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foreverlogical · 9 months

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The U.S. government faces a dilemma.

Starlink, a private satellite venture devised and controlled by Elon Musk, offers capabilities that no government or other company can match. Its innovations are the fruit of Musk’s drive and ambitions. But they have become enmeshed with American foreign and national-security policy, and Musk is widely seen as an erratic leader who can’t be trusted with the country’s security needs. In other words,

the United States has urgent uses for Starlink’s technology—but not for the freewheeling foreign-policy impulses of its creator.

The conundrum is substantially new for Washington. During World War I, wealthy industrialists, such as Henry Ford and J. P. Morgan, poured considerable resources into the American war effort: Ford’s factories produced boats, trucks, and artillery for military use; Morgan lent money. After the war, John D. Rockefeller Jr. funded the League of Nations. But Musk is doing something different. He supplies his product directly to foreign countries, and he retains personal control over which countries can obtain his equipment and how they can use it. That discretion has military and political implications. As one U.S. defense official admitted to The New Yorker, “Living in the world we live in, in which Elon runs this company and it is a private business under his control, we are living off his good graces.”

The dilemma is currently clearest in Ukraine. Starlink satellites, which Musk generously supplied at the start of the conflict so that

Ukrainians would not lose internet access, have allowed for satellite-guided drones to help the Ukrainian military observe battlefield movements and target precision missiles. Experts describe Starlink’s military advantage as akin to providing an “Uber for howitzers.” But its disadvantage is Musk’s outsize role in determining the conduct of the war. That influence has come under scrutiny in recent days, with the release of excerpts from a forthcoming biography that highlight Musk’s mercurial decision making in Ukraine.

[Read: Demon mode activated]

Musk’s assent is required to maintain satellite internet connectivity in the country, and for reasons of his own, he has refused it near Crimea and imposed other restrictions that limit where Starlink services are available to Ukrainian forces. He told his biographer, Walter Isaacson, that he felt responsible for the offensive operations Starlink might enable, and that he had spoken with the Russian ambassador about how Moscow might react to them. At significant junctures during Ukrainian offensive operations, Starlink communication devices have experienced mysterious “outages.” The outages became enough of a problem that in June, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin specially negotiated the purchase of 400 to 500 new Starlink terminals that the Defense Department would directly control for use by Ukrainian forces.

The concerns about relying on Musk don’t end with Ukraine or even with questions of temperament. Musk’s commercial holdings could expose Washington to unwanted entanglements. Take, for example, his ownership of Tesla, which has a large factory and market presence in China. In the event of an invasion of Taiwan, would Musk willingly provide Starlink terminals to Taiwanese forces—at the behest of the United States—and take huge financial losses as a result? Last October, Musk told the Financial Times that China had already pressured him about Starlink, seeking “assurances” that he will not give satellite internet to Chinese citizens. He did not make clear in the interview how he responded, but Starlink was then and remains unavailable in China.

So what is the U.S. government to do about its own entanglement with Musk? One idea that experts have floated is to invoke the Defense Production Act, which authorizes the president to direct private companies to prioritize fulfilling orders from the federal government. The Pentagon estimates that it already uses DPA authority to place roughly 300,000 orders a year for various equipment items. Using it to regularize deliveries from Starlink would be relatively straightforward and could ensure a continuous flow of devices and connectivity for Ukraine’s forces. The U.S. government could even add language to the contract mandating that decisions to turn connectivity on or off would reside with public officials and not Musk.

But what if Musk decided to contest the terms of the contract? What if his factories suddenly faced supply “shortages” affecting delivery rates of crucial devices? The DPA could serve as a hedge against Musk’s impulses, but it would not be a full guarantee against disruptions.

If the government wanted to get really aggressive, it could nationalize Starlink, taking effective control over the company’s operations and removing Musk as its head. As extreme as this scenario sounds, the U.S. government has actually nationalized corporations many times in its history: During World Wars I and II, the government nationalized railways, coal mines, trucking operators, telegraph lines, and even the gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson. Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, the United States nationalized the airport-security industry.

But past government takeovers nearly all took place under conditions of war or financial crisis. Today, no national crisis equivalent to the 9/11 attacks can provide political cover for such a move. And Musk would be sure to fight back: He built Starlink from scratch, and the company is deeply personal to him. A government takeover would be acrimonious, politically messy, and not necessarily successful.

More likely, it would be counterproductive: As a private company, Starlink can provide products that assist Ukrainian forces even while claiming that it’s simply offering a service and not taking sides. That posture hasn’t prevented Moscow from testing weapons to sabotage Starlink, nor has it stopped Beijing from developing an alternate satellite network. But the company’s independence has likely deterred U.S. rivals from targeting its infrastructure for destruction. Nationalization would change this equation and send the message that Starlink is an instrument of American power and should be treated as such.

[Read: What Russia got by scaring Elon Musk]

So if Starlink has to remain independent—but needs to be less of a wild card for national security—the government’s best bet may be to negotiate one or several agreements with Starlink to ensure its compliance with U.S. interests. Starlink could then act as something more like a traditional military-contracting company. The contracts could build in provisions stipulating that in the event of a crisis, Starlink’s regular operations would be suspended, and all manufacturing and distribution decisions would run through U.S. regulators.

Musk might find such a deal attractive. His company would get long-term government funding and a reputational boost. But government contracts also come with restrictions that would likely irk him over time—limitations on which other clients Starlink could sell to, for example. He might also balk at the implications for his other businesses, such as Tesla, in foreign markets. If he soured on the arrangement, he could terminate the contract or undermine the effectiveness of his product—for example, by slow-walking software updates or declining to invest in upgrades.

The only sustainable solution to the problem of Elon Musk is for the American market to produce alternatives to Starlink. But even here, the obstacles are legion. Musk was able to turbocharge Starlink in part because he used rockets from his adjoining company, SpaceX, to deliver thousands of satellites into space. A competitor would have to not only match Starlink’s technical innovation but also secure enough rockets to get masses of satellites into orbit. And because satellite-based networks work better the more devices come online, a rival company’s service would lag behind Starlink’s for a long period of time. So far, the efforts of would-be competitors have been underwhelming. Amazon was reportedly preparing to launch its very first satellites in May but had to put the effort on hold because of rocket testing problems.

A viable Starlink competitor may be a long way off, but U.S. national security requires the pursuit of one. The government should encourage competition in the satellite market by offering subsidies and commercial tax breaks, among other incentives, because in the long run, only diversification will alleviate pressure on the United States and its allies to conform to Musk’s whims. With a choice of providers, the United States—or Ukraine, for that matter—could choose which company it wished to contract with, and redundancies could fill the gap in the case of an unexpected supply shortage or a snag in one company’s production line.

Elon Musk’s monopoly on satellite internet technology is the product of an original idea—launching a great many low-orbiting satellites in place of a distant, high-orbiting few— and a big gamble he made with his own capital. The venture has brought him undue influence over national-security affairs that the U.S. government can’t possibly tolerate. The surest way to curtail it is to make sure he isn’t the only one innovating or launching satellites into space.

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sofiawellman · 9 months

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During WWll, the US sent all people of Japanese ancestry living in the US to concentration camps called internment camps; two-thirds were actually born US citizens. Approximately 127,000 people of Japanese heritage were kept there, supposedly to protect our country. Imprisoned were Caitlin's grandparents, yet her grandfather fought for our country's freedom. The convoluted logic to that is as confusing and complicated as it appears. Yet, it is the same thing we do every day. We are imprisoned by the expectations of those around us. We keep their feelings safe at the same time that their expectations imprison our needs.

As much as we would love to believe we are free, we usually follow what everyone wants us to be. The need to belong is our nemesis. Every day, we go to battle internally when family, religion, society, and cultural norms overshadow being who we are—being free. We do everything we can to quiet our inner voice telling us this isn't what we want. The internal conflict gets louder and requires more distractions to drown out our inner knowing.

Born Japanese-American, Caitlin was already disadvantaged because she looked different. Being gay was not ever something she could consider. So Caitlin went along and married the perfect man. She did everything expected of a woman in our heteronormative world. The distractions that helped drown out her inner voice presented well; her external world did not create chaos, causing her to reevaluate her life. She excelled in school and surgical residency. It was the discord inside herself. The internal conflict became enough for her to be honest with herself. In this episode, we witness her joy unfold as she is aligned with her truth.

Caitlin was featured here on episode 54. If you missed it, here is an opportunity to see both. In the previous episodes, she speaks about being openly gay in surgery.

Go to Sofia Wellman YouTube channel to see the full episode, and subscribe to the media making a difference!

If you or someone you know has an inspiring story, contact me at [email protected]. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel, Sofia Wellman, so you don't miss weekly episodes of Freedom to Love, a documentary film series. Each week, you will watch a new story featuring fearless people who choose to be authentic and love freely.

#freedomtolovefilmseries #loveislove #queer #samesexcouple #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #homosexual #gay #lesbian #bisexual #nonbinary #transgender #genderfluid #sexuallyfluid #comingout #pride #samesexmarriage #Youtube

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nj355 · 1 year

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Education System

Regarding gender, research reveals that black girls tend to outperform black boys and that a signi ﬁ cant proportion of boys compared with girls complete compulsory school with few or no quali ﬁ cations (Archer and Francis, 2007; Rhamie, 2007).

For black boys, research reveals that they are between four and 15 times more likely to be excluded than white boys, depending on the locality (Sewell, 1997; Department for Education and Employment, 2000a, 2000b) and black girls are four times more likely to be permanently excluded than white girls (Wright et al, 2005).

"Given the key role of education in facilitating social mobility, what does denying access to education through the process of exclusion say about social justice?"

"Parekh (2000) argues that education is a virtue in all democratic societies and serves as a gateway to employment for all citizens. Alongside social justice and social mobility, education is also seen as essential for encouraging greater social cohesion. Further, Parekh (2000) concludes that the British education system, though designed to meet the needs of its citizens, does not appear to equip a large proportion of young black people with the skills needed to achieve their full potential.

Indeed, as already discussed, Gillborn (2008) argues that educational ‘ race ’ inequality in the UK, particularly in relation to schooling, is a form of ‘ locked-in inequality ’ whereby the schooling system is seen to disadvantage young black females and males in two ways: through school exclusion and inequality of attainment. 2 What is therefore a major issue here is the implication of this form of locked-in inequality for social justice. This study represents not only a key issue regarding social identities and social justice in education but it links the discourse on the problematic relationship between ‘ race ’ and education that has framed UK social democratic policy since the 1960s with contemporary concerns with how young black people ’ s schooling experiences shape their transitions on leaving compulsory education. It is argued that a way of understanding the in ﬂ uence of di ﬀ erential experiences of transition for young black people is to examine the role of education. In particular, how school exclusion a ﬀ ects their life chances and the nature of their transition."

"However, as Branglinger (2003) points out, ‘ the classical ideological “ American dream of social mobility ” combined with tales of “ school as meritocracy ” cause a range of students to believe that the playing ﬁ eld is level and those who excel do so by virtue of natural talents while those who fail are lacking ’ (p. 7). As mentioned in the introductory chapter, the educational resources playing ﬁ eld was constructed to create inequality between blacks and whites (e.g Ladson-Billings, 2006) but it would appear to remain unequal to this day (Roza and Hill, 2004; Education Trust, 2006; Ladson-Billings, 2006; Liu, 2006)."

