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hussyknee · 1 year

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Arundati Roy writing in The Guardian against the Afghanistan War on October 2001

“Brutality smeared in peanut butter”

Why America must stop the war now.

By Arundhati Roy

Tue 23 Oct 2001 • 00.57 • BST •

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As darkness deepened over Afghanistan on Sunday October 7 2001, the US Government, backed by the International Coalition Against Terror (the new, amenable surrogate for the United Nations), launched air strikes against Afghanistan. TV channels lingered on computer-animated images of cruise missiles, stealth bombers, tomahawks, "bunker-busting" missiles and Mark 82 high drag bombs. All over the world, little boys watched goggle-eyed and stopped clamouring for new video games.

The UN, reduced now to an ineffective acronym, wasn't even asked to mandate the air strikes. (As Madeleine Albright once said, "We will behave multilaterally when we can, and unilaterally when we must.") The "evidence" against the terrorists was shared amongst friends in the "coalition".

After conferring, they announced that it didn¹t matter whether or not the "evidence" would stand up in a court of law. Thus, in an instant, were centuries of jurisprudence carelessly trashed.

Nothing can excuse or justify an act of terrorism, whether it is committed by religious fundamentalists, private militia, people's resistance movements – or whether it's dressed up as a war of retribution by a recognised government. The bombing of Afghanistan is not revenge for New York and Washington. It is yet another act of terror against the people of the world.

Each innocent person that is killed must be added to, not set off against, the grisly toll of civilians who died in New York and Washington.

People rarely win wars, governments rarely lose them. People get killed.

Governments moult and regroup, hydra-headed. They use flags first to shrink-wrap people's minds and smother thought, and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury their willing dead. On both sides, in Afghanistan as well as America, civilians are now hostage to the actions of their own governments.

Unknowingly, ordinary people in both countries share a common bond - they have to live with the phenomenon of blind, unpredictable terror. Each batch of bombs that is dropped on Afghanistan is matched by a corresponding escalation of mass hysteria in America about anthrax, more hijackings and other terrorist acts.

There is no easy way out of the spiralling morass of terror and brutality that confronts the world today. It is time now for the human race to hold still, to delve into its wells of collective wisdom, both ancient and modern. What happened on September 11 changed the world forever.

Freedom, progress, wealth, technology, war – these words have taken on new meaning.

Governments have to acknowledge this transformation, and approach their new tasks with a modicum of honesty and humility. Unfortunately, up to now, there has been no sign of any introspection from the leaders of the International Coalition. Or the Taliban.

When he announced the air strikes, President George Bush said: "We're a peaceful nation." America¹s favourite ambassador, Tony Blair, (who also holds the portfolio of prime minister of the UK), echoed him: "We're a peaceful people."

So now we know. Pigs are horses. Girls are boys. War is peace.

Speaking at the FBI Headquarters a few days later, President Bush said: "This is our calling. This is the calling of the United States of America. The most free nation in the world. A nation built on fundamental values that reject hate, reject violence, rejects murderers and rejects evil. We will not tire."

Here is a list of the countries that America has been at war with – and bombed – since the Second World War: China (1945-46, 1950-53), Korea (1950-53), Guatemala (1954, 1967-69), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-60), the Belgian Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964-73), Vietnam (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-70), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), El Salvador (1980s), Nicaragua (1980s), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991-99), Bosnia (1995), Sudan (1998), Yugoslavia (1999). And now Afghanistan.

Certainly it does not tire – this, the most free nation in the world.

What freedoms does it uphold? Within its borders, the freedoms of speech, religion, thought; of artistic expression, food habits, sexual preferences (well, to some extent) and many other exemplary, wonderful things.

Outside its borders, the freedom to dominate, humiliate and subjugate usually in the service of America¹s real religion, the "free market". So when the US Government christens a war "Operation Infinite Justice", or "Operation Enduring Freedom", we in the Third World feel more than a tremor of fear.

Because we know that Infinite Justice for some means Infinite Injustice for others. And Enduring Freedom for some means Enduring Subjugation for others.

The International Coalition Against Terror is a largely cabal of the richest countries in the world. Between them, they manufacture and sell almost all of the world's weapons, they possess the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction – chemical, biological and nuclear. They have fought the most wars, account for most of the genocide, subjection, ethnic cleansing and human rights violations in modern history, and have sponsored, armed and financed untold numbers of dictators and despots. Between them, they have worshipped, almost deified, the cult of violence and war. For all its appalling sins, the Taliban just isn't in the same league.

The Taliban was compounded in the crumbling crucible of rubble, heroin and landmines in the backwash of the Cold War. Its oldest leaders are in their early 40s. Many of them are disfigured and handicapped, missing an eye, an arm or a leg. They grew up in a society scarred and devastated by war.

Between the Soviet Union and America, over 20 years, about $45bn (£30bn) worth of arms and ammunition was poured into Afghanistan. The latest weaponry was the only shard of modernity to intrude upon a thoroughly medieval society.

Young boys many of them orphans – who grew up in those times, had guns for toys, never knew the security and comfort of family life, never experienced the company of women. Now, as adults and rulers, the Taliban beat, stone, rape and brutalise women, they don't seem to know what else to do with them.

Years of war has stripped them of gentleness, inured them to kindness and human compassion. Now they've turned their monstrosity on their own people.

They dance to the percussive rhythms of bombs raining down around them.

With all due respect to President Bush, the people of the world do not have to choose between the Taliban and the US Government. All the beauty of human civilisation – our art, our music, our literature – lies beyond these two fundamentalist, ideological poles. There is as little chance that the people of the world can all become middle-class consumers as there is that they will all embrace any one particular religion. The issue is not about good vs evil or Islam vs Christianity as much as it is about space. About how to accommodate diversity, how to contain the impulse towards hegemony every kind of hegemony, economic, military, linguistic, religious and cultural.

