#maybe even.....socialist dutch? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fictionalred · 7 months

Note

hii! if you don't mind, would you share some of your experiences in Belgium, Ghent? I'm thinking of studying there, so all and any impressions of day to day life there would mean a lot! thanks :)

Hi! I hope it's okay to publish this ask, because I want people to weigh in here. I haven't been a student here for about 7 years (so know that).

Ghent's very much a socialist kinda city. People you meet will randomly complement you or talk with you. It's diverse. You will get drunk but enjoy it. Because people care. There's always an event. It is cosy as can be. You will know it whole, yet always find something new.

Practically:

Get A Bike!! You can't go without here!!! Check out the Fietsambassade (bicycle embassy) for renovated second hand bikes [x] You can also rent a bike there!

There are cheap spots to eat but just know Belgium is expensive in general. So even the cheap spots might seem expensive to you.

Lots of places/shops have student discounts. USE IT

There are many a places that will hire you for a student job without any knowledge of the Dutch language so don't worry too much about that.

And, like, take advantage of the Student restaurants, check their page here [x].

Student clubs; in a lot of the studies they are almost a necessary thing to join, pay the small entrance fee and you will get a lot of the syllabuses for free and even some former exam questions to practise on and more study help.

Speaking of courses, at the UGent they are almost always "at print" cost. So don't expect high book costs like Americans seem to have. Lots of professors even provide their syllabus for free digitally and you can print it if you wanna or just bring a laptop to class to annotate.

Language courses, like Dutch, are available for cheaper as a student, check the UCT (this is the price for the whole course not just the one evening, the site is confusing)

The campuses are pretty spread all over the city (all in close bike range, the only exception is veterinarian studies I think)

Nightlife wise; the Overpoort is The Spot to Party. It's a street that gets closed off to traffic at wednesday and/or thursday just for partying purposes. If you're into that, go there ;)

Otherwise there are a many cosy bars that are calmer too. Ghent is in general a very warm city.

BUT, and do not forget, "koten" (student residents) tend to be very expensive!! There is a massive shortage. So beware of that! Check the Uni supplied rooms here [x] A nearby house to ours rents out a room for €410 (incl utilities) a month (and I think that was cheap). So, if you are considering Ghent, do know of the cost. (the room is taken by now jsyk)

So yeah, if more recent students wanna weigh in? I did science-y studies so maybe it's different for language or history or etc... studies?

Also if you have any follow up or other questions lemme know! :)

#fr #ask #incandescentq

5 notes · View notes

marisol993 · 3 years

Text

For some time now I've seen, over and over again, that the Qunari in the Dragon Age Universe are apparently some kind of racist caricature of black people, muslims and other types of poc's, bipoc's, minorities, ....

From a personal perspective I never saw them as such, but since a personal view of things isn't very objective and can be skewed by ones life-experiances I was completely willing to admit, that I might have been wrong about that and had an opportunity to learn something new here.

The more I thought about it and critically examined this statement though, the less I agreed with any of it. Especially since a lot of arguments in favor of this view seemed to boil down to "this person of [insert relevant minority here] said so". I.e. another "personal viewpoint".

So let's get into a critical analysis of the Qunari and why I think that they are so very far removed from any kind of "minorty" (from a western point of view) coding that you couldn't even see it with the power of the Hubble and James Webb space-telescopes combined:

First of all, who are the Qunari? The Qunari are tall, medium to heavily built, horned (or unhorned, if you only played Origins) humanoids, that come in varying shades of grey skin, with whiteish hair. They are more intensly sexually dimorphic than the Dwarves, Elves and Humans of Thedas, with the males being sometimes nearly twice as wide (especially in the shoulders) and much more muscled than the females. They call themselves the Qunari as they are followers of the Qun (their guide to life and society), though the word is more of an umbrella-term, since anybody of any race is called a Qunari if they "convert" to the teachings of the Qun.

Here's a picture:

At this point some people might already remark, that the Qunari are very obviously "black-coded" since apparently nowadays any deviation from natural, real-life human skintones automatically has to mean, that the fantasy-race in question is meant to reflect black or brown people (even if they are green or bright purple), unless you literally give them a complete and utterly snow-white skintone. If that is the argument you want to go with, I would like to redirect your eyes to the picture above, as it already disproves this. As it is shown there (and in the DA:I Character-Creator), the Qunari can come in a complete spectrum of skintones (from very light grey to nearly ebony), just like all the different races of Thedas (even the dwarves for some reason, which doesn't make much sense for a race that lived underground for most of their history, but what can you do..). This basically means, that yes there are dark-skinned (or "black") Qunari, but there are also those that could be better described as "light-skinned", so the coding-qualifier goes away.

Then there are the people, who might want to say, that because they are tall and "burly", together with the unnatural skintone makes them "black-coded" which is something I never really understood, since the tallest people in the world by ethnicity are the Dutch and if you look at heights in correlation with body-weight the Russians take first place. Both countries not really know for their large populations of darkskinned-humanoids. Another coding-qualifier that goes away.

And then there are the people (who I would seriously suggest should maybe review their own "racial" views, if "black and brown people" is the first thing they think about when it comes to this), who say, that they are a stereotype of the "savages and natives", which is something that is actively contradicted in canon. One of the most prominent traits of the Qunari is that they are efficiant to a T, use every resorce at the disposal to it's maximum (including their people) and that they are more technically and scientifically advanced than many other race in Thedas (except maybe the dwarves) . This is shown through their mastery of gunpowder (which they call gaatlok) and the fact that they can use chemicals and drugs to literally warp the mind of people without needing magic. They are in no way presented as "savage" and if they are named such, it's usually by people who they are actively at war with, who want to insult them. They are also not "natives" of Thedas. Even their so called "homeland" in Thedas, which is called Par Vollen, was colonised by them, when they landed at it's shores in 6:30 Steel-Age and started converting the original population of Tevinter humans and elves, with whom they have been at war with ever since. Let me say that again: The Qunari are active colonisers and at war with the Tevinter-Imperium, who's people are the original population of the land. Not exactly a typical "native or black" stereotype in western media.

So who do I think the Qunari are actually modeled after?

