery. The physicality of male slaves meant that they were often utilised for manual labour whilst female slaves were more likely to be reserved for domestic or entertainment purposes. In many Ancient societies, women could not own property and therefore slave masters were predominantly male. As a result, female slaves were often used for the sexual entertainment of their male owner. Slave owners frequently rented out their female slaves as prostitutes and even set up commercial brothels. Prostitution, born out of sexual slavery, has always disproportionately affected women belonging to lower socioeconomic classes. It is crucial to acknowledge the origin and history of prostitution in order to understand that it is not ‘work like any other’ but an industry built upon the oppression of poor women.

A Wide Umbrella

‘Sex work’ is a vague term which refers to people selling their own sexual labour or performance. This can therefore include any number of professions such as webcamming, stripping, hostessing, escorting etc. Whilst any profession which exists solely to sexualise women is objectively antifeminist, it is important that we acknowledge that prostitution is distinct from these other milder forms of objectification. Clearly, the experiences of a student flirting with strangers via webcam to top up their student loan differs greatly from those of a vulnerable sixteen year old girl, trafficked from Romania, walking the streets. The job description of a prostitute lists acts and risks which are not common to other jobs: risk of STIs; unwanted pregnancy; unprotected handling of bodily fluids; degrading, painful and even tortuous sex; vaginal and anal tears; high risk of PTSD — not to mention the significantly increased risk of rape, assault and murder. Even within the sex industry, the experiences of prostituted women are uniquely harrowing and so it is essential that we prioritise these women in legislation on prostitution reform. By grouping all sex-related professions under the wide umbrella of ‘sex work’, those in less dangerous and degrading jobs have now been given the authority to speak on behalf of prostituted women, thus silencing the most oppressed voices within the sex industry. Individuals whose experiences have little in common with those of prostitutes are spearheading movements whose aims will have a direct and adverse effect upon the safety and wellbeing of these vulnerable women. The wide scope of the term ‘sex work’ allows wealthy lobbyists to use compliant liberal women as the mouthpiece for their damaging narrative whilst simultaneously pushing the experiences of those who are worst affected by the sex trade into the background.

In some cases, the term ‘sex workers’ is so broad that it includes pimps. Borrowing the language of the labour movement, pro-decriminalisation lobbies brand themselves as ‘collectives’ or ‘unions’ and demand decriminalisation under the pretence of ‘worker’s rights’. Douglas Fox, of the International Union of Sex Workers, describes himself as a sex worker yet is the co-owner of the one of the largest escort agencies in the country. The agency’s website argues that pimps are ‘sex workers’ and Fox also shockingly states that ‘the fact that paedophiles produce and distribute and earn money from selling sex may make them sex workers’. Similarly, the Sex Workers’ Outreach Project USA was founded by Robyn Few, a self-proclaimed sex worker who has a conviction for conspiracy to promote interstate prostitution (pimping). Unionising prostitution legitimises an industry which causes untold suffering to millions of women around the world. It is absurd to allow pimps to join these unions alongside those who they abuse and exploit. No amount of ‘worker’s rights’ will ever make prostitution a safe or humane profession. An inherently unethical system cannot be fixed through reform. A radical solution is needed: abolition.

An Appeal to Socialists

Describing prostitution as ‘work’ and its victims as ‘workers’ is a cheap and transparent appeal to socialists. Using Marxist jargon to describe prostitution as ‘work like any other’ is an insult to history’s great communists who condemned prostitution as counter-revolutionary. Under Mao, whose policy of criminalising pimps was implemented as soon as he took power, prostitution was virtually nonexistent. Engels himself asserted that communism would ‘transform the relations between sexes into entirely personal relations’. Therefore, any economic relationship between man and woman, particularly the grossly exploitative one between prostituted women and buyers, is inherently anti-communist. Lenin, too, commented that ‘so long as wage-slavery exists, inevitably prostitution too will exist’, demonstrating that he also believed prostitution to be inextricably bound to capitalist exploitation.

However, a significant portion of the woke left insist upon misinterpreting and misapplying Marxist theory to legitimise the continuance of the sex trade. They claim that by declaring prostitution to be ‘a specific expression of the general prostitution of the labourer’, Marx understood the position of prostituted women to be identical to that of all exploited workers. However, this wilfully overlooks Marx’s use of the word ‘specific’. In reality, Marx is suggesting that, whilst prostitution falls under the general banner of exploitation, its reliance on the oppression of women differentiates it from the ‘general prostitution of the labourer’ and makes it ‘specific’ to the female condition. If capitalist exploitation were removed, labour would continue to be necessary for the subsistence of any given society. In contrast, prostitution without capitalist exploitation ceases to exist; sex, devoid of economic coercion, would become a purely interpersonal relationship. In Private Property and Communism, Marx goes on to say that communism aims ‘to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production’. Pro-prostitution arguments which characterise prostitution as ‘work’ inherently reinforce the perception of female bodies as machines which produce a commodity (sex) for male consumption. The objectification of female bodies, whether exploitative or not, is plainly incorrect and so cannot be supported by any Marxist movement.

There’s More to it Than Money

Framing prostitution as ‘work’ deliberately reduces it to a purely economic analysis. Any analysis devoid of historical materialism is wholly inadequate and will invariably fail to offer a comprehensive examination of the issue. It is vital to acknowledge the social factors which lead women into prostitution: low self esteem, childhood sexual trauma, incest etc. It is unsurprising that some of these vulnerable women embrace the ‘sex work is empowering’ narrative. Language which clouds the abject reality of their situation is undoubtedly appealing and so it is all the more immoral and manipulative for pimps, traffickers and lobbyists to push this sinister doublespeak. The insistent claim from liberal feminists that prostitution is merely ‘sex work’ does not recognise the existence of the social factors which predispose women to sell sex and so naturally prevents positive change to combat them. Prostitution, therefore, is much more than capitalist wage slavery and so we must reject any attempts to render it mere ‘work’.

#Anglo.txt

[96thdayofrage]

WAR DAY 7️⃣1️⃣2️⃣1️⃣ 🍅 "In an exclusive interview with The Grayzone, Col. Douglas Macgregor, a former senior advisor to the Acting Secretary of Defense, revealed that President Donald Trump shocked the US military only days after the election last November by signing a presidential order calling for the withdrawal of all remaining US troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year.

"As Macgregor explained to The Grayzone, the order to withdraw was met with intense pressure from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark M. Milley, which caused the president to capitulate. Trump agreed to withdraw only half of the 5,000 remaining troops in the country. Neither Trump’s order nor the pressure from the JCS Chairman was reported by the national media at the time.

"The president’s surrender represented the Pentagon’s latest victory in a year-long campaign to sabotage the US-Taliban peace agreement signed in February 2020. Military and DOD leaders thus extended the disastrous and unpopular 20-year US war in Afghanistan into the administration of President Joseph Biden."