Any ecologist will tell you how dangerous and fragile a monoculture is. A hegemonic world is like having a government without a healthy opposition. It becomes a kind of dictatorship. It¹s like putting a plastic bag over the world, and preventing it from breathing. Eventually, it will be torn open.

One and a half million Afghan people lost their lives in the 20 years of conflict that preceded this new war. Afghanistan was reduced to rubble, and now, the rubble is being pounded into finer dust. By the second day of the air strikes, US pilots were returning to their bases without dropping their assigned payload of bombs. As one pilot put it, Afghanistan is "not a target-rich environment". At a press briefing at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, was asked if America had run out of targets.

"First we're going to re-hit targets," he said, "and second, we're not running out of targets, Afghanistan is..." This was greeted with gales of laughter in the briefing room.

By the third day of the strikes, the US Defence Department boasted that it had "achieved air supremacy over Afghanistan" (Did they mean that they had destroyed both, or maybe all 16, of Afghanistan's planes?)

On the ground in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance – the Taliban's old enemy, and therefore the international coalition's newest friend – is making headway in its push to capture Kabul. (For the archives, let it be said that the Northern Alliance's track record is not very different from the Taliban's. But for now, because it's inconvenient, that little detail is being glossed over.) The visible, moderate, "acceptable" leader of the alliance, Ahmed Shah Masud, was killed in a suicide-bomb attack early in September. The rest of the Northern Alliance is a brittle confederation of brutal warlords, ex-communists and unbending clerics. It is a disparate group divided along ethnic lines, some of whom have tasted power in Afghanistan in the past.

Until the US air strikes, the Northern Alliance controlled about 5% of the geographical area of Afghanistan. Now, with the coalition's help and "air cover", it is poised to topple the Taliban. Meanwhile, Taliban soldiers, sensing imminent defeat, have begun to defect to the alliance. So the fighting forces are busy switching sides and changing uniforms. But in an enterprise as cynical as this one, it seems to matter hardly at all.

Love is hate, north is south, peace is war.

Among the global powers, there is talk of "putting in a representative government". Or, on the other hand, of "restoring" the kingdom to Afghanistan's 89-year old former king Zahir Shah, who has lived in exile in Rome since 1973. That's the way the game goes – support Saddam Hussein, then "take him out"; finance the Mojahedin, then bomb them to smithereens; put in Zahir Shah and see if he's going to be a good boy. (Is it possible to "put in" a representative government? Can you place an order for democracy – with extra cheese and jalapeno peppers?)

Reports have begun to trickle in about civilian casualties, about cities emptying out as Afghan civilians flock to the borders which have been closed. Main arterial roads have been blown up or sealed off. Those who have experience of working in Afghanistan say that by early November, food convoys will not be able to reach the millions of Afghans (7.5m, according to the UN) who run the very real risk of starving to death during the course of this winter. They say that in the days that are left before winter sets in, there can either be a war, or an attempt to reach food to the hungry. Not both.

As a gesture of humanitarian support, the US Government air-dropped 37,000 packets of emergency rations into Afghanistan. It says it plans to drop a total of 500,000 packets. That will still only add up to a single meal for half a million people out of the several million in dire need of food.

Aid workers have condemned it as a cynical, dangerous, public-relations exercise. They say that air-dropping food packets is worse than futile.

First, because the food will never get to those who really need it. More dangerously, those who run out to retrieve the packets risk being blown up by landmines. A tragic alms race.

Nevertheless, the food packets had a photo-op all to themselves. Their contents were listed in major newspapers. They were vegetarian, we're told, as per Muslim dietary law (!) Each yellow packet, decorated with the American flag, contained: rice, peanut butter, bean salad, strawberry jam, crackers, raisins, flat bread, an apple fruit bar, seasoning, matches, a set of plastic cutlery, a serviette and illustrated user instructions.

After three years of unremitting drought, an air-dropped airline meal in Jalalabad! The level of cultural ineptitude, the failure to understand what months of relentless hunger and grinding poverty really mean, the US Government's attempt to use even this abject misery to boost its self-image, beggars description.

Reverse the scenario for a moment. Imagine if the Taliban Government was to bomb New York City, saying all the while that its real target was the US government and its policies. And suppose, during breaks between the bombing, the Taliban dropped a few thousand packets containing nan and kebabs impaled on an Afghan flag. Would the good people of New York ever find it in themselves to forgive the Afghan Government? Even if they were hungry, even if they needed the food, even if they ate it, how would they ever forget the insult, the condescension? Rudi Guiliani, Mayor of New York City, returned a gift of $10m from a Saudi prince because it came with a few words of friendly advice about American policy in the Middle East. Is pride a luxury that only the rich are entitled to?

Far from stamping it out, igniting this kind of rage is what creates terrorism. Hate and retribution don't go back into the box once you've let them out. For every "terrorist" or his "supporter" that is killed, hundreds of innocent people are being killed too. And for every hundred innocent people killed, there is a good chance that several future terrorists will be created.

Where will it all lead?

Setting aside the rhetoric for a moment, consider the fact that the world has not yet found an acceptable definition of what "terrorism" is. One country's terrorist is too often another¹s freedom fighter. At the heart of the matter lies the world's deep-seated ambivalence towards violence.

Once violence is accepted as a legitimate political instrument, then the morality and political acceptability of terrorists (insurgents or freedom fighters) becomes contentious, bumpy terrain. The US Government itself has funded, armed and sheltered plenty of rebels and insurgents around the world.