Well let's summarise:

The Qunari came from across the ocean in their ships filled with cannons and guns, to colonise the land and convert the native population towards their beliefs. They are currently fighting a war against the Tevinter-Imperium, an old and powerful empire, that engages in widespread slavery and practices blood-magic by sacrificing said slaves, sometimes also to one of their many gods.

(If you can't guess who I think they are supposed to be modeled after by now, I would recommend to maybe picking up a 7th-grade history textbook again)

Yes, you can make a very strong case for the Qunari actually being these guys:

The Conquistadors (heck, if you cross out a few letters you can even anagram the word "Qunari" out of the word Conquistador). Who also came from across the sea with ships, cannons and guns to colonise the land (south- and middle-america) and convert the native population (to christianity) and fought an ancient and powerful empire with slaves and blood-sacrifices (the Aztec-Kingdoms).

So after pissing of one half of tumblr with that, let's start with the other half by talking about the apparent "muslim-coding" and how I disagree with that too.

Let's start with a rough definition of what a muslim is and how I think that that alone shows how the Qunari are in no way coded to be them:

I would define a muslim as somebody who is an active member of the religion of Islam. Islam is defined by it's holybook (the Qur'An), which was revealed to the prophet Muhammad by an all-knowing and omnipresent abrahamic god.

This in and of itself basically already disqualifies the Qunari from being "muslim-coded" since first and foremost the Qunari are not a religion. They do not have a god and they don't pray to any, the Qun is not a "holy-book" and Ashkaari Koslun (the guy who wrote it) was not a prophet, who wrote down the word of god, but a philosopher who basically crafted a "guide to life and society" with his works.

If you really wanted to find something that is slightly "muslim-coded" in the world of Thedas, you might actually have more luck with the chantry-stuff, since they do have a prophet (Andraste) who could talk to god (the Maker), they have a holy book based of her teachings (the Chant of Light) and they believe that the whole world should follow those teachings, so god will return to them (singing the Chant from all four corners of the world). They even have their own flavour of jihadist religious warfare with the Exhalted Marches (though all in all I do think that the Chantry can be better viewed as a take on christian religions since the split between the Imperial Chantry and the original one is similar to the split of the (western) christian church into catholics and protestants).

So what do I think is a better representation for the Qun in the real world?

Well lets look at it in the simplest way possible that the canon gives us:

The Qun is a guide for the life of the Qunari (the people of the Qun) that ecompasses everything from laws, legislative guides, too how society should be struktured and how everyone has to fit into and function in that society, from the most mundane and simplest tasks and jobs to it's highest administrative bodies. Everyone in this society is evaluated, so that they can be put into a position that is best suited to them and their skill-sets. There they will then each work according to their abilities and each be provided for according to their needs (see what I did there). Yes, the Qun can in my opinion be best described as a take on an authoritarian-socialist guide to life, written by somebody with a similar philosophie as Karl Marx.

So all in all, I don't think that the Qunari are in any way black-, brown-, bipoc- or muslim-coded, but a fantasy take on the Conquistadors, if instead of a bible they had all carried around "A Guide to Life, Luck and Community, written by Karl Marx (during one of his more productive weekends)", visually represented by giant Minotaur-People of many colours.

Also I find this obsession with finding every and any kind of reflexion of our real world in some random fantasy setting, by people who are most of the time actively looking to get offended by at least something and mostly every- and anything, quite contrived most of the time and that the day people on tumblr learned the word "codeing" a significant part of the internets critical-thinking skills and will just shrivelled up and died.

Thank you for coming to my TED-talk.

#dragon age #dragon age origins #dragon age 2 #dragon age inquisition #qunari #the qun #thedas #tevinter imperium

33 notes · View notes

dustedmagazine · 2 years

Text

Doodswens — Lichtvrees (Svart Records)

Lichtvrees by Doodswens

Dutch duo Doodswens plays an elemental sort of black metal, by turns vigorously engaged by the form’s kvlt rootedness in tradition (cold and raw) and simultaneously, rapturously open to contemporary atmospherics (grand and cathartic). So, it’s elemental in a double sense: sometimes reducing the music to base substances, and sometimes reaching toward the stars, from whence all elements come. The band’s new LP Lichtvrees commences with “In Mijn Bloed,” a song that concentrates on paying tribute to black metal’s Northern European orthodoxy. It’s a sensible move for a young band to make. Doodswens has been releasing music for only a couple years, and anyone who has paid even minimal attention to the kinds of chatter that circulate through the black metal underground knows the deep significance attached to terms like “ancient,” “primitive” and “reverence.” The twist? Doodswens comprises two young women, Fraukje van Burg, who plays guitar and sings, and Inge van der Zon, who provides percussion. Tradition?

To be sure, it’s nearing 2022, and Western culture has experienced a swing of the pendulum toward the feminine (we can and should debate the relative superficiality of that swing, since there is a real difference between what the Internet says and what the Supreme Court says; but the broader culture is fond of citing that pendulum’s sweep). Is it really necessary to note the band members’ sex? In this climate, it might seem patronizing, or worse, charged with a sort of sub-rosa wink and leer. Given black metal’s loyalty to old ways, we might note that some of its originary recordings included songs like “Werewolf, Semen and Blood,” “Bestial Lust (Bitch)” and “Chainsaw Gutsfuck.” Even though the young women in Doodswens don’t seem to be interested in making a lot of noise about, or cynically capitalizing on, the fact that they are indeed young women, the broader contexts, social and artistic, assert the fact’s significance.

But we should emphasize: The music is quite good. The song “Lichtvrees” is a strong example of what the band can create. A riff with drama, a tune with a pleasurable melody that van Burg’s resonant playing drapes with foreboding and fills with force; production that’s just rough enough, but also glistening with the crystalline tingle of blizzard-blown snow. It’ll redden your cheeks, and then it’ll freeze them solid. The writing and the playing both show real promise.

One hopes Doodswens will have the chance to build on that. But black metal acts play in an increasingly crowded field, with an audience that doesn’t exactly swell by the millions. So what’s a young band to do? Maybe not agree to tour with a bunch of self-important edgelords that have made a career out of playing peekaboo with National Socialist sympathies (and who once recorded a charming ditty called “Fistfucking God’s Planet”). Sure, a band has to build cred, and traveling on a bill topped by an internationally established act with buzz—however complicated, or sort of gross—will get you noticed. One wishes Doodswens would let the music do that work.

