how long yall letting this kabuki theatre you call freedom & democracy go on?

How Can We Talk About Free Speech: Protecting Minorities and Preserving Freedom

Discover why free speech is crucial for the empowerment of minority voices, promoting equality, and preventing oppression. Learn how protecting this fundamental right benefits society as a whole.

How Can We Talk About Free Speech: Protecting Minorities and Preserving Freedom Introduction: Free speech is a fundamental right that lies at the heart of any democratic society. It allows individuals to express their thoughts, ideas, and opinions without fear of censorship or retaliation. While free speech benefits everyone, it is particularly vital for protecting minorities. In this blog…

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A few days ago Ukrainian President Zelensky gave an address before the United States Congress and I think it's worth taking the opportunity to talk about Ukraine again because we so often don't except for the far-right politicians who advocate kowtowing to Russia.

The war going on in Ukraine right now is far larger than just a spat between Ukraine and Russia, it's a war that could determine the future of freedom and democracy in the world. This is not an exaggeration, Russia and other totalitarian/authoritarian countries are not just dictatorships within their own borders, they are fundamentally incapable of tolerating freedom and democracy anywhere in the world.

When people are free, it is obvious that their lives are better. People are simply happier and more prosperous under liberal democratic governments that respect individual liberties. With the rise of the internet and the growing interconnectedness of the world it is no longer possible for dictators to prevent their people from coming into contact with people from other places and the simple act of that contact, especially when sustained over time, will show their people the fundamental nature of the lies their own propaganda seeks to sow.

For this reason, authoritarian countries, Russia and China being the largest and most powerful among them, will always seek to undermine and destroy freedom and democracy around the globe.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a test, a test of whether the free world will allow a brutal dictatorship to crush a nascent liberal democracy by force. If Russia is allowed to succeed in crushing Ukraine it will increase the threat on other small democracies that border large autocracies such as Taiwan, South Korea, and Poland among others.

This is not a war the United States can fight directly, unfortunately the risk of escalation to nuclear war is too great, but it is not a war we should walk away from either. Ukrainians are fighting not just for their own land and freedom but for the freedom of all of us and we should provide them whatever tools and weapons they need for as long as they need them.

Already the Ukrainians have scored a dramatic victory, holding their own and revealing the Russian military to be a paper tiger, but there is still far more to do. Until Russia is forced to abandon its brutal attempt to weaken freedom and democracy in the world both by crushing it in a neighboring state and by attempting to divide and undermine those countries that practice it then our own liberties will remain insecure.

In all of this we can be thankful both that President Zelensky has turned out to be such an inspiring leader and that Ukrainians of all situations have shown such admirable courage and resilience in the face of a relentless assault. It is mostly through their efforts that we are in a position where victory is possible at all.

Given all of this, I would argue that the United States and other liberal democracies should commit to providing as much aid and equipment as is possible to Ukraine. This war is being waged as much against us as against them, as Putin's repeated declarations have made crystal clear, and we should count ourselves lucky that we are asked only to sacrifice a few of our tax dollars and not the lives of our friends, children, and fellow citizens.

This war will likely continue for some time, though the Ukrainians have proven extremely effective at fighting the Russian war machine it is clear that the Russian leadership believes that we in the US and the West in general do not have the resolve to continue a conflict if we are even the slightest bit inconvenienced by it. Even worse, there are those within our society and even in our government that are committed to proving him right.

Do not let them win. It is time for us to show that the same country that endured years of hardship and loss in order to win the second world war still has at least enough resolve to continue to spend some of its abundant resources in another war to defend our values. If we don't, it is certain that Ukraine will not be the last war we fight for those values and the next one will cost us far more dearly.

andrew’s definitely gotten in trouble with his pr manager for tweeting things along the lines of:

“no mania inducing medication will compare to the euphoria i will feel the day donald trump drops dead”

Palestinian educators have previously told Middle East Eye that Israeli authorities were aiming to eliminate its curriculum in favour of the Israeli version, in an attempt to erode Palestinian identity and "distort" history. 

Academic content Israel has sought to censor, they said, includes the logo of the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian flag, lessons that discuss the Palestinian struggle against occupation, the right of return and prisoners, settlements, the immigration of settlers to Palestine, military checkpoints, the intifada, displaced villages, and considering Zionism a racist political movement.

"Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it."

Ursula K. Le Guin.

How are you gonna "I would have sided with the patriots of 1776" if you can't even say "kill this tyrannical judge"

Bro the patriots literally tortured colonial cops, they didn't wait for an appeals court to give them permission to rebel lmao

Time for a reminder: We are a (CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC) NOT A DEMOCRACY LET IT SINK IN !!!!!!

“Christian white men”.

Fun fact: Zappa was a conservative.

