#how fucking impossible is it going to become to show dissent in this fucking country or yknow go to a fucking vigil

[snappysprinkledog]

what happened at clapham which people are already calling a protest which it wasnt it was a vigil is making me even more terrified for the powers the police are going to legally have over protests and what they deem ‘protests’ once the pcsc bill goes through next week which it almost certainly will.

#*looks at certain people* the police arent your friends #sarah everard #how little are they going to use as an excuse to arrest people for protests? #how fucking impossible is it going to become to show dissent in this fucking country or yknow go to a fucking vigil????? #the met dont like you talking about how one of their officers murdered a woman uwu #FUCK ALL OF THIS #pcsc bill #clapham #acab

[divulgacion-alternativa]

Ben Ful Links - February 22/2021

Weekly Geo-Political News and Analysis

Benjamin Fulford. February 22, 2021

Massive March Campaign Planned Against Global Idiocracy

Source: benjaminfulford.net

------------------------------------------

Ben Ful Links - February 22/2021:

For example, the peer-reviewed scientific report sent to us by British and French intelligence says:

“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on August 23, 2020, ‘For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned.  For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.’”

(Science, Public Health Policy and the Law Volume 2:4 October 12,2020) https://jdfor2020.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/adf864_165a103206974fdbb14ada6bf8af1541.pdf

Here, for example, is a link to a scientific report admitting CRISPR is used in “Covid-19” vaccines. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7469881/

The Cabal’s state actors are now under increasing attack for their criminal activities.  Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told puppet President Biden off last Wednesday after China Joe instructed him to shut down the state because of the fake Pandemic.  Speaking to vaccine czar Dr. Anthony Faustus DeSantis asked, “How much do you stand to earn from these vaccines, Dr. Fauci?”  He then added, “And, Joe, if you continue with this course of action, I will authorize the state National Guard to protect the movement of Floridians.”  When Biden replied, “Address me as Mr. President or President Biden,” DeSantis replied “I will not, and you can go fuck yourself,” before hanging up. https://realrawnews.com/2021/02/gov-desantis-tells-biden-go-fuck-yourself/

The situation on the ground is now so dire that, in just one example, a new survey by the NYC Hospitality Alliance reveals that 92 percent of New York restaurants couldn’t afford to pay December rent. https://thenycalliance.org/information/december-2020-rent-report

Also even to corporate propaganda media is starting to revolt against their fake narratives.  For example, in an appearance on MSNBC, White House COVID adviser Andy Slavitt said the fact that Covid infection patterns were identical in no lockdown Florida and hyper-lockdown California was “a little bit beyond our explanation.” https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/watch-biden-adviser-struggles-explain-similar-covid-numbers-ca-fl-despite-opposite

The Cabal is now desperately dialing down the fake pandemic as reality becomes impossible for them to deny any longer.  That is why they are reporting a huge drop in “Covid” cases and propaganda news articles are now saying the entire “pandemic” could be over by April. http://www.battleforworld.com/2020/08/01/covid-19-where-does-it-end/#CovidCasesDrop

https://www.statista.com/chart/22067/daily-new-cases-by-world-region/

Of course, we must never underestimate these criminals because they have literally thousands of years of experience in herding humans as if they were livestock.  The attack on Texas -which involved deliberately shutting down their power grid in the middle of a cold snap- is one example.  This came after Texas Congressman Ron Wright “died of Covid-19,” and as an election for his replacement looms, the corporate propaganda media is full of articles criticizing the Texas establishment for “mishandling,” its energy grid. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/17/texas-shows-that-when-you-cannot-govern-you-lie-lot/

Now, NSA sources are telling us the next thing the criminal regime is planning is food shortages. The NSA notes:

1) Small farms shutting down world-wide.

2) Over 1,000 ships off our coast with food as the FDA keeps them out at sea; allowing the food to rot,

3) China is outbidding everyone for food worldwide as their crops fail,

4) This NASA-created freeze is not allowing food shipments across the nations; USA, Europe, etc.

