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mostlysignssomeportents · 10 months

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Why they're smearing Lina Khan

My god, they sure hate Lina Khan. This once-in-a-generation, groundbreaking, brilliant legal scholar and fighter for the public interest, the slayer of Reaganomics, has attracted more vitriol, mockery, and dismissal than any of her predecessors in living memory.

She sure must be doing something right, huh?

A quick refresher. In 2017, Khan — then a law student — published Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox in the Yale Law Journal. It was a brilliant, blistering analysis showing how the Reagan-era theory of antitrust (which celebrates monopolies as “efficient”) had failed on its own terms, using Amazon as Exhibit A of the ways in which post-Reagan antitrust had left Americans vulnerable to corporate abuse:

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox

The paper sent seismic shocks through both legal and economic circles, and goosed the neo-Brandeisian movement (sneeringly dismissed as “hipster antitrust”). This movement is a rebuke to Reaganomics, with its celebration of monopolies, trickle-down, offshoring, corporate dark money, revolving-door regulatory capture, and companies that are simultaneously too big to fail and too big to jail.

This movement has many proponents, of course — not just Khan — but Khan’s careful scholarship, combined with her encyclopedic knowledge of the long-dormant statutory powers that federal agencies had to make change, and a strategy for reviving those powers to protect Americans from corporate predators made her a powerful, inspirational figure.

When Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, he surprised everyone by appointing Khan to the FTC. It wasn’t just that she had such a radical vision — it was also that she lacked the usual corporate law experience that such an appointee would normally require (experience that would ensure that the FTC was helmed by people whose default view of the world is that it should be structured and regulated by powerful, wealthy people in corporate boardrooms).

Even more surprising was that Khan was made chair of the FTC, something that was only possible because a few Republican Senators broke with their party to support her candidacy:

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1171/vote_117_1_00233.htm

These Republicans saw in Khan an ally in their fight against “woke” Big Tech. For these senators, the problem wasn’t that tech had got too big and powerful — it was that there were a few limited instances in which tech leaders failed to wield that power in the ways they preferred.

The Republican project is a matter of getting turkeys to vote for Christmas by doing a lot of culture war bullshit, cruelly abusing disfavored sexual and racial minorities. This wins support from low-information voters who’ll vote against their class interests and support more monopolies, more tax cuts for the rich, and more cuts to the services they rely on.

But while tech leaders are 100% committed to the project of permanent oligarchic takeover of every sphere of American life, they are less full-throated in their support for hateful, cruel discrimination against disfavored minorities (in this regard, tech leaders resemble the corporate wing of the Democrats, which is where we get the “Silicon Valley is a Democratic Party stronghold” narrative).

This failure to unquestioningly and unstintingly back culture war bullshit put tech leaders in the GOP’s crosshairs. Some GOP politicians actually believe in the culture war bullshit, and are grossly offended that tech is “woke.” Others are smart enough not to get high on their own supply, but worry that any tech obstruction in the bullshit culture wars will make it harder to get sufficient turkey votes for a big fat Christmas surprise.

Biden’s ceding of antitrust policy to the left wing of the party, combined with disaffected GOP senators viewing Khan as their enemy’s enemy, led to Khan’s historic appointment as FTC Chair. In that position, she was joined by a slate of Biden trustbusters, including Jonathan Kanter at the DoJ Antitrust Division, Tim Wu at the White House, and other important, skilled and principled fighters like Alvaro Bedoya (FTC), Rebecca Slaughter (FTC), Rohit Chopra (CFPB), and many others.

Crucially, these new appointees weren’t just principled, they were good at their jobs. In 2021, Tim Wu wrote an executive order for Biden that laid out 72 concrete ways in which the administration could act — with no further Congressional authorization — to blunt corporate power and insulate the American people from oligarchs’ abusive and extractive practices:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down

Since then, the antitrust arm of the Biden administration have been fuckin’ ninjas, Getting Shit Done in ways large and small, working — for the first time since Reagan — to protect Americans from predatory businesses:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

This is in marked contrast to the corporate Dems’ champions in the administration. People like Pete Buttigieg are heralded as competent technocrats, “realists” who are too principled to peddle hopium to the base, writing checks they can’t cash. All this is cover for a King Log performance, in which Buttigieg’s far-reaching regulatory authority sits unused on a shelf while a million Americans are stranded over Christmas and whole towns are endangered by greedy, reckless rail barons straight out of the Gilded Age:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

The contrast between the Biden trustbusters and their counterparts from the corporate wing is stark. While the corporate wing insists that every pitch is outside of the zone, Khan and her allies are swinging for the stands. They’re trying to make life better for you and me, by declaring commercial surveillance to be an unfair business practice and thus illegal:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/12/regulatory-uncapture/#conscious-uncoupling

And by declaring noncompete “agreements” that shackle good workers to shitty jobs to be illegal:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its-the-economy-stupid/#neofeudal

And naturally, this has really pissed off all the right people: America’s billionaires and their cheerleaders in the press, government, and the hive of scum and villainy that is the Big Law/thinktank industrial-complex.

Take the WSJ: since Khan took office, they have published 67 vicious editorials attacking her and her policies. Khan is living rent-free in Rupert Murdoch’s head. Not only that, he’s given her the presidential suite! You love to see it.

These attacks are worth reading, if only to see how flimsy and frivolous they are. One major subgenre is that Khan shouldn’t be bringing any action against Amazon, because her groundbreaking scholarship about the company means she has a conflict of interest. Holy moly is this a stupid thing to say. The idea that the chair of an expert agency should recuse herself because she is an expert is what the physicists call not even wrong.

But these attacks are even more laughable due to who they’re coming from: people who have the most outrageous conflicts of interest imaginable, and who were conspicuously silent for years as the FTC’s revolving door admitted the a bestiary of swamp-creatures so conflicted it’s a wonder they managed to dress themselves in the morning.

Writing in The American Prospect, David Dayen runs the numbers:

Since the late 1990s, 31 out of 41 top FTC officials worked directly for a company that has business before the agency, with 26 of them related to the technology industry.

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-06-23-attacks-lina-khans-ethics-reveal-projection/

Take Christine Wilson, a GOP-appointed FTC Commissioner who quit the agency in a huff because Khan wanted to do things for the American people, and not their self-appointed oligarchic princelings. Wilson wrote an angry break-up letter to Khan that the WSJ published, presaging their concierge service for Samuel Alito:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-im-resigning-from-the-ftc-commissioner-ftc-lina-khan-regulation-rule-violation-antitrust-339f115d

For Wilson to question Khan’s ethics took galactic-scale chutzpah. Wilson, after all, is a commissioner who took cash money from Bristol-Myers Squibb, then voted to approve their merger with Celgene:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4365601-Wilson-Christine-Smith-final278.html

Or take Wilson’s GOP FTC predecessor Josh Wright, whose incestuous relationship with the companies he oversaw at the Commission are so intimate he’s practically got a Habsburg jaw. Wright went from Google to the US government and back again four times. He also lobbied the FTC on behalf of Qualcomm (a major donor to Wright’s employer, George Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School) after working “personally and substantially” while serving at the FTC.

George Mason’s Scalia center practically owns the revolving door, counting fourteen FTC officials among its affliates:

https://campaignforaccountability.org/ttp-investigation-big-techs-backdoor-to-the-ftc/

Since the 1990s, 31 out of 41 top FTC officials — both GOP appointed and appointees backed by corporate Dems — “worked directly for a company that has business before the agency”:

https://www.citizen.org/article/ftc-big-tech-revolving-door-problem-report/

The majority of FTC and DoJ antitrust lawyers who served between 2014–21 left government service and went straight to work for a Big Law firm, serving the companies they’d regulated just a few months before:

https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/The-Revolving-Door-In-Federal-Antitrust-Enforcement.pdf

Take Deborah Feinstein, formerly the head of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, now a partner at Arnold & Porter, where she’s represented General Electric, NBCUniversal, Unilever, and Pepsi and a whole medicine chest’s worth of pharma giants before her former subordinates at the FTC. Michael Moiseyev who was assistant manager of FTC Competition is now in charge of mergers at Weil Gotshal & Manges, working for Microsoft, Meta, and Eli Lilly.