🍅 A peace agreement the Pentagon was determined to subvert

"The subversion of the peace agreement with the Taliban initiated by the US military leadership in Washington and Afghanistan began almost as soon as Trump’s personal envoy Zalmay Khalilzad negotiated a tentative deal in November 2019. The campaign to undermine presidential authority was actively supported by then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.

"In February 2020, under heavy pressure to amend the agreement, Trump ordered Khalilzad to deliver the Taliban an ultimatum: agree to a full ceasefire as a prelude to a broader peace deal, including peace negotiations with the Afghan government, or the deal was off. The Taliban refused the immediate ceasefire with Kabul, however, offering instead a 'reduction in violence' for seven days to establish a conducive atmosphere for implementing the peace agreement that had already been fleshed out in detail. It then gave the US its own ultimatum: if the US refused the offer, its negotiators would walk away from the table.

"To salvage the deal, Khalilzad agreed to the Taliban proposal for a one-week 'reduction of violence' by both sides. The adversaries reached further understandings on what such a 'reduction in violence' would mean: the Taliban agreed there would be no attacks on population centers and Afghan stationary military targets, but reserved the right to attack government convoys if they exploited the reduction to seize control of new areas.

"The US-Taliban peace agreement signed on February 29 called for a withdrawal of US troops from the country in two stages. First, the US agreed to reduce its troop levels to 8600 within 4.5 months and remove forces from five military bases ahead of a final withdrawal that would take place in May 2021. Second, the US and its allies pledged to 'refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Afghanistan or intervening in its domestic affairs.'

"The Taliban promised in turn that it would 'not allow any of its members, other individuals or groups, including al-Qaeda, to use the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies.'

"Those two commitments obliged US and Taliban forces not to attack each other. The agreement also specified that the Taliban would enter into 'intra-Afghan negotiations on March 10, 2020, after the two Afghan parties were to have exchanged prisoners.'

"They also required the Taliban to keep al-Qaeda personnel out of Afghanistan – a pledge the Taliban Military Commission appeared to implement last month when it issued an order to all commanders forbidding them from 'bringing foreign nationals into their ranks or giving them shelter.'

"But the pact did not provide for the immediate ceasefire between Taliban and Afghan government forces which the U.S. military and Pentagon demanded. Instead 'a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire' was to be negotiated between the two Afghan parties.

"With startling swiftness and determination, Pentagon officials and military leadership exploited the open-ended terms of the ceasefire to derail the implementation of the agreement.

"Secretary of Defense Esper claimed the peace deal allowed the US military to defend Afghan forces, blatantly contradicting the agreement’s text. He then pledged to come to the defense of the Afghan government if the Taliban began mounting attacks on its forces, setting the stage for American violations on the ground.

"Esper’s promise of continued US military support, made public in Congressional testimony days later, gave the Afghan government a clear incentive to refuse any concessions to the Taliban. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani promptly refused to go ahead with a promised prisoner exchange until formal negotiations with the Taliban had begun.

"The Taliban responded by initiating a series of attacks on government troops at checkpoints in contested areas. The US military command in Afghanistan responded with an airstrike against Taliban forces engaged in one of those operations in Helmand province. US officials said privately that the airstrike was 'a message to the Taliban' to continue what they described as the 'reduction in violence commitment they had agreed…'

"The combination of Esper’s assurance to the Afghan government and the US airstrike showed the hand of the Pentagon and military leadership. It was clear they had no intention of passively accepting a deal to withdraw the remaining US personnel from Afghanistan, and would do whatever they could to unravel it.

"Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the commander of the Central Command, further highlighted the Pentagon’s opposition to the deal when he declared in congressional testimony that troop withdrawals would be determined by 'conditions on the ground.' In other words, it was up to the judgment of military commanders, rather than the terms of the agreement, to determine when U.S. troops would be withdrawn."

🍅 Shaping a false narrative on the agreement

"The military’s plan to sabotage the agreement hinged on creating the false impression that the Taliban had reneged on its commitments. This ruse was advanced mostly publicly by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Esper.

"In an interview with CBS News, Pompeo mentioned 'a detailed set of commitments that the Taliban have made about the levels of violence that can occur…' But that was a deliberate obfuscation. Though the Taliban had agreed to the seven-day 'reduction in violence,' it did not apply to the peace agreement signed on February 29, 2020.

"On March 2, Esper told reporters, 'This is a conditions-based agreement…. We’re watching the Taliban’s actions closely to assess whether they are upholding their commitments.' That same day, US commander in Afghanistan Gen. Scott Miller stated through a spokesman on Twitter, 'The United States has been very clear about our expectations — the violence must remain low.'

"Once again, the Pentagon and the US command were dictating conditions to the Taliban outside the actual written terms of the peace agreement.

"The Pentagon and military command’s ploy was advanced through a story leaked to the New York Times and published on March 8. Below the headline, 'A Secret Accord With the Taliban: When and How the U.S. Would Leave Afghanistan,' the story referred to two 'secret annexes' to deceptively suggest that the agreements reached with the Taliban were not fully reflected in the publicly available text.

"The Times’ ploy recalled the national hysteria the paper triggered last summer when it legitimized an Afghan intelligence fraud by publishing a series of lengthy articles claiming Russia had paid Taliban fighters bounties for dead American service members. Indeed, the 'secret annexes' story was simply the latest political deception deployed by the Pentagon to torpedo plans for a US withdrawal.

"Despite the article’s assertion that the two documents 'lay out the specific understandings between the United States and the Taliban,' the only specific reference in the story to any such understanding mentioned 'commitments from the Taliban not to attack American forces during a withdrawal.' However, that explicit commitment was missing from the actual terms of the published accord.

"As the Times acknowledged in its article, when Esper and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley appeared before the House Armed Services Committee just three days before the agreement was signed, both were asked about any 'side deals with the Taliban.' Neither said they were aware of any unpublished agreements. Pompeo, who also denied the existence of any 'side deals' with the Taliban, referred to them as 'military implementation documents.'

"The evidence clearly indicated that the so-called 'secret annexes' were, in fact, internal US documents on US policy related to the agreement.

"In April 2020, the Taliban accused the United States of flagrantly violating the deal, citing 50 attacks by US and Afghan forces between March 9 and April 10, including 33 drone attacks and 8 night raids by Special Operations forces. By the summer, as the Taliban stepped up attacks on government checkpoints in areas bordering territory under their control, US forces in Afghanistan and the Defense Department informed the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) that the orders to Afghan government forces allowed them to preemptively strike Taliban positions.

"The war thus returned to the situation that prevailed before the agreement was signed and the peace deal was effectively shattered.