The CIA and Pakistan's ISI trained and armed the Mojahedin who, in the '80s, were seen as terrorists by the government in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Today, Pakistan – America's ally in this new war – sponsors insurgents who cross the border into Kashmir in India. Pakistan lauds them as "freedom-fighters", India calls them "terrorists". India, for its part, denounces countries who sponsor and abet terrorism, but the Indian army has, in the past, trained separatist Tamil rebels asking for a homeland in Sri Lanka – the LTTE, responsible for countless acts of bloody terrorism.

(Just as the CIA abandoned the mujahideen after they had served its purpose, India abruptly turned its back on the LTTE for a host of political reasons. It was an enraged LTTE suicide bomber who assassinated former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1989.)

It is important for governments and politicians to understand that manipulating these huge, raging human feelings for their own narrow purposes may yield instant results, but eventually and inexorably, they have disastrous consequences. Igniting and exploiting religious sentiments for reasons of political expediency is the most dangerous legacy that governments or politicians can bequeath to any people - including their own.

People who live in societies ravaged by religious or communal bigotry know that every religious text – from the Bible to the Bhagwad Gita – can be mined and misinterpreted to justify anything, from nuclear war to genocide to corporate globalisation.

This is not to suggest that the terrorists who perpetrated the outrage on September 11 should not be hunted down and brought to book. They must be.

But is war the best way to track them down? Will burning the haystack find you the needle? Or will it escalate the anger and make the world a living hell for all of us?

At the end of the day, how many people can you spy on, how many bank accounts can you freeze, how many conversations can you eavesdrop on, how many emails can you intercept, how many letters can you open, how many phones can you tap?

Even before September 11, the CIA had accumulated more information than is humanly possible to process. (Sometimes, too much data can actually hinder intelligence – small wonder the US spy satellites completely missed the preparation that preceded India's nuclear tests in 1998.)

The sheer scale of the surveillance will become a logistical, ethical and civil rights nightmare. It will drive everybody clean crazy. And freedom – that precious, precious thing – will be the first casualty. It's already hurt and haemorrhaging dangerously.

Governments across the world are cynically using the prevailing paranoia to promote their own interests. All kinds of unpredictable political forces are being unleashed. In India, for instance, members of the All India People's Resistance Forum, who were distributing anti-war and anti-US pamphlets in Delhi, have been jailed. Even the printer of the leaflets was arrested.

The rightwing government (while it shelters Hindu extremists groups such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal) has banned the Islamic Students Movement of India and is trying to revive an anti-terrorist Act which had been withdrawn after the Human Rights Commission reported that it had been more abused than used. Millions of Indian citizens are Muslim. Can anything be gained by alienating them?

Every day that the war goes on, raging emotions are being let loose into the world. The international press has little or no independent access to the war zone. In any case, mainstream media, particularly in the US, have more or less rolled over, allowing themselves to be tickled on the stomach with press handouts from military men and government officials. Afghan radio stations have been destroyed by the bombing. The Taliban has always been deeply suspicious of the press. In the propaganda war, there is no accurate estimate of how many people have been killed, or how much destruction has taken place. In the absence of reliable information, wild rumours spread.

Put your ear to the ground in this part of the world, and you can hear the thrumming, the deadly drumbeat of burgeoning anger. Please. Please, stop the war now. Enough people have died. The smart missiles are just not smart enough. They're blowing up whole warehouses of suppressed fury.

President George Bush recently boasted, "When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2m missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive." President Bush should know that there are no targets in Afghanistan that will give his missiles their money's worth.

Perhaps, if only to balance his books, he should develop some cheaper missiles to use on cheaper targets and cheaper lives in the poor countries of the world. But then, that may not make good business sense to the coalition's weapons manufacturers. It wouldn't make any sense at all, for example, to the Carlyle Group – described by the Industry Standard as "the world's largest private equity firm", with $13bn under management.

Carlyle invests in the defence sector and makes its money from military conflicts and weapons spending.

Carlyle is run by men with impeccable credentials. Former US Defence Secretary Frank Carlucci is Carlyle's Chairman and Managing Director (he was a college roommate of Donald Rumsfeld's). Carlyle's other partners include former US Secretary Of State James A Baker III, George Soros and Fred Malek (George Bush Sr's campaign manager). An American paper The Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel– says that former President George Bush Sr is reported to be seeking investments for the Carlyle Group from Asian markets.

He is reportedly paid not inconsiderable sums of money to make "presentations" to potential government-clients.

Ho hum. As the tired saying goes, it's all in the family.

Then there's that other branch of traditional family business – oil. Remember, President George Bush (Jr) and Vice-President Dick Cheney both made their fortunes working in the US oil industry.

Turkmenistan, which borders the north-west of Afghanistan, holds the world's third largest gas reserves and an estimated six billion barrels of oil reserves. Enough, experts say, to meet American energy needs for the next 30 years (or a developing country's energy requirements for a couple of centuries.) America has always viewed oil as a security consideration, and protected it by any means it deems necessary. Few of us doubt that its military presence in the Gulf has little to do with its concern for human rights and almost entirely to do with its strategic interest in oil.

Oil and gas from the Caspian region currently moves northward to European markets. Geographically and politically, Iran and Russia are major impediments to American interests. In 1998, Dick Cheney – then CEO of Halliburton, a major player in the oil industry – said, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It's almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight." True enough.

For some years now, an American oil giant called Unocal has been negotiating with the Taliban for permission to construct an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan and out to the Arabian sea. From here, Unocal hopes to access the lucrative "emerging markets" in South and South-east Asia. In December 1997, a delegation of Taliban mullahs travelled to America and even met US State Department officials and Unocal executives in Houston. At that time the Taliban's taste for public executions and its treatment of Afghan women were not made out to be the crimes against humanity that they are now.

