"Yeah, I hate America. I think it's cruel and unfair to almost everyone. If it's not the minorities who have laws being passed practically making their existence illegal,, it's the lack of proper healthcare. It's the taxes funding genocide instead of actually helping out the people paying them (and the lack of billionaires having to throw in their share). It's capitalism in general that I don't agree with. It's the country we're actively destroying after stealing it from and slaughtering the native people. It's the consistency of the old, cis, white men in power who do nothing but make our lives worse and 100% harder than it should have to be."

"OHH,, SO YOU MUST HATE ALL AMERICANS??? YOU WANT THEM ALL DEAD. YOU'RE AND AWFUL HUMAN BEING AND I HATE YOU. YOU OBVIOUSLY AUTOMATICALLY BLAME THE COLLECTIVE PEOPLE FOR THE CRIMES OF THEIR GOVERNMENT, RIGHT??"

This is how Zionists sound.

I've been following you for a while and I'm definitely pro Palestine. I'm just wondering if you're from there or why you're such an advocate? I am too. I've been to one rally. But I could do better.

No, I'm from europe.

They always told us to think independently & not look away and just go along with everyone else if something like the Nazis etc. happens again in our lifetime, and we dissected in class the disastrous wars of the past & how talking points, rhetoric & nationalism was used to justify atrocities & fool people into throwing away their lives.

But now it's like all the authorities & media went isane at once & are like like "oops, we didn't mean it, shut up & accept this rationalization we feed you". It's the same nonsense. It just wears a 21st century cancel culture disguise of smearing peace activists as "offensive".

I've been against many other wars, religious extremists & oppressive rauthoritarian governments, but they want to sell us that this one is somehow different & forbidden to complain about even though it does all the same things, if not worse? Even before the war the treatment of ppl, and particularly in the westbank & gaza, was atrocious, and the present situation is just in terms of the rate of destruction, the worst destruction since WWII or maybe Vietnam.

Though, to be fair, i just happen to have some time on my hands RN because I'm between jobs and my obsession brain has currently glued itself to the topic. I'm not really a hero or an advocate or anything like those ppl actually losing jobs over this.

But the ppl who are supposed to be speaking for us in media & politics are pretending like everyone here agrees with Israel and those who don't are considered scum. There were dystopian-ass videos interspersed with the adds at a bus station I frequent, calling for 'solidarity with Israel' - solidarity with what? Colonialism? Orientalism? Baby killing? (Then of course the same politicians don't wanna give back stolen art or pay reparations to Namibia, and they also don't care too much about ppl drowning in the mediterranian so...)

One of the guys involved in that one assassination attempt on Hitler said something like "God said he would spare Sodom & Gomorrha if there were even 10 just people there, so we will show that there are at least 10 just people left in Germany" - now I'm not a believer so I wouldn't have put it in those terms, but it really made an impression on me cause it captures the total darkness they were in.

Of course I'mnot anything like those ppl who risked & lost their lives in the process and I'm very aware that I don't have much reach or influence, no money to give for example, and that this is totally the result of me not prioritizing such things. Never though I'd need them.

But I can do what I can to use what limited influence I do have, I guess.

I wrote out some more responses to that post while I was at work, but didn't post them because I didn't have the time to go over them (not that anyone on that thread shows the same level of courtesy anyhow but whatever), but I've since realized my mistake. I should've just stopped responding when I initially said I was going to.

I've disagreed with Communists in the past and while I might've disagreed with them, I typically didn't find them insane. Like don't get me wrong, some Commies can take things pretty far, but generally-speaking it usually comes down to a simple "agree to disagree" ending.

With these clowns however, I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that they act like they're in a cult. They preemptively dismiss evidence as irrelevant before I even thought to show them any. Any criticism I levied against them, they tried to gaslight me into thinking they were actually criticisms of myself. They deny, disavow, and disfellowship any involvement their cult might've had in any past, present, or future tragedies, going so far as to pretend like it wasn't them at all that caused them.

They're like reverse-Mormons in that sense. You know how Mormons will like baptise famous people postmortem and then act like they were Mormon all along? These guys will disavow any tragedy caused by Communism and act like Communism never actually had anything to do with it.

It'd be one thing if I just simply disagreed with them, but it's another thing entirely when they're actually just wrong, logically-speaking. Like we can argue the semantics of Communism and whether it'll work or not until we're both blue in the face. I see the purely hypothetical yet completely impractical appeal of Communism. While I might know that it'll never work in reality, they don't know that yet, and I don't think they're wrong for still having fanciful dreams about it.