Furthermore, the NSA notes railroads are sitting idle so trucks must pick up the slack meaning shipping costs went from $1,000 per container to $10,000 per container from Seattle to Chicago.  They note the same trouble in Japan as ports need constant upgrades due to shaking.  To top things off, they say “Biden is shipping USA Grain Reserves to China again.” https://news.yahoo.com/world-pay-more-meat-food-050000496.html

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/amid-soaring-food-prices-kraft-heinz-conagra-brands-set-raise-prices

The cabal has also been tearing down power substations in the U.S. for years “so a 3-hour power outage becomes a 3-week power outage,” the sources note.  They say what happened in Texas was “just a foretaste.” https://www.revolver.news/2021/02/texass-power-grid-disaster-is-only-the-beginning/

In addition to economic sabotage, the Cabal is now promoting multiple space missions to gather money. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9273375/Seven-minutes-terror-NASAs-Perseverance-land-Mars-TODAY.html

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/worldnews/14089099/russia-china-sign-historic-deal-build-first-moon-base/

Now let us look at a recent snapshot of some of the moronic policies the Cabal is trying to impose on the world.  For one thing, they are still harping endlessly about Iran and its so-called “nuclear bomb.”  Here for example is a Mossad linked Debka comment saying “the blank wall reached by President Joe Biden’s policy for re-engaging Iran in nuclear diplomacy is that his advisers could not get together on a strategy for stalling its progress towards a bomb.”  This is the same BS they have been repeated endlessly for over 30 years. https://www.debka.com/are-bidens-moves-for-nuclear-diplomacy-with-iran-stuck-in-the-sand/

Of course, if you take a look at Iranian leaders wearing their sheep masks, you can tell Iran is also just a cabal colony playing their role in trying to get us all to kill each other in WWIII.  https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/white-house-signals-iran-its-ready-eu-sponsored-talks-major-nuke-deal-breakthrough

In Israel meanwhile, the sheeple there are now being given the mark of the beast vaccination certificates that allow them to go shopping, etc.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-re-opens-further-with-green-pass-for-vaccinated/ar-BB1dSlf1

And then we have German Chancellor Angela Hitler saying, “the pandemic is not over until all people in the world have been vaccinated.” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-politics-g7-merkel-idUSKBN2AJ1WG

Of course, any nations opposed to this are “rogue nations,” opposed to a “rules-based world order,” which is why NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, “China and Russia are trying to re-write the rules of the road to benefit their own interests.” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-security-nato-idUSKBN2AJ24G

The Pentagon is on board with the plan to occupy Israel and so are the Russians.  “Russia is the last island of freedom,” State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said recently adding, “Do you see what’s happening in the United States of America?  The country is dying, everything has been canceled out.” https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/02/17/russia-is-the-worlds-last-island-of-freedom-parliament-speaker-says-a72995

Several targets have been outlined for the spring offensive against the cabal.  In addition to Israel, any world leader pushing for Covid-19 vaccines has to be removed ASAP.  These include Boris Johnson of the UK, Justin Castro of Canada, Angela Hitler of Germany, Joe CG Biden of the U.S. etc.

Removing Justin Castro in Canada is a high priority because it will allow Canadian troops to join their compatriots in states like Texas and Florida to fight against the Khazarian mafia strongholds like California and New York.  https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/14-5m-canadians-to-be-immunized-by-june-updated-vaccination-timeline-shows-1.5314048

Also, Google and Facebook were created with taxpayer money and then given to private individuals.  They are now taking over power from elected governments and must be nationalized.  “Freedom of speech is not something that anonymous moderators working for private companies should decide,” Deputy Polish Justice Minister Sebastian Kaleta said recently.  “Instead, that is for the national body; duly elected officials,” he added.   https://www.foxnews.com/world/poland-fights-big-tech-push-block-social-media-censorship?utm_campaign=later-linkinbio-foxnews&utm_content=later-14580965&utm_medium=social&utm_source=instagram

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-admin-working-directly-big-tech-crush-vaccine-dissent

----------------------------------------------

[tanadrin]

Controversial opinion: The sole aim of political organization is to maintain or increase the standard of living in society.

Or, to phrase it more precisely: the only relevant question in politics is, “how do we increase the standard of living?” Everything else is at best a vain and frivolous distraction.

