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middleagedangst · 5 years

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Marching to the Beat of a Handmaid’s Drum

A pro-choice manifesto... by a dude

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Freedom of choice. It’s as American as apple pie, baseball, and watered-down beer. As Americans, we get to choose what we buy, where we eat, who we love, whether or not we like someone based on their opinion of The Office… You get where I’m going. Exercising your choice is a great display of your patriotism and love for this nation.

Sometimes our freedom of choice gets ripped away from us. It can happen when the grocery store you frequent decides to stop carrying your favorite brand of powdered mashed potatoes (I’ll never forgive you, Kroger!). But sometimes, it gets ripped away by the very people who took an oath to serve you and protect all of your freedoms, even the ones that live in a gray area.

Avoiding human interaction and wasting time on my phone has never been more obnoxious. Between all the President’s shit-tweeting, to our planet being on fire, to all of the other depressing shit going on, just even trying to read the news sends my pulse into a near-fatal death spiral. It’s hard to find a good pick me up and dog videos and other real-life blooper reels can only get you so far.

But speaking of death spirals…

Let’s discuss the latest thing to fall into one, the freedom to make a different kind of choice, a woman’s right to body autonomy and abortion.

(Okay liberals, before you get all bent out of shape, I know I’m just another privileged cisgendered white man who deserves to be burnt at the stake and for that reason, you may ignore everything I write and instead sit and yell at your screen so others know you have a black belt in woke-jitsu. Trust me, same team. Kumbaya and shit.)

This whole abortion debate has me pretty fucking confused. First, wasn’t this shit settled back in ‘73? And second, I thought this was America, where we have freedoms so great terrorists hate us and the government was supposed to keep their noses out of our business? Whatever happened to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?” The American dream? What the fuck America? Is Lady Liberty too strung out on God, guns, and OxyContin to remember the hood she came from?

Making laws that hinder a woman’s individual liberty is some shit that isn’t exclusive to state governments. The Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, fucking ISIS, all have laws intended to keep women subservient and powerless over their own life. At least they’re honest about their theocratic motivations. What say you, Georgia, Ohio, Alabama, Tennessee, Utah, Missouri, Mississippi, Arkansas? The dumpster fire of Ohio is even trying to take it one step further with a bill that, in a way, caters to the religious right’s push for abstinence by equating any contraceptive that prevents fertilization to abortion. Fortunately for me, the bill makes no mention of a situation sock.

I have to ask, do the politicians that are supporting these laws actually think that they’re going to really stop anything? The people that think its wrong or don’t want one are already not getting abortions. Sure, it might put a dent in overall numbers and make law-abiding citizens think twice before getting the procedure, but no law will ever stop it completely. History has shown time and time again that trying to legislate morality is futile. Prohibition, the drug war, bestiality- all failed attempts at controlling the morality of the sovereign by the political class. Abortion is no different. Women got them before Roe v. Wade, and I’ll bet that they’ll get them after these laws take effect. It might help some of these pro-lifers sleep at night knowing that they have done something to protect the life of an innocent child, but is restricting human rights worth saving the potential life of an unborn fetus?

First off, that child you’re hell-bent on protecting might just end up to be a real asshole. We all know a few. It might become a drain on society, or be a mass murderer, a drug addict, war criminal, or even worse, a Democrat. Will it be worth all your zealotry then? Will it be worth saving that life that then becomes all the other things you despise? What if the child needs your help getting by, or being fed, or getting a good public education? Are you going to be pro-life then? Or are you going to complain they aren’t a desirable example of a human being and a bad American? It seems easy to want to protect that life while still in the womb, but it’s apparently much harder to want to help that same life flourish.

That’s my main problem with pro-lifers. They say they’re all about life being born and we should do everything we can to protect the ones that can’t speak for themselves, yet when it comes to actually helping a life outside of the womb, then all attempts are deemed socialist and unamerican. Universal healthcare. Fuck that. Raising the minimum wage to a living wage, communist. Programs that would help the less fortunate and end a cycle of poverty, nope. What about the life that already exists? Shouldn’t it be important to help protect the mother from having to potentially raising a child alone or when they’re already struggling to make it? Dare I even mention that in cases of rape, the woman would always have a constant reminder of that incident, or that the rapist still has parental rights?

I’ll take a pro-lifer seriously when they openly condemn war, capital punishment, factory farming, eating meat, pollution, racism, sexism, police violence, poverty, hunger. Until then, I don’t think you can truly label yourself pro-life. All you can label yourself is pro-childbirth. Or pro-government control. Statistically speaking, most women who get abortions are already poor or misfortunate. Many of these children forced into this world will be brought up poor (Poverty affects health. Look it up.), or raised in an abusive home, have parents that neglect them or are addicted to drugs. How is that a good thing? What is so great about having to live that way?

It’s nice to want everyone to have the same values as you when you live in a nice suburb with decent schools and a healthy tax base, but when every day is a struggle and surviving isn’t that easy, your decision making and sense of what’s right changes. It shouldn’t be anybody else’s prerogative to dictate how others live their lives.

We should be moving society in a direction where abortions aren't really desired. There are ways we can do that but many of the same people that want to ban abortion don’t want to pony up some more money on their tax bill to do so but are willing to make sure they pay for extra law enforcement and jail for those that violate their will. Instead, it seems we’re totally fine with moving back to a time where women had less control over their own lives. Barefoot and pregnant seems to be the baseline for how these politicians view women.

So maybe instead of being assholes and restricting a woman’s freedom, find other ways to minimize the number of abortions in this country. How about allowing for easier access to birth control, especially in poorer neighborhoods? How about funding comprehensive sex education? Genital mutilation-free male birth control. That one’s easy, mix it straight into Viagra. Boom. Done. You’re welcome science. Invest in better public schools and higher education, more homeless shelters, addiction treatment facilities, psychiatric hospitals, and jobs programs. Expand taxpayer-funded healthcare for all. Give handjobs a better PR team. Literally, anything is better than resorting to stripping rights away. Show a little humanity.

Even though you might not agree with the practice, there are benefits to turning the other cheek. Studies have shown that access to abortion helps lower poverty and crime. Fewer people will be brought into the world at a disadvantage which means society as a whole gets better. Fewer children in foster care (which is expensive, by the way). Less money needed for social programs. Less crime, so fewer spent on prisons. This is a bottom-up problem and it is deserving of bottom-up solutions. Instead of acting like the morality police, take some time, know why these things happen, understand and act with some compassion.

I know that as a man, I don’t really have a say in what women do with their own bodies. It’s none of my fucking business, and it’s none of yours too. I'm not making an argument as to what constitutes a human life and whether or not it should be considered murder. That’s a whole other discussion. I’m making the case that as a sovereign adult citizen of the self-proclaimed “free-est country on the planet” a woman should have the actual freedom to make a decision that will serve their own best interest and do it safely.

Showing resistance to this display of power and control is needed, perhaps now more than ever. If you agree with a woman’s right to choose, if you believe in self-governance and freedom, then take to the streets, be obnoxious, vote the fuckers responsible out of office, make your voices heard in the most annoying ways possible. Act like the gun nuts. Because you never know what the dicks in Washington will try to take away next.

Having an informed and motivated populace is what the government fears. You have power. You have a voice. Use them.

#abortion #pro choice #womens rights #philosophy

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xtruss · 3 years

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“Shameless War Criminal Bloody British Bastard Blair” Lectures the World on Military Strategy, With No Word of the Deceit He Engineered For an Illegal Assault on Iraq 🇮🇶, Syria 🇸🇾 and Afghanistan 🇦🇫

— 6 September, 2021 | RT

Former War Criminal Bloody British British PM Tony Blair sees himself as a colossus on the world stage – climate hero, peace maker and thinker for our times – seemingly unaware that many people view him as a ‘War Criminal’ who deserves to be put on trial and throw him behind bars to “Stay, Rest, Rot and Burn in Hell Forever.”

Since he left high office in 2007, there really is no subject in the world on which Tony Blair is reluctant to express an opinion on, buoyed by an unsinkable self-belief and an apparently total absence of self-awareness.

He’s convinced that a huge appetite exists for his latest musings, that French President Emmanuel Macron is desperate for his help in tackling the radical Islamist problems of the Sahel, that US President Joe Biden lies awake at night asking himself, ‘What would Tony do?’ and that the British public has forgotten he took the country into a catastrophic war against Iraq that both the United Nations and even his own government inquiry determined was illegal.

His acquiescence to US demands for an attack on Saddam Hussein earned Blair the US Medal of Freedom from George Bush and 20 years of opprobrium from the British public, which has only increased as the years have passed on par with his own immense personal wealth. A poll in 2017 found a third of the British public would like to see Blair put on trial as a war criminal.

But that’s not something the ex-PM likes to dwell upon. So his speech to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), almost 20 years to the day since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, made no mention of what followed those unforgettable events: dodgy dossiers, suggestions of bunkers full of weapons of mass destruction or of the purposeful lying to the British people.

Rather than learn any lessons from recent history, like when to wage war, Blair’s appetite is clearly undiminished, as he moaned, “Western societies and their political leaders have become quite understandably, deeply averse to casualties amongst our Armed Forces.” This, in his view, had become, “an overwhelming political constraint to any commitment to Western boots on the ground, except for Special Forces.”

It’s all Biden’s fault apparently. Blair said, “It is clear now – if it wasn't before – that America has decided that for the foreseeable future, it has a very limited appetite for military engagement.”

‘First order security threat’ akin to revolutionary communism: Afghan war didn’t solve radical Islam, Tony Blair says. War Criminal Bloody British Bastard don’t like to talk about “Radical Christians Terrorists, Radical Saffron Hindu Terrorists, Radical God’s Fucked-up People Zionist Cunt Terrorists,” because they can give him a deep f*** and stop paying him to propagate spew filth against Muslims.

Well, yes, Mr. Former Prime Minister, it is true that the Americans have made no secret of the fact that they are sick of fighting ‘forever wars’. But us Brits also do not like to see the lives of young men and women who have signed up to serve their country sacrificed at the altar of political self-aggrandisement. We are now a little less gullible, a little less obliging when it comes to fighting unwinnable, neverending battles and somewhat more suspicious of our glory-seeking political leaders. And that’s all largely down to one person. You.

It’s strange Blair doesn’t acknowledge this. One thing’s certain, he knows his geopolitics; hell, he even has his own eponymous ‘global institute’ packed with researchers, academics and leading experts to tell him what to think and say about the key issues of our time. With one exception. Do. Not. Mention. Iraq.

The exclusion of that country’s name from the conversation is obvious. In looking forward, Blair said that Europe – insisting “for these purposes Britain is part of Europe like it or not” – faced an immediate challenge from the destabilisation of the Sahel and was “already facing the fallout from Libya, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.” Err, by ‘elsewhere in the Middle East’ could Blair possibly mean Iraq? Probably, but let’s not risk spoiling a pleasant chat.

And in the face of that perceived threat, which in the Sahel until now has been largely handled by France, Blair asked, “How do Europe and NATO develop the capability to act when America is unwilling?”

Blair clearly sees military action as an imperative – I’m not sure everyone else agrees – but he also thinks the capacity of Western policymakers to think strategically needs to be reinvigorated.

“For me, one of the most alarming developments of recent times has been the sense the West lacks the capacity to formulate strategy,” he said. “That its short term political imperatives have squeezed the space for long term thinking.

It is this sense more than anything else which gives our allies anxiety and our opponents a belief our time is over.”

Now the picture is starting to become clearer. While Western governments are distracted from war by the need to focus on rebuilding economies, fighting worldwide health crises and seemingly perpetual election cycles which inhibit their ability to think long-term, they need big thinkers, top-shelf statesmen and global heavy hitters to work out how to bomb the citizens of far-off places into oblivion through drone strikes, how to convince a sceptical public that it’s a good idea to send servicemen and women to their deaths and – most importantly of all – how to create the right PR buzz around those decisions, so that everyone feels comfortable about falling into line.

Those Western governments need men just like Tony Blair. He’s free most afternoons, if you’d like to schedule a Zoom call. Just don’t mention the war (on Iraq).

“War Criminal, Boak Bollocks Bloody British Bastard Tony Blair” calls US Afghanistan withdrawal ‘imbecilic’ – What, then, was the Bush-Blair invasion of 2001?

— Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. He tweets on politics and world affairs @NeilClark66

— August 22, 2021 | RT

War Criminals Bush and Blair met in Washington to discuss the ongoing operations in Afghanistan, November 7, 2001. © REUTERS/Win McNamee

“Serial Warmonger and War Criminal Bloody British Bastard Tony Blair” has blasted the US decision to pull out from Afghanistan, but history tells us the real madness was invading the unconquerable country in the first place.

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair –aka ‘The Blair Creature’– is not a happy bunny this Sunday, folks. He has said that the decision to withdraw western forces from Afghanistan was made “in obedience to an imbecilic slogan about ending the ‘forever wars’.”

What he calls the US’ ‘abandonment’ of Afghanistan was “tragic, dangerous and unnecessary.”

In fact we could say the same about Tony Blair himself – and certainly the wars of choice he promoted.

Imbecilic? That’s the perfect word to describe what happened in October 2001 when Afghanistan was invaded in response, we were told, to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, even though none of the terrorists were Afghan nationals.

Had Blair read just a little bit of history, he would have pursued an exclusively diplomatic path to try and get Osama Bin Laden handed over and not have been so keen to send in the troops.

As I wrote in the Daily Express in 2009 in an article entitled ’Afghanistan: History repeats itself,’ “‘That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history,’ said Aldous Huxley. Nowhere is this more applicable than in the case of the many unsuccessful attempts by foreign powers to conquer Afghanistan.”

I went on: “The mighty forces of the British Empire failed three times between 1839 and 1919. The Soviet Union, which at the time had the largest army in the world, tried in 1979: they too were defeated.”

But in 2001, Blair and the then American President George W. Bush thought they would buck the trend. They could topple the Taliban (which they did) and remake Afghanistan – a deeply conservative and very religious country – in the western secular image. Afghanistan would be transformed from a ‘failed terror state’ into a ‘functioning democracy.’ What folly. What imperial arrogance.

Today, Blair is busily trying to spin the invasion of 2001 as a ‘success.’ But, while some things did improve, 'Operation Enduring Freedom' certainly didn’t bring peace to Afghanistan.

According to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, 579 civilians were killed in aerial operations between January and September 2019. That’s more than double the amount ten years earlier. Nearly 111,000 civilians have been killed or injured in the country since 2009.

Far from bringing stability, the 2001 western military invasion, just like the 2003 invasion of Iraq, was a major cause of instability.

I recall chatting to a friendly Afghan taxi driver a couple of years ago and saying to him how I’d love to visit the country to see its great natural beauty. “Don’t go,” he said. “It‘s far too dangerous. You would be targeted.”

So much for Afghanistan being ‘safe’ post-invasion.

Whenever the US withdrew, we would have had scenes of chaos. But the Americans had to pull-out at some point otherwise its forces would have been in Afghanistan forever. That doesn’t seem to concern ‘The Blair Creature’ too much. ‘Forever wars’ aren’t a great problem to him or indeed the ‘Inside the Tent‘ political and media figures who promote them. They are, though, for the soldiers who die in them, and for their grieving families.

‘But the US and British forces could have stayed in a support role,’ we’re hearing. But, as was pointed out last week, there is a word for countries whose governments only endure because of foreign military support. The word is “colony.”

Blair and his supporters are tacitly admitting that Afghanistan, billed as a ‘sovereign democratic country’, was actually a colony. I thought ‘imperialism’ was supposed to be a bad thing that we’re all supposed to be ashamed of. So why is it ok when it comes to Afghanistan?

Afghanistan is virtually impossible for foreign powers to subjugate. There’s its hostile terrain, its harsh weather, its fiercely independent people who are very brave, very tough and are highly skilled in mountain warfare. But anyone who’d read the history books would have known all this and not intervened in the first place.

Tony Blair, with his Messiah complex, thought he’d be different. He could succeed in Afghanistan where other, lesser mortals had failed. But the ‘new’ neocon empire met with exactly the same result as the old empire did. Wasn’t it ‘imbecilic’ to think it would be any different?

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Tuesday, August 17, 2021

Canada’s Trudeau calls snap election in bid to regain parliamentary majority (Washington Post) Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, betting that his standing has been improved by his government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic while his main opponent has failed to gain traction with voters, called on Sunday a snap federal election for Sept. 20 in a bid to regain a majority in the House of Commons. Trudeau, first elected prime minister in 2015, has led the country since October 2019 with a minority government. Winning a majority would mean he would no longer need to rely on opposition parties to advance his agenda and stay in power.

California fire threatens homes as blazes burn across West (AP) Thousands of Northern California homes were threatened Sunday by the nation’s largest wildfire and officials warned the danger of new blazes erupting across the West was high because of unstable weather. Gusts of up to 50 mph (80 kph) on Saturday pushed flames closer to Janesville, a town of about 1,500 people just east of Greenville, the small gold rush-era community decimated by the fire 10 days ago. The Dixie Fire was the largest among more than 100 big blazes burning in more than a dozen states in the West, a region seared by drought and hot, bone-dry weather that turned forests, brushlands, meadows and pastures into tinder. The U.S. Forest Service said Friday it is operating in crisis mode, fully deploying firefighters and maxing out its support system. The roughly 21,000 federal firefighters working on the ground is more than double the number of firefighters sent to contain forest fires at this time a year ago, said Anthony Scardina, a deputy forester for the agency’s Pacific Southwest region.

After Haiti Quake, Thousands Seek Scarce Care (NYT) With broken bones and open wounds, the injured jammed into damaged hospitals or headed to the airport, hoping for mercy flights out. A handful of doctors toiled all night in makeshift triage wards. A day after a magnitude 7.2 earthquake killed at least 1,300 people and injured thousands in western Haiti, the main airport of the city of Les Cayes was overwhelmed Sunday with people trying to evacuate their loved ones to Port-au-Prince, the capital, about 80 miles to the east. There was not much choice. With just a few dozen doctors available in a region that is home to 1 million people, the quake aftermath was turning increasingly dire. “I’m the only surgeon over there,” said Dr. Edward Destine, an orthopedic surgeon, waving toward a temporary operating room of corrugated tin set up near the airport in Les Cayes. “I would like to operate on 10 people today, but I just don’t have the supplies,” he said. Officials in Les Cayes estimated that only 30 doctors served the entire western region. They are now confronting the overwhelming prospect of treating thousands of grievous injuries from caved-in buildings. All the main hospitals are damaged; doctors worked overnight to erect the temporary operating room near the airport in Les Cayes because local hospitals were in such bad condition.

Death toll in floods that hit northern Turkey climbs to 70 (AP) Rescuers recovered more bodies from the site of severe flooding that devastated a town in northern Turkey on Monday, bringing the death toll to 70, officials said. Torrential rains battered the country’s northwestern Black Sea provinces on Aug. 4, causing floods that demolished homes and bridges, swept away cars and blocked access to numerous roads. Emergency crews on Monday pressed ahead with efforts to locate at least 47 people who were still reported missing in Kastamonu and Sinop. The Turkish disaster management agency, AFAD, said some 8,000 personnel, backed by 20 rescue dogs, are involved in the rescue and assistance efforts.

Afghanistan’s military collapse: Illicit deals and mass desertions (Washington Post) The spectacular collapse of Afghanistan’s military that allowed Taliban fighters to walk into the Afghan capital Sunday despite 20 years of training and billions of dollars in American aid began with a series of deals brokered in rural villages between the militant group and some of the Afghan government’s lowest-ranking officials. The deals, initially offered early last year, were often described by Afghan officials as cease-fires, but Taliban leaders were in fact offering money in exchange for government forces to hand over their weapons, according to an Afghan officer and a U.S. official. Over the next year and a half, the meetings advanced to the district level and then rapidly on to provincial capitals, culminating in a breathtaking series of negotiated surrenders by government forces, according to interviews with more than a dozen Afghan officers, police, special operations troops and other soldiers. Within a little more than a week, Taliban fighters overran more than a dozen provincial capitals and entered Kabul with no resistance, triggering the departure of Afghanistan’s president and the collapse of his government. Afghan security forces in the districts ringing Kabul and in the city itself simply melted away. By nightfall, police checkpoints were left abandoned and the militants roamed the streets freely. “Some just wanted the money,” an Afghan special forces officer said of those who first agreed to meet with the Taliban. But others saw the U.S. commitment to a full withdrawal as an “assurance” that the militants would return to power in Afghanistan and wanted to secure their place on the winning side, he said.

Chaos as thousands flee Afghanistan after Taliban takeover (AP/Reuters) Thousands packed into the Afghan capital’s airport on Monday, rushing the tarmac and pushing onto planes in desperate attempts to flee the country after the Taliban overthrew the Western-backed government. U.S. soldiers fired warning shots as they struggled to manage the chaotic evacuation. In the capital, a tense calm set in, with most people hiding in their homes as the Taliban deployed fighters at major intersections. There were scattered reports of looting and armed men knocking on doors and gates, and there was less traffic than usual on eerily quiet streets. Fighters could be seen searching vehicles at one of the city’s main squares. Massouma Tajik, a 22-year-old data analyst, described scenes of panic at the airport, where she was hoping to board an evacuation flight. After waiting six hours, she heard shots from outside, where a crowd of men and women were trying to climb aboard a plane. She said U.S. troops sprayed gas and fired into the air to disperse the crowds after people scaled the walls and swarmed onto the tarmac. Gunfire could be heard in the voice messages she sent to The Associated Press. At least seven people were killed in Kabul airport as hundreds of people tried to forcibly enter (or hold onto) planes leaving the Afghan capital, witnesses told Reuters.

Afghanistan and the media (CJR) Pundits widely blamed President Biden for the country’s swift fall back into Taliban hands. But—when it comes to the prosecution of the war, and the years of official lies told in its service—there is an awful lot of blame to go around, stretching right back to the Bush administration, which started it. As Liam Stack, a reporter at the New York Times, put it yesterday, “the entire US governing class is implicated in this… every official or DC think tanker or cable news talking head you see on TV today.” The list of the complicit includes sections of the press, and yet the dominant tone in much mainstream commentary and coverage was not one of humble self-reflection, but rather high-pitched indignation and shock. As numerous observers have noted, many major news organizations lost interest in the war—at least as a major story—as it became a quagmire, and have only returned to it recently with the endgame in sight. “Ask yourself how often Afghanistan has been a lead story for the last twenty years. And then ask yourself if it will be in a week,” Oliver Willis, a progressive journalist, tweeted. “American media is putrid at covering the world and it directly leads to a public constantly surprised by topics and issues.” In addition to sins of omission, media watchers highlighted sins of commission, seeing a clear pro-war slant in some of the coverage. Part of the problem here, surely, is the common media fallacy that it’s a story when new bad things happen, whereas the status quo just exists.

The past as indicator of the future (Globe and Mail, BBC, Washington Post, NPR) Somewhere Alexander the Great is saying something future foreign powers should have paid more attention to: even if they temporarily win a battle in Afghanistan, they will eventually lose the war. It’s simply not possible to control the disparate religious and tribal forces that make up that country. The British tried and failed three times between 1838 and 1919. The Soviets sent in 115,000 troops in 1979, but were forced to leave by 1989. After September 11, 2001, America and NATO allies invaded Afghanistan. Seven years later, 53-year-old Ruslan Aushev, a highly decorated combat veteran who served two tours with the Soviet army in Afghanistan, recalled: “We knew by 1985 that we could not win. We could take any village, any town and drive the mujahedeen out. But when we handed ground over to the Afghan army or police they would lose it in a week.” The Soviets had deployed roughly two times the number of troops the Western alliance had in Afghanistan in 2008—they also trained an Afghan army three times the size of Kabul’s security forces at the time. It was never enough. The Soviets knew the longer foreign armies remained in Afghanistan, the more support grew for the insurgents. Aushev warned thirteen years ago there could be no military solution in Afghanistan. “The Taliban may not be able to win militarily but they can’t be defeated .... There will have to be an accord with the Taliban, because at least 50 percent of the Afghan population supports them.”

