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theculturedmarxist · 11 months

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I don't know what awful things Russia has done during this war with Ukraine and I don't particularly care. I'm not really interested in contesting them either. It's a war, awful things happen in war, awful things are deliberately inflicted during war, and whatever one thinks of the Russians or their army, that army is going to commit atrocities. It's simply a given.

The reason I push back against the shrill wailing about Russia and highlight the atrocities committed by the Ukrainian army isn't because of some idealization of Russia. It's a capitalist regime and I don't have any love for it. I don't think Putin particularly cares about the Russian people in Ukraine and I don't think his motivations for invading are in any way altruistic. If anything good does result from it, it will merely be incidental.

I highlight the crimes of the Ukrainian government first of all because it's a neo-Nazi government. It doesn't deserve support. It's only a puppet government of the United States which pulls its strings and directs its policy. Furthermore, it's been preying upon its own citizens for years and has been cultivating gangs of Nazis to spread terror among them. The government of Ukraine has been pursuing a policy of genocide against its own people, and collaborating in Nazi violence against them. Worse still, these Nazis' ambitions extend beyond Ukraine, and win or lose the United States will give them the means to fulfill them.

Second, the US and its allies are all loathsome hypocrites. Even if you accept whatever the worst projections of the casualties from all this mess in Ukraine, it won't be but a fraction of the United States' and its allies 30 year world tour of mass death and destruction. Not one of them cares about Ukrainians, nor are they the least bit interested in any sort of justice. The sole and only purpose of their reporting about Russia's crimes in Ukraine is to gin up support for this war that they are waging against it. They are used only as a cynical effort in order to justify inflicting atrocities on the people of Russia. NATO isn't supplying the Nazis of Ukraine with weapons for compassion's sake. They are doing it because the destruction of Russia and the subjugation of its peoples are integral for safeguarding and continuing the unlimited power and impunity that the bourgeoisie of the United States think is their right. Whatever justification for pursuing that end, however factual, will only lead to much worse outcomes than whatever Russia is currently inflicting on Ukraine.

Prolonging this war isn't going to do anyone any good, least of all the Ukrainians themselves. I think there are only three possible outcomes for this nightmare.

The worst case scenario is that this conflict escalates into a nuclear war. The longer this goes on and the further both sides escalate, the greater the likelihood that this happens. If it does, then billions will die in an instant, and then everyone that's left will die slowly. As you can imagine, this isn't a positive outcome for the Ukrainian people.

The less worse case scenario is that the United States wins. What the US seeks is nothing less than the subjugation of all of Russia and the destruction of its ability to militarily resist the US. If they were somehow to achieve this, this would put the US into stronger position to maintain its hegemony by depriving other smaller states of an alternative to its power. It would work to isolate China by cutting it off from a major source of vital resources, as well as removing a major potential ally when the US inevitably declares war against it. What NATO has done in Ukraine they seek to do in Taiwan. If the US is successful in bringing war to China, then without a doubt many hundreds of millions, if not billions of people will die.

The least worse case scenario is that Russia wins. Ukraine will still be in ruins, but currently only Russia has the technological capabilities to repair its Soviet-era infrastructure. The Nazi government will be removed from power or at least greatly diminished in its ability to inflict harm on anyone depending on the political outcome of the war. The United States will have expended a great deal of money and military material, material which it will take years or possibly decades to replace, if it can at all. Failure to favorably resolve the conflict in NATO's favor potentially jeopardizes the entire alliance and degrades its ability to wage war on others. Its plans to wage war on China might be delayed or even postponed indefinitely. Faith in the United States' military supremacy would be severely diminished. Deprived of the resources it expects to extract from Russia, its decline will only continue and perhaps accelerate.

I think these are the only three realistic outcomes because the US, the actual opposite to Russia in this war, has repeatedly refused to even contemplate negotiating an equitable outcome. For them, the only acceptable result is the complete defeat and humiliation of Russia, the removal of its government, and its subordination to the United States. I don't believe it has the capacity to alter this stance in any meaningful way. Even if it was willing, I'm of the opinion that the US isn't "agreement capable." Whatever agreement it did make it would almost immediately renege upon and work to undermine. Even if the Biden administration did engage in a peace deal in good faith, there's no way of knowing whether or not the next administration would uphold it. I think the nuclear deal it made with Iran is a good example of this inability to commit to any agreement in the interests of lasting peace. Unfortunately, I think the only way this conflict will come to a close is by one side or the other pursuing it to the bitter end.

I don't think any of what I have described makes me "pro Russian." I have for years now posted to this blog what I consider good evidence supporting my positions to the best of my ability to understand it. So far, all that's been offered to the contrary has been the raving of zealots utterly convinced of the depravity or inherent evil of the Russian people in part or in whole and the necessity to exact bloody revenge on them. I don't think that's the perspective of anyone that wants to minimize suffering, but only change who it's inflicted upon.

The only true solution to the ambitions of both the US and Russia is for the workers of the world to put a stop to them. Without an international effort based on solidarity, revolution, and the genuine desire for peace, the capitalists of the world and their engines of destruction will continue to prey upon anyone lacking the ability to stand up to them, and that puts us all in the gravest jeopardy.

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gryphonablaze · 3 years

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hello and welcome to gryphon’s crackshit crossover corner

I’ve already talked about my theory that httyd is set in the very distant, post-apocalyptic future. that theory was originally inspired by ‘what if httyd and horizon zero dawn crossover?’ My brain said things and for some fuckforsaken reason I listened.

TL:DR I can smash together a crossover of so many different fandoms and media. It’s stupid. I’m crazy. I love it. This is what ADHD makes me think about when I zone out

Anyway, first thing; the portal games could cross over with virtually anything. Portal-lands (borderlands). Portal age of wonderbeasts. How to Portal Your Dragon. Portal and the Princesses of Power. Portal: Zero Dawn. Portalverwatch. Portales of Arcadia. Fuck, if I really wanted, I could make the portal series crossover with Star Wars. This is because the time gap between portal one and two is spectacularly, deliciously difficult to pinpoint. If I shuffle it around, I could align the times during which action and dramatic events occur to line up with Chell finally escaping the facility. She walks through the wheat field and immediately encounters a megabunny, or a herd of grazers and striders. Or she trips on a rusted null sector carcass. Or her first night on the surface she’s staring at the moon and the star-filled sky, until she hears a slowly mounting screech and a flash of lightning. Or after a couple days she encounters a migration of creatures with stone skin, because they’re going to New Jersey and wanted to stop in Michigan to visit the great lakes, I guess. Or a couple weeks in to her new life, there’s a bright flash in the sky, and now she’s glowing? And has weird glowing tattoos on her arm? And can set things on fire? Or a year or two after she escapes, a spaceship? touches down? and out comes a catgirl, a lady with prehensile hair, a weird tall white guy, but not, like, a typical white guy, his skin is literally snow white, and someone who appears to be (???) normally human????? With portal, anything is possible. Bonus points that technically any and all fanfiction, AUs, the like etc. of portal are canon, thanks to cave literally reaching through the multiverse, thereby making all of those alternative realities possible.

So if I wanted, I could stick portal in anything. Like how salt can be used in virtually every cuisine.

But oh, my dear brain did not stop there. This is a crackshit crossover corner, after all. If I fuck around enough, I could frankenstein together almost all of these. The events in HZD take place approximately one thousand years after the apocalypse, which occurred mid-2000s. As in 2050s-60s, not 2005. Kipo Age of Wonderbeasts takes place about 200 years after their mutepocalypse (also it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that ‘mute’ was shortened from ‘mutants’ and has nothing to do with their ability to speak), and we’re not sure when that happened. We could hazard a guess that Gaia was able to rebuild the world and some of humanity after Faro’s fuckup, but maybe went a liiiiiiiittle too far with the Artemis sub-probgram, and the mutepocalypse happens almost immediately. Oopsies. World goes on for 200 years post mutepocalypse, events of the series of Kipo Age of Wonderbeasts occur. Anknown amount of years later Hades decide’s that’s enough and wipes Gaia’s slate clean for her to start over again. She gives it another shot, but this time limits the amount of historical information that she gave to the humans that she released. Might’ve been a bit inaccurate, because do you know just how much human media insisted that vikings had horned helmets? (Could also explain why somehow Tuffnut knows some spanish). Whatever. This time she tries dragons. Things are actually going pretty well for a couple hundred years, Gaia always thought the ancient mythological tales of winged fire-breathers were cool, why not try it out? Until--are you kidding? The dragons disappear to hide underground? From the humans? Seriously? Wow. Wooooow. All that effort, wasted. Hades decides it’s time to try again. This time? Screw it. Robot megafauna. Hades can’t eat that. Around half a millenia later, Hades gains sentience, goes about trying to commit genocide, events of the HZD game occur. For fanfic funsies, Chell could wake up literally any time in there, because why not add another layer? These all coexist in the same space-time. Same universe, same timeline, but unfortunately not at the same time. Oof. -----> This crackshit combines Horizon Zero Dawn, Kipo Age of Wonderbeasts, and How to Train Your Dragon. (*portal optional)

Or how about somehow, some way, the whole prehistoric ‘peopling of the earth’ (deadass the name of a textbook chapter) was more like accidental colonization of the earth? The rest of the six galaxies moved on and kind of forgot about them, so Borderlands doesn’t necessarily have to be in the distant future of earth’s timeline. Some millenia ago, the Destroyer was going around, doing its thing. The Eridians didn’t like that, so they found a planet with natural capabilities they could take advantage of, asked some sirens for help, and turned it into a superweapon. After all, as typhon says, most Eridian things run on crystals. And sirens’ powers are often elemental--who’s to say the runestones on Etheria aren’t their collaborative work? Along the way they probably make an enemy because of course they do, so why not give the Heart a test run @ Horde Prime? Until Mara rebels, and yeets Etheria and its moons (and presumably star) into Despondos. Well, fuck. Horde Prime mentions ‘one thousand years’ of waiting, but when traveling through space, time can get fucky. Anyway, Now they have to come up with an alternative way to eliminate the Destroyer. It might take a few millenia of hopping around, leaving their mark on various planets, but eventually they come up with the idea of creating a cage, creating pandora... After all, the architecture of the First One’s ruins in SPOP and the various Eridian Ruins in the borderlands series aren’t super different. It’s reasonably possible that their stylistic design choices changed over time--whose hasn’t? Gothic architecture wasn’t hanging around from the dawn of human time. Anyway, we know that since they began building Pandora, the Eridians knew what it would entail. So when Nyriad killed them to power the Machine in the Pyre of the Stars, it’s not like they hadn’t prepared to die. The guardians, their own creations, have heath bars made entirely of shields, implying that they are beings not of flesh but of energy. And who wouldn’t want to at least attempt to preserve their culture, at least a shred of it? Many statues that are presumably in the Eridian’s likeness have only two arms, but some have more. And what energy-based lifeforms (from tales of arcadia) have a majority population with two arms, but a select special few with four? What is their planet called? AkiRIDIAN 5. It is implied that not even Nekrotafeyo, the Eridian’s home planet, is technically the place of their origination, so it’s not all that out of the question for them to make (and possibly fail at) a couple of planets they could put their extra-sentient lifeforms on. ‘Alright, We are called Eridians. This is the fifth planet we made for you. Have fun, we have to go die.’ How often is history not warped by time? Particularly the pronunciation of things? And of course if they’re starting over with a completely new place and no template to work off of, the architecture they come up with is not at al likely to resemble that of their progenitors. Also note that Luug and other Akiridian creatures seen, like those weird ass energy bugs, look fucking weird. You know what else looks fucking weird? The fauna of Nekrotafeyo. In this version, Mara’s story in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is the very distant early history of the Eridians, before even Nyriad, who is presumed to be very long-lived. The ancient history that the Eridians themselves left behind is in turn the prehistory of the people of Akiridian 5. And again, if u want, portal. That said, the end of SPOP S5, the end of BL3 (currently the latest borderlands game), and the end of the Tales of Arcadia series could not only exist in the same spacetime, but also at the same time. ---->This crackshit combines She ra, Borderlands, and Tales of Arcadia. (*portal optional)

#gryphons crackshit crossover corner #crackshit crossovers #borderlands #portal #portal 2 #horizon zero dawn #hzd #kipo age of wonderbeasts #how to train your dragon #she ra #spop #overwatch #tales of arcadia #my adhd specifically daydreams about my oc #either rose from eden 6 or someone (not lumina) from arcadia inheriting tyreen's powers and kicking the shit out of the arcane order's ass #in like five minutes. Other daydreams include that after eating the moon and exploding Lilith encounters Angella floating in nothingness.#This nothingness is the dimension Lilith (and glimmer) moves through when she teleports and phasewalks. Also the one maya reaches into the #*into to phaselock. I've decided that that dimension is the shadow realm from toa because the shadow realm is the space claire moves thu #when SHE teleports/uses portals. so I'm deciding that all three of them use the shadow realm whether they really know it or not. anyway #eventually either tannis or claire reach into the shadow realm and yoink lilith and angella out. this will presumably happen #after my girl hands the order's asses to them on a silver platter and the world is saved. since rise of the titans hasn't come out yet I'm #just gonna keep daydreaming this do occurr before it #for fanfic timeline purposes

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ghostmartyr · 4 years

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SnK 126 Thoughts

Doctors hate him.