But to suggest that being Jewish makes you a Communist is kind of where I draw the line. There's just no logic in it, and it's kind of insensitive to Jewish people who died under Communism. Plus the whole obsession with Hitler being right thing was kind of setting off alarm bells. Like I typically like to give the benefit of the doubt to the ignorant, something which I've had to do a LOT recently with the pro-Palestine crowd, but when you keep repeating the same rhetoric over and over again, despite being told numerous times that it's wrong...I begin to stop doubting it anymore.

Do I think they're purposefully antisemitic? No, I can tell from their deranged fanaticism that while their mind might be somewhere else entirely, their heart is at least with Jewish people. Do I maybe wish they'd deprogram themselves before spouting off what is easily interpreted as antisemitic nonsense? Yeah, a bit.

All in all, I'm washing my hands of that crowd. Even though I wasn't the one agreeing with him, it felt weird to have to type "Hitler was right" in any context multiple times.

P.S. If any of them read this and feel like sending me more anon fanmail, feel free, but I'll either be responding to it privately or not at all. I've subjected my followers to y'all enough I think.

Biden Campaign Makes Deranged Graphic About Trump and Hitler

Say it with me, everyone: Do not make tortured comparisons of modern politicians to Hitler. That's a rule that, when followed, makes the national discourse slightly less insane. Of course, it's never followed, at least when talking about far-left attacks on Republicans, and no one draws more ire on that front than Donald Trump. 

(Also see: David Frum Wets Himself Over a Potential Trump Second Term)

The "Biden-Harris HQ" account put out a vile graphic that sought to compare three quotes by Trump to three "quotes" by Hitler. I put quotes in parentheses because there's a lot of paraphrasing going on. 

I'm not going to pretend that Trump wasn't stupid for saying some of those things. What is he doing using the term "vermin" in 2023 in a political context given how easy it is for Democrats to spin it? And the "blood of our country" line was tailormade for a Joe Biden ad next summer once the deluge begins.

With that said, saying inartful things doesn't make someone Hitler, and the massaging going on in that graphic is ridiculous. A campaign that can't use a direct quote to make its point but instead relies on editorializing and taking snippets out of context is a campaign that should keep its mouth shut. 

Take the first quote as a perfect example. Where does Trump mention Jews? He doesn't because he obviously was not talking about Jews. Here's his actual quote. 

"We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country," he told a New Hampshire crowd.

Anyone who reads that quote and thinks he's talking about Jews is simply being laughably dishonest. Fault him for whatever else, but Trump is not antisemitic. On the contrary, he was one of the most pro-Jewish presidents in history.

Moving on, "poisoning the blood of our country" was a politically dumb thing to say, but again, when you look at Trump's actual quote, the context doesn't justify a comparison to Hitler.

“They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump told the crowd at a rally in New Hampshire. “That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”

Now, maybe someone will read the above statement and still find it objectionable for other reasons, but he's not talking about an "inferior race" poisoning the literal bloodline of the country. He says exactly what he means in the very next sentence, which is that mass illegal immigration is bringing in crime. 

The last comparison is the dumbest, though. Trump's statement about the weaponization of the U.S. government for political means being more of an issue than North Korea is not only mundane, but it's obviously correct. Claiming that saying that makes him Hitler is like claiming that because Hitler drank water, everyone who drinks water is a genocidal maniac bent on world domination. It's dumb, pre-school-level logic. 

Frankly, for whatever complaints I could levy about Trump's sometimes self-destructive use of language, I'm more sick of Democrats being so lazy that they stoop to vile attacks like this. Trump is not Hitler, and neither is any other Republican. Making that comparison is disrespectful to the tens of millions of people murdered by the German dictator. Only Hitler is Hitler. It's as simple as that. 

Kanye West Dropped by CAA

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Cctl 24, 2022.--Billionaire wrapper and music producer Kanye West was dropped by Creative Artists Agency [CAA] today for making anti-Semitic remarks.  West finds himself in the headlines largely for his failed marriage to Kim Kardashian, complaining in court records that he suffers from bipolar disorder, a condition, when not treated, results in disruptive behavior.  Kanye’s recent anit-Semitic tirade indicates that he’s either not taking his meds or his condition is worsening.  Kanye’s anti-Semitic remarks are fashionable in the Black community where the Rev. Louis Farrakhan, 89, once head of the Nation of Islam, frequently used anti-Semitic slurs in his sermons, pandering to Black audiences that see Jews as slave masters, particularly in Hollywood and the banking industry.  Unlike Farrakhan, Kanye did not grow up in the ubiquitous pro-Nazi era where anti-Semitic slurs were commonplace in just about everywhere.  