"Meanwhile, the US military continued to accuse the Taliban of failing to adhere to the agreement. In July, the US government-run Voice of America reported that McKenzie had 'told VOA the Taliban has not kept up their commitments agreed to in the U.S.-Taliban peace deal, leading to one of the "most violent" periods of the war in Afghanistan.'"

🍅 Reversing a presidential order for withdrawal

"Following Trump’s defeat in the November 2020 presidential election, and after fashioning the strategy to sabotage the Afghan peace agreement, Esper, McKenzie and Miller agreed on a memorandum from the 'chain of command' warning Trump against further withdrawal from Afghanistan until 'conditions' had been met. These terms included a 'reduction in violence' and 'progress at the negotiating table.'

"Trump reacted to the memo with outrage, swiftly firing Esper on November 9. He replaced him with Christopher Miller, the former head of the US counter-terrorism center who agreed with Trump on withdrawal from Afghanistan.

"That same day, Trump asked Col. Douglas Macgregor to serve as Miller’s 'senior adviser.' Macgregor was an outspoken advocate of withdrawal from Afghanistan and a harsh critic of other US wars in the Middle East, from Iraq to Syria. During a January 2020 interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, Macgregor blasted Pentagon leadership for its failure to find a path out of Afghanistan.

"Once inside the Pentagon, Macgregor immediately took on the task of enabling a rapid and complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. Just how close Trump came to withdrawing all US troops before leaving office had not been reported until now. Macgregor recounted the episode to The Grayzone.

"According to Macgregor, he met Miller on November 10 and told him that a pullout from Afghanistan could only be accomplished by a formal presidential order. Later that day, Macgregor dictated the language of such an order to the White House by phone.

"The draft order stated that all uniformed military personnel would be withdrawn from Afghanistan no later than December 31, 2020. Macgregor told the staffer to get a National Security Presidential Memorandum from the White House files to ensure that it was published in the correct format.

"Macgregor’s White House contact informed him in the morning of November 11 that Trump had read the memorandum and immediately signed it. On November 12, however, he learned that Trump had met with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, national security adviser Robert O’Brien and Acting Secretary Miller. Trump was told that the orders he placed in the memorandum could not be executed, according to Macgregor’s White House contact.

"Milley argued that a withdrawal would harm the chances of negotiating a final peace settlement and that continued US presence in Afghanistan had 'bipartisan support,' Macgregor was informed. Later that night, Macgregor learned that Trump had agreed to withdraw only half the total, 2500 troops. Trump had once again given in to military pressure, as he did repeatedly on Syria.

"The maneuvering by the Pentagon to obstruct the Trump administration’s initiative to end an extremely unpopular war in Afghanistan was just one example in a long-established pattern of undermining presidential authority over matters of war and peace.

"When he was Vice-President, Joe Biden witnessed first-hand the pressures the Pentagon brass imposed on Barack Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan. With the peace agreement’s May 1 deadline for final US withdrawal just weeks away, Biden is certain to face another round of maximum pressure to keep US troops in the quagmire of Afghanistan, supposedly as ‘leverage” on the Taliban."

###

[Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist who has covered national security policy since 2005 and was the recipient of Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2012. His most recent book is The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis co-authored with John Kiriakou, just published in February.]

_____

🍅 Trump admin insider reveals how US military sabotaged peace agreement to prolong Afghanistan war. By Gareth Porter, The Grayzone, Mar. 16, 2021.

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/16/trump-us-military-peace-agreement-war-afghanistan/

[simonalkenmayer]

One thing to add to the terf discussion: While it’s understandable a person wouldn’t want to have sex with a kind of genitals regardless of gender, one thing transphobes don’t consider is that many trans women don’t have penises anymore. A common thing that happens is a person is attracted to a trans woman->finds out shes a trans woman->denies their attraction, despite knowing she has a vagina now. And that’s clearly transphobia because only the knowledge that she is trans changed their mind.

Yes, I think we, on this blog, are all aware of that. But that isn’t what was said by any of the asks received last night.

The first anon said they asked Molly Anne if she’d sleep with a trans woman. And because she didn’t directly answer the question that must mean she’s a feef.

A later ask was allegedly a lesbian who was asked out by a specific person and that she said no because that person was trans and they had no sexual chemistry. That sounds transphobic, but it was written as if to imply by “they were trans” that in fact they had a penis and this person knew it. But it could easily have been one of the staged asks designed to make the idea of terfism seem to have a context in which its acceptable.

Then I was accused of siding with TERFS because I said that a person doesn’t have to be attracted to all people within a group, just because they lean toward a sexual attraction to that group. I was told that genitals don’t matter. And they don’t…DOR GENDER. But as I replied, gender and sex are not the same thing. See here: if you say “I have male parts but that doesn’t matter because I am a woman. Genitals don’t matter to gender” you are saying that sex and gender are divided. If you then say everyone who is attracted to the female gender has to also be attracted to you, you are re-linking gender and sex, nullifying your own assertion. It’s a paradox. Gender and sex are not connected. You say you’re female and live as one, then you are one, but your parts are still there unless you have them altered, and that physical body may not be one that attracts everyone who are attracyed to women. Period.

The final ask was merely a bunch of capital letters going on about how perts don’t matter and that trans women are women and that anyone who won’t sleep with a trans woman isn’t actually attracted to women or is teansmusoginisf. That everyone who is an ally is just pretending to be for some inexplicable reason and oh how tragic is the fate of all these supposed sexually divested involuntary celibates in the trans female community. That was sarcasm on my part. I’m sure there are many lonely trans women who deal with trans trans misogyny , the issue being that none of them in their right mind would ever demand an ally prove themselves by having sex.

The argument of “I like you, but wait you’re trans? How disgusting” was never put forth. Not once. That is obviously transphobic. Obviously. No one would ever dispute that. The scenario was never even introduced. So yes, you’re right, and I have never said anything different, but it isn’t something that was a part of the discussion and using an isolated counter example does not excuse the statements made.

Let me make a comparison- trump supporters say undocumented migrants are criminals. I can show them that a citizen is literally theee Times more likely to be a criminal, ten times more likely to be a felon. But they will say “what about that family whose parents were shot by that undocumented man”? That is a logical fallacy. Using one isolated and emotionally charged scenario to dispute or cast an emotional context on the statistics is not actually arguing anything. It’s simply attempting to obfuscate.

Yes, trans women are dumped for being trans and that is wrong. But that in no way contradicts what I have been arguing all morning—that not being attracted to a apecidic trans woman’s body is not transmisogyny.

And yes, I received your second ask. You don’t need to worry as I take no offense to having people discuss things with me so long as they are polite.

#Transphobic #TERF

[kegareki]

25, 33, 35, 36, 39, 52, 67, 39, 94 for you! ^u^ and for Luce, 5, 41, 42, 52, 85, 90, 91, 94, 95, 98. answer the ones you wanna answer :')

:D :D thank you for sending questions!

for me:

25) What color socks are you wearing?

i am not wearing socks because it is Too Hot For That, Currently

33) What do you typically have for breakfast?