Biden draws new red line for U.S. military action in Afghanistan (Yahoo News) In a resolute and, at times, defensive speech explaining the swift fall of U.S.-trained security forces in Afghanistan to the Taliban and his decision to pull troops from that country, President Biden also drew a red line Monday for the use of future military force. “If they attack our personnel, the U.S. presence will be swift and the response will be forceful. We will defend our people with devastating force, if necessary,” Biden said in a speech delivered from the White House that followed a weekend during which Afghan security forces melted away and Taliban fighters seized control of the country. Condemning Afghanistan’s military for its apparent refusal to stand and fight the Taliban, Biden said a continued U.S. military presence there was not in the country’s interests. Facing withering criticism from Washington Democrats and Republicans alike, he acknowledged that the destabilization in Afghanistan occurred “more quickly than expected,” but he went only so far in accepting blame. "I am the president of the United States of America, and the buck stops with me," Biden said. Instead, he set blame squarely on the shoulders of the Afghans. "So what's happened? Afghanistan's political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight,” he said, adding, “We gave them every chance to determine their own future. What we could not provide them was the will to fight for that future.”

U.S.-South Korea drills (Foreign Policy) The United States and South Korea begin annual joint military drills today, a move likely to spark more discontent in North Korea, which has warned of a “serious security crisis” if the exercises go ahead. South Korean military officials have said that the 10-day exercise will mostly consist of computer-simulated training with minimal personnel and no live drills. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the decision to hold relatively low-key drills was taken in consideration of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as “to support diplomatic efforts to denuclearize and foster lasting peace on the Korean peninsula.” North Korea has already signaled its displeasure with the drills by refusing to answer routine calls from South Korea after reconnecting a hotline in July.

Detainee says China has secret jail in Dubai, holds Uyghurs (AP) A young Chinese woman says she was held for eight days at a Chinese-run secret detention facility in Dubai along with at least two Uyghurs, in what may be the first evidence that China is operating a so-called “black site” beyond its borders. The woman, 26-year-old Wu Huan, was on the run to avoid extradition back to China because her fiancé was considered a Chinese dissident. Wu told The Associated Press she was abducted from a hotel in Dubai and detained by Chinese officials at a villa converted into a jail, where she saw or heard two other prisoners, both Uyghurs. She was questioned and threatened in Chinese and forced to sign legal documents incriminating her fiancé for harassing her, she said. She was finally released on June 8 and is now seeking asylum in the Netherlands. While “black sites” are common in China, Wu’s account is the only testimony known to experts that Beijing has set one up in another country. Such a site would reflect how China is increasingly using its international clout to detain or bring back citizens it wants from overseas, whether they are dissidents, corruption suspects or ethnic minorities like the Uyghurs.

Animals and numbers (Wired) An understanding of numbers is often viewed as a distinctly human faculty—a hallmark of our intelligence that, along with language, sets us apart from all other animals. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Honeybees count landmarks when navigating toward sources of nectar. Lionesses tally the number of roars they hear from an intruding pride before deciding whether to attack or retreat. Some ants keep track of their steps; some spiders keep track of how many prey are caught in their web. One species of frog bases its entire mating ritual on number: If a male calls out—a whining pew followed by a brief pulsing note called a chuck—his rival responds by placing two chucks at the end of his own call. The first frog then responds with three, the other with four, and so on up to around six, when they run out of breath. Practically every animal that scientists have studied—insects and cephalopods, amphibians and reptiles, birds and mammals—can distinguish between different numbers of objects in a set or sounds in a sequence. They don’t just have a sense of “greater than” or “less than,” but an approximate sense of quantity: that two is distinct from three, that 15 is distinct from 20. This mental representation of set size, called numerosity, seems to be “a general ability,” and an ancient one, said Giorgio Vallortigara, a neuroscientist at the University of Trento in Italy. Now, researchers are uncovering increasingly more complex numerical abilities in their animal subjects. Many species have displayed a capacity for abstraction that extends to performing simple arithmetic, while a select few have even demonstrated a grasp of the quantitative concept of “zero”—an idea so paradoxical that very young children sometimes struggle with it.

#headlines #news

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megacircuit9universe · 4 years

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25 45 Hutt!

THU OCT 08 2020

13 members of a right wing militia group in Michigan were rounded up and indicted today for a plot to kidnap their Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer. The plan, apparently was to kidnap her, put her on trial for treason, and then execute her.

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi announced today that Congress will create a commission to invstigate and discuss the rules for removing Trump under the 25th ammendment... citing his apparent, “dissociation from reality,” over the past week.

And news broke that Pence, has cancelled campaign engagements for the near future to return to Washington DC.

So, what it’s looking like tonight, is... Trump’s about to be forcibly sidelined.

But how can it be? Pelosi doesn’t have that kind of power!

To take Trump off the field using 25A, she’d need the cooperation of both the white house cabinet and the senate! And that’s never gonna...

...Oh, wait!.. didn’t Mitch McConnel pop up in the news today saying he hasn’t been to the White House since August 6th, because he didn’t agree with the way they were blowing off the risk of Covid?

...Oh, wait!.. didn’t we hear today that the number of White House staff who’ve tested positive for Covid is now up to 34?.. and that the White House is nearly empty, with those essential staffers left, being required to wear plastic gowns, and face shields, in addition to masks and gloves?

Maybe Nancy Pelosi DOES have the cooperation of the White House cabinet, and the Senate!

Let’s do a thought experiment here; Imagine your uncle tests positive for Covid and goes to the hospital for it. Okay? Now imagine this same uncle not only elopes from the hospital two days later, but shows up that night in your house, because he knew you had a spare key under the welcome matt... and now he’s in the kitchen, defiantly removing his mask, and telling you how he feels like a million bucks, and he’s gonna be staying in the spare bedroom for the next couple weeks.

For real here... imagine it! How terrified would you be, that he’s giving you Covid right now, in your kitchen? And how angry? You’ve been quarantining here for months. This is your sacred cold zone... the one place you know you’re safe from the virus, because you’ve taken every precaution to keep it safe.

This uncle was always a jerk, but you tolerated him, because he’s family, but now?.. how long will you hesitate to call 911 and have paremedics... accompanied by cops if necessary... haul his ass the hell out of your house, and back to the hospital?

You hesitate. You think maybe if you can get him to quarantine in the spare bedroom, and if you just double down on the PPE, maybe it will be okay.

But the next morning he’s walking all around the house in his bath robe, and he’s jacked up on coke... invading everybody’s personal space, spouting manic nonsense about how your neighbor should be arrested because he’s spying on him, and he’s a perfect specimen who is still 25, and by the way... he has a gun.

Don’t worry, I’m not gonna shoot anybody, but I like to have a gun with me, because you know...

You go to the clinic with your kids to get tested, and both your kids are now positive. You come home, and your uncle is shout-rambling to himself, “GRITS AND BACON! VOTE! JEWS AND TOP HATS! VOTE!..” while staring out the window at your neighbor, gun in hand.

Are you going to get back in the car... drive around to the other side of the block, and call 911 now?

I feel like you probably are.

And this is pretty much the situation for everybody in the White House tonight, from the lowliest staffer, up to the cabinet appointees... interim as most of them now happen to be.

Crazy Uncle Donald was flown out last Friday with Covid to the hospital, where surely he would spend two weeks under the finest care... and be out of your hair until he was over it, and no longer contageous...

But SURPRISE!.. he came back two days later, ripping off his mask, declaring himself cured, and rambling like 2011 Charlie Sheen in the peak of his Tiger Blood breakdown*

He’s infecting everybody and calling for Bill Barr to arrest both Biden and Obama, for spygate, saying that Barr could be remembered as the greatest Attorney General ever... or... or... it could end very sadly for him.

And he’s got the nuclear launch codes!

Tell me... somebody did not call Nancy Pelosi directly on a hotline today, crying out for help with 25A!

We need to do 25A right now but we don’t know HOW! WE’RE ALL JUST INTERIM APPOINTEES WHO DONATED MONEY TO HIS CAMPAIGN BUT KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THE LAW, PLEASE HELP US, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, YOU IMPEACHED HIM!

Meanwhile... over at the Pentagon... the Chiefs of Staff are starting to test positive, and manic Trump just tweeted today that he’s gonna have all the troops out of Afghanistan by Christmas!.. something the Taliban was celibrating online today.

So you know both Pelosi and McConnel got an earful about that from more than one livid five star general.

The FBI crackdown on the Michigan militia conspiracy, going public today, was also probably not a coincidence, and would have to have been okayed by Barr, who was in attendance for the Coney Barret ceremony and... if he didn’t get Covid there... only narrowly escaped it by the grace of God, and he knows it.

McConnel was smart enough to keep his distance... and while he must be mortally torn between his mission from God to pack the Supreme Court with hard right conservative judges... and his own self preservation...

...self preservation may be winning out in this moment... when Covid is landing very close to home, and... in his home state of Kentucky, a full blown KKK rally happened today, in support of Trump... threatening to end his career in the Senate.

For McConnel the calculus is incredibly complex right now, because if Pence takes the reigns, he loses that tie breaking vote for Coney Barret’s confirmation, even as he loses two other GOP Senator votes to mandated quarantine because they’ve tested positive.

Is there enough time in the lame duck session to confirm CB? Maybe! Maybe even if they all lose the election, there will be time for Trump to recover, and Pence to return as the tie breaker, and the other Senators to come back with a clean bill of health.

Maybe maybe maybe!

But also, maybe preventing a nuclear war in the next two weeks is also prudent.

Lastly... in this analysis of the emerging situation...

...Pelosi does not bluff. I wrote all about this a year ago, when the impeachment hearings were going on. Pelosi does not gamble.

She would not have teased publicly a commission into 25A unless she knew it was not only warranted by the circumstances, but also had the necessary support from all parties involved, to result in swift, decisive action.

She only went ahead with impeachment last year, because she knew there was an iron clad case, and that it would pass the House. And she did it fast!

No, in that case the Senate did not remove Trump... and she had no control over that aspect of the process... but she nonetheless impeached him, and forced the Senate to hear the case for removal... putting the burden on their shoulders to either do the right thing, or not... in a vote that is NOW coming back to haunt them HARDCORE!

Tell me that doesn’t make it easier, a year later, to get the same Senate to play ball on a measure to temporarily suspend the President... who’s tested positive for a deadly virus with no cure, and is contageous, and being given mood and mind altering drugs to fight it... resulting in a state of delerium that threatens himself, the government, the nation, and the world.

Nobody loves Mike Pence, but... if he were in charge until after the election... maybe a civil war might not break out in November, and maybe we’d wind up with a semi-peaceful transition of power in January?

Maybe?

And I thought I’d be able to take the night off, eh?

Not in October of 2020!

Go to bed, and I’ll write again soon.

*In a January 2017 article in NME (New Music Entertainment) Charlie Sheen blamed his Tiger Blood breakdown from 2011 on accidental roid rage. He’d been using a topical steroidal cream to keep up his libido, and wasn’t aware of the possible side effects.

In Sheen’s case, steroids cost him his leading role on Two and a Half Men... an insanely popular show at the time.

He was later diagnosed with AIDS, which lead him to become temporarily suicidal, until he learned that AIDS is now survivable with modern drugs, and... he’s still alive today, if living under the radar.

This lends all the credibility to the idea that perscription steroids (much stronger steroids than anything Sheen was taking) have driven Trump into a psychotic split with reality.