I knock the Marxists sometimes for caring too much about the material aspect of human existence, and confusing that with the *meaningful* aspect of human existence, which I do not think are at all the same; the reason a lot of traditional, worker-oriented left-wing politics seems sterile and a little exhausting to me is that it obsesses particularly over the material output of society and the value of the individual with relation to that output, without addressing the things *I* care about. I don't find monumental engineering accomplishments inherently stirring (a giant dam or power plant is neat, but mostly for the things it enables; a giant space rocket is very neat, but only because it lets us go to space), and while you might, a vision of Utopia concerned primarily, to say nothing of only, with steel production figures, the distribution of consumer goods, and lionizing square-jawed avatars of !LABOR!--well, it bores me to tears, to be frank.

(While my utopia would involve material comfort, it would primarily be a utopia of quiet intellectualism, social harmony, and low-grade spirituality. That probably sounds as dull to some people as communist!Utopia sounds to me, which is fine; many visions of utopia are mutually incompatible, which is why there's a certain burden on people of a utopian bent to recognize that, unless they're willing to consign large swathes of the population to a kind of dreary purgatory, no vision of utopia can demand to be a totalizing vision of the future.)

But I am increasingly of the opinion that, in a non-totalizing way, the Marxists and the neoliberals are the only ones getting one thing right: namely, a focus on politics as, properly, the sphere of economic development. Nothing more, nothing less.

The history of increasing human social organization is the history of increasing human economic organization. This is not an original observation. The transition from hunter-gatherer societies to settled agricultural societies, a transition that, to paraphrase Douglas Adams, has made a lot of people upset and was widely regarded as a bad move at the time, offered nothing meaningful to the increase of human flourishing except maybe more humans, packed into a smaller area, and suffering a commensurate increase in disease, along with a commensurate decrease in free time and personal freedom. Out of which we get patriarchy, organized religion, and ziggurats; depending on your personal philosophy/taste in monumental architecture, that might not be *all* bad. Settled agricultural societies outcompeted nomads of various stripes by virtue of the fact that they could support more people, including a dedicated warrior caste, and in the modern period this transition is essentially complete, leaving true nomads to very marginal land beyond the outskirts of settled society.

Innovations in human political organization since then have been enabled by innovations in human economic organization: empires are supported by large-scale economic integration of disparate regions (the Silk Road, the Roman road network and Mediterranean thalassocracy, the triangle trade and European colonialism), and innovations in economic organization like the joint-stock corporation, paper money, and double-entry bookkeeping are impossible where the economic preconditions for their creation don't exist, and probably inevitable where they do. This isn't to elide the importance of actual historical circumstance and the decisions of individuals: for various reasons, for instance, paper money was invented first in China but didn't really take off there like it later did in Europe.

What I'd like to argue is that much of what we take for granted as a separate component of politics, that is to say, as seeming to arise independently from political economics, is in fact dependent directly or indirectly on economic organization. Enlightenment and later liberal democratic values both marked substantial turning points in the history of Western and world politics, revolutionizing our understanding of the relationship of the individual to society and the individual to authority. The consequences of those ideas are still being fought over as we decide how far to carry them. I suggest, however, that these ideas could not have arisen much before they did in European history (and probably world history), being contingent on the rise in standards of living occasioned by the increasing economic sophistication of the societies in which they appeared and then took hold.

Think of it as a kind of Maslovian hierarchy: the more our basic needs as a society are being met, which is isomorphic to saying the more each separate individual's bodily needs are being met, the more we can devote attention to meeting additional needs--psychological needs like personal freedom and self-actualization. Insofar as agricultural society made rigid social hierarchies possible, increased the population density to the degree that you couldn't just fuck off to the next valley when your chieftain was being a dick (and made it so you lacked the skills to survive on your own), and decayed the standard of living for the average individual, it actually represented a massive *regression* (individually) in standards of living. The worker of the industrial revolution had to fight tooth and nail to get two days off a week and to work less than twelve hours a day; modern anthropologists like Marshall Sahlins estimate hunter gatherers have to work about 20 hours a week to meet their needs. Such societies also tend to be far more egalitarian and, at least in some cases, sexually liberated--in contrast, as a society we're now struggling to reinvent something like equality between the sexes and to dispense with our crippling neuroses about human sexuality, both of which are relics of the brittle hierarchical social organization of our ancient Mesopotamian predecessors.