Fired by CAA and dropped by sponsors Adidas, Balenciaga, JP Morgan Chase and Gap, Kanye doesn’t have a clue how his bipolar disorder affects his daily life.  Anit-Semitism is no longer fashionable except in the most extreme circles, mainly fringe right-wing militia groups still showing allegaiance to once Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.  No one did more damage to European Jews that Hitler who, during WW II, came up with the Final Solution to round up and exterminate 6 million Jews before allied powers crushed the Nazi regime in 1945.  Hitler wrote in famous tome “Mein Kamph” while imprisoned by the Weimer Republic in the early 1920s, where books like “The Learned Elders of Zion,” written in 1902 by some Russian colonel who said the Jews were controlling the world.  Hitler and auto industrialist Henry Ford had something in common, both liked plagiarizing anti-Semitic texts.

So the origins of anti-Semitism linger today with Kanye’s more recent tirades.  It’s tempting for angry people to stereotype and blame different groups for the ills of society.  Unlike Kanye, the Black community lives in U.S. inner cities, often with high levels of unemployment and poverty.  Why Blacks listen to Farrakhan or West is anyone’s guess but looking for scapegoats is the easiest thing to do.  While it’s not known to Blacks that many Jews, like everyone else, live in a spectrum of socioeconomic success, some at the bottom and other at the top, berating Jews is the macho thing to do with Blacks who like to blame Jews for Black failures.  CEO of Endeavor Agency Ari Emmanuel, cut ties with Kanye after he tweeted he wanted to go “death con 3” against Jews.  Kanye was questioned by CNN’s Piers Morgan about his remarks, trying to gain clarity and an apology.

Morgan tried to get the mentally challenged West to sound lucid had a difficult time getting him to admit his offensive language.  “I will say I’m sorry for the people that I hurt with Death Con—the confusion that I causes,” Kanye told Morgan.  Kanye was banned from Twitter and Instagram for his remarks   Kanye said he was going “death con 1 on the JEWISH PEOPLE,” referring to the military condition “DEAFCON.”  Kanye’s apology seemed insincere, designed to save his sponsors.  “I feel like I caused hurt and confusion.  And I’m sorry for the families of the people that had nothing to do with the trauma that I have been through, and that I used my platform, where you say hurt people and I was hurt,” Kanye said.  Kanye gets confused over his own trauma and that of the Black community, to lash out at Jews, a favorite target of Farrakhan and other Black preachers.

Kanye was interviewed by Fox New Tucker Carlson, where its didn’t take long for the 47-year-old rapper to go off the rails.  “I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,” Kanye said. “The funny thing is I actually can be anti-Semitic because black people are actually Jew also.  You guys have toyed with me and try to blackball anyone whoever opposes your agenda,” Kanye told Tucker, showing no real apology but exposing his twisted logic. Going after Jews wins Kanye plaudits from white supremacist groups but doesn’t fly in Hollywood where so many Jewish artists, producers and directors earn their living.  Ari Emmanuel, brother of Chicago Mayor Rom Emmanuel, former strategist to President Bill Clinton, wasted no time denouncing West.  Given the sensitivity to the Holocaust and random acts of anti-Semitism around the country, Kanye was condemned quickly.

Paying a heavy price for his mental illness, Kanye doesn’t find much sympathy for someone that suffers from bipolar disorder.  “I gotta let go of that and free myself of the trauma and say, ‘look, I’m gonna give it all up to God right now,’” Kanye told Tucker Carlson.  “God forbid one comment could cause people to feel any of the pain that my people have went through the years,” Kanye responded to Piers Morgan.  “Do you now regret saying Death Con 3 on Jewish people,” Morgan asked Kanye.  “ Are you sorry you said that?” to which Kanye responded, “No, absolutely not,” Kanye told Morgan.  When it comes to a high-file celebrity spewing anti-Semitic hate, it shows how far Hollywood needs to go to reverse old prejudice and bigotry.  Kanye vented against Jews because it’s more acceptable in the Black community, having evolved from Farrakhan to evangelical Black Churches.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.                          

notable moments from The Lost Hier Job

leverage 2.09

(Sophie opens her curtains and looks out the window. A knock comes to the door and she goes to look through the peep hole, then immediately opens the door)

Sophie: Who's dead?