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airoasis · 5 years

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Ted Cruz Is OBSESSED With AOC

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/ted-cruz-is-obsessed-with-aoc/

Ted Cruz Is OBSESSED With AOC

>> Ted Cruz is trying to trick every body into thinking that he’s in prefer of making birth control low cost and to be had over-the-counter. And this was once clear in his response to a tweet that came from AOC. Now this all started with AOC tweeting, delivery manage must be over-the-counter, move it on. Now she adopted that up with a subsequent tweet that mentioned, it must be free, too, like in the UK.Now when it came to the primary tweet, Ted Cruz spoke back to it and said, I agree. Might be, in addition to the laws, we are already engaged on collectively to ban members of Congress from becoming lobbyists, we are able to workforce up here as good. A easy, clean invoice making birth manipulate to be had over-the-counter, interested? So he is not to be trusted, correct? In the beginning I notion, what’s he looking to do? Is he just seeking to latch on to her popularity, bear in mind he was a Tea party candidate. He’s to be despised by way of progressives in every single place the arena, correct, so here is- >> Does he have eyeliner in that photograph? >> I do not know, i do not wanna look at his face. >> okay, ok. >> So here is what we all know, now Republicans have without a doubt supported putting beginning manipulate over-the-counter, you wanna comprehend why? >> can’t wait. >> on account that then it is now not blanketed by means of wellbeing insurance. When you do it that method, it becomes a client product. And so if you are now not competent to afford it, then you’re not in a position to find the money for it. It can be now not protected by wellness coverage since it’s now a client product. That is truely whatever that Republicans have been seeking to do in the back of the scenes in an extraordinarily difficult approach considering the cheap Care Act made birth manage free.>> that’s why Ocasio-Cortez added it must be free. >> exactly. >> Now Cruz is not gonna conform to that. >> No. >> So he is definitely doing two matters right here. One is the trick that Ana’s referring to, why? Cuz they don’t want you to take contraception and then whilst you get pregnant later, they are gonna say, well, i don’t care. You gotta carry the child to term. Now if they have been in favor of contraception, you can have much less abortions within the nation. Theoretically, that will have to make them completely happy, however they’re like, no, we’re religious fundamentalists. And being the American Taliban that we’re, even though 99% of yankee ladies use beginning control, we don’t want them to. And we would like them to take heed to the 1%, which genuinely within the case of the Republicans kinda is sensible. The 1% of theological mullahs that we’ve in this nation, and the 1% that are the richest people in the country, both means, that is who Ted Cruz serves.And then the 2d part of it’s, yeah, hes thirsty. So whenever Occasio-Cortez is doing something, individuals pay concentration. So hes like, me too, me too, me too, me too! Now, seem, that being mentioned, if he comes and concurs with us, I consistently take sure for an answer. So I cant stand Ted Cruz, I consider thats abundantly clear. But if they work collectively to ban lawmakers from doing eyeliner like that, or becoming lobbyists, i’m wholly in want of that. I’ll take sure for an reply. If he needs us to move on his path and say, now, remember how terrible contraception is so we should not make it free, then no deal. >> simply proceed with warning. And finally, I just wanna note that there is an effort by means of Democrats in Congress to do the correct factor relating to contraception. Very curious to see if Ted Cruz signs on to this.I might most commonly wager no. So Senator Murray, representative Ayana Pressley, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others offered the Affordability in entry Act. The invoice will not make birth manage over-the-counter. Handiest the FDA can do this. But it might ensure that if the FDA does act, delivery manage would remain covered via coverage, to prevent a state of affairs where the treatment turns into easier to get but more difficult to pay for. >> look, it can be a part of our health care protection, it can be apparent. And if the Republicans get their way, satirically, we’ll have much more abortions within the country. >> And one more thing, you know why it’s part of healthcare insurance policy and why Obama wanted to comprise it within the inexpensive Care Act? Due to the fact, and the quantity could have extended seeing that, but again then, the federal govt was spending $eleven billion a 12 months on sudden pregnancies.And so it can be part of maintaining the cost of health care down, offering free birth control to ensure that individuals can take control of their bodies and no longer get pregnant if they don’t wish to. >> No, I’ve acquired a different factor cuz i might love to cite to Bible. So have you learnt why devout zealots like Ted Cruz think you should not do birth manipulate? Is it when you consider that he mentioned that, speak about start manage drugs within the Bible, most likely now not. Do they speak about condoms, definitely now not. No, there was once one passage and that’s about how you mustn’t spill your seed.That is the same passage they use to justify being against masturbation. Good success with that. Ok, the only thing much less standard than seeking to ban contraception. Anyway, it can be considering the fact that Onan was once having intercourse together with his brother’s spouse as God commanded. His brother had died and God stated, you must have intercourse with your useless brother’s spouse. Curious option. >> Gigidy. >> okay, however Onan clearly felt responsible, so he pulled out. So this is in the Bible. You can not say i’m saying whatever soiled. It’s in the Bible, ok? >> Do they train this in Sunday school? >> well, they teach you to not be an Onanist, k? So he pulled out and his seed spilled on the bottom. And God was once tremendous indignant. He’s like I advised you to have sex together with your brother’s spouse and ensure you get her pregnant.>> Why did God want that, what used to be the point? >> So again within the day that they had these historic traditions about if your brother dies you have to take his family and in essence preserve them. But at the same time, safety was once partly having sex together with his ex-wife. He did not have to do that, to preserve her, right? But it’s in the Bible. And so all of this anti-masturbation and anti-contraception stuff comes from that bizarre component of the Bible that was once just a passing reference. >> we now have heard you inform this shellfish part of the Bible a billion instances. How come you do not tell this part of the Bible? >> good, I just did, mission accomplished. .

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batterymonster2021 · 5 years

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Ted Cruz Is OBSESSED With AOC

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/ted-cruz-is-obsessed-with-aoc/

Ted Cruz Is OBSESSED With AOC

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cabotcreekuniversity · 7 years

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Dear Eloise Green as portrayed by NATALIE,

Congratulations! On behalf of Cabot Creek University, I am pleased to announce your admission for Fall 2017!

The academic and personal accomplishments reflected on your application for admissions are exactly what Cabot Creek University embodies and represents.

We cannot wait to greet you this coming school year.

Please [ check here ] for further instructions on accepting the offer of admissions. We look forward to working with you.

Name, Age, Timezone, Pronouns: Natalie, 20, EST, She/Her/Her’s

✯ IC Questionnaire ✯ Answer the following OOC about your character:

Character name: Eloise Green

Character major: Her major is education, and specifically, Eloise wants to go on an early childhood education route. In her junior year of high school, Eloise took a class to fill a Home Economics graduation requirement, that was geared towards Early Childhood Development. In the class, not only did they learn about the different stages of development, but also had to do craft assignments one could put up to stimulate children on Fridays. Each student would also eventually spend two days job shadowing in an early education classroom. Through this, Eloise found that it is frankly the perfect fit for her. There was so much organization to it. Being able to just even teach, tell people what they should know without seeming condescending. And the kids, oh how she loved kids and caring for said kids. After that, she couldn’t see any other path to go on. She also has a minor in Sociology. She tended to always be interested in the social sciences and does see getting this knowledge of groups of people as also being very helpful when she is a teacher.

Clubs or sports: Gymnastics! She has been in gymnastics since she could walk and it’s the perfect way to get out everything she builds up inside her with her very type A personality. Other than Gymnastics, she does just throw herself into her school work, actual work, and friends, but she is also signed up for, and occasionally goes to events for, the Philosophy Club. She didn’t have some type of reason, which got a giggle at the first meeting when she said she didn’t really know why she decided to join it, but she just found herself interested in it.

Will your character have a job?: Yes, she is a cashier at Yaya Yogurt. It is not nearly what she would like to be doing, but for the sake that she even had to go to Cabot Creek was a tight financial situation, so she definitely needs to continue to make money whilst here. Also, hey, it gives customer service experience, something she sees as being helpful practice for when she has to spend 6 hours teaching a day, and especially when parents will want to talk about their children’s performances.

Give us a head canon about your character:

The first time Eloise watched Pretty Little Liars, it was weird, and “weird” may even be too light of a word for what she experienced. It took her over a year to get past the second episode, as when they showed Spencer, with her family, at that dinner, she saw her own family.

There was that high/low game, and the family was using it solely to brag about their victories in work and school, and that was what happened so much with Eloise. Even on Eloise’s birthday, every year, her parents would fill a room with all her accomplishments both from that year, and all years past, and they would “tour” it together. Eloise could always expect two gifts from her parents every single year, and that “tour of accomplishments” was one of them.

That game, though? While not exactly the same, because there would never be any lows, it was all trying to just beat out each other in highs, when her siblings would come over that was all that would happen at the dinner table. It was strange too, how they played it. On one hand, her parents wanted to win themselves. On another hand, they barely saw Eloise’s older siblings, with the closest sibling age-wise to Eloise was even 14 years older than her. On the final hand, Eloise was their baby, and a miracle baby at that due to how old her parents were when they conceived her, so of course they wanted their baby to win.

However, seeing that scene, it struck a nerve in her. She saw the body language that the actors were having their characters give off. She saw how it wasn’t supposed to be seen as normal, with Spencer’s sister’s fiancee not totally understanding it due to his ‘outsider’ status still when it comes to the family.

It was too weird to not only see something that resembles you that much on air but even have it shown it was actually something ‘weird’? ‘Taboo’, even? She couldn’t deal with it, couldn’t face that fact and continue on with the show, until over a year later.

Answer the following questions IC about your character. Feel free to use a gif to respond if you’d like:

What is an issue you feel most passionate about?: “The lack of education towards girls worldwide. Did you know, in Chad, there is a sixteen percent gap between literacy rates for men and women? And a twenty-one percent gap between boys and girls enrolled in primary school? And remember Malala Yousafzai, when the Taliban shot her in the head - nearly killed - for daring to want not only herself to be educated but other girls in Pakistan to receive education, too? And, coming from Oklahoma, it isn’t much better here either. I mean, I was from the city, but I knew more out in rural areas, once kids could drop out of school, they were having their daughters do so. And that’s not even touching on the school-to-prison pipeline in this country when it comes to students of color. It’s ridiculous. We need to focus caring towards all kids getting an education, it leads to opportunities like I have.”

Describe your thoughts on social media?: “This may contradict my caring for world wide stance just before, but I love my social media. Well, except MySpace, does anyone use that anymore? Like, seriously, do they? Or, Google Plus was a thing for a hot second because of Google and YouTube combining, but I don’t think anyone ever used that in the history of ever. Did they? Anyway, one may even call me a ‘social media whore’. I think if I have gone seventy-two hours without a post on Instagram, and twenty-four hours without a tweet on Twitter, you can assume something bad has happened to me. FaceBook, SnapChat, LinkedIn, YouTube, Tumblr … You know, I also love and have those, but especially pay attention to me and my activity on Instagram and Twitter. Oh, and Pinterest! I love doing projects I find on there so much! And I always post the completed project to my Instagram!”

What is your favorite fandom or movie or TV show or book series (choose one)?: “Untold Stories of the E.R.! Oh god, what a guilty pleasure of mine. I just find myself completely letting go watching it. It’s kind of nice, wow.”

Opinion on love and romance?: “I’ve been in about two long term relationships before. There was my high school sweetheart, Seth. Then I’m sure you know but I started dating Erica the beginning of freshman year here, but we broke up at the end of sophomore year. My relationships, they are always super romantic and I do feel I am in love, so yes. I think that exists. That idea of one true love, that there is some one person in Montenegro, who at this point in time could be barely a year old, that I won’t be happy until I am with? No, I don’t believe in that. But, yes, cynics, love is a real feeling, and with it, heartbreak is a real feeling too. And romance as a concept exists.”

Optional Extras: http://eloisegreen.tumblr.com/

#horror rp #school rp #university rp #town rpg #mature rpg #ccuaccepted

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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16,000 Readers Shared Their Experiences of Being Told to ‘Go Back.’ Here Are Some of Their Stories.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/reader-center/trump-go-back-stories.html

PLEASE TAKE TIME TO READ, ABSORB AND SHARE readers responses when they were told to 'GO BACK ' TO where they came from. 😭🙏🏻😭🙏🏼😭🙏🏽😭🙏🏾😭🙏🏿

16,000 Readers Shared Their Experiences of Being Told to ‘Go Back.’ Here Are Some of Their Stories.

By Lara Takenaga and Aidan Gardiner | Published July 19, 2019 | New York Times | Posted July 19, 2019 |

“Go back to where you came from.”

These seven words are seared into the minds of countless Americans — a reminder that they haven’t always been welcome in the country where they were born or naturalized because of their appearance, language or religion.

For many, the pain of past encounters throbbed again after President Trump attacked four Democratic congresswomen of color in a series of tweets this week.

“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” he wrote in one.

When we asked readers if they had been told to “go back,” some 16,000 responses flooded in on our website, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Readers recounted the insults they’ve heard as African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native Americans and Jewish Americans. Many recalled first becoming aware of their “otherness” as young children and said that slurs have followed them into adulthood. Their stories span decades, with notable upticks after 9/11 and Mr. Trump’s election. And several readers expressed regret after telling others to “go back.”

We chose 67 of the most representative stories to feature here, lightly edited and condensed. If you’ve been told to “go back,” please share your experience in the comments.

The First Time

I was 12 the first time I heard that. My mom and I were at Costco and it was Christmas Eve. We went there to pick up a ham. By the time we made it to the register, the lines were huge. At some point, a middle-aged white woman tried cutting in line. My mom stopped her, and when she did, the woman said, “Get out of line and go back to Mexico.” When we wouldn’t respond, she got louder and louder.