Signalis, Authority, and History

There's a level of nuance to how Signalis presents the violence of the authority of the nation that doesn't call attention to itself but which I really appreciate. Which is basically just, all the officers and cops and spies who make life hell for people like the Gestalt mine workers, Ariane, and the Itou family--we get little glimpses into who they are in Adler and Kolibri's diaries and despite the propaganda and the authoritative tone they take in official communications, for the most part they don't seem to actually be particularly invested in the hard line of national ideology. They uphold it though, viciously, both because things were worse under imperial rule (we don't get hard details on what it was like but it's mentioned in passing enough that I believe it) and because they're scared that if they don't they will be decommissioned and easily replaced. They are literally stamped out of a production line after all. There's a subtext of well, if I don't do it my replacement will anyway and I'm not trying to die so what's the point of rocking the boat?

I think Kolibri stands out to me most clearly on this because in communications from the block warden regarding Ariane there is emphasis put on how it is unacceptable and suspicious that she should be so interested and invested in art and literature that does not serve the purpose of furthering the goals of the nation. But we know that Kolibris themselves are bookworms, Adlers are fiends for stimulating experiences, and both get miserable FAST when deprived of art and puzzles and entertainment and hobbies. Y'know, just like anyone. Far be it from being a paragon of The Nation only interested in productive labor, we are reminded that the block warden, too, hates this shitty town and wants to transfer but is denied. They're hypocrites, but not monsters, nor brainwashed puppets of the state.

The monstrousness at play is not contained within any particular subset of evil individuals, or even an inherent universal force of evil contained in the broad notion of The Nation. There is no cosmic evil force that makes them all do these things to each other. The monstrousness is within the social systems, the mechanisms of how authority perpetuates on a structural procedural level, held in place by fear and tangible threats of violence, each link in the chain restraining the next through those threats out of fear that if they don't, then they'll be next. Regardless how many, if any, of those people in this chain are true dogmatic hardliners, they must act as such because failing to do so opens them up to danger.

Here then I think of the quote that is so prominent, "Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl", from Lovecraft's The Festival. This is not just a chilling abstract visual that conveniently evokes a mineshaft-- in Lovecraft's story, this line refers to worms which ate the decomposing bodies of wizards whose wretched souls had remained after death, complete with the terrible powers they gained through contracts with demons. Those worms inherited both their power, and also the evil. The Nation, despite having overthrown the Empire, is built on imperial technology, in particular Replikas and bioresonance. So too, then, we can imply that The Nation inherited with those things some of the monstrousness of The Empire as well. There is no end of history, nor clean break with the past, no matter how violently it may seem to be rejected. That which remains from the past--and something inevitably always does--creates the present.

This is a game that is not shy about evoking East Germany. And I think all of this provides a sophisticated picture of repressive authority that we rarely see in fiction of the English speaking world, especially in games. The year the S23 incident takes place is notably 84, but, frankly, I find this to be more compelling and illustrative than 1984 (and I'm a librarian and have taught English classes so I get to say that). Orwell, let's be honest, presents a fairly one dimensional picture of authority, where people seize power and wield it against others out of seeming mustache twirling evil or malice.

Here though we get a more humanistic view. Authority did not come from nowhere and is not wielded arbitrarily out of gleeful cruelty or mindless brainwashed allegiance. People aren't "just following orders". Individuals have rich inner lives. They make decisions, and those decisions are based in the context they're in. Even the decision to carry repressive tools of the past into the present is a decision that was made strategically with the big picture in mind. Nobody woke up and decided to be evil that day. Everyone operates on self interest, and, we must assume, an earnest desire for things to get better. Even the [spoiler] program which served as an inspirational demonstration of The Nation's power, you can imagine the chain of officers and bureaucrats who genuinely wanted the people of the nation to believe in the future, to confidently trust that everyone was working together towards something great and beautiful. And, through a long chain of those people who couldn't say "No" without being decommissioned, we ended up with something unbelievably cruel.

We get to know Adler and Kolibri and the other officers not to say well they're human too, maybe it wasn't so bad that they condemned all those people to agonizing suffering, but to remember that if we keep looking for true monsters we will not find them. There are no monsters and there are no demons. There are only people making decisions. A better world is possible. A better world, where Adler is just a paper pusher who does puzzles after work instead of signing papers to authorize torture, where Kolibris are librarians instead of spies and cops, where EULEs can gossip and play piano and ARARs can do maintenance on facilities that don't contain torture rooms, is one that would not have led to the Ariane and Elster's tragic cycle and ultimate end.

Authority and its attendant cruelty is not contained, radiating forth from The Great Revolutionary and Her Daughter, it is within the social systems of control. When those two women die, that cruelty will continue so long as those social systems continue. Like Lovecraft's worms, no matter how long dead the evil of the past is, so long as it continues to be fed upon, that evil will not only remain, but evolve into something new in the present. A better world can't be achieved through the death of the old world alone, even if violent overthrow is warranted. There is no end of history. There is no clean break from the past.

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."

Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

"Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced." - Brave New World, Aldous Huxley