#i have the government and the politics and the propaganda and how it has been used to hurt so many people

[76historylover]

i have such a yearning to return home. to return to where i came from. to meet my birth family. to learn about my culture and traditions and people. i've been crying about it for the past 30 minutes. am i a terrible person to miss where i come from? am i a terrible person to want to touch the ground that i was on for only 6.5 months of my life? am i a terrible person to love the waters, the forests, the architecture- the songs and dances and stories- the people, the culture, the history (good and bad)? there was so much ripped away from me at my adoption. i just want to see my birth family before anything bad happens to them.

#crapaleksposts #crapalekssays #missing home #adoption #i have the government and the politics and the propaganda and how it has been used to hurt so many people #but that place #it's my home #i identified with that country so much #i was picked on as a kid constantly for it #i just want to see my family #i never got to meet them other for the five days i spent with my birth parents

[artbyblastweave]

Recently a post has been doing the rounds about military propaganda in the latest COD, yea yeah, sky’s blue, fork in kitchen, et al et al. This got me thinking about the shooters I actually play, and one thing that strikes me about the multiplayer shooters I play is that a lot of them dodge that same major discourse bullet by expressly grounding themselves in amorality and Kafka-esque dysfunction- a structural fingerwag towards their own content, acting as a paradoxical green-light to enjoy the game with no sense of moral injury. And there’s a big example of one that didn’t do this that kinda winds up with egg on its face as a result. 

To start with, I’m thinking about Team Fortress 2. The original Team Fortress, inasmuch as it’s possible for a game where you shoot each other with real firearms to be apolitical, was fairly apolitical. The soldiers had no markers of identity beyond their arbitrary team affiliation; the fighting was over no discernable real-life resource or point of political tension; the environments were decontextualized labs and facilities. It was platonic violence. 

Team Fortress 2 rolls around. Now that the general novelty of a 3d multiplayer class shooter has eroded, development stalls out on the following aesthetic problem; you can’t have semi-realistic militaristic character models rocket-jumping themselves across the map in the early 2000s. The cartoonishness is too dissonant when you’ve got similar semi-realistic militaristic characters in much more “grounded” games. Eventually they resolve this by taking the other tack, leaning into the cartoonishness, crafting character models so completely bombastic and over the top that no action taken in gameplay, no matter how absurd, will ever feel dissonant. This philosophy extends into the map design; the environments are farcical. Military instillations built mere yards from each other, with paper-thin pretenses of being civilian facilities despite the constant gun battles occurring inside. It’s self parody. And when the game extends to the point of having lore and worldbuilding, the idiocy becomes diegetic. This is a conflict fought on the behalf of idiots, by idiots, over idiot-goals, in spaces designed by idiots. It’s completely amoral, but it’s also contained amorality, since the fighting doesn’t spill out of these Helleresque Designated Pointless Fight Zones- and that leaves the mercs sympathetic enough that you can play them as protagonists in stories that take place “off-the-clock” without a ton of tonal dissonance. I can’t stress enough that the TF2 protagonists are amoral PMCs who work for callous megacorps. In a vacuum, this is not a well-regarded Kind Of Guy around here. There is some implementation of this broad concept that would invite a shitload of discourse that I’ve never seen materialize!

A lot of hero-or-character-based multiplayer games do this, abandoning any pretense of player heroism or productivity in the conceit in a way that shields them from a lot of moral and logical criticisms. Apex Legends and Monday Night Combat are explicitly in-universe bloodsports. Atlas Reactor and Rogue Company are cyberpunk corp-on-corp warfare. Dirty Bomb is about loosely affiliated mercenaries picking over the remains of an evacuated city. I think that Valorant is PMCs in a resource war (Not completely sure on this one.) The never-released Battlecry was expressly tied to actual nation-states, an alternate history where great powers fight wars via singularly-powerful champions instead of via traditional warfare. And in Battleborn the PCs were a hastily-assembled coalition of smaller hastily-assembled coalitions, which means that it makes perfect sense that any combination of these people might be fighting alongside or against each other, at any given time.

Here we see commonalities. Amoral participants. Larger governing bodies delineating clear fight zones centered on specific, if deliberately silly or petty, goals. Most crucially, PCs that are very loosely affiliated with each other, such that you’d see them in different configurations, fight to fight, day to day, as they’re contracted or shuffled around by the powers that be.

You know a game that doesn’t do any of this? Overwatch. 

Overwatch gets 80% of the way to being a superhero universe; it falls short primarily because Blizzard chose not to explicitly market it as such, but it’s got everything short of the purposeful brand designation- powered heroes, super science, codenames, Faceless Hydraesque terrorist groups with shadowy, powered enforcers. There are specific allegiances implied by this; specific policy and interpersonal goals implied by this that aren’t really reflected in six-on-six grudge matches in a smattering of inexplicably depopulated civilian environments. There are roughly half-a-dozen villains associated with Talon, four or five independent villainous mercenaries, and everyone else is a would-be superhero. Why is most of the core roster of the world’s premier superhero team performing some kind of terror attack in London? Why is a woman who murdered a civil rights leader trying to stop them, with the help of two avowed anti-Omnic mercenaries and three Omnics? Why did a cryogenics researcher weaponize her tech and come along for the ride? Why are a dozen envoys from tech conglomerates, grassroots movements, and paramilitary defense forces throwing down over a Gazebo in a charming Greek resort? Fuck if I know. Fuck if the writers know!

So, to round it out, I think that there’s a structural difficulty for multiplayer shooters to stand for something, or advance a philosophy, or whatever. The smart ones embrace this by shielding themselves in ablative nihilism, preemptively deflecting criticism by painting the gameplay as hollow and barbaric, but fun! But Overwatch- Overwatch 2′s tagline is “Get back in the fight.” What Fight? Why? Against Who? Call Of Duty might be a horrific mouthpiece for militarism and imperialism, but when it valorizes the military, it’s at least picking a side! Overwatch is just so strange to me because it’s somehow got the worst of both worlds- it uses these heroic, aspirational language and visuals to hype up a gameplay loop that’s ultimately the exact same kind of cynical, aimless abattoir as the games that are smart enough to explicitly be about amoral paid killers!

#thoughts #meta #I don't think any of this is new #but it occurred to me #video games #media analysis #team fortress 2 #tf2

[malinthebodyguard]

Young Royals is anti-monarchist propaganda (always has been) 

I think it’s fair to say that most of the fandom was quite happy with the finale. However, I’ve seen a handful of posts by people who were unhappy, specifically  those who were unhappy with Wille giving up his place in the line of succession. These criticisms range in everything from dismissing Wille’s choice (Wilhelm has made a harsh decision without thinking of the consequences, this won’t actually make the media circus around him go away), to those disappointed in how the monarchy in general was represented (Wille could have modernized the institution, no one in the show attempted to consider how the monarchy could be good, actually). I don’t want to invalidate anyone’s feelings about the finale. If you didn't like it, that’s more than ok and I don’t want to argue with anyone about their taste. 

But when it comes to criticism about Wilhelm giving up the throne,  I do find myself frustrated at what I see as a fundamental misunderstanding of what this show was trying to communicate. Young Royals, plain and simple, is a story that  denounces the incompatibility of antiquated and hierarchical institutions (Hillerska, the monarchy) with equality and justice. 

If you’ve had the displeasure of being my fandom friend you’ll know that I’ve spent the last 3 years yelling about how this show is about abolishing the monarchy. I even wrote a lengthy  fanfic with the sole excuse of having Wilhelm arrive at this conclusion. Still, I knew that whatever statement the show wanted to arrive at, we’d only really be getting to it at the end of the show. 

Seasons one and two were setting up all the characters on the chessboard for the end: Wilhelm is the Crown Prince, although he does not want to be. He and Simon are in love, but Wilhelm’s role drives a wedge between them. Erik’s legacy and August's spot next in line are keeping Wilhelm in his place.

 From episode one, I think the show was telling us about the many things that are wrong with the monarchy, but I don’t think it’s until season three that these discussions become more explicit. Is this why some people were disappointed by the ending? Maybe so. Still, I wanted to look at how season three in particular answers some of the questions or issues  people are bringing up regarding both the monarchy and the Wilhelm’s choice. 

What do you like about the monarchy? 

Season 3 Episode 4 is the first time we hear an explicit discussion about why the monarchy could potentially be a good institution. I’ve seen some people complain that the show didn’t give this idea enough thought. 

I completely disagree with this take: the short conversation Wille and Simon have in this episode  is succinct, but still effective at presenting both arguments in this debate. A  longer and more drawn out conversation would have been a bit unrealistic and probably boring to watch. These are not academics having a debate, but two teenagers who are talking about what for them is emotionally charged.

There’s also no need for a longer, more detailed discussion. Wilhelm does provide a very good answer to the question: The monarchy is there to unite the people. To be a neutral party in situations when the government cannot or will not interfere. 

A quick civics lesson: In parliamentary democracies, the monarch serves as the Head of State. 