Over the next six months, pressure from hundreds of outraged American feminist groups was brought to bear on the Clinton administration.

Fortunately, they managed to scuttle the deal. And now comes the US oil industry's big chance.

In America, the arms industry, the oil industry, the major media networks, and, indeed, US foreign policy, are all controlled by the same business combines. Therefore, it would be foolish to expect this talk of guns and oil and defence deals to get any real play in the media. In any case, to a distraught, confused people whose pride has just been wounded, whose loved ones have been tragically killed, whose anger is fresh and sharp, the inanities about the "clash of civilisations" and the "good vs evil" discourse home in unerringly. They are cynically doled out by government spokesmen like a daily dose of vitamins or anti-depressants. Regular medication ensures that mainland America continues to remain the enigma it has always been – a curiously insular people, administered by a pathologically meddlesome, promiscuous government.

And what of the rest of us, the numb recipients of this onslaught of what we know to be preposterous propaganda? The daily consumers of the lies and brutality smeared in peanut butter and strawberry jam being air-dropped into our minds just like those yellow food packets. Shall we look away and eat because we're hungry, or shall we stare unblinking at the grim theatre unfolding in Afghanistan until we retch collectively and say, in one voice, that we have had enough?

As the first year of the new millennium rushes to a close, one wonders – have we forfeited our right to dream? Will we ever be able to re-imagine beauty?

Will it be possible ever again to watch the slow, amazed blink of a newborn gecko in the sun, or whisper back to the marmot who has just whispered in your ear – without thinking of the World Trade Centre and Afghanistan?

#if you read nothing else today read this #i wonder how many people know that Afghanistan was also an oil war #people seem to think the Afghanistan War was 'justified'#but the Iraq War wasnt #Arundati Roy was just saying what people already knew – this was a war machine sniffing after oil and guns #an industry coalition of which the Republican establishment were major stakeholders #the obscenity of dropping food packets with bombs #this is why you have no future in your country USAmerican Gen Z #this is why the entire globe adopted anti-Muslim ethnonationalism and Islamic fundamentalism for the next 20 years #this is how the global wave of fascism began #because they sold weapons to the wrong people‚ and then chose a scapegoat to sacrifice in revenge #world history #september 11 #geopolitics #us history #afghanistan war #usamerican imperialism #cold war #taliban #violence #terrorism #colonialism #capitalism #genocide #arundati roy #pacifism #anarchism #knee of huss

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blue-kyber · 5 months

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How quickly people can turn on one another when one of their own is attacked by another group, and that group wants a target to focus their emotions on. When the source of their pain is something they can't fight, they find an avatar to paint its face on, and take that anger out on them, then come up with lies to justify their brutality. They then believe their own lies in a heartbeat. That avatar, that scapegoat, is often an innocent person or group that has nothing to do with the originator of the attack group's pain.

All because they can't punch the face of what caused their pain in the first place into the ground and destroy it.

It wound up in my book as a topic we need to face. One we need to see the evil and futility in, and stop it in reality.

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Their beloved Princess Siffon Nirenthi Giniviette Kala, the Sunlight of Ilthall, and heir to the Kala dynasty, was dead. Murdered by a human. Fights between the two species - yondi and human - broke out among small groups who had no outlet upon which to direct their anger and grief. Lines of discord formed through glares, heated arguments, and aggression, even among those who were friends, and those who married into a yondi family. A handful of humans used that added betrayal to group up to protect each other and fight back. This fueled the accusation from the irrational yondi - and some aliens easily swayed by the loudest rage-filled idiots - that humans were less evolved pack animals. ‘Justice for the Princess!’ they shouted. The cry to avenge Siffon’s death by taking it out on the humans steadily gained traction to the point where those of other species stood up with the yondi and humans who could still think clearly. They defended the innocents of both species, with numerous people attempting to quell the fire of hatred before it could spread. The local security forces were called in to break up brawls all over town. By nightfall, small pockets of anti-human sentiment peppered both major cities of Cos Besta and Cos Arda. Most understood that the rioters were wrong, angry, and already looking for a reason to fight, and that they could do better. Leaders of various spiritual groups, and the magistrates of different sectors urged those starting the fights to consider the impact their actions had on the Light of Ilthall - a fragment of which all born on the planet had within them. The yondi had stopped warring among each other long ago due to how it hurt the planet and thus each other. They brought up the Hundred Year Isolation that occurred four thousand years ago, where the suffering became so bad that Ilthall cut off anyone fanning the flames of war as punishment. The loss of that connection among so many plunged their society into chaos. Those who retained their connection figured out how to use Ilthall's Light to protect themselves against the Isolated. It took a century for them to learn how integral that connection was to their well being. They reminded the rioters that the actions of those in the past are the reason Ilthall blinded the yondi people to the beauty of her Light. One day, she would return that sight to her children. They reminded them that those they attacked now were their friends, families, and neighbors, and to not judge a group by the actions of a few. They were all hurting. They should mourn together and be united. Not divided by hatred. But the angriest and loudest of the yondi didn’t care. They didn't believe in those stories, calling them fantasy tales to frighten children. Only those who had been offworld believed in that connection after having experienced it. Being away wasn't enough to hinder their lives, but it was enough for them to notice how much better they felt once they returned. The rest discounted it. All of them wanted a target. And all humans - native Ilthallans or not - were it. Fortunately, the majority of citizens were smart enough to not join in, but the damage was done. The humans - who made up about thirty percent of a populace of mostly yondi on the small, sparsely populated world - now lived in a state of heightened anxiety. The Alliance forces along with the local planetary law enforcement made it their priority to handle the instigators, and protect all innocents of all species caught up in their mire.