Local man faster at finding new fingers than modern medicine.

It’s nice that we never have to wonder which parts of the story Isayama finds interesting. Clearing out all the titans after a hundred years? Dull. Uninspiring. Have a beach day laced with sadness. Announcing the identities of the Armored and Colossal Titans? We got a fight to get to, chop chop.

We have several groups of people who all think this is a terrible idea but have internal disputes and distance issues that interfere with them collaborating and making a feasible offensive?

-looks for the fast forward button-

Like. Part of me -- a very considerable part of me -- finds this hysterical. In a good way.

I have spent the last... more months than I feel like counting slowing writing my way through a oneshot only I care about. It is taking a long time to write, in part, because of pacing. I am very worried about making sure the pacing of the story stays steady, so all of the beats land right.

Some of the additions such care requires are not my favorite things to write, but for the good of the story feeling like something I can say with confidence I’ve put my best effort into, they’re necessary.

So I’m in flabbergasted awe, here, that someone is out in the world, getting paid to skip everything they evidently find too boring to actually spend time on.

The worst part is it’s really hard to even fault the logic.

Presenting our resolved conflicts!

Is Connie going to kill Falco???

Making Falco and Gabi’s island getaway even more traumatic for the dozenth time even though they’ve had all their character development for it??????

Is Armin going to get make it in time to stop Connie from committing a murder that will definitely happen????

Will Gabi hate everything all over again!?@?!12?

The answer to the first question is no.

It has been no since the concept was introduced.

Even Sasha’s dad is all, “Yeah, it’s probably fine that Connie kidnapped this child.”

Is Jean on Floch’s side now?

No, he’s had that character development already.

Is Mikasa on Floch’s side now?

No.

Is Mikasa doing anything at all or joining Reiner in his depression nap on the floor?

Mikasa joined a rebellion but didn’t have a depression nap on the floor because she was given a bed and also only like five people can sleep with all the rumbling going on.

Will she find her scarf?

Who has her scarf?

Is it the last person seen with her scarf?

Is it the last person seen with her scarf who idolizes Mikasa and first met Mikasa when she was wearing that scarf?

Who also idolizes Eren, who gave her that scarf?

Does Louise have the scarf?

scarfscarfscarfscarfscarfscarfscarfscarfscarfscarfscarfscarf

Mikasa found her scarf.

Louise found it first.

As with most things lately, Eren was a bastard about it.

Mikasa has her scarf.

Is Annie going to reunite with the gang and cause shenanigans?????

Sure, why not?

Is Reiner being left in some building somewhere with food no one is making him eat going to result in something bad for Reiner?

Nope, Armored Titan. Plot included.

Is Reiner ever going to wake up?

Yep.

Are the two volunteers with names in any real danger?

Yes, but Floch’s probably not likely to shoot them now.

Is Falco going to find out that his life got even sadder while he was asleep? :(

Yes.

Are the people of Paradis going to get used to their new Titan overlord just like they got used to the walls, leaving the majority to figure this is not their problem and creating the kind of moral squalor that led to their new Titan overlord completely losing his shit in the first place?

Yep.

Does the plot’s chronic abandonment of Hitch imply a good future for her?

Totes.

Are any of the conclusions to these events surprising in a way that would require more buildup to provide understanding of what is going on?

Nnnnnot really?

Fantastic, let’s not waste time on it. We’ve got a volume to end and a badass crew we want looking pretty.

(Also, Levi still really wants Zeke dead.)

It’s really important that all of these high stakes that the audience is so concerned with are dealt with so we can move into the final arc without any lingering thoughts about things that might get in the way of actually writing the final arc.

I think the worst victim here is Connie’s subplot, because things move too quickly for the emotional weight to come home. At the same time... Connie was never going to kill Falco. There’s only so much suspense you can put there when half of Connie’s thoughts about killing Falco are how maybe he shouldn’t be killing Falco.

Armin’s inclusion and the callback to Serum Bowl likewise doesn’t have much meat on it. Armin feeling inadequate is nothing new, and his complicated feelings on who receives Titan powers are likely always going to be complicated. The only conflict to really resolve here is the physical one of getting Connie away from Falco before some dumb accident happens.

That conflict happens, and squared away it gets.

More, “You betrayed me, Mr. Kru -- I mean Connie, :( :(” doesn’t actually benefit the plot at all. More time given to Falco to react to something the audience has known for months doesn’t really benefit the plot at all. Less time with Gabi and Falco being sad little munchkins arguably does benefit the plot, with how many times they’ve been called on for that role.

Connie cooling down and being pals instead of perpetually angry was going to happen at some point. Throw it in with the rest. Armin needing someone to lean on without melodramatic childhood bonds fits right in. Throw it in.

Did we need Louise?

I would argue I wanted more of Louise, but my opinion seems to matter very little in these things

Mikasa needs Louise. Louise is someone Mikasa inspires into following Eren down the wrong path. Louise is the mouthpiece that tells Mikasa that Eren, who promised to wrap her scarf around her as many times as necessary, wants nothing to do with it anymore.

Louise is someone Mikasa protected, and she’s dead.

One last nail in that awkward coffin.

And I guess we just don’t like children anymore and Falco and Gabi have all the survival tokens, so yeah, throw Louise on the pyre too.

What else, what else... oh, more Floch and speeches. Because he’s still allowed to talk. More happy voices about how no one has to worry about dying anymore because everyone who would think of killing you is going to be murdered.

Uhhhh. Annie could conceivably be there, right?

Yeah, sure.

Annie’s here now.

We all are agreed that was always going to happen, right? No problem?

Public executions in front of an angry mob?

For one morally bankrupt religious nut and one Good Boi who deserves the chance to punch Floch in the face a few times before shooting him?

Yeah, pile that on. Make it really clear that if Eren was going to destroy the world, he might as well have taken out the island too, since we’re doing the whole party anyway.

Give Onyankopon a really solid moment, too. Someone in the chapter has to represent that genocide is bad. Well, Connie sort of implied that already. But Onyankopon has been screwed over the most for doing absolutely everything right, so he deserves the chance to point out that everything is fucked and also fuck you this is terrible you were supposed to be better.

Then like, uh.

That gives us a cast, right?

We’ve got Jean, Magath, Pieck, Yelena, Onyankopon, Hange, and Levi on one side, and Reiner, Annie, Falco, Gabi, Connie, Armin, and Mikasa on the other.

Fourteen!

One over thirteen!

That’s like lucky, right?

Can we do the plot now?

Can we, can we, can we?

It’s amazing.

It’s abominably paced, but oh wow is it incredible. Need everyone on the island who has an interest in stopping this in agreement? Well, here’s a chapter for you. Now they are. Now we can actually maybe like. Do stuff. Against Eren.

Good luck figuring out how, but we’ve at least got everyone assembled now.

Except Historia.

Because you know, fuck the Queen.

...Does anyone on the island remember they have a Queen?

This is a serious question.

Like no, this is amazing. It’s like, well, we could have a bunch of chapters slowly building up to this point while everyone starts counting Wall Titans in the background and wondering when we’ll get on with actually fixing this massive problem instead of just detailing it further for the hundredth time.

Or.

We could just admit that we all basically knew this was coming, so we can skip to the good stuff. Good? Good.

Only we make sure to draw it all out so there’s no argument over how it went down and no one does anything dangerous like apply imagination while a hasty time skip patch job takes hold.

Because that’s probably next chapter.

SHOUNEN POWERS ACTIVATE.

Team Fuck Zeke vs. Team People Die When They Are Killed And We’re Not About That (right now).

Pray tell, do any of you have the power to do literally anything about this?

I do wonder if that’s some of why we’re zooming through these points. While I think there’s a slightly legitimate case to be made that extra time on things we all realized were going to go down is not needed (...it... is needed, for like. enjoying things, but you know let’s just not), part of that hinges on the complications they’re about to face.

Stopping Connie from child murder eats up time. Finding Annie takes time. Confirming Mikasa’s scarf reunion takes time. Confirming Levi and Hange are alive takes time. Confirming Magath and Pieck are willing not to murder them immediately takes time.

I don’t think Levi and Hange’s side is too badly harmed from the pacing. It’s fast, but it’s working with the backing of time. They’ve been absent for a while, and catching us up on where they are and what ground they’re standing on proceeds smoothly. Without the rest of the chapter being what it is, I don’t think the starting scene would feel particularly unusual.

Even the rest of the chapter with its speedrunning ways isn’t too terrible once your brain is expecting it.

...I can’t really excuse Annie.

Unless Rule of Funny comes into play. But even then, yeah. Wow.

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that despite our full cast of degenerates assembled, we still don’t have a workable plan in sight. Five of the nine Titans are working together against Eren. One remaining is missing in action, but also generally anti-Eren at this point.

Then we’ve got nine humans.

So what?

One Colossal Titan with a baseball enthusiast destroys the Survey Corps, and only dies due to human error and someone’s willing sacrifice.

Eren’s got more than we can count, and the stegosaurus behemoth he’s using as a body now.

It’s all very nice and good to form a united front of fourteen people deciding to kill a god, but what does that actually mean?

Even if we’re generous, and include Shadis and his allies in the available forces, how does that actually help anyone? Does anyone have a good idea of how to get to Eren, let alone stop him? Has anyone in this group had a single stable conversation with him since he set out on his own?

If we took an extra couple of chapters to settle down all of the live wires this one grounds, those issues would still be at the front of the main plot. Drifting into the side pools doesn’t damage the story, but it does interfere with momentum.

Stories are hard. Balancing a story’s pace between what the completed work will look like and what the audience is currently experiencing is a nightmare.

This story has the largest conflict it will ever probably face, and a bit of a list of things to check off before it can get around to dealing with that. So it goes with the option of speeding through the list and skidding to a halt in front of the main show.

I don’t exactly approve of it, but given that this is what was chosen, it’s hard to turn away the benefits. I didn’t really want to read about Connie’s shenanigans with Falco and Armin turning into more shenanigans when they come across Annie and try to figure out if they have to kill her, then yet more with --

There is a lot going on. Consolidating that into a lot going on, but with everyone on the same side proactively working together... I like where this lands us.

It’s just really, really funny.

I don’t think I have another example of an author not wanting to write something, so just. not. This whole chapter is like, “oh wait I wrote myself into a hole well now I’m just going to erase that hole and move along.”

From a writing standpoint, it’s hard not to find that endearing. Wiping the slate clean is something you can do endlessly in unpublished works, but with published works, once you ink yourself into a situation, that situation tends to demand attention.

These situations got a little. As a treat.

But back to the state of the story, the primary conflict is pretty firmly locked in, “Well now what?”

Ideally, you lace, “Well now what?” in with all the subplots you have going, and then upon their conclusion you have a solid, “What has arrived!” moment, and everything plays together beautifully, but this has chosen not to do that. Except with the emotional resolutions.

Team Fuck Zeke.

Team People Die When They Are Killed And We’re Not About That (right now).

-underlines the clears philosophies of the teams-

Wait Yelena doesn’t fit in on Team Fuck Zeke. Unless.

But yeah, so now what?

Does all of this friendly bonding help?

I mean. Maybe Magath and all of his highly influential Marleyan politics can land the good people of Paradis (aka the ones not enjoying their coup) a deal with the rest of the world to unite in taking down Eren?

Or something?

(Seriously, how many countries are looking at this and thinking to themselves, “If they hit Marley first, that’s one problem solved”? I do not think anyone has forgotten they hate Marley, they just hate other things (Eren) more right now.)

While we’re at it, maybe Armin and Mikasa shoot beams powered by friendship into Eren’s stegosaurus skull.

The story potentially still has a lot of downtime. Mixing that in with all of the subplots would absolutely be preferred, but doing that while keeping enough of the main story going to keep the tension up regarding the end of the world...

It gets tricky.

I am sympathetic to the difficulty.

Amazing.

What a chapter.

#Shingeki no Kyojin #SnK 126 #shingeki no spoilers #SnK spoilers #spoilers #tl;dr #chapter post

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almostperfectchance · 5 years

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*** Full extract from a Descendant high commanding officer during an operation, in collaboration with Union and Republic forces, overseeing the Battle for Caladis against Homeworld’s Kybran Seige Army ***

*** Year 8091/2012 Earth Time ***

I look back now...and it’s almost unreal to believe that this cursed world was once the birthplace of our Sacred Order; our sanctuary and refuge for the faithful, the forgotten, and the persecuted, human and gem alike.

This world, much like Ody'n Prime and Drax, has changed hands many times. We used it as a haven. The Republic used it as a prison world. And now these Homeworld heretics wish to use it as a mining colony for their own purposes. Of course, the Republic themselves used their prison labor to conduct mining operations of their own, but that’s not something they would teach in the SGR history books.