This role is predominantly representative, although in many places the government is formed in the name of the monarch. This could, theoretically, grant them some political power-- since they could technically reject the winning party from forming a government. However, in most parliamentary monarchies, the King or Queen simply has to accept whatever decision is made based on election results.

However, the value of the Head of State is precisely in its apolitical nature. Regardless of who’s in power, the head of state is a neutral ambassador of the nation, both in and outside of their country. Their job is diplomatic and representative, and one that is thoroughly divorced from politics. This is what Wilhelm meant when he said that the monarchy was there to ‘unite the people’. Whenever I’ve spoken to pro-monarchy folks about their beliefs, they cite this as the reason why they like it. 

It’s easy to see why Wilhlem would latch on this as his main argument to defend the institution. I don’t think there is anything inherently bad about having a separate head of state that represents the country. I don’t think the major grip with this issue is the having a head of state, but the fact that the head of state is a hereditary position. Simon says this himself twice in this episode: the issue is not that the head of state exists, but that the head of state is not an elected position. Furthemore, the head of state is a role that is imposed on a person not by their talent as a public speaker or negotiator, but by a simple accident of birth. 

The job’s legitimacy or importance should not be above any individual’s right to autonomy and self-determination. Furthermore, considering that taxpayers are the ones who finance this position, shouldn’t they be able to elect who it is? 

Let’s imagine a scenario where a friend tells you they’ve gone into a career because everyone in their family works in that industry, and they simply had no choice in the matter. It wouldn’t even matter if they were good or bad, they had a job in this career guaranteed from birth. 

 Would you not be concerned that maybe your friend is unhappy for a rather unnecessary reason? Would you not think that perhaps someone who actually wanted the job would be better suited for it? Would you think it right for a company to hire someone simply because of their family history? Would you consider any of this fair? And what is so special about monarchy that makes us have a different answer for it than we would if the question was about law or medicine? 

You’ll always be famous. 

Another common criticism I’ve seen is that Wilhelm will inevitably regret his decision, especially once he realizes that public scrutiny will not be going away. This is true, Wilhelm will likely always  be a figure of public interest. But to me, this has always been a negative consequence of the monarchy, and I have a hard time seeing this is a valid reason why he should stay in it. 

From the second we meet him, we know Wilhelm is uncomfortable with both the public attention and the scrutiny placed on him. However, this goes a bit further than that. I’d argue than more than the  scrutiny itself,  Wilhelm is weighed down by having to keep a public image. Because, remember folks, Wilhelm is not merely an awkward teenage boy with acne and a crush. No, no, Wilhelm is the State. Wilhelm is going to be a publicly-funded representative of the nation . This means, of course, that there’s a narrative, as he mentions himsef, that needs to be put forward. One that’s generic, serious, and unproblematic: 

From the get go, Wilhelm is uncomfortable with the inauthentic and performative aspect of his role.This is a constant we see with Wilhelm in seasons one and two: every ‘performance’ he has to do fills him with nausea, anxiety, or some sort of discomfort.

In season three, Wilhelm begins acquiescing to this performance. Uncomfortable as he may be, for most of season 3 he’s accepted that this is his role. However, the attention this season shifts from Wilhelm to Simon, who’s now the one facing public scrutiny. The difference is that, unlike Wille, there’s no role for Simon to play. Nothing about who he is or what he believes is compatible with the public image the monarchy is putting forward. The only thing he can do in this situation is disappear, and Wilhelm is tasked with having to ask that of him. 

I know a lot of people were exasperated at Simon’s very bad and clumsy social media presence. I’m not gonna argue that my boy wasn’t being a bit cringey, because he absolutely was. But I think the larger commentary here has more to do with the expectation that these two teenagers have to censor and edit themselves to comply with a particular PR image. 

Ultimately, the criticism that Wilhelm will always be famous leads us straight back to the institution. Why does an underage boy have the same PR expectations as a politician? Why is a teenager dating his classmate + being cringe online justification for doxxing him? Unfortunately, no abdication is really going to undo any of this, and things are certainly going to be crazy once Wilhelm announces he’s stepping down .

However, this time around both he and Simon will at least have the agency to decide what they want to do with their public image, including the decision to disappear from the public completely if that’s what they want.

Queer representation 

This a sentiment that has been in the fandom for some time now. This was the main argument why some people wanted Wille to stay in the monarchy. Sure, the institution has always been about bloodlines and tradition. But wouldn’t it be so nice to have Wilhelm as a symbol for the queer community? I’ve always found this idea a bit shallow. I’m not sure how much of a symbol of a queer and progressive country Wilhelm could be, when the whole idea is predicated on absolutely no one having a choice in the matter. Is it really impressive to accept the queerness of the guy you already had no choice in accepting?  

There’s three scenes in season 3 where the potential Wilhelm -and by extension Simon-  could have for the queer community come up.  Farima brings it up in the first episode, but the framing here is reversed. Wilhelm isn’t serving the LGBTQ community by being a queer Prince, but the monarchy is using Wilhelm (and his queerness) to appear progressive.

The show, however, does humor this idea with the May 1st photo. We see what Simon and Wilhelm could potentially do for the community by simply existing as who they are: they’re inspirational. It gives Simon, briefly, hope that maybe something good could come out of this. 

But this moment is quite literally framed by politics. It doesn't matter that Simon is not participating in that manifestation, anything that is slightly connected with politics is a challenge to neutrality of the monarchy. This same idea is stated more explicitly int the next episode, when Wilhelm is reviewing the options for his charity.

Ultimately, any action significant enough to be truly impactful, would be bordering the limits of what could be considered political. He's got to stick it out with these quite frankly boring and limited themes, all for the sake of staying on the very narrow lane of things that are not political.

The weight of the crown. 

Stories about Kings and Queens usually carry the same fundamental tension of duty vs self. 

In order to rule, our protagonist has to sacrifice themselves, usually for the sake of their country and people. The Crown is an excellent example of this type of story. Sacrifice in that series is framed as something noble and selfless. 

Young Royals started out with this same fundamental tension, but the main difference is that Young Royals has framed this debate as a question: 

Why should Wilhelm give himself up, his happiness, the love of his life, and  his mental well-being? What’s so important and valuable about this institution that requires this sacrifice?

Wilhelm’s journey is about accepting and voicing his answer. He doesn’t want to be Crown Prince, he doesn’t want to be King. 

But by virtue of taking part of this journey with him, we’re able to examine this question from a different perspective: Is this institution valuable enough to justify all of this? I think the show is inviting all of us to evaluate this situation and arrive at the conclusion that it isn’t.

Even someone like August, who wanted this, is weighed down by the realization of just how much the crown weighs. Of course, a big part of the fandom probably doesn’t live in countries with parliamentary monarchies. Still, considering the worldwide popularity of the British Royals, for example, I still think it’s a worthwhile exercise to question the validity of these institutions. Are they really worth sustaining? And if they’re not, why should we continue to drag them on into the present, citing tradition?

#young royals #prince wilhelm #Wilhelm #wilhelm yr #simon eriksson #Wilmon #Politics in Young Royals #august horn #yr meta #my and

[theotterpenguin]

the performative accusation that shipping zutara (and occasionally this criticism is levied at jinko/zukka) is colonialist apologism has been addressed in some excellent posts, explaining the inaccuracies and problematic implications of this logic far better than i ever could - like this post and this one and this one and this one and this one.

and i know this topic has been talked about to death, but if you could indulge my contribution for a moment, i just find it interesting how this sentiment results from the cognitive dissonance of atla fans being unable to reconcile with the idea of their favorite show's political beliefs not lining up with their own.

atla is a largely philosophical children's show that at its core deals with themes of love, redemption, and destiny vs. free-will. atla examines these themes through an anti-colonalist, anti-imperalist lens that deconstructs the idea of racial divisiveness and the idea that people of different ethnicities are inherently different. this is message is pretty explicitly stated by guru pathik:

Guru Pathik: "The greatest illusion of this world is the illusion of separation. Things you think are separate and different are actually one and the same." Aang: "Like the four nations?" Guru Pathik: "Yes. We are all one people. But we live as if divided."

and also by uncle iroh:

"It is important to draw wisdom from many different places. If you take it from only one place, it becomes rigid and stale. Understanding others, the other elements and the other nations will help you become whole."

this theme is developed across three full seasons, with the crux of this message culminating in zuko's friendships with the gaang - despite coming from different nationalities and different backgrounds, they have all had their own experiences being hurt by the fire nation and work together to take down the oppressive fire nation government. the question of destiny vs. free will is also explored through zuko's character - despite starting off as an antagonist, he develops into a symbolic representation of how the fire nation's oppression hurts its own citizens. he unlearns the fire nation's imperialist propaganda while simultaneously unlearning his father's abuse. rather than following misguided beliefs of what he thought his destiny was as the heir to the throne, instead he forges his own path.