... there was a period of three months in a row and then another month just now where i ate egg sandwiches and orange juice for breakfast, so i'm going to go with that

35) Have you ever tried archery?

I Have Not, Unfortunately

36) Favorite clean word?

... good question. uh. i like words for surprised, like flabbergasted and gobsmacked

39) Do you have any scars?

i have four dotted lines on the back of my right hand that i vaguely think of as having earned in a fishing incident, though i'm not sure if that was a dream or not. i have a thin scar on the bend of my left thumb from sanding it accidentally in eighth grade. i have a scar on my right shin from... possibly me scratching at a bug bite??

52) Favorite food?

beef and cheese quesadillas are so good

67) Can you name all 50 states of America?

I HATE THIS QUESTION BECAUSE IT MADE ME LITERALLY HAVE TO MAKE A NUMBERED LIST AND WRITE DOWN STATES THAT I COULD REMEMBER. no, i cannot name all 50 states. i got 39 of them.

94) What are your strengths?

i'm creative, probably?

JKGJFKD no but. i'm used sometimes as a voice of reason and to give perspective? one of my friends goes along with the currents of the group and doesn't have the best understanding of where the line is, because he's very petty and so are most of his friends, but i'm less... eager to exact revenge? especially in ways that are gratuitous and not "getting even" so much as it is being cruel for the sake of it.

-

-

-

for luce:

5) What is your favorite color?

purple! any shade of it, really, though i think they'd tend toward darker and/or greyer tones of it.

41) Are you a good liar?

ehhh...

a good liar as in "good at deliberately obfuscating the truth"? not really, no. luce is an honest sort of person, generally, and they don't lie often enough for them to get good at it.

but "obfuscating the truth incidentally and for enjoyment" is something they're more adept in. like arguing ardently in favor of leeches for half an hour before giving up and admitting that they don't even like leeches in the first place. as long as it's not thought of as lying, specifically, they're fine

42) Are you a good judge of character?

ehhh...

ghjfdldjsk no but. this is. hm. i'd say that they generally are, though they have certain prejudices that may prevent them from having a truly accurate reading.

for example: garp is their grandpa, right? he loves them and wants the best for them, despite the forms that these things take, and he would have gladly taught them things. but they hate him so much that they refuse to acknowledge these things about him and view him in just about the worst light possible

but when they're not powerfully predisposed towards Hating Someone, they're a lot more likely to actually take in what kind of person it is and form opinions based off of what they can tell

52) Favorite food?

egg sandwiches. just. egg sandwiches.

bonus: their least favorite food is mint chocolate, because it is the worst kind of chocolate and you can't change my mind

85) What color are your eyes?

their eyes are dark brown!

90) What makes you angry?

systemic inequality and injustice. (they and sabo have a lot of discussions about this.)

a society that demands the blood of its citizens and cares not for the staunching of wounds but for the continued gaping of them.

garp's existence. (they remember canon marineford, and they're never going to forgive him for it. this may not be the same man entirely, but--the fact that he has that capability--no. they want him far away from them and theirs.)

shanks. (they like him but they also feel like they shouldn't, which is aggravating.)

(they also get angry at themselves when they fuck up, but they're quieter about that.)

91) Do you like your own name?

they... don't mind it? names are weird things to have and it's pretty common to feel alienated from them, but luce is an okay one, and they get used to it. they kind of wish they had a name that allowed for nicknames, though. "lu" just makes both them and luffy look over.

94) What are your strengths?

they're good at improvisation--have to be, with ASL as their friends--and able to adapt to new situations, even if they don't like the development.

they're also good at listening--to other people, to corrections. if they've done something wrong, they want to know so that they can correct it and not do it again.

communication in general is probably their biggest strength? they're the most communicative by dint of being the one trying to teach the rest of ASLsquared to communicate, and that means that ASLsquared are all pretty open with each other, to varying degrees, and are at least peripherally aware of people's boundaries, even if they can't really articulate them.

on a lighter note: they can also wrangle ASL with pretty high reliability. (it helps that they won't pester ASL to do things that they genuinely do not want to ever do.)

95) What are your weaknesses?

they don't always think before acting, which is not great and results in awkward or outright bad situations sometimes.

they also don't always know when they've fucked up--some social etiquette and norms slip past their mind or don't register at all.

they're very selfish and self-oriented, and hate that ASLsquared have to part ways. they want to stay together! they don't want to have to give any of them up! as unrealistic as they know it is, it still hurts and makes them feel like they're the only one who doesn't want to leave, which makes them want to hold onto them harder.

... on a lighter note: ASL's smiles. ace's dimples. luffy's sparkling eyes. sabo focusing on them. and don't even get me started on ASL entreating luce with "i love you"s. luce is weak.

98) Do you have any scars?

luce has to continue the monkey d. trend of having something up with the left side of their face, so they're going to get a scar. can't tell you yet what that scar is going to be, though

they're getting various arm and leg scars from 1) Bug Bites, 2) The Regular Battles With Terrifying Megafauna, and 3) normal kid dumbassery

i'll have better answers for this question later on when i’ve. actually. thought about it gjksdfjsdklf

#keg wrecks #set sail verse #literally just the saddest thing is that finding a nickname for luce is /hard/. #i went 'lu-two' in my head and laughed #500shadesofblue

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#1yrago A proposal to stop 3D printers from making guns is a perfect parable of everything wrong with information security

Many people worry that 3D printers will usher in an epidemic of untraceable "ghost guns," particularly guns that might evade some notional future gun control regime that emerges out of the current movement to put sensible, minimal curbs on guns, particularly anti-personnel guns.

Certainly, it's possible to 3D print a gun specifically designed to kill people (as opposed to target shooting or hunting). It's also possible to have such a gun machined in pieces by stores that will overnight the components to you for on-site, simple assembly, but 3D printers make that process simpler and may eventually make it cheaper.

Enter "C3PO," a notional solution to this problem proposed by a group of researchers based at U Syracuse and Buffalo U. In a preprint on Arxiv, the C3PO team proposes that 3D printers could come pre-installed with a database of hundreds of thousands of images that they would attempt to match to print-jobs to determine whether they were being asked to make a gun (or any other unlawful object) so they could reject jobs that seemed to match the prohibition list.

It's DRM for 3D printers, in other words, and it has all the problems of DRM and then some.

First, for this to work, it has to be impossible for the user to alter the configuration of the printer. To make that practical, the printer has to obfuscate its operations from the user, lock down its bootloader, and generally treat the user as an adversary (the  paper explicitly describes the printer being an adversary of its owner).