Wright, Cecile, et al. Black Youth Matters : Transitions from School to Success, Taylor & Francis Group, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mdx/detail.action?docID=465328. Created from mdx on 2022-12-11 16:19:45.

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smapc-marekjaksic · 2 years

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Social media in journalistic practice

Social media is undeniably an everyday part of our lives and an inherent phenomenon of our time. And of course, even the journalistic profession could not avoid this phenomenon. So what impact does social media have on journalists? Which social media do journalists most often work with and could they work without them in their daily practice?

Social media began to have a significant influence on the functioning of traditional media editorial offices many years ago. In response to this, in 2009 the world's largest media such as the New York Times or the BBC created the position of social media editor. His main task was primarily to use social media to cover so-called breaking news. (Alejandro, 2010)

Since then, social media have become an absolutely inseparable and indispensable part of the functioning of traditional media. Journalists use social media not only to obtain new information but also to actively act on them and present themselves and their own articles.

According to an article by the American independent think tank Pew Research Center, 94 percent of journalists in the United States use social media for their work. (Jurkowitz & Gottfried, 2022) The preferences of individual social media differ considerably, but by far the most often used by journalists is Twitter. According to the aforementioned research, almost 70 percent of American journalists use it as their main source of information. (Jurkowitz & Gottfried, 2022)

However, the research reveals a rather interesting fact that the public uses other social media to obtain information. By far the largest number of people get information from Facebook (31 percent), Twitter with 13 percent is even in third place behind YouTube (22 percent). (Jurkowitz & Gottfried, 2022)

Social media, like all other sources of information, have many advantages and also disadvantages. Among their clear advantages, we can include much easier and faster contact with the citizens who have something to say about a certain issue. And covering so-called breaking news is definitely another huge asset. When an unexpected event occurs, it is not always possible for a professional journalist to immediately cover the situation.

Thanks to social media, normal citizens become non-professional (citizen) journalists. (Barnes, 2012) We could witness this for the first time on a massive scale during the events of the Arab Spring, and recently we can mention, for example, the protests of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States.

However, social media also have a number of disadvantages. On social media, there is a huge amount of information, which people are essentially unable to orientate themselves in without the help of artificial intelligence and are unable to correctly evaluate and verify the received information. This results in an increased risk of spreading misinformation and hoaxes. (DeVito, 2010)

This is also why the vast majority of journalists admit that they use social media as an important source of information, but primarily for so-called soft news. However, the main source of information for so-called hard news is still the traditional media, of which the already mentioned Twitter has been the most used in recent years. (Moon & Hadley, 2014)

To sum up, we can see, social media have a very significant influence on the work of journalists, but journalists still use traditional sources of information when they create hard news. However, in my opinion, it is only a matter of time before social media fully dominates this area and changes the system of journalistic work that has been operating for decades.

References

ALEJANDRO, JENNIFER. JOURNALISM IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA. Reuters Institute Fellowship Paper University of Oxford, 2010.

BARNES, Corinne. Citizen journalism vs. traditional journalism. Caribbean quarterly [online]. 2012, 58(2-3), 16-27 [cit. 2022-11-18]. ISSN 0008-6495.

DEVITO, Joseph A. Essentials of Human Communication. 7th ed. New York: Pearson Education. 2010. ISBN 978-80-247-2018-0.

JURKOWITZ, Mark a Jeffrey GOTTFRIED. Twitter is the go-to social media site for U.S. journalists, but not for the public. Pew Research Center [online]. 2022, 27 June 2022 [cit. 2022-11-18]. Accessible through: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/27/twitter-is-the-go-to-social-media-site-for-u-s-journalists-but-not-for-the-public/

MOON, Soo Jung a Patrick HADLEY. Routinizing a New Technology in the Newsroom: Twitter as a News Source in Mainstream Media. Journal of broadcasting & electronic media [online]. Routledge, 2014, 58(2), 289-305 [cit. 2022-11-18]. ISSN 0883-8151. Accessible through: doi:10.1080/08838151.2014.906435

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jesawyer · 3 years

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No Power Left to the Vanquished

My feelings, Conscript Fathers, are extremely different, when I contemplate our circumstances and dangers, and when I revolve in my mind the sentiments of some who have spoken before me. Those speakers, as it seems to me, have considered only how to punish the traitors who have raised war against their country, their parents, their altars, and their homes; but the state of affairs warns us rather to secure ourselves against them, than to take counsel as to what sentence we should pass upon them. Other crimes you may punish after they have been committed; but as to this, unless you prevent its commission, you will, when it has once taken effect, in vain appeal to justice. When the city is taken, no power is left to the vanquished.

- Sallust, quoting Cato the Younger, Bellum Catilinae

In the late years of the Roman Republic, a conspiracy arose from within the ranks of the Senate. The aristocrat Lucius Sergius Catilina attempted to seize control of the government after his bid for consulship failed. One of the consuls, Cicero, exposed the conspiracy and Catilina fled Rome to prepare an army. Five of the conspirators were captured after the letters they wrote, in which they urged people to join the conspiracy, were intercepted. The letters were read before the Senate and Cicero urged for the execution of their authors.

Julius Caesar pled for patience and clemency; after all, Rome had laws and customs to observe. He did not want to set a precedent that the ways of Rome could be set aside because they were inconvenient. Cato the Younger, a longtime (and future) opponent of Caesar, spoke next. His appeal won out because the Senate understood the reality of the scenario he was describing: when an institution is in imminent danger from those who seek to dismantle it, you must question if strict adherence to the institution’s laws and customs is worth more than the existence of the institution itself.

Fourteen years later, Julius Caesar, champion of Roman laws and customs, crossed the Rubicon in defiance of law, custom, and the explicit order of the Senate to mark what would become the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of Caesar’s rule of the Roman Empire. Caesar’s respect for Roman norms and civitas ended when they put him in personal danger. As for Cato, he died with the republic and subsequently became its most lionized martyr.

In 1923, Adolf Hitler and Erich Ludendorff, accompanied by hundreds of other Nazis and members of the paramilitary Sturmabteilung staged the Beer Hall Putsch, an attempted coupe d'état against the regional Bavarian government. Hitler’s goal was to pressure the elected representatives in Munich to turn against the federal government in Berlin through a public show of force and violence. It failed. Hitler was imprisoned, but he used his trial testimony to continue spreading his propaganda and dictated Mein Kampf while serving his sentence. The Beer Hall Putsch was a success for the Nazi party in spite failing to achieve Hitler’s goals.

Ten years later, Hitler was the presidentially-appointed Reichskanzler of Germany. While the Nazis had the most seats in the Reichstag, it was still a minority party. To ensure the passage of the Enabling Act, which gave the chancellor the power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag, Hermann Göring, President of the Reichstag, suspended the rules for quorum and outlawed the opposition KPD (Communist party) from participating. Sturmabteilung forces entered the assembly chamber to surround and intimidate the non-Nazi representatives into voting for the law. The passage of the Enabling Act marked the end of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of Hitler’s dictatorship over the German Reich.

The differences between the Beer Hall Putsch and and the Enabling Act were differences of organizational power, instruments, and outcome, not intent. In both cases, the same bad actors were seeking to overthrow an existing government. President Paul von Hindenburg and Franz von Papen failed to recognize that Hitler and the Nazis not only threatened the principles of the aristocracy or their other political opponents, but the Weimar Republic itself.

Was the Weimar Republic worth saving? It was, by most accounts, including the little my grandmother remembered of it, an awful state. Its government was, putting it mildly, dysfunctional. Many of its citizens lived through an era of terrible poverty and violence following the end of the first World War. But the Reich is what came after. All other avenues of evolutionary institutional or truly revolutionary change ended with the fall of the republic. The world suffered for it.

Trump and his allies have been attacking American institutions for the last four years. Trump doesn’t have the ideological drive of Hitler or the strategic acumen of Caesar. He just has the most base populist instincts to agitate a mob. What he shares with Hitler, Caesar, and other would-be dictators is a desire to remove opposition and the institutional mechanisms of opposition through whatever means are at his disposal. If he can do it through an executive order, he will. If he can do it through political pressure, he will. If can do it through intimidation, quid pro quo exchanges, and other illegal actions, he will. And if it requires a mob of supporters to storm the capitol during a Senate session to overturn their certification vote, he’ll try use that, too.

People have been likening what happened in the U.S. capitol to the Beer Hall Putsch. It’s a fair and reasonable comparison, though Hitler did actually march in his own coup attempt and was wounded during its defeat; Trump just gathered people together, lit a fuse, and watched them go. But it’s important to remember that the differences between the Beer Hall Putsch and the Enabling Act were of organizational power, instruments, and outcome. What if there had been more pro-Trump agitators at the capitol? What if the Senate had not been evacuated in time? What if Trump had more supporters within the Senate to begin with? What if Trump were even mildly more intellectually competent or the various online factional leaders in his mob were more coordinated in their tactics and goals?

Facebook, twitter, and other social media sites have deplatformed Trump. Several companies have suspended hosting services for online communities that have been involved in coordinating fascist, white supremacist mobs in the past. Trump’s supporters, in ignorance or bad faith, have decried that this violates 1st Amendment rights. They are wrong, but even if they were not, the events of January 6th, planned armed protests on the 17th, and threats of violence against Biden’s inauguration on the 20th, represent the kind of imminent institutional danger that Cato spoke of during the Catiline Conspiracy. “When the city is taken, no power is left to the vanquished.”

We have wrestled with how the government and corporations should moderate social media since these platforms emerged. We will continue to do so in the future. While we must take guard against the transformation of severe actions in time of crisis into the de facto way of handling our day-to-day problems, we must also recognize and act to resolve crises as soon as they appear if we have any interest in preserving the institutions they threaten.

I think of myself as a socialist. My political thought is not as educated, as principled, or as nuanced as many other socialists I know, some of whom think that any efforts to preserve or work within existing American institutions is, at best, naïve; in practice, counterproductive; and, at worst, actively reactionary. I often look at our institutions through the lens of a designer. When I do, I see systems that do not work to produce meaningful social change. I see systems which do not often work to accomplish any goals of its body politic. In practice, our systems serve the needs and interests of the ruling class and the powers that have the means and knowledge to manipulate the members of that class. The systems confine the use of violence and its instruments to the state, as the state sees fit, often to the detriment and mortal peril of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable among us. It is hard for me to sympathize with those who deify the state and its institutions, especially a state like America that treats its citizens so cruelly. It becomes even harder when adjacent political cousins perennially denounce any hesitance to support milquetoast centrist candidates as tantamount to treason. Even so, when fascists, white supremacists, advocates of genocide are positioning themselves to imminently dismantle these institutions through intimidation and violence, it is not difficult for me to see the value in their immediate preservation.