thus, to claim that zuko can never form a deep and meaningful relationship with any of the gaang because of his nationality goes unequivocally against the themes of the show. and a major part of this is because these are fictional characters being used to analyze different theoretical questions within the show and in some cases, are used as symbolic representations of different philosophical ideas - their friendships and their character arcs serve a purpose within the text that cannot be easily transcribed onto real-life dynamics between people.

it's illogical to criticize fans who are choosing to understand atla at the level of the themes that are presented by the text - who are interested in exploring similar philosophical questions brought up by the show through the context of relationships.

if you don't like the themes of forgiveness and redemption that atla explores, your criticism should be aimed at the writing of the show itself rather than other fans. because you are giving far more thought to the "implications" of a close friendship or romantic relationship between someone from an imperalist nation and someone from an oppressed nation than the writers ever did. (and if you fall in this camp of people, i would hope you wouldn't be reblogging fanart of zuko and the gaang together while simultaneously claiming zuko could can never escape the sins of his ancestors and can never form a deep relationship based on trust and intimacy with katara or sokka or jin - because that would just be hypocritical).

and as a side note, people seem to apply this flawed logic to zutara far more than other ships solely because the show spends the most time exploring the complicated nature of fire nation imperalism in the interactions between zuko and katara in the latter half of b3. this is because they've been juxtapositioned against each other and paralleled with aang since the beginning of the show in ways that toph, sokka, and suki are not, who have mostly been used to examine different themes. there simply isn't enough time to explore these complicated themes with all the other characters, even if they theoretically exist in zuko’s dynamics with these characters, so the writers focus the most on zuko's relationships with katara and aang, and these relationships are given far more narrative weight, so have more content to criticize. but zuko and katara also canonically become friends by the end of the show. if you want to discount the existence of their friendship, claiming that it will always be tainted by the fire nation's oppression regardless of what is shown in the text, then you also have to discount zuko's friendships with aang, suki, toph, and sokka - because even if this isn't shown as a permanent barrier to their friendships in the show, it’s also not shown as a permanent barrier to his friendship with katara. if your logic is solely based on the idea that a person's identity in a relationship as a colonizer or a victim is fixed and unchanging regardless of character development, this would apply to zuko's friendships with everyone else as well.

#zuko #katara #zutara #i have seen people say that the zutara dynamic makes them personally uncomfortable and that's fine - to each their own! #but it's hypocritical to only dislike zuko's relationship with katara while simultaneously exalting his friendships w aang or toph or sokka #just because the show doesn’t take as much time to explore these issues with other characters doesn’t mean the same dynamic doesn’t apply #my post #my meta

[tanadrin]

This series of four videos on Ukraine and the Russia-Ukraine conflict is very interesting. The first is basically just a narrative political history of Ukraine from about 2000 to 2014, talking about different political factions that were relevant in the country in the period, and how different internal and external pressures shaped politics. It's very helpful for understanding the Ukrainian political context, including just how recent and just how shallow the supposed tensions between monolingual Russian and bilingual Ukrainian-Russian speakers was in 2014.

The second video is an overview of the Donbass war from 2014-2022, which you might have been vaguely paying attention to at the time. But it's very helpful to have it all laid out in chronological order with the benefit of hindsight, especially due to the obfuscation of Russian operations at the time that made it hard to work out what, exactly, was going on. It's a combination of a good old 19th century-style filibuster (the military expedition, not the parliamentary maneuver), Fox News-style propaganda, and some (rather badly failed) attempts at astroturfing civil unrest--why Russia thought that would work becomes important in Part 4.

Part 3 is just an extended argument that NATO expansion is not relevant to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and while I already agreed with that assessment, it's nice to have it laid out in detail. The very very short version is that by NATO's own public criteria, Ukraine was simply not a candidate to join NATO, and had given up on joining NATO, and that had been painfully obvious since at least the Obama administration. Even more frustratingly, there were multiple points where Russia had an offramp to escalation, where it had gotten everything it could have possibly wanted from the conflict in Donbass, and it refused them all.

Part 4 is the author's attempt to explain why it refused them. The very short explanation is that Russia's government is led by idiots, who are very enamored of a flavor of conspiracy theory that has its origins in the LaRouche movement, and which has been bubbling in both left-wing and right-wing circles since 2000. In this worldview, the US government acting through the CIA (or the British royal family, or George Soros, or Jewish bankers, or whoever your bogeyman of choice is) has an almost supernatural ability to overthrow any government on earth by funding performance art groups (seriously), civil society NGOs, and protestors, and that almost every revolution, actual or so-called, since 1989 has been their direct work, from the post-Soviet revolutions, to Euromaidan, to the Arab Spring.

This belief, in its more overt or fragmentary forms, is incredibly popular, spurred on no doubt by historical instances of CIA malfeasance and actual aggressive wars waged by the Bush administration. But the problem is, it's bunk. During Russia's initial moves against Ukraine in 2014, they tried essentially the same playbook in the Donbass, and of course it failed miserably--you cannot actually astroturf a popular uprising. (The CIA has preferred to stage coups and assassinations, which are a different animal from color revolutions.) The separatists in the Donbass eventually had to be supported by a few thousand Russian troops and direct military aid.

But Putin, driven by his own paranoid misunderstanding of world events, the clique of yes-men he has embedded himself in, and his fear of gay Nazi Jewish CIA agents, simply got Russia in over its head. There is no offramp because Russia cannot articulate what its goals are, and because "stop trying to use George Soros to overthrow the Russian government" is not something the US can agree to, since they are not doing it. The only thing that might have prevented Putin fucking with Ukraine in the first place was maybe if rigging the parliamentary election in 2011 hadn't resulted in protests, in which Putin saw the specter of the hand of the CIA--but of course the US and NATO and the EU had nothing to do with that!

And to cap it all off, since the 2010s the LaRouche movement and its theory of color revolutions has been making inroads in China, so we have that to look forward to in coming decades.

[mightypurplethunder]

I don't want to see any of you usamericans talk about "punching nazis" ever again. I don't want to hear yall pat each other on the back and say shit like "If I had been alive during the holocaust I would have done something about it", or any other white savior shit like that.

You don't care about jews, you didn't care about them back then, just as you don't care about palestinians now. Yall repeat and repeat "the holocaust was terrible, we should condemn it", not because you care, but because it lifts yourselves up. Because it's the only war that the US won where they just happened to be on "the good side", so it portrays you as heroes, warriors of justice, which happens to be excelent propaganda material, so you exploit it. You make memorials, you make films, hundreds of them, fetishizing the jewish suffering and portraying yourselves as the force of good that saved them all. Meanwhile, dozens of other genocides - many of them even bigger and bloddier than the holocaust - happen around the world, many of them endorsed or supported by your government. But yall don't care. It's not the holocaust. You're not the good guys in this one so why bother making a movie, why pay atention to it at all? It's hard to keep track of everything happening in the world, it has nothing to do with you. So you just keep scrolling your socials paying no mind to whatever fucked up shit is happening out there, until you run into some fucker from the global south posting something mildly critical of israel, or about how the United States shamelessly exploits jewish history for the sake of warfare, or how victim mentality is a dangerous thing for a marginalized group to hold on to, and you get furious. How dare they say things that don't align with the narrative I've been fed my whole life?? They are anti-semitic!! They hate jews!! They are nazis!! And you tell them so, you put them in their place, because you are a democrat and a good guy and you won't tolerate nazis. And then you reblog "support our troops" posts and write letters to your president begging him to bomb brown people on the other side of the planet because they are terrorists, I think. And I'm here to tell you that you are not the good guy, you are not a hero. You are a victim of indoctrination and an idiot, and your domestic white politics mean absolutely nothing to the rest of the world.

Yes, I did watch Schindler's list. No, I don't hate jewish people. Yes, I'll aggresively condemn Israel's actions and anyone blind enough to say that one genocide justifies another, and I will always support palestinian people. And if you happen to be a jewish person that has somehow found themselves in the center of a conversation that isn't even about you, and getting negative attention you don't deserve, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that no matter what you do or where you live, you keep being used as a scapegoat and your life and history exploited for colonialist propaganda, your heritage is worth more than that.

So keep calling yourselves the good guys, keep pulling the anti-semite card or the "Palestine is homophobic" argument. Keep playing your white politics in your white country that you stole from non-white people. The rest of the world is watching you and history will remember you as what you are and always have been; fucking colonizers.

#palestine #free palestine #israel #anti-zionism #white politics #colonialism #social justice #free gaza

[max1461]

This has mostly disappeared from my corner of the internet over the last few years, but it used to be the case that every once in a while some story would go around about a corporation or a government doing some fucked up shit in pursuit of their self-interest, and people in the comments and reblogs would act utterly aghast that said government or corporation would do such a thing.

This was always baffling to me, and I have only ever been able to interpret it as a sign of profound naivety. Of course, I too think it is awful, sad, and unjust when people are exploited, killed, abused or so on by the institutions of our society. But "aghastness" is not synonymous with these things, to be aghast is to be (or present yourself as) in some sense surprised. And surprise is wholly unwarranted here.