Rises in standards of living in the modern period correlate with the adoption of what we think of as Western values. I'd like to suggest these so-called "western values" are just the statistical aggregate of millions of people suddenly becoming aware that the fulfillment of their individual psychological needs is possible, because they feel, compared to people in previous eras, less economic pressure to conform lest it cost them their livelihoods, or their lives. Flexible career options and the existence of public unemployment insurance means that if you don't fit in with the environment of a socially conservative firm, you can seek a new job without worrying about starving to death. Consequently, the workplace is one less avenue through which conservative elements of society are likely to be able to enforce their values. But this is a modern example: going back further, being shunned from one's community entirely was a very real possibility, depending on how much one dissented from the social norm, in, e.g., colonial America--Rhode Island was founded by Roger Williams, who was banished from Massachussetts for having the temerity to suggest church and state be separate. Further back, acts as apparently innocuous to modern ears as writing love poetry (i.e., trying to seduce a woman instead of going through normally approved social channels to set up a marriage) in medieval Iceland could land you a sentence of outlawry, which in an agrarian society in a marginal environment is not merely ostracization: it can amount to a death sentence.

In other words, the more prosperous a society the less failure to conform means death or reduction to the state of a wretched beggar. Prosperous societies can support larger urban communities which unlike small rural communities can support random unconnected individuals showing up out of nowhere looking for work. A society prosperous enough to provide for widows and orphans is one where women no longer have to be socially subservient to men in order to survive, i.e., where they can pursue their own psychological and social fulfillment, and demand further concessions to their ability to do so from a conservative political leadership. A society prosperous enough to support very large cities is one with cities large enough for subcultures and communities to form which were previously rare enough that failure to conform was all but impossible: that is, gay and lesbian communities, or communities of gender-nonconforming people in societies with strict sexual norms. Once some small degree of personal psychological fulfillment or freedom becomes possible, agitation for a larger degree of freedom becomes likely.

The minimum needed to support human artistic, spiritual, psychological, and social flourishing, then, that is to say, to support all those things which pertain to being human that aren't the bare facts of material existence, are improvements in the conditions of our material existence. That is necessary; is it sufficient? In aggregate, I think so. Even modern counterexamples of the trend toward "western" liberalism conjoined with economic flourishing (i.e., China) work only so long as the improvements in material conditions are massive and sustained over a very long period of time. When economic growth in China stalls eventually, as it must for any rapidly industrializing country, the pressure for social and political liberation will increase sharply. This isn't to say that the correlation between prosperity and personal fulfillment is ironclad: it's a trend, but one I think is very strong. If you care at all about the non-material condition of society, and of individuals in society (and remember, society is nothing but the aggregate of individuals!), then you have to care about the material prosperity of society, and increasing that prosperity. If our wealth and our standards of living flourish, everything else good to us can flourish as well. This isn't to say there aren't more and less efficient ways of increasing non-material human flourishing, based on how we increase material human flourishing: if, for instance, all material gains are going to a small part of society, either a particular social stratum or a particular region of the world, then they will be able to flourish better at the expense of everyone else. Under conditions of inequality, it should not be a puzzle that some groups and areas flourish better than others. That still means the goal of political organization should be the more efficient increase of *general* material wellbeing, in this case by attempting to even out the gains of additional economic growth.