Whether it’s mining for minerals or harvesting new gems, what’s the difference really? Maybe the Republic doesn’t kill their slaves in the end, but honestly it’s still getting harder to tell the difference between the two anymore.

Both sides want to pretend that their vision of the universe should trump all else, both are elitist pigs, both sides try to protect their image in the face if their own atrocities, and they both go so far as to pretend that they have a set of principles when it comes to war, expansion, and conquest...as if anyone should ever expect them to follow those rules themselves when the chips are down.

There’s even word going around in the void that Homeworld now pronounces that they only conquer worlds with “no intelligent life” as if to erase all of their past crimes in the galaxies beyond...

(scoffs)...What a load of shit!

It’s awfully convenient that they’re the ones who get to decide arbitrarily whats worthy of being intelligent and what isn’t. It didn’t stop them from committing genocide across the Andromeda galaxy while hunting us down one by one. It sure as hell didn’t stop them from coming back for us now!

At least the Republic has the spine to openly display their misguided biases and brutality for the universe to see...

(sigh)

At least they make an attempt to stand by their principles, misguided as some of them may be. More than I can say for these purist gem blasphemers, who judge and dictate the galaxy as they see fit, still acting as if they see themselves as equals to the Requian Gods themselves.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Another century...another war...another tyrant...only this one refuses to know when she’s been beaten.

During the civil war, we spent decades and countless lives trying to take back our Father’s land from the SGR and their relentless dogs. With the help of Commander Cyrus’s leadership and The Father’s vision, we had some success. While we were never able to take back the entirety of our holy world, we were able to get the Republic’s attention, even after we were forced to surrender.

We were finally given a chance to rebuild, and possibly a chance to seek a peaceful redemption in the eyes of everyone.

Yet in the span of a week, the indiscriminate destruction of Homeworld’s vanguard fleet destroyed nearly everything we had gained. Countless efforts, the sacrifices of many a loyal human and gem, many of my own friends, most of them innocent...all lost for nothing...

An atrocity that Homeworld will not simply wash away like all the others...and one they will live to regret! One way or another, the will of the Union and the Descendants will be reborn; we will rejoice, and the gemstones of our oppressors will be shattered and spilled in a sea of fire! We will force the Diamonds to see their precious perfect kingdom crumble piece by piece from beneath them, and then they too will lie shattered in the ashes!

A United Andromeda defeated the Diamonds once before through rebellion and revolution, we will do it again...only this time we’ll finish the job, with or without the help of the SGR...

...or Pink Diamond.

Still it doesn’t make the chaos we face today any easier, or any less unsettling...

It was Cyrus’s plan to provoke Homeworld back into the theater of war, through the illusion of perceived weakness. Everyone always knew that Yellow Diamond would return one way or another to finish what she started, but I always had my own unsettling doubts about Cyrus’s intentions.

Homeworld did return, but at what cost?

Not only has everything we have build for the last two centuries now more in jeopardy than ever, but we are now left at the mercy of one Regime facing off against another. In the aftermath of the civil war, we became yet another vassal state to the SGR, and the scars on both sides haven’t even had the time to start to heal.

Yet here we are once again, forced by fate, to align with one monster in order to defeat a bigger one...

Caladis was among the first of many worlds to fall under Homeworld’s rapid invasion force, and they attacked without mercy. Even the mighty bulwark of the Republic’s armored might was thrown off balance by the initial attacks. Not that it slowed them down for very long. In no time at all, Chancellor Reiben’s response to the conflict was as swift and ruthless.

Of course we didn’t want to be left standing on the sidelines, watching as the two Titans skirmish and squander over our hard fought gains. But then again...our involvement wasn’t entirely by choice.

The Chancellor felt that since this war was caused by our own actions (not that she was entirely wrong), she felt that the Union should be the ones who would have to pick up the slack and do most of the dirty work, but for none of the rewards.

Caladis would be retaken from Homeworld, but the planet would lay entirely in the Republic’s hands.

More sacrifices and lost souls wasted away for nothing...

But at least with Caladis, the planet was among a small handful of worlds that the Republic would spare no expense in retaking. I guess “an example was to be made” as the arrogant Chancellor would put it.

I guess the one shining light in all of this, as much as it pains me to say, was that there was as much grief as there was relief that the SGR wasn’t shooting at us for once.

A selection amongst the Chancellor’s finest in her council would accompany my forces to Caladis to retake it: The 58th Mechanized Regiment of the Lunar Wolves Valkyierian Stormtroopers led by their Quartz Corp Marshall herself, Serena Quartz, and their Sentinel Force Commander, Reyna Vance.

The Valkieryan Congressional Guard...their elite reputation precedes them in the eyes of most. I personally find them to be overrated: Pampered jar headed Pearls and Lapis Lazulis with more specialized armor, weapons, ships, mechs, tanks, and resources than sense, and yet just as ruthless and unforgiving as their yet superior Quartz Marine counterparts.

Despite our best efforts to retake the world, they would be the ones to take all the credit...and the gains. And that reality alone will be what forever pains and haunts me the most...

Nonetheless...

I will not allow my faith to linger. I still believe in The Father’s vision without question as he believes in me, and despite my doubts with Cyrus and the Union’s plan, I will still trust her judgment...

...for now.

*** High Confessor Lapis Am’byr Slavic Lazuli ***

The Prophet’s 1st Shadow Company

The Right Hand of The Father

#steven universe #pearl steven universe #lapis lazuli #voidborne

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armenianassembly · 7 years

Video

youtube

Chris Cornell’s Official Music Video For His Song “The Promise” Released on World Refugee Day 2017 By Survival Pictures

LOS ANGELES, CA – Multi-Grammy® Award-winning, Golden Globe nominee Chris Cornell’s official music video for his song “The Promise” was released this morning by Survival Pictures. “The Promise” was Cornell’s last release prior to his passing.

"Chris Cornell was not only a dear family friend for many years, but he was also a once-in-a generation talent who is missed more than words can convey. It was such an honor to collaborate and partner on The Promise over the years, said Eric Esrailian, Producer of The Promise and Co-Manager for Survival Pictures. “His music and lyrics will not only shine a light on the Armenian Genocide and the human rights crises of modern times, but they will also inspire people and provide hope for years to come.”

Esrailian added, “Although it is bittersweet because Chris filmed his performance in Brooklyn, NY shortly before his passing, he wanted his video to be released on World Refugee Day, and he was passionate about helping people through this project. True to Chris's charitable spirit, he made a commitment to donate all of his proceeds from “The Promise” to support refugees and children, and to further the conversation about the refugee crisis the world continues to endure.”

The video was directed by Grammy Award winning director Meiert Avis (Audioslave, U2) and Stefan Smith (Madonna, Sting). “The Promise" is Cornell's last music video performance. It also includes media donated by Academy Award nominated director Evgeny Afineesvky (HBO’s Cries from Syria), UNESCO Prize for Peace Recipient SOS Méditerranée, Freshwater Films (Ross Kemp’s Libya’s Migrant Hell), Keo Films (Exodus: Our Journey To Europe), Nazik Armenakyan (Survivors), Human Rights Watch, Refugee Rescue, and Nobel Peace Prize Recipient Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

At the time of the song’s release Cornell said:

“’The Promise’ to me is mainly about paying homage to those we lost in the Armenian Genocide, but it's also about shining a light on more recent atrocities. The same methods used in the Armenian genocide were used to carry out crimes against humanity in Bosnia, Darfur, Rwanda and right now in Syria on multiple fronts, contributing to a massive global refugee crisis. Unfortunately, the words 'never again' seem like just words when we recall these mass executions of the twentieth century, as well as renewed racism and prejudice around the world. Even in the US, the warning signs - isolating groups based on race and religion - are evident. We really need to tell these stories and keep telling them in as many different ways as we can. As humans, we have a tremendous capacity to trudge ahead in our lives and not look at the difficult and challenging moments... but I think it's important. Educating ourselves on the past is the best way to understand the present and avoid future atrocities by understanding and intervening. We must educate and stand as one to combat this fear and violence, and as citizens of the world, work to protect each other's human rights."

In April 2017, Cornell and his family toured refugee camps in Greece and it was there that they decided The Chris and Vicky Cornell Foundation would focus its efforts on child refugees and the issues affecting them including education, health and human trafficking.

#Chris Cornell #The Promise #Armenian Genocide #World Refugee Day

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pope-francis-quotes · 5 years

Text

13th February >> (@VaticanNews By Linda Bordoni) #PopeFrancis #Pope Francis ~ Ahead of the International Day Against the Use of Child Soldiers, the founder and Executive Director of the Roméo Dellaire Initiative requested #PopeFrancis' support for their efforts to end the use of children in conflicts across the globe.

Dallaire Initiative seeks Pope’s support to end use of child soldiers

The Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative brings the perspective of the security sector to the urgent need to end the use of child soldiers in conflicts across the globe. The Founder and the Executive Director of the Initiative were recently in the Vatican to tell Pope Francis about their work and to ask him for his support.

By Linda Bordoni

February 12th is the International Day Against the Use of Child Soldiers.

On various occasions Pope Francis has expressed his concern for the global phenomenon and called for an end to the practice which he has called a “form of slavery.”

Responding to a call from an organization that aims to end the recruitment and use of child soldiers, he recently received in audience retired Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire, and Dr Shelly Whitman.

They are respectively the founder and the Executive Director of the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative, a global partnership that brings the perspective of the security sector to the issue of child soldiery, equipping leaders with the training and tools to prevent the recruitment and use of child soldiers worldwide.

As General Dallaire and Dr Whitman told Vatican News immediately after the papal audience that took place on January 17th, the meeting with Pope Francis came about in a harmonious and constructive atmosphere of “significant mutual interest”:

'Shaking Hands with the Devil'

Retired Canadian Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire’s passionate mission to protect all children from becoming weapons of war stems from his own powerful experience and first-hand witness of the horrific 1994 Rwanda genocide.

He was the Force Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda prior to and during the genocide. Notwithstanding the information he provided about the planned massacre and his reiterated requests to take action, he was denied permission to intervene and the UN withdrew its peacekeeping forces creating a vacuum in which over 800,000 people were killed in less than 100 days.

They were days of absolute horror, as narrated in Dallaire’s prize-winning book “Shake Hands with the Devil: the failure of Humanity in Rwanda”, a country from which he returned with a deep commitment to give meaning to the tragedy and do his part in preventing such horror from happening again.

But as the General told me the day after meeting with the Pope, he did not travel to the Vatican all the way from Canada to talk about the past, but to engage with Pope Francis and find channels of collaboration and support with the Holy See.

"The Pope has been writing and speaking about the scourge of modern slavery since 2013", the General said, and was interested in knowing what we are doing. “We, he added, were very keen in gaining his support for our work, and bringing the Holy See into the exercise of influencing world leaders to be engaged, particularly in using children as instruments of war.”

Seeking the Pope's assistance

Dr Shelley Whitman explained that the aim of the meeting was to ask the Pope’s assistance on three levels:

- On South Sudan (where the Initiative has a project), because we know that that is a situation where Pope Francis can have significant influence on the religious and political leaders and the peace process; and because we believe that it is of primary importance that people understand that it is primary value if you’re going to achieve peace and security in South Sudan, and break the cycle of violence, it is necessary to end the recruitment and use of child soldiers.

- On being a global advocate for this issue: we called upon him to make it a point amongst members of the Catholic Church across the world so that Church leaders can have a significant influence especially in some parts of the world where children are being allowed to join armed groups, and where community members, parents etc. have an important role to play.

- We requested that the Catholic Church endorse the Vancouver Principles on peacekeeping, at least in the moral perspective that it can bring to this set of non-binding pledges that seek to equip security sector actors with the skills and knowledge to prevent violations being committed against children.

Whitman said she and the General came away from the papal audience “feeling listened to and understood: he spoke very passionately about how issues related to children and their abuse in a multitude of forms around the world is something that intimately touches his heart and keeps him awake”.

Francis, she said, “took notes and we left materials with him to follow-up afterwards, and he asked how the Holy See could become an endorser and what the process is”.

A new era of peacekeeping

Regarding the harsh lessons of the past, General Dallaire said he believes “lessons are being learnt, whether or not there is a political will to apply them both from the international community and within the single countries is another matter”.

“I think the international constructs of legal constraints have been established and we know we have the responsibility to protect” he said.

He also spoke positively about the fact that many nations today want professionalized security forces and want to be recognized as forces that are responding to human rights: “they want to do peacekeeping but they need new skills, new knowledge and competencies”.

That, he said, is one of the focuses that the Dallaire Initiative has: “bringing a new era of peacekeeping regarding children to the fore versus simply treating it as an afterthought”.

Both the General and Dr Whitman speak of the role of the media, both in countries where there is conflict - where radio for example can be used to reach communities and inform – and more generally where there is a need for correct information and for journalists to be informed in a more specialized way.

South Sudan project

Whitman talks about the 3-year project in S. Sudan which is funded by the Canadian government, explaining that the Initiative has just opened an office in Juba where she says it is working on different levels trying to impact a situation that is going through a peace process: “trying to get the parties to that conflict to stop the recruitment and use of children, and working at how it is a really important piece to that peace process”.