I suppose this is part of my worldview that feels very fundamental, it feels deeply obvious, and I struggle to figure out how to talk productively with people who did not get the memo: exploitation and abuse of others in pursuit of self-interest is in some sense the natural behavior of agents in any kind of competitive context. It requires a lot of effort and coordination to mitigate this behavior. We do not feel "aghast" when someone is bitten by a dog. Dogs bite people, idiot! And corporations exploit their workers, lie, cheat, and steal, unless you work very hard to prevent them from doing so. And governments exploit and neglect their citizens, and go to war and kill and maim, unless you work very hard to prevent them from doing so. Individual humans, as members of a social species for which cooperation is paramount to survival, have quite a lot of specific programming whose purpose seems to be to discourage us from doing these things (empathy, loyalty, etc. etc.), and yet very often we still do them!

I have relatives who have a hard time believing in US atrocities abroad, on the grounds that "Americans are the good guys, and the US just wouldn't do that". This is very stupid! Do you think the US got where it is today without cracking some eggs? Bullshit. There's never been a government or a military in the history of humanity that "just wouldn't do that". I sometimes see posts on here from tankies, defending Chinese or Soviet atrocities on the grounds that these things must be Western propaganda, a socialist government just wouldn't do that. Again, I find this so obviously false as to be essentially beneath engaging with. We don't live in a just world! Often, a very effective strategy for achieving whatever it is you're trying to achieve will involve treating people like shit. It is what it is.

I'm not trying to play defense for injustice here. Obviously I think we should do as much as we can to prevent these abuses. But I think that doing so must start with basic recognition of the following: it is the nature of institutions—being as competition between them is essentially unavoidable, and being as their decision processes are unavoidably removed from the face-to-face social context which is so load-bearing in motivating respectful treatment between individual humans—to abuse people in pursuit of their (perceived) self-interest. This behavior is mundane and expected. It can be mitigated in various ways, ideological and structural, but it will probably always be with us to some degree. To look at it and express shock in any capacity suggests a completely misguided understanding of how the world works.

This is the first and most important thing I ever learned about politics or society.

#society

[snowdropluck204]

A Date With Death - Spencer Reid x Unsub Fem! Reader

Hi my lovelies! After a lot of people seemed interested in this story, namely a few that commented who I am tagging below! If anyone wants to be tagged in these chapters from now on, let me know! I am going to try and plan this out okay, I'll post a separate post with the release dates of the chapters! With that! Enjoy!

Also, I'm a Brit writing about America... Specifically Colorado! So if there is anyone from there that would be willing to help me, please do!

Tag List: @vexis-world @inexplicableeee @flowercrownsandtrauma

TW: Murder, gore, blood, vomit, mentions of rapists, pedophiles, abuse, y/n being mistaken for male.

Spencer pov

The BAU hadn't had a case like this for a while...

This case had gotten media attention across the country, further even. All because this unsub was doing things that many a soul had thought about, hell even acted upon, the difference between their unsub and the average person, is that he was getting away with it.

For the last month, bodies had been cropping up all over Denver, Colorado, all with the same MO. People, both men and women, had been found dead in different locations, the only things that the victims had in common were the ways they were killed and that they were all once convicted of a crime. These crimes have ranged from rape, domestic abuse, paedophilia and stalking, but each of the victims had been killed using three consecutive methods.

As the car arrived at the scene of the crime, the body being found outside his own home, I wasn't massively shocked to see the crowd of media representatives surrounding the scene, I was a little perturbed to see a separate crowd of protesters.

"How many of them are there?" I asked confused, "God the street is crawling with them!" Morgan nodded from beside me, as we both stepped out of the car. Hotch grumbled under his breath, "Clearly the local cops didn't secure the area very well." The reporters seemed to have noticed us, we weren't exactly inconspicuous in our suits and sunglasses, but we still flashed the badge, asking them to move as politely as we could.

Immediately we were swarmed, questions being fired at us left and right, "Do you have any idea who was behind this killing?" "What is being done to keep this community safe?" "Why has it taken this long for the FBI to become involved?"

We tried to answer as many as we could without giving away too much of the investigation, including how little had been discovered so far. The police here had no leads, so we were working off of very little, and, until we had analysed the crime scene, we had no working profile of the unsub to make up a suspect list. This was square one...

Morgan walked over to the protesters, myself following close behind, they were all carrying banners or picket signs, they each read various forms of propaganda, 'He's Saving Lives', 'Let Him Live', 'Grim Will Save US.' I tilted my head as we walked closer to the crowd. Derek very clearly hadn't assessed the situation as strongly...

"Don't you worry folks, we'll have this guy behind bars soon!" He called out, trying to get the group to leave peacefully, only to get angry faces and practically being spat at.

"Why? He's doing what our government is too scared to do now! I say let him go!" A woman cried, beginning a chant of, 'Let Him Go.' The chanting became louder, Hotch began seeming more nervous as they advanced. He turned to shout over his shoulder at the local police.

"Can you hold them back please?" At the authority in his voice, the cops quickly rushed to attention, herding Morgan and myself into the front yard. The crime scene.

The body had been placed, almost gently, into the flowerbed in the front yard, some of the blood that decorated his body had even been mopped up. "Do we have an ID on the victim yet?" I asked Hotch, receiving a negative, apparently the neighbours knew of the victim, knew that he lived here, but rarely spoke to him and didn't know his name, so I crouched down to see what we were working with.

This victim's demise, also followed the same MO of the last seven victims the unsub had killed. Each of the victims before this one, had been killed with three separate methods, asphyxiation, the throat was slit and then the victim was garroted. "Reid." Hotch asked from behind me, I turned to look at him, showing him he had my attention, "What have we got?"

I looked back to the body, fiddling with the gloves on my hands, "The victim seems to have been killed in the same methods of the unsub's MO, it's called the threefold death, it's a religious method of killing going as far back as Druid-Irish folklore. The threefold death obviously entailed a person being killed three separate times, in this case, asphyxiation, a form of stabbing and then a mixture of the two... It was said that this method of death was saved and used as a punishment for those who didn't deserve to die only once..." I told them, trying to be as concise as possible.

Hotch nodded, whilst Morgan began taking a closer look at the garrote around the man's neck. Each of the previous victims had been convicted of a crime, violent and sometimes sexual in nature. Each of the garrotes used seemed to be personalised, a single word scratched roughly into the wooden handle of them, this garrote in particular had the word, 'ABUSER' carved into the grain of the wood.

Morgan pulled out his phone, pressing it to his ear, "Babygirl, newest victim apparently has a history of abuse or domestic violence, can you work your magic?"

I focused back on the body.

Like all the previous victims, the body was as clean as the unsub could get it, he seemed to have cleaned up any blood that pooled on the skin, before laying them to rest, in an almost respectful manner. Laid flat on their backs, hands and arms crossed over their torso, with a single white lily laced delicately between their fingers. The only thing that didn't seem as respectful, was the plastic bag tired around their face, using the same garrote that was used to kill them. I decided to speak up my thoughts to Hotch.

"The unsub almost seems to have feelings of remorse, the funeral like way of displaying the bodies is another part of his signature, strange for what we would assume is just a spree killer, it's more likely that he was targeting these people, or that there was an extreme trigger involved.

"The white lily represents the transience of life and the emotions of grief and mourning, also strange for your average serial killer. There is the possibility that the unsub knew his victims before he killed them... That could prove that he has anti-social personality disorder, he's trying to replicate an emotion he has seen around death, like copying the process of mourning at a funeral." I finished, even I felt confused...

Hotch nodded along, before the three of us walked over to the front door of the victim's home, judging by the track marks through the blood, the victim was murdered in the home and dragged out to the garden. "The unsub must have been surveying the house and the neighbours, because most of them work nights or have late night activities, the victim was found outside his home at around one in the morning. Somehow, the unsub made his way into the home, killed this guy using three separate methods and dragged the body out of the home and positioned it the way he wanted in a small window of about three hours." I told the room.

Hotch nodded, following the trail of blood around the house, leading to a chair in the middle of the kitchen, the kitchen tile had a clear tarp laid over it, the chair on top, both were coated in a thick layer of dried blood, the knife used to slit his throat wasn't at the scene, so the unsub still had it...

(y/n) pov

The sting in my throat and eyes was horrid as I retched into the toilet bowl, the tears running down my face were falling hot and fast. Eventually, the vomiting stopped, I took a deep breath, now that I could, I flushed the toilet and shuddered.

I stood up, my legs shaking, almost buckling underneath me, I stumbled my way to the sink, looking up I saw myself in the mirror, the blood spattered across my face, my arms, my hands. My eyes were different to how they used to be, they were clouded by this grief, this agony I didn't know how to get rid of anymore. The colour was faded, the whites were blemished with deep red veins and my pupils were so dilated, so scared. Memories of the night flashed behind my eyes.

I was walking slowly, stalking forward, making my way to the front door of the house. I'd been watching the house for the last few weeks, he was a monster. Beat his previous wives, now he was alone. Beat his children, now he wasn't allowed to see them. The bastard was too scary for those poor women and children to keep charging him with the abuse, so now he was a free man...