Jonathan Shaw

#doodswens #lichtvrees #svart #jonathan shaw #albumreview #dusted magazine #metal #black metal #netherlands

9 notes · View notes

transrightsjimin · 3 years

Text

was on the phone w my parents for 1 hour and almost 40 minutes today and on the one hand i think it was good to keep each other up to date on stuff and give them that social interaction they rly crave, but on the other hand i feel so fucking weird abt not saying anything when my mom talked abt having done smth very racist + pro-cop nd i was just so shocked and saddened but also didnt know what to say??

like she is in one of those neighbourhood whatsapp group chats ('buurtpreventie apps') (which are unfortunately rly popular in recent years), in which people from a certain street or flat contact each other to keep an eye on each other aka use it to report random black or arab people to the cops. which she did when two men were in her flat to collect money for charity nd apparently it was a scam bc the permit wasnt for that specific charity that week but just. my mom talking abt how she snitched on them nd the rest of the flat of even older people encouraging that, nd worst of all my mom going 'kijk dit klinkt vast een beetje racistisch maar het waren twee donkere mannen dus we dachten dat dat dezelfde waren als de oplichters waar we over hoorden' HELLO??? 🤢 like i had to say smth but then i fucking didnt bc i was just so weirded out and know how threatening my mom gets when shes criticized. like i just dont know how to get some sense or compassion into her head bc she's blocking it all. she used to be a socialist who even supported anarchists and protest state violence and now she's just.... vaguely in agreement w criticism of class structures but as soon as it's about strictness if tax authorities to the poor, or about racism, her support stops and ppl are criminal to her. it's so tiresome. so im frustrated i didnt say anything but then DID talk the ears if my dad's face by trying to explain where mask skepticism came from nd how the govt and conspiracy theorists were to blame for this and why they do this (money), but i was rambling too much prob nd my dad just doesnt follow anything bc old nd adhd nd former alcoholic (he also didnt understand what memes r which i realized too late after trying to tell him mama sent me a 13 page pdf w bad memes) nd so eventually he noted 'but please don't eh get into the opposite side of these conspiracy theories, believing in other ones' nd im just 🤦‍♂️ i prob sounded fuckingrly incomprehensible nd extreme to him??

he also asked me what i thought of the sylvana simons interview in the interview he gifted me nd i said i liked it but was side eyeing some repeated, rethorical questions she was asked abt 'extremist muslims!!'. he seemed more positive abt BIJ1 / sylvana than my mom who completely discredits them just solely based on the racist general public's treatment of her, whereas my dad seemed kind of curious but also tone policed how sylvana should have not sounded this angry and how he found it strange she kept bringing up 'minorities' and *very confused* ' l.. g... b...t ... q .. uhh'. which is still somehow better than my mom who immediately discredited her political party based on nonsense racists spout for years so i guess the bar is on the ground

nd ALSO me telling my dad contact w my mom is difficult was met w him relativating it by saying my mom is in severe pain bc chronic pains nd illnesses nd even worse lately, shes on her way to become deaf (p much is on one ear nd the other almost) nd was too stubborn to get a hearing aid (but then was more willing to in the end). but anyway his argument is not to be so harsh at mama for being so snappy bc shes in pain nd has bleeding intestines again nd hears these noises bc of her messed up ears so cant sleep etc and then theres just regular back and hip nd knee pains she has bc of deteriorating bones bc medication. like i get thats horrible nd i do get that thats why her moods change so much nd shes so scary to talk to but i dont think thats a reason to never ask her to maybe not say or do smth abusive or bigoted??

like at the time i was happy that they were finally a bit more satisisfied bc i talked to them for a long time but im just really so puzzled on what to say to them when they say smth horrible, like. i feel like i have to try to educate them nd not make them (especially my mom) move further to the right nd to racist rethoric. nd i dont even think her racist views changed that much (though she did luckily, though only somewhat, changed her mind on zwarte piet) but the netherlands is just so behind on shit that even acknowledging racism exists here is incomprehensible to ppl like her and enrages them so much bc its seen as a personal insult. like idk what to say to an old white woman who had threatened to slap me if i ever called her actions racist again, and who clearly believes in cops and antiblackness so much just like the average member of a buurtpreventie app, that calling cops on black men is justified to her. like idk how to change someones mind bc she never listened to me nd only gets aggressive nd i have to stay nice and never confront her actions bc shes in insufferable pain???? what about other disabled people who r in chronical pains and SUFFER bc of racism?? like white disabled people rly get a free pass on being shitty bc of feeling bad but the same mentality isnt applied to poc. like she's rly become a stubborn old adult who doesnt listen to / read what others state unless it doesnt challenge her views or if its on tv or whatsapp groups, nd anything confronting is met w insults or passive agressiveness. like idk how to educate ppl like that bc my parents (esp mom) clearly refuse to be open to that, and they dont use social media nd cant read the same level of english as me so all info has to be in dutch but also everything is seen as a personal insult or 'too elitist' language so i rly dont know what to do. like i want to be more than a fucking ally on only the internet nd maybe 1 or 2 protests per year, but idk how to get through the thick skulls of people 30-40 years older than me who r so hard to communicate w bc they dont get technology, social media, newer language, poc, lgbt stuff, cant read a lot of english nd stop reading at difficult words etc ???

#rambles #like im just lost #family stuff

1 note · View note

goingorthodox · 4 years

Text

Thoughts on growing vegetables, not government.

So a friend of ours ended up, at the end fo last year, going to join a monastery in West Virginia. He was a permaculture enthusiast, and he offered us a bunch of things - drip lines, hoses, and even a cast iron dutch oven. But he gave us larger things too - eight or nine fruit trees, a bee smoker and bee suit, some books. I thought that was cool, the trees are in movable pots so I ran some water lines to them and they’ve actually started producing fruit. Since we’re renting right now it’s good they’re in pots.