There’s a whole bunch more, but Dayen reserves special notice for Andrew Smith, Trump’s FTC Consumer Protection boss. Before he was put on the public payroll, Smith represented 120 clients that had business before the Commission, including “nearly every major bank in America, drug industry lobbyist PhRMA, Uber, Equifax, Amazon, Facebook, Verizon, and a variety of payday lenders”:

https://www.citizen.org/sites/default/files/andrew_smith_foia_appeal_response_11_30.pdf

Before Khan, in other words, the FTC was a “conflict-of-interest assembly line, moving through corporate lawyers and industry hangers-on without resistance for decades.”

Khan is the first FTC head with no conflicts. This leaves her opponents in the sweaty, desperate position of inventing conflicts out of thin air.

For these corporate lickspittles, Khan’s “conflict” is that she has a point of view. Specifically, she thinks that the FTC should do its job.

This makes grifters like Jim Jordan furious. Yesterday, Jordan grilled Khan in a hearing where he accused her of violating an ethics official’s advice that she should recuse herself from Big Tech cases. This is a talking point that was created and promoted by Bloomberg:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-16/ftc-rejected-ethics-advice-for-khan-recusal-on-meta-case

That ethics official, Lorielle Pankey, did not, in fact, make this recommendation. It’s simply untrue (she did say that Khan presiding over cases that she has made public statements about could be used as ammo against her, but did not say that it violated any ethical standard).

But there’s more to this story. Pankey herself has a gigantic conflict of interest in this case, including a stock portfolio with $15,001 and $50,000 in Meta stock (Meta is another company that has whined in print and in its briefs that it is a poor defenseless lamb being picked on by big, mean ole Lina Khan):

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ethics-official-owned-meta-stock-while-recommending-ftc-chair-recuse-herself-from-meta-case-8582a83b

Jordan called his hearing on the back of this fake scandal, and then proceeded to show his whole damned ass, even as his GOP colleagues got into a substantive and even informative dialog with Khan:

https://prospect.org/power/2023-07-14-jim-jordan-misfires-attacks-lina-khan/

Mostly what came out of that hearing was news about how Khan is doing her job, working on behalf of the American people. For example, she confirmed that she’s investigating OpenAI for nonconsensually harvesting a mountain of Americans’ personal information:

https://www.ft.com/content/8ce04d67-069b-4c9d-91bf-11649f5adc74

Other Republicans, including confirmed swamp creatures like Matt Gaetz, ended up agreeing with Khan that Amazon Ring is a privacy dumpster-fire. Nobodies like Rep TomM assie gave Khan an opening to discuss how her agency is protecting mom-and-pop grocers from giant, price-gouging, greedflation-drunk national chains. Jeff Van Drew gave her a chance to talk about the FTC’s war on robocalls. Lance Gooden let her talk about her fight against horse doping.

But Khan’s opponents did manage to repeat a lot of the smears against her, and not just the bogus conflict-of-interest story. They also accused her of being 0–4 in her actions to block mergers, ignoring the huge number of mergers that have been called off or not initiated because M&A professionals now understand they can no longer expect these mergers to be waved through. Indeed, just last night I spoke with a friend who owns a medium-sized tech company that Meta tried to buy out, only to withdraw from the deal because their lawyers told them it would get challenged at the FTC, with an uncertain outcome.

These talking points got picked up by people commenting on Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley’s ruling against the FTC in the Microsoft-Activision merger. The FTC was seeking an injunction against the merger, and Corley turned them down flat. The ruling was objectively very bad. Start with the fact that Corley’s son is a Microsoft employee who stands reap massive gains in his stock options if the merger goes through.

But beyond this (real, non-imaginary, not manufactured conflict of interest), Corley’s judgment and her remarks in court were inexcusably bad, as Matt Stoller writes:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/judge-rules-for-microsoft-mergers

In her ruling, Corley explained that she didn’t think Microsoft would abuse the market dominance they’d gain by merging their giant videogame platform and studio with one of its largest competitors. Why not? Because Microsoft’s execs pinky-swore that they wouldn’t abuse that power.

Corely’s deference to Microsoft’s corporate priorities goes deeper than trusting its execs, though. In denying the FTC’s motion, she stated that it would be unfair to put the merger on hold in order to have a full investigation into its competition implications because Microsoft and Activision had set a deadline of July 18 to conclude things, and Microsoft would have to pay a penalty if that deadline passed.

This is surreal: a judge ruled that a corporation’s radical, massive merger shouldn’t be subject to full investigation because that corporation itself set an arbitrary deadline to conclude the deal before such an investigation could be concluded. That’s pretty convenient for future mega-mergers — just set a short deadline and Judge Corely will tell regulators that the merger can’t be investigated because the deadline is looming.

And this is all about the future. As Stoller writes, Microsoft isn’t exactly subtle about why it wants this merger. Its own execs said that the reason they were spending “dump trucks” of money buying games studios was to “spend Sony out of business.”

Now, maybe you hate Sony. Maybe you hate Activision. There’s plenty of good reason to hate both — they’re run by creeps who do shitty things to gamers and to their employees. But if you think that Microsoft will be better once it eliminates its competition, then you have the attention span of a goldfish on Adderall.

Microsoft made exactly the same promises it made on Activision when it bought out another games studio, Zenimax — and it broke every one of those promises.

Microsoft has a long, long, long history of being a brutal, abusive monopolist. It is a convicted monopolist. And its bad conduct didn’t end with the browser wars. You remember how the lockdown turned all our homes into rent-free branch offices for our employers? Microsoft seized on that moment to offer our bosses keystroke-and-click level surveillance of our use of our own computers in our own homes, via its Office365 bossware product:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the-peoples-amazon/#clippys-revenge

If you think a company that gave your boss a tool to spy on their employees and rank them by “productivity” as a prelude to firing them or cutting their pay is going to treat gamers or game makers well once they have “spent the competition out of business,” you’re a credulous sucker and you are gonna be so disappointed.

The enshittification play is obvious: use investor cash to make things temporarily nice for customers and suppliers, lock both of them in — in this case, it’s with a subscription-based service similar to Netflix’s — and then claw all that value back until all that’s left is a big pile of shit.

The Microsoft case is about the future. Judge Corely doesn’t take the future seriously: as she said during the trial, “All of this is for a shooter videogame.” The reason Corely greenlit this merger isn’t because it won’t be harmful — it’s because she doesn’t think those harms matter.

But it does, and not just because games are an art form that generate billions of dollars, employ a vast workforce, and bring pleasure to millions. It also matters because this is yet another one of the Reaganomic precedents that tacitly endorses monopolies as efficient forces for good. As Stoller writes, Corley’s ruling means that “deal bankers are sharpening pencils and saying ‘Great, the government lost! We can get mergers through everywhere else.’ Basically, if you like your high medical prices, you should be cheering on Microsoft’s win today.”

Ronald Reagan’s antitrust has colonized our brains so thoroughly that commentators were surprised when, immediately after the ruling, the FTC filed an appeal. Don’t they know they’ve lost? the commentators said:

https://gizmodo.com/ftc-files-appeal-of-microsoft-activision-deal-ruling-1850640159

They echoed the smug words of insufferable Activision boss Mike Ybarra: “Your tax dollars at work.”

https://twitter.com/Qwik/status/1679277251337277440

But of course Khan is appealing. The only reason that’s surprising is that Khan is working for us, the American people, not the giant corporations the FTC is supposed to be defending us from. Sure, I get that this is a major change! But she needs our backing, not our cheap cynicism.

The business lobby and their pathetic Renfields have hoarded all the nice things and they don’t want us to have any. Khan and her trustbuster colleagues want the opposite. There is no measure so small that the corporate world won’t have a conniption over it. Take click to cancel, the FTC’s perfectly reasonable proposal that if you sign up for a recurring payment subscription with a single click, you should be able to cancel it with a single click.

The tooth-gnashing and garment-rending and scenery-chewing over this is wild. America’s biggest companies have wheeled out their biggest guns, claiming that if they make it too easy to unsubscribe, they will lose money. In other words, they are currently making money not because people want their products, but because it’s too hard to stop paying for them!

https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/12/ftc_cancel_subscriptions/

We shouldn’t have to tolerate this sleaze. And if we back Khan and her team, they’ll protect us from these scams. Don’t let them convince you to give up hope. This is the start of the fight, not the end. We’re trying to reverse 40 years’ worth of Reagonmics here. It won’t happen overnight. There will be setbacks. But keep your eyes on the prize — this is the most exciting moment for countering corporate power and giving it back to the people in my lifetime. We owe it to ourselves, our kids and our planet to fight one.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

[Image ID: A line drawing of pilgrims ducking a witch tied to a ducking stool. The pilgrims' clothes have been emblazoned with the logos for the WSJ, Microsoft, Activision and Blizzard. The witch's face has been replaced with that of FTC chair Lina M Khan.]