Then, the manufacturer will have to invoke Section 1201 of the DMCA, as well as CFAA and other censoring rules to suppress bug-reports, because any defect in a printer could be exploited to overrule the preloaded prohibition on printing objects on the banned list.

So now you've got a printer that can run on free/open source software (because this is intrinsically user-modifiable). It has a "Ring -1" in which code executes without the ability of users to inspect or terminate processes. Any malware that runs in that zone -- anything that leverages a bug like the the ones AMD is contending with right now -- is, by definition, undetectable to the user and can do anything from staging attacks on the rest of the user's network to tampering with the user's printouts to introduce subtle (and since we're talking about high-performance materials, potentially lethal) flaws into them, etc.

And what's more, it won't stop 3D printed guns. The burgeoning body of research on adversarial examples reveals the inadequacy of this kind of fuzzy matching. The tldr is that if the fact that you can train your printer to recognize models of guns generated by people who weren't trying to fool it tells you nothing about whether it's possible to fool it. Think of how Google was once able to use inbound links as an incredibly reliable signal of page-relevance, and how quickly and easily attackers were able to generate spurious inbound links to fool Google's Pagerank algorithm.

What's more, the intrinsic secrecy of the DRM model means that legit security researchers who discover defects in the gun-detection system won't be able to publish (since they'll face legal retaliation under DMCA 1201, etc) while people who want to make guns will be able to freely develop and productize systems to bypass the gun-detector, because those people are already doing something illegal and have already demonstrated their indifference to the law.

Finally, these secret blacklists are an invitation to mischief and a moral hazard. The "special purpose," "narrowly constrained" blacklists of child sexual abuse imagery developed by governments in Europe, Australia and elsewhere were first stuffed with material that powerful people just wanted to block (information about online gambling or assisted suicide, for example) and then used as justification to expand national censorship regimes to block copyright infringement, then trademark infringement, then "extremist content" and so on.

Once you equip a 3D printer with a blocklist of things that they notionally can't print, everyone will want to add to that list: Erdogan and the King of Thailand will demand that satirical statuettes depicting them in caricature be banned; Disney and the copyright lobby will demand that models matching their proprietary characters and objects be banned; Ikea will want to ban third-party connectors; patent holders will want to ban third-party dinguses; the Saudi Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice will demand a ban on depictions of Muhammad, and so on, and so on.

So this is an idea that neatly encapsulates virtually every terrible idea from the last 30 years of computing, learning none of its hard-earned lessons.

For the record, I believe in gun control and am mildly alarmed at the implications for gun control from 3D printing. But this won't solve the problem, and will make it worse, and it's precisely because gun control is an important issue that we can't surrender to the security syllogism of "Something must be done; there, I've done something."

https://boingboing.net/2018/03/22/yellow-dots-cubed.html

[americanmysticom]

A powerful network of political operatives, a global vaccine mafia and their man in Washington.

Last Friday, a group of Democratic Senators “demanded” that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) Robert Kadlec, “accurately disclose all his personal, financial and political ties in light of new reporting that he had failed to do so previously” after it was revealed that he had failed to note all “potential conflicts of interest” on his nomination paperwork.

The report in question, published last Monday by The Washington Post, detailed the ties of Kadlec to a man named Fuad El-Hibri, the founder of a “life sciences” company first known as BioPort and now called Emergent Biosolutions. Kadlec had previously disclosed his ties to El-Hibri and Emergent Biosolutions for a separate nomination years prior, but had failed to do so when nominated to head ASPR.

Though The Post does note Kadlec’s recent failure to disclose these connections, the article largely sanitizes Kadlec’s earlier yet crucial history and even obfuscates the full extent of his ties to the BioPort founder, among other glaring omissions. In reality, Kadlec has much more than his ties to El-Hibri looming large as “potential conflict of interests,” as his decades-long career in shaping U.S. “biodefense” policy was directly enabled by his deep ties to intelligence, Big Pharma, the Pentagon and a host of corrupt yet powerful characters.

Thanks to a long and deliberate process to introduce biodefense policy, driven by Robert Kadlec and his sponsors, $7 billion dollars-worth of federally-owned vaccines, antidotes and medicines – held in strategically arranged repositories across the country in case of a health emergency – are now in the hands of one single individual. Those repositories, which compose the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), are the exclusive domain of HHS’ ASPR, a post created under Kadlec’s watchful eye and tailored over the years to meet his very specific requirements.

From this perch, Robert Kadlec has final say on where the stockpile’s contents are sourced, as well as how, when and where they are deployed. He is the sole source procurer of medical material and pharmaceuticals, making him the best friend of Big Pharma and other healthcare industry giants who have been in his ear every step of the way.

Kadlec assures us, however, that the fact that he now holds the very office he worked so long to create is merely a coincidence. “My participation in the ASPR project began at that time when I was working for the chairman of the Subcommittee on Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness…The bill was made law and the ASPR was created. It just was a coincidence that, 12 or 14 years later, I was asked to become the ASPR,” Kadlec stated in 2018.

It was all a random twist of fate, Kadlec asserts, that saw him occupy ASPR at this crucial moment in U.S. history. Indeed, with the country now in the middle of a WHO-declared coronavirus pandemic, Kadlec now has full control over the far-reaching “emergency” powers of that very office, bestowed upon him by the very law that he had written.

The story of how a former USAF flight surgeon came to have the exclusive dealer license over the single biggest stash of drugs in the history of the world is as disturbing as it is significant in light of current events, particularly given that Kadlec now leads the coronavirus response for all of HHS. Yet, Kadlec’s rise to power is not a case of an evil mastermind conquering a uniquely vulnerable point of the nation’s resources. Instead, it is a case of a man deeply enmeshed in the world of intelligence, military intelligence and corporate corruption dutifully fulfilling the vision of his friends in high places and behind closed doors.

In this third installment of “Engineering Contagion: Amerithrax, Coronavirus and the Rise of the Biotech-Industrial Complex,” Kadlec is shown to hail from a tight-knit group of “bioterror alarmists” in government and the private sector who gained prominence thanks to their penchant for imagining the most horrific, yet fictitious scenarios that inspired fear among Presidents, top politicians and the American public. Among those fictitious scenarios was the “Dark Winter” exercise discussed in Part I.

Some of these alarmists, among them “cold warriors” from Fort Detrick’s days of openly developing offensive weapons, would engage in unsettling anthrax experiments and studies while developing suspect ties in 2000 to a company called BioPort. As noted in Part II of this series, BioPort stood to lose everything in early September 2001 due to controversy over its anthrax vaccine. Of course, the 2001 anthrax attacks that followed shortly thereafter would change everything, not just for BioPort, but U.S. biodefense policy. With the stage set, Kadlec would quickly spring into action, guiding major policy changes on the heels of subsequent major events and disasters, culminating in his crowning as King of the stockpile.