Once I got to the door, I smiled seeing the electronic lock, I pressed a small device to the side of the lock, hearing a small buzz before the door clacked open. Taking my time, both so as not to alert my target and also partially dreading what I was about to do, I pushed open the front door, sneaking through the hallways, until I found the kitchen. The pig was drunk, he hadn't been home longer than half an hour, and he was almost passed out wasted, beer bottles lying around where he was sat on the couch, staring listlessly at the television.

I wobbled over to the shower, flinging back the curtain, my head reeling, I waddled carefully in, trying not to slip. I turned the shower head on, full blast, almost blistering hot, and began to scrub at my skin as hard as I possibly could. The water ran off of me in dark red waves, before they faded to pink and then clear. Once all the bloody water was sucked down the drain, I finally began to relax, which was a mistake.

I slunk up to the guy, leaning behind him before pulling out a plastic bag, the crunching sound of the bag alerted him. He turned and met my face, hidden by a mask, a cheap, crappy masquerade mask, a candy skull, hiding my face. A flash of realisation on James' face made me fear he had recognised me, instead, he began to stutter. "You're h-him, aren't you? The k-killer, t-the Reaper?" He whimpered. Coward. I leapt forward, wrapping the bag around his face and pulling.

I curled myself into the corner of the shower floor, the hot water making me more dizzy and in a deeper haze as tears filled my eyes.

"Please..." He kept begging, pleaded with me to spare his life as he tried to rock himself back and forth in the chair he was now tied to, "I'm sorry! I haven't gone near my family since the restraining order!" He shrieked, the most pathetic sounding noise. I almost spat at him, "Then your a liar as well as a beater." I growled, once he heard my voice, he realised that I wasn't the guy everyone was thinking of. "You're a pathetic excuse of human life, weak. You target the people who you're supposed to care for, children, your own wife." I snarled, stalking forward with a small, but extremely sharp, hunting knife.

The blood went everywhere, the walls, David James' face and clothes, the floor, me. The smell was metallic and bitter, it made me feel vile, hideous, tainted.

He was gasping, struggling for breath as I wrapped the bag around his face again, pulled out the garrote, bound the bag taut around his neck and began twisting, the wire digging painfully into the deep gash already across his neck. Eventually, he stopped struggling, stopped breathing. I let go of the garrote, the handle provoking me with my own handwriting, PAEDOPHILE. Taunting both David James, the beater and myself. (y/n) (l/n), the reaper.

I placed him in his car, and drove the short while down to the cemetery, I huffed as I pulled James' body out of the trunk, dropping him rather unceremoniously outside the gates, in a patch of half dead grass. I closed his eyes through the plastic bag, crossed his arms over his chest, and threaded a single white lily through his hands. After I had finished, I stood slowly, bowing my head, a moment of silence for the deceased, however undeserved it may be.

I left the shower, the water still dripping off of my body quickly becoming cold. I knew there would be little to no physical evidence that I was at the scene. I shuddered once again, the shiver continuing down my body. I quickly got changed and curled up in my bed, trying to remember who I was doing all of this for...

Spencer pov

After examining the crime scene, we all went back to the station, Garcia's face appearing on the laptop screen as we began to review the case, what we knew so far. Gideon was writing on the whiteboard, pictures of the victims taped to the surface, annotations lining them. Elle was pacing the room, fiddling with a pen as she asked about the scene and, in turn, the unsub.

"The protesters outside, they sounded like they were supporting him, how popular is this unsub?" She asked, Garcia quickly typing up on her computer, finding the information in quick keystrokes.

"Oh, he's huge, most of Denver population believe that he's saving their children and friends, he's only killing off people who were convicted of a crime, there's never any witnesses, never any tips called in. These people believe that the government was wrong to get rid of capital punishment in Colorado, that these people deserved it.

"A lot of people also think that the unsub deserves the death penalty too, but that he's some sort of public figure, he knew the risks and the punishment, but took out those who were a risk to their society. The unsub has a lot of names, The Grim Reaper, Charon, The Wraith, lot of mythological connotations..."

I sat, stuck, staring at the whiteboard. "What's going on in that big, beefy brain?" I heard Garcia ask, I finally looked up at the team, all looking at me worried. I felt my brow furrow further as I stood and walked quickly, over to the board. There were seven victims up on the board, the ones we had found, who knew if there were more. Now there was an eighth.

"None of this makes sense." I murmured, "All of the evidence contradicts itself, we can't make a linear profile of the unsub..." I trailed my hands along the pictures, "The unsub should be someone who shows little to know emotion, but he sets his victims to rest in a nice place, with flowers, almost mourns them. He gruesomely murders his victims with an ancient religious process, only to have no showing of any other religious motif or ritualistic killing.

"They clearly have been watching their victims, their neighbours, their homes, but there is no physical evidence of that! The places the victims are left were proved by relatives to be special to them, so the unsub leaving the bodies there shows some sentiment and that, somehow, the unsub knew them but none of the victims had ever met each other and have no social circles in common with one another!"

I had never felt so frustrated and confused. Hotch patted me on the shoulder as I sat down again, running a hand through my hair. He began a pep talk that always begins the investigation, "True remorse from the unsub might only be capable if they were compelled to commit the killing for reasons unknown to even them, or he's being forced to..."

#cute #love #fanfiction #romance #x reader #comfort #open requests #spencer reid x reader #criminal minds #x fem!reader

[tossawary]

The other somewhat amusing thing about rewatching "Bleach" with some knowledge of later stuff and as an adult is that people keep trying to fight Ichigo for being a soul reaper, like Uryuu and Ganju, and Ichigo can't not throw down when someone gets in his face. But Ichigo is obviously initially thinking about "soul reapers" as a... type of person? A normal person who simply has specific spiritual fighting abilities.

Whereas these people's issue is... you know, with the corrupt, incompetent, merciless military dictatorship that has ruled the afterlife for as long as everyone can remember, an organization which regularly commits both "legal" and "illegal" mass murder to maintain authoritarian power.

Seireitei has an ASSASSINATION SQUAD. Which can't be intended for hollows, because the rest of the soul reapers are already intended to fight hollows. Also, the assassination squad cannot simply be for killing "evil rich people who want to take over" and "evil terrorists who only want to kill everyone" like some spy propaganda fantasy (there aren't even any other nations here), because these the soul reapers are NOT shown to be that benevolent, they're shown to be really shitty actually, and also that has NEVER EVER been how government assassination squads have ever worked in practice. I feel for any socialists, communists, anarchists, etc. in the poorer districts who have ever attempted to organize to meaningfully improve Soul Society somewhat for the common people. You don't have assassins unless you're killing people! Almost certainty for power!

Ichigo, you hot-headed baby, the very legitimate issue here is that the people yelling at you initially think you're working with their enemies. Uryuu already told you about the fact that Soul Society exterminated an entire group of people. You're going to have to get used to repeatedly explaining yourself and your political allegiances to strangers if you're walking around in that uniform.

#tossawary bleach #ichigo kurosaki #spoilers #violence #character death

[icantturnthisthingoff]

okay i don’t want to give that one person more attention than necessary because they aren’t very reasonable so im just gonna put in my final opinions on this topic on my own post.

no singular civilian person is at fault for the actions of their government or their military. that is the fault of the people at the top of that decision tree alongside those who knowingly and willingly choose to spread propaganda.

its also a bad faith argument to suggest that it is the fault of the russian people due to their silence and inaction when we know that those who have spoken out against the kremlin have been assassinated and imprisoned. we also know that there is little to no democracy in russia.

russians who oppose the invasion of ukraine are not silent, they have been silenced.

and those who have left russia because they did not wish to be drafted or involved in said invasion in any capacity have been pretty fucking vocal about it offline at least from my experience living in hotspot area for slavic immigration.

but even without all that : just being from a country does not make you inherently bad or good or anything really because thats not how it works?? yes environmental factors can greatly impact the way somebody thinks politically and morally etc but its not inherent. like if you look within peoples families a set of siblings may all be raised the same in the same area by the same people with the same rules, regulations and beliefs but you will find that very often sibling 1 has a wildly different worldview to sibling 2 or 3 and so on. thats the beauty of human complexity we make up our own minds ultimately.

anyways i’ve ranted enough

tl;dr - the person at a JO concert singing UM in russian has no real say in the actions of their country and is not a bad person just because they are from russia, they might be a lovely person they might be awful, but whatever they are its not just because they are born in russia and to say so would be xenophobic

#joker out #lois talks fandom discourse #say no to xenophobia even if there are a some really bad apples #because thats just human decency

[hussyknee]

it’s rare to find a sinhalese person (online atleast) who is supportive of tamil self-determination. genuine question: among leftist circles in sri lanka, how common is such a stance?