Lastly, I'll note that it may seem strange to talk of increases of nonmaterial measures of human wellbeing, especially over the course of the last century or two, when modern society is notably more fragmented in terms of family structures than society in previous eras, notably less spiritual (to the point where vague New Age-type movements and new religious movements like neopaganism flourish as people struggle to find spiritual fulfillment in modern society), and often seems no happier in general. I don't think that the "modern condition" provides a strong counterexample to my fundamental argument. Let's look at spirituality first. I don't think traditional spirituality is any better at fulfilling people's spiritual needs than New Age woo. Indeed, organized religion in the West is historically often synonymous with hypocrisy, corruption, and subordination to secular power. Moreover, traditional organized religion relies for its popularity on being able to enforce strong social norms with a very high penalty for people who decline to publicly share those norms; even in a prosperous society, being shunned is psychologically painful, and often state violence was employed in the enforcement of religious-social norms. Traditionally religion has also often made empirical claims about the world which, now being subject to experiment and analysis, are often no longer held to be true. It is inevitable that, as science marches on and traditional methods of coercion fall by the wayside, traditional religion should erode somewhat. This is a feature, not a bug. Indeed, I think a lot of the modern forms of spirituality that people from a traditional religious perspective wring their hands about (like deistic theraputic moralism) show what people actually seek from spirituality. If your traditional religious movement cannot provide a sense of moral order and a sense of the sacred without brutalizing the human psyche, perhaps it's best that it ultimately fades into obscurity or mainline Protestantism.

Likewise, while the extended biological family traditionally provides a degree of social support and cohesion, especially in smaller communities, it's hard not to notice that in the era of the nuclear family this structure is often fragmented at best and nonexistent at worst. This seems like a more serious issue; but I beg you to consider the ways in which family, too, is often an impediment to individual flourishing rather than a catalyst. On this point I may be biased since I have a lot of exposure through the time I spend online (and in my personal life) to dysfunctional family dynamics, but suffice it to say that someone being relted to you--even loving you dearly--is no guarantee they have your best interests at heart, or that they're willing to promote your general personal fulfillment. The low-grade version of this we sort of all chuckle at is the parent voicing mild disapproval of the child who wants to be a musician or an actor rather than a doctor or lawyer. Far more extreme and debilitating examples of this exist, and it's only in the present era, with the deemphasis on family connections as an absolute source of identity and a critical means of social support, that individuals are more often than not equipped with the social technology to say to an odious and destructive family member "fuck you, go to hell." I'd like to tentatively suggest that the fragmentation of the familial support network reflects, in general, the mixed quality of that network, and in general as a society what we should be striving toward is other kinds of voluntary affinity to replace it, not holding out the loss of the family as an evil in itself. Especially in the era of technology serving to connect people who may migrate away from their family for economic reasons, I think the kind of family support networks which do provide a great deal of value for the people who belong to them will persist. As general prosperity increases basic assurance of material support is increasingly seen as a duty of society at large; the problem of social support for isolated individuals is more serious, and I have some hope that as we develop online forms of interaction further, both through technology and familiarity with that technology, other kinds of strong affinity groups may emerge on the model of geographically dispersed social groups of previous eras of human history.

(It proved too tangential to my main point, but yes, this means I don't think any kind of enforcement of morality is the proper sphere of government; that the average ethical-ness/prosociality of any given member of society increases as material prosperity in general increases--since scarcity breeds more selfish antisocial behavior than abundance, and children in scarcity-heavy environments are a lot less likely to have adults around who can socialize them properly--and that therefore the central problem of criminal justice isn't "how can society enforce its norms," it's "how can we reduce individual reoffender rates," which is a criminal justice system that looks entirely different from the one we have now.)

[literateape]

It's the Common Ground Rather Than the Differences That Unify Us

by Don Hall

"It tastes like chicken."

Why do we do that?  Why do we compare a meat we aren't used to, that perhaps sounds alien like snake or crocodile or stingray, to the most common of American meat products?

I'd wager we do that because trying new and different things contains a risk.  For most of us, risk is a bit uncomfortable because it has a real chance of tasting like shit.  Which upon signaling our distaste, we are immediately judged for our terribly pedestrian tastes and told we are terrible people for sticking to the Olive Garden as fine dining.

Chicken, to Americans is basic.  It's easy.  Sure, you can dress it up in Jamaican jerk spices, boil it in a bowl of ramen, mop it up with a piece of injera, or fry it up covered in dough and spices but it's always chicken.  Comparing that which is unusual or different to chicken eases the fear of trying the cuisine of faraway lands.  It eases us into the experience (because, face it - almost none of it actually tastes like chicken...)