But if the state and its institutions do survive the next few weeks, we will still live in a world where social media and the principles of freedom of speech are vulnerable to the predations of those who would use their contentious legal status to spread lies, foment popular dissent, and, if necessary, coordinate another violent coup d'état when the time is ripe. The next time, perhaps the popular figurehead will not be as ignorant, as incompetent, as craven, as plainly stupid as Donald Trump. You can already see his would-be successors positioning themselves for 2024 in the waning hours of his presidency. The next time, the populist agitators may be more focused in their goals, more coherent in their strategy, more careful in their communication. Those among them who have witnessed the spectacular failure of imbeciles like Jake Angeli, Adam Johnson, and Richard Barnett may be shrewd enough to learn from the disaster as they prepare for the future.

The Weimar Republic became vulnerable to the schemes of the Nazi party because its representatives failed to address the needs of its citizens and because its leaders failed to recognize the magnitude of threat posed by leaders like Adolf Hitler, propagandists like Goebbels, and paramilitary groups like the Sturmabteilung. Our elected representatives may have finally, at this recent brink of disaster, comprehended the threat that Trump and his supporters pose to the existence of the state. After they make their way through January 20th, the federal government will have to address the needs of a disaffected, impoverished, violently-policed, often disenfranchised populace. They will also have to disentangle the mess that the government has created through their laissez-faire attitude toward social and news media regulation. Their actions in the immediate future will tell if they intend to effect meaningful change or if they are content to use the next four years to pave a road to the ruin of the republic.

#essay #politics

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hunterexamcheatsheet · 3 years

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Explaining how the Mafia functions, Kurapika in the mafia community and why the other “Neon died” theories don’t work from the Mafia Structure perspective

Please read this if you’re interested in how Kurapika in the mafia functions in the HxH world.

I went to roam around the Chinese forums using Kurapika and Neon's name (酷拉皮卡和妮翁; pronounced as Kù Lā Pí Kǎ and Nī Wēng) to try and find some KuraNeon content in the Chinese fandom.

I found a Chinese blog that also talks about the dolphin theory that @anotherworldash has thought of. You may use Google translate for the link above to read it. You may also view what @u-named had summarised here regarding the dolphin theory. I had reblogged it before but I got very excited when I saw that another fan had thought of it.

I’m so glad that other people from non-English fandoms had also thought of it (and not just the usual theories of Neon dying, but exploring other explanations why it’s possible for her to be still alive). I might be slightly biased, but I disliked how everyone just jumped into the assumption that she’s dead because her name disappeared from Chrollo’s book. From what I see, HxH deaths are often shown or at least heavily implied. We also got false narratives like the one with Kite in CA arc.

We do not see her dead body. Or any major hints of what happened to her.

What’s more, Kurapika implied that the previous owners where he had acquired the Scarlet Eyes from did not need to be killed. While this only means that Kurapika did not kill Neon, and it’s possible that other people might have killed her or she had died by accident/natural cause, it’s still something to think about.

The flaw in some of the “Neon’s dead” theories

I think u-named already discussed this a bit, but I’m going to elaborate it a little further. I am actually thinking of posting regarding the mafia theme, but that will take a while. I had been researching the functions of mafia in both reality and media, in order to understand what goes on in mafia families in HxH.

The theories regarding “Neon was killed by the mafia community”, “Light Nostrade killed her” and “she committed suicide” are possible, but I’m going to need to nitpick on the reasoning. I suspect people who formed these theories don’t know how the mafia works or at least, attempt to understand how it works (not that I’m an expert, I’m still trying to understand it from mafia movies, videos, a book and journal papers).

Of course there is a discrepancy between the actual mafia and what is depicted in media, but given that Togashi had mafia themes in his previous works like in Ten de Showaru Cupid and in Yu Yu Hakusho, and until now, he is using mafia families in his current arc.

“Oh, but what if Togashi doesn’t do his research?”

I genuinely think he does. York New City and the Ten Dons could be a parallel to the actual Five Powerful Mafia Families in New York City back then, formed in 1931. The Five Families is also what inspired the five mafia families in The Godfather. (I don’t know, maybe Togashi was a fan of The Godfather or any mafia movies; that trilogy was very influential in the media). Even the family name Nostrade is both a reference to Nostradamus (a French fortune teller) and La Cosa Nostra (a nickname for the Italian mafia). The coincidence is too uncanny.

From what I gather from resources, the mafia functions like an organisation/corporation, but their services are largely illegal. Their main aim is to acquire money (and also power, but power comes with money).

Neon’s fortune-telling ability is highly sought after because accurate information in many places (which includes being in businesses) are crucial. If you guys are familiar with The Godfather, information and strategy is important when trying to win over people or crushing your enemies. The concept of knowing your enemy is also a huge main idea in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.

And it’s even more valuable when these information is from the future. You will always be one step ahead of the enemy if you have accurate information in regards to the future.

Now, there are people envious of Light’s climb to power because he exploited his daughter’s fortune-telling ability and they gained influence as she has fans among the Dons. They see Light’s acquiring of power as a threat, which is why Light protects his daughter.

Another reason (not really stated, I just thought of it) is that information from the future is a disadvantage when your enemy has it and you don’t. You already lose when the other side has information that you do not have.

By the end of the YorkNew City arc, we see that the Ten Dons are assassinated by Illumi. Therefore, there seems to be empty seats when it comes to the leadership of the mafia community. Not stated, but without leadership, a corporation/business will either crumble or someone else will assume leadership. Be it brutally or by succession of an heir, we’ll never know.

Neon’s ability is no longer on hers. Who is affected negatively? Light Nostrade because he just lost his way of influence and attaining money/power. His enemies, who are envious of his climbing up the ranks, will see it as an advantage. A blessing perhaps. Because the threat (which is Neon’s powers) are gone.

While murder among mafia members are not uncommon, killing one’s family member (especially one’s direct children) is irreversible and poses serious consequences. An all out war could evoke and it can be costly. Going back to my point about the mafia community’s main aim and how it functions as a business, negotiations are actually another way to deal with possible disputes. They do not need to do the killing because her powers are simply GONE. Without her powers, she’s just an ordinary “citizen” who is a family member of a father whose in the mafia community.

Therefore, “mafia community killed Neon” theory is flawed if you look at how the mafia community functions as businesses and negotiations. The reason why they decided to be brutal and aggressive in York New City is because they were up against the Phantom Troupe. Additionally, the lack of manpower and leadership that follows after their fiasco with the Phantom Troupe is another concern. A girl who no longer poses a threat is the least of their worries.

Now, onto the “Kurapika let them die off”, “Light killed Neon” and “she committed suicide” theories.

The reason why I have a problem with these is because it’s based on the big assumption that they became broke. Either Light Nostrade went crazy and he killed her; or they became broke and Neon couldn’t handle the stresses of being poor so she committed suicide. But the thing is, they aren’t broke.

Even on the Hunterpedia states:

The Nostrade Family survived the loss of Neon's ability and is now led by Kurapika. The organization is exclusively involved in legal activities such as personal security details and gambling.

This is backed by what Linssen has said to Mizaistom in the Dark Continent Expedition arc.

The reason why they survived the financial slump? Kurapika.

During the Greed Island arc, Kurapika reassured him that he’ll “take care of it”. And during the Dark Continent Expedition arc, we see that Kurapika’s title is “Nostrade Family Waka-gashira”. Waka-gashira means “Young Boss”. There are many mistranslations to this text where they state that he’s the mafia organisation leader, but in the hardcopy (which I have), the title is “Nostrade Family Boss”.

In the context of the Japanese yakuza, the Waka-gashira is the second in command, just below the Oyabun.

The second in the chain of command is the wakagashira, who governs several gangs in a region with the help of a fuku-honbucho who is himself responsible for several gangs.

While it seems that the inspiration of mafia is from the Italian-American mafia families in York New City, the terminologies they used is that of the Japanese yakuza. I think that this is because the original language is in Japanese.

In Italian-American mafia, the term “mafia organisation” is synonymous with “mafia family”. Therefore, if you say that a man is the mafia organisation leader, he is also by default the head of the mafia family.

In the context of Kurapika, it does make sense that he is the second-in-command and Light is the oyabun (if you go by the yakuza terminology), or Kurapika is the head of the Nostrade family (if you go by the Italian-American way).

Now, I’m just going to backtrack a bit because I want to address that theory that “Kurapika let Neon and/or Light die and overtook the Nostrade mafia organisation”.

If you go by the Yakuza terminology, it already doesn’t make sense because it implies that Light is still in charge, and Kurapika is the second-in-command (wakagashira). The Yakuza also assimilate members into the mafia organisation and “making your own family” (via trust).

If you go by the Italian-American way, it also doesn’t make sense if you look at the way they appoint the head of the mafia organisation. From what I read and seen in mafia movies, aside from mafia organisations functioning like a corporation, it functions like a family business, where typically, the head of the family is a male. This isn’t just exclusive to mafia families, but pretty much family businesses in [East] Asia. Togashi also depicts this male heir and family business dynamic within the Zoldyck Family.

While there are actual records of women leading mafia organisations, what is depicted in media is that the mafia community are often populated with men. This is also evident in the York New City arc, where the mafia community is filled with armed men.

Even among the Yakuza, it is like this:

The Yakuza is populated almost entirely by men and the very few women who are acknowledged are the wives of bosses

Light Nostrade only have one child, a daughter to be exact. While Morena Prudo is the boss of the Heil-Ly Mafia Family, this isn’t the actual case for Neon. Neon is a young girl who likes to shop and collects dead body parts. She enjoys luxury and materialism. She doesn’t have an interest in the mafia business or where the money comes from. Besides, as mentioned before, a male heir is often depicted.

In Japanese family businesses, when there is no male heir available, they will have to resort to mukoyoshi practice. Taken from Wikipedia:

When a family, especially one with a well established business, has no male heir but has an unwed daughter of a suitable age, she will marry the mukoyōshi, a man chosen especially for his ability to run the family business.

This is done to preserve the business and name of the family when there is no suitable male heir, since traditionally businesses are inherited by the oldest male heir. Mukoyōshi is also practiced if there is no capable male heir to run the family business.

This is a centuries-old tradition and is still widely practiced today. Many Japanese companies with household names such as Nintendo, Kikkoman, and Toyota have adopted this practice.

This is why I often liked the whole “Kurapika married Neon for the title” theory because it takes into a Japanese practice when it comes to family businesses + how the mafia family business are run into account.

We also have to note that Neon Nostrade’s character blueprint is Princess Luna from Level E. Princess Luna is betrothed to the main character, Prince Baka. Initially, Prince Baka did not want to marry her. Arranged marriages do not need to be founded by love or a relationship bond. In fact, arranged marriages are often agreed on because of practical reasons, such as a family business.

Princess Luna is also why I take the marriage theory more into account, rather than the idea that Ligth adopted him. Kurapika is considered as an adult (or nearly) anyway.

Side note: Whether or not you agree with this because it seems sexist or the possible sickening idea that Kurapika married a flesh collector, is irrelevant. Me being a KuraNeon shipper also does not make this theory hold any less weight. In fact, I started liking them together because of this theory. This is based on how [mafia] family businesses are depicted in the media, the mukoyoshi practice in Japan and Princess Luna being Neon’s character blueprint. Remember that theories are based on evidence, not based on how you feel. If anything, this gives more depth to Kurapika because it shows how far he’s willing to go through in order to gain power and money for his clan.