I don't know whether I'm a reliable source to answer this question because I'm very jaded about this in general. A couple of days ago, someone on the Sri Lanka Reddit started up discourse about Maitreyi Ramakrishnan's choice to reject identifying with the country that tried to genocide her people, which I'm still chewing wire about. I'm a very isolated person with a very small social circle of like-minded leftist friends. They're mostly not SinBud and anti SinBud nonsense, but none of them are Tamil and I'm the one who really convinced them about Eelam I think. The people I learned from, who are out there doing the work of building inter-ethnic dialogue and overturning Sinhalese propaganda, might have a more hopeful view.

Thing is, there's no one "leftist" faction here because "left" doesn't mean the same thing as it does in the West. The Rajapaksas' party SLPP is socialist, a legacy of their ancestor the SLFP who was the party aligned with the USSR. They and their voters and their saffron terror acolytes (Buddhist priesthood) are all for public infrastructure they can rob blind and central government they can use to crush minorities, and build on the nationalist fervour of genocidal Sinhalese Buddhism that's served both major parties independence. There's quasi-communists, descendants of the ethnonationalist Marxist JVP that rose in opposition to the class corruption of ethnonationalist USSR-aligned socialist SLFP and enthonationalist US-aligned neoliberal UNP. They've since distanced themselves from their ethnic myopia, possibly due to suffering much of the same state terrorism as minorities via militarisation and policies like the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act. They're the most vocal about the abolition of the executive presidency, the defunding of military and police, and restructuring and executing the long-mismanaged socialist infrastructure. These are usually the working class and university students, but their base has been growing in other demographics too, since we "held our noses and voted" for the Yahapalana government in 2015 and it ended up fucking us over. But despite their sympathy with the suffering of Tamils and Muslims and favouring the devolution of power, most still cling to the idea that Sinhalese majoritarianism is a fair result of democracy.

The kind of pro-LGBT, anti-racist, feminist liberals that would pass muster with the western left otoh, are a minority of urban, English-speaking professionals. Their panacea for enthofascism is voting for the neoliberal party, whose idea of reducing corruption and increasing efficiency is privatizing everything, are against racism because it's bad for tourism, and coasts on the promise of never actively feeding ethnosupremacy, even if they won't do anything about it either. Both these groups hate each other but are equally deeply uncomfortable with if not entirely resistant to the idea that the North and East are Tamil lands colonized by the Sinhalese. Both groups are aware of the corruption and complicity of the Buddhist priesthood and are prepared to do exactly nothing about it.

What I'm trying to say is that Sinhalese Buddhist ethnosupremacy is baked in to the Sri Lankan political fabric. "Left" means jack shit when it comes to whether Tamils have rights, in much the same way that the western left agrees on everything except Palestine. It's a political no man's land everyone tries not to look at.

The fundamental problem is that Sinhalese people who know enough about 1958, 1983, or the full scope of genocide perpetrated against Tamils during the last push of the war, let alone all 26 years of it, are very much in the minority. It takes a particular education to understand that "Sri Lanka" is a post-colonial invention that took over from "Ceylon", which was nothing but a construct for the ease of British administration. As far as I know, this education is confined to activist organizations and whoever followed my sociology program. So my kind of anarchist leftism that calls the war a Tamil genocide with their whole chest and the priesthood saffron terrorists and recognises Eelam is, afaik, vanishingly small.

To be honest, I never really questioned the propaganda and narrative we've been spoon fed myself until I went to Canada when I was 23 to complete my anthro degree (became disabled and dropped out after). One thing that struck me was how racist the Sinhalese diaspora was. I was raised SinBud, my school didn't admit any non-Sinhalese, half my uncles were in the military, but these people that had left the country decades ago still hated Tamils and Muslims in a way that nobody else I knew did. I wondered whether this was what it had been like when it had all started; whether this hatred that seemed to have been preserved in amber was a true taste of what had ignited Black July. Suddenly the attitude of the Tamil diaspora towards the Sri Lankan government and Sinhalese people didn't seem so unreasonable.

Then, later in the same uni term, I went to an art exhibition of a white artist who travelled the world collecting information about their genocides and made art about them, and found a painting depicting Sri Lankan Tamils in 2008. Promptly had a meltdown. Went to the lady and told her tearfully that it was all propaganda, we didn't really hate Tamils, not even my uncles in the army hated Tamils, it was a war, the LTTE had terrorized us for my whole lifetime. Bless the woman, she didn't fight me, just let me cry at her and patted my hand and pretended to take me seriously. This made it easier for me to really think about what I knew once I'd stopped wailing and stamping. It prompted a years-long self-interrogation and fact finding that made me unearth how much brainwashing had been done to us by everyone, from our families to our school textbooks to news media. It's like the air we breathed was propaganda. And I still didn't know a fraction of what life had been like for Tamils (or Muslims) and the scope of atrocities perpetrated by the Sinhalese until I began my Society and Culture degree at the Open University when I was 30. The first year textbooks were only broadstrokes facts, but at last I found out about Gnananth Obeysekera, Prageeth Jeganathan, Stanley Thambaiya, Malithi DeAlwis. Their work on nation-making, ethnicity, historical revisionism, genocide and ethnic conflict and state terrorism...everything I should have been taught as a child. The chapters on the rapes and murders and shelling and war crimes and IDP camps were..indescribable. That was what properly radicalised me about Tamil self-sovereignty, because there's clearly no possible way the Tamil people will ever be safe and safeguarded under a Sinhalese majoritarian government.

I had to drop out of that programme too because of my health. But during the mass protests against the government in 2022, I learned even more about Tamil indigeneity, the extent of JR Jayawardena's crimes, and the persecution of Marxists and victims of the '71 and '89 insurrections. So much of the protests and their encampments were directed and galvanized by social media, that organised online and in-person lectures, teach-outs, and live discussions that anyone and everyone could attend right alongside the protests. I've never seen that kind of truly democratized, free, egalitarian civic education and discourse before. That was the very first time I saw academics, survivors, refugees and human rights activists being given a respectful platform, the masses hearing firsthand accounts from people of the North and East and witnesses of Black July. April to July 2022 was a truly golden bubble of time where I saw people finally start listening, believing, and challenging all their convictions. It was the closest we ever came to realising the hope that things could be different; that we could, as a society, understand how Sinhalese ethnosupremacy had been the black rot killing this country from the first, stop being racist Sinhala-first cunts and actually hold any of these murderers accountable.

Teach us to hope, I guess.

But I suppose it's no small thing that I learned about the Tamil resistance and struggle and taught all my friends about it. I'm sure they're informing their own circles in small ways too. These tendrils are hard to see, but they exist and grow. Especially with the fall of the Rajapaksas and their Bhaiyya contingent, more people can see ethnosupremacy for the grift that it is, and the younger generations are less defensive, more willing to listen and eager for justice and change. So I guess the answer is: not very common, but less uncommon than it used to be.

#sorry if this is long winded. I hyperfixated #sri lanka #sri lanka politics #tamil sovereignity #eelam #tamil genocide #asks #anon #knee of huss

[ohsalome]

And I am once again reminding you that for centuries, Ukraine wasn't given its own voice in the world discourse. Our history, politics, culture were written by the people who colonised us and benefited from convincing the world (and us!) of a distorted picture. A good majority of information in English language that exists about Ukraine, that you believe to be the default knowledge of the world, is such distorted information. Because that is how russian propaganda work. They take a snippet of truth and blow it out of proportion and add a bouquet of lies to it and repeat it many-many times until you think that it is just basic information about the world that everyone knows.

No, Ukraine is not run by nazi. Ukraine has a non-zero percent of nazi population that is marginalized out of politics because their rhetoric is not relatable to the majority of the electorate, which leans towards socialistic populism and anarchism.

No, ukraine is not "brotherly nation" with russia. Antropoligically we belong to the same slavic family of nations that includes many other eastern europeans like czechs, polish, moldovan etc. There is no reason to select russians, belorussians and ukrainians into a distinct category that isn't political. The idea of "three brotherly nations" was literally created by a theologist Theofan Prokopovych as a part of philosophical justification to russian imperialism in the 19th century meaning of the word.

No, DNR and LNR are not "people's republics". They were created by russian army, run by the russian army and following the orders from the kremlin. Russis spent decades trying to create a dissident movement in the eastern Ukraine but failed and stepped down to brute force. Everything you see in the southern Ukraine now has happened in the east in 2014. The only difference is that y'all swallowed russian lies back then.

No, Crimea didn't have a "referendum to join russia". Russian soldiers occupied the peninsula, forced the politicians under the gunpoint to announce the referendum, and made sure that the results would be the ones they like. The native population of the peninsula, crimean tatars, that had been twice genocided by the russians in the past, boycotted the referendum. Despite making up only ~12% of the population, crimean tatar rallies were much more numerous than those of the russians in Crimea. The people who "supported" the "return of Crimea" were russian nationals, who moved to the peninsula after the ethnic cleansing of the native population and proclaimed that "it has always been theirs".

No, Ukraine doesn't have a "government-run kill list". Myrotvorets is (1) run by the volunteers, not the government, (2) is a database of pro-russian propagandists, and (3) hardly anyone on that database has been killed so far. FFS, our current first lady used to be in this database.