Nate: No, no. Everybody's okay. Can I...

Sophie: Huh?

Nate: I-I...

(Sophie lets Nate into the room)

Sophie: Oh. Y-You scared the life out of me.

HER FIRST FEAR IS THAT SOMEONE DIED OR GOT HURT

SOPHIE IS THEIR MOM FIRST BEFORE EVERYTHING

- - - - -

Nate: Oh, yeah. No, we're doing fine. I mean, yeah. Everything's, I mean, it kind of went from a quintet to what we are now, a quartet. I mean, it's like, we still know how to play. We sound good, you know. But something is, uh, sounding a little bit, uh, you know, wrong.

Sophie: Huh. Well, I hope that I’m, I really hope I’m not the violist because when I was little, my mum made me have lessons, and I was rubbish. I was completely rubbish. I can't play a note. Not a single note

- - - - -

Tara: Either I am in, or Ruth is out. It's your choice. (walks away)

Nate: They are gonna hate this.

[Leverage HQ]

Eliot: I hate this.

Hardison: You do not let Vicki Vale into the Batcave ever.

Nate: First, this is my home, not a cave. And, second, we're not gonna allow her up here.

Parker: Sophie would never approve. Call her.

Nate: We can't just keep calling Sophie.

Hardison: Oh, okay. I see how it is. We can't call her, but you can go off and have a little secret meeting with her.

Nate: Secret meeting? What are you talking about? I was in Harrisburg, researching a client.

Hardison: Wow, ‘cause you know what? (hits remote and pulls information up on monitor) Your passport got dinged going through Heathrow airport yesterday. Heathrow's in London. I guess you couldn't get a direct flight over to Harrisburg.

Eliot: Well, it's hard when you do the same-day booking.

Hardison: Yeah, 'cause you had to go with the -- Did you realize that London is the home of the most surveillance cameras in the world?

Parker: Really?

Hardison: Who feels like playing "where's Waldo"?

Parker: Oh. Yeah. (raises hand)

Hardison: I do. (hits remote to show video on monitors) Oh. There's Waldo right there. Waldo Ford. Oh, oh. Is that big Ben and you? Wow. You got twins and triplets everywhere. And looky there. 11:18 am standing outside of Sophie’s apartment, Looking quite pensive.

Parker: Aww. He's rehearsing what he's gonna say. I've seen him do that.

Nate: All right, all right, all right, guys. Okay. Yeah. You caught me. I went to London. Yeah. I saw Sophie. And she's not coming back.

Parker: Not now or not ever?

Nate: I don't know. And I don't, I don't think she knows either. So, uh, that's that. Could you please take the...

(Hardison darkens the monitors)

parker wearing that bright yellow flannel? adorable

parker and eliot look DELIGHTED as hardison fucks with nate it’s great

- - - - -

Hardison: Tara Carlisle. She checks out. Civil-Rights lawyer, does a lot of pro bono work. Collects lost causes like kittens.

Eliot: Well, she's honest.

Hardison: Crusader. Incorruptible.

(Tara pulls up and gets out of her car)

Hardison: And one sexy librarian

I saw a headcanon that Tara did actually do this on the side for a living, because, if you think about it, could she really fake a file THAT GOOD to fool hardison, the best hacker in the world

- - - - -

we love to see parker in the vents

- - - - -

EVEN IN P R I S O N HARDISON GETS HIS ORANGE SODA

- - - - -

(Frank slides the back from a photo to find a Nazi flag and a photo of Hitler. He carries it over to where Orson is standing between Hardison and Eliot)

Hardison: My god, he is Aryan nation

LMFAO

- - - - -

(Blanchard enters room reading a file. He looks up to see Nate on a ladder tearing pages from a law book and clears his throat. Nate looks over at him)

can someone PLEASE make a compilation of nate’s characters being obnoxious and chaotic pretty please

- - - - -

parker’s sMOOTH exit from the vents into a flip I am in LOVE with her

- - - - -

Hardison: I tied the adoption-Reference number to the medical records of one of Parker's aliases. Social security, taxes, long record of drug offenses. Anybody short of the CIA is gonna believe that is Kimball’s daughter.

he’s so good at this I love it

- - - - -

(hiding behind a broken crate, Lind points a gun at Parker and Hardison. Eliot sees this as he approaches)

Eliot: Nate!