I had never felt so small or so angry in my life. Even though I’d seen racism on TV and in the movies, that was the first time I ever experienced it in real life.

— Justin Vazquez, Irvine, Calif.

I am American. I was born and raised in Texas. I call this state my home and have never known any other. I am also Muslim and South Asian.

I vividly remember the first time a boy yelled at me to “go home.” I was in middle school and getting used to my first official locker. I had a top locker, which I was excited about, but had not quite mastered it. One afternoon, rushing to change out books between classes, I accidentally dropped one of my textbooks on the foot of a boy whose locker was below mine. I recall turning to him and his friends and saying, “I’m so sorry!”

He stood up — much taller and bigger than I was at 13 — and screamed into my face: “What is wrong with you? GO HOME, YOU DIRTY … ” I won’t repeat his words, but they are seared into my memory.

It was the first time I felt someone’s hatred of me so viscerally. I felt confused, scared, angry and alone. He was the first of many — usually men, usually white, usually angry — who have yelled at me to “go home.”

Now, as a professional adult, it is usually not a slur screamed through an open car window or someone shoving me down a middle school hallway — it is the subtle and not-so-subtle, “Where are you really from?” and, “Are you sure you’re Muslim? You don’t seem like the others,” comments masked as questions.

No matter how many American flags I put on my lawn, how diligently I pursue the American dream that my parents came here for or how hard I try to be the model citizen, it seems I am the perennial “other” — that I have to constantly prove my allegiance to my country and that I am (no really! I am!) American.

— Sakina Rasheed Foster, Dallas

When I was in seventh grade, I commented to some classmates that I didn’t like cheeseburgers. One of them, a white girl, turned to me and said, “You’re not American, go back to Mexico!”

Everyone in the group laughed, and I joined in, trying to disguise my shock.

I’ll never forget that instance, and how “othered” it made me feel. Never mind that I was born in Albuquerque, and am not of Mexican descent.

Up until that moment, I thought my classmates saw me as one of them, an equal. I realized after that day that my Spanish surname and the color of my skin made me an outsider in the eyes of my white classmates.

— Margot Luna, Washington, D.C.

New Tensions After 9/11

I’ve been called a terrorist and Osama bin Laden’s son. I’ve been told to go on my jihad. I’ve been called a member of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. These all came during high school. I was born here, yet others told me I didn’t belong.

I always tried to shrug off the comments. At times, I’d even try to educate the people who called me these names to tell them why it’s incorrect to categorize me as that. I’m a first-generation American and my parents emigrated to the United States from Iran in the 1970s.

— Keian Razipour, Los Angeles

I immigrated to the United States from Panama in 2002 at just 8 years old. My mother enlisted in the Army, so my first experience of America was living and attending school at a military base in North Carolina six months after 9/11.

Faced with hypernationalism, hyperpatriotism and being “othered” by my peers for my language and cultural barriers, I was told to “go back” to my country on an almost daily basis. I was called an “alien,” “beaner” and “wetback,” words that I had no cultural context for.

I wished for nothing more in those first months than to be able to go back home to Panama — but this was my home now. My mother was fighting alongside their fathers. Didn’t that mean we belonged here, too?

— Paola Salas Paredes, Washington, D.C.

I had just started a doctorate program in August 2001. Soon after 9/11, I was talking about the attacks with some of my fellow graduate students. We had a disagreement about what the American response should be. My response was clearly not bellicose enough — my classmates thought we should immediately obliterate the entire Middle East.

These same classmates told me I should “love it or leave it” with respect to the United States. I asked them where I should go — back to Texas (where I grew up)? They said no, where your parents came from. I asked them if I should go back to New York (where my parents were from). They said no, where my “people” are from (three of my four grandparents emigrated from Poland and Russia).

I’d experienced anti-Semitism growing up, but never anything like that. I had never been called un-American, and never been told that this wasn’t my home. I didn’t realize at the time that this was just the beginning, and that this “with us or against us” mentality would metastasize into what we are seeing today.

— Rachel Walker, Keller, Tex.

Growing Up As An Asian-American

The worst experience was when I was a young child, playing on my driveway, and heard several thwacks and felt a cold sticky substance running down the back of my neck. I had been egged, and our house had been hit with vegetables. Someone shouted from a distance, “Go back to China, chink!”

— Kenneth Hung, New York City

I immigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines in the early 1970s with my parents, and we became U.S. citizens soon after our arrival. We lived in a very diverse neighborhood in the Near West Side of Chicago right next to the local university’s medical schools.

One unfortunate day, my mother took my 8-year-old brother and 12-year-old me to a neighborhood that was predominantly white. While my brother and I patiently waited in the car for my mom, a group of kids from that neighborhood came up to the car and started throwing stones at the car while yelling, “Go back home, you chinks!”

Thinking this was just a case of mistaken identity, I tried to explain to them that we were not Chinese, but was pelted with rocks. My mother ran out to yell at these kids to stop, and soon a white adult from the neighborhood came running out. Just when I thought sanity would ensue, the white adult, in support of the rock-throwing kids, told my mother to get the hell out of their neighborhood and to go back home.

My mother drove us out of there in tears, as she wiped the tears from my face.

I had never experienced such outward hatred and bigotry before and I was wondering to myself why were they so angry. My innocent 8-year-old brother broke our silent drive home by saying, “Those must’ve been Sox fans!”

My mom and I could only smile through our tears at the wonderful innocence. From that day on, my brother and I became very aware of our ethnic identities and the power of ignorance and hated.

— Gerry Granada, Chicago

My parents used to own a small diner in Santa Monica, Calif., when I was young. A customer didn’t like his order and got the ketchup bottle and sprayed it all over the wall of the store and yelled, “Go back to your country!”

It was the first time I was made to feel like an “other,” through my parent’s experience.

— Brian Kim, Hayward, Calif.

Los Angeles

I’ve been called a terrorist and Osama bin Laden’s son. I’ve been told to go on my jihad. I’ve been called a member of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

—Keian Razipour

As a kid in elementary school, people found out that I’m Vietnamese and would tell me to go back to my communist country because I must be a communist.

Hearing that from students and teachers as an American citizen and as a young child was hurtful and incredibly frustrating because my family had fought in Vietnam against communism. I had family members that never came home from that war — but that didn’t make a difference.

— Hannah Tong, Winona, Minn.

When my younger sister and I were in elementary school, we were told by an older student to “go back to China” after we refused to tell him whether we knew Yao Ming (so, two racist slurs for the price of one!).

We were both born in America to immigrant parents; our father came from Japan, our mother from Taiwan. We had never even been to China. We grew up in a predominantly white suburb of Chicago, and though I knew we were Asian, it had never occurred to me until then that we might be seen as different or strange in the only home we had ever known.

— Natalie Yang, Chicago

The People Who Said ‘Go Back’ — and Regret It

Unfortunately, I do not want to admit this, but I have told people, people who are Americans, to go back to their country (which does not make much sense other than the fact that they look different from the majority) and I feel horrible for it.

While I do regret these actions, I felt emboldened at the time because of the current political climate.

— Richard Nahas, Omaha

Several years ago in Los Angeles, a guy cut me off in a parking lot. That escalated into yelling out of windows and, to my utter shame, I yelled for this Arab-looking man to go back home.

I was ashamed then and more so now and have never repeated this epithet.

But to say this is not who we are as Americans is not entirely true. This is who we are on our worst day. I would give a lot to be able to apologize to this man.

— Matthew Sunderland, Joshua Tree, Calif.

One day while shopping in Home Depot, a lovely dark-skinned man of obvious Asian origin commented to me how very hot he found it in my Florida hometown ever since moving from New York.

Without thinking, I said, “So why don’t you go back to where you came from?” meaning, fully and honestly, to New York, not the country he’d emigrated from.

“I mean, to stay cooler,” I quickly added, seeing the look of insult that swept over him.

Both of us remained silent as he led me to my aisle. For me, I realized every word I utter has impact.

— teZa Lord, St. Augustine, Fla.

African-Americans’ Constant Battle For Equality

I’ve been told to “go back to Africa” repeatedly. At this point, I don’t really feel anything about it because I’m accustomed to people’s ignorance. I’m a black American and my family has been here since the 1600s. I usually just respond with that fact and people get uncomfortable. The funny thing is that one of my nonblack ancestors is actually Robert E. Lee.

— Whitney Lee, Washington, D.C.

Decades later, I still remember how much it hurt.

I was usually the only little black girl in class. I was teased about my nappy hair and my wide nose. My dark skin was called dirty. Many times, I was told to go back to Africa although I’ve never been.

And it wasn’t just mean kids. Even teachers would sometimes ask me where I was from with a look of disdain.

I rarely stood up for myself. I would just shrink inward in unwarranted shame. It wasn’t until the era of black pride that I finally found my voice. I’m black and I’m proud of my African ancestry and look forward to one day going to Africa for the first time!

— Pat St.Claire, Atlanta

I was about 13 when a white classmate overheard me complaining to friends about the Vietnam War. He looked at me and said, “If you don’t like it here, why don’t you go back to Africa?”

I was too shocked to respond. I had never considered Africa to be my homeland. My family has roots in northeastern Louisiana dating back to slavery. To me, my ancestral home was Oak Grove, La.

It wasn’t until much later, after many other such negative interactions, that I understood how, to many whites, African-Americans are not considered to be real Americans, equally deserving of the rights and privileges of citizenship.

— Michael Hornsby, Albany

I was on a summer league basketball team in 1990. We played a game in Squirrel Hill, the same neighborhood as the Tree of Life shooting.

We beat the all-white team with a late flurry of baskets. In the team and their fans: anger. We were called “N-s.” Our lone white player was an “N- lover.” We were “monkeys” and told to go back to Africa.

In 1990 and in western Pennsylvania, we all had experienced racism and disrespect on that level except our white player. He quit the team. Embarrassment? Shame? We don’t know because none of us ever saw him again.

— Allen Malik Easton, Pittsburgh

The Ignorance Fueling Racist Comments

I was in high school and my brothers were in elementary school. We were riding the school bus in the morning to school. Some kid threw a crumpled-up piece of paper and yelled, “Go back to where you came from! You didn’t win in Iraq and you aren’t going to win here!”

What this redneck didn’t know was that we are from India, not Iraq. He had thought that my Sikh brothers and I were Muslim.

— Reetu Height, Nashville

I’m Peruvian-American born in Flushing Hospital, and yes, I’ve been told to go back to “Taliban.”

— Chris La Rosa, Queens

I am a black woman of biracial ancestry. My mother is a white Jewish woman and my father is black. My facial characteristics are racially ambiguous, and I am often misidentified as Latina, specifically Puerto Rican, Dominican or Cuban.

Several months ago, at a gas station in Jacksonville, Fla., an older white man approached me as I pumped gas into my car.

“How many houses did you clean to buy that convertible?!” he yelled.

Startled, scared and angry, I chose to ignore him because, well, it is a “conceal carry” state.

As I attempted to quickly place the nozzle back onto the pump station, he walked closer to me and with venom in his voice said, “You should take your ass back to Mexico!”

— Chevara Orrin, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

My family suffered at the hands of plantation owners in Hawaii and during the internment camps of World War II. Even when our countrymen thought of us as traitors, we fought for them in the 442nd.

My mother, sister and myself have been told numerous times to “go home.” My family has fought, died and worked for a more perfect union for generations. Seeing the president and his apologists share this idiocy is infuriating and hurtful.

— Joel Higa, Chicago

During my first semester in college, my friends and I were walking to dinner when two guys told us to “go back to China.” This was 2015, at a highly selective private school in an urban city, so it was incredibly shocking to hear those words on campus.

I envisioned college as a place where people were past making racist remarks, but it only confirmed to me that society still saw Asians as perpetual foreigners.

To be honest, at the time I was still a green card holder, but I had spent my entire childhood in the U.S. The country that I’m “from” is Canada.

— Stephanie Yuan, Washington, D.C.

Abuse In The Trump Era

I was walking my two boys out of their middle school. In the school’s driveway, as several students and parents were walking out, a minivan pulled out to my side and a middle schooler yelled at me and my boys to go back to my own country. She was driving with her mother and was barely 13 years old.

I was dumbfounded and surprised. There was hate in her and her voice and expression. I did not catch the minivan’s license plate number but did catch a Trump sticker on the back. This was right after Trump got elected.

I felt hurt, as this was the first time I was confronted with racism in my face.