She says the lessons learnt in Rwanda are of enormous help: “it does help immensely to have that history and knowledge on the continent on who General Dallaire is with many of the people we are dealing with – the government and the SPLA (the liberation army) – they know of his name and they know of the Rwanda genocide. The approach that we are taking is one they want to be engaged with, as they want to be empowered instead of us just coming in and castigating them for their behavior”.

Rwanda project

Whitman points out that having come out of the genocide, Rwanda today is the third-largest peacekeeping contributor to UN peacekeeping missions and has about 800 troops in South Sudan.

She explains that in Rwanda, the Initiative has been working with Rwandans to create a center of excellence training and learning, a hub for troops from the entire region: “what is interesting we have been training the troops that have been going into South Sudan, and now they are a force multiplier for us on the ground to help with ending and advocating for the end of the use of child soldiers”.

Whitman and Dallaire both express hope, with the General pointing out that it is not a “Pollyanna optimism”, and that they firmly believe, being the only organization that has looked at the problem from a security sector point of view, “that they can certainly reduce the flow and ultimately maybe stop the flow into conflict of child soldiers, versus trying to pick up the pieces at the end”.

Global phenomenon

Whitman explains that the recruitment of children as weapons of war is sadly a phenomenon that is endemic throughout the world: in the Middle East - Syria, Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Lebanon; Europe: Ukraine; Asia: Sri Lanka, Myanmar; Latin America: Colombia, Guatemala, the drug wars and the use of children in criminal networks.

Migration

She points out that the migrant crisis has an influence and an impact on how this is no long an “us-versus-them” issue, but touches each and every one of us.

“When we fail to address conflicts that happen in other parts of the world, because of our inter-connectedness, there is no way we can avoid their impact on us: if we fail to address the recruitment of child soldiers in country X, it will come knocking on our door and we will have to address the influx of refugees and migrants because of those conflicts”.

General Dallaire concludes with a bitter memory: “They refused to come and give me any support in Rwanda because it wasn’t in anybody’s self-interest.”

But that, he says, has changed radically in the last 25 years, “because every conflict out there, and conflicts that are using child-soldiers has an impact on us back home… there is no more disconnect: whatever happens over there has ramifications on us”.

“So the aim”, he reiterates, “Is to go there and to attenuate the rage, prevent things from happening versus trying to ‘pick up the pieces’, seeing the impact on us, and trying to survive by building walls and whatever else…”.

Topics

POPE FRANCIS

CHILDREN

WAR

HUMAN RIGHTS

HUMAN TRAFFICKING

12th February 2019, 19:53

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calystarose · 7 years

Text

Hey, my fellow white Americans!

I’m white. Which matters only in so far as that fact has shielded me from the worst that my country has inflicted on our own people and on others around the world. I am a woman, and I have been poor all of my life. So I have seen some of the ugly side of the system and our culture.

That’s my disclaimer, to let you know where I began.

I grew up believing in the myth of America. Or I guess myths. Specifically I believed that the founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights were something that this country really and truly pursued and believed in. Fifth grade that belief started unraveling. But it took awhile for me to see just how much of the myths of America were complete and utter propaganda. That is, they were pretty words that virtually no government body at any point ever actually pursued with any genuine effort.

That hurt my feelings. I felt super betrayed and let down and god damn did I hate this country for the lies and the failure to live up to what were pretty decent ideals. I mean, yeah...the language was insufficiently inclusive (all ~men~) and then of course there was that whole...Not All Men (because slavery somehow was just glossed over) bit. But you know, the basic concepts, those were great!

Later I realized what a privileged, entitled reaction that was for me to have. Because even though I’ve always been poor, I’ve also always been white. And that provides a HUGE cushion from the horrors of our Unjust System, particularly in the cities where I’ve always lived.

But those ideals: that all of us are created equal, that we have equal worth and equal rights? Those I still 100% believed in. I just had to push past my Whiteness to see just how poorly those ideals have been applied to the vast majority of people in this country.

That is an ongoing process, and will be for the rest of my life. But it is one that I am committed to pursuing because I really, truly, unironically believe in the ideals of Equality. In my early twenties I encountered the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and I was like, aha! Because that was so much in line with my own personal ethical positions.

Anyway, to get to the point of all this, I have for quite a while now had no great love for or pride in my country. I could not see any reason to be proud of a country founded on genocide and slavery that then turned around and in the 20th century in particular started visiting even more horrors on other countries around the world. I mean, I was...I AM...ashamed of what this country has done. What I, in my ignorance, was complicit in.

I admit to falling in love with many things about Russia. I was fascinated by the ideals, hah god I’m an idiot, of the Soviet Union. I went to the Soviet Space exhibit when it came through my town and was just awed by the cosmonauts.

Growing up in the 80s, with the whole Cold War thing and then Glasnost and Perestroika and the heavy threat of nuclear war. It made me highly sensitized to the USSR on some level. When I learned of American atrocities and failures, the USSR seemed the lesser of two evils. Again, it took time for me to learn how horrific the USSR had been. There is no real way to say which of us is worse. Both sides were so fantastically and banally evil. The dick measuring contest between our nations has caused untold horror, and continues to do so.

Nevertheless, this is my country. This is my home. And at the end of the day, I still believe in the ideals that I was told the country was founded on. Even though the founders apparently didn’t.

So when this past election rolled around and the Republicans and their reality show travesty ‘won’, I was horrified. As each week passes and more and more information comes out showing just how thoroughly Russia and the Republicans and 45 colluded to alter the election results, I have become increasingly angry.

It turns out, I am a patriot after all. I am loyal to the ideals this country pretended to be founded on. Because I actually believe in those ideals and I believe that we CAN make this country live up to those ideals.

But the traitors have to go. 45 and every single person who has colluded or collaborated or turned a blind eye to the out and out treason has to go. They have to go to jail. And we have to rip apart the corrupt structures that undermine our ideals.

I don’t know how to accomplish this. But I know where to look for answers. It’s time to listen to those Americans who this country has done all it can to grind into nothing, and to follow their lead. Because White people cannot be trusted to see past our own blinders. Even those of us who mean well.

To save this country, we have to commit 100% to the ideals that it pretended to begin with. And we have to center the voices of those our country has most ardently tried to destroy.

I believe in what America can be. I believe that is worth fighting for.

#USA #politics #treason #patriotism #white to white

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mittensmorgul · 7 years

Note

If anything Bmol is socialism, moving into hunting parties and offering their equipment and connections in exchange for a tax of service. Regulating, deciding, and providing response which takes away the freedom of movement to the average hunter. They're part of a larger system instead of an independent community which isn't how hunters operate. They provide a set standard that doesn't work for everyone but they're all still expected to adhere to it. Weaker hunters cling to them/strong stay away

I... really don’t think that’s right. I mean, I’m not a political scholar, but the BMoL have been framed as straight-up fascists since the beginning.

I think you’re not seeing the full picture here. The BMoL aren’t trying to organize hunters into better units, nor are they giving out weapons and cash to help hunters be better at their jobs in exchange for hunters following their orders. They’re planning to put hunters out of business entirely by committing a genocide.

Hunters might be lured in by the glossy surface sales pitch, but the only ones who seem willing to buy into that (essentially what boils down to a lie when you see behind curtain) pitch are the ones the majority of the hunting community has written off as incompetent (like the hunter that Rufus worked with once, because he wasn’t worth the effort of collaborating with again).

The long term goals of the BMoL-- to annihilate every last monster in the entire country, even the ones who are just living their lives and not hurting anyone-- would eventually put every last hunter out of a job entirely. And then what? What would the BMoL do at that point? Would they care what the hunters would do with themselves after that?

They are using the hunters like a disposable commodity to achieve their larger goals, with their controlling interests are being run by a faceless group of old white dudes in a dusty boardroom somewhere. Their only concern is wiping out opposition, and anything they consider “other.”

Strong hunters are staying away because they can SEE the bigger picture. They don’t trust the BMoL because there are NO long-term benefits there. To the MoL, the hunters are weapons, not people. And the monsters are “other” that pose a threat to their way of life. Which is why I freaking CHEERED when the Alpha vamp looked Mick in the face and basically shouted “NOT MY PRESIDENT.”

(yeah he said get off my lawn, but the feeling behind it was 100% this kind of resistance against the anti-monster, anti-”other” fascist regime the MoL are trying to establish)

There’s nothing socialist about the organization. At all.

I really don’t want to get into a political discourse on this blog. This is my happy place. This is where I come to NOT have to think about political discourse for a little while... That said, here’s one more post on the subject, and then I’m officially done...

http://hellosaidthemoonisafangirl.tumblr.com/post/157975710994/spn-12x14

#men of letters vs hunters #if you think they're socialist you might what to look up the definition of socialism #and then compare that to fascism #and then maybe actually learn facts about these things before throwing the terms around so carelessly #Anonymous

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years

Text

You Can’t Boycott a Monopoly

Facebook's top executives, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, had a meeting on Tuesday with a coalition of civil rights groups that have organized a major advertising boycott of the company over its handling of hate speech.

On a media call afterwards, representatives from the N.A.A.C.P., Anti-Defamation League, Color of Change, and Free Press made it clear that the meeting had gone horribly.

Jessica Gonazalez, co-CEO of Free Press, summed up the company's efforts as "the same old talking points to try and placate us without meeting our demands." Rashad Robinson, President of Color of Change, said that the executives “showed up to the meeting expecting an A for attendance. Attending alone is not enough.”

The groups presented 10 specific demands they referred to as "low-hanging fruit.” The hope was that these demands would begin the process of radically fighting hate speech on the platform, but so far Facebook has only partially addressed the first demand. The coalition calls for hiring a C-suite executive with civil rights expertise to "evaluate products and policies for discrimination, bias, and hate.” While Facebook agreed to hire such a person, the representatives told journalists Facebook would not commit to a C-suite position or provide any concrete details about the position in their meeting.

Representatives went on to call the meeting “disappointing,” a “PR exercise,” and yet another opportunity for “spin” from the company. Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, told journalists that it was "abundantly clear" that Facebook "is not yet ready to address the vitriolic hate on their platform."

The reason for this is obvious: the gargantuan Facebook and Google have an effective duopoly on digital advertising for all of America, not just big spenders. Facebook is so big that it is not even the slightest bit afraid of other unfathomably large companies (e.g. Verizon, Microsoft, or Starbucks) pulling money from its platform.

Early this month, The Information reported that Zuckerberg privately characterized the boycott at a staff meeting as a "reputational and a partner issue," not an economic one, and as a result "these advertisers will be back on the platform soon enough." For the Facebook chief executive, there's no reason to "change our policies or approach on anything because of a threat to a small percentage of our revenue, or to any percentage of our revenue."

Last year, Facebook brought in nearly $70 billion in advertising revenue—only 6 percent, a meager $4.2 billion of it, came from the 100 top ad spenders. The remaining $65.3 billion came from small and medium-sized businesses. And while the pandemic and boycott have hurt the company to an extent (Facebook cut its spending this fiscal year by $3 billion to make up for the pandemic's effects on advertising and lost $60 billion in stock value on June 26, the day the ad boycott really took off) analysts seem unfazed and the company has another $60 billion cash on hand. Its stock has also gained nearly $80 billion in value since the day the boycott launched, making up for any initial losses.

"It's important for groups and advertisers to apply public pressure. But we shouldn't think that public pressure is going to be enough. The government is going to need to act,” said Charlotte Slaiman, competition policy director at Public Knowledge, a non-profit focused on platforms and the digital economy. "The impact of our public pressure would be more powerful if we have a competitive marketplace."

Slaiman is not advocating for free market economics to unleash the engine of the marketplace of ideas, or whatever. Instead, she’s interested in significant antitrust reforms to fight Facebook’s monopoly that gives it the ability to act unilaterally because there are no economic threats, only “reputational” and “partner” issues as Zuckerberg so aptly put it.

As important as the #StopProfitFromHate campaign is right now, the meeting between Facebook and civil rights groups showcased that Facebook can choose to meet demands or ignore them, even when billions are at stake. You can’t boycott a monopoly. And even if Facebook were to meet demands, there’s no guarantee of future collaboration if the company’s power eclipses any damage competitors or the public can do.

Facebook’s power goes far beyond deflecting a boycott. Its position has given it leeway to smear critics (including Color of Change, which attended the meeting an helped organize the boycott), attempt to implement a new global currency, incite genocide, and shrug off regulatory fines in the billions.

There is no chance that Facebook, which also owns social media juggernatus Instagram and WhatsApp, will reduce its power voluntarily. During Congressional hearings in 2018, Zuckerberg spent an enormous amount of time arguing that Facebook is not a monopoly. And yet his internal suggestion that a mass boycott from some of the most powerful companies in the world will have little or no effect on the company indicates that Facebook is able to operate like one. These companies have no choice, Zuckerberg said, but to come back.

As Public Knowledge laid out in a letter to the FTC, Facebook "benefits form significant barriers to entry, [including] very strong network effects… [which] make it hard for a new social network to gain users.” Indeed, over the years numerous “Facebook killers” have come and gone without making much of a dent.