Regardless of how Kurapika had gotten this title, it is via assimilation. Not coercion or force.

It also doesn’t make sense if he were to function businesses under the Nostrade family name, if he disliked Light and Neon so much that he’d let them wither off. Why would he still keep their family name in honour if he had let them die off? The answer is getting the title via assimilation. Be it through trust or becoming a member of the family (literally or figuratively).

Neon being uninterested also meant that there is no one to challenge Kurapika for the title, and Kurapika had already reassured to Light that the business during Greed Island arc.

Therefore, the “Kurapika had let Light and Neon wither off to get the title” is flawed when you look at the way mafia organisations functions as a family business and Neon’s character.

Why the Nostrades aren’t broke

Linssen stating the Nostrade family gains its income from gambling and personal security detail businesses that the Nostrade family runs, thanks to Kurapika being the head of the family.

Aside from that, we also see Kurapika obtaining many sets of Scarlet Eyes, with him stating that there are various ways he had done so.

“I’ve threatened, coaxed and paid people off” - Kurapika (based on the hardcopy Volume 33 that I have)

During the York New City arc, one set of Scarlet Eyes are already worth like what, millions? Not only money, but Kurapika needs influence and connections to gain these Scarlet Eyes. Threatening and coaxing meant that you’ll need to invoke fear or drive them into situations where they are forced to surrender the Scarlet Eyes. How to do that? Creating dilemmas. Give the person two options, both that are undesirable, with the lesser evil option being the one you want.

Basically, giving an offer they can’t refuse (sorry, this reference was too good to pass up lmao).

This is why being part of the mafia, and more so being a mafia leader is an attractive pathway for Kurapika because it gives him the resources, in terms of influence, finance and aggressive force.

Another thing to note is that Kurapika has hired Izunavi, Melody, Basho and Bisky to apply for the Kakin Bodyguarding contract. It’s evident that Kurapika has the money. Therefore, the Nostrades aren’t broke.

Hence, the idea that Neon was killed because her father could not face financial difficulties or that she committed suicide because she’s no longer rich, falls flat when you consider Kurapika’s involvement with their family.

“But didn’t Linssen say that gambling and personal security are legal businesses and he told Mizaistom that they are not the crime syndicate? Why is it part of the mafia?”

Yes. You see, the mafia deals with LARGELY illegal businesses, but that doesn’t mean they don’t deal with the legal ones too. Perhaps the Nostrade family has been legitimised, but it wouldn’t be the case because Kurapika’s title still states “mafia”.

While these facts seem to contradict what Linssen claimed to Mizaistom that the Nostrade organisation is not a crime syndicate, it can be argued that Mizaistom is a Crime Hunter (aka like a detective). It makes sense for Linssen to tell a Crime Hunter that you are not a crook, and it’s easier to lie about it if your services in the mafia business is legal.

Also, in actual mafia businesses where gambling is involved, the place of the server where online gambling may be legal, but in the place where the people use the online gambling may be illegal.

Taken from 10 Businesses Supposedly Controlled by the Mafia:

But mobsters have adapted to the times and taken their act online. These days, they are more likely to be busted for online sports gambling. In 2008, a Queens district attorney charged the Gambino family with illegal sports and casino-style gambling operations. Players were allowed to borrow gambling money at 200 percent interest [source: Bonner]. More recently, members of the Genovese family in New Jersey were indicted for making millions of dollars each year through illegal gambling operations [source: Ivers].

In Europe, officials have raised concerns over the vast amounts of money being laundered by the Mafia through online gambling, particularly sites based in Germany, where there are no penalties for illegal gambling activities [source: Walther].

Personal security details kind of vague, but I believe it’s Protection Racket. I went to have a look at Wikipedia for a short while and found ties with the mafia:

A protection racket is a scheme where a potentially hazardous group guarantees protection from violence, looting, raiding, piracy, and other such threats posed by them outside the sanction of the law, to polities, businesses, individuals, or other entities and groups that pay to them in cash or kind.

Protection rackets tend to appear in markets in which the police and judiciary cannot be counted on to provide legal protection, because of incompetence (as in weak or failed states) or illegality (black markets).

Certain scholars, such as Diego Gambetta, classify criminal organizations engaged in protection racketeering as "mafia", as the racket is popular with both the Sicilian Mafia and Italian-American Mafia.

While this “personal security details” the Nostrade family business provides, the stuff that involves in it may be illegal.

We don’t really know why Kurapika resorted to these two types of businesses. I have two guesses: 1) He wants to compensate and retain his moral values, therefore he opts for legal businesses, 2) He wants to have a loophole in being in the mafia yet avoiding legal troubles. Either way, it’s a smart move for Kurapika in my opinion.

Side note: With Togashi liking mafia themes so much, I truly believe that it’s a hard opportunity for him to pass up the idea of making one of his main characters a mafia leader. We get to have our own Michael Corleone, and that’s hot. (Simping hard for mafia boss Kurapika right now).

What about the Kakin Bodyguard thing? And the fact that Kurapika’s a Zodiac now? Does this mean he’s no longer the Nostrade Family Boss?

He is still the Nostrade family boss. These three are not mutually exclusive.

In the manga panel where they showed his title, it was slightly after the Zodiacs meeting. Therefore, he still retains his title as the Nostrade Boss. Being part of the Zodiac is a position within the Hunters Assocation, they are the counsellors to the Chairman. Just as when Kurapika is a hunter and the Nostrade Boss at the same time, he can also be a Zodiac and the Nostrade Boss.

The Kakin Bodyguard thing is like an employment contract. As mentioned, Kurapika hired a few people to apply for being a bodyguard because six Kakin Princes were looking for bodyguards to get close to the 4th Prince Tserriednich. You can actually see this as a link to his “Protection Racket” mafia business. Being a Kakin bodyguard is a type of Protection Racket. Therefore, he can still be a Kakin bodyguard while holding onto the mafia title.

Kurapika doesn’t need to be in the mainland overseeing everything in the business, in fact, it’s kind of noteworthy that Linssen was not on board - it is definitely possible that he had left the other parts of the mafia business to a second-in-command (a consigliere, shategashira, or the saiko-komon). He may also leave the businesses back to Light Nostrade.

Okay, what if Neon committed suicide because she couldn’t take how she’s being mistreated, rather than her being broke?

That could be possible, but we don’t really have a clear hint of that. Yes, I can see some potential daddy issues because she’s no longer of use to her father and also the possibility that Light favours Kurapika more now and maybe even sold her off to Kurapika, but I don’t find any strong evidence of that. And we don’t actually exactly know how Kurapika will act around her now that he seems to have more power than her. In fact, we don’t really have any insights as to what Kurapika thinks of her, only sweeping statements when it comes to flesh collectors which may or may not apply to her.

(I know people assume that he hates her, because they like to infer his prejudice on flesh collectors to her, but we really have ZERO clear indication of what he thinks about her specifically. To say that he definitely hates her is inaccurate. I literally just argued with someone on Youtube comments for this. And even if he did hate her, that’s hot if she’s his wife because hate-sex is wow.)

To Conclude:

The theories surrounding Neon Nostrade being dead falls flat when you look deeper into how the mafia functions. I have also explained more in detail at a possibility of how Kurapika might function in the mafia community and as the Nostrade family leader.

Other sources aside from above (so that ya’all know I don’t pull this out of my ass):

New York Mafia Families

What does the mafia even do anymore?

How to Make an Offer they can’t refuse like Vito Corleone

The Godfather by Mario Putzo [film/fictional book - watched Part 1 and 2]

Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires By Selwyn Raab [book - only read a bit]

When culture matters: succession challenges for Asian business families

Behind the Yakuza: documenting the women of Japan’s mafia

How Japan’s family businesses use sons-in-law to bring in new blood

Pretty much the whole of Hunterpedia LMAO.

I only wanted to post the Chinese blog but ended up a huge full-on essay about the mafia in HxH HAHHAA. (Because I’m so sick of people talking about theories without taking the mafia structure into consideration).

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joemoshe · 2 years

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What Is Universal Basic Income?

Fiction writer and socio-political satire, Thomas Moore, shared in his book Utopia the idea of a guaranteed income for everyone. This became the first-ever example and foundation of the idea of universal basic income (UBI).

Between 2015 and 2019, the Google searches for “universal basic income” have grown to 50 times. The thought of having ‘free cash for everyone’ sounds beyond possible, but influential figure tech billionaire Elon Musk believes that universal basic income may really be a reality.

What would you think life would become if every person would receive free money that can cover life’s basic necessities? Perhaps, people would have greater freedom to find and pursue their passion since they won’t have to spend most of their time working tirelessly to support their needs.

However, will the basic universal income really work in the real world?

At the time of writing, many countries are still having doubts about the idea of universal income, but some countries around the world are already testing out their UBI experiments, entertaining the possibility of the vision.

To answer the latter question, let’s go over the concept of universal basic income, its advantages and disadvantages, and existing real-world experiments.

What is Universal Basic Income?

Universal basic income (UBI) refers to the cash payments that get given to a certain population with little to no requirements for obtaining the money. According to International Monetary Fund, this idea was to help people increase their income.

Let’s put things simply.

Have you tried playing Monopoly back in your childhood? If you have, you must be quite familiar with the term ‘Pass Go and collect $200.’ This is similar to what universal basic income is.

Like the classic fast-dealing property trading board game Monopoly, everyone receives the same amount of money to work with forthcoming payments. Everybody would get to receive an income regardless of how much (no matter how big or small) they are earning in their career.

This is pretty similar to programs that will benefit the elderly, the poor, and the unemployed. The only difference is that other programs establish particular conditions to meet, and UBI doesn’t.

Traveling back in time to the year 2020, the unprecedented pandemic caused a lot of people to lose their job and struggle to make ends meet.

To assist people who had a hard time dealing with the situation, the countries including Hong Kong, the Philippines, Germany, Italy, Canada, India, United States, etc., come up with the idea of releasing ‘free cash’ to help them get through the hardships of the pandemic.

The wrenching pandemic is the epitome of the need for universal basic income.

Andrew Yang, a democratic party candidate for the presidency in 2020, made universal basic income one of the main bases of his political campaign. He called calls his plan the “Freedom Dividend,” which is to be given to all American citizens 18 and above. The amount of money that will be freely given is about $1,000 every month.

“Thirty percent or more of Americans couldn’t afford housing cost last month, that’s with un-extended unemployment benefits and other measures. So, we need to think much bigger about how we can make this economy work for so many Americans. And for me, that’s putting economic relief directly into their hands,” Yang expressed.

However, there is another reason why a lot of people are calling out for a universal basic income.

Automation adoption is growing steadily, so a lot of people are worried about getting replaced by robots any time soon. In 2017. McKinsey & Company estimated that about one-third of the American workforce must learn new skills and shift into another career because of the great automation transition by 2030.

In contrast, research reports from Gartner state that artificial intelligence (AI) would create more jobs than it stamps out.

Moving away from a model where jobs are essential to living is the heart of the universal income. It provides relief for people’s everyday necessities, a financial cushion to unexpected events, and freedom to pursue whatever they want to pursue in life, without worries about how they can afford to live.