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bill-the-dog-for-the-check · 2 months

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I want to go back to how things were.

I want to go back to when I believed that the progressives were on the right side of history, fighting against oppression in all its forms, and had critical thinking, honest compassion, and understanding in a way that the right--inundated with racist conspiracy theories and absurd lies--did not.

In many ways, I'm a perfect demographic fit in the pro-Palestine circles. I'm bisexual. I'm a young university student who's been progressive for as long as he knew what progressivism was, and I never experienced genuine economic insecurity or wondered if I'd eat that night. In another timeline, maybe I'd be there marching and shouting their horrible slogans. But there's one, teeny little thing that ruins it, which makes me fall through the cracks and renders me politically homeless, outcast by the progressive left and the MAGA right.

I'm a Jew.

And I'm trying so, so hard to hold compassion for the suffering of minorities who have not extended us that same compassion. I'm trying to maintain my progressivist urge to go out and help minorities in solidarity, but it's so hard when they make it clear that they hate us and want our state dead and gone. I supported BLM, but Al Sharpton, Leonard Jeffries, Alice Walker, James Baldwin, Louis Farrakhan, Malcom X, Jesse Jackson and many others either were or are wildly antisemitic, especially Sharpton and Walker, and so are the BLM movement's leaders, who openly sneered at Jews for being shocked by them by announcing, "I guess their activism was just transactional. How (((Zionist))) of them!"

And the queer community forced me out of their ranks for merely questioning whether the war in Gaza is a genocide, for pushing back against them saying that Hamas is fighting oppression. And spread antisemitic lies about me, claims of harassment and supporting genocide to my friends because I dared to question them. And they've chosen to side with those who would throw both of us off roofs for being queer. Cast out by the outcasts.

Like, what do I do? Our only allies are Hindus, Iranians, Kurds, Republicans, and Christian Zionists (respect to all of these groups for that... even you Republicans. This is one of our only points of agreement). That's literally it. No loud show of from indigenous nations supporting what is effectively the most successful anticolonial land back movement in human history. No push from "antiracist progressives" against rising antisemitism and genocidal terrorism from a reactionary fundamentalist group against a historically discriminated group.

And they aren't even just leaning back and being silent--many members of these groups are being actively antisemitic--especially the progressive left, which has morphed into the most antisemitic mainstream political movement since the Nazis. Instead, we're 'Zionazis' and genocidal colonizers who aren't even oppressed anyway, that's just evil Jewish Zionist lies designed to stoke sympathy for their unrelentingly evil nature, which we can't even help. The notion that Jews are intrinsically predisposed to evil acts and deception--never heard that one before.

So now, when I look at pictures of Pride Parades, a celebration of an identity of which I am a part and would have previously killed to attend--I wonder... would I be allowed to hold up a rainbow flag with a Magen David on it? If I asked any of their views on the state of Israel, what will they say? What about on Zionists who support its existence? Would all parts of my identity be respected, valued, and celebrated? Or would I be forced to leave the Star of David flag at home, pretend I don't notice their antisemitic views, and pass the litmus test of disavowing Israel before being accepted?

I feel suspicious and wary of the very community which I am 'supposed' to belong in. I feel uncomfortable. I hate, hate, hate that I feel this way. That I've become more closed, more cynical, more angry. Those of us who fall through the cracks, who hold multiple marginalized identities--queer and Jewish, black and Jewish, Indigenous and Jewish--we are ignored and silenced, our voices and experiences entirely spat upon as being a front for 'Zionist crimes' or whatever new buzzwords they create.

I've decided that first and foremost, I am Jewish. The me that was proud to be a part of the queer community is dead. I want to support the progressive causes of antiracism and social justice, but they hate us. They want us dead. They wouldn't view my participation as being a genuine gesture of solidarity, but an evil Jew Zionist seeking to con them and co-opt support in order to aid our evil apartheid genocidal settler-colonialist white supremacist illegitimate entity in a land that should really be given to Hamas anyway.

How am I supposed to hold space for other minorities when nobody is holding space for us right now?

#antisemitism #jewish #jumblr #leftist antisemitism #left wing antisemitism #jewblr #antizionism #progressivism

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chronicallycouchbound · 9 months

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Intelligence Doesn't Equal Morality

Intellect is rooted in ableist systems and stupidity and intelligence are pointless social constructs that don't relate to morals or character.

I try to be a pretty good person, I fight for human rights, I regularly engage in mutual aid, and I care for my community. I try to do the right thing and support causes I care about and make positive changes in the world.

But I also am not very smart. I have several neurodevelopmental disorders, as well as cognitive disabilities. I can’t do simple, basic math, it’s hard for me to remember facts or algorithms, I rely entirely on spellcheck and speech-to-text to write, I failed many classes in high school and I barely passed with a low GPA, I had low pSAT scores and I never took the SATs. I moved around a lot all through school starting in third grade, and I missed a lot of basic fundamentals in learning (like how to do division and multiplication) so when I went to a different school they had already passed it and expected me to know. After my TBI, I could barely read AFTER I was cleared from my “concussion” symptoms because letters and words would flip around and I’d get headaches. Which still happens sometimes.

A lot of people see me as smart because I've learned a lot of academic language and can formulate thoughts into cohesive posts. But I lack a lot of necessary skills and rely on my caretakers to assist me. Things like budgeting and planning are extremely difficult for me. If I need to do simple addition or subtraction, even with a calculator, I quickly get confused and struggle. I forget basic information about myself all the time, let alone other subjects. I'm talking, has to check my ID for my birthday type confused. Doesn't know my name or address or what year it is confused. It happens daily, sometimes multiple times a day. Being able to type out posts like this often takes weeks and many adaptive tools to get there. Focusing is extremely difficult on many fronts, severe chronic pain, ADHD, dissociation, fatigue, migraines, and TBI, are just some of the contributing factors. I struggle daily with many things because of my lack of intellect.

I’m also privileged in the fact that I had some access to education as a homeless youth, that I had some supports in place to help me (towards the end of school), that I was somewhat able-bodied at the time and could walk or bike to and from school when the school system didn’t provide transportation. I was fortunate to have a chance to succeed, and I’m proud that I graduated high school because it was a difficult task for me, and others often aren’t offered that chance or get accommodations. I almost didn’t and I dropped out many times before graduation. I passed on sheer luck and what little privileges I had.

That all being said, me being stupid (reclaiming it here) doesn't make me a bad person. I don't hurt people because I can't do math. I may mess up things or get confused but it doesn't make me want to harm others.

We often (wrongfully) equate morals with intellect. Being ‘stupid’, ‘dumb’, or an ‘idiot’ doesn’t automatically make someone a bad person. Plenty of evil, awful, and abusive people are extremely intelligent.

I see this most notably with people advocating for IQ tests to be able to vote. Often from left-leaning people, in hopes it'll make the right (that they view as unintelligent), unable to vote. The reality is, it just hurts some of our most vulnerable members of the community while not actively doing anything to restrict some of the most dangerous members of our community-- those who know what they're doing to harm others and deliberately doing so. My voice matters, and I speak up against injustice and participate in dismantling oppressive systems. Taking away my right to vote won't make the right stop oppressing minorities (which also puts a lot of faith into the two-party voting system, which is a post for another day).

Additionally, legislative measures that discriminate against intellectually disabled people such as IQ tests for voting are also rooted in racism and classism.

Yes, education can be a vital tool when it comes to addressing discrimination and creating safer communities. But the kind of education that is measured with an IQ test (or any test) isn't the same. Building compassion and caring for others can (and should) happen at any IQ level. We can all practice this, we can all participate.

It harms our communities and stagnates our progress when we equate intelligence with high morals.

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makerinthemaking · 6 months

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neil gaiman is a fucking zionist.