— Yogesh Lund, Austin, Tex.

I am the U.S.-born white parent of a child adopted from Vietnam. He is a naturalized U.S. citizen.

In early February 2017, just a few weeks after the “Muslim ban” went into effect, someone put a sign on our front lawn. It was a Trump/Pence sign from the 2016 election. The side facing our front door had been papered over with “Ban Them All” written on it.

It was devastating. It took my breath away to see such hatred directed at a child, to know the intent was for my sixth grader to see that message when he opened the door to go to school.

We called our town’s police, but we had to make follow-up calls to try to convince them to classify it as a hate crime. I posted a picture of the sign on a local Facebook page, and this spurred an outpouring of support.

Two days later, our lawn was decorated with dozens of signs saying things like “You belong here” and “We’re glad you’re here.” I believe love will always trump hate, but two years later, my family is still reeling from this hateful act.

— Bonnie Gardner, Vienna, Va.

I had a new employee whom I was instructed to train in 2017 where I was employed in Kansas. He was from the South and I am originally from California.

Upon introductions, he immediately spun around and told me to go back to the country where I came from and get the “HELL” out of America. This was after Trump was elected and he was bragging about being a Trump fan. I never talk politics at work so I let his comments go.

It was very unnerving trying to train someone whose viewpoint was that I was an unwelcome immigrant from California.

— Mayjo LaPlante, Topeka, Kan.

I mentioned to my friend, whom I’ve known for 50 years, that during my recent visit to Australia, how impressed I was with the national health care system in comparison to the dismal state of ours.

I was devastated when she suggested I move to another country since, “You don’t seem happy with this one.” I responded that “I’ve been a proud and patriotic American citizen since I was naturalized at age 10,” that this is “my country as much as it is yours,” that I care deeply it and that critiquing and participating in protests against certain government policies is patriotic.

I reminded her that protests against the Vietnam War helped end it sooner and saved American and Vietnamese lives. She didn’t respond.

We’ve had a deep chasm in our relationship since she voted for Trump, whom I consider a racist and abhorrent individual who lacks character and decency.

I love my friend, but I now suspect she’s a white nationalist. As painful as it may be, I’m considering whether it’s time to address my concerns with her and see where the chips fall.

— Nadia McGeough, McLean, Va.

Reacting And Responding

About five years ago, I was watching the Fourth of July parade in Bristol, R.I., when a woman who was upset because I was unintentionally blocking her view, shouted, “Go back to your country!”

Even though I wasn’t an American citizen, I had lived legally here for more than 15 years, married to an American citizen with an American daughter. I was very upset and felt humiliated, but I said back to her: “Are you a Native American? If not, you should go back, too!”

— Rogeria Christmas, Bristol, R.I.

I was told to go back one beautiful, sunny afternoon in Brooklyn. I turned around to make sure it was indeed what I had thought I heard as I walked past a woman, someone mumbling, “Go back to Egypt.”

When I turned back and looked at the deliverer of the message, she looked at me directly and repeated it. I was in a sassy mood and retorted, “I’m going to take you with me.” She quickly turned around and avoided further conversation, and I smirked my way down that Brooklyn block and laughed it off with my friend who was with me.

— Rokshana Ali, Queens

Changing To Blend In

From my experience here in Tennessee, I have learned that I am no longer allowed to wear my head scarf in public because of constant harassment and physical assault.

I used to work in West Town Mall at a local phone store, and I was harassed and followed to my car multiple times by racist people telling me to go back to my country.

There was even a time I was grocery shopping and was screamed at and chanted at in the middle of Walmart, “RATS GO BACK TO IRAQ.”

It was so hurtful as a child to know people didn’t know me and already hated me. And it has affected my mental health as well.

— Yasmeen Hamed, Knoxville, Tenn.

This happened a couple of years after Sept. 11. I was walking out of the old Barnes & Noble on Austin Street in Forest Hills with my husband, who was carrying our granddaughter on his shoulders. An older white woman, who mistook my husband to be Iranian (he’s Central American and has a beard), started shouting at him to go back to Iran.

She then said our granddaughter should have burned in the towers instead of Americans.

I was blind with rage, but my husband remained calm, as it appeared our granddaughter was unaware of what the woman was saying and that it was directed at the two of them. This woman did not see me, as I was behind them. It took all of my willpower to not make a scene for my granddaughter’s sake.

The next day my husband shaved his beard so as to not appear too “Muslim.” My heart broke that day.

— Adele Chavarria, Brooklyn

When Bystanders Stay Silent

One day, on a crowded subway train in New York City, an older couple wanted to get on the extremely crowded train car that I was in. They asked me (a visibly Muslim woman wearing a hijab) to move over, although there was no room for me to do that. I told them that I couldn’t move, and they responded by pushing me to the side and saying: “In this country, you’re not that important. Go back to where you came from.”

I felt offended about the assumption of where I am from, and totally taken aback by the fact that they felt they had more of a right to take up space than someone else did, no matter where I was from. Although others nearby heard what they said, no one spoke up and I felt incredibly vulnerable.

— Lama Ahmad, Dearborn, Mich.

The day the lockdown broke in Boston after the marathon bombing, I went with a friend who happens to be East Indian to celebrate (and breathe easier) at a bar in Boston.

An older white man who stood behind us was muttering insults somewhat under his breath. Finally, I turned around to face him, to which he replied, “Take your slanty eyes back to your country.”

I am Filipina-American, born in San Diego. My father served in the Navy. Though I grew up in New Orleans, I have no “accent.” Not Southern, not Asian, not even Bostonian. Not that that would matter, but I mention it only to highlight that the only quality that signaled “not from here” to this man was the color of my skin and my facial features.

He would not relent, and out of sheer disbelief and anger at his taunts, I stood up on my bar stool, now the tallest person in the room, and shouted at the top of my lungs (I was a junior varsity cheerleader): “WHAT DID YOU SAY? Say it again! Say it again because everyone in this room is going to hear you now.”

I was shaking and afraid. The room buzz went down, then back up again. No patron intervened the way someone always does when there’s a punch thrown. Soon, the manager of the bar, a white woman, came out and asked me to wait in the back room. The bartender, a black male who had witnessed the incident and knew the man taunting us, came back as well. I explained what happened and she offered to give us a gift certificate or to comp our dinner. I was appalled. I did not want a free meal, nor did I want to be pulled aside for my calling a bigot out.

I left that day, not celebrating freedom after the city’s siege. I left feeling imprisoned in my skin in my home country — a born citizen who will never truly belong.

— Annaliza Nieve, Newbury, Mass.

San Antonio

It doesn’t matter that I’m multigenerational American. It doesn’t matter that I come from a long history of veterans and social activists who have worked to make our nation safer and stronger.

—Eddie Torres

I was born in the States but raised mostly in South Korea until I moved here in the early 2000s. About five years ago, I sat next to an elderly man on a bench in the subway. He immediately recoiled and started complaining about how I shouldn’t be sitting there, though I didn’t realize this at first because I was listening to music.

When I finally realized he was speaking to me (or about me), I immediately felt afraid. I did not want to engage him, so I stood up and began walking away. He yelled to my back: “You don’t even speak English, do you? Go back to your [expletive] country!” It was a pretty busy platform, but everyone averted their eyes and pretended they couldn’t hear anything. No one said a thing.

I waited for my train burning in shame, thinking about all the things I could have said to him. I’ve had quite a few encounters like this over the years and it’s always the same: I’m stunned into silence, and the slow burn of anger lingers for a long time.

— Seine Kim, Brooklyn

Dealing With Slurs At Work

When I was a reporter for the CBS TV affiliate in Fresno, a viewer called asking who was “the spic on the air?”

I said: “You are talking to him. How can I help you?”

Other times, the message was, “Go back to your country.”

— Pablo Espinoza, Elk Grove, Calif.

I am a physician. I worked on a patient in serious condition. In the morning, he was much improved and woke up. The first thing he said when he woke up was that he wanted a white physician and I should go back to my country (expletives excluded).

A Latino patient next to him defended me and told him, “If that doctor went to sleep instead of taking care of you, you would not have woken up today. Be thankful.”

I knew I saved his life and that was important to me, not his prejudice.

— Sridhar Chilimuri, White Plains, N.Y.

One day at summer camp, a bully who pretty much did whatever he wanted at camp was bullying a little girl over her ice cream. She was crying and before I realized the implications of what I was about to do, I yelled out, “Hey, leave her alone.”

He looked at me and said, “Shut up, spic, go back to where you came from.”

This was the first time I was ever called a “spic” and suggested that I did not belong here because I was not American.

I felt isolated, alone and scared because the bully was now moving toward me and I was surrounded by other kids who were his friends, and I was now going to be the recipient of his wrath. Luckily for me, camp counselors saw what was about to transpire and broke up the confrontation.

In my first year as a firefighter, I was the only person of Hispanic heritage in the department. One person asked if I was an affirmative-action hire. Another said, “Why couldn’t a white guy get the job?”

The thought that I had gone through the testing process and passed on my own merit was more than they could comprehend. Then someone said, “Why don’t you go back to where you came from?”

Those same feelings I felt as a 10-year-old boy came rushing back. Again I felt isolated and alone, but the counselors were not there to save me. I looked back at him and said very calmly, “I was born in Stamford, Conn.”

— Rey Rodriguez, Danbury, Conn.

Children of refugees on ‘American-ness’

As the first-generation daughter of Vietnamese refugees, throughout my entire life I have been told to go back to where I came from. Every single time, those words wound me to my core. My parents fought and sacrificed endlessly to scratch out a life of opportunities for my sisters and me.

Just because my eyes are slanted does not mean I am any less deserving of being here. Just because I am a woman of two languages and two cultures does not mean I am any less American. Just because I see the flaws in our government does not mean I am not patriotic.

In fact, all those things make me inherently more American. This country was built on the backs of immigrants, shaped by hundreds of cultures and molded by the voices of dissent for equality.

— Christina Tran, Greenville, S.C.

Growing up in Chicago in the Uptown neighborhood, I’ve been discriminated against since I was 5 years old. My parents were Cambodian refugees who arrived to the U.S. in 1981. I was born four years later.

The one that I remembered clearly was in Uptown. I was helping a friend parallel park her car. I stuck my head out the window to help her when all of a sudden a white man walking by told me to go back to where I came from.

I was stunned but not fazed because this racism wasn’t my first encounter. People always question my American-ness because I’m Cambodian-American and I don’t look white.

— Phirany Lim, San Francisco

When you’re told to ‘speak English’

I was born in Philadelphia to Palestinian immigrant parents. I’ve been told on numerous occasions to go “back to Palestine” (or “back to Pakistan,” an unsurprising error racists seem to make).

Once while shopping and chatting with my mother in Arabic on the phone, I heard a man tell me that “We speak English in America. Like it or leave.” I hung up the phone, turned to him and said, “I beg your pardon?” and watched his shock. He hurried away.

But I didn’t feel victorious. I felt humiliated. As he’d wanted me to.

— Susan B. Muaddi Darraj,Phoenix, Md.

I went to the post office to mail a package. There were many steps going up to the entrance door. I was holding my 4-year-old daughter’s hand. We counted in English on our way up. We mailed the package. On the way back down we counted in Spanish. Suddenly, an older woman said, “This is America; talk to your daughter in English or go back to Mexico.”

I don’t think she realized I spoke English because she was very caught off guard when I replied: “As a U.S. citizen I know that because I live in America, I can speak in any language I please.”

This is just one of five instances since Donald Trump was elected president. In my entire 34 years previously, I’d only ever been told such a thing one time.

It makes me feel like I belong nowhere. I’m a U.S. citizen born to an immigrant parent who later became a naturalized citizen. However, I feel like I will never be American enough because I’ll never be white. Regardless of my accomplishments or strife, I’ll just never be good enough.

— Sandra Benitez, Sunnyside, Wash.

Some years ago, I was in a bar with a friend chatting in Arabic. I went up to get a few more drinks, and some guy thought I had cut in front of him and said, “Don’t you know we have lines in this country?”

I was taken aback and asked, “Excuse me?” He responded, “If you don’t like it, why don’t you go back to your country, and have fun drinking over there.”

As a rule, I don’t ever try to explain my humanity to someone — it’s a degrading experience in and of itself. So I ignored him, got my beers and went back to my table. My best revenge is enjoying my time with my sister at our local bar.