Pros and Cons of Universal Basic Income

In Moore’s Utopia, there’s a part where characters discussed how thieves are hanged for their crimes. One of the characters expressed:

“No penalty will stop people from stealing if it’s their only way of getting food. Instead of inflicting horrible punishment, it would be a far better point to provide everyone with the same means of livelihood, so everyone’s under the frightful necessity becoming, first, a thief, and then a corpse.”

Surely, the hanging punishment that is well-implemented before no longer exists now. However, the basic point of this argument still stands— by giving people funds for their basic needs, there wouldn’t be a need for them to resort to illegal activities to survive.

Overall, universal basic income can income inequality, poverty levels, fight tech-related unemployment, and improve mental health. With monthly free money, it’s more likely that people can spend time helping and collaborating with their communities since they can lessen their time at work

This idea isn’t as simple as it seems, though.

Despite the fact that it has a fair share of great benefits for the public, it still has its share of drawbacks.

Some believe that implementing the universal basic income would intensify the already existing inequality since even rich people will be receiving the same amount. It could also decrease people’s motivation to work hard for their daily living. And obviously, UBI would be very expensive.

In the United States, the estimated amount that is needed to give every citizen $1,000 every month is about $2.8 trillion every year.

Universal Basic Income Experiments

There are countries that have already tested the waters of UBI, so to have an idea about the effectiveness of this proposal, let’s look at how their trial is going.

In Alaska, United States, the government pays their locals with an annual dividend of about $1,000 to $2,000 since 1982 through the Alaska revenue fund. This fund is backed by oil revenues.

As opposed to the claim that people will be demotivated because of the ‘free money,’ people receiving the annual dividend in Alaska didn’t stop working at all according to the investigations of economists. Research has shown that the UBI-like program didn’t impact employment, but rather led to a 20% reduction in poverty rates.

Manitoba also tried implementing the same program between 1974 to 1979, and Ontario from 201 to 2018. Both countries have seen good results in terms of improvement of mental health. But both programs got suspended when another candidate came into power.

The implementation of UBI programs in province-limited places. Let’s look at the impacts of the nationwide execution of this program.

Iran is the very first country that has tried testing the waters of universal basic income on a large scale to compensate for the elimination of some subsidies. Studies revealed that it has lowered the working motivation levels in the country.

Regardless, other countries that have enforced UBI trials including Kenya, Finland, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, and Brazil, have seen good results in contrast to Iran.

#ubi #universal basic income #money #salary #income #job

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sauntervaguelydown · 3 years

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alright i gotta ask.. tell me about Strangers in a Strange Land? :Dc

ahhh I See You

So the original drabble the longer this is based on was very specifically inspired by listening to Panic! at the Disco. "LA Devotee" even more specifically. I was imagining the way that the performative fakeness of greater LA culture would mesh well with Hisoka's desire to both be Seen and Perceived but also retain his distance and privacy. Also. the painting nails thing. Originally I just wanted him to be painting his nails because it's such an elegant and femme thing to do, but then as I was writing the "underground fighting ring" section I realized (based on my own experience of kickboxing with acrylic nails) that this was not a practical thing to do, and then I realized they should be press-ons, and then I blew my own mind with how bizarre and low key funny it is to put on fake nails and then paint them WHILE they're on you, like, who DOES that

"Moon Men" is my favorite motif of all time and I'm just!!! Ahh!!! When I hit on how to combine the alien and the angelic imagery I just about got up and did a lap around the house. The comic books about Moon Men are an idea I lifted from--get this--Beverly Hillbillies. The son reads a comic about Moon People and wants to get hitched to one'a them Moon Maidens. I thought it would be fun if out on Whale Island they're only getting old books, decades behind the rest of the world, because there's no consistent bookstore on the Island. It's just whatever the sailors and travelers bring along. Once when my dad was a teenager a Deadhead traveled through his town selling off his records for gas money and my dad bought a bunch of like, Uriah Heep off him, stuff you'd never have gotten in the South in the 70's. Anyway I think that's basically how Gon gets his pop culture.

The idea of "mugging the monster" gives me infinite joy so I just... did that trope literally. This fic is closely related to Peace on Earth in the sense that it's about shared companionship through strangeness--about how Hisoka and Gon feel like they don't belong to this world. But while Hisoka holds it at arms-length , Gon throws himself into the strangeness and experiences everything as if it's new and wonderful. Hisoka is at a greater disadvantage in this real-ish world because his longings are the same, but without nen, there's no real way for him to get what he's craving. He wants to play chess and street fight and do algebra all at the same time and we just don't have a place for that, so he has to do them all separately. He was probably in jail for killing his mentor by the way. It was judged self defense and he got a two year sentence. After that he couldn't find legit work so he did porn for a while before getting into illegal ring fighting. People do occasionally recognize him from the porn work in public, and you can always tell because they go VERY red. Gon asks a lot of problematic questions about this phenomenon. Thank god they're leaving for south america in a week.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how to GET everyone to LA in this au. For Killua I just lifted the athelete family thing from Thanksgiving and gave it a hollywood spin. Kurapika was the hardest. I eventually decided that his "clan" was a commune of low key cultists, who had some very valuable jewels they were using for religious reasons, and the Spider crew swept in and killed them all to get the loot. They weren't necessarily all wonderful people, and while they were alive Kurapika was a troublesome youth with too many uncomfortable questions, but now that they're gone, well--those were his family. Kurapika is technically an American citizen but he was out east for Quest Reasons before everyone met up on the flight to LA.

I have to admit, I cheated a little bit by engaging this "Indiana Jones vision of Peru" at the end, since that's not technically mundane. But I'd already spent a while talking about Gon's missing dad, and that he was an archaeologist, and the tomb Ging talks about at the end of the anime was still floating around in my head and well... anyways.

I think when they show up in Peru, there's a whole conspiracy of looters and corrupt government officials and it turns into a story about trying to help the locals push out the greedy corporate interests while dodging their own warrants and also people who keep trying to kill them, and at the end of the whole arc you find Ging napping in a jail cell, where he's been held for like 5 years and been doing penpal correspondences with local academics about the stuff he found in the ruins before he was arrested.

I don't want to write that but ^^; I would certainly read it. Or watch it. It would be fun to watch the team getting to know each other and Hisoka coming out of his shell with them a little bit. Knuckle&Shoot are definitely here. Maybe some new characters. Maybe the mustache proctor guy? He's an archaeologist. He might be interested.

Also. Mosquitos. There will be mosquitos. Hisoka HATES this. Gon never gets bit somehow.

#izamun

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lolmasoma · 3 years

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⌘ DON’T MATTER IF YOU’RE BLACK OR WHITE ⌘

FIELDWORK CH. 5 / HOW IS RACE CONSTRUCTED AROUND THE WORLD

A FEW KEY CONCEPTS THAT EFFECT HOW RACE IS PERCEIVED FROM MY POINT OF VIEW

1. WHITE SUPREMACY

THE BELIEF THAT WHITES ARE BIOLOGICALLY DIFFERENT FROM & SUPERIOR TO THE OTHER RACES

Higher Learning (1995) is a film by John Singleton that centers 3 students from different backgrounds that are navigating life through college, battling over different hardships like grades, finances, sports, race and more. One of the main character’s finds acceptance in a Neo-Nazi group on campus and tension rises amongst the already hostile environment. Great movie! 10/10– Definitely recommend.

2. RACIALIZATION

THE PROCESS OF CATEGORIZING & ATTRIBUTING A RACIAL CHARACTER TO A PERSON OR GROUP OF PEOPLE

At the beginning of the outbreak, Asian-Americans experienced a duel-pandemic between Covid-19 & xenophobia.

President Donald Trump would refer Covid-19 as “the Chinese virus”, and spread his ignorance to the public, encouraging discrimination towards Asian citizens. Over the past year, due to the false rhetoric of the virus being spread by Asian people, there was an incredible increase of verbal & physical abuse towards them, forcing a congregation. #STOPASIANHATE

3. MISCEGENATION

THE UNION BETWEEN PEOPLE OF DIFFERENT RACES

On June 12th, 1967 The Supreme Court banned anti-interracial marriage restriction laws. There was once a time where if a black man & a white woman were caught together (consensual of course) the man would’ve been thrown in prison and the woman set free to go, and vice versa; if between a black woman & a white man, the woman would’ve been reprimanded & the man unbothered.

To put it into another perspective, my father was born in 1962 . For about 5 years of my father’s life, 15% of married couples in the United States today would’ve been illegal.

I want to highlight Meghan Markle & Prince Harry’s relationship. The people of the U.K. (including the Royal Family) constantly berated Meghan because of her race. Markle opened up to the public on what living in that environment was like and revealed that, while pregnant, a member of the Royal Family was concerned over the appearance of their expected child Archie, regarding his skin color & hair texture.

4. INTERSECTIONALITY

THE STRUCTURE SOCIETY BUILT TO KEEP CERTAIN GROUPS AT AN ADVANTAGE AND OTHER GROUPS AT A DISADVANTAGE

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The video speaks for itself, it illustrates exactly how society is built for the black man to easily fall behind.

5. MICROAGGRESSION

COMMON, EVERYDAY VERBAL REMARKS THAT COMMUNICATE HOSTILE, DEROGATORY AND NEGATIVE MESSAGES ABOUT SOMEONE’s RACE, GENDER, SEXUAL ORIENTATION, OR RELIGION

A question every black girl has heard atleast once in their life. “Is that your real hair?” A question you would probably never hear getting asked to a white woman. When someone asks this, it may not mean ill-intent but the question is rooted from a negative stereotype that is only placed on black women.

All hair is beautiful. Our hair is such an important piece to our black identity, its versatile & expressive. I just find it unnecessary for society to set these assumptions so strongly where it’s black women questioning other black women. Our hair is an important symbol to our culture, it’s constantly evolving with time; the styles we’ve grown accustomed to have defined our generations for centuries and will keep doing so indefinitely.

#Spotify #SoundCloud

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jennifergracia · 3 years

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DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP 1: POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT

Do you know that social media has already been used to communicate with a large audience by a politician since 2008?

The United States’ president was called Barack Obama, used social media to educate, entertain the public and form his legacy. In 2017, white house officials also used this method to attract public attention. They believe presidents should not only rely on press conferences or interviews with a journalist to deliver messages to the public as most Americans nowadays receive news online (Freking 2017).

What is political engagement?

You may hear or read this political definition about “who gets what, when and how”. It can be interpreted Politic as material goods distributions during post-world war II. However, this term has been opposed in few decades because politics is not about distribution, but it also involves culture, identity, and others. So, politics can refer to the governments or its citizens' activities that attempt to affect a country's settings (Boswell 2020).

Political engagement involves the wide society in political activities such as election voting, discussing with other people on issues, helping the political campaign, and others. By engaging in political activities, citizens can influence politicians' actions directly and indirectly (Uhlaner 2015, p. 504).

Social media + politic = 100% good???