"b-but neil gaiman simply said both israel AND palestine have a right to exist!! that doesn't make him a zioni--" yes the fuck it does u privileged ignorant fucks. i shouldn't have to fuckin say this but y'all will say anything for the sake of defending the brits ig? even throwing those being mass genocided rn under the bus?

i used to admire the guy 'til i found out what he's believed, the genocidal state he supports the existence of, & continues to stand by what he said.

israel DOESN'T have a right exist.

not as it is, not as it's been & will always be. a genocidal state built on stolen land. its very citizens have shaped into a culture of discrimination, see the shit they post about palestinians. see questionnaires & statistics. segregation laws many of them gladly endorse. this ain't just the politicians (who have been loud in their prospects of ethnic extermination to allow for more land stealing) nor is it abt jews, abt neil's or anyone's jewish background. plenty jews speaking up against this bullshit, & already there were jewish ppl living in palestine before colonization (brought by an illegitimate act of imposed imperialism & not one palestinian representative in sight. the UK must also be held accountable but they won't be). dare y'all to tell me it shouldn't be the goal to give the land & the power back to its indigenous colonized peoples, regardless of the oppressing settlers already being... settled. it ain't the native peoples' problem to figure out, esp when so many of the colonizing settlers will support the shit thrown at palestinians. there's maybe like 1000 palestinians losses for very israeli casualty. US cops r trained by Israel, not to mention Israel equips them w shit to k1ll minorities in the US. Palestinians stand by BLM & gave advice on how to dodge gas & bullets during protests. they stood by Malcolm X & Black Panthers. BIPOC oppression & fight has always aligned w Palestinians'. israel freely enjoys basics & luxuries & will fuss abt the silliest shit like not getting enough diet flour at the moment, while publicly segregating & making racist mock of palestinians for literally not having access to basic shit like water & shelter & for getting their population violently cleansed & decimated while in an open-air prison. they're not even allowed to try & leave without risk of getting killed, & they're bombed even where Israel directs them it's safe to go (like South Gaza!) but why should they leave? it's THEIR land. would be successful cultural genocide. & now Israel declines offers to recover Israeli hostages just bc they don't wanna return infant Palestinian hostages, & instead Israel bombs places where ISRAELI hostages may be kept. even target-bomb hospitals, houses. freed Israeli hostages come out saying how appalled they are at how Israel failed them & keeps failing them. Israel's also been stealing & jailing/target killing palestinian children for ages. this mass killing's been going on for decades, yet Palestine is demonized by media when they try defend themselves. ain't no matter of "two sides" & "neutrality" when one side is oppressed & the other the oppressor. hamas is israel's oppression fault (& their politics actually see them as a convenience). actual palestinians have stated again & again they don't just want the genocide to end, they also want their stolen land back & the genocidal invasor state to be dismantled. which is what's right. the state of israel often has to delete its own posts cuz they're always found to be fabricated, falsified shit against palestinians, now western jewish AND christian celebrities post abt how "scared" they are, from the safety of their mansions & limos. it was already illegal to wear traditional muslim attire in anti-muslim countries such as france, now it's illegal to even peacefully protest for palestine & if u do ur thrown in jail as a terrorist or deported. these countries publicly support israel. israel has the army the means & the world's support, palestine's been in need of support & neilman ain't helping. should just shut his goddmn mouth. ain't he the one getting genocided this day. i dare that moron neilman to come at me i'll fucking have him, he's just like any other people who won't let themselves be educated anyway. not by us, much less by the oppressed people of palestine, the ones actually getting the shitty end of this situation. im so done. bland fuckin spineless "liberals". so quick to defend the british. stop fucking defending rich public figures online & do something for the persecuted ppl actually getting killed rn.

they're never on equal footing when it's 15 goliaths against 1 david.

no, israel shouldn't fucking exist & neil gaiman is a fucking zionist for even saying it should. not sorry i said this - palestinians r getting worse than rudely worded posts.

not a war. GENOCIDE.

#i dare a bitch to come at me. he knows well how to get his fans to pile on people anyway #Palestine #Israel #free palestine #israel palestine conflict #neil gaiman #neilman #Zionism #settler colonialism #islamophobia #ethnic cleansing #genocide #anti zionisim #Hamas #terrorism

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delawaredetroit · 2 months

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Are you still a dfo truther? If so, why?

I'm not counting it out just because the body that All for One was eventually planning on discarding anyway is dead. The naysayers are taking too early a victory lap on that one. That said, if it does happen, this Deku vs Shigaraki fight is the last place where it feasibly could happen. There's no way All for One's vestige isn't making another appearance regardless considering his plotlines with Yoichi and Shigaraki have not been resolved.

Why do I think it's still possible? Because Horikoshi usually carefully plans the names of his characters. And it's odd that an ordinary businessman would have a name meaning leader and "a long time"/"eternal" when that sure matches the goals of the manga's villain who basically wants to be reborn in a new body so he can rule the world (and have Yoichi under his thumb). It's weirder when the alleged son in this theory has a name that includes a character that can be read "to be born" and the exact same a long time/eternal character. (Especially when unlike any of his classmates, he is the only one with both parents' names introduced where his name only has influence from one parent)

Also, it's because the themes between Izuku and Shigaraki currently feel incomplete. And they would feel more complete if this fight was also about the villain born from heroic origins versus the hero born from villainous origins. Touya, the villain character Shigaraki has the most parallels with, already has one of these in Hawks. And like Izuku and Shigaraki, those two are some of the only ones that really play with the visuals of angelic looking villains versus demonic looking heroes. All for One said that heroes/villains used to receive their "names" based on what their enemy called them - so it would make sense if what remained of All for One was defeated once and for all by those he has named. Izuku is the odd one out in this fight if dfo theory isn't true if he didn't receive a name from All for One like Shigaraki and Yoichi.

The general impression I get from people who hate this theory is that they don't want Izuku to not be an ordinary person or intended for some special destiny. And I'm ????? about that because I think these people have bought Izuku's unreliable narrative about himself hook, line, and sinker. Again, that "ordinary" interpretation goes against the actual reading of Izuku's name. Second of all, I have no idea what people are smoking to have interpreted the guy who knowingly and repeatedly breaks his bones like they're glow sticks as the most normal guy. Even before One for All - Izuku wasn't "normal" - he was part of a minority group and faced discrimination for being quirkless.

The second impression I get from naysayers is that DFO theorists are wrong because their characterizations of All for One and Inko are way off. To that I say - the original Dabi=Touya theorists were almost all way off about Touya's personality/motivations - but their conclusion was still correct. There's also more potential evidence to back up DFO theory now than there was to support the Dabi is a Todoroki theory at the time of that reveal.

At a minimum, if this theory turns out not to be true, there's enough bread crumbs left by Horikoshi that he was clearly trying to steer people into thinking there was a connection here. So am I sure it will be canon: no. Is there still a good chance it could still happen: yes.

#dfo #dad for one #all for one #afo #midoriya izuku #shigaraki tomura #shigaraki yoichi #todoroki touya #dabi #takami keigo #hawks #there you go: a potential reading of why dfo could be canon without ever mentioning star wars #mainly bc i've never seen star wars #asks #bnha manga spoilers

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thv-jk97 · 3 months

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Sharing my thoughts about the negative take from that H*BE stylist about LWA because I need to put them somewhere, so forgive me for this post. For context, the stylist said that the MV is using disabilities and those who face discrimination as inspirational material and that they’re “romanticizing disabilities”, and while I can genuinely understand what they were trying to advocate for, their take also completely ignores massive elements of the MV as a whole, whilst also making grand assumptions about the artists (Tae and IU) that they cannot possibly know.

Listen, everyone has the right to interpret any piece of content how they see it and they’re also entitled to feel how they feel and share their opinions, but it becomes problematic when they start making baseless assumptions along with the point they’re trying to make. Claiming that IU and Tae are rich cishets with no disabilities(implying that they are privileged and not discriminated against) is such a WILD assumption to make (let’s not forget that IU does actually have a hearing impairment).

I do think that there should be conversations about who should be able to tell what stories or portray what character, especially in huge projects in mainstream media, but there has to be room for flexibility. Are we going to require people to reveal everything single thing about themselves in order to prove that they can represent a specific demographic fairly? That’s a completely unreasonable expectation, and in some circumstances, it could literally be unsafe. And their assumptions do not contribute to a constructive dialogue about this topic at all.