Slaiman pointed to the United Kingdom, which conducted an economic analysis of digital advertising markets to help plan what shape antitrust action would and what its goals should be. The report’s conclusion was that if we are interested in making Facebook accountable, transparent, and reducing its negative impact on individuals and society at large, then short of breaking up the platform or spinning off its various products into standalone public goods and services, we need regulatory frameworks that make the company more vulnerable to government action and public pressure.

You Can’t Boycott a Monopoly syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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christineamccalla · 5 years

Text

Failure To Understand The US Constitution’s, Section 8, Scope of Legislative Power Results In The US Being Shunted Back To Its Policies, by McCalla, Christine Ann, MBA, MS, CBME, CAHR, CBDE, CTW, CPA

Failure to understand The US Constitution, Section 8, Scope of Legislative Power creates complication in its mandates and of such shall be set to execution, publicly, jointly and severally, and as a deterring measure to the benefit of appreciation of the inherent right to life. These mandates are,

To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

To provide and maintain a navy (or other Armed Forces);

To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;--And

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

As such, in executing all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof, the instigators; perpetrators; and facilitators of an insurrection or holocaust intent on abusing the US Constitution, Section 8, Scope of Legislative Power own edicts:

REUTERS.com published world news June 8, 2019 “U.S. envoy, in interview, does not rule out Israeli annexation in West Bank” is a regard of nations conferencing in trivialities which are far from accurate, implicitly, and given the CIA Factbook confirmed deficiencies all nations must address, explicitly. Whether Israel is invading West Bank / Palestine in the occupied West Bank is not the United States of America’s policies or priorities. Furthermore, the role of an ally is clearly defined in Foreign Relations and Intercourse found within the US Code, or in Public Lands: Interior; National Defense; Navigation and Navigable Waters; Aeronautics and Space; Foreign Relations; Commerce and Foreign Trade; Commercial Practices; Judicial Administration; and, Commodity and Securities Exchanges found in the Code of Federal Regulations. Incitement; aggression; invasions; sieges; and holocausts are not titles, roles, and responsibilities conveyed through alliances or collaboration of allies. Furthermore, the role of the international peacekeepers are clearly defined in the laws and statutes of, Geneva Conventions; LIBOR; MAASTRICT; Charter on the Fundamental Human Rights of the European Union; International Covenant On Civil and Political Rights; International Covenant On Torture, Cruelty, and Inhumane Treatments; United Nations Coventions on International Armed Conflicts; United Nations Conventions On Genocide; and, United Nations Conventions On The International Sale of Goods and Services.

REUTERS.com (2019) represented, (1) The U.S. ambassador to Israel did not rule out an Israeli move to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, land that the Palestinians seek for a state; (2) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in the run-up to an April election that he plans to annex Jewish settlements in the West Bank, a move bound to trigger widespread international condemnation and complicate peace efforts. (3) The New York Times said that U.S. Ambassador David Friedman had declined to say how Washington would respond to annexation, but remarked: “We really don’t have a view until we understand how much, on what terms, why does it make sense, why is it good for Israel, why is it good for the region, why does it not create more problems than it solves.”; (4) Friedman said that, under certain circumstances, “Israel has the right to retain some, but unlikely all, of the West Bank”. It was unclear which West Bank territories Friedman meant and whether Israel’s retention would be part of a peace accord that includes land swaps - an idea floated in past negotiations - rather than a unilateral move such as annexation. (5) The Trump plan had been expected to be unveiled during an economic conference in Bahrain this month. But a snap election in Israel set for Sept. 17 is likely to delay the roll-out. (6) Responding to Friedman’s interview, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat tweeted: “Their vision is about annexation of occupied territory, a war crime under international law.”

With the REUTERS.com’s (2019) confirmed snap Israeli election set for Sept. 17, explicitly, Trump, Friedman, and Erekat fail to appreciate the premiums a democracy presents, particularly Voting and Elections; Census; and Nationally Statistically Rating Agencies. A reminder of the U.S. Constitution Article VII, The ratification of the conventions of nine states, shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between the states so ratifying the same. However, Friedman was not referring to 1791, but to an electoral cycle between June 8, 2019 and September 17, 2019. Arbitration seems to be the order of the day between US Ambassador Friedman; CIA Factbook’s Israel’s Chief of State President Reuben RIVLIN (since 27 July 2014); and Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat. Furthermore, the conflict Transnational issue of the current status of the West Bank / Palestine being subject to the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement - permanent status to be determined through further negotiation, deteriorating (CIA Factbook). Friedman is apparently circumventing or supplanting the role of UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), headquartered in Jerusalem which, monitors ceasefires; supervises armistice agreements; prevents isolated incidents from escalating; and assists other UN personnel in the region (CIA Factbook). CIA Factbook also alleges UNTSO consists of 350 peacekeepers.

Another escalating issue is the CIA Factbook does not mention Palestine as state, but refers to it as country West Bank, a territory shared by Palestinian and Israeli settlers, with nontraditional military branches defined as branches subordinate to defense ministries or the equivalent (typically ground, naval, air, and marine forces). To complicate War and National Defense and Armed Forces statutory requirements further, CIA Factbook argues, “in accordance with the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is not permitted a conventional military but maintains security and police forces; PA security personnel have operated almost exclusively in the West Bank since HAMAS seized power in the Gaza Strip in 2007”. Is Friedman the holocaust; genocide; instigator; or, plain rabblerouser?

With West Bank / Palestine circumventing and vandalizing its own name and the United States of America playing the insurrectionist and holocaust, Israel fares no better. The CIA Factbook describes Israel has having no formal constitution, but allocutes to executing some functions of a constitution through the Declaration of Establishment (1948), the Basic Laws, and the Law of Return (as amended) in 11 of the 13 Basic Laws have been amended at least once, latest in 2018.

The process of writing the constitution is not as complexed or complicated as it seems, and guidance instead of pointers can be provided. (1) Do not forget The Preambles, We the People; (2) All peoples are created equal under the law and entitled to dignities, Justice, and Equalities; (3) While Israel’s constitution is an urgent and dire attribute, a consultation of existing laws and statutes, may be productive and fruitful and should include, Geneva Conventions; LIBOR; MAASTRICT; Charter on the Fundamental Human Rights of the European Union; International Covenant On Civil and Political Rights; International Covenant On Torture, Cruelty, and Inhumane Treatments; United Nations Coventions on International Armed Conflicts; United Nations Conventions On Genocide; and, United Nations Conventions On The International Sale of Goods and Services. (4) The War Finance Corporation Act should not yet be relevant as this is a direction the United States of America’s Friedman is headed. Clearly, expediency is now an asset; and, (5) Israel shares assets with West Bank / Palestine, citizenry.

With the election clearly approaching, Voting and Elections, and Nationally Statistically Rating Agency should bring Territories and Insular Possession; Espionage; Domestic Security; National Security; Flag and Seal, Seat of Government and The States; and, Patriotic and National Observances, Ceremonies, and Organizations to the surface and be made priorities. What is the United States of America’s contribution to assume such as prominent and distinguished chair?

While Israel’s constitution is in the process of completion and execution, a reminder to US Ambassador Friedman and CIA Factbook’s governance, the United States of America has a ratified constitution. It consists of Cornell Law’s,

Amendment I [Religion, Speech, Press, Assembly, Petition (1791)] (see explanation)

Amendment II [Right to Bear Arms (1791)] (see explanation)

Amendment III [Quartering of Troops (1791)] (see explanation)

Amendment IV [Search and Seizure (1791)] (see explanation)

Amendment V [Grand Jury, Double Jeopardy, Self-Incrimination, Due Process (1791)] (see explanation)

Amendment VI [Criminal Prosecutions - Jury Trial, Right to Confront and to Counsel (1791)] (see explanation)

Amendment VII [Common Law Suits - Jury Trial (1791)] (see explanation)

Amendment VIII [Excess Bail or Fines, Cruel and Unusual Punishment (1791)] (see explanation)

Amendment IX [Non-Enumerated Rights (1791)] (see explanation)

Amendment X [Rights Reserved to States or People (1791)] (see explanation)

Amendment XI [Suits Against a State (1795)] (see explanation)

Amendment XII [Election of President and Vice-President (1804)] (see explanation)

Amendment XIII [Abolition of Slavery (1865)] (see explanation)

Amendment XIV [Privileges and Immunities, Due Process, Equal Protection, Apportionment of Representatives, Civil War Disqualification and Debt (1868)] (see explanation)

Amendment XV [Rights Not to Be Denied on Account of Race (1870)] (see explanation)

Amendment XVI [Income Tax (1913)] (see explanation)

Amendment XVII [Election of Senators (1913)] (see explanation)

Amendment XVIII [Prohibition (1919)] (see explanation)

Amendment XIX [Women's Right to Vote (1920)] (see explanation)

Amendment XX [Presidential Term and Succession (1933)] (see explanation)

Amendment XXI [Repeal of Prohibition (1933)] (see explanation)

Amendment XXII [Two Term Limit on President (1951)] (see explanation)

Amendment XXIII [Presidential Vote in D.C. (1961)] (see explanation)

Amendment XXIV [Poll Tax (1964)] (see explanation)

Amendment XXV [Presidential Succession (1967)] (see explanation)

Amendment XXVI [Right to Vote at Age 18 (1971)] (see explanation)

Amendment XXVII [Compensation of Members of Congress (1992)] (see explanation)

Seemingly without predictive modeling and big data analysis, US Ambassador Friedman is insistent on the US Constitution’s nullification. Furthermore, this interaction with the West Bank / Palestine is inappropriate. The titles, roles, and responsibilities conferred upon Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, would be most eloquently served by that of Head of Government or Chief of State, minimally. Perhaps, an application of the Right to Face The Accuser is a more articulate statement and articulation in which it is best argued that CIA Factbook could be a more efficient and dynamic multitasker in the assisting of UNTSO as peacekeeper and mediator, and define the said titles, roles, and responsibilities of Head of Government or Chief of State, minimally.

Without an analysis of each nation involving economic drivers, an accurate business intelligence assumption would be the fruition of US Constitution’s Section 8 Scope of Legislative Power’s, (1) debt must be financed; (2) credit ratings must be optimized; (3) reserves and debt covenants must be met; (4) currency and commodity exchanges must be monitored to optimize international performance; and, (5) risks must be managed to ensure maximum international competitive advantages. All three (3) nations involved, United States of America; Israel; and, West Bank / Palestine are Third Nations by international commercial comparison to the European Union. Within the European Economic Community, Article 111, Member States shall co-ordinate their commercial relations with third countries in such a way as to bring about, not later than at the expiry of the transitional period, the conditions necessary to the implementation of a common policy in the matter of external trade. A logical assumption includes improved balance of trade; reduction of deficits; and addressing Customs Duties and Tariffs.

Governance requires masterdom of circumstances. In this case, the democracy must stand to ensure the governance of the people, for the people, and by the people. Allegations of holocausts; insurrections; genocide; mass bankruptcy and manipulations of bankruptcy rules; and mass murder is not an indicator of democracy. Not every international assignation of interest results in Foreign Relations and Intercourse; Commerce and Foreign Trade; Commercial Practices; and, Commodity and Securities Exchanges, and yet still, the Judicial Administration must stand alone, alone, at arms-length, effective and efficient.

The United States of America’s Preamble - We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

A recommendation on forming a more perfect union; establish justice; and, insure domestic tranquility also has a solution. This is the US Constitution’s Section 8 Scope of Legislative Power. This includes,

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes (or be it Israel, United States of America, et al);

To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;

To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;

To establish post offices and post roads;

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;

To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

To provide and maintain a navy;

To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/is.html

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlevii

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-usa/u-s-envoy-in-interview-does-not-rule-out-israeli-annexation-in-west-bank-idUSKCN1T90MP

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kathleenseiber · 5 years

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Rohingya refugees need mental health treatment and justice

Doctors are working with an organization in Bangladesh to help deliver mental health care to Rohingya refugees from Myanmar.

Since 2017, more than 740,000 refugees—more than half of them children—have fled violence in Myanmar and settled in overcrowded camps in Bangladesh.

In one camp, a 12-year-old Rohingya boy flatly, stoically tells of how, within three hours one day in August 2017, the Myanmar military murdered 56 members of his family in their village in western Myanmar. Of his immediate family, his parents and three sisters were slain; only he and his brothers—ages 27, 25, and 10—survived.

A mother weeps as she describes how she and her 10-year-old daughter escaped to Bangladesh after their heads were sliced open with machetes, the woman was raped and their home set ablaze. Her husband and their three other children, ages 4, 2, and 1, were killed—the baby, as she held him.

This young Rohingya girl lost several family members to violence in Myanmar. She, her mother, and surviving siblings are now in a refugee camp in Bangladesh. (Credit: E. Holland Durando/WUSTL School of Medicine)

A middle-aged man with torturous memories rants unintelligibly about the soldiers who raided his village. He frantically acts out the violence he witnessed, firing a gun no one else can see, but that he can’t stop seeing.