Social media is an internet communication tool that allows people to create, share content and interact with the public immediately. In politics, social media helps in citizen engagements and builds public trust as it helps citizens keep informed with critical information, policy, and issues such as telling citizens to stay at home/ less do activities outdoors during pandemic covid-19. It also allows politicians to see analytic data of people who have seen the news based on their demographics and help specific situations. For example, during a presidential election, politicians can message people who have not voted for their candidate yet. However, there are some drawbacks to social media. Bots can disturb politics by giving unreliable sources and even affecting election outcomes because they can create fake profiles that no one may not know whether the people are real. Moreover, it may make people stay to their perspectives as they only search or see others' same ideas (Bromfield 2018).

Malaysia is considered one of the most digitally connected countries. Social media has already become a norm for Malaysians to deliver information, fund-raising, sharing ideas, and other activities, including politicians. In fact, the opposing party won the 14th general elections named Pakatan Harapan for using social media to gain citizens' trust. Social media helps to engage young people to participate in politics. It recorded that during the 2018 Malaysian election commission, the ages between 21 to 39 have voted for 41%. Social media also helps raise people's voices to be heard, such as the trending #PulangMengundi which means voting at home. Furthermore, it brings people to connect, for example, in the election with some Malaysians living abroad who cannot participate. Nevertheless, it can have disadvantageous effects such as false reports, bots, edit political leaders' photographs. For instance, #UndiRosak is used on Twitter to corrupt the vote (Debra Grace 2018).

Overall, political engagement and social media are mutually beneficial to each other. Combining both can give all users good experiences because it gives many advantages, such as delivering important news fast. Despite this, it can also give bad experiences if some users use it for fun purposes, such as giving fake news to cause a panic situation for citizens.

You have reached the end of my post; thank you for reading it!

References

Boswell, C 2020, ‘What is politic?’, The British Academy, 14 January, viewed 30 March 2021, <https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/blog/what-is-politics/>.

Bromfield, S 2018, ‘Pros & cons of social media in politics’, Uloop, 7 May, viewed 30 March 2021, <https://www.uloop.com/news/view.php/263903/Pros-amp-Cons-of-Social-Media-in-Politics>.

Debra Grace, LJ-E 2018, ‘Social media and politics in Malaysia’, YourCommonwealth, 24 May, viewed 30 March 2021, <http://www.yourcommonwealth.org/social-development/democracy-participation/social-media-and-politics-in-malaysia-election/>.

Freking, K 2017, ‘Obama makes his marks as first ‘social media’ president’, The Seattle Times, 6 January, viewed 30 March 2021, <https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/obama-makes-his-mark-as-first-social-media-president/>.

Hudson, M 2020, ‘What is social media?’, The Balance Small Business, 23 June, viewed 30 March viewed 2021, <https://www.thebalancesmb.com/what-is-social-media-2890301>.

Uhlaner, CJ 2015, ‘Politics and participation’, International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences, vol. 18, pp. 504-508.

#MDA20009 #Week 5

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creepingsharia · 4 years

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What is Islamization?

Originally posted on March 30, 2011 reposted for newer readers.

What is Islamization? An incomplete list. by Dr. Nicolai Sennels The word “Islamization” was originally coined by Muslims to describe the conversion of a kufr (infidel) society to an “enlightened” (Islamic) society. Islamization is a phenomenon that has existed since the Muslim prophet Mohammed lived 1,400 years ago. Islamization has been effective, since it is now the main religion in 57 countries. The association of Islamic countries, OIC, is the world’s largest supra-national organization, surpassed only by the UN. Three roads to Islamization One road to Islamization is to remove non-Islamic traditions and symbols. This is to avoid offending Muslims or expose Muslims to proselytizing by other faiths. It also aims to reduce competition from the country’s original religion and culture in order to improve the possibilities for further Islamization. An example is the Red Cross’ refusal to decorate for Christmas in their stores, or when banks no longer hands out piggy banks to their customers’ kids (because pigs are unclean in Islam) — in both situations in order not to offend Muslims and lose Muslim customers. Another way Islamization is accomplished is by making Islamic traditions and rules part of non-Islamic societies. Examples are reconstruction of public sports facilities to cater for Muslims’ inhibited views on nudity and contact between the sexes, or the imposition of leave on Islamic holidays. A third way Islamization achieved happens when certain areas or neighborhoods acquire such a high a proportion of Muslims that the country’s indigenous culture and people are pushed out. One example is when non-Islamic authorities such as police and fire departments meet with disrespect and sometimes even threats and violence, while imams, patrolling police-style Muslim fathers’ groups, homemade Sharia Courts, and Islamic mediation meetings are free to exercise their power. Another example is when Jews can not wear yarmulke or girls can not wear miniskirts in Muslim-dominated areas, because they risk being attacked. Islamization thus occurs through elimination of the indigenous culture, introduction of Islamic traditions and through immigration and the building of Muslim parallel societies. Disadvantages of Islamization There are many disadvantages of Islamization. The main issue is of course that it comes at the expense of our own culture, which is the foundation of our lifestyle, our sense of community and our well-functioning society. Also, our western culture is simply better than that of the Muslims because it is freer, includes human rights, and is more productive. In addition, Western culture makes people more self-confident, happy and loving, because unlike the Muslim culture it does not cultivate aggression, fragile feelings of honor, and intolerance against other faiths. Furthermore, we allow free speech and allow women and feminine qualities to bloom freely for the benefit of themselves, men, and society. Every time we introduce more Islamization to our society, it moves one step away from our own culture, and one step closer to the Muslim culture and a sharia-based society.

Islamization occurs at the expense of the indigenous culture and its norms. By harming the native culture, important life values are taken away from the people and the values and norms that bind our community together are undermined. The sense of community is fundamental to quality of life for us “pack” animals, and common core values are the foundation of the mutual trust, helpfulness, openness, understanding, and respect among a population.

Islamization dilutes the national identity among the indigenous population, because it dilutes our common culture. At the same time it strengthens the Muslims’ Islamic identity at the expense of national identity. National identity and sense of community are important for work morale, tax morale, morale in relation to benefit fraud and respect towards the nations laws and authorities. People who feel part of the community feel that they hurt themselves if they harm the community.

Islamization allows inhumane traditions take root in our society. The Koran’s prescriptions and the Muslim culture’s views on women, free speech, and other faiths are medieval. They are subversive to the democracy and human rights in a country — and whether it be little or much, or whether it is restricted to certain geographical areas, no such thing should take root in our society.

Islamization pushes the indigenous people out of the areas where Muslims and Muslim culture dominate. This is because the Muslim culture is so different from the Western that we find it hard to feel at home and comfortable, and because Islam and Muslim culture is racist towards non-Muslims.

Islamization makes it possible to retain Muslim traditionalists or Islamic extremists in our countries, because they can keep their Islamic traditions. This is counter-productive to integration and a source of homegrown Islamic extremism.

For every new Islamization of society, the step is shorter to the next Islamization. It is easier for Muslims to make claims when they can refer to the fact that we already accepted a large number of other similar claims.

Islamization provides maneuvering space for a political ideology that has oppression and extermination of all non-Muslims as both means and goal.

Examples of Islamization

The following examples of Islamization lead to one or more of the aforementioned disadvantages:

It is Islamization of our cities

when entire neighborhoods are dominated so strongly by the Muslim culture, Islamic values, and Muslim racism that the country’s culture and the indigenous population no longer feel at home and safe in the area. We should feel at home and welcome everywhere in our own country.

It is Islamization of our food

when halal foods are not labeled as such. By keeping consumers ignorant of what is Islamic food, we are forced to eat halal. By buying it, we contribute to Islamic “charity”, which helps fund terrorists, and support Muslim jobs at the expense of non-Muslims and food prices — for halal slaughter requires a Muslim to assist with the slaughter, and Muslim organizations are paid to approve the procedure. Food products are already labeled in detail in relation to content, health, and production methods to increase consumers’ ability to make conscious choices concerning their food. Of course halal must also be labeled.

It is Islamization of children’s schooling

when the state allows and supports Islamic schools and madrassas. Primary schools are our society’s most important cultural carrier and are intended to inform schoolchildren of the country’s indigenous culture and values.

It is Islamization of our urban design and architectural culture

when municipalities and the state permit the construction of large mosques and minarets. Arabic architecture does not belong in Western cities — and certainly not at very central, historical or visible locations.

It is Islamization of our country

when mosques are permitted. The mosques enforce and increase Islamic values among the area’s Muslims and often function as a springboard for political activity that works for the Islamization of the country.

It is Islamization of our way of being together

and of women when we allow burqas and the niqab in public spaces. In a democratic society, we should see each other’s faces, and women and men are equal and free to dress as they like.

It is Islamization of our public sports facilities

when swimming pools and locker rooms are closed or reconstructed so that Muslims can use them. It should a person’s personal choice of what religion and what view of nudity he allows. Personal choices should not restrict the citizens’ access to public taxpayer-funded facilities.

It is Islamization of our schools, institutions, workplaces and the rhythm of the year

when we create Muslim holidays and when municipalities and unions print Muslim holidays in our calendars. We have an adequate number of holidays in our country, and more holidays harm children’s academic development and loss of productivity in companies. The yearly rhythm is closely associated with a country’s history, traditions, and culture and plays an important role to our experience of holidays and seasons. This very basic rhythm of life should be experienced as being related to our own history and culture, and not be Islamized.

It is Islamization of our schools

when Muslims are excused from physical education and Christian education for religious reasons.

****BONUS - READIN’, WRITIN’, AND JIHADIN’The Islamization of American Public Schools (PDF)

It is Islamization of the stores

when they choose not to use Christian, cultural or national symbols in order not to offend Muslims or losing Muslim customers. Shop decorations are part of our culture and our cities’ street scene, and help to mark the seasons with Christmas ornaments, Easter eggs, carnival decorations, etc. Buyers should select stores that take a social responsibility for our society and culture.

It is Islamization of our public institutions and workplaces

when halal foods are included on the menu. Special diets due solely to personal choices of religion should not be funded by the state.

It is Islamization of our way of caring for children

when we ignore that they are being starved for religious reasons. Ramadan damages children’s ability to concentrate in school. In addition it affects the children’s social development, because hunger and fluctuating blood sugar make them emotionally unstable and aggressive. Starving of children should rightfully be categorized as neglect and punished as such.

It is Islamization when we ignore the fact

that a specific ethnic group of women in our own country are deprived of basic human rights on religious grounds. Women from non-Western countries should have a visit or meeting with municipality employees. These employees must advise migrant women about family planning and contraception. Additionally, employees should make sure that the women are free and safe. Finally, it is important that migrant women know their rights to women’s shelters, divorce and repatriation.

It is Islamization of the Danish government

when public sector workplaces have prayer rooms. Public workers are public servants, and thus taxpayers’ money should not be used for religious practices.

It is the Islamization of our jurisprudence

when we do not effectively stop homemade Sharia Courts and Islamic mediation meetings. Such things are organized vigilantism and a direct assault on the foundations of our social structure and sense of justice, and should be removed with the necessary methods.

It is Islamization of the justice system

when police ignore Muslims’ scorn, threats, and violence, and when the police invite Muslim fathers’ groups to help stop Muslim riots and gangs. It is harmful to the sense of justice in the country and undermines police authority.

It is the Islamization of our legal system

when we allow Sharia courts or give reduced sentences to perpetrators who have committed a crime for religious or cultural reasons (honor crimes).