Not only that, but their critique sort of implies that the MV equates having disabilities to being a victim, but that isn’t what I personally got from the MV. Their characters literally fight until the very end, in their blind and deaf/mute states, and are never actually shown as weak. And it’s just another assumption that the “love filter” takes away their disabilities, when in reality, IU still uses sign language even when Tae is looking at her through the camcorder – what is shown is a world where they don’t have their injuries anymore (injuries that were sustained in this dystopian world) and their lives are more than just fear and running. The concept of “love wins all” is that they made it to the very end of the world together and are ultimately taken out by the shittiness of this world that they’re living in – not by their disabilities.

The stylist also goes on to imply that the ambiguity of the MV is an issue because they end up wearing traditional hetero outfits (since when is sexuality linked to pieces of clothing?), and if it were meant to mean something to the queer community, they wouldn’t have included that. Which makes no sense because that’s the beauty of art – it’s meant to be interpreted however the viewer sees it, and so many people in the queer community did actually take comfort in the symbolism they interpreted from the MV.

To be honest, I can’t help but question the motive of their rant, because from where I’m standing, this person works for a billion dollar company that literally capitalizes on using the queer community for good sales (fanservice, etc)(mind you, this is only one of H*BE’s many offenses) so their issues with this metaphorical MV seem to be a bit selective (aka taking issue with things that don’t affect their livelihood). Also gonna add that they literally have posts supporting Zionists (who raised money specifically for the IDF), so it really seems like selective activism atp.

Tae and IU have both consistently shown that they are massive advocates of inclusivity and equality, so to be accused of exploiting minorities and their struggles is actually so upsetting. People can label it whatever they want, but IU’s decision to change the title of the song was not about “saving face”, it was showing empathy for a minority when she learned that they were bothered by the original title. And for this person to insinuate that Tae and IU are tone deaf and clueless to the strife of those who have been discriminated against is just plain disrespectful and such a projection based on their own personal interpretation and assumptions.

Anyway, sorry for this long-winded post. There’s never a day of peace and I am siiiiick of it.

#rambling thoughts #love wins all #mv discourse

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apollos-olives · 6 months

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Hi sorry Israeli Canadian anon from earlier. White gays are saying that Palestinians are homophobic??

(Admittedly, i am a white gay. I say that in the sense of "didn't realize ppl were doing this" and not in a distancing way to exempt myself from the shitty things us white gays do. I'm not perfect.)

Okay, putting aside how bullshit it is to label an entire ethnic group as being homophobic - do ppl think that Israel *isn't* homophobic?? Or transphobic for that matter? I actually happen to be trans and when I was changing my name and gender marker on my legal documents, I learned that I can't change my Israeli birth certificate bc to do so requires bottom surgery. Which I personally don't want or plan to get. To put that into perspective, canada (with all its bullshit facade of being such an ~accepting~ place) doesn't require that. Requiring bottom surgery to change gender marker is so fucking antiquated and transphobic.

Also, to be honest, even though I was born in Israel, I'm not super educated on all of the history. Part of that being because for so long I saw the discussion surrounding it being portrayed as oh so complicated. And then I realized that it really isn't. At its very core what it boils down to is: do you support genocide? If your answer is yes, then you support Israel. If your answer is no, then you support Palestine.

(Very much want to learn more about Palestinian history and Israeli occupation/apartheid. Do you have recommendations for articles/documentaries/etc on it?)

hi anon. and yeah. white gays, especially libs, constantly use the belief that all palestinians are homophobic (which also leads to islamophobic sentiments) and that people should not support palestine because of that. unfortunately that is a very overly used belief in arguments, especially in north america. the belief that palestine is homophobic and that israel is very open and supportive is due to pinkwashing, which can be explained very thoroughly on the website decolonizepalestine. this website also has TONS of information all about palestine, the occupation, and the various forms of questions people often ask, while also debunking a lot of myths and falsehoods that are produced from israeli propaganda. very good site to scroll through, and i'm sure many of your questions will be answered just by taking a read through it.

i'm not going to waste time and repeat what thousands of others have already said about pinkwashing, but i do want to mention that pinkwashing does play a huge role in the dehumanization of palestinians and also plays a role in how western propaganda continues to split oppressed minorities constantly, making them against each other rather than uplifting each other.

the belief that all palestinians are homophobic is. honestly. well. it's islamophobic. i'm queer, trans, muslim, and palestinian. i exist. queer palestinians exist everywhere. western and zionist propaganda makes people think that all palestinians are muslim, and therefore against queer people. this is simply not true, since palestinians are very VERY diverse. palestinians are christian, jewish, muslim, atheist, and whatever else as well. it's not a religious thing, it's an ethnic and racial thing. palestine simply has not had the time to unlearn homophobia or had the time to try to advocate for queer and women's rights because we are too busy trying not to die. we don't have time to fight for queer liberation because we're too busy fighting for our HUMAN liberation. we are trying to exist first, then we can worry about the discrimination against queers.

israel also claims to be a safe space for queers, but it is literally the opposite. it's just as discriminatory as other countries, and hurts queer jews, as well as blackmails queer palestinians into submission. like you said, israel does have transphobic regulations, like the whole "need bottom surgery in order to legally get a sex change" and other things like that.

i've been recommending this masterlist of palestinian resources for everyone, but please look through this if you want to learn more about the occupation in palestine. the website i mentioned earlier is very helpful as well.

inshallah we will see a free palestine in our lifetimes.

#palestine #free palestine

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rogueddie · 24 days

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with the hp/ jk thing. the defenders always go 'separate the art from the artist, only interact with fanon, only read fanfic, it's not hp, its a different era, but using her world and characters'

she has said any support for her work is supporting her and her ideals. even if they just interact with fanon its still promoting hp, and supporting her.

they bend over backwards to justify continuing to support the work of a raging bigot and holocaust denier.

and they bring up 'but its my special interest' it was a lot of peoples special interest for a long time. including mine for over 15 years. but then she started to get more vocal with her hatred, and i started noticing her bigotry in her work, and became more educated on it. i eased myself off of it, it's hard, but its possible.

im also trans in the uk. everytime i hear her name it sends a chill through me in fear of what is coming next. a lot of people, especially Americans, don't realize how much power and influence she has here. she is incredibly rich and she is a household name, almost everyone has heard of her

but it shows where their priorities stand. they're all about standing up for the little guy, for promoting the rights of marginalized people, until it's their entertainment on the line. they'd rather keep their comfort thing than do what they're otherwise preaching.

i hope you can stay as safe as possible, and i hope something changes for the better for people like us soon <3

All of this! You put it perfectly!

I've definitely been lenient with them, given my own hyperfixation on Stranger Things, which has its own issues, but she's been getting so extremely bad recently that I can't fucking stand it anymore.

When the popularity and monetary support of Harry Potter is something she uses as a defense, something that other transphobes use to levy her name as a battering ram, you have no excuse.

You can so easily keep all that shit offline! Read the books in the privacy of your home! Stop funding her transphobia! Stop willingly allowing her to weaponize your "special interest" to discriminate against a minority group that is being seriously threatened right now! TRANS PEOPLE ARE BEING MURDERED!

Sure, a lot of people have distance and "but I'm American" as a defense for their ignorance- but she's been quoted by a GOP senator while they blocked a vote on an LGBT bill, so no, they don't actually.

And, sure, a lot of people don't think she's actually transphobic- but being ignorant can only last so long before you look like a liar or an idiot. Especially when she's spending £70,000 on challanging "the definition of woman", which seems to me an obvious attempt to delegitimize GRCs (Gender Recognition Certificates).

Just in case there is someone coming across this who doesn't think JK Rowling is actually transphobic, I'd recommend this video that Matt Bernstein made with Contrapoints (which still misses a couple points, but Contrapoints also has a great video on jkr).

I hope you stay safe too. And I am confident that things will change and improve for us in the near future. We are the easy target right now, but it will not stay that way forever.

The transphobes are loud but they are not the popular opinion. We have a community and I know that there will always be people who have our backs while we fight for our safety and freedom. People will listen, and we will move forward.

Wishing you the best x

#ask #anti jkr

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rachetmath · 11 months

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Ruby: Jaune our characters are not that mixed up.

Jaune: Ruby are you freaking kidding me?

Ruby; Jaune you got admit we are complete opposite to one another.

Jaune: Yes but the presentation makes it worse.

Ruby: How so?

Jaune Ruby I killed Penny.