No, Ukraine didn't ban russian language. Ukraine has implemented laws that would help ukrainian book, music, film industry survive the competition with russian industry that has for many years monopolised our market. Ukraine has implemented the law that our politicians need to know ukrainian language if they want to hold office (this will sound surreal, but many didn't. Can you imagine such scenario in any other country? A spanish minister that doesn't speak spanish?). Ukraine has implemented a law that websites, advertisements published in foreign languages need to have the information accessible in ukrainian as well Ukraine has implemented laws that state that ukrainian citizens have a right to governmental service in Ukrainian. And if you bothered to open the law you criticise at least ONCE, you would have seen that every article has a clarification "the communication can happen in any language as long as both parties consent, but if the consumer requests to be served in ukrainian, the provider is obligated to respond to them in ukrainian".

No, Ukraine doesn't use the war as an excuse to repress the political opposition. The only people that have been "repressed" are the ones who have been colluding with ruZzia and have helped in organising the invasion of Ukraine. FFS one of those "poor oppositioners" is literally putin's godfather, and another visits russian tv channels agitating russians to nuke Kyiv. The proof against them is overwhelming and well-documented, and ukrainian civil society has been pressuring our government to stop them for literal years. Even today, many russian agents remain in governmental structures.

No, Euromaidan was not a "coup". It was a response of civil society to the police brutality and usurpation of power. We do not need white saviours to tell us that being beat up at peaceful protests is bad. We have enough agency to understand this without external help.

It's almost a year of this war. It's high time for people to stop spreading russian propaganda, especially if they claim to support Ukraine. I am yet to see a "both sides are wrong" argument that wasn't based on russian propaganda.

#ukraine #war in ukraine #russia #russian invasion of ukraine #politics #russo ukrainian war #russian propaganda

[thelastharbinger]

I’m already seeing male reactors get very verbally defensive about that scene in She-Hulk where Jennifer describes how, simply as a woman, she has more experience in suppressing rage than Banner because speaking out will get you labelled “hysterical”, “emotional”, “difficult”, “too much of a feminist”, the list goes on. And if you snap back at the wrong cat-caller, you can get murdered. So now mcu bros are rushing at the opportunity to cry out “this is just another ‘marvel throwing in another woke scene for woke’s sake’. But like...it isn’t untrue. Comic nerds are all for female superhero protagonists until she, god forbids, talks about the dynamics of what it’s like to live within the confines of patriarchy.

MCU fans are always clamoring for the social commentary to be more “subtle” and not so “in-your-face”, just so they can mindlessly enjoy a punchy fighty show and not have to confront any real-world intersections with racism, misogyny, xenophobia, transphobia, all the -isms and -phobias you can imagine. Additionally, even when the social criticisms are embedded into the story, the conflicts are routinely either overlooked or watered-down and discussed at the individual-level as if these are just isolated incidents and not reflective of larger phenomena. Dudebros forget that superhero comic media, from the very beginning, has always been political. A lot of the mainstream characters we know and love today were created in response to the anti-war and peace movements during the seventies in the United States (this is also not to say that there isn’t some definite war propaganda and Red Scare-inspired comics out there either).

Comics are teaching grounds for morality, human good, and bad, power, greed, corruption. Comics have been about the social commentary from the get-go. The idea that the government (and by extent society at large) is villainizing and surveilling a specific minority group who carry varying physical and genetic traits contrasting to that of the “ideal national subject” because of a perceived inherent aggression or difference based on their physical attributes *ahem ahem mutants*...where do you think they got that from?

I literally sat through a dude being like “IN MY EXPERIENCE AS A MAN, THAT IS NEVER THE CASE! IF A WOMAN GETS UPSET AND MAKES A SCENE IN PUBLIC, THE MAN ALWAYS LOOKS LIKE THE BAD GUY BECAUSE IT IS ASSUMED HE DID SOMETHING WRONG. MEN ARE THE ONES WHO CAN NEVER BE ANGRY.” (Obviously for Black men, my argument is different because when Black men express rage, they are viewed as a threat or turned into spectacle, but the person who made this rant was not a Black man, nor was he factoring race into his argument). As if masculinity and gratuitous violence have not become nearly synonymous. When male celebrities are accused of beating their partners, fans run to their defense to say “well she shouldn’t have provoked him.” When Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, the internet rooted for a televised boxing match between the actors/comedians. We all watched the Trump and Hillary debates right, where his belligerent behavior was coddled while she had to maintain composure?

We’ve collectively grown up watching male newscasters, talk show hosts, and reporters make jokes about angry women in sports, in the media or in news reports being on their periods, as a way to minimize the stressful and abusive circumstances, or people, women are subjected to. The world expects women to react to harassment with class and elegance; women’s anger, Black women especially, is never not mitigated. For male fans to come away from that scene wanting to eye roll is why the commentary is so “in-your-face” because a lot of y’all still don’t get it! Men are still finding ways to make women’s issues about them and the “loss” of their rights. In a world where Brock Turners are able to walk free, are you really trying to argue against this scene? Really? What else do you expect out of a series whose main character is AN ATTORNEY? Y’all are just not going to enjoy this series then, as per usual.

#if you're wondering who the youtuber in question is it is jaby koay from the channel #getjaby #he also has another channel but im not trying to promote his shit #he does reactions to loads of things but i literally want to beat his ass everytime he opens his mouth to make some social hot take bc #you might as well be talking to fucking ricky gervais #he gives major centrist vibes nd he's so fucking condescending nd will jump at any opportunity to mansplain things to his female co-reactor #he's like i'm woke but only to a certain point #anyways fuck dudebros #also are we gonna act like this she hulk scene is more shoe-horned in than that scene in endgame? let's be real #just say you hate hearing about any issues that affects anyone ever who isn't a white man #she hulk #she-hulk #marvel #mcu #mcu rant #tatiana maslany #jennifer walters #hulk #bruce banner #reactors

[howtofightwrite]

I have a character who is expected to fight enemies in a war but secretly doesn't want to, so when he chooses his weapon He goes for something specifically for defense and never uses it to hurt or kill anyone. But he chooses one that doesn't make it too obvious that he's intended to just use it for defense and not to kill. What would be a good weapon for something like that? The weapons they all use can be anything from melee to ranged (although ranged is rare) and they can summon it at will.

Most psychologically healthy individuals don't particularly want to murder random strangers. Also, unsurprisingly, most people don't want to go to war. So, these have a few implications for you.

Your character isn't unique or special for not wanting to kill people; that's normal. Part of the job of any competent military is convincing their soldiers to kill for them. There are a lot of distinct elements that go into this, including their training, overall discipline, the propaganda and information that the soldiers (and general population) are exposed to.

So, while it's entirely normal for someone to not want to want to kill people in war, if they're actually getting deployed into combat while still holding onto idea, either the war they're involved in is so difficult to justify that the propaganda didn't take hold, or their military was deficient. Further, if either of those factors are in effect, then it's not just going to be them, their pacifism will be a widespread problem within their military.

Training and drills should have gotten your character used to the idea of following orders. Including to kill. This doesn't mean they're an unfeeling machine, but it does mean that, if the training was effective, they're far more likely to follow orders, when told to kill someone, rather refuse to.

Refusing to follow orders would result in (often severe) disciplinary action. Depending on the military, that could even mean a summary execution, after the battle.

Now, punishment is probably the least effective method for motivating your troops to fight. It will work, but has severe diminishing returns, and it's only a mater of time before those troops will return the favor, and start assassinating their own officers (or whomever is responsible for overseeing discipline) in retribution. There's even a modern term for this specific behavior, “Fragging.”

Before it got this far, your character's government should have been instilling why it was important for your character to fight. This can alternate between legitimate information and propaganda without much difference in how they function. One's true, the other isn't.

The process of formulating propaganda or legitimate information does differ. Propaganda is heavily affected by human psychology, and focuses on disinformation. Providing legitimate context for the war  requires explaining, sometimes fairly sophisticated, political concepts in terms that the rank and file will understand. There are muddy elements here as well, a legitimate war is likely to also see propagandist materials produced to further motivate. Hostile use of propaganda can be used to demoralize enemy forces. Similarly, sometimes the legitimate context is effectively fictitious. An example of that would be, The Domino Theory: It was believed at the time, but has since been thoroughly debunked.

So, your character doesn't want to kill anyone, and that's great, but they're now in a war to repel an invading force, who are pillaging their homeland. Is it true? Maybe. Maybe not, but if it's a lie it's one they're unlikely to be unaware of. Maybe they're in a war to liberate territory that was previously claimed by the other party, and very importantly, they're pretty sure the other side struck first this time.

Finally, and probably most importantly to your character, they may not want to kill anyone, but they're pretty sure the invaders will kill them, if given the opportunity. They've also learned in training that, while fighting defensively has a purpose, it's not going to stop someone from trying to kill you, so they really need to put down an enemy soldier before their foe can do the same to them.