So we have an orchard. We already had a garden, though we’re taking it more seriously now. Realizing we’re sort of stumbling into homesteading made us look at chickens (chicken bans are very stupid btw, fight your city ordinances any chance you get)...then miniature cows...and then o, look how little space pigs need. Maybe we should pray specifically about an acre of land... With seed catalogues overwhelmed in some places, hatcheries being sold out, goat sales going up...I’m wondering if what we’re going to emerge from this with is not the socialist utopia so many are craving in some circles, but a more self reliant, self-feeding population who fell into gardening and bee keeping and are realizing the government is a bunch of incompetent millionaires who would drink your blood if it gave them $50. These are random thoughts, but I’ll say that since I’ve started looking at our property as a miniature farm instead of a house in the city (though we only have plants, to be clear) I’ve been way more productive. I don’t feel like mowing the yard or trimming the trees are things that just require attention, they’re part of my vocation as a man literally feeding his family and keeping his ‘farm’ productive and neat. I’ve run the hose under the driveway like I was supposed to. I’ve started seedlings and fixed water lines. I’ve mowed more, mulched, mixed fertilizers and carried bags of soil and...it’s stupidly stereotypical but it’s really helped my mental health in a time when things have been super depressing. So I recommend it. Look at your apartment, your house, your dorm room, as a farm and see what you’re able to do and how much more you care when your environment is...I don’t know something more than a dwelling, but an extension of your life? You can ferment in a dorm room, you can grow herbs in an apartment. What is your farm capable of?

6 notes · View notes

ingloriousbi · 5 years

Text

like how abstract money and taxes are can really just... make money almost incomprehensible to people who aren’t earning and spending full time. like ive never been bad with money, or math, or understanding of basic tax principles, but it wasn’t until i had a full budget 100% earned by me with NO student loans that a lot of the mystique kind of left it. maybe im just an idiot idk.

but the moment i have a real, legit, state of comparison, money just loses all mystery and it becomes blatantly obvious how much money rich people have, and how unacceptable it is, and how fucking RIDICULOUS IT IS that people not only didn’t straight up cave-man instinct kill the people that so obviously create a threat to the entire community with hoarding wealth but that people have - with love and glee - voted in laws and economic regulations that made even MORE wealth hoarding possible

like dutch people just... voted away their successful socialist democracy bc they were “paying too much taxes” on their 50k a year income and just let ppl making 6 figures or more pocket and hoard that money for no damn reason and no one seems to stop and think and do a calculation and reach the conclusion of just how insane the world we live in is

#personal

2 notes · View notes

berniesrevolution · 6 years

Photo

JACOBIN MAGAZINE

If you go by most of what you see in the media, you would think politics is governed by some strange version of Newtonian physics. “Both sides” are perennially to blame, and if there’s ever dangerous excesses on one end of the political spectrum, then they must of course be evened out by the existence of equally dangerous excesses on the other end.

It’s why, after George Soros was mailed a bomb, Chuck Schumer felt the need to announce that “despicable acts of violence and harassment are being carried out by radicals across the political spectrum.” And why the New York Times, after more explosives were sent to individuals hated by the Trump-loving Right, decidedthe explosives were adding “to [a] climate of overheated partisan rancor.”

Yet we’re now at a moment when it’s indisputable that only one of these “sides” has actually become a vehicle for dangerous, violent extremism.

I’m speaking about the quickly fading line between the far Right and “mainstream” conservatism. This isn’t really a new phenomenon. The dividing line between US conservatism and fringe bigots of various kinds has always been pretty flimsy; the old, “respectable” conservatism represented by William F. Buckley and pined for by today’s centrist pundits was also a deeply racist one. It’s not a mystery why the Klan endorsed Ronald Reagan for president twice.

But just consider some of the events of the past few weeks. The “theory” that the bombs sent by Trump superfan Cesar Sayoc were a “false flag” orchestrated by the Left quickly moved from far right internet message boards to being broadcast by “mainstream” conservatives, including Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs, Michael Savage, various Fox News guests, and even a Republican lawmaker, Matt Gaetz. Gaetz, along with “mainstream” conservatives like Newt Gingrich, also floated the idea that the thousands of Central American migrants traveling to Mexico and the US-Mexican border were being funded by some mysterious agent of chaos. One of these conservatives was pundit and prolific conspiracy theorist Erick Erickson, who for some reason was invited this past Sunday onto Meet the Press where he play-acted as a sober moderate and lectured conservatives to drop the crazy talk.

It called to mind the recent episode in which conservative legal thinker Ed Whelan invented an alternative“explanation” for Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged assault of Christine Blasey Ford that involved a Kavanaugh doppelgänger, defaming an innocent man in the process. It also calls to mind that, even now, a majority of Republicans believe Obama was born in Kenya.

This is far from the only recent instance of crossover between the far and “mainstream” Right. British far-right figure Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (a.k.a. “Tommy Robinson”) was invited by Republican congressman Paul Gosar to speak to the Conservative Opportunity Society, a group of right-wing House Republicans founded by Steve King. This is only a few months after Gosar traveled to London and spoke in support of Yaxley-Lennon at a protest peopled with other far-right figures, where he called Muslim men a “scourge.” The Arizona GOP said nothing.

Speaking of Steve King — the Republican congressman who, whoopsie daisy, just happens to somehow constantly retweet, meet with, and sound exactly like neo-Nazis — his “mainstream” colleagues seem to have a hard time condemning him. Here’s a parade of local GOP officials defending King and whitewashing his various racist comments (“he’s a godly, upright man”; “I think that he says what he means”;“maybe it’s crude, maybe a little mean, but it gets the point across”). One GOP county chair, when asked if King’s statement that “we can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies” was racist, responded: “I think it’s a reality.” (The head of the Republican Congressional fundraising arm did finally criticize King on Tuesday.)

King has helpfully made clear an obvious truth that would be considered too “partisan” if uttered by anyone in the media. Referring to the Freedom Party of Austria, a far-right party of actual Nazis, King said: “If they were in America pushing the platform that they push, they would be Republicans.” And he’s not wrong: this November features a gaggle of real-life, no-kidding neo-Nazis and white supremacists running as GOP nominees.

Meanwhile, the Proud Boys, a ridiculous but nonetheless violent fascist gang led by Vice founder Gavin McInnes, have been welcomed into the Republican Party fold, with McInnes invited by the Metropolitan Republican Club of New York City — traditionally a hub for the GOP’s establishment elite — to give a lecture. The talk involved McInnes re-enacting the 1960 assassination of Japanese Socialist Party leader Inejiro Asanuma, complete with caricatured Asian eyes, and concluding, “Never let evil take root,” a line reportedly met with hooting and cheering by the Republican audience. The Proud Boys also acted as “security” for Joe Gibson, a far-right activist who was briefly a Republican Senate candidate from Washington, and a recent protest by the gang was organized by a local GOP official in Florida.