(Lind fires, shattering the passenger’s side window. Eliot runs forward, bends to pick up a rock, and throws it at Lind, hitting him in the head. He fires again, shooting out the tire as Nate runs around the car. Lind swings the gun at Eliot, who catches it. Lind punches Eliot in the stomach and Eliot hits Lind in the face with the gun. Eliot throws the gun down as Lind stumbles back for more)

Eliot: Come on!

(Lind swings, Eliot ducks and hits Lind in the ribs, then pushes him away. Lind turns around and swings but Eliot blocks his punches, grabbing him and throwing him to the ground. Lind gets up and looks at the gun. Eliot picks up the gun)

Eliot: You want this?

(Lind holds up his hands and moves away, running. Nate and Parker move out from behind the car. Eliot unloads the gun and tosses it aside)

when eliot sees the sniper and is terrified? when he manages to pick up a rock and nail the sniper in the face with it while running? his FURY when he’s fighting him? he’ll do anything to protect his family

- - - - -

(Eliot and Parker walk past a sunglasses vendor. Eliot bumps a table for a distraction and Parker grabs two pairs of sunglasses, handing one to Eliot)

Eliot: Are you kidding me? (puts on the glasses) Look at this.

THEYRE SO IN SYNC I LOVE IT

also married complaining about the style of the sunglasses? we love to see it

- - - - -

(Eliot and Parker run through a hallway)

Parker: We're cut off. We're gonna have to get rough.

Eliot: I ain't hitting cops.

(a noise from behind has them looking back)

Parker: I look forward to seeing you explain that

remember that one commentary with john rogers where he said in this scene beth changed her lines/energy to more of a kinky vibe that made the scene that much better? because I do and boy was this scene charged with something interesting

- - - - -

Eliot: All right. Be cool.

(Eliot unloads the gun and catches the bullet)

Eliot: All right. Nothing's gonna happen to anybody. Just settle down.

(The officer raises a stun gun that Eliot knocks out of his hand and Parker catches)

Eliot: You’re not using a stun gun either

(Eliot pushes the officer back and Parker points the stun gun at the officer)

Eliot: Hold on. Stop. Chill. All right? Nobody's gonna get hurt.

(another officer steps out behind Parker, his gun raised)

Officer: Drop it!

(Parker points the stun gun under her arm and hits the officer, knocking him down)

Eliot (to Parker): Seriously? What are you doin’?

Parker: Mmm.

Eliot (to officer): Listen, it's probably best if you pretend that you never saw us. Okay?

(Eliot and Parker move down the hall past the fallen officer. Parker triggers the stun gun again)

Eliot: Stop

parker loves tasing people and eliot is exhausted

- - - - -

Nate: Hey, Parker, forget about the hearing. I need you to do something else.

(Parker pulls files from the safe in Blanchard’s office, proudly kissing it)

SHES BABY YOUR HONOR

- - - - -

Blanchard: What the hell is this? Hey, you don't understand!

(the officers drag Blanchard to the exit)

Blanchard: These people are thieves! I don’t even think that one’s a lawyer!

someone also make a compilation of their marks swearing they’re not who they say they are. I just think it’s funny and chaotic

- - - - -

parker hardison and eliot all walk in together (TOGETHER)

also both parker and eliot are wearing flannel

- - - - -

Parker: I bet you're not even a lawyer.

Tara: Oh. Sophie was right. You are adorable.

Parker: Excuse me?

(Eliot, Parker and Hardison talk angrily at her for several moments as Nate reads what’s in the envelope)

some highlights that I was able to hear from all of them talking over each other:

- Eliot: Don’t comment and say that kinda stuff. You don’t know us at all.

- Hardison: Woah, you’re overstepping here

- Parker: You don’t get to call me adorable. You don’t get to say that.

basically the boys jump to her defense and I love it

also SOPHIE CANONICALLY TOLD TARA PARKER WAS ADORABLE THATS SO SWEET

- - - - -

Hardison: Whoa, whoa, hold up. Mnh-Mnh. Hold up, hold up. What is this?