#writing #writeblr #original work #We use stories bring attention to real world issues. We always have. And we always will.#This scapegoat mindset found a place in my novel #when people have nowhere to focus their anger they will find something #completely unrelated and blame that #because it's something physical they can attack in the name of revenge.#The two species were coexisting perfectly fine before hand.

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rainninpain · 10 months

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I am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me.

David Levithan,

#people suck #toxic family #revenge #scapegoat #karma #i hope they suffer #depression #i miss my mama #death #never-ending #i wouldnt #i have thought about their deaths

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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months

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Fighting junk fees is "woke"

“Populism” isn’t intrinsically left or right. The distinction between the two is often obscured by jargon, but there’s a simple litmus test (courtesy of Steven Brust): “ask what’s more important: human rights, or property rights. If they say ‘property rights are human rights,’ they’re on the right.”

Which is to say, both the left and the right can be populist, but the populist left seeks to improve peoples’ lives, no matter what that takes, while the populist right is only willing to make the world better when that doesn’t interfere with the interests of property owners.

This is how you get the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire equating publicly produced, free insulin with forcing enslaved Black people to pick cotton in the fields:

https://newrepublic.com/post/174485/libertarian-party-suggests-former-black-lawmaker-pick-crops-free

For right populists, the property rights of pharma giants are human rights, so anything that interferes with those rights is equivalent to any other human rights violation.

This is not only wrong, but it’s also a huge vulnerability in the right populist mindset. It’s a button that, when pushed, produces a reliable and reflexive outrage.

This is essential for the creation, maintenance and expansion of plutocracy. In a plutocracy, a small minority owns most of the property (we live in a plutocracy). By definition, plutocracy isn’t popular, since it’s a system that benefits a small minority at everyone else’s expense. In its natural state, plutocracy is only popular with its winners, and not the vast majority of losers it creates.

So plutocrats need to find ways to get turkeys to vote for Christmas. One important trick is to convince us all that the system is fair, guided by an invisible hand that performs mystic passes over our heads at birth and locates the very best of us and elevates us to the apex of the social pyramid.

But there’s a problem with this: plutocracy is self-sustaining. The story that we’re all just “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” who can rise to the top with hard work and smarts falls flat in the face of the reality that nearly everyone at the top was born there. If the system selects rulers based on merit, and if everyone the system selects was born rich, then the rich must have some genetic trait that makes them destined to rule.

This is why plutocracy always turns into aristocracy: the idea that some people are suited to rule because they have “good blood.” Eugenics is, above all, a way to excuse inequality. Fitness to rule is determined primarily by whose orifice you emerge from, and only secondarily by any obvious competence or skill.

So right wing footsoldiers are mired in a terrible and shameful swamp of self-loathing. By definition, their lack of wealth and power is their own fault, and not merely their fault, but the fault of their genes. Being on the bottom is proof that you deserve to be there. Your failure to rise proves that you don’t deserve to rise.

No wonder the right is so irony-poisoned. Remember 2020, when gun-nuts got “revenge” on gun safety scolds by photographing themselves pointing loaded guns at their own penises? The participants insisted that they were just trolling, and they were…by pointing loaded guns at their dicks:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/28/holographic-nano-layer-catalyser/#musketfuckers

Plutocrats understand that there are limits to irony, and that at a certain point, irony poisoning becomes so acute that your rank-and-file literally start blowing their balls off. To relieve the pressure, plutes scapegoat other people based on their gender, sexual orientation, race, or nationality.

This provides an important resolution to the cognitive dissonance of meritocracy. The reason you’re doing so badly isn’t that you lack merit, it’s that affirmative action has elevated unworthy people to the positions that you deserve. You are a temporarily embarrassed millionaire — but the riches you deserve have been snaffled up by welfare queens and DEI consultants.

Cruelty isn’t the point of culture war bullshit: the point is power. Cruelty is merely the tactic:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/09/turkeys-voting-for-christmas/#culture-wars

Culture war bullshit is a very reliable way to get turkeys to vote for Christmas. Take the campaign against junk fees, which have ticketmastered every part of your life with “fees” for things like “paying your rent by check” and “not paying your rent by check”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/30/military-industrial-park-service/#booz-allen

There is no broad constituency for junk fees. Scam artists (including scam artists in the C-suites of Fortune 100 companies) love them, sure, but junk fees make everyone else furious.

What’s a plutocrat to do? Well, it turns out that culture war bullshit can make right wingers point (metaphorical) guns at their own junk — all plutocrats need to do is put the word out that getting rid of junk fees is “woke” and low-information right-wing thumbsuckers will demand the right to be charged junk fees.

Here’s an example: one especially pernicious form of junk fee is the “swipe fees” that credit-card companies charge merchants. In an increasingly cashless age, these companies — dominated by the Visa/Mastercard duopoly — have figured out how to scrape 3–5% out of every single retail transaction in the entire fucking economy.

Every merchant you patronize has to charge more — or reduce quality, or both — in order to pay this Danegeld to two of the largest, most profitable companies in the world. Visa/Mastercard have hiked their fees by 40 percent since the pandemic’s start. Forty. Fucking. Percent. Tell me again how greedflation isn’t real?

A bipartisan legislative coalition, led by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) have proposed the Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA), which will force competition into credit-card routing, putting pressure on the Visa/Mastercard duopoly:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/1838/text?s=1&r=3

This should be a no-brainer, but plute spin-doctors have plenty of no-brains to fill up with culture war bullshit. Writing in The American Prospect, Luke Goldstein unpacks an astroturf campaign to save the endangered swipe fee from woke competition advocates:

https://prospect.org/power/2023-08-04-wall-street-culture-war-swipe-fee-reform/

Now, this campaign isn’t particularly sophisticated. It goes like this: Target is a big business that runs a lot of transactions through Visa/Mastercard, so it stands to benefit from competition in payment routing. And Target did a mean woke by selling Pride merch, which makes them groomers. So by fighting swipe fees, Congress is giving woke groomers a government bailout!