We can also see this shift in Fox News, the most popular and powerful media arm of the conservative movement. Fox has long been a bastion of racist dog-whistling, as Megyn Kelly’s tenure at the network can attest, but it’s recently opted to swap the dog whistle for a bullhorn. Tucker Carlson runs shows about the dangers of Roma immigration and supposed anti-white discrimination in South Africa, while Laura Ingraham told viewers that “massive demographic changes have been foisted upon the American people” through both illegal and legal immigration, and that “the America that we know and love doesn’t exist anymore” in parts of the country. Earlier this week, Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade suggested that the migrants headed toward the US are carrying unnamed “diseases,” which Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale accurately called “a staple of racist and anti-semitic incitement for hundreds of years.”

But the fact that Fox has never been far from these more alarmingly explicit appeals to racism is key, because the same goes for “mainstream” conservatism. As the Left has been at pains to point out for the past three years, other than on trade and some aspects of foreign policy, there is very little real substantive difference between Trump and “mainstream” conservatives, which is why Republicans, including his fiercest“opponents”, vote almost exactly in line with Trump’s policy positions most of the time. It’s also why Trump’s approval ratings are sky-high among Republicans and why “mainstream” conservatives have walked back their previous disapproval of Trump and now declare they’re “thrilled” with him. As one pollster has said, the “Never-Trump” Republicans that tend to appear on TV and in op-ed pages don’t really exist in real life.

Take a look at the recent midterms, which have seen the entire GOP heavily stoking racism in advance of voting day. The Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC, affiliated with House speaker Paul Ryan and the GOP leadership, has been running some breathtakingly racist ads. But the GOP’s “moderate” elements have been flirting with extremism for a while now.

Hatred of refugees, which motivated the latest far-right terrorist attack, was stoked by the “mainstream” Right in 2015, when 31 governors (all but one of them Republican) refused to resettle any Syrian refugees in their states. Hapless “moderate” Jeb Bush suggested letting in only the Christian ones. The following year, Ted Cruz, then another “moderate” alternative to Donald Trump, ran a campaign ad that was essentially Willie Horton for immigrant communities.

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the annual confluence of “mainstream” conservatism’s brightest lights, has for many years been a cesspool of far-right talking points, ideas, and figures. Figures like Pamela Geller and Frank Gaffney were fixtures for years (Gaffney, a conspiratorial, anti-Muslim hate-monger, was also an adviser to Ted Cruz in 2016, and other GOP hopefuls that year lined up to be associated with him). Geert Wilders, the far-right Dutch politician, turned up once at CPAC to a forty-second standing ovation. This was the same year Wilders had been invited to the Capitol by Jon Kyl, the extremely conservative Republican former congressman who was considered a “pragmatic” choice to fill John McCain’s seat in Arizona.

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #jacobin #jacobin magazine #conservatism #republicans #bigotry #economic inequality

51 notes · View notes

brainstormngo-blog · 6 years

Text

Mat Ricardo hits back at the Peep Show star’s attack on street performers.

David Mitchell, in his groundbreaking ‘rich white guy finds things to whinge about to a deadline’ column in The Observer last weekend, spaffed out 1,000 words about his hatred of street performers. I’m a street performer. Have been for thirty years. So I was curious about what, exactly, about my artform had so irked Mr Mitchell.

Was it, perhaps, the beautifully egalitarian way a street show is open to any and everyone? It’s one of the very few forms of entertainment to truly be able to say this – with a busker’s audience, there’s no admission charge, nor a preferred type of audience member.

The price of a ticket is simply a desire to watch, and everyone is welcome, and treated equally. Street performers are experts at making their work accessible to the young and the old alike, those that understand the language spoken, and those that don’t. You don’t even have to have any money to watch – those who can pay, cover those that are unable to – it’s a beautiful thing. Socialist, populist theatre.

Maybe he found the artform too broad. Street performing offers a cocktail of disciplines and artforms unmatched anywhere else. Wander down Edinburgh’s Royal Mile during the Fringe and buskers might come in the shapes of Japanese slapstick maestros, Australian hula-hoopers, Spanish clowns, Dutch magicians, American acrobats, and, if you see me, a British juggler in a fantastic suit.

And did he really just call us ‘hippies’? What kind of half-assed dad-insult is that, in 2018? Hippies haven’t been a thing since before David was in public school. You’ll find no hippies among our number – just international theatre makers, globally recognised physical comedy virtuosos, world class circus performers, and dozens of other hard-to-categorise artists who travel the world entertaining audiences in theatres, clubs, festivals, and, yes, on streets. Ironically, given his distaste for people who work on the street, perhaps David likes his shows a little more pedestrian.

No, of course that’s not it. He’s very clear about why he doesn’t like buskers. It’s not about us, it’s about him. He is, he says, very anti-group fun. Always a peachy quality for a comedian, that. But there’s more. He talks about being a Finge performer himself, a few years back, handing out flyers and struggling to sell any tickets, then seeing people like me having Fun on the streets with huge crowds and seething as he watched.

Oh babe, that’s just the Fringe – everyone struggles sometimes. You weren’t failing because you weren’t any good. You were failing because people didn’t care. The street performers that made you ball your little fists, though? They were succeeding because they were good. They’re masters of an artform you don’t seem to respect enough to really understand. Which is a shame, because despite your stated assumption that we’re all twats, we’re actually pretty lovely, so perhaps if you’d said hi, you might have learned a few tricks that could have helped you fill your venue.

In his column, David says that street performers have big crowds because people know the show is free. Nope. They have big crowds because over years, often decades, of honing one of the last remaining Fringe theatre forms, they’ve learned how to charm passing strangers, conjure a theatre from cobblestones, and deliver something that people enjoy so much, that many of them voluntarily choose to donate money at the end, when they could so easily, not.

Being a street performer trains you in bulletproof stagecraft, improvisation, timing, tight scripting, stage presence, and fearlessness, in a way nothing else can. Just ask people like Eddie Izzard, Penn & Teller, Robin Williams, Steve Martin, and dozens of other household names, all of whom developed their unique performing styles on the streets.