READ MORE

https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/head-hydra-rise-robert-kadlec/

[endrcg]

Abuse and Apologism in the RCG

CN: Abuse, Apologism, Victim Blaming

This post will offer a short summary of some of the harm caused by the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG) to numerous people - both in and outside the organisation. In these cases it is often difficult for people who have just heard about the situation to find out exactly what has happened - this tends to favour abusers and abusive dynamics, which can continue to deny and obfuscate what has happened. There have been numerous testimonies from previous members of the RCG regarding their harmful behaviour and their bullying of members. This post acknowledges these stories, whilst focussing on a specific case of abuse within the group.

In late 2017, a number of people came forward with complaints regarding the predatory, abusive behaviour of Andrew Fairbairn - a member of the Revolutionary Communist Group’s (RCG) Manchester branch. A number of people spoke out with specific allegations of sexual harassment and in one case, a complaint of abuse within a relationship with Andrew too. The survivors of this abuse demanded that the RCG be made accountable for the harm their member had caused them.  

Eventually, In October 2017 the RCG posted the following blog in response to these demands:

 "The Revolutionary Communist Group is aware of a historic allegation of sexual harassment by a member of the organisation. The RCG views such allegations with utmost seriousness. The comrade involved has been suspended from membership and will remain suspended until an internal enquiry completes an investigation into the matter and reports with recommendations on further action"

A couple of months passed during which survivors of the abuse continued to attempt to work with the RCG in good faith to address the harmful behaviour caused by its member. Survivors gave information to the RCG through email/private message - these communications and the labour undertaken by the survivors of this abuse caused additional stress and harm to people already affected. Unfortunately, during this period Andrew continued a campaign against those demanding accountability for his actions - including sending threatening and malicious communications to concerned individuals. To date, his only public admission of the harm caused has been a coy tweet on his timeline, before locking his Twitter account permanently. When someone close to the situation contacted his new girlfriend to tell her of the historical harm caused by her new partner, Andrew responded really aggressively, demonstrating a further lack of acknowledgement to himself of the harm he'd caused.

In late December (days before it was due to come into effect) the RCG issued the following update on their website: 

"Following an investigation and a period of suspension, the comrade has been reinstated as of 1 January 2018. The comrade understands that his actions were unacceptable for a communist and a member of the RCG. Through the process we have undertaken, his consciousness and behaviour has changed, and continues to change to the extent that we have decided he can now be readmitted as a full member. The RCG takes seriously the sexism, discrimination and exploitation women face and is committed to building an organisation that opposes all such oppression.” 

It also transpired that the people responsible for the internal investigation into the claims against Andrew were people he had existing friendships with.

The survivors affected, and those supporting them, were rightly angry - their demands for accountability and positive steps for addressing the harm apparently abandoned, the RCG instead chose to readmit a sexual predator who had shown no admission of the harm caused to those affected, let alone any genuine signs of addressing or changing his own behaviour. In effect, the RCG is now harbouring a serial sexual predator, and as such is not a safe place to organise.

There were numerous attempts to address this - some members of the RCG even attempted to force the leadership of their organisation to take the allegations seriously, and address the needs of those affected. Those speaking up from within the group were also disciplined - many left the group in response. It has also become clear, from London RCG branch meetings, that the RCG leadership has chosen to describe these calls for accountability as a smear on their organisation - repeatedly accusing those who’ve demanded they not provide cover for a repeat abuser as being agents of the state, or the tedious trope many are familiar with: “sectarians”. The only support the RCG will now offer the survivors of this abuse is to pursue their complaint against Andrew Fairbairn with the police.

Those affected directly by the harmful behaviour of Andrew Fairbairn continue to demand these basic steps of solidarity:

That Andrew Fairbairn admit to and apologise for the harm he caused

That the RCG not be allowed to continue to organise in ways which offer cover to and protection for known abusers

[decolonizeyourself]

THE HISPANO WHITE NATIONALISM OF NORTHERN NEW MEXICO

June 3, 2018

White power movements are on the rise in Spain, but we have our own version right here in New Mexico.

[ unseennewmexico.org ]

cover image: Spanish fascists gather in Madrid to honor Francisco Franco.

By Kurly Tlapoyawa

If the image of angry Spanish youth throwing the fascist salute worries you, you might want to pay close attention. Because while the photo above was taken in Madrid during an event in honor of Fransisco Franco, a homegrown brand of hispano white nationalism is taking shape right here in the state of New Mexico.

The controversy surrounding Española’s celebration of Juan de Oñate recently boiled over when a coalition of community activists and Indigenous rights groups demanded that representations of Oñate be removed from the city’s annual parade. This demand prompted an outcry from a small, but vocal segment of New Mexico’s white hispano community, who saw it as an existential threat to their cherished fiestas.

The thing is, very few people have a problem with commemorating the events that led to the establishment of communities in northern New Mexico. The history is well documented of how these communities were settled by a handful of Spaniards accompanied by a large number of Indios Mexicanos. It is the insistence that these fiestas serve as a platform for celebrating Juan de Oñate that people take issue with. Hell, the majority of people who live in Española don’t seem to have a problem with working out some sort of compromise.

So…why would anyone be opposed to celebrating Juan de Oñate, you might ask?

For starters, he was a career criminal who was tried and convicted of rape, murder, and theft – crimes for which he was exiled from the state of New Mexico for life. In fact, Oñate was such a shitty leader that 2/3 of the Spanish colonists he led to New Mexico deserted his settlement and fled. Perhaps most importantly, he is best known for having ordered the enslavement of Acoma women and children, and ordering that all Acoma men over the age of 25 have one of their feet chopped off.

Seriously. This is the murderous clown that a small group of New Mexican hispanos is rushing to defend.

The hispanos view their veneration of Juan de Oñate as a matter of European birthright, and perceive any criticism of Oñate and the parade held in his honor as an assault on their culture. And therein lies the problem: by framing Oñate as the embodiment of their culture, Oñate supporters have painted themselves into an ideological corner, creating an intractable situation in which even the slightest compromise would be seen as complete cultural surrender. In their minds, admitting that Oñate was a piece of shit is tantamount to admitting that their culture is also shit.

This fear of somehow betraying their heritage prevents them from ever doing the right thing in this situation, which would be to commemorate history without glorifying a murdering rapist. But perhaps creating such an immovable position was the plan all along. After all, it is far easier to mobilize your base against an imagined threat to your culture and community than it is to do credible research and admit that celebrating Oñate is a pretty fucking horrible idea. Unfortunately, people tend to have a hard time admitting when they are wrong.

Unsurprisingly, their position bears a striking resemblance to that of southerners who promote confederate imagery as “heritage” rather than symbols of white supremacy. If this seems like an unfair comparison, I joined the “Save the Española Fiestas” Facebook page to develop a more informed opinion of their views. Here is a response I received to one of my questions:

Puke.