Ruby: So I killed people too.

Jaune: Name one.

Ruby: Roman.

Jaune: A grimm ate him.

Ruby: Umm….

Jaune: Pyrrha died fighting Cinder against Ozpin’s orders. Ozpin died fighting Cinder. Leon died somehow. Clover and Ironwood I don’t know. Penny died by my hands. So who did you kill with your weapon?

Ruby: Oscar.

Jaune: So a fake Oscar is worth crying over the real one huh?

Ruby: Your point.

Jaune: You didn’t kill anyone. So how are you struggling to kill no fight with your weapon if you never token a life with it. While I’m able to fight with mines despite it’s condition.

Ruby: Um.

Jaune: That can give someone the impression that Penny’s death met nothing to me.

Ruby: But Jaune you had years.

Jaune; PTSD. Survivors guilt. Any form of depression or disorder can last for years Ruby. And you say I had years but Penny was still on my mind during a Ponder Storm. And then I was trying to be hero to the paper pleasers, who mind you were trying to off themselves, because it seems I can not be a hero in Remnant.

Ruby: Oh.

Jaune: Now let’s go back to what you say about not being good enough. How so?

Ruby: Well I failed to save Penny and Pyrrha. I failed to save the people of Mantle and Atlas. I only made things worse.

Jaune: Okay look. There is no such thing as perfect plan. Things are bound to screw ups. It’s impossible to avoid. But again, Pyrrha chose to fight Cinder and died. Penny chose to die. In theory because she thought you died.

Ruby; Um.

Jaune: Next wasn’t Ironwood going to kill thousands.

Ruby: But our plan could get millions in danger.

Jaune: You right, but that forces Atlas and Mantle to get together and stop discriminating against each other to survive. Better that than having one half of the nation fend for itself while the other thrives.

Me; (Look I’m not trying villianize James but we have to admit his plan was darker than the kids.)

Ruby: Oh.

Jaune: And then we have Ozpin. Or Ozma who’s first idea was to sleep with his first love.

Ruby: Um.

Jaune: Use every relic possible but still doesn’t know how to kill her. He single handily divided the world he was suppose to help fix.

Ruby: Mm

Jaune: Exactly.

Ruby: Your point?

Jaune: Ruby, you threw away a perfectly functioning weapon while I have a broken sword with a rusted shield. You killed an illusion. I killed an actual person. You say your not good enough well sweet heart at least you didn’t have to forge your identity off lies and fake transcripts. You had training. You had support. I had nothing like that. Not even from my family. Pyrrha showed me something like that but then she pushed into a locker. Your leadership always seems to go fine. Mines doesn’t.

Ruby: I mean it sometimes does.

Jaune: Yeah. (Until the writers fuck me over one way or the other.)

Ruby: I’m still not seeing your point. My friends helped you more than me.

Jaune: Because you didn’t say shit. My problems were completely visible and hard to hide. Yours were minor compared to mines.

Ruby: No they aren’t. I struggle with my identity. I was too weak. I wasn’t good enough.

Jaune: How?! Look your problem was simple. You had hard time processing change. As well as being overwhelmed by stress. And you know what that’s my bad. Because I couldn’t help you. Why? Because I was already going through of my own problems. I couldn’t make time for you. Your sister couldn’t make time for you because she was prioritizing her own happiness. Weiss couldn’t help you because she was trying to figure out what to do after her home got destroyed.

Ruby: Um-

Jaune: However here’s the thing. Yang was out right now. But wouldn’t me and Weiss neglect our problems to listen to you. Would we not give our time and our ears to you if you asked. Did you think about that?

Ruby: No.

Jaune: NO! You just ran off. Basically you questioned our loyalty to you. You questioned our friendship. You did exactly what Penny and Pyrrha are guilty of.

Ruby: And what’s that?

Jaune: You didn’t give me chance. You made a decision and you didn’t consider how it effected everyone around you. Including me.

Ruby. Oh.

Jaune: I think he can say the rest.

Ruby: *sees me and sigh* You do know a lot people will hate you right?

Me: I said before, I don’t control the show. I don’t control the fan base. I just leave my penny worth opinion down and move on. So let’s start. Ruby I didn’t feel bad for you at all.

Ruby: What?

Me: In fact, I enjoyed your suffering. Mainly when you got jumped.

Ruby: Really? You didn’t feel sorry for me at all.

Me: No. I would… but sweet heart you were a horrible person.

Ruby: That’s not true.

Me: You lied to someone who gave you their trust. That led to them to being more insecure and highly emotional to where they become reckless and foolish. And never took responsibility for that. Oscar did. Jaune did.

Ruby: Alright that just one thing.

Me: One thing? That one thing caused four hunters lives. That one thing caused millions of people’s livelihoods to be ruined. That one thing caused the relic.

Ruby: Okay but I suffered.

Me: Jaune suffered more than you. He went back in time. Had to be Alyx and Lewis Rusted Knight. Only to get poisoned by Alyx, the same girl who he come to find out was killed by the Curious Cat. He waited. He waited for you. Try to find a way home for you.

Ruby: So?

Me: Ruby your problem wasn’t even that bad. All you had to do was open up. Shit my bet is Jaune or Weiss would have listened. Basically your were acting like a child and I don’t care about you.

Ruby: UM.

Me: Shoot I don’t know why cat needed you to get to Remnant. He could’ve tried Jaune. Like bro imagine the reason Jaune and CC had beef because that cat was secretly torturing him. Like CC instead of helping you, was using you to get close to him. And Neo when she destroyed you that should sent him over the edge.

Ruby: …

Me: Basically y-y-you showed me how weak you really are. Like I don’t understand. I get your fifth teen in canon but still.

Ruby: But my friends-

Me: No-no-no. They should’ve token more responsibility too. Blake, Yang and especially Weiss need to start being more supportive to your health. Mainly, because Weiss barely did anything to help Atlas or you at all.

Jaune: What about me?

Me: Motherfucker you need to go home. You need a break. Gets some training. Get some bitches. Go get some pussy. I don’t know. Relax. Cause you earned it. Like I’m sorry but for the much “development” you’ve gotten, I’m surprise KnightFall shouldn’t be canon.

Jaune: …

Me: Bro you fit this post:

Me: Like you have gotten hoed so many times by not just your friends. But the fan base and the writers themselves. Look just take a load off okay? Get help! Jesus, you got to be Salem’s descendant cause life be bringing you pain.

#rwby #ruby rose #Jaune Arc #weiss schnee #yang xiao long #Blake Belladonna #rwby curious cat

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lira456 · 9 months

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Sasuke's revolution is 100 percent effective and has foresight only demerits is you have to kill few super powered shinobis like 5 kage and naruto well warcriminals, maniac killers, ignorants, hypocrites like them deserved painful death who belived in their own village interest without giving damn innocent lives and crimes like massacre morelike genocide,child soldiers,invasion etc, anbu culture etc.

Thing is Sasuke's revolution had its merits, we know through many revolution and lessons of violent wars and loss and human greed today we achieve constitutional republic where also prioritizes lives and rights of minorities like uchiha clan civilains(not rebellious faction who planned the coup but innocent children like izumi uchiha and yashiro's 7 years old son who did not agree and know about the coup) or vulnerable and naive child like rin and ryogi and boruto who would indoctrinate to the system without knowing truth of shinobi past, even think of its honorable to die for the village, sad ending,conclusion and execution and future. That's why support sasuke's revolution, his first task to create deterrent and make 5 villages hate him and some might fight against him and defeat them only killing the strongest shinobi would be enough to slowly shinobi losing their desire to fight against him and but they will stick together for assistance and in case of shortage of power if sasuke attacked suddenly with that sentimental fear, then slowly sasuke would go for social,law related change then political then with progress go for the economical change and they go for the continental and international change thus totally destroy the shinobi system and past, only new way chakra usage with strict laws and regulation for every sides with equal footing so that no one used it for wrong purpose or be questioned immediately, sasuke needs only 60-100 years to destroy this system and create another one to make people used to the new system without no existence of shinoi army,ranks,missions or structure or kage dictatorship, for that long he needs to acquire immortality and reincarnation with powerful able bodied chakra power like demi god of shinobi only problem jigen and momo even he can destroy kara organization completely.