Tara: Oh, it’s a bill, for my cut of the inheritance. Hey, I’m not a candy striper. This is my job.

(Eliot, Hardison and Parker look at Nate, who nods)

Tara: There. See? We're getting paid already. It's gonna be fun.

for the character writing meme- steve!

!!!! i love. writing steve so much you don't even know

the difference between steve and captain america, between the actual person and who people think he is. it's an interesting contrast that i think really eats away at him, because he's not the person people think he is but he's trying to be. captain america, to steve, is both a nightmare and a really aspirational mantle

i won't back down by johnny cash. it's just. you can stand me up at the gates of hell/but i won't back down and well i know what's right/i got just one life/in a world that keeps on pushing me around/but i stand my ground

steve is grew up the poor son of immigrants and i feel like. it isn't addressed enough? sometimes you'll get fics about how he was sick all the time or poking fun at how weird modern views are to him, but his childhood fundamentally changed his worldview (definitely specifically re: foreign policy and england and i'm going to cut myself off there bc could write an essay abt this) and that really needs to be examined. like. the wealth disparity between tony and steve is especially striking to me and i'll write abt it sometime

captain america was created by two jewish men to punch hitler at a time when america generally was not pro hitler punching and was in fact full of actual literal nazis and they made him look like hitler's ideal aryan and still be violently against anti semitism, racism, and fascism and that MEANS something goddammit

"listen to me - all of you out there! you were told by this man - your hero - that america is the greatest country in the world! he told you that americans were the greatest people - that america could be refined like silver, could have the impurities hammered out of it, and shine more brightly! he went on about how precious america was - how you needed to make sure it remained great! and he told you anything was justified to preserve that great treasure, that pearl of great price that is america! well, i say america is nothing! without its ideals - its commitment to the freedom of all men, america is a piece of trash! a nation is nothing! a flag is a piece of cloth! i fought adolf hitler not because america was great, but because it was fragile! i knew that liberty could be snuffed out here as in nazi germany! as people, we were no different than them! when i returned, i saw that you nearly did turn america into nothing! and the only reason you're not less than nothing - is that it's still possible for you to bring freedom back to america!"

pick a character i’ve written and i will explain the top ~three to five ideas/concepts/etc i keep in mind while writing that character that i believe are essential to accurately depicting them.

Nazi-Hating, Bisexual King, and German actor, Conrad Veidt (1893-1943) whose performances inspired the creation of Edward Scissorhands, Jafar from Aladdin, and The Joker, was a gem in real life. Be like Connie. Do it for him.

Here’s some information on how great he was:

https://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/post/41163268378/ten-reasons-why-you-should-love-conrad-veidt

“In honour of Conrad Veidt’s 120th birthday, let us present you with a list of reasons why you should love him. Because, let’s face it, he kicked more arse than you ever will. While wearing your great-grandmother’s dress.

1. He was an awesome actor who could hypnotise the screen in both the silents and the sounds. He could do amazing things with his body language, his eyes and his voice and move like an actual cat. Oh, and he was Method before it became popular. To the point where his friends and colleagues would get worried because his entire body language and way of speaking would change. He genuinely believed he was possessed by some greater spirit when he was acting. And it shows. 2. He was an amazing human being—everybody loved working with him because he was incredibly polite and jovial and charming, but he was even more amazing off the screen. Let us tell you why.

3. This guy starred in the first gay rights movie ever and played the first explicitly-referred-to-as-gay character on screen, and the first sympathetic gay character on screen. In a movie that said it was okay to be gay and that some people were just born that way. In 1919. The makers of the film and Connie himself were flooded with death threats from the far right. They would arrange riots in theatres and release gas and rabid rodents into the aisles. But the makers of the film stood their ground. Later, the Nazis tried to burn all copies of the film but over half of it still survives and a reconstruction can be seen here.

 4. Oh yeah, and this guy also starred in an early pro-choice film, had a high opinion on women (with some progressive views for his time, when the right to vote and to wear trousers were still seen as new and scandalous things) and was a fierce campaigner for human rights and a vehement anti-Nazi for his entire life. Speaking of which… 

 5. In the Thirties, he starred in two British movies sympathetic to the plight of the Jews. While still a German citizen. Hitler sent him personal hate mail, Goebbels tried to persuade him into doing propaganda films for the Nazis instead and he told them to go stuff themselves. This was after some of his Jewish and gay friends had already been killed by the Nazis, too, so he knew exactly the sort of danger he was in. Oh, and they imprisoned him and tortured him with sleep deprivation and put him on the Gestapo hitlist. Guess what? He didn’t budge. He never raised his hand in the Heil Hitler salute, once. And when, finally, the British authorities helped him escape to England, he never went back to Germany again. Also? Despite being Protestant, he identified himself as Jewish on official forms as a form of protest. In. Nazi. Germany. I’m sorry, but Conrad Veidt’s balls»»»>yours. 