Things recently came to a head at an Española City Council meeting, where supporters of the fiestas petitioned to have the sponsorship of the event transferred to a non-profit to avoid city oversight of the parade. Their arguments for honoring Oñate were…interesting to say the least.

Many of the Oñate proponents in attendance made sure to reference the “common blood and culture” they share with New Mexico’s indigenous people, but this was little more than cover to excuse their abhorrent support of Oñate. After all, if they actually DID have any respect for this “common blood and culture,” they would take the concerns of Indigenous people into consideration. I mean, surely we can commemorate our shared history in a way that is dignified, inclusive, and respectful, right?

Apparently not.

The most telling moment of the evening came when a pro-Oñate historian (and I use the term “historian” loosely), argued that the Spanish colonization of New Mexico was inevitable, and that white hispanos should be seen as native to the area. Because, you know, all it takes to be native is to be born somewhere. This ahistorical argument is designed to gradually obfuscate who is and isn’t a “native” person, thus enabling white hispanos to lay some sort of ancestral claim to New Mexico. It is an intellectually dishonest tactic, demonstrating a clear disregard for New Mexico’s numerous indigenous communities.

What this reveals about the Oñate supporters is that they really aren’t concerned with “preserving culture” at all. Rather, they have embraced a pointedly ethnocentric position that seeks to privilege the legacy of European conquest by any means necessary. Framing European colonization as an inevitable form of “manifest destiny” and declaring that their descendants are now “natives” is a hallmark of settler colonialism. Australian writer and historian Patrick Wolfe calls this strategy “destroy to replace.”

Whatever settlers may say— and they generally have a lot to say—the primary motive for elimination is not race (or religion, ethnicity, grade of civilization, etc.) but access to territory. Territoriality is settler colonialism’s specific, irreducible element. – Patrick Wolfe

The underlying intent of the pro-Oñate fiestas is not to preserve any sort of cultural traditions, but to distort New Mexico’s history to the point that its Indigenous people are merely footnotes in a pre-ordained historical legacy written by and for white people. Glorifying men like Juan de Oñate is a central part of this process.

In a recent Facebook comment, an Oñate supporter asked “What do we call this group of awesome culture protectors now?” Whatever name they choose to go by, I think “hispano white nationalist” best describes their attitudes and objectives. In fact, this is the term I will be using from here on.

Sound like hyperbole? Consider a few other comments made by members of their group:

Clearly these are people who cannot be reasoned with. Their contempt for Indigenous people is rivaled only by their sad devotion to a racist fantasy in which white hispanos from New Mexico are “native people living in their homeland.” The twisted ideals of hispano white nationalism have no place in our state.

Time will tell if the Española fiestas can survive under a non-profit, but one thing is certain: New Mexico’s Indigenous people will not sit silent while white supremacy is flaunted in our faces under the guise of “celebrating culture.”

Fuck Juan de Oñate.

Want to help us fight this idiocy and tell Española to kick Oñate to the curb? Sign our petition!!

SOURCE: https://unseennewmexico.org/2018/06/03/spanish-white-power-movements-are-on-the-rise-but-we-hav-eour-own-version-right-here-in-new-mexico/

More reading on white hispanic/”white mexican” identity here: http://decolonizeyourselfarchive.tumblr.com/tagged/white_hispanic

#new mexico #indigenous people #white hispanic #white latino #neocolonialism #spanish empire #white nationalism

[didanawisgi]

PRADHEEP J. SHANKER is a radiologist who focuses on health policy.

By PRADHEEP J. SHANKER February 3, 2021

“For much of the past year, the mainstream media and Democrats have largely blamed former president Donald Trump and his administration for most of America’s COVID-19 deaths. Trump did indeed fail in certain aspects of coordination, messaging, and inserting politics into the parts of the process where it didn’t belong. He deserves credit, however, for Operation Warp Speed, the initiative that (ultimately successfully) fostered the development of coronavirus vaccines, one of the most successful public-private ventures in modern history. But Trump’s overbearing personality tended to absorb all the attention, leaving little room for real debate on the successes and failures of other politicians, except when the media found time to criticize Republican governors. But serious criticism of Democrats in this period was rare.

Until now.

Last week, New York attorney general Letitia James, a Democrat, released a long-awaited report on the state of New York’s response to the coronavirus outbreak as led by Governor Andrew Cuomo. Her findings were stunning in their demonstration of both gross incompetence and outright malfeasance, and were recently reinforced by a New York Times report this week on Cuomo’s leadership failures and staffing troubles during the coronavirus period. The Times now reports that nine leading health-care experts for the state of New York resigned during the last summer and through the fall, all of whom complained that Cuomo had politicized health-care decisions and was ignoring the experts on long-standing plans for the pandemic, including regarding vaccinations.

It is important not to dismiss a critical fact here: James herself is a longtime Cuomo political progeny. He supported her attorney general campaign. That someone who for years has been closely aligned with Cuomo released this report is damning in and of itself. Yet the evidence it contains is even worse than the report itself suggests. If anything, the media response to it has been an underreaction.

The 76-page report relates, in great detail, the state’s irresponsible reaction to COVID raging through extended-care centers, primarily nursing homes. James and her team went straight to nursing homes to obtain the data, bypassing the state’s own data-collection entities. They took a random data sampling from 62 nursing homes around the state and found that 1,914 of their residents had died from COVID, 56 percent more than the 1,229 the state reported. If that sample is truly representative of the total for New York, the state’s nursing-home deaths total more than 13,000, where the state tallies just 8,711. (Overall New York COVID deaths remain unchanged.)

Why the discrepancy? First, the state refused to count those patients who were transferred to, and later died at, hospitals. Why this loophole? Nobody has ever provided a good answer. Every other state in the country counts these deaths in the nursing-home numbers, because that is the practical and commonsense way to count it. New York specifically chose to be an outlier.

The real failure, however, was New York’s unwillingness to be transparent with the data after the fact. For many who analyzed the data in April and May, it quickly became apparent that the state was not being fully transparent on nursing-home deaths. Many individuals were reporting that their family members died at the hospital, but only after getting severely ill at their extended-care facilities first. But somehow the numbers did not appear to bear that out.

An objective observer might be willing to give anyone in charge during such horrific events the benefit of the doubt. New York was at the time the worldwide center of COVID deaths, and it continued in this manner all through the spring. The vast majority of the more than 40,000 deaths in the state occurred during a horrific twelve-week period, when hospitals and health professionals faced war-like situations as patients died left and right.