Only an idiot judges a show by its venue, and that’s double-true at the Edinburgh Fringe.

My feeling is that David figured buskers are an easy target. Glorified beggars, right? I mean, if your punches are going to be this lazy, you need to be throwing them down, not up. His grumpy middle-aged man schtick is played out and obvious, and if not carefully managed can easily come across as elitist assholery.

Look, we’re all entitled to our opinions, but to be so lame and mean-spirited about one of the few remaining elements of beautiful, chaotic, surprising Fringe spirit? Seems like a waste of a column. I mean, what kind of person, with such a fantastic platform in the national press, uses it to whinge about a whole artform, that millions of people enjoy, just because they once had a shitty day at the fringe.

David, are you a baddie?

Underneath David’s free column which people only like because it’s free, there’s a little bonus paragraph. It’s from the Guardian itself. It suggests that if the reader enjoyed the piece, we might want to consider contributing some money. Guess we’re not so different, after all.

Mat Ricardo Versus The World is on at City Cafe, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, at 12.30pm. He has added an extra show at the Counting House at 6.40pm on Monday. Unsurprisingly, it’s a pay-what-you-want show….

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Hey, David Mitchell, only an idiot judges a show by its venue… – Mat Ricardo Mat Ricardo hits back at the Peep Show star's attack on street performers. David Mitchell, in his groundbreaking ‘rich white guy finds things to whinge about to a deadline’ column in…

1 note · View note

talesofnecromancy · 6 years

Text

February 2018 #320

H: (coughing) That you darlin’?

Me: You have many other callers?

H: No, but I thought you wished to talk?

(Despite asking to talk with him and wanting to, I still hadn’t for two days.)

Me: I’m sorry, I’ve no excuse. I’m an idiot…

H: Feeling betwixt and between?

Me: Kinda. It’s… You - you feel like home. Oh gods - that’s why! That’s why any time I haven’t talked to you for a while I procrastinate about doing it. I feel like a stray who can’t come home - small and uncertain of their welcome. But I come home anyway - I talk to you again - and it’s always wonderful.

H: (smiling) My prodigal vagabond sorceress.

Me: Ha! Yes. How have you been darlin’?

H: Well enough, although the cough is returning. S has promised to bring something for me, something Hesta made.

Me: With ‘button’ in it?

H: Very likely, yes.

Me: That’s either cocaine or opium - maybe cannabis. Why the hell call it ‘button’?

H: A slang term.

Me: But the origin? There’s no way I could do that sort of research.

H: How so?

Me: Slaves came from all over Africa, taken and put with French, Dutch, British and American owners - other nationalities too. Then they were sold on and moved around. The different slang and patois they developed… I’m not sure I could prove button was slang for anything let alone a narcotic in a home brewed cough remedy!

H: You’re right, their lives and heritage were not well treated or recorded.

Me: On that note, someone said that your father brought back F from the Mexican War to be a servant.

H: (affronted) Beg pardon?

Me: Thought so. The article never even mention S but -

H: (fiercely) They were not! They were never!

Me: I know.

H: They… (searching for a way to explain) You have different classes in England.

Me: Yeah. We manage to be both Classist and Socialist, apparently.

H: Both. Can you believe that many Southern families were terrible and charitable both?

Me: I can believe that slaves were owned and works of charity done and the good and the bad was often committed by the same people. Although it makes me uncomfortable. That your family owned two house slaves, but adopted two stray orphans - one mixed race and one Mexican - and raised them as family is something I struggle to get my head around.

H: (coughing) I believe on the whole I am pleased you don’t understand. Otherwise the world would have turned in very poor gyres and loosing the war would have meant nothing at all.

Next Conversation

#notes #history #ouija board #my ghost #ouija #necromancy

2 notes · View notes

sol1056 · 6 years

Note

Do you have any advice on how to write compotent "evil" empire that's existed for about, 30 years or so?

I gots all sorts of historical references for that, but the first question is really: evil, by whose measure?

The thing to remember about empires is that they exist because someone benefits. This does not have to be a direct, material, thing; sometimes people benefit by a kind of nationalism, like Brits who used to boast that the sun never set on the British Empire. But generally speaking, in every empire, there is a core constituency who benefits, who are grated status, opportunities, wealth (or wealth potential), that they’d lose if the empire fell.

The second is that empires span the entire gamut of political systems. There are totalitarian empires, like the PRC (China), or socialist empires, like the UK, and democratic empires, like the US. Even within the political system, there are nuances. America, for instance, has really devolved into a plutocracy (political agendas prioritize the wealthiest citizens), and since the 80s, we’ve seen a huge push of it becoming a corporatocracy (where corporations power and set the political agenda).

The third is that empire by definition means colonialism, in some measure. It is not enough to simply have your own country; an empire requires subjugating a separate entity for material, political, or cultural, capital. That kind of subjugation is expensive, people-consuming, and resource-consuming, so it takes time for a new country (or remade country) to ramp up into having its own ducks in good enough rows to start tackling foreign properties.

That said, there are two examples that spring to mind, and one is far back in history, while the other is pretty recent. The first would be the Dutch East Indies Company (aka the VOC), and the other would be Apple.

the dutch east indies company

Back around, oh, the late 1500s or thereabouts (what we call the ‘early modern’ in academia), the Dutch fought for their independence from Spain, I think it was. Not long after, someone had the bright idea to get into the spice business, and the new government created the VOC. Note that being govt-sponsored meant access to, and command over, Dutch troops, so we’re talking a corporation with a military branch. The VOC set out first to trade, then realized a monopoly would be so much more lucrative, and within maybe thirty years had simply taken over chunks of Southeast Asia, radically shifting that region’s economy into cash crops for the sole purpose of selling it all in the markets of Europe for vast, incomprehensible profits.

It’s worth reading about the first Dutch expedition, led by Cornelis de Houtman, who was possibly the last person anyone should’ve put in charge of anything remotely diplomatic. Honestly, VOC history is the ultimate bull in a global china shop. (You may be pleased to hear that on his next expedition, de Houtman ran afoul of Aceh and was taken out by a female admiral, Keumalahayati, who understandably thought the Dutch were asshats and beat them soundly every time they showed their faces in the straits of Melakka.)