Now you people know why sasuke said i am all alone and can bear the darkness of five villages because in past sharingan named power was connected with uchiha clan which caused genocide because of obito's wrong doing because he was an uchiha and uchiha were falsely accused because of sharingan power even people with no sharingan, if sasuke became all alone meaning no connection with five shinobi villages or other villages in public(he might have recruited orchimaru and taka and small numbers of white clones though) punish corrupt kages like kurotsuchi then no one will harm konoha, becuase he is also enemy of konoha with no secrecy becasue of his killing 5 kage deterrent from the past and all alone with no ties with any of the shinobi villages(might create his own organization like one that akatsuki and kara) and also his plan has nothing similar like danzo he would not wipe out entire country,clan and village because of his objective even don't use children others for his biddings only magical creatures like bijjus who should have eliminated by hagoromo because their power caused destruction they better off dead completely if hagoromo did think good of the mankind, wher danzo would sacrifice total or other or stick with them like parasite for his dream and village, sasuke would only take agency by his own hand without killing or sacrificing innocents, only judge,punish and execute the wicked ones like danzo,five kage and kurotsuchi who would be main perpetrators of violence,conspiracy,discrimination,inequality,power imbalance,greed, personal ambition and dream like hashirama's,selfish desire,resources and benefit seeking in unfair ways,wars,invasion,paranoia,systematic discrimination, corrupts dictators among kage and daimyos, corrupt shinobi etc. which danzo would never do he would just destroy other people community based on person and aspect and assumption and for his greed, which sasuke would never, he would take agency for the revolution he wanted to execute like batman a global threat with no ties to any shinobi villages, more like in itachi's way without causing genocide or mass killing that's why he would work from the shadow

#anti shinobi system #anti naruto ending #pro sasuke's revolution #pro sasuke #pro sasuke uchiha #pro uchiha #pro uchiha clan #pro madara #pro indra #anti boruto sasuke

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aelloposchrysopterus · 7 months

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HEY DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE ASSASSINATION OF A PROMINENT SIKH LEADER IN CANADA AND WHY THIS MATTERS?

I generally don't like to write current events-y stuff here, but since I'm not seeing any people talking about this in my corner of this hellsite, I figured I might as well.

DISCLAIMER: For the record, I'm part Punjabi, raised culturally Sikh in the United States, I don't actively practice Sikhism, and I'm writing this assuming a non-Sikh, non-Desi audience that knows little to nothing about Indian politics. I am trying to be as factually accurate as possible but if certain information is incorrect, I will correct this post because a) this is an ongoing issue so the information I have right now may not turn out to be correct and b) my memory is fallible and while I did try to fact-check the background information I remembered, many of these historical events have accounts that differ drastically from each other, so it is difficult to establish a definite truth. This post was written and last updated 25 September 2023.

So, the basic facts of what happened:

Hardeep Singh Nijjar was killed on 18 June 2023. He was a proponent of the Khalistan movement. In the past week or so, Canadian government officials have accused India of orchestrating his assassination.

Khalistan? What's That and Why Does It Matter?

Like quite a few things in Desi politics, the idea of Khalistan can be traced back to the Partition. At the heart of the Partition, the idea was that Pakistan is for the Muslims and India is for the Hindus.

However, India is not exclusively populated by Hindus, no matter how hard Modi and the BJP* try to make it a Hindu-only nation through their Hindu nationalist policies. Among other religious minority groups, many Sikhs had to made the new India their home, because of the religious persecution they would face in Pakistan. The Radcliffe Line (the line of partition) runs right through Punjab, the ancestral homeland of, among others, most Sikhs. In Punjab, during the Partition, Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims carried out sectarian violence against each other.

What this means is that a lot of Sikhs were displace from their homeland and subjected to discrimination and violence based on their religion in both Pakistan and India. As a result, some members of the Sikh community started calling for a new nation to be carved out of the Punjab regions in Pakistan and India. This new nation was to be a Sikh nation, much like Pakistan for the Muslims and India for the Hindus, and it was to be called Khalistan.

(Little bit of anecdotal trivia: apparently identifying as Punjabi first and Indian second when describing ethnic background is more common among Punjabi Sikhs, due to Sikh efforts to show their connection to Punjabi in an attempt to make Khalistan a Sikh nation in the Punjabi region.)

Needless to say, the Indian government did not and does not like the idea of a Sikh nation and sees the idea of it as a terrorist threat.

*Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindu nationalist party currently ruling over most of India.

Operation Blue Star and Indira Gandhi

As part of this rising call for a Sikh nation, Sikh militant groups sprung up. Indira Gandhi's government wanted to arrest one of the most prominent leaders of a Sikh militant movement. However, he and his supporters were holed up in the holiest site in Sikhism, the Golden Temple in Amritsar.

On one of the holiest days in Sikhism, the martyrdom day of Guru Arjan Dev, the Indian military began their attack on the Golden Temple, known as Operation Blue Star. Long story short, Sikh pilgrims were killed during both the fighting and in extrajudicial killings by the military afterwards.

In anger at how Gandhi's government had carried out Operation Blue Star, two of her Sikh bodyguards assassinated her. Anti-Sikh pogroms then occurred, with independent estimates of the number of Sikhs killed ranging from 8,000 to 17,000.

This only made tensions between the Sikh community and the Indian government worse; I see this as a defining moment in how the government of India responds to the Khalistan movement and both Sikh extremist violence and peaceful support.

Oh and did I mention yet that the Indian government has outlawed the Khalistan movement?

The law that does this dates back to 1967, by the way.

Hardeep Singh Nijjar

And so now we come to the story of the recently-assassinated Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

Due to Khalistani activism being outlawed in India, many Khalistani activists have settled abroad. This includes Nijjar, who became a Canadian citizen in 2007 and had first come to Canada to apply for asylum after having been arrested by the Indian police in connection with his pro-Khalistan stance. He continued his Sikh and Khalistani activism in Canada until he was killed in the parking lot of the gurdwara he belonged to by two masked gunmen.

The Canadian government recently alleged that the Indian government war involved in the killing of Nijjar, but has not yet provided firm evidence.

Why Does This Matter?

Obviously, as a culturally Sikh person, it matters to me because this assassination is part of a legacy of violence targeting my community due to perceived associations with terrorism. (Yes, there are some Sikh extremists and terrorists, but the overwhelming majority of Sikhs are neither extremists nor terrorists.)

But this has ramifications that everyone should care about.

Canada and India have recently done tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions due to the Canadian government's allegations

The US may also get dragged into this because Canada alleged that American intelligence gave them some information necessary to prove the involvement of the India government

The UK may also get dragged into this because they, too, have a sizeable Punjabi Sikh community that includes multiple MPs and the government has historically had strong relationships with both Canada and India

Despite the BJP's involvement in anti-Muslim violence, Modi and his government still enjoy a cozy relationship with many Western nations; this may start to change, although change is unlikely as Western governments see being allied with India as key to countering Chinese influence

If India is proven to be behind the assassination, this could be bad for other Khalistani activists in the Sikh diaspora because it means the Indian government could potentially target and kill them, too

This is important. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, and this isn't an isolated incident. I know I probably didn't do a great job explaining this, but it's hard to summarize about 550 years of oppression and violence and politics and culture and how that has manifested over the past 80 years, leading to the murder of a prominent leader in the Sikh diaspora.

For further reading on this, I'd suggest this BBC article, which includes information on some other Khalistani activists recently killed.

Anyhow, I'll keep trying to follow the news on this and update this post as needed, likely through reblogs.

#current events #sikhism #religion #khalistan #canada #india #hardeep singh nijjar #look i really don't like to write politics and current events shit #but it's important to me to just put this out in the hopes that more people hear about this and also understand what it means #i tried to keep this short so there's a lot i left out

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ooops-i-arted · 2 months

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Gina Carano Sues Disney and Lucasfilm. According to Just Some Guy at 1 : 36 of the youtube video. Gina Carano was the one who put gasoline into the fire herself by intentionally starting a fight with trans people and mocking them for their importance in society.