But amid such carnage, why not be honest about the deaths? The answer is that, from the earliest moments of the pandemic’s arrival to the United States, Governor Andrew Cuomo was playing political games. It has become even more apparent in hindsight. At this point, there is no question that some of his early decisions during the pandemic led to many of these deaths, and worsened the situation in nursing homes. From the AG report:

On March 25, DOH issued guidance providing that “[n]o resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the nursing home solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19. Nursing homes are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or re-admission.” The guidance was rescinded on May 10 in Executive Order 202.30. From March 25 to May 8, 6,326 hospital patients were admitted to 310 nursing homes. The peak of these admissions was the week of April 14. The peak single day in reported resident COVID-19 deaths was April 8, with 4,000 reported deaths occurring after that date.

This was likely the worst possible decision Cuomo could have made. First, although many feared the hospitals would be overwhelmed, field hospitals and military-hospital ships quickly became available, but were underutilized. As for COVID itself, we now know that patients needed around ten days to be totally free of the virus. Furthermore, some patients who were never symptomatic were nonetheless infectious, and they were still returned to nursing-home facilities. There, they could quietly infect other patients and staff. We may never know the true number of people who were infected, or even died, from the governor’s orders.

This too, could have been excused, if Andrew Cuomo had simply been forthcoming and admitted it was a mistake. But if he had done that, he wouldn’t be Andrew Cuomo. In July, his own New York State Health Department report denied any wrongdoing relating to its March 25 order that homes be forced to accept COVID-positive patients — though 323 facilities had no reported infections until they took in such patients from hospitals. Even worse, this report still didn’t provide statewide data on the matter. The report was a clear attempt to hide data and whitewash the repercussions of Cuomo’s ill-considered order. This has led to outside groups, such as the Empire Center for Public Policy, to file lawsuits demanding the Health Department release these data.

The simple reality is that the governor’s orders led to more deaths. How many can be argued, and likely will be an area of vigorous debate in public-health-policy academic circles for decades to come. But Cuomo then compounded his mistake by purposefully lying and deceiving the public about it, all the while having the machinery of the New York state government cover for him as well.

This negligence by the government of New York is certainly awful enough. But it’s more awful still that national and local New York media, whose primary responsibility has always been to tell the truth and to hold those in power to account, have been covering for Cuomo from the beginning. Local reporters failed to ask these questions for months, as the governor held his much-praised daily press briefings about the pandemic. There were literally hundreds of hours of Cuomo press conferences in the first half of 2020 where not a single question was asked about nursing homes. All the while, Cuomo got free national airtime to voice his lies. Even during the few occasions when such questions were raised, Cuomo attacked the press, and the answer was lost in the muddle. Cuomo was lauded as a hero, and received not only a large book contract (proclaiming his expertise in reacting to the pandemic no less!) but also an international Emmy award for his “masterful” COVID press conferences, which we now know were made up at least somewhat of lies that resulted in thousands of deaths. But the worst media actors in this affair are likely those at CNN. CNN employs Cuomo’s younger brother Chris as a primetime host. The “Laurel and Hardy” act the two brothers put on for months looks even worse in retrospect. Questions went unanswered about the governor’s honesty over thousands of deaths, while the governor and his brother comically bantered about their family dynamic.

In earlier times, we as a nation would simply allow the voters to deal with Cuomo’s future, and they could decide the repercussions he deserved. But these are not normal times. So what should the justice system do with a governor whose actions contributed to 12 percent of all New York nursing-home residents dying from the COVID-19 virus, with an unknown number of other deaths and infections? Because of Andrew Cuomo’s lies, we can only guess how many of those were because of his own ill-conceived policies. But we know for certain that the governor was hiding data that showed his culpability.

The pandemic made fools out of many of us: scientific and medical experts, media, politicians. And that failure itself is not enough to indict Cuomo. But his persistence in trying to lie and obfuscate the facts of the COVID pandemic, and even worse, his trying to make himself some exalted national hero or beacon of science to emulate, make him one of the great villains of this episode in American history. To fail is human. But to lie about it, when tens of thousands of your fellow citizens died from the illness, is a level of moral depravity and social disregard that this country should not stand for.”

#andrew cuomo #new york #covid-19 #politics #infectious disease #democrats

[disillusioned41]

Nearly four months after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez first demanded that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy turn over his daily calendar, the U.S. Postal Service on Tuesday released documents rendered almost completely useless by heavy redactions concealing who DeJoy met with as he worked to implement his destructive overhaul of mail operations.

"DeJoy works for the public, but you wouldn't know it from his calendar. Even in the Trump era, this is an extraordinary level of obfuscation."—Austin Evers, American Oversight

The Postal Service released DeJoy's calendar in response to a public records lawsuit filed in September by watchdog group American Oversight, which was not at all amused by what it finally received from the agency.

"Shrouding his calendar in secrecy likely violates the letter of the law, and certainly violates its spirit," Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, told HuffPost. "DeJoy works for the public, but you wouldn't know it from his calendar. Even in the Trump era, this is an extraordinary level of obfuscation."

In a series of tweets on Tuesday, American Oversight noted that the Postal Service "didn't specify which specific exemptions they are claiming applied to the individual redactions," as is generally required by law.

"DeJoy supervised the delivery of mail-in ballots and USPS is now delivering Covid-19 vaccines," the group noted. "The public is entitled to see how he's spending his time and who has been influencing his decisions, but USPS continues to obscure this information."

The only details left visible after the redactions are the dates and times of DeJoy's meetings between June 15—when the postmaster general formally took over the agency—and November 7 as well as a handful of words, such as "meeting" and "in office."

"Yeaaaah that's not gonna work," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response to the redacted calendar. When the New York Democrat requested during an August 24 hearing that DeJoy submit his calendar to lawmakers, the postmaster general said he would need to check with counsel before doing so.

In a subpoena issued in September, the House Oversight Committee demanded that the Postal Service provide DeJoy's "complete, unredacted calendar from June 15, 2020, to the present."

DeJoy, a GOP megadonor who was appointed to lead the Postal Service in May, is one of a number of government officials who will likely remain in power long after Trump leaves office in January, given that the president does not have the authority to remove the postmaster general.

As such, Democrats in Congress are facing pressure to exercise their oversight powers and pursue impeachment of DeJoy, whose brief tenure at the Postal Service has been enveloped in scandal.

"DeJoy is a 'civil officer' and is clearly impeachable under Article 2, Section 4," The Nation's John Nichols recently argued. "He stands accused of committing crimes and of lying to Congress. There is more than enough evidence that he has abused his position in order to benefit a political ally and benefactor, Donald Trump. In addition, there is daunting evidence that he has done harm to an agency that was outlined in Article 1, Section 8."

With the presidential election over, the DeJoy-led USPS has wasted no time resuming work on sweeping operational changes that dramatically slowed mail delivery nationwide before they were briefly put on pause in August.

"Haul Louis DeJoy in front of a criminal grand jury for his postal sabotage and subversion of our elections," Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-N.J.) demanded on Tuesday.

#Common Dreams #us politics #AOC #Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez #us post office #dejoy #trump