Now, that linked wiki article says the entire fiasco barely broke even, but I’ve also read academic studies that indicate this isn’t entirely accurate. More like, between the inflation back in Europe (thanks, nonstop warfare), and the lure of fantastical spices, the relatively small haul still turned enough of a profit to pay for that expedition and a good chunk of the next one. And so, the Dutch empire was born, lasting for several hundred years. (Even after the VOC shut down, the Dutch retained their colonies up through WWII.)

apple, or, any modern corporate empire

Now, as a modern empire of a different sort, we’ve got Apple (and Google, or IBM, or Facebook, or Amazon, there’s a lot of ones that fit). Apple has its core company (the home country), and realizes there’s profit to be made if they can control this other, external, piece. Competition to the iPod? Buy the company that builds that thing, and put them out of business, just like capturing foreign territory and slaughtering the natives. Someone comes up with a technology that dovetails neatly with Apple’s own products? Buy the company (or even just the stakeholders, if you’re dodging IRS/monopoly laws), so now you can control both the main product and the peripheral, just like making sure you own/control the colony that produces the resource you want.

Profits are higher if you reduce cost, which means outsourcing to, and control of, the companies producing the parts (this is also called a vertical monopoly or supply-chain monopoly, if you want to look it up). There are entire factories in China, India, etc, where Apple sets the hiring, oversees the management, does inspections on facilities, and so on. Only on paper can you argue these factories are independent from Apple’s control; in reality, they’re utterly hogtied and answerable to the corporation. Apple is effectively sole owner and sole consumer of a colonial resource, same way the VOC took over the Banda Islands and said, “this is what you’re growing now, and if you sell to anyone but us, and you will suffer for it.”

empires are always a mixed bag

Remember what I said about someone always profits. No empire is fully evil to everyone under its umbrella, ‘cause it wouldn’t last very long. Even empires that are partly-evil (or offload their evil onto foreign colonies) will have some kind of arrangements, somewhere, in those colonies so that someone benefits there, too.

In the modern corporation, it’s that Apple can promise purchasing X number of goods, which means Y number of jobs, often in a rural area where there’s literally nothing else. Sure, it’s a horrible job and dangerous (even abusive) working environment where the company controls literally everything, but hey, it’s a job, so it’s better than the alternative, which is no job at all.

Or in the VOC, it was often firearms, and various trinkets the locals couldn’t get, that now they had access to bc of Dutch ships pulling into port. The Dutch figure out which chief is struggling, and they say, “hey, we’ll give you weapons to defeat that guy, but in return you have to give us all these croplands, or change what you grow to this one spice we want,” and the chief would say, hmm, okay, deal!

But inevitably the locals end up in debt to the VOC for those firearms or technology, and the VOC says, sorry, you couldn’t pay, we’re taking over. (This is also pretty much the basic process by which the Brits took over India, btw. Piece by piece, ‘helping’ one local chief/lord, then sweeping in and claiming it all, after the dust settled.)

Or in military empires, like Japan in Taiwan, in the 30s and 40s. Yes, the invasion had its brutal sides, especially against the Taiwanese indigenous peoples. But Japan also modernized Taiwan at a rapid pace: laying down roads, setting up a postal system, building schools. There were collaborators (Taiwanese who worked with the Japanese) because they looked around and said, well, so some stuff is bad, but now I have access to things I couldn’t get before, that make my own life better, so I’m okay with it, overall.

a semi-new empire focuses on profit, and benefits

If you’re going to write a somewhat new empire, remember that in its early years, it’s going to be expanding, possibly at a ferocious pace. But it will always pivot on benefits – for the core/home group, and for just enough people in well-placed positions in the colonized groups – that the dominant perception might be some vague awareness of ‘well, okay, so some things could be done a little better, but overall, my life is much improved, now!’ And those voices will be enough to drown out, or force into silence, anyone who disagrees.

And the other is that empire is always ruled by profit. Either (in the case of the VOC and Apple), because controlling a foreign entity means getting shit really cheaply, to keep costs low and profits high. Or (in the case of America’s current cultural empire) the ability to sell shit to other countries at high prices because they want anything that has that ‘america’ stamp on it, whether that’s movies, fashion, or attention from nonprofits.

I’m not sure if that’s giving you enough to work with, but if not, let me know what I missed and I’ll dig into that, too. :)

#writing #imperialism #history #dutch voc #corporatocracy #empires #sol thinks about stuff

14 notes · View notes

plusorminuscongress · 4 years

Text

New story in Politics from Time: Bernie Sanders Supporters in Nevada Are Canvassing on Horseback to Get Out the Rural Vote

Sebastian is standing next to me, watching Cynthia Rifi and Brittnee Meechan approach a neighbor’s door to talk about Bernie Sanders. He looks like he might want to go have a chat with the neighbor too, but he’ll wait to see how it goes first.

It’s probably worth clarifying that Sebastian is a gorgeous, 16.2-hand Dutch Warmblood horse, and he’s parked out front like a car. He often has a Sanders sign fastened to him like a bumper sticker. He’s been the preferred mode of transportation for Rifi, a riding instructor and horse trainer, as she canvasses houses for Sanders here in the rural Golden Valley of Nevada ahead of Saturday’s first-in-the-West presidential caucuses.

You might assume that a democratic socialist from Vermont would struggle in this vast stretch of desert scrubland, where the houses are spaced far apart and the roads are best traveled by horse or four-wheeler. But it’s in places like this, a patch of the West that’s still-Reno-but-only-in-the-official-sense, that the breadth of Sanders’ movement really comes through. Sparse polling shows him well ahead in Nevada. At the same time, new national surveys show Sanders opening a double-digit lead in the wake of his wins in Iowa and New Hampshire. The campaign said Tuesday that it has knocked over 400,000 doors across Nevada. And in places like rural Washoe County, that means relying on supporters like Rifi and Meechan, her stepdaughter, who have logged many miles canvassing on horseback.

“When it comes to any kind of rural organizing out here, it takes a lot of time just to get from house to house,” says Matthew Fonken, the campaign’s regional field director in the Reno-Sparks area, as we sit in Sanders’ Reno field office. It’s the last day of early voting here in Nevada, and there’s a winding line of people outside, waiting to get in the voting site near the office. The campaign has divided the state into eight regions, and Fonkan says one-fifth of the doors knocked in the state have been out of the Reno field office alone.