 6. He spent a huge amount of money supporting the British war effort and personally smuggled people out of the hands of the Nazis. Including driving his third wife’s Jewish parents out to Switzerland in his car under the cover of night after much bribery and passport shenanigans. In the Forties, he participated in a fund helping fellow Europeans escape Nazis and settle in the UK and the US. One of the people he helped was his Casablanca co-star, Paul Henreid. By the time Henreid had reached the UK, the war was in full swing and he was treated as an enemy alien. Connie (who had managed to acquire British citizenship just before war broke out) personally rang the British authorities and vouched for him until Henreid could finally cross the Atlantic to safety (with some monetary assistance from Connie himself). So, kids, when you watch Major Strasser menacing Laszlo in Casablanca, remember this guy actually helped him escape the Nazis in real life. 

 7. While living in London in the late Thirties, he and his wife would regularly shelter war children at their house. When the air raid sirens came on, he’d rather run back home to be with the kids rather than stay safe at the studio’s bomb shelter. No, really. And even when he’d left for Hollywood in the 40s, he would do stuff like this for the poor kids of London huddled in bomb shelters. You might need tissues. 

 8. He was made of actual sex on and off the screen. He possessed an amazing, androgynous sexual aura that would take no prisoners. He could be feminine without being effeminate, seductive and possessing and powerful without being gruff or macho, incredibly catlike and soft without being weak. Despite being skinny as hell and 6’3” tall, he was as graceful as a dancer, gliding around so smoothly it was uncanny, slightly unnatural (when Disney were making Aladdin, they deliberately based the cartoon Jafar on his performance in The Thief of Bagdad and told the animators to make him glide like Connie did. Yeah, that’s right, Disney villains were based on him. No wonder. No, really, look at that). From the Thirties onwards, he was repeatedly described as pantherlike. He had a sensuous, cruel mouth (always a little more red and open and wet than it should have been in order to be decent), large, pale blue piercing eyes (oh yeah, he was well-read in hypnotism and occultism, so he is actually hypnotising and possessing you for real), finely manicured fingernails (sometimes filed into sharp points) and a voice to melt knickers off anyone within a five-mile radius. When he smoked, it looked like he was giving oral sex to a woman and a man at the same time. Watch A Woman’s Face, The Thief of Bagdad and Dark Journey for good examples of this amazing man’s slinking, slithering, purring charm. 

 9. Oh yeah, speaking of the off-screen sex… Merle Oberon said “he would have sex with a butterfly”, Anita Loos quipped “the prettiest girl on the [Berlin] street was Conrad Veidt” and he was a major gay icon in 1920s Germany thanks to the aforementioned gay rights movie and his androgynous looks and style. Let us remember this guy spent his youth in Weimar Berlin and its cabarets, a modern Babylon where “anything goes” was an understatement. Drugs, wild parties and sexual diversions of every sort imaginable were the done thing in those days. You were considered unfashionable if you didn’t dress in drag and experiment with bisexuality. In that, he was hardly different from his peers (like, for example, his good friend Marlene Dietrich). But then again… there were people who experimented and there were people for whom it was all a phase, but according to numerous sources, he was a natural, voracious bisexual and so in love with everything feminine he genuinely loved to dress as a lady. And apparently he would fall in love all the time, so the Twenties were… busy years for him, especially when his second marriage had started to fall apart. Just don’t ask what he did to Olivier. And according to a couple of sources, Gary Cooper. Oh, and his first wife left him after she found him wearing her dress (her loss). Most of the time, his friends would describe him as a ladies’ man during the day, and going after the men as well after he’d had a few drinks in the evening. He seems to have calmed down a lot in the Thirties after he found genuine happiness with his third wife and escaped the Nazis to the UK, but apparently he was still an incorrigible flirt with both sexes until the end of his life. If you think he looks seductive and deliciously perverse on screen, that’s all real and then some. So, yep, this was a guy who was a genuine saint and an amazing human being and a naughty, naughty man at the same time. How often do you hear of both sides coexisting in the same person? 