Is that all true? Not quite. Their enemies may have the same hang-ups about killing that they do. They probably don't want to be there any more than your character does. They may think they're fighting a liberation war, trying to reclaim lost territory. They're pretty sure that your character, yes, your character in specific, the pacifist, wants them dead, personally, and that if they don't kill enemy soldiers on the battlefield, they will die.

Is any of that true? Not quite. But, by the time you've gotten onto the battlefield and are staring down an enemy infantry advance, trying to find a path of pacifism is extremely risky. If your character is supremely lucky, they'll be captured, and held in decent conditions until the end of the war. If they're unlucky, they'll either be executed on the battlefield (by whichever side wins, either for cowardice or because they're a surviving enemy combatant with no important standing.) Worse, they could always be captured and tortured for information. Whether that's better or worse than being put to death is up for debate, but it's not going to be a fun time. This is all assuming that they're not killed in the fray.

So what's the best weapon for your character? Who knows? They're going to get whatever they're going to get. If the quartermaster hands them a spear, that's their weapon. Outside of some elite forces, and conscripts who are called up with whatever they could grab from their home, you don't really pick your weapon in most armies. You also don't, usually, get to pick, what you're going to be doing on the battlefield. If your character was trained to be infantry, they'll use whatever infantry weapon their military uses. Depending on the exact time frame, they may be required to procure the weapon themselves, in which case it will need to meet some standards, or it may be provided for them by their army. Without more context, it's impossible to know what you're looking at in this specific case, but your character wouldn't be allowed to pick an ineffective weapon focused on self-defense.

-Starke

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#writing advice #writing reference #writing tips #starke answers #how to fight write

[icecreamkink]

i JUST need people to understand worldwide just how big this win was. yall know bolsonaro is a fascist forest burner, but the lenghts he went to try to cheat this election were unprecedented (and we had a coup 7 years ago!)

beyond his industry of fake news, the government was shamelessly buying votes with state tools. he was artificially manipulating the economy to try to win votes. there have been hundreds of complaints of companies, big and small, across the country of employees being threatened into voting for bozo, women being told to smuggle phones in their bras to prove their vote. workers being shamlessly bribed into voting bozo. there have been countless attacks and dozens of murders over this election this year. and finally, yesterday, when even that wasn't enough, the federal traffic police was used to roadblock voters on the regions lula had the most votes. the police stopped HUNDREDS of buses taking people to vote in over 780 operations in a blatant act of electoral fraud; i don't know how many votes were lost because of it. nothing like this has ever happened after the end of the dictatorship. it was terrifying, i was scared we were looking at another coup.

and yet. even after all of that, even after years of fascist propaganda and the machine of state being shamelessly used to attempt to fraud this election it STILL wasn't enough! we won , WE DID IT and we won by millions! I'm from an extremely anti lula, fascist region in the country and people were euphorically celebrating in the streets! historical political rivals are talking of hope for the future, finally. lula is our once and future president, democratically elected in a government that seeks to undermine democracy every day. it was genuinely a fight against the machine of the state and every underhanded tactic they could employ.

a lot of foreigners were talking about how this was one of the most important elections in the last decades... yeah. yeah .... you have no idea

#brasil #brazil #lula 2022 #lula presidente #eu simplesmente não consigo expressar tudo o q tp sentindo #gente festando na rua no reduto minion que é foz do Iguaçu!! coro de lulala no centro de curitiba!!!!! #SEM MEDO DE SER FELIZ POHA

[matan4il]

Thank you for your daily updates.

I've been seeing people discussing why/not the ICJ case is valid, but nothing on how the judges are likely to rule, a discussion that happens often when there is a big SCOTUS case.

What of their temperaments? Sure there's a Lebanese judge, that doesn't inherently make him antisemitic. Do you know if the judges are more "left" or "right?" My hopes are not high, considering they refuse to see evidence of the actual Oct 7 massacres (shame, since Hamas really wanted that broadcasted).

Hi Nonnie,

I usually try to reply to asks at the same order I got them, but I'll make an exception, because of how relevant this is to the current proceedings at the ICJ right now.

I don't think that being Muslim makes anyone inherently biased, nor do I think being Jewish means a person is free of the antisemitism of their environment, so I generally believe it's impossible for judges to be completely disconnected from what their country's position is. I believe the ICJ recognizes this as well, and that's why, a country that is suing or sued at the ICJ without having a representation among the permanent judges, has the right to appoint one. Specifically when it comes to Lebanon, I have to admit that IDK how possible it is for the Lebanese judge to ignore the fact that his country has for decades implemented an actual apartheid, a legally imposed policy of discrimination against Palestinians who live there.

Well, for this trial, we have an Israeli judge, a SA judge, and the 15 permanent judges. Here's one analysis about the 15 that I read:

American judge: had worked as a legal advisor to the administrations of Clinton and Obama, believes the scope of international law is limited (so she's less likely to grant SA a provisional measure that's a legal precedent).

Russian judge: advises Russia on two legal matters (regarding Georgia, and Kosovo), believes the scope of international law should be wider, has voted against demanding of Russia to stop the military operation in Ukraine, and has published independently his opinion that the ICJ has no right to judge the Russia-Ukraine conflict, because Russia didn't recognize its authority on this. Has visited Israel in 2015 for an international space conference, and together with 2 other ICJ judges, has conducted a "trial" regarding space law.

Slovak judge: sees the scope of international law as narrower, in the past he indicated that he thinks the crime of committing a genocide can't be decided in this court (that it should be in a criminal one), he has also said that quotes uttered in "the heat of battle" (the kind at the basis of SA's lawsuit) are not indicative of policy intent, they're just war propaganda. Has visited Israel in 2015 for an international space conference, and together with 2 other ICJ judges, has conducted a "trial" regarding space law.

French judge: Jewish, considered critical of Israel. In the past, while arguing against Israel, he has also said that the conflict here is political by nature and that the involvement of the ICJ in it is unhelpful to dialogue between the parties.

Moroccan judge: in the past, his decisions included non-legal considerations (for example, he said he's not sure Ukraine's move against Russia fits the convention on the prevention of genocide, but he still was in favor of granting Ukraine the provisional measures it was asking for). He was also a minority vote in the matter of whether the Serbs committed a genocide against the Bosnian Muslims, where the majority determined that the conditions to define it as such were not met.

Somali judge: there are no past indications of how he might rule from an international law perspective. He's Muslim, but in the past he has joined an Iftar dinner at the home of the Israeli ambassador at the Hague, and has also once opened a Holocaust Day lecture for the ICJ.

Chinese judge: has worked for her government in the past. She has voted against the provisional measures Ukraine has asked for against Russia, saying that it seems like an attempt to use the convention in order to get the ICJ to decide in broader political matters than the convention allows for. She has also argued against provisional measures that only demand one side would stop the fighting.

Ugandan judge: has worked for her government in the past. There are no past indications of how she might rule from an international law perspective.

Indian judge: tends towards an expanded view of what is discrimination. Has visited Israel in 2015 for an international space conference, and together with 2 other ICJ judges, has conducted a "trial" regarding space law.

Jamaican judge: has worked for his government in the past. Has voted against Russia when it came to the provisional measures demanding it stops its fighting against Ukraine.

Lebanese judge: has expressed anti-Israel views in the past, and has also repeatedly shown that he takes his country's position into account in his decisions. Has argued in the past that in situations of military occupation, the burden of proof is very low, or that the burden of proof should be on the occupier.

German judge: in the past, he has published his opposition to an Israeli law professor's article, arguing that a wider view is required when it comes to the right to self defense.

Japanese judge: in the past, he has published an article that sees the right of third party countries to appear before the ICJ (as is SA in this case) as limited.

Australian judge: very active in the field of women and gender rights. In the past, she has criticized ICJ rulings that allowed the coalition forces a lot of freedom in Iraq.

Brazilian judge: in the past, he has referred to the PLO as a terrorist organization (at the time about which he was writing), but he did the same regarding the Jewish underground movement, the Hagana (which worked to protect Jews, and to smuggle them "illegally" into the Land of Israel to save them from the Nazis during WWII).

According to one legal correspondent that I listened to, SA has asked for so many provisional measures, that the ICJ is unlikely to turn them all down. This reporter believes that the ICJ will likely not grant the provisional measure calling on Israel to stop the fighting, but it will probably grant at least two other provisional measures. She had a bet which two, the provisional measure calling on more humanitarian aid to be brought into Gaza (if true, this would be so redundant. One of the points made at the ICJ proceedings, was that Israel has agreed to allow in as much humanitarian aid as could be taken in on the Gazan side, and was willing to expand its operations on the Israeli side for this to happen. In other words, what's currently limiting the amount of aid going in is the capacity to handle it on the Gazan, not Israeli, side), and to collect evidence regarding the fighting in Gaza (which Israel is already doing).

I hope this helped! xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

#israel #antisemitism #israeli #israel news #israel under attack #israel under fire #israelunderattack #terrorism #anti terrorism #hamas #antisemitic #antisemites #jews #jew #judaism #jumblr #frumblr #jewish #ask #anon ask