— Randa Tawil, Seattle

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ehentha · 5 years

Text

Maldives Twitter wakes up to a fever dream where everyone is Ali Rameez

At 12AM on Friday the 23rd of November 2018, a whole bunch of Maldivian twitter users changed their profile pictures to the one above. It shows a young Ali Rameez leaning back, relaxing his head against his arm. The incident is referred to by some as #NationalAyyaDay.

This is a bipartisan effort, okay? Whether you’re a snowflake or a YAG supporter or a feminist or a humanist, please come together for this one day so we can all celebrate the greatest Maldivian singer of all time: Ali Rameez. Happy #NationalAyyaDay! ♥️

— KeehveFA (@ShafaRameez) November 22, 2018

Mass confusion spread as everyone’s notifications looked the same.

Yup, giving up on trying to figure out who is who.

— Azzam Pompi Mohamed (@Pompeee) November 23, 2018

To make things worse, many users changed their names to song lyrics by the one time Maldivian king of pop. There was once a time when you could not walk two feet in the Maldives without hearing one of his songs on the TV or radio. I’d post more screenshots of the incident, but most people have already changed their pictures and names back. Guess the world can only take so much Ayya.

Of course I say one time because Ali Rameez is currently a violent extremist “sheikh” who constantly spreads hate and fear speech against Maldivian minorities such as non-Muslims and LGBTI+ people. While being a massive sexist of course. On top of this, he also regularly promotes such lovely things as child marriage.

In the above screenshot, the Dhivehi text reads “Islam dheenun beyru vejje meehaa; gathul kuraasheve’”, which roughly translates to “Slaughter those who leave Islam”. The first comment below it reads “It is best if such children move to a country where they can get the freedoms that they want. No space for atheist in this country”. It doesn’t take a genius to see how this encourages vigilante violence against non-Muslims. I suppose it is also worth pointing out again for the thousandth time that the Maldives is one of the few countries in the world whose constitution bans freedom of conscience. Ali Rameez promotes these views on his official twitter account and his facebook page, where he also pimps out his extremist buddies from religious NGOs like Jammaiyathul Salaf.

With all this in mind, it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that Ali Rameez hates his pop star past. He did famously dump all of his CD’s into the ocean after all.

Is singer/songwriter Ali Rameez and haabee Ali Rameez the same person? 🤔

— Refty (@Refty) November 23, 2018

So while people took the opportunity to mock / celebrate him by sharing his music and reminiscing about the days when he wasn't a psychopath, others took the opportunity to gaslight Maldivian minorities by claiming that the good sheikh was being bullied.

we advocate for tolerance and acceptance yet we are intolerant to those that have an understanding different to us. I really don't believe @aliramyz should be bullied and bashed like this. This has gone beyond a simple friendly joke. This needs to stop.

— Ghaanim (@Qhaany) November 23, 2018

This kind of gaslighting is typical from “liberal” Maldivians who fall head over heels to defend extremists yet never utter a single word in support of Maldivian minorities whose very existence is criminalized. As such I am sure these people are not ignorant of Ali Rameez’s extremism. Instead I think they are sympathetic. I think extremists like that say what these people are afraid of saying. What they really think.

You will never get any of these people to admit whether they support something as basic as freedom of conscience. However they will rarely admit they don’t support it either. Instead, they will prop up the extremists who have the courage to actually express such darkness. This is why I respect honest extremists who will say to my face that they want to kill me. I have no respect at all to closet conservatives like this who pretend to sit on a fence while they crap on minorities below. It is not an equal conversation when one side has their existence criminalized.

“liberal extremism” is a thing

— Shani 🍂 (@shani1i) November 23, 2018

Can you believe the audacity of such a statement from people who do not think their fellow Maldivians deserve constitutional recognition?

Wait till you are bashed and joked about for saying this.

— Mushfiga Waheed (@MushfigaWaheed) November 23, 2018

Comments like this one are referring to an incident in the past when a woman on twitter made extremely homophobic remarks. For once a lot of people on Maldivian twitter called out this woman for her blatantly bigoted remarks. Not this crowd of closet conservatives though. Much like this incident, back then they sided with the bigot being roasted. How could you bully such an innocent person they all decried.

This past event, and the common occurrence of conservatives and extremists to claim to be victims of “bullying”, is what has led to the creation of the local meme of “bleeing”.

stop bleeing ayya 😭😭 stop bleeing his extremist opinions 😭😭😭 stop admiring his flawless voice 😭😭😭 SAY NO TO BLEEING 😩 https://t.co/Bg2lymNMtV

— imran (@imlatheef) November 23, 2018

This type of gaslighting would be funny if it wasn’t the norm. Gaslighting, for those unfamiliar, is when an oppressor makes a person doubt their own memories and self. It is a common tactic used by abusive people against their partners. Wikipedia defines it as “a form of psychological manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. “

They states that the signs of gaslighting are:

Withholding information from victim;

Countering information to fit the abuser's perspective;

Discounting information;

Verbal abuse, usually in the form of jokes;

Blocking and diverting the victim's attention from outside sources;

Trivializing the victim's worth; and,

Undermining victim by gradually weakening them and their thought process.

When have he ever advocated killing anyone he deems as infidels? Any reference?

— Mohamed Allam Naeem (@8laam) November 23, 2018

Observe this clear example from a tweet calling the original one out.

When he is okay with underage marriage. When he blames the rape victim always. These are the different views you talk about? Yes. I do have a problem with that.

— 𝕲𝖎𝖗𝖑 𝕴𝖓𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖗𝖚𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖉 (@Thathu182) November 24, 2018

Look at the response above. Ali Rameez is well known for blaming rape victims and his support for child marriage. Yet the original tweet dismisses this as having a “different understanding”.

It’s nice that everyone’s having a bit of fun. But do try to keep in mind that @aliramyz thinks it’s okay to marry 13 year olds, promotes violent jihad, is a core member of Jamiyyathul Salaf, and advocates the death penalty for those he considers laadheenee.

— Mohamed Shuraih (@MohamedShuraih) November 23, 2018

The day led to some clashes within the more progressive parts (relative to the Taliban) of Maldivian twitter as well, with some people thinking that the incident downplayed Ali Rameez’s extremism.

Just for fun, would you put a pedo on your Twitter DP? I don't think so. kthnksbye

— @waddey (@waddey) November 23, 2018

Isn't Ali Rameez known for his extremist religious views? 🤔 Love his songs but finding it strange to be so obsessed with him given who he is now.

— 🍞🌹 (@kopitaaaa) November 23, 2018

Some responses from the twitter cult leader responsible for this madness:

Haha hello my cult, what else should I do today after renouncing feminism and supporting Ali Rameez’s extremism, might fuck around and drop all my morals and principles and become someone N E W

— KeehveFA (@ShafaRameez) November 23, 2018

I would also like to tell you it’s not only Ali Rameez’s beautiful voice that mesmerizes me, it’s also his promotion of extremism (obviously), and presence in Jamiyyathul Salad (OBVIOUSLY) also in other news @imlatheef hates Ariana Grande 😭😭

— KeehveFA (@ShafaRameez) November 23, 2018

Kindly fuck off and let people fucking enjoy today, good lord! 😂 People woke up to an abundance of Ali Rameezs on their TL today, that is fucking AMAZING that it was pulled off. An, miothy than thanah thadhuvaa kudhinnah khaassa lavayeh ♥️https://t.co/hw61dHt1Jf

— KeehveFA (@ShafaRameez) November 23, 2018

Now that we’ve dealt with the drama and my existential bitterness, here are some of the funnier tweets from the day:

Kaia asking me the name of a random internet cat that popped up on my timeline. Told her the first name that popped into my mind. Ali Rameez. Thanks, twitter.

— EhJu (@EhJu) November 23, 2018

If you people don’t get sarcasm that’s really on you at this point. Brb listening to Nudhaashe Mage Loabiva for the 50th time today. :) https://t.co/TOb4K9xIaO

— KeehveFA (@ShafaRameez) November 23, 2018

Brain reading the entire timeline in Ali Rameez voice. Ali: I'm no one's crush. Ali: this cabinet is bullshit. Ali: here's a cat. Ali: I'd rather use tampons but they're too expensive W E I R D

— EhJu (@EhJu) November 23, 2018

me, before and after listening to ali rameez’s emotional masterpiece maruvedhaaney maadhamaa gaimey pic.twitter.com/AzhMts5nDO

— imran (@imlatheef) November 23, 2018

#NationalAyyaDay Ayya: Capitalising on his Freeze Band to make a Freeze Brand!

— Yuna Waheed 🎈❓ (@YuAeKito) November 23, 2018

Ali Rameez towards the end of his music career was in a band called “Freeze Band”. Once he gave up music, he capitalized on this by creating “Freeze Brand” - a company that sells dried fish and other products. Gotta admit that some of their stuff is pretty delicious though.

Ali Rameez and me in the same frame #happiestmoment 😂 pic.twitter.com/kfdXFccxCx

— ⚫️⚪️TEDRY🎈❓ (@tedry) November 23, 2018

With all these Ali Rameez songs floating around, I’m sad I haven’t seen a single “Bunebala ladhu ganefaa erey”. Definitely one of my favourites. #NationalAyyaDay

— Shubbi (@shubaadam) November 23, 2018

On this auspicious day I was just blessed to see Ali Rameez on the road. 😱😱😱😱

— S-laughter (@heyshaha) November 23, 2018

I give up on checking who’s who, I’m liking everything in bulk now

— KeehveFA (@ShafaRameez) November 22, 2018

I can't pic.twitter.com/BmK40l9i3f

— Saaif Shiyad 🇲🇻 (@SaaifShiyad) November 22, 2018

Ayya had moves. #NationalAyyaDay pic.twitter.com/TT8s4o8mjQ

— immi 🐑 (@immimmii) November 22, 2018

The other day at uni i saw ali rameez and randomly started singing “dhanee dhanee” bc obviously i was leaving the uni

— salty (@thelulifaiyy) November 22, 2018

the first time ali rameez looked at me. i was walking on sosun magu with a friend when we saw ali rameez and involuntarily shouted “EY ALI RAMEEEZ”. he looked, but looked away even faster. 😥#NationalAyyaDay

— Naura 🇲🇻 (@ayshathnaura) November 23, 2018

Since @ShafaRameez wanted me to do this so badly, like this tweet and I'll be brutally honest about your Twitter profile picture.

— Mi dhehiy vaathee, loabin gulhifaa (@haesham) November 23, 2018

Tb to the time i made eye contact with Ayya for a split second while eating pani puri @ the place infront of Iskandhar. He was having tea and looked away at the speed of light. Ma iny anga haluvan ves neyngifa

— KirimJehiBanas (@meynakambulo) November 23, 2018

The best part about this is how much I hate Ali Rameez and he still hasn't blocked me.

— San (@dontcallmesatan) November 23, 2018

Did you call him a finifenmaa ?

— Althaf🎈؟ (@AlthafAli_) November 23, 2018

pic.twitter.com/hbrqaLvwh0

— Musal (@FoniLunbo) November 23, 2018

The cat is screaming out lyrics to one of Ali Rameez’s hit songs “Finifenmalakey” (like a rose).

At the end I listened to all the heart broken Ali Rameez songs and now I feel like I have fallen out of love, hard. 😭💔 https://t.co/eVnWk4tmgQ

— Azzam Pompi Mohamed (@Pompeee) November 23, 2018

legends say people are still trying to get over the double vision of ayya from their twitter feeds 🤣🤣

— Awhosun (@awhosun) November 23, 2018

Marinating a chicken with bae. It's so hot man

— Shady 🎈❓ (@shadyfish) November 23, 2018

Ali Rameez had a particularly saucy hit video where he sensuously marinates a chicken with a beautiful woman. Probably one of the sources of his paranoia about his past sins.

#NationalAyyaDay, a day to honor the legendary Maldivian singer @aliramyz 🙏 pic.twitter.com/dTtVKU1WTw

— 🙏 آدم محمد (@Adamiington) November 23, 2018

I’d like to point out the fact that @semiicold has had his photo way before this started and I didn’t see it till after @FoniLunbo suggested this photo so a round of applause for him because we’re living in 2018 and he’s living in 3018. We stan! 👏🏾

— KeehveFA (@ShafaRameez) November 22, 2018

#Islam #Ali Rameez

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task-modelcam-blog · 6 years

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When Pop Culture And Digital Marketing Collide

In the age of the Millennials and the GenZers, the drab, old “Look at our product, look at how lovely it is” methods do not work. At all. These people love their memes and gifs; they’re aware and vocal about their social causes; to them, celebrities are closer to being role models than merely evening entertainment. Thanks to these factors, they have a superpower when it comes to sniffing out brands trying to sell them stuff under the guise of caring about them.