Rifi was introduced to Sanders before the 2016 election by one of her daughters, a college student at the time. She likes his track record, and cites his stances on health care, college affordability and prescription-drug prices as among the reasons she believes he’s the “real deal.” Now, a presidential cycle later, she and her step-daughters have been going out atop Sebastian and their mare Sage for several hours at a time. She says Sanders’ appeal here runs deep. “Rural people are supportive of Bernie. And I think maybe being rural, there might be a stereotype—oh, they’re probably a certain way,” she says, clad in a “Hindsight 2020” Sanders t-shirt. “It’s definitely not what we’ve found. We’ve seen so much support.”

The best part of rural canvassing, Rifi explains, is that as soon as you pull up on your horse, people already know something about you—that you’re a horse person, and what horse person isn’t down to earth? We’re sitting in her home, which is decorated with posters of Lake Tahoe and Yosemite National Park. She and her husband Brent have more than 20 animals on their property, including eight goats, six dogs, two horses, two ponies, two cats, and two llamas that protect their goats from coyotes. There’s a screen in her living room with feeds from the cameras surveilling the property in case any of the animals get out, which has happened before. One night they got loose, and her horses ran around the neighbors’ places, playing follow the leader with even the littlest pony trotting and whinnying. Neighbors came out with halters and leads to help round them up, a story Rifi says illustrates how tight-knit her community is.

Rifi says she hasn’t encountered any hostility while out canvassing. Even neighbors who are not supporting Sanders have been willing to have a conversation. Brent has been supportive of her efforts to volunteer for Sanders, even helping her to make signs despite the fact that he’s a Republican (though one who does not back President Donald Trump).

“If I don’t do everything I can do and try to reach people and send the proper message of who [Sanders] really is,” Rifi says, “then even if things don’t go well, I want to be able to say I tried my best.”

In the 40 minutes we spent out canvassing Tuesday—Rifi on Sebastian, the rest of us following on foot—we only hit two houses whose addresses show up on the campaign’s MiniVan app. One doesn’t answer. But at the other house, a neighbor comes to the door. She tells Rifi she’s already gone out to an early vote site to support Sanders, and Rifi gives her a hug.

By Lissandra Villa/Reno, Nev. on February 19, 2020 at 11:55AM

#Time #politics #PlusOrMinusCongress #±Congress #Indega±#IndegaPlusOrMinus #TimeMag #TimeMagazine

0 notes

bowsetter · 5 years

Text

ECB President: ’We Should Be Happier to Have a Job Than to Have Our Savings Protected’

Newly installed European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde made controversial remarks in a recent statement prior to assuming her new role. The former IMF Managing Director implored: “isn’t it true that ultimately we have done the right thing to act in favour of jobs and of growth rather than the protection of savers?” Regarding former president Mario Draghi and the ECB’s negative interest rate policy, she went on to imply that people should be grateful for the job policies, savings protected or not.

Also Read: Low Interest Rates Are Crushing Young People and Fueling Global Riots

Easy for You to Say, Lagarde

Some commentators were taken aback by the bold remarks reported Wednesday, with one Twitter user remarking: “translation: You should be happy to be slaves.” Another felt Lagarde’s words embodied “The old mantra to make the tax slaves think they would be jobless without the government protecting them. Propaganda doesn’t work when you’re enlightened by Bitcoin.”

In her address, the new ECB leader chided the German and Dutch governments for not investing their budget surpluses in causes she deems worthy, such as infrastructure, education and innovation to “allow for a better rebalancing.” As far as the common folk go, the bigwig of financial policy noted in blatantly direct fashion:

We should be happier to have a job than to have our savings protected … I think that it is in this spirit that monetary policy has been decided by my predecessors and I think they made quite a beneficial choice.

Who Is ‘We’? – Poverty In the EU

When Lagarde says “we” one is inclined to wonder who exactly she is talking about. According to statistics, 16.9% of EU residents are living at risk of poverty even after welfare and social transfer factors are accounted for as of 2017. Many Europeans may be currently “employed,” but the nice sounding stats are often bolstered by extremely lax measures of what constitutes said employment. Spotty and unreliable jobs such as someone working only one hour a week still officially serve to make Draghi and Lagarde’s rhetoric appear sound. According to the August, 2018 study “Measuring employment and unemployment” by Bank of Italy researchers Andrea Brandolini and Eliana Viviano:

The employment rate is the proportion of the working-age population with a paid job: it is a headcount measure that disregards how working time and contract duration differ across the employed.

While the multimillion-dollar-net-worth Lagarde sips champagne in designer clothes and “power scarves,” the common plebs living paycheck-to-paycheck governed by ECB policy must remain grateful that although their savings are being eaten alive, at least they can work, maybe. Those taking issue with the new negative rate defender at the ECB are not necessarily opposed to high fashion and the good life, as much as the hypocrisy and arrogance required to utter such nonsense in a position like Lagarde’s.

Savings Are Essential to Healthy Economies

As American economist Murray Rothbard once wrote, “Savings and investment are indissolubly linked. It is impossible to encourage one and discourage the other.” Without the ability to save, there is no ability to invest. No chance to build for a future, or to create space by leveraging finance for personal time for innovation, exploration and rest.

Lagarde’s proclamation that those nations with surplus should invest, while calling for everyday individuals to essentially quiet down about retaining value, betrays an important disconnect and telling, underlying worldview: money and savings are for us, working is for you.

Ironic that the socialist lawyer from France would take such a position. Looping back around to Bitcoin, the statements also betray something else. The very reason most governments stand opposed to permissionless, decentralized finance and cryptocurrencies may be that Bitcoin enables saving and spending freely, regardless of what any disconnected third party might think about what should be done with your money.

What are your thoughts on Lagarde’s remarks? Let us know in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, fair use.

Did you know you can buy and sell BCH privately using our noncustodial, peer-to-peer Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform? The Local.Bitcoin.com marketplace has thousands of participants from all around the world trading BCH right now. And if you need a bitcoin wallet to securely store your coins, you can download one from us here.

The post ECB President: ’We Should Be Happier to Have a Job Than to Have Our Savings Protected’ appeared first on Bitcoin News.