It’s literally that stupid. It’s being pushed by a dark money group based in Kansas, which is targeting Senator Marshall’s constituents with mailers that warns voters they’ll “lose their credit card points” because he’s thrown his lot in with “liberal politicians”:

https://punchbowl.news/caf-marshall-mailer-kansas/

The fliers also warn that competition could result in “your financial data could be processed by partners of the Chinese Communist Party” (the bill bans foreign companies from routing transactions, and bans China UnionPay by name).

The fliers are anonymous. The only ghoul shameless enough to put his name on the campaign is Grover Norquist, whose Americans for Tax Reform tells its Christmas-voting-turkeys to “side with consumers, not woke retailers.”

The dark money org pushing this line have placed op-eds in newspapers across red states, comparing transaction routing competition to your kids’ data being snaffled up by Tiktok:

https://www.theflstandard.com/senators-rubio-and-scott-must-protect-the-personal-financial-data-of-floridians/

This nonsense was peddled by League of Southeastern Credit Unions president Samantha Beeler, whose org has spent $20,000 fighting the CCCA, claiming that a “cheaper” system would be “less secure”:

https://disclosurespreview.house.gov/ld/ldxmlrelease/2023/Q2/301493985.xml

But that’s small potatoes. Millions are being spent, right now, lobbying against CCCA — $5m from the American Bankers’ Association, $2m from the Credit Union National Association, another $400k from Mastercard.

For these rentiers, corrupting our government with millions is a stellar bargain if it lets them continue to collect rent every time we spend money. And millions of people who’ll end up paying that will demand the right to do so, provided they’re told that they’re fighting “woke capitalism” and China.

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

[Image ID: A mechanical credit card imprinter (AKA 'zipzap') emblazoned with a US flag Punisher logo. It is imprinting a blank credit-card slip with a red Visa card bearing the GOP logo. It sits on a weathered wooden plank table, stained a dark brown.]

#pluralistic #finance #junk fees #ripoffs #turkeys voting for christmas #culture war bullshit #useful idiots #visa #mastercard #swipe fees

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valkyriepegusus · 1 month

Text

Blood & Cheese was not about getting revenge on Aemond. Daemon didn’t want to hurt Aemond (he got his personal revenge later hehe), B&C was about AEGON THROWING A FEAST. Daemon wanted Aegon to feel exactly how Rhaenyra, and the blacks were feeling. He wanted AEGON to be hurting. Honestly Daemon probably didn’t even think about Helaena.

The show will probably make it seem like it’s about Aemond, but canonically, it’s because of Aegon.

An eye for an eye, a son for a son. That’s what it’s about. Aegon fucked around, and he found out.

Nobody is justifying B&C, but Aegon throwing a feast to celebrate the death of a child, the death of the child of the Queen no less, is the reason why B&C happened. And it’s the consequences of his actions. Sorry but that’s the truth.

I’m not justifying B&C but compared to ALL the other shit that Team Green has done, B&C isn’t comparable.

Daeron killing thousands and then letting his men rape and murder innocent women and children at Tumbleton and Bitterbridge. Aemond completely burning the Riverlands. Team green collectively has probably killed thousands more innocent children than Team Black but y’all stay trying to justify them.

Team Green loves to use Helaena as a moral scapegoat to justify the actions of Team Green and to claim Team Black is the worse of the two. It’s so crazy because if the roles were reversed and if Team Black had B&C happened to Jace, Team Green would be making jokes, justifying the absolute fuck out of it, creating extremely lame and unoriginal nicknames, etc etc.

#team black #pro team black #anti team green #anti alicent hightower #pro daemon targaryen #pro rhaenyra targaryen #rhaenyra targeryan #anti aegon ii stans #anti aemond stans

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befuddled-calico-whump · 9 months

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Reasons your character may be tortured that don't revolve around trying to get information:

(for those who care about accuracy and don't have time to research psychological techniques)

Revenge: the torturer feels wronged by their victim, and wants to make them suffer.

To get at a loved one: the victim isn't the actual target, but hurting them will emotionally affect or demoralize the torturer's enemy.

To force someone else's hand: similar to the above, torture by proxy to force the torturer's target to turn themselves in, sign a binding document, or make an impossible choice.

To coerce a confession: the torturer needs to pin a crime on someone, and their victim is a believable scapegoat.

Propaganda: we've captured one of your strongest men, now watch as we make them break down and beg for their life.

even more reasons

#if youre going for accuracy you could also have someone inexperienced grill someone for information #someone who doesn't know it wont be effective #whump prompts #captivity whump #military whump #tw torture

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lovely-keii · 4 months

Text

being their sibling

characters: tsukishima kei, oikawa tooru, suna rintarou

a/n: i write a fic every time i rewatch hq LOL sorry ik i said im abandoning this blog buuuut…happy bday to this blog!! (repost from 1/5 because tags broke :(( )

part 1

TSUKISHIMA KEI

looks out for you, but he can’t help that hes so emotionally constipated :’( he tries to give you advice because he genuinely is concerned for you but just is unable to word anything properly. see: “you need to stop talking to that person, you’re being a pushover,” but he just wants you to realize you’re letting people walk all over you.

god forbid he has to comfort you because hes the wrong brother for that - you’re definitely in better hands with akiteru. he might walk in on you crying and contemplate if he’ll even say anything or just ignore it flat out, or he’ll say something like “don’t cry, you look stupid.” if you cry more, he’ll end up swallowing his pride and sitting next to you. he’ll groan and reluctantly, “fine, spill it.”

other than that, he’s going to be a sneaky little prick. definitely the type to take revenge on you if you annoy him. you eat the last piece of chocolate he was saving and suddenly you find your charger hidden deep under your bed. also loves to take things without your permission. “why? i’m just using it, it’s not like you need it now.”

if someone picks a fight with you, he’ll be quick to extract you from the situation before saying something ruder and harsher than usual to the person. and if you tell him you like someone from his team, he’s going to look at you like you’re crazy. “are you insane?!” he’s honestly more bewildered than upset. doesn’t let you anywhere near the gym. he can make an exception for yamaguchi though. “at least it’s not hinata…or worse, kageyama.”