What happened in Myanmar to these and thousands of other Rohingya refugees, and how their experiences and losses forever changed their lives, are the reasons Rupa Patel and Anne Glowinski travel to the refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh. While numerous aid organizations focus on the refugees’ basic needs, Patel and Glowinski, colleagues at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, have zeroed in on another crisis: the profound need for mental health care, and the dearth of people and means to provide it.

Health and justice

More than 900,000 Rohingya—mostly Muslim but some Hindu—live in small bamboo huts in sprawling, overcrowded camps not far from the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. More than 740,000 of them arrived in quick, desperate waves after Aug. 25, 2017, the beginning of a savage campaign that United Nations (UN) investigators say showed evidence of the gravest crimes under international law, including genocide.

Patel, an assistant professor of medicine and a public health specialist, responded to a request from a Bangladeshi nongovernmental organization (NGO) that needed help mapping out and delivering health care and other services for the unprecedented surge of refugees.

With support from the Global Health Center of the Institute for Public Health, she jumped in, advising the NGO on sanitation, medication, and other pressing issues—but quickly realized the necessity of helping address the traumatized refugees’ fragile mental health. She enlisted Glowinski, a professor of psychiatry and associate director of Washington University’s Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, to help figure out how.

Rupa Patel (left), an assistant professor of medicine, and Anne Glowinski, a professor of psychiatry, at a Rohingya refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh. (Credit: Muhammad Mostafigur Rahman)

Troubled by the horrendous accounts she was hearing, Patel also volunteered to become a forensic investigator with the organization Physicians for Human Rights, to help document crimes against the refugees. She has since begun collaborating with Leila Sadat, director of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University School of Law, to work toward finding justice for the Rohingya.

“They were trying to erase people; this is a crime against humanity,” says Patel, who has been to the camps seven times in the past year and a half. “We can help the survivors heal by listening to their stories and bringing the perpetrators to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face justice. And if you bring the perpetrators to court, you make it less likely for this to happen again.”

Accountability and reparations

The ruthless campaign against the Rohingya left an estimated 10,000 dead, and their villages looted and torched. The attackers burned villagers to death in their homes, gunned them down as they fled, or beat or stabbed them to death. They gang-raped and disfigured women, and tossed their babies into fires and rivers.

A UN Human Rights Council fact-finding panel found patterns of violations committed principally by Myanmar’s security forces. While Myanmar denies its military was behind the brutality, saying it only responded to Rohingya insurgents who had attacked police checkpoints, the UN panel wants Myanmar’s army commander and other generals to face trial for genocide and crimes against humanity. The ICC’s prosecutor is reviewing allegations to determine how to proceed.

Patel feels strongly that those who committed acts of violence against the Rohingya must be held accountable and that they must make reparations, including land and a safe return to Myanmar.

Glowinski visits with young Rohingya refugees who have gathered to see an educational play in the Bangladeshi refugee camp where they live. (Credit: Muhammad Mostafigur Rahman)

She was a member of a team of doctors that, as part of a Physicians for Human Rights investigation, examined and interviewed Rohingya Muslims who had survived a massacre in the Myanmar village of Chut Pyin. A report based on the group’s findings focuses on how the attacks unfolded, offering details consistent with reports of assaults on other Rohingya villages. The organization created the report in hopes it would help bring the aggressors to justice.

In Patel’s collaboration with Sadat—who is a professor of International Criminal Law and a special adviser on crimes against humanity to the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor—the two have discussed potential options for justice for the Rohingya, as well as what sort of evidence the ICC would require as part of an investigation.

Their discussions resulted in Patel traveling in December to the Hague, in the Netherlands, for meetings focused on working with victims in crisis situations. She traveled there again in February for training focused on investigating sexual and gender-based violence. The effort, which the Institute for International Criminal Investigations oversaw, aims to build a network of people with skills to investigate—and train others to investigate—sexual violence as a violation of international criminal law.

“It’s become very clear that it is our social responsibility to help with the justice aspect of what happened with the Rohingya,” Patel says. “A major part of healing from trauma is justice.”

Healing the trauma

The Rohingya Muslims have faced repression for decades in Myanmar, a majority Buddhist nation formerly known as Burma. Though the Rohingya have lived for generations in Myanmar, they are viewed as unwelcome immigrants. In 1982, the government stripped them of citizenship. They are not allowed to attend government schools, vote, or move about freely, among other restrictions.

Bangladesh has opened its borders to fleeing Rohingya before, but never this many, and never so many this traumatized.

“These are people who have suffered so much and for so long that their risk for mental health symptoms is really high,” explains Glowinski during a visit to the refugee camps. “They are trying to cope with severe anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and their futures are far from certain. The need for mental health services—medication and therapy��is unimaginable.”

She and Patel realize the immensity of the problem and their limitations, however, so they work with the Bangladeshi NGO that contacted Patel in 2017, when the deluge of refugees began streaming into the South Asian country. The organization, called Friends in Village Development Bangladesh (FIVDB), now relies on Patel as its senior health adviser. One of Patel’s strengths is finding existing resources and programs—for example, health- and shelter-related outreach efforts that FIVDB and other organizations previously initiated—and building onto them, rather than starting from scratch.

A young boy in a Rohingya refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh shows a toy he made out of a bamboo stick and bottle caps. Children make up more than half of the refugee camps’ residents. (Credit: E. Holland Durando/WUSTL School of Medicine)

The chief role for Glowinski—FIVDB’s mental health and education adviser—meanwhile, is training the NGO’s employees and volunteers how to screen for and respond to mental health concerns in a setting where everyone is dealing with losses, stressors and great uncertainty. No one knows what is to come for the stateless Rohingya. They likely will live in the teeming refugee camps for years, or even decades.

Knowing that and knowing the atrocities the Rohingya have suffered, mental health care is critical, Glowinski says. With so many refugees and so few resources, there will never be enough people to help address mental health in the camps. But even recognition within the Rohingya population that mental health is a key component of one’s overall health and that it shouldn’t be overlooked will go a long way.

‘We want justice’

When Glowinski and Patel visit the camps, they meet with refugees to learn how they are coping, what they need, and how they can best help them. One theme comes through repeatedly.

“They killed my people, and we will never get them back—but we want justice,” the 12-year-old boy who lost 56 members of his family told Glowinski and Patel through an interpreter during their recent visit to the camps.

The boy does not have the look of a young adolescent. His wears a serious expression, and his eyes lack joy. He’s witnessed far more tragedy than any child ever should.

“I shared this because they killed many people—our brothers and sisters,” the boy says. “We want justice.”

As she does with everyone she talks with in the camps, Glowinski thanks him for sharing his family’s story and his thoughts.

“There is not a mental health problem globally that you can correct with just services, which is why it’s very important for us to help in any way possible, with the intention of justice,” she says. “In situations like these, justice and acknowledging the need for justice is essential to mental well-being and healing.”

Patel agrees.

“The Rohingya are going to continue to be ping-ponged back and forth from one nation to another, and they will remain stateless for a while, which will eat at their psyche, their dignity, their self-worth,” Patel says.

“We’re here to support their empowerment and to help maintain their well-being and mental health and preservation of dignity. If we advocate with the right people, within our centers and among our faculty, we might be able to help achieve justice for them.”

Source: Washington University in St. Louis

The post Rohingya refugees need mental health treatment and justice appeared first on Futurity.

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learningrendezvous · 5 years

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Global Warming

AWAKE, A DREAM FROM STANDING ROCK

Directed by Josh Fox, James Spione, Myron Dewey

Record of the massive peaceful resistance led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to the Dakota Access Pipeline through their land and underneath the Missouri River.

The Dakota Access Pipeline is a controversial project that brings fracked crude oil from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota through South Dakota, Iowa and eventually to Illinois. The Standing Rock Tribe and people all over the world oppose the project because the pipeline runs under the Missouri river, a source of drinking water for over 18 million people, and pipeline leaks are commonplace. Since 2010 over 3,300 oil spills and leaks have been reported.

Moving from summer 2016, when demonstrations over the Dakota Access Pipeline's demolishing of sacred Native burial grounds began, to the current and disheartening pipeline status, AWAKE, A Dream from Standing Rock is a powerful visual poem in three parts that uncovers complex hidden truths with simplicity. The film is a collaboration between indigenous filmmakers: Director Myron Dewey and Executive Producer Doug Good Feather; and environmental Oscar-nominated filmmakers Josh Fox and James Spione.

The Water Protectors at Standing Rock captured world attention through their peaceful resistance. The film documents the story of Native-led defiance that has forever changed the fight for clean water, our environment and the future of our planet. It asks: "Are you ready to join the fight?"

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 89 minutes

DIVEST! THE CLIMATE MOVEMENT ON TOUR

Directed by Josh Fox, Steve Liptay

Chronicles 350.org's 'Do the Math' bus tour as it launched the fossil fuel divestment campaign onto the national and ultimately international stage.

As world governments struggle to meet the aspirational limit of 1.5 degrees of global warming agreed to at COP21 in Paris, a new campaign is targeting the fossil fuel industry in an effort to withdraw its social license to operate. DIVEST! Chronicles 350.org's 'Do the Math' bus tour across the United States in 2012 as it launched the fossil fuel divestment campaign onto the national and ultimately international stage.

Each night Bill McKibben and special guests laid out the findings in his landmark Rolling Stone article 'Global Warming's Terrifying New Math' and made both the moral and historical case for divestment. Three years later over 500 institutions representing over 3 trillion dollars in assets have committed to divest. The campaign is winning, but with the clock ticking down the question remains: will the victories add up enough to matter?

Featuring Naomi Klein, Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Dr. Sandra Steingraber, Josh Fox, Terry Tempest Williams, Winona LaDuke, Desmond Tutu and Ira Glass.

DVD / 2016 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adult) / 77 minutes

FOOTPRINT: POPULATION, CONSUMPTION AND SUSTAINABILITY

By Valentina Canavesio

FOOTPRINT takes a dizzying spin around the globe, witnessing population explosions, overconsumption, limited resources, and expert testimony as to what a world straining at its limits can sustain. We spend time with indigenous health workers, activists, and the ordinary people in the Philippines, Mexico, Pakistan and Kenya, women who all challenge the idea that our world can continue to support the weight of humanity's footprint on it. FOOTPRINT offers unprecedented access to the people on the ground who are all in their unique way challenging the status quo and making us rethink what's really at stake. There are surprising revelations on who are the players standing in the way of solutions and those pushing for it, without losing sight of the array of possible solutions that open up when we take the time to ask this critical question of how many of us there are in the world and what the Earth can sustain if we are to all live a dignified life.

DVD (English, Swahili, Urdu, Tagalog, Spanish, Color) / 2016 / 82 minutes

HOW TO LET GO OF THE WORLD AND LOVE ALL THE THINGS CLIMATE CAN'T CHANGE

Directed by Josh Fox

Oscar-nominated director Josh Fox contemplates our climate-change future by exploring the human qualities that global warming can't destroy.

In his new film, Oscar-nominated director Josh Fox (GASLAND) continues in his deeply personal style, investigating climate change - the greatest threat our world has ever known. Traveling to 12 countries on 6 continents, the film acknowledges that it may be too late to stop some of the worst consequences and asks, what is it that climate change can't destroy? What is so deep within us that no calamity can take it away?

Featuring, among others, Lester Brown, Elle Chou, Van Jones, Elizabeth Kolbert, Michael Mann, Bill McKibben, Tim DeChristopher, Petra Tschakert.

DVD / 2016 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 127 minutes

FEED THE GREEN: FEMINIST VOICES FOR THE EARTH

By Jane Caputi

FEED THE GREEN: FEMINIST VOICES FOR THE EARTH, by Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies professor and scholar Jane Caputi, challenges the cultural imagination surrounding the destruction of the environment and the link and influence on femicide and genocide.

No nation is immune to the effects of global warming, but the impacts of climate change are felt disproportionately by those who face racial and socioeconomic inequalities. In the US, African Americans, Hispanics and other racial and ethnic minorities are more vulnerable to climate change. Globally the effects from global warming are likely to be unequal, with the world's poorest and developing regions lacking the economic and institutional capacity to cope and adapt.

FEED THE GREEN features a variety of feminist thinkers, including ecological and social justice advocates Vandana Shiva and Andrea Smith, ecosexual activists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens; ecofeminist theorist and disability rights activist Ynestra King, poet Camille Dungy, scholars and bloggers Janell Hobson and Jill Schneiderman and grass roots activist La Loba Loca. Their voices are powerfully juxtaposed with images from popular culture, including advertising, myth, art, and the news, pointing to the ways that an environmentally destructive worldview is embedded in popular discourses, both contemporary and historical. Required viewing for Women's and Environmental Studies as well as Pop Culture.

DVD (Color) / 2015 / 35 minutes

STANDING ON SACRED GROUND: FIRE AND ICE

Directed by Christopher McLeod

From the Gamo Highlands of Ethiopia to the Andes of Peru, indigenous highland communities battle threats to their forests, farms, and faith.