I was sick the day the happened and @jennadknowsbest-blog was kind enough to tell me and boy let me tell you, despite feeling like crap I was laughing like this allllllll day

If you too need a good laugh, read the released document thingy. It's badly written on so many levels. (I saw it on Reddit but I think it's floating around Tumblr too. There are some golden comments on both.) Both from just a writing style perspective (it's written like a teenager's Star Wars fanfic) and the fact that her main argument is that "Pedro Pascal said mean things about conservatives and wasn't punished" when 1. most of the posts were apparently before he was hired as the Mandalorian and 2. it seems like pretty common knowledge in fandom that he was asked to tone it down and he did. I follow him on Insta and he rarely posts outside of promoting his own work, and it's largely "support this cause" or "I love my trans sister" instead of attacking/joking at anyone. (I guess his Twitter had more comments, but he's since deleted it afaik.) Overall, it's likely just a stunt to get the right-wing frothing at the mouth and Gina's name back in people's mouth, because she hasn't filmed anything since Terror on the Prairie (one of two Daily Wire films she was supposed to have, the other appears to not be happening anymore) and My Son Hunter (which was straight Breitbart propaganda). Shatpiro has used and dumped her and while I doubt she's hurting for money, I bet she's desperate to get the praise and attention and adoration that the Cara Dune role briefly brought her. Why else would she come crawling back to a company she's publicly trashed and accused of mistreating for the last several years? It doesn't make sense by her own logic! If they were so bad, why does she want back? (And who's gonna hire her now if they think she's a liability who's going to turn around and sue them?)

It's really disgusting though that Gina wants to claim she was discriminated against for being a woman while actively mocking minority groups. Her post appeared on my Insta fyp and I usually don't click because I know she's gonna piss me off, and I clicked and she did. At the time she had a story that said "Still beeping, bopping, booping" with a smirky picture of her. So all she's been told - we know Pedro talked to her because she herself admitted it on Twitter*, and while I'm sure there were plenty of people jumping on the hate bandwagon, there were also people trying to genuinely explain - and explained how this is hurtful to the queer community, she still keeps doing it and thinks it's funny.

That's what's unforgivable to me. Not that she said ignorant shit in the first place - we all have - but her refusal to learn and do better. She wants to say whatever she wants without pushback and so do her fans. The few times I've thought it's worth it to try and talk to someone about it, they always insist it's just her opinion and say something homophobic to me as well (last time I talked to a Cara Dune content creator on Insta, she said she "doesn't agree" with me being gay and "I can't expect everyone to agree with me." For wanting to exist as a gay person. Apparently I should just take it when people mock me or say I should burn in hell.) That's the problem with Gina and her supporters. They don't care, they don't want to think critically or debate, they want to say anything they want without consequence and brush off any conflict with "well it's just a joke" or "it's just her opinion."

Bigotry is not an opinion. You can't "not agree" with someone's skin color and it's the same with their sexuality. You don't get a fucking opinion on whether I have the right to exist as a queer woman.

Let's not pretend the things Gina says are in a void. People who flock to her believe the same things she does. That's why people have protested her attending FanExpo (this video goes into more depth thank you @jennadknowsbest-blog for sharing), when you invite people who, like her, think it's funny to mock anyone like them, it doesn't make a safe or welcoming environment for people like me. Sure one can brush off a comment or two - but where do you draw the line? When does it become harassment? And who is going to protect people like me from that harassment? How can I count on security from an organization that invited Gina and encouraged these people in the first place?

And I say all this as a queer woman who is able to chameleon myself very well because I've done it since childhood. Things are only getting more dangerous for people who are visibly queer. A nonbinary teen was just killed in Oklahoma. I live in a relatively blue area of a blue state, but that doesn't mean I'm completely safe. There are extremists out there, and they're only getting more bold - because people like Gina think it's amusing to fan the flames. Gina, at least, has faced some consequences for it. I doubt this lawsuit will go anywhere (either it'll be settled and Elon and Gina have some Own The Libs content, or they'll be dismissed/lose and they'll get some A Woke Judge Discriminated Against Me content). Gina will be happily on her way. Meanwhile, I get to wonder if the people around me who dismissively say "it's just her opinion" are the kind of people who don't think much about social issues.... or are the kind of people who will happily vote my rights away in the next election.

I assure you, if you have friends who are queer, they are listening to what you say about this case. Throughout all her tomfoolery, I've found Gina to be an excellent canary in the coal mine when it comes to identifying homophobes.

*She apparently later told Tucker Carlson that no one bothered to explain the pronouns thing to her, so we know she's a liar who twists the story as well, which is why I never take anything she says in good faith.**

**I'm very embarrassed I know this but I can't help but following up on stupid things she's doing. She fascinates me. She's like the inverse of a blorbo to me, like she pisses me off but she compels me. How can one person be this dumb. (Fr tho has anyone in her life talked to her about CTE??? Impulsiveness/aggression are possible symptoms....)

#gina why can't you be normal i would still be a fan if you weren't an asshole #I have a lot of Feelings bc first finding out about Cara/Gina I really related to and admired her #and then........this #anti gina carano #asks #gina carano

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gryficowa · 1 month

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We'll laugh, he tries to push me, but it fails

My grandmother was born a few years after the end of the war, and the second one wasn't even Polish, but French, so yes, I'm trying to push, but it doesn't work very well

Plus I'm Kashubian, so even better

The Kashubian griffin is waiting to show off his knowledge of Poland

Yes, yes, because being pro-Israel and saying that Palestinians are not called terrorists, and yet insisting that Israel should stay, even though the country was created in such a way that the US put people of Jewish origin in this place, and they started attacking Palestinians and gradually depriving them of any rights because they are Jews and they can, because if you criticize, you are an anti-Semite

I'll probably be an anti-Semite because I criticize a Jew, it's a pity that he showed his xenophobic side, because I'm sorry, but your origin doesn't change anything, if you're trash, you're trash, isn't that what equality should look like? On not justifying evil just because of its origin? And yes, we have reached such absurdity, that if Israel or the Christian church commits genocides, should we seriously accept it because they are discriminated against? Well, this is no longer a fight against discrimination, it is a fight to ensure that those discriminated against can go unpunished in such situations

Do you know who is from the discriminated group? Me, I have ASD, I'm aroace (Queer) and I'm a fucking national minority in my country because I'm fucking Kashubian

In addition, I have fucking social anxiety, but I have to endure a lot, in 2020 my country created a campaign against queer people, and on top of that, the church took part in signing the "Stop-LGBT" petition and pro-life people with vans were driving and tearing all kinds of disgusting things on the topic of queer people (Fuck, I mentioned that my country did this, but no, I'm probably too privileged because yes)

I live with my mother, my sister and her daughter, because they don't want to hire me, because fuck "They don't have accommodations for people like me", but I still hear them calling me a freeloader on the Internet

And now the Palestinians, who don't even have anything to survive because Israel is fucking taking it from them, and are victims of terrorist attacks (But they're Jews, so don't say anything, or you'll be an anti-Semite, classic, right?), they don't even have work, because Israel loves to take away their freedom to move, because there has never been fucking segregation in history, and if they rebel, they are terrorists, a lot of people there are fucking starving because Israel is stingy

People from Palestine are treated like shit, but go on and say that they persecute Jews because they support Palestine and despise what fucking Israel is, and then write that Hitler would be proud that you criticize Jews for what they write (And yes, a lot I have mentioned many times that there are a lot of Jews behind Palestine and I will say one thing: You are fucking great, you have courage and you stand on the side of the weaker, unfortunately, I see how other Jews laugh at you in the comments, which is sad, but don't give up, because remember, there is strength in the masses)

(Mabel for those who fight for Palestine despite being attacked in the comments by other Jews)

Unfortunately, many such wonderful people are lost among Israelis who are happy about the deaths of children and attack everyone for anti-Semitism

So yes, I could write mainly about myself, but I can't think only about myself (Unfortunately, communication problems are difficult, especially when you try to describe your thoughts), but I have to add this, simply one Jew being pro-Israel will not hide other Jews who are for Palestine, one xenophobe Jew will not cover those who have a lot of empathy, if we criticize Jews, it is those from Israel, people outside Israel are not to blame for all this, all we can hope is that somewhere in Israel there is an Israeli who is not happy with what his country is doing and is fed up with other Israelis using anti-Semitism as a defensive shield every time someone talks about Israel's crimes, Unfortunately, I haven't met such a person yet and I'm starting to doubt whether this hope is false, because none of us wants to believe that the world is black and white, that there are no people in a specific place who are the only ones who don't like what they do. their country

Seriously, I saw Jews who are for Palestine, but many of them were from outside Israel, so I'm afraid this hope is false

#xenophobes #israel #palestine

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