It is Islamization of our population, electorate, and country

when we allow immigration from Muslim countries and when Europe do not protect us effectively against illegal immigration.

Nicolai Sennels is a psychologist and the author of “Among Criminal Muslims: A Psychologist’s experiences with the Copenhagen Municipality”.

#Islam #Muslim #Sharia #Jihad #Legal #Immigration #Politics #News #Media #Religion #Travel

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libertariantaoist · 4 years

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I want a government small enough to fit inside the Constitution.

You can't give the government the power to do good without also giving it the power to do bad - in fact, to do anything it wants.

The free market punishes irresponsibility. Government rewards it.

We should never define libertarian positions in terms coined by liberals and conservatives, nor as some variant of their positions. We are not fiscally conservative and socially liberal. We are libertarians, who believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility on all issues at all times.

Republicans campaign like Libertarians and govern like Democrats.

For those looking for security, be forewarned that there's nothing more insecure than a political promise.

A little government involvement is just as dangerous as a lot - because the first leads inevitably to the second.

Left-wing politicians take away your liberty in the name of children and of fighting poverty, while right-wing politicians do it in the name of family values and fighting drugs. Either way, government gets bigger and you become less free.

The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, "See if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk".

I'm for a flat tax -- as long as the flat rate is zero. The object is to get rid of big government, not find a new way of financing it.

The American heritage was one of individual liberty, personal responsibility and freedom from government. Unfortunately, that heritage has been lost. Americans no longer have the freedom to direct their own lives. Today, it is the government that is free - free to do whatever it wants. There is no subject, no issue, no matter that is not subject to legislation.

It is well known that in war, the first casualty is truth - that during any war truth is forsaken for propaganda.

The police can't stop an intruder, mugger, or stalker from hurting you. They can pursue him only after he has hurt or killed you. Protecting yourself from harm is your responsibility, and you are far less likely to be hurt in a neighborhood of gun-owners than in one of disarmed citizens - even if you don't own a gun yourself.

Once upon a time, government budgets were balanced, our money was sound, the streets were safe, and taxes imposed by all levels of government took less than 10% of our income.

It's wrong for someone to confiscate your money, give it to someone else, and call that "compassion."

Forcing people to be generous isn't humanitarian, effective, compassionate, or moral. Only acts that are truly voluntary for all concerned can be truly compassionate.

Whatever the issue, let freedom offer us a hundred choices, instead of having government force one answer on everyone.

Immigrants used to come to America seeking freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom from government. Now they come looking for free health care, free education, and a free lunch.

Our government, taxes, and ideas of freedom are already duplicates of the Old World. Our politicians determine how we should live our lives - and our individual liberties are sacrificed for the benefit of the Fatherland.

The government's War on Poverty has transformed poverty from a short-term misfortune into a career choice.

In almost all matters, the real question should be: why are we letting government handle this?

The problem is big government. If whoever controls government can impose his way upon you, you have to fight constantly to prevent the control from being harmful. With small, limited government, it doesn't much matter who controls it, because it can't do you much harm.

The seeds of today's runaway government were planted when it was decided that government should help those who can't help themselves. From that modest, compassionate beginning to today's out-of-control mega-state, there's a straight, unbroken line. Once the door was open, once it was settled that the government should help some people at the expense of others, there was no stopping it.

There are no violent gangs fighting over aspirin territories. There are no violent gangs fighting over whisky territories or computer territories or anything else that's legal. There are only criminal gangs fighting over territories covering drugs, gambling, prostitution, and other victimless crimes. Making a non-violent activity a crime creates a black market, which attracts criminals and gangs, which turns what was once a relatively harmless activity affecting a small group of people into a widespread epidemic of drug use and gang warfare.

Can you think of a single area of government in which George Bush hasn't already made things worse than Bill Clinton did?

I say that the Second Amendment doesn't allow for exceptions - or else it would have read that the right "to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, unless Congress chooses otherwise." And because there are no exceptions, I disagree with my fellow panelists who say the existing gun laws should be enforced. Those laws are unconstitutional [and] wrong - because they put you at a disadvantage to armed criminals, to whom the laws are no inconvenience.

When you know you're capable of dealing with whatever comes, you have the only security the world has to offer.

Government seems to operate on the principle that if even one individual is incapable of using his freedom competently, no one can be allowed to be free.

The problem with politics isn't the money; it's the power.

#harry browne #libertarian quotes

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liskantope · 4 years

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Some thoughts on BLM and our current unrest

[Content warning for death and violence and even sexual abuse (although that’s not part of this week’s issue) and, you know, discussion of a current topic that’s very upsetting for many people. I can’t guarantee that the opinion I express won’t be additionally upsetting although I’m hoping for an open-minded rather than strident tone here. Also, it turned out super long. And I didn’t even get around to the protest vs. rioting discourse!]

This post is long, and since Tumblr for some reason has done away with the light horizontal bars separating sections of writing (I can’t imagine why, and I wish they’d bring it back), I’ll adopt the style of Slate Star Codex and The Last Psychiatrist to mark different sections.

(The following hypothetical situation is inspired by the crimes of Jerry Sandusky of Penn State and Larry Nassar of Michigan State.)

Suppose it becomes public knowledge that in many American universities there are officials working in athletics departments who are using their programs to gain access to children and teenagers for the purpose of sexually abusing them. Say it is discovered that this has been going on for decades at most of these universities, with the perpetrators using their privilege and power to keep the suspicions of the higher-up administrators on the downlow. This would of course become a dominating national news item and lead to a public conversation about how poorly structured the system must be at universities to allow for such despicable crimes to go on, how we as a society are putting people in power who care more about their power than about the basic safety of children and teenagers, and so on. If enough people felt like university administrations or state governments were refusing to take action towards dissolving these corrupt systems, or if they disagreed with the actions being taken, there might be full-scale protests or even riots along with the vigils that would take place in any case. I mean, I believe all of this is basically what happened when the Sandusky and Nassar situations broke out some years back.

Now suppose that in addition, when looking at all these horrific revelations from universities all around the country, it became noticeable that the victims of these sex crimes were disproportionately young people growing up in poverty; let’s say fully one third of the victims were growing up in households whose annual income was under $30,000. (I don’t recall the Sandusky case in great detail but something like that was probably true there to a more dramatic extent since he got access to his victims through a program designed for underprivileged children.) This makes the situation feel even more tragic -- don’t kids from low-income backgrounds suffer enough disadvantages already? These monsters that are protected by The System are adept at preying on the most vulnerable, and clearly this (hypothetical but altogether not unrealistic) phenomenon highlights the vulnerability of those who are not economically privileged.

Now in such a situation, class issues would definitely become at least a minor part of the discourse, but I have a hard time imagining that the entire main thrust of the public outrage would focus on classism, even if (and this is something I can’t imagine either!) the only cases being projected by the media to become common public knowledge, out of the whole series of university athletics sex crimes, were the ones where mainly poor kids and teenagers were targeted. In fact, I expect that if any media outlet tried to present the entire thing as being a class issue and implied that it affected only poor kids, there would be a lot of backlash especially on the grounds of this coming across as a big middle finger to the higher-income-background molestation victims. I just don’t see it happening. Primarily, the outrage would be centered on the fact that university administrations allow high-ranking people in their athletics departments get away with despicable violations of young people for decades. The fact that a disproportionately high number of those young people are from underprivileged backgrounds would be treated as sort of a secondary issue, if properly noticed by the broader public at all.

So, if you’ve read this far you probably see where I’m going with this. And I know that the above hypothetical scenario furnishes nowhere near a perfect analogy to what has people riled up right now. But why is it that in my hypothetical nightmare crime scenario, the prevalence of the crime itself (rather than which demographic is disproportionately on the receiving end) is what constitutes the outrage, whereas in the real-life scenario of numerous documented instances of police brutality and murder, the entire thrust of the public outrage is centered on the notion that this is all about racism, that yeah there must be something seriously amiss in a system that lets cops get away with brutal violence towards innocent civilians but pretty much every single statement expressing that sentiment will frame it in terms of racism while the existence white victims of police brutality is essentially never even acknowledged?

From what I can see, in this age where everyday happenings can easily be recorded by random bystanders and the recordings can easily become accessible to the public, we are seeing evidence that a number of American cops are way, way too liberal with lethal violence, either through direct training or through a tendency towards paranoia of how dangerous a civilian under arrest might be or through psychopathic tendencies that attract certain kinds of people to a profession where brutally violent behavior is too easily excused in the courts after the fact. I don’t know to what degree these relatively few pieces of documented footage reflect a large part of the police force rather than just “a few bad apples”, but on some level it doesn’t matter -- an event like the murder of George Floyd should not be tolerated and the fact that many such instances are happening every year seems unacceptable. This is true regardless of whether Floyd’s race actually played any significant part in Derek Chauvin’s decision to apply very excessive force. Then there are statistics to reckon with -- I don’t have the skillset that some have for knowing where to look up data and rationally analyzing it, but to my understanding it’s quite unambiguous that American law enforcement officers kill a lot more people than the police forces of most other countries, and this would seem to point to a serious problem. I have generally heard that in absolute terms, in fact more white men are killed this way than black men, but relative to the ratio of white people to black people, black men are killed disproportionately often. Of course there seems to be no room whatsoever for discussion of any possible reason this could be aside from purely racist motives on the parts of the cops, which is certainly one of my issues with the whole topic, but let’s set that aside for the moment and assume for the sake of argument that this disparity is entirely attributable to anti-black racism. Even with this assumption, does it make sense to present the entire issue of police brutality as a purely racial one?

Here is another analogy to something that is not only non-hypothetical but is an even bigger current situation: the pandemic. It’s frequently been remarked on that Covid19 has been killing at a significantly higher rate among racial minorities. And yet the broader framing of the crisis we’re in hasn’t been that it’s an African-American issue or that every failure of government officials to respond effectively is primarily an instantiation of racism. The racial component of this is treated secondarily, in fact with far less emphasis than the direct crisis which affects everyone in the country even if not in equal measures.

With the murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Abery, as with every other story of a cop killing of a black person that goes viral, it’s not only that the narrative frames the race component as the primary issue -- the race component is framed as the only issue. This is done in such an absolute and unquestioning manner that I’m still a little taken aback whenever I see each new “We denounce racism!” announcement from almost every company whose mailing system I’m in: my Unitarian Universalist organization, the university I work for, Lyft, Airbnb, etc., not that any of them actually suggest a plan of action beyond donating to Black Lives Matter and other related organizations.