From Ethiopia to Peru, indigenous customs protect biodiversity on sacred lands under pressure from religious conflicts and climate change. In the Gamo Highlands of Ethiopia, scientists confirm the benefits of traditional stewardship even as elders witness the decline of spiritual practices that have long protected trees, meadows and mountains. Tensions with evangelical Christians over a sacred meadow erupt into a riot. In the Peruvian Andes, the Q'eros, on a pilgrimage to a revered glacier, are driven from their ritual site by intolerant Catholics. Q'eros potato farmers face a more ominous foe: global warming is melting glaciers, their water source. Andes farmers, scientists and visiting Ethiopians struggle to adapt indigenous agriculture to the changing climate.

DVD / 2013 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adult) / 57 minutes

ADAPTING TO A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT: EP 2 - CLIMATE CHANGE

This special compile looks at how technology and climate change have affected farming practices over the past 5 years.

Carbon Farming (2008) While agriculture's carbon footprint will be factored in under international rules in Australia's emission trading scheme, there's growing anxiety that farmers might get lumped with all the costs and fewer benefits of a looming carbon economy.

Climate Risk (2006) At a conference in Adelaide which focused on climate variability, experts from around Australia and the world claimed climate change is inevitable. We look at what farmers are doing to deal with variations in climate from season to season.

Climate Conference (2009) In 2009, at an international climate conference in Melbourne, climate scientist warned Australian farmers that the fierce winds of climate change will fundamentally alter what they plant and where they farm.

Carbon Economy (2009) One scientist claims storing carbon in soil it is the key to farming profitably in a carbon economy. Dr Christine Jones has spent her life savings on carbon trials to prove it can be done.

Dairy Farmers (2010) Many of the country's dairy farmers are already on the front foot in the battle against greenhouse emissions.

Fighting Erosion (2010) It sounds like agricultural science fiction, a cheap accessible option for lowering methane production that can help remediate land ravaged by erosion and doesn't need much water.

Professor Tim Flannery (2007) Professor Flannery talks about climate change, water and the intriguing subject of carbon trading.

Carbon Trading USA (2009) Ten thousand American farmers are already trading agricultural carbon credits through a voluntary exchange set up in 2003. We travel to the US Midwest for this special Landline report.

DVD / 2011 / 60 minutes

ENERGY QUESTION, THE: NUCLEAR, WIND OR FOSSIL?

In March 2011 a tsunami hit a Japanese nuclear reactor and ignited a new debate on the safety of nuclear energy. This film explores the very different energy policies of two countries: Australia and Sweden.

AUSTRALIA: For decades people in Australia campaigned against the nuclear and uranium industries - but global warming has now led some environmentalists to change their minds. Coal and gas generates 90 per cent of the country's electricity, and the fossil fuel lobby virtually dictates Australia's energy policy. They've come up with a technological fix that promises emission-free power from coal - but the technology is in its infancy, and the eventual costs are unknown.

SWEDEN: For the past 20 years Sweden has generated half its electricity from nuclear reactors. Many people feel nuclear is safe - despite the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. One of the greatest fears associated with nuclear energy is how to dispose of the dangerous waste - and Sweden has an elaborate plan for this, but many other countries, including Australia, are having problems agreeing where to put it.

ALTERNATIVES: Are renewable forms of energy, such as wind, a feasible alternative source of energy? Denmark, the wind power capital of the world, gets an astonishing 20 per cent of its electricity from wind power. Says one commentator: "There are other necessary and urgent things that we should do to stop polluting the planet, and building nuclear power plants is not the answer."

DVD / 2011 / 24 minutes

ISLAND PRESIDENT, THE

Director: Jon Shenk

President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives is confronting a problem greater than any other world leader has ever faced - the survival of his country and everyone in it. Nasheed, who brought democracy to the Maldives after decades of despotic rule, now faces an even greater challenge: as one of the most low-lying countries in the world, a rise of three feet in sea level would submerge the 1200 islands of the Maldives and make them uninhabitable. A classic David and Goliath tale, The Island President captures Nasheed's battle to stop global warming - and save his country.

DVD-R / 2011 / 101 minutes

ALMIGHTY DOLLAR, THE

As the world grapples with the Global Financial Crisis, Compass asks: Should our lives be ruled by the almighty dollar? In the 21st century money has become the measure of all things, but what does money really mean to us?

Has belief in money replaced our belief in the divine? We rate it so highly that it trumps almost everything else, but is it what defines us as human beings? Or is the pursuit of money the only way to drive our society? Compass gathers some big thinkers to explore the values underpinning our abiding love of money.

DVD / 2010 / 28 minutes

BATTLE FOR THE ARCTIC, THE

By Julian Sher & Lynn Raineault

As the polar ice caps shrink, the international battle for control of the Arctic Ocean, a body of water surrounded by five countries, and its seabed, is escalating.

The stakes are enormous, with the region estimated to hold up to 50% of the Earth's remaining reserves of gas and oil, so Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States - not to mention Greenland, Japan and the entire European Union - are all working to stake their claims.

THE BATTLE FOR THE ARCTIC reveals the importance of an ice-free Northwest Passage, a shipping route between Asia and Europe 5,000 kilometers shorter than the Panama Canal route, and examines the competing claims over which nation controls these waters and the natural resources beneath the seabed. The film shows how the competing nations use ships, planes and submarines to explore and map the continental slope in order to prove their claims to the International Seabed Authority.

Through contemporary and archival footage, plus interviews with military, scientific, and diplomatic representatives from the competing nations, the film discusses the legal framework of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the respective international claims, the methods used to update the navigation charts and map the unknown Arctic Seabed, and the commercial, environmental and defense considerations involved in the region's development.

DVD (Color) / 2009 / 49 minutes

CIRCLE OF LIFE: THE GREATER YELLOWSTONE ECOSYSTEM - ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT & GLOBAL WARMING

This program looks at the Endangered Species Act; causes of species extinction; greenhouse warming and the consequences to the ecosystem; and the federal agencies that manage the ecosystem and the federal lands found within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. There is also a discussion about cattle grazing in the ecosystem and the challenges it presents to wolf and grizzly management, and considers an important wild card in greenhouse warming that is often neglected: methane.

DVD (Closed Captioned) / 2009 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adult) / 30 minutes

GLOBAL WARMING: WHAT'S TRUTH AND WHAT'S PROPAGANDA?

In basic terms, global warming refers to a warming trend of the Earth's near-surface atmosphere and its oceans. Scientific study has shown that in the distant past global warming trends occurred due to natural influences; however, today, because climate change and rising sea levels have seen dramatic changes, and because human emissions of greenhouse gases have increased significantly over the past 100 years, scientists are much more concerned about global warming than ever. With the world's population continuing to grow, the demand for energy will only increase, which will continue to put a heavy demand on the Earth's natural resources. As a result, there's no way around global warming being a political issue, and, no pun intended, the debate about global warming continues to heat up. To remain objective it is key for individuals to know what is fact or fiction, which is the main theme of this program.

This program introduces us to Stephen H. Schneider, Ph.D., who is an expert climatologist and Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change at Stanford University; he co-edited the acclaimed book, Climate Change Policy: A Survey. Here he explains how individuals can determine what's truth and what's propaganda in the scientific wars regarding the environmental status of planet Earth.

DVD / 2008 / (Senior High, College, Adult) / 30 minutes

GREEN MATTERS: WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOING ON? GLOBAL WARMING

A critical concern for the planet today is global warming and its probable consequences. And whether warming trends are occurring because of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or a cyclical change in the weather, we'll investigate this global issue from the polar Arctic to the polar Antarctic.

DVD (Closed Captioned) / 2008 / (Intermediate or above) / 23 minutes

TIPPING POINT? GLOBAL WARMING: THE EVIDENCE

What is global warming? What is the evidence for it? How will it affect the world? This film explores these questions as it follows the icebreaker Louis St Laurent on a trip to the Arctic Circle.

The Arctic Ice Sea, a plate of ice roughly the size of Europe, is disappearing.

Scientists say that by 2013, there will be no sea-ice left in the Arctic, causing a tipping point for climate change throughout the world.

Polar bears, who are at the top of the Arctic food chain, are feeling the heat. As the sea ice shrinks, so does their world.

The forests of Alaska are suffering, too. Alaska's vast pine forests rest on a layer of solid permafrost and when the frost melts the ground literally gives way. Melting permafrost could soon be a worldwide disaster.

"The Arctic will export change to the rest of the world," warns one expert, "Melting sea ice will intensify the extreme weather caused by climate change, bringing violent storms and cyclones."

Very quickly the world's food and water supplies will begin to run short.

Canadian coastguards predict that it will not be long before the legendary Northwest Passage through the Arctic will be completely ice-free. And that's fuelling a new "cold rush" as businesses eye the vast oil and mineral reserves which, until now, have been locked beneath the melting ice.

Says one commentator: "This issue will become something that people are willing to go to war over."

DVD / 2008 / 35 minutes

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES - CLIMATE CHANGE 2: BEYOND GLOBAL WARMING

The reality of climate change is now beyond any doubt. The most dramatic upheavals are occurring in the Earth's northern polar regions, where communities there are facing unprecedented changes. This timely documentary, the second of two on climate change, goes beyond the issue of global warming, exploring many of the development situations, which are already occurring in the Canadian Arctic, making it a key region of the globe. The question raised is, will this frozen land become the New World of the 21st century?

DVD / 2007 / (Junior High, Senior High, College, Adult) / 52 minutes

STRAIT THROUGH THE ICE

By Yves Billy

Today the North Pole is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. The Arctic ice cap is less than half the size it was 50 years ago. This radical climate change has thus begun to open the ice-packed Northwest Passage between Europe and Asia, and some scientists predict that the transoceanic maritime route will soon be permanently ice free during its ever-longer summers.

STRAIT THROUGH THE ICE examines the geopolitical ramifications of this development, including disputes between the five nations bordering the Arctic Ocean-the U.S., Canada, Denmark, Norway and Russia-over claims to territorial waters, the control of sea traffic, and the right to exploit the region's untapped resources of oil and other natural resources. But if this multinational race to the Arctic is not legally regulated, the region's fragile ecosystem could be devastated.

STRAIT THROUGH THE ICE illuminates the many complex issues involved in this potential conflict between ecology and geopolitics through interviews with scientists, shipping executives, local residents, navigational workers, educators, climatologists, military leaders and glaciologists.

Complemented by stunning vistas of the Arctic environment and its wildlife, the film also follows the crew of the Canadian Coast Guard research icebreaker Amundsen as it explores a new passage through the Arctic strait and collects scientific and cartographic data, in the process broaching environmental issues, global warming, the dangers of ice-floe navigation, new ship designs, and the need for new deep-sea ports.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2007 / 52 minutes

EVERYTHING'S COOL

Examines the media strategies, on both sides, that have resulted in the US government's failure to take decisive action on global warming.

EVERYTHING'S COOL is a "toxic comedy" about the most dangerous chasm ever to emerge between scientific understanding and political action- Global Warming. The good news: America finally gets global warming; the chasm is closing and the debate is over. The bad news: the United States, the country that will determine the fate of the globe, must transform its fossil fuel based economy fast, (like in a minute).

While the industry funded naysayers sing what just might be their swan song of scientific doubt and deception, a group of self-appointed global warming messengers are on a life or death quest to find the iconic image, proper language, and points of leverage that will help the public go from understanding the urgency of the problem to creating the political will necessary to push for a new energy economy. Hold on -- this is bigger than changing your light bulbs.

EVERYTHING'S COOL features a renowned cast of scientists, journalists and actiivists including Step It Up's Bill McKibben, Pulitzer Prize winner Ross Gelbspan, The Weather Channel's Dr. Heidi Cullen, the "bad boys of environmentalism" Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, and White House whistleblower Rick Piltz.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2006 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 89 minutes

GLOBAL WARMING

Explains the science and the uncertainties behind current global warming debates in Congress and the press. Program includes interviews with experts like: Richard Lindzen, MIT; Reid Bryson, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Howard Odum, University of Florida; Thomas Lovejoy, Smithsonian Institute and others.

DVD / 2005 / (Secondary, College) / 35 minutes

BAKED ALASKA

Looks at the battle over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in the context of Alaska's accelerated warming.

"The weather really changed", says Eleanor Sam, plucking feathers from a goose. "When we were children we wore thick fur. We don't wear clothes like that any more..."

Temperatures in Alaska are rising ten times faster than in the rest of the world. President George W. Bush is ignoring the warning signs about global warming; after pulling out of the Kyoto convention, he now wants to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. Native Alaskans are divided: the Inupiat Eskimos want the jobs and the money that drilling would bring, but the Gwich'in Indians fear it will destroy their caribou. Alaska is rich in oil-but for every barrel shipped south, damage is done to the delicate balance of Arctic life.

DVD (Color) / 2002 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 26 minutes

GLOBAL WARMING: HOT ENOUGH FOR YOU?

The debate over global warming is clearly explained in this kit. This program made for middle and high school classes explains the sources of greenhouse gases and how they affect the environment. It also looks at arguments about how big a problem this is and whether humans can or need to control these gases. Includes a classroom poster that graphically shows how greenhouse gases cause global warming.