In the monolithic reductionism of today's political climate it turns out that all white men are just Bill O'Reilly in cheaper suits, anyone who prefers logical communication over emotional tirades is part of the problem, and alienation, exclusion and public shaming are the "go to" tactics of both the Far Right and Left wings of the radical fringe.

To suggest that we, as Americans and human beings, need to find common ground and compromise is to be accused of denigrating the #BlackLivesMatter with the erroneous #AllLivesMatter.  To suggest that culture is no more than costume (which is why it is so easy to re-appropriate for crappy college Halloween parties) is to proliferate the deep racism inherent in our history.  

We are told that we can't tell stories about other cultures but when we tell our own stories we are narcissistic which is just a circular way of saying "Shut the fuck up for a change."  The idea of consent has become nearly impossible effectively making any heterosexual contact a minefield of "rape culture" accusations ready and waiting.

I've taught storytelling workshops off and on since 1999 and in preparing to launch another series ("The Woodshed") I've been honing up the curriculum.  A central concept behind my views on stories is that of finding Universal Commonality.  Find the chicken to compare things to.  Steinbeck nailed it in "East of Eden" when he wrote:

"If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.  And here I make a rule - a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last."

Contrary to dissenting opinions, this is not a dismissal of the importance of hearing diverse voices on stages.  In fact, just the opposite.  The stories of white people dominate the American popular culture which means that so many are missing out on some amazingly rich and meaningful stories from people with a bit darker skin and very different experiences living in this country.

The question at hand is twofold: how does one tell a great story in the Steinbeckian model and how do we as producers, artists and listeners increase the culinary options for all of our audiences with a bit of spice and pain and love and different voices speaking different truths?

The answer to the first is relatively simple.  Tell stories that first resonate with that sense of common ground with the reality that while culture, language, religious background and ethnicity are essential in our perspective, all are just costumes we wear to mark ourselves in tribes; spices that change the chicken to something unique.  Tales rooted in our humanity at the forefront draw us in and make us want to understand the differences.

This requires craft as well as self reflection. Certainly, anyone can get up and tell "their truth."  Given the malleability of both memory and the mirror image we project, one's "truth" is often flawed and self ennobling and is thus in need of scrutiny.  Craft is intentional and specific.  Rather than simply getting up and orating like one would on a porch or in the back of a bar, to write and tell stories that, as Steinbeck challenges, are great what is required is hard looks into finding those universal human truths and pruning ego and/or victimhood out.  If you are either the hero, the villain, or the victim in your story, tell a different story, that is, reframe your story to be less sympathetic to your place in it.

The answer to the second is more complicated.  

I see a three-pronged approach to increasing the presence of voices previously ignored.

First, current producers and curators of storytelling nights need to actively seek out those voices, those stories.  A perfect example in progress is Scott Whitehair's This Much is True.  Take a look at the list of performers and you see all colors, all ages, all backgrounds represented.  Whitehair understands that this is a marathon rather than a sprint and curates accordingly.  Major institutions are in the act as well with outreach programs from Second City, Steppenwolf, the Goodman Theatre as well as mid-sized and smaller arts organizations reaching out to marginalized voices and folding them into the fabric of their seasons.

Second, people from within those communities need to step up and produce and curate shows themselves.  David Fink's OUTSpoken is a great example of this as well as Cara Brigandi's Grown Folks Stories.  What makes them special is that their shows are open to everyone of all stripes but they heavily work within communities traditionally non-hetero and non-white which brings a certain needed balance.  Not strident or exclusionary but welcoming and inclusive, shows like these are far and few between so the work is necessary.

Third, Big Philanthropy needs to step up with funds that support organizations like Young Chicago Authors and to finance after school programs designed to encourage kids in the least provided for schools to learn the craft of stories.

I suppose if there is a fourth prong, it is to seek out shows that promote a more inclusive curation and go to them.  Support them with dollars and attendance.  

It isn't the differences that unite us in art or life.  It is the similarities that start the conversation and help us to appreciate the differences in such a bold and progressive way that eventually we won't have to say "It tastes like chicken" because chicken will not be the basic American meat but just another kind of meat among so many others.

#thinly veiled metaphor #cuisine #John Steinbeck #chicken #storytelling