To appeal to these masses, you will have to get with the times, so to speak. There are lots of ways you can do this, but the most popular perhaps is the use of pop culture as a marketing device. Lots of brands are exploring this (not so) new possibility and most of them are succeeding in attracting the right kind of attention. Because of this, using pop culture references in marketing is starting to gain the reputation of being a sure shot way to success; the ultimate weapon in a marketer’s arsenal.

But even this so-called “sure shot” way has taken some victims, mostly because these brands didn’t fully understand how to use pop culture. They either looked at it as a last resort to appeal to the younger generations or were trying to look hip and cool without putting any actual thought into it.

If you don’t want to fall victim to the devil disguised as a shiny, new, easy-to-use marketing method, there are some no-no’s that you might want to take a note of.

What Is Pop Culture?

Before getting into what you should not do with pop culture, let’s quickly see what pop culture is and what it consists of.

Simply put, “pop culture” refers to anything that a society as a whole (or a majority of the society) considers to be mainstream. So any set of practices, beliefs, and objects that are widely accepted to be dominant or omnipresent can be categorized as pop culture. Pop culture is prominent (and sometimes originates from) movies, music, television, video games, sports, news (as in people/places in the news), politics, fashion/clothes, technology, and slang.

Since the very definition of pop culture is beliefs and practices that are omnipresent and dominant, it has a strong influence on, not only the entire society but also on the everyday lives of individuals. This very aspect of pop culture is what makes it a double-edged sword for brands; since people are so familiar with pop culture, they will either relate to your message or be harshly critical of it.

Know More About Social Selling @ https://bit.ly/2nLDRaW

The Biggest Don’ts Of Pop Culture Marketing

1. Using Social Causes to Sell Your Product

The biggest mistake brands make in the haste of getting on the pop culture bandwagon is to use social causes to sell their product. Now you’re probably thinking, “hey, wait up, lots of brands talk about social causes and it gets them so much popularity.” And you’re right, they do talk about social issues and it does get them the popularity, but that is because they show that they genuinely care about the topic and the people; they do serious research about it before making any comments, they interact with the people facing the issue, vocalize their support, launch drives and campaigns promoting awareness about the cause.

None of them says “buy out products if you believe that black lives matter” or “using our product will help resolve this issue.”

Look at what happened when Pepsi tried that; it became the biggest, most talked about marketing blunder of the year. People were so outraged by it that PepsiCo president Brad Jakeman stepped down and called the ad “the most gut-wrenching experience of my career.” Yeah, it was that bad.

The reason this practice is so frowned upon is that it minimizes the experience of the victims and survivors; it basically says “use our product! It will settle the arguments that have taken hundreds of victims and stop all the violence and anguish caused!!” In short, it is wildly, outrageously insensitive.

2. Looking at Alternate Implications of Your Message

This point is applicable even if you aren’t using pop culture marketing because there are a lot of words in every language that have multiple meanings and using the wrong words can have terrible, brand image shattering consequences.

To understand this point, let’s see how a popular brand messed up a pop culture reference without even making the reference.

Adidas is a sportswear brand so it is obvious that it will get involved in marathons and triathlons and other such sports competitions. This is exactly what it did after the 2017 Boston Marathon when it sent the runners an email with the subject line “Congrats, you survived the Boston Marathon!”

Sounds harmless, right? Everyone says “you/I/they survived” something that needed lots of efforts. But people all over twitter expressed outrage and pure disgust over the subject line of this particular email. The reason: the Boston Marathon bombing of 2013, which killed three and injured more than 260 others, in which case “surviving” the marathon had a completely different connotation.

So, to avoid coming off as insensitive and careless, make sure that you look at your campaign from every angle possible.

3. Not Doing Proper Research

Everyone uses pop culture references in normal conversation, but if you’re a brand, you need to be very careful with how, when, and where you use these references; otherwise they will come back to haunt you.

Take Wendy’s for example; it is a fast food restaurant company but is probably better known for its witty Twitter persona. In 2017, it got some serious backlash over tweeting a Pepe the frog meme. If you don’t know who the infamous Pepe is, it was an innocent, funny meme that was made famous as a white supremacist symbol in the 2016 United States presidential election.

In defence of the person who posted the meme, Amy Brown, the social media manager at Wendy’s, said that he was “unaware of the recent political connotations associated with Pepe memes…Since this used to be purely an innocuous meme, he had this fan content saved from a year or two ago,”

4. Don’t Underestimate Your Campaign’s Success

When it comes to promoting your brand using pop culture references, never, ever underestimate how well it will do; in fact, it will do you some good if you prepare for things going slightly better than expected (slightly, because you don’t want to waste resources).

McDonald’s Rick and Morty’s Szechuan Sauce promotion perfectly exemplifies what happens when you underrate the power of pop culture. Back in 2017, McDonald’s promised Rock and Morty fans a “super limited” release of the famous sauce, the episode of which topped 11 million viewers. But when they said super limited, they meant super limited because some locations got only 20 packets of the sauce while others got zero and lo and behold, madness ensued.

You can do everything right with a pop culture reference but still get hit with a major fail if you underestimate its success.

5. Don’t Use Funny References at Serious Places

Some pop culture references are hilarious (like “The Dress”) while some are highly sensitive (like social causes) and each has a time and place to be used.

An example where a brand failed to realize this is the Yanny/Laurel by the U.S. Air Force. While you might think it is impossible to go wrong with such a light-hearted, funny ice-breaker, the U.S. Air Force managed to do just that by tweeting “The Taliban Forces in Farah city #Afghanistan would much rather have heard #Yanny or #Laurel than the deafening #BRRRT they got courtesy of our #A10.”

Whoa! Insensitive much?

Safe to say, the internet did not take this well.

Now, this doesn’t mean that funny reference can be used in serious settings (a good example being Salvation Army using “The Dress” to shed light on domestic violence), and the vice versa, sometimes, it’s better to just not do that.

Using pop culture and pop culture references to be more relatable to your audience is not wrong; neither is speaking up about social causes. But what matters here is your intention. Remember that your audiences, especially the younger ones, have a special ability to see through brands masking sales pitches with pop culture. What’s worse, they’ll definitely call you out for it.

An easy way to successfully use pop culture as a marketing device is to do proper research, be aware of the situation around the particular reference, use it at the right time, in the right setting, and never ever underestimate the influence a good reference holds.

#Brands #popculture #marketing device #smartphone #digital marketing #amitjadhav #amitjadhavsocial

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politicalfilth-blog · 7 years

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Trumps Pivot That Will Bring On The End Of The U.S. Empire

We Are Change

Welcome back beautiful and amazing human beings, here at WeAreChange we often confuse a lot of people. To pinpoint our philosophy, we are here to get you to question your reality so that you can make up your own mind.

We are a fully independent broadcast news organization that is financed by you. I needed to say that before getting into the next subject of this video which is a very light topic which is of course “The diabolical, evil plot by bloodthirsty globalists to start a war, with the help of the mainstream media!”

youtube

More concisely we are going to be talking about Trump’s Afghanistan plan, the internal battles between Kushner and Steve Bannon, and how Henry Kissinger’s recent comments support ISIS. A few days ago I tweeted:

Some of the recent actions by the Trump administration show that this is increasingly likely. We’re getting alleged information that it was Ivanka Trunk and Jared Kushner is the reason that Donald Trump’s Chief Strategist Steve Bannon was removed from the White House.

Now Mr. Kushner, Ivanka’s husband has been very instrumental in the White House. He has business ties to George Soros and Goldman Sachs.

He is the one who called Lockheed Martin to get Saudi Arabia a better deal.

A few weeks ago it was this couple that got Trump to launch a military strike on the Syrian Government because “Ivanka watched a video of children suffering inside Syria.”

We hear that Steve Bannon called Jared Kushner a cuck and a globalist.

Even since his recent ouster, many analysts are saying this is a major win for the globalists. Finally, a lot more people are concerned about this globalist influence in Trump’s administration. This is something we have been talking about on this broadcast since the beginning of his presidency.

We are now seeing a more aggressive, more militarized, more war hawkish stance by this administration. Today they just slapped further sanctions on Chinese and Russian companies and individuals, supposedly so they will put pressure on North Korea.

These sanctions are a significant move one that is generally considered a form of economic warfare. The United States is more aggressive, stating that they need a Pre-emptive war on North Korea to stop a war. Which if you think about it doesn’t make any sense.

These latest developments show that the president does not represent the people of this country but a small number of individuals that are pulling the strings.

Donald Trump just made a major announcement about Afghanistan and what was his decision. Back in 2013, he agreed that we should withdraw from Afghanistan.

In 2011, he stated that we are wasting money in Iraq and Afghanistan, that Ron Paul is right.

and then he said

What did the man who said he wanted to be a non-interventionist, that promised to pull back the military troops, what did he do well, he totally flipped-flopped.

He just made the same excuses of his predecessor Barack Obama.

Trump has approved sending 4,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, and imagine my shock when he gave no timeline for withdrawal.

This is extremely frustrating as it makes almost no sense unless you look at what the media and government are not telling you. The United States has already spent over a trillion dollars in Afghanistan. 3600 Americans have been killed, and twenty thousand soldiers have been wounded. This occupation has been the longest conflict in the history of the United States now in its sixteenth year.

There are a number of reasons why we are in Afghanistan. These include the Taliban who in 2000 managed to almost completely eliminate the worlds largest crop of opium and heroin production in under a year.

Ever since the United States took over the country, it has turned into a Narco State ruled jihadists and drug lords.

According to the United Nations, the war-torn nation provides 90 percent of the world’s supply of opium. You know one of the most addicting drugs in existence.

Afghanistan is also rich in natural resources rare metals that help run your computer and your cell phones.

People like McMaster, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain are celebrating this announcement. Which is ultimately a continuation of the same policies of Bush and Obama. Even the mainstream media is cheering him on, congratulating him on his bold new action plan against Afghanistan. Which is really the same old plan we have had since 2001, and they say I’m the conspiracy theorist.

People need to realize Donald Trump has just shifted toward total Neo-Con, he is now doing the same policies that never change no matter who is president.

We all need to wake up to this and stop being naive. It’s not just drugs and natural resources that the United States is after but also global hegemony. A big part of the new deal to everyone has a lot to do with Iran. Since Israel and the U.S. have aligned themselves with Saudi Arabia. They are the one’s that fund the Wahhabists, the pushers of Islamic terrorists against Iran. Saudi Arabia and Iran control most of the oil in the Middle East. They have been fighting each other through various proxy wars.

One reason to leave troops in Afganistan is to make sure that Iran doesn’t gain influence over Afghanistan. Iran has been fighting off drug lords on the border with Afghanistan where all that opium and heroin is produced.

Henry Kissinger has come out saying that he would rather have ISIS than risk Iran becoming more influential in the Middle East.

Kissinger is one of the most influential American foreign policy advisors and a major globalist who is tangled up with various secret societies within the establishment. He advises Donald Trump, and Donald says he respects Kissinger dearly and has regular meetings with him. He is recommending to Trump not to destroy ISIS as that could lead to a radical Iranian empire. If we examine American foreign policy, we have seen them weaponize, fund, and support the radical Islamic terrorists known as ISIS to get rid of nation states inside of the middle east. Iran is one of the countries that are fighting against ISIS and these terrorists.

All of this conflicts with the real reason we went into Afghanistan in 2001 which was to fight terrorism. Terrorism is just an excuse since there are greater geopolitical stakes involved. These policies are detrimental to the people of the United States but are beneficial to bankers like Goldman Sachs and the military contractors and generals that surround Donald Trump. These policies are stupid and will not change even though Trump made promises to do so. This will eventually result in the decline of the United States and the destruction of our nation state.

So yeah, that’s what is happening from my perspective. Let me know if you agree or disagree in the comments.

I want to thank everyone who donates, and you are more important than ever before. No matter what I love you and thank you so much for being here, for your support and your viewership.

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The post Trumps Pivot That Will Bring On The End Of The U.S. Empire appeared first on We Are Change.

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