OIKAWA TOORU

your life is never boring with this guy as your brother. you’re literally being dragged everywhere, practices, shopping, team events… you’re like “i’m not even part of the team.” he goes “we can fix that!” and the next day you find out that you’re the manager for the boys’ volleyball team. huh, wonder how that happened.

oh my god, he MILKS you being his manager. “hold my drink, my fans are calling.” “y/n get my towel please.” you’re absolutely seething at the power trip that this guy is on. eventually, you start doing all that for his other team members and not for him, and he gets so whiney. “y/n you’ll get big ugly iwaizumi a towel but not your own sweet brother?!” that earns him a spike to the head from iwaizumi.

he tells you all the gossip about the school, because believe me, he knows A LOT of things. he’ll do his skin care while he forces you to listen to his gossip, cue him getting mad if you try to leave. everyone realizes why you two are siblings when you two walk down the halls and pull the exact same faces at the people he’s told you about in his gossip.

he makes you his little scapegoat for his fangirls. “oh, you want my number? you’ll have to ask y/n for that, they keep my phone with them during practice!” (you dont) “now, why don’t you girls hand all these gifts to my lovely sibling for me?” (you almost immediately chuck them at his face when you see him) but you know the best way to get back at him? when he sees you even slightly conversing with ushijima or kageyama, all hell breaks loose.

SUNA RINTAROU

the devil if the devil was your brother. he takes the ugliest pictures of you, when you’re asleep, when you’re yelling, when you’re crying over a movie. he also loves to send you pictures of animals and send a “look at you in this picture, so cute”. he also takes your things without asking and never returns it, you’ll just find it in his bag one day.

he also is one to order you around, and it drives you mad. “pass me the remote, y/n.” “but it’s nearer to you.” “i’ll tell mom that you-” // “y/n get me a drink from the vending machine.” “why would i do that” “remember when you snuck out and i-” // “get my bag too when you get yours.” “no.” “what i post that one picture of you when you’re about to sneeze-”

but he’s always looking out for you. when creeps try to approach you, he’s quick to react by shooting them a nasty glare. he’s a silent kind of care. standing behind you on elevators, walking on the outer side of the sidewalk, staying up late til you come home and just telling you he just couldnt sleep. little do you know, it’s something he’s always done even as a kid. putting more food on your lunch box, holding the corner of tables when you pick something up so you don’t hit your head, returning your things that are sprawled around the house to your room so you don’t lose them.

and if he ever finds you crying over some guy, he sighs and sits down next to you. “why’re you crying over an idiot?” he then makes snappy insults at the expense of the guy, making you laugh. “see? you look better like that. now stop crying and let me get some sleep.” he closes the light and shuts the door on his way out.

#haikyuu #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu!!#oikawa x reader #tsukishima x reader #oikawa tooru #tsukishima kei #oikawa tooru x reader #tsukishima kei x reader #suna rintarou x reader #suna rintarou #suna x reader

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robertreich · 9 months

Video

youtube

Is Donald Trump a Fascist?

I want to talk to you about the F word. No no — not that F word.

I’m talking about fascism.

Is Donald Trump really a “fascist,” as some would claim?

Is “authoritarian” adequate?

The term “fascism” is often used loosely, but you can generally identify fascists by their hate of the "other," vengeful nationalism, and repression of dissent.

To fight these ideas, we need to be aware of what they are and how they fit together.

Let's examine the five elements that define fascism and what makes it distinct from, and more dangerous than, authoritarianism.

1. The rejection of democracy in favor of a strongman

Authoritarians believe strong leaders are needed to maintain stability. So they empower strongmen, dictators, or absolute monarchs to maintain social order through the use of force.

But fascists view strong leaders as the means of discovering what society needs. They regard the leader as the embodiment of society, the voice of the people.

2. Stoking rage against cultural elites

Authoritarian movements cannot succeed without at least some buy-in from establishment elites.

While fascist movements often seek to co-opt the establishment, they largely depend on fueling resentment and anger against presumed cultural elites for supposedly displacing regular people. Fascists rile up their followers to seek revenge on the elites.

They create mass political parties and demand participation. They encourage violence.

3. Nationalism based on “superior” race and historic bloodlines.

Authoritarians see nationalism as a means of asserting the power of the state.

For fascists the state embodies what is considered a “superior” group — based on race, religion, and historic bloodlines. To fascists, the state is a means of asserting that superiority.

Fascists worry about disloyalty and replacement by groups that don’t share the same race or bloodlines. Fascists encourage their followers to scapegoat, expel, and sometimes even kill such “others.”

Fascists believe schools and universities must teach values that glorify the dominant race, religion, and bloodline. Schools should not teach inconvenient truths about the failures of the dominant race.

4. Extolling brute strength and heroic warriors.

The goal of authoritarianism is to gain and maintain state power at any cost. For authoritarians, “strength” comes in the form of large standing armies that can enforce their rule. They seek power to wield power.

Fascists seek state power to achieve their ostensible goal: achieving their vision of society.

Fascism accomplishes this goal by rewarding those who win economically and physically, and denigrating or exterminating those who lose. Fascism depends on organized bullying — a form of social Darwinism.