DVD / 2000 / (Grades 5 or above) / 17 minutes

RISING WATERS: GLOBAL WARMING AND THE FATE OF THE PACIFIC ISLANDS

Shows that global warming is already hurting the Pacific Islands.

" We are like the warning system for the whole world to see." Penehuro Lefale, Samoa

For 7 million people living on thousands of islands scattered across the Pacific ocean, global warming is not something that looms in the distant future: it's a threat whose first effects may have already begun.

Through personal stories of Pacific Islanders, RISING WATERS: Global Warming and the Fate of the Pacific Islands puts a human face on the international climate change debate.

The majority of scientists around the world now agree that global warming is real, and key studies show that the tropical Pacific islands will be hit first and hardest by its effects. The water temperature in the tropical Pacific has risen dramatically over the last two decades, bleaching coral and stressing marine ecosystems. Sea level rise threatens to inundate islands, and extreme weather events -- such as more frequent and intense El Ninos, severe droughts, and mega hurricanes -- could wipe out ecosystems and the way of life that has existed for thousands of years.

"Way before most of these islands go under, they're going to lose their fresh water supply." Anginette Heffernan, Fiji

In the program, islanders show the viewers the physical and cultural impacts caused by global warming. Unusual high tides have swept the low-lying atolls of Micronesia, destroying crops and polluting fresh water supplies. Ancestral graveyards are being destroyed by the impacts of rogue waves and erosion never witnessed before the last decade. An increase in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes is making it difficult for island communities and ecosystems to recover.

"It's very difficult for someone living in the United States to grasp the fact that if the sea level rises just a few feet, a whole nation will disappear." Ben Graham, Republic of the Marshall Islands

But the islanders' stories have not convinced everyone in the rest of the world. Some scientists refute the studies, and business leaders and economists warn that forcing industries to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions will cause a global economic collapse.

While the policy makers and scientists argue about when and how much to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next twenty years, many Pacific Islanders are wondering if they will have a future. One thing is known: the longer emission reductions are delayed, the harder it will be to curb the effects of global warming, and prevent sea level rise from devastating the Pacific Islands.

What, then, should the islanders do? Whom should they believe? Where would they go if forced to leave their homes? RISING WATERS explores what it means to live under a cloud of scientific uncertainty, examining both human experience and expert scientific evidence. The problems facing the islanders serve as an urgent warning to the rest of the world.

Locations include Kiribati, the Samoas, Hawai'I, the atolls of Micronesia including the Marshall Islands, as well as laboratories and research centers in the continental United States. RISING WATERS weaves the portraits of the islanders with historical film and video materials, interviews with top scientists, and voiceover. 3D animation is used to illustrate key scientific concepts.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2000 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 57 minutes

SILENT SENTINELS

Was the unprecedented mass coral bleaching in 1998 proof of global warming?

Coral reefs are the jewels of the ocean. Communities of organisms as rich and diverse as any above or below the surface of the planet, they encircle the tropics like an azure necklace.

1998 was designated 'International Year of the Oceans'. It turned out to be the year that coral reefs around the world began to die. Unprecedented mass bleaching swept the world's tropical oceans, in places leaving hundreds of miles of coral coastline-the fringes of entire countries in places-severely damaged. Following a number of similar but lesser events since the 1980s, this latest bleaching event is being touted as unequivocal proof that global warming has begun, and that it will have a greater impact than many think.

This program reveals disturbing evidence that even if coral can survive continually rising temperatures, they won't be able to escape the chemical effects of high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Experiments in Arizona's Biosphere II show that as the ocean is becoming more acidic, corals will grow more slowly and with weaker skeletons.

SILENT SENTINELS examines these claims and takes a step back to take a broader look at the coral organism and how it has coped with climate change over time. How coral both defines its environment and is created by it. It is a story of a polyp and a plant-one of the most successful biological relationships in the history of the earth.

SILENT SENTINELS was filmed in three oceans, on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and remote Scott Reef in the Indian Ocean, in the Maldives, the Red Sea, the USA and the Caribbean.

"This is the most important movie on global warming to date." Rafe Pomerance, key US global warming negotiator, former Deputy Asst. Secretary of State for Environment

DVD (Color) / 1999 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 57 minutes

http://www.learningemall.com/News/Global_Warming_1901.html

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theinvinciblenoob · 6 years

Link

Facebook picked election evening in the U.S. to release a major report on its role in Myanmar, where it is widely accused of failing to prevent its social network from being used to incite genocide.

The situation is arguably more severe that alleged Russia-backed attempts to meddle with the 2016 U.S. election — people have died in Myanmar as Facebook has been used to spread hate speech against its minority Muslim population for years. Yet, Facebook pushed out this independent investigation — available in full here — just hours before the mid-terms, timing that could see its findings buried as the U.S. political news cycle takes over.

It shouldn’t. There are some serious issues here that need exploring, and not just in the context of Myanmar.

A UN Fact-Finding Mission previously concluded that social media has played a “determining role” in the crisis, with Facebook the chief actor, but there are concerns to answer for in other emerging markets where, like Myanmar, it has happily siphoned advertising money and basked in user growth without taking full responsibility for its position as the dominant internet platform.

In Myanmar’s case, Facebook admitted its failings in a blog post that announced the results of the BSR report into “a human rights impact assessment” of Facebook’s presence in Myanmar, where it is used by nearly 20 million people.

“The report concludes that, prior to this year, we weren’t doing enough to help prevent our platform from being used to foment division and incite offline violence. We agree that we can and should do more,” Facebook wrote.

That’s a positive if not obvious start but Facebook has been criticized for failing to fully invest in change in Myanmar.

Young men browse their Facebook wall on their smartphones as they sit in a street in Yangon on August 20, 2015. Facebook remains the dominant social network for US Internet users, while Twitter has failed to keep apace with rivals like Instagram and Pinterest, a study showed. AFP PHOTO / Nicolas ASFOURI (Photo credit should read NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/Getty Images)

Still no local office

The company confirmed to TechCrunch it doesn’t plan to open a local office, an obvious step that would show it is treating Myanmar seriously.

It believes a local presence would put its staff at risk. The BSR report itself concludes that there would be “both advantages and disadvantages” to a Facebook presence in Myanmar since “the existence of local Facebook staff may increase government leverage over content restrictions and data requests by allowing them to threaten seizure of Facebook’s IT equipment or data or place Facebook staff at safety risk.”

Facebook has been ok taking that risk in a market like Thailand — where it has sat back and watched users routinely jailed for Facebook activity — while its service has been weaponized by controversial Philippines’ President Duterte, and it has come under pressure in Indonesia to censor content and pay taxes, to name but three examples.

“How many companies have 20 million users in one country but don’t have a single employee, it’s absurd.” Jes Petersen — CEO of accelerator firm Phandeeyar, which is part of a civic advisory group to Facebook in Myanmar — told TechCrunch. “An office would go a long way to building relationships with stakeholders.”

Instead, Facebook is building a remote team for Myanmar — with five open vacancies on its careers page.

“Earlier this year, we established a dedicated team across product, engineering, and policy to work on issues specific to Myanmar, and said that we plan to grow our team of native Myanmar language speakers reviewing content to at least 100 by the end of 2018,” it said in its blog post.

However, that push has yet to kick in, according to the report, which pulled two notable quotes from Myanmar-based “stakeholders” interviewed as part of the research. One noted that Facebook’s Myanmar-focused content checkers “need to live and breathe Myanmar and build relationships with a wide range of organizations across Myanmar, not just the usual suspects.”

While another remarked that “at times it feels as if Facebook has outsourced the job to us, but we simply don’t have the resources to do it. We have a strong desire to be collaborative, but not to be relied upon.”

With both complaints, it is hard to see how a remote staff base can adequately address those concerns.

Asia Pacific has become a key growth market for Facebook as user numbers have stalled in the U.S. and Europe

Taking action

Without committing to an office, Facebook has taken significant steps to set an example. It banned 20 individuals and organizations — including armed forces chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and military-owned TV network Myawady — in August after finding evidence that they “committed or enabled serious human rights abuses in the country. Then in October, it booted 13 Pages and 10 accounts — with a cumulative following over one million — after a New York Times investigation found they had pedaled government propaganda.

The social network also claims that it is seeing positive change with its efforts to root out content. During Q2, it said it “proactively identified” 63 percent of content that was removed for hate speech in Myanmar, up from 52 percent and 13 percent in the previous quarters.

Petersen, however, suggested that Facebook has been selective with the information that it has shared. He said the Myanmar-based group is still waiting on a request for further clarification on a wider selection figures, while Facebook has been less communicative with the group in recent months.

Facebook credits both its hiring of staff and investment in technology for the progress on content, however it remains unclear how those two factors break down. For one thing, the company has been guilty of over-emphasizing the role its AI-based tech plays in Myanmar.

A previous claim from CEO Mark Zuckerberg that its “systems” prevent hate speech from being sent was roundly rejected by the Phandeeyar-backed group which helped Facebook to identify hate speech on Facebook and Messenger. In response to a public apology from Zuckerberg, the group expressed its frustration that Facebook does “nowhere near enough to ensure that Myanmar users are provided with the same standards of care as users in the U.S. or Europe.”

One area of tech where Facebook is hoping to make a tangible impact is the adoption of Unicode, which is yet to happen widely in the country. More than 90 percent of phones in Myanmar use Zawgyi, but Facebook is dropping support for the standard with the goal of making its safety, reporting and other resources readable — and therefore usable — to all users. It is also improving font converters for those stuck on Zawgyi, it said.

In addition, Facebook said it is working on a digital literacy pilot with Myanmar Book Aid Preservation Foundation and it has partnered with “independent publishers in Myanmar to help build capacity and resources in their online newsrooms.”

Myanmar’s next election is scheduled for 2020 so the company really does need to get its house in order. Petersen, the Phandeeyar CEO, is concerned at what may happen if progress isn’t made.

“The report does include some good recommendations but this is what everyone told them three years ago. Also, it doesn’t touch on the fact that there’s been a systematic failure on the part of Facebook to address those issues, and that hasn’t changed,” he said. “It establishes an assumption that they’ve engaged with Myanmar strongly before, but they haven’t. Only in the most cursory way.

“There’s an absence of real action from Facebook so far and a risk they’ll continue to not really care at all — and what will happen if they continue to not care?”

A Rohingya ethnic minority man looking facebook at his cell phone at a temporary makeshift camp after crossing over from Myanmar into the Bangladesh side of the border, near Cox’s Bazar’s Palangkhali, Friday, Sept. 8, 2017. Tens of thousands more people have crossed by boat and on foot into Bangladesh in the last two weeks as they flee violence in western Myanmar. (Photo by Ahmed Salahuddin/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Great responsibility

In particular, Petersen and the only members of the Myanmar-based civic group want the company to look at more localized development features for Facebook products. In the same way that every part of the social network is optimized for engagement and user interaction, so they hope it could tweak its service with the ultimate goal of improving the way it is used in Myanmar.

While Petersen’s ask is likely to fall on deaf ears, the fact remains that Facebook’s failure to be locally aware — both in terms of a team presence and localized product tweaks — are weaknesses that have caused it issues across a number of emerging markets.

Whether that be deaths following fake news on WhatsApp in India, hate speech in Sri Lanka, or the issues in Myanmar, it is high time that Facebook took responsibility and developed a truly local strategy rather than generic policies designed in Menlo Park for global usage.

Zuckerberg said earlier this year that “it would be near-sighted to focus on short-term revenue over people.” Even in a ‘poor’ last quarter, Facebook recorded a $5 billion profit and a logical extension of Zuckerberg’s ‘people-first’ thesis would be a genuine investment in markets where its presence is controversial.

Until we see that happen, Facebook isn’t fully committed to living up to its responsibility.

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

0 notes

fmservers · 6 years

Text

Facebook still isn’t taking Myanmar seriously

Facebook picked election evening in the U.S. to release a major report on its role in Myanmar, where it is widely accused of failing to prevent its social network from being used to incite genocide.

It shouldn’t. There are some serious issues here that need exploring, and not just in the context of Myanmar.

That’s a positive if not obvious start but Facebook has been criticized for failing to fully invest in change in Myanmar.

Still no local office

The company confirmed to TechCrunch it doesn’t plan to open a local office, an obvious step that would show it is treating Myanmar seriously.

Instead, Facebook is building a remote team for Myanmar — with five open vacancies on its careers page.

With both complaints, it is hard to see how a remote staff base can adequately address those concerns.

Asia Pacific has become a key growth market for Facebook as user numbers have stalled in the U.S. and Europe

Taking action

Myanmar’s next election is scheduled for 2020 so the company really does need to get its house in order. Petersen, the Phandeeyar CEO, is concerned at what may happen if progress isn’t made.

“There’s an absence of real action from Facebook so far and a risk they’ll continue to not really care at all — and what will happen if they continue to not care?”

Great responsibility

Until we see that happen, Facebook isn’t fully committed to living up to its responsibility.

Via Jon Russell https://techcrunch.com

#TechCrunch

0 notes