I think I can answer my own questions about why the narrative is coming out this way. Some areas of social justice enjoy a much more prestigious position in America than others do, and racism seems to dominate all the rest. (I’ve come to see this as a very American thing, no doubt due to the exceptionally dramatic nature of my country’s struggles against racial oppression, although it’s probably the case in Canada as well and maybe to a comparable extent in other Anglophone countries.) There is no surer way to make an issue more hot-button than by framing it as a racial issue, except in the unusual case (as in my Covid example) that the issue is actually of urgent and immediate concern to all citizens. Opposition to something like police brutality could have some momentum on its own, but as motivation for activism it has nowhere near the mighty strength in our culture that anti-racism does. In the hypothetical scenario about child abuse at universities, we have one type of social injustice, economic inequality, which has mostly been relegated to the background in the recent history of social activism (yes, Bernie Sanders has had a significant following, but my impression is that even many of his most diehard supporters get more passionate about racial inequality than economic inequality, at least when it comes to fiscal issues other than health care reform). Whereas child molestation is condemned in the strongest terms by our society perhaps even more universally than racism is (even though this universality makes it less of a cause for energetic activism -- I never hear anyone complain that “we live in a molestation culture” or anything like that). So, issues viewed as racial have far more memetic endurance than non-racial issues or even the exact same fundamental issues when not viewed from a racial angle.

Or, here is another way that I’ve considered looking at it: because police violence happens disproportionately to African-Americans, police violence could be considered to be “an African-American issue”, and since anti-racism activism is already quite a strong force in modern American culture, the issue of police brutality will naturally find an outlet to the public through the lens of African-American issues. Therefore, this is the only angle from which most of us will ever see it.

Of course the obvious thing that someone would surely point out here is that pretty much all of the examples of police brutality we’ve been seeing for years have white people victimizing black people (George Zimmerman did not present to me as white from the moment I first glanced at him, and by many definitions he is a PoC, but I guess he’s close enough to white that people were able to ignore this). Therefore it seems logical to assume that anti-black racism is the only lens to view these events through. Well, it would be logical except that we should all be able to think critically enough to realize that there are probably tons of videos out there of innocent white people being victimized by cops but those aren’t the ones that go viral. In fact, videos of black people being victimized by non-white cops probably also don’t get very far in the memosphere* -- it’s occurred to me that perhaps if the Asian policeman on the scene had been the one in the center of the frame pinning Floyd to the ground, this atrocity might never have become public knowledge!

(*Did I just make up that term? Google isn’t showing anything.)

And honestly, for this reason, I can’t help feeling particularly bad right now for loved ones of nonblack people who were victims of such crimes while being treated as if their cases didn’t exist.

This is not me trying to covertly imply support for “All Lives Matter” here. I’ve never felt the slightest bit of attraction to that counter-hashtag, which has always struck me as subtly obnoxious in implying that Black Lives Matter’s name is equivalent to saying “only black lives matter”, which of course BLM is not saying. Black lives do matter and in many ways still constantly get devalued and it is good that there’s an activist group out there whose main purpose is to stand up for them. But my discussion above does point to a specific issue -- probably the biggest of two or three issues -- I have with BLM. It would be one thing to say, “Police brutality can be considered a black issue since it affects black people disproportionately, so we should form a Black Lives Matter group and include it as one of the things we want to fight against.” Instead, BLM’s rhetoric strongly implies, “Police brutality is entirely a black issue and we’ll round off the entirety of it to racism and make opposition to it our main plank”. (Compare, from an secularist activist group, “Anti-gay bigotry often arises from fundamentalist religion and the justification for anti-gay-rights legislation threatens separation of church and state; therefore we should consider it an atheist/secularist issue and place gay rights issues among our concerns” vs. “Anti-gay bigotry and legislation is simply a manifestation of religion’s attempt to dominate non-religion so we should make opposition to it our main plank and not acknowledge or stand up for gay Christians.” Again, not a perfect analogy, but I hope it shows where I’m coming from.)

II.

I already wrote a post exactly four years ago describing and criticizing what I called “protest culture”. My point in linking to it here is not to revisit the discussion about Bernie Sanders or even the question of protesters’ deep-down motives but to endorse the following paragraph describing the kind of protest activism I felt (and still feel) could be helpful:

I definitely think there’s an important place in our culture for organized protest. Sometimes we ordinary citizens need to show our dissatisfaction to the higher-ups in a way that they are forced to notice and not ignore. But I strongly prefer protests that express dissent from a particular action, propose a concrete solution, and include many people who are able to make nuanced arguments in favor of this solution. If there is no good consensus as to a serious solution, then I’ll settle for some particular action that is being protested against. For instance, I would have proudly joined the marches against the war in Vietnam had I been around for it, and would have joined the marches against the war in Iraq had I been a little older at the time. I would consider joining protests against, for instance, particular amendments I feel strongly about. I did not, on the other hand, feel comfortable with the “99 percent” movement. What was it expressing a sentiment against, exactly, apart from the very vague notion that a few people at the top screw things over for the rest of us? (And by the way, I suspect that demonizing the entire top 1% was too heavy-handed; it’s probably only some in the top .01% who have been doing the main damage.) There seemed to be little organization to this movement, and little common purpose except “let’s protest for the cause of being vaguely left-wing!” The best argument I remember hearing in its favor was when a student explained to me the main strategy behind the movement: they would essentially fight guerilla-style by occupying large areas for a very long amount of time in a way that the top politicians couldn’t ignore, never, ever giving it up until things change in Washington. But I was still pretty sure that at some point, the movement would have to die down, and was willing to bet that this would happen before anything changed in Washington.

I’ve never felt as fervently as I do now that too many law enforcement officers in the US are out of control and some kind of reform needs to be done (or at least strongly considered, in a serious conversation) to the system so that it can be effective in keeping them in check and outlawing certain forms of excessive force. There’s a lot I don’t understand about the demands and risks involved in law enforcement, but I really can’t imagine how there’s any possible excuse for what Officer Chauvin did, or for his colleagues who stood by and watched him do it. One reason I’m bringing up everything I did in the section above is that a massive protest movement based entirely on opposing racism seems to me like the exact wrong way to bring about the kind of reform we need, in part because it fails to recognize that the link from the bare facts of these events to possible racist motives is far less direct than the link to the overpowered nature of American law enforcement.

What is a campaign centered on “Be less racist!” possibly going to accomplish? Yelling at the police to be less racist isn’t going to change the behavior of individual cops who might be subconsciously racist but don’t realize it, many of whom are likely to react with defensiveness (because racism on an abstract level is sufficiently shamed in modern western culture that nobody likes to admit to themselves that they’re being racist). It’s even less likely to change the behavior of individual cops who are maliciously racist. It’s not going to change the policies set in place for law enforcement when, in this day and age, it would be highly illegal and unconstitutional to have explicitly racist policies in the first place. (It can be argued that some of these policies are a part of systemic racism, but then in my opinion the activist movement should focus on attacking those specific policies.)

In fact, I can’t think of any situation, however race-related, where I expect it helps to yell “Be less racist!” except for when (1) you are protesting against a particular law which discriminates against people of a certain (minority) race; or (2) you are denouncing a particular candidate or person in power who has explicitly endorsed racism in public or in private. Both of these scenarios are highly rare in 2020. Maybe there are other neighboring scenarios I’m not thinking of at the moment, but I’m pretty sure our current scenario isn’t one of them.

I imagine that if we set race aside for a moment and focus on police reform, by waiting for background information on the Floyd case to come out and piecing together what led to this injustice and pinpointing which factors led to it, a difference could be made. I’m not saying that this should all be done dispassionately, and in fact acting with passion and emotional force is crucial. And I’m not saying that in the wake of such an obvious murder everyone should just stay quiet until more facts come out. It makes sense to cry out in pain and anger as an immediate reaction, and I’m not going to criticize anyone for doing this, especially someone who feels closer to the tragedy (yes, including through shared racial background) than I do. But letting this get immediately drowned in a rampage against perceived racism and only that, against a system that has shown time and time again that it clearly doesn’t think itself racist at all and perhaps (in at least most of its components) has no deliberate intention of being, doesn’t seem likely to produce anything but further acrimony and polarization.

[TL;DR for these last two sections: it would seem like a more effective response to focus on police brutality and overpowered-ness as the main issue rather than making it all about race.]

III.

I forced myself to watch as much of the video of George Floyd’s final hours and minutes as I could. I didn’t actually succeed in finding the full video, and maybe that’s for the best, because what I did see chilled me to the bone and distressed me more than almost any real-life footage I’ve ever seen. I’m not as eloquent as some at putting my raw emotions in writing and don’t know the words to describe how twisted up it made me feel to “witness” an obvious murder of a man whose greatest “crime” was resisting getting pushed into a police car, and to watch him dying one of the most undignified deaths I can imagine ever being forced on anyone. I felt momentarily physically ill and wanted to cry.

Others in my orbit -- mostly white people; my social bubbles have always been disproportionately white and Asian and certainly nonblack -- have expressed a similar emotional reaction to mine except with the added factor of disgust at the obvious racism present. This was just simply not part of my immediate emotional reaction. On a cognitive level I am aware that there clearly has to be some degree of anti-black racism in law enforcement, even independent of classism and other factors, and that could be of some relevance in any individual case (although it would seem very tricky to assess how much). But this awareness doesn’t have time to kick in when I open a video or news story that’s already been presented to me as “another black man killed by racist cop” which reminds me that this is embedded in a particular media narrative and makes me feel instinctively on guard against letting my perceptions be colored by it.

Black people seeing these apparently all feel on the level of deep, fundamental knowledge that this happened to Floyd because he was black and that it’s a fate they have to constantly fear happening to themselves, or at least that’s what the white people around me are constantly claiming. I feel epistemically helpless when it comes to knowing what the “average” (rather than one of those on the forefront of racial activism) African-American’s take on this is, or how fearful the “average” African-American is of the police on a daily basis as compared to a white person’s, especially prior to the age when videos of police abuse started going viral.

But I’m certain that a significant part of the African-American community is right now in a deep pain that I can’t really imagine, because I don’t quite know how it feels to perceive one horrible tragedy as indicative of something that is done to attack a specific minority that I belong to.

I expect that some of them learn about an incident like this, and an incident like the one with Ahmoud Arbery, and feel on the level of social intuition (I think I’ve sometimes called this “social sense”), developed from a web of personal experiences, that these individual terrible choices clearly had a lot to do with the victims being black. I would be a hypocrite to fault someone for reaching a strong conviction based on this kind of social intuition, because I do it myself all the time -- in fact, I often express such conclusions on this blog. I feel less qualified to rely on this social intuition and my own experience when it comes to race issues, but I invoke it all the time on this blog when I talk about male-female dynamics in order to argue on controversial position on gender relations, for instance, because I do have lifelong ample experience with men and women interacting.

If many black people in America have a deep instinctual feeling for the racial aspect of many of these attacks, then I do acknowledge that a lot of that is probably coming from somewhere other than media narratives. It might come from everyday interactions with police, observing that they are stopped and treated hostilely by the police than their white friends seem to be, or who knows what else. And those voices with their explanations need to be at least listened to. I wish it were easier to hear them through all the tribalistic noise and confusion.

So trying to better understand all this is part of my struggle at the moment. This post might not age well -- I wouldn’t be surprised if I view some of my turns of phrase in this section of it with some embarrassment even sometime in the near future -- but I need to commit myself to trying.

Anyway, I guess all of this is to say that my lengthy arguments above aren’t meant to claim that the instances of police brutality we’ve been seeing aren’t related in some way to racism, but that reflexively framing them in terms of racism seems guaranteed to bring only more pain to an already painful situation.

#child molestation #racism cw #police brutality cw #classism #basically all the content warnings #covid pandemic #BLM #protest culture #social intuition

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