For the fascist, war and violence are means of strengthening society by culling the weak and glorifying heroic warriors.

5. Disdain of women and LGBTQ+ people

Authoritarianism imposes hierarchies. It’s about order.

Fascism’s idea of order is organized around a particular hierarchy of male dominance. The fascist “heroic warrior” is male. Women are relegated to subservient roles.

In fascism, anything that challenges the traditional heroic male roles of protector, provider, and controller of the family is considered a threat to the social order.

Fascism seeks to eliminate homosexuals, nonbinary, transgender, and queer people because they’re thought to challenge or weaken the heroic male warrior.

These five elements of fascism fit together and reinforce each other.

Rejection of democracy in favor of a strongman depends on galvanizing popular rage.

Popular rage draws on a nationalism based on a supposed superior race or ethnicity.

That superior race or ethnicity is justified by a social Darwinist idea of strength and violence, as exemplified by heroic warriors.

Strength, violence, and the heroic warrior are centered on male power.

These five elements find exact expression in Donald Trump. His uniquely American version of fascism is rooted largely in White Christian Nationalism. It is the direction that most of the Republican Party is now heading in.

It’s not enough to call Trump and those promoting his ideas authoritarians when what they are really advocating is something far worse: fascism.

#youtube #fascism #Donald Trump #politics #election #video #videos

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ystrike1 · 4 months

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Don't Look Back, Seisia! - By danryhan (8.5/10)

A poisonous love battle, featuring a ruthless Duke who acts kind and a merciful healer with a bad reputation. They are a loving and tender couple. Their honesty is the highest charm point in their relationship. The magical poison part of the story gets kind of pointlessly complicated, but it's good.

Seisia Lidyne is an adult woman who knows her worth. Not a crying child in need of saving. At least not at first. The forces working against her have way more influence than her. There's only so much she can do with no allies and knives in her back. Her father remarried. Her younger brother is an idiot sadist. Her father only cares about his male heir, and her stepmother only cares about her reputation.

It's a powder keg that explodes whenever Seisia Lidyne dares to step outside.

Her stepmother has been using her as a scapegoat.

Seisia Lidyne is an infamous hoe. Her poor brother was tormented by her, and her countless men. That's why he's such a nasty loser. It's all her fault. The rumors are both extravagant and ridiculous but Stepmother Lidyne puts YEARS of effort into the lies.

Seisia is left friendless with no marriage prospects.

She leaves the house.

Yep.

She also doesn't care about her father at all.

She walks out the door.

Time passes, and she finds a bloody man on the ground. Seisia has healing magic. Does this make her super special? No. It's pretty rare but healers have zero offensive capabilities. She never ever revealed her powers to anyone, because she knew her scummy father would use her gift to make money.

Dian is just another man who benefits from her services.

She settles down in a village. She uses her herbal knowledge and her magic to make a modest amount of money, for herself.

It's nobody else's business.

She quickly figures out he is noble. He's too educated. His clothes are too nice, and he was badly poisoned. His fingers were actually blue. Two plus two equals four. She helps him and sends him on his way.

Seisia Lidyne has no one. No one that can be trusted. No one that she likes. Her rare hair and eye color makes her a target. The local villagers eventually realize she's a runaway noblewoman, and they want to turn her in for money. Her awful family is looking for her because they need their scapegoat.

She doesn't flirt with Dian, who is secretly a Duke with poisonous mind control magic.

He goes after her.

They are opposites in funny ways. He sticks around the village to watch her, and he notices that she's actually kind. Even when she doesn't need to be. All of the villagers gossip about her sordid past. They talk about hurting her. Selling her back to her abusers. Dian hears them all, and he wonders why she doesn't want revenge.

Dian is frustrated. His reputation is perfect. Everyone thinks he's kind, because of his manipulative magic. On the inside he's your average ruthless Duke. He's a master of poison too so...two plus two equals four...

He kills the men who want to harm her with a burning cloud of poison ash.

He thinks he wouldn't mind dying if she killed him.

Dian is a strange kind of yandere. He's happy about it. He loves being in love. He resented his mother for most of his life, because she died in a stupid way.

His mother sacrificed herself for love, even though she had a six year old son that needed her. He didn't understand her.

Seisia is kidnapped by her family, and he doesn’t hesitate.

Now he does. His love for Seisia showed him the light. His mother could not give up on her first love, even after he betrayed her. That's normal and natural. He finally feels the same way about his own love.

It gives him closure, and he can finally let the past go.

Dian uses his status to save her and marry her. He is too powerful to refuse, and Seisia is happy about it. With no allies running from her father is a pipe dream, but she can trust Dian.

She also has no choice.

Dian listens to her woes. He accepts her past. Her flaws. Her fears. He promises her the world and he wants to give it to her.

Her brother has dark magic. That's why he gets so much special treatment. He tortured her with bugs. He helped spread the rumors about her sordid affairs.

He feels no remorse either.

Seisia is so happy to talk to someone she can trust.

The "real" Dian isn't hidden away. He shares his true thoughts and feelings with her too. He has enemies he needs to dispose of. They already tried to kill him. The gloves are off.

Seisia pledges to help her husband, like a good wife.

He takes her to an endless field of flowers, where four families compete for power. Even though she's a healer it's a struggle for her to get used to all the poison in the air.

She tries her best. He helps her, and together they rise to the top of the flower battle.

He gives her his blood, as proof of his love. His blood is the antidote. His mind control powers can no longer affect her. He has to trust her, and she has to feel the same way. When he says he can't live without her he really means it.

#yandere #male yandere #yandere male #yandere boy #recommendations #recs #rec #recommended #Don't Look Back #Seisia!

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