 10. He was, basically, the last lingering sigh of Romanticism as a genuine cultural movement. On screen, he played the Gothic, Byronic hero to the hilt (The Student of Prague being one of the greatest examples of the type). In the silents, he played degenerate dandies, tortured painters and pianists and violinists, cruel yet seductive tyrants, men haunted by their doppelgängers, possessed creatures wanting to crawl out of their own bodies, sleepwalking and twitching and writhing on the screen, turning everything into a dark, exquisite ballet. In the sound films, he turned that demonic energy outwards and would pin people down with his gaze as he cursed them, would undress women with a flick of his pitch-black lashes, would curl his long fingers around their arms in a sadomasochistic, erotic stranglehold. He never completely lost his accent, but he compensated for it with pitch-perfect softness and tone, speaking very slowly and quietly when everybody else would speak loud and fast. His voice in The Thief of Bagdad was compared to poisoned honey. The MGM bosses were surprised at the mountains of fanmail he received from women in the Forties, even if they had never given him a starring role, only supporting, villainous ones. And the ladies wanted this villain, oh yes. A woman moviegoer (presumably after seeing his performance in A Woman’s Face) described him thus: “Conrad Veidt has wicked eyes, a sinister mouth, strange hands and a half-man/half- woman quality about him. His walk is frightening. There is something not quite normal about him. And yet, he was totally fascinating, charming and appealing to me at the same time!”

So, there you have it. There are many more reasons to love him, but it would take forever to try and list all of them. I suggest you watch his movies and read up on him yourself, because he deserves to live forever.”

I Just Need to Get This Out (Political Content Warning)

Now more than ever, I am going to be avoiding politics on Tumblr.  This is, with any luck, the last political post I will make on my blogs.  It is meant to serve as an explanation of why I’m going to be a lot less tolerant of political content on roleplaying blogs.  TL;DR, I don’t fit in on the right or left and I’m fucking tired of seeing politics everywhere.  I deal with it at work, and I deal with it at home.  I don’t want to deal with it here.  I’m going to start unfollowing people when I see it.  That doesn’t mean our friendship is over, it doesn’t mean we can’t RP.  But I’m so tired of it all. If you want the long explanation, keep reading.

From about middleschool to shortly before the election of the current president I considered myself an ardent conservative.  Listing out a lot of my positions, this might have seemed not to be the case: I’m not religious (try as I might to be so).  I’m pro-LGTBQ+.  I’ve always been a proud member of what Rush Limbaugh used to call the Wetland Gestapo. I think anthropogenic climate change is a real thing.  I want pot legalized.  I think military interventionism is a mistake in all but the rarest situations (granted this is a more recent position).  I think the welfare state is necessary and in places ought to be expanded.  I am enthusiastic about multiculturalism. On the other hand, I am pro-religion despite not being religious, and feel religious conservatives shouldn’t be compelled to violate their own religious beliefs as long as it’s not hurting anyone (and my definition of ‘not hurting anyone’ seems to be a bit broader than most progressives).  While I’m not anti-union, I think that unions can be corrupt as any other institution, particularly at a national level, and that the Left is too inclined to overlook that.  I’m solidly pro Second Amendment.  I consider illegal immigration a bad thing (mostly because it’s an excuse to exploit the poor and undocumented).  I think “states’ rights” is not just a dogwhistle term for racists, but something that really does need to be taken into account given the way the American republic works. I could have expanded the above to paragraphs, but they’re already ungainly and, I’m sure, a pain to read through.  Where am I going with all this?  Well, first I wanted to establish that I COULD consider myself “an ardent conservative” while holding a lot of varied opinions (like literally everyone on the planet has).  Secondly, I want to establish that I hold all of the above views, and have for some time, while bearing a specific label—right winger.  I’ve ended up rejecting that label, and rejecting what for want of a better term I’ll call “the conservative movement”, but my positions haven’t changed.  And, most importantly, stopping thinking of myself as a conservative DOES NOT mean I’ve come to think of myself as a progressive. Let me try to tell a story. I’m decent at stories. Metamun in middle school and high school was a lonely creature.  He was sick a lot, and pretty socially awkward, although he could make up for it by being funny and knowing some trivia.  But he mostly kept to himself.  Since being on the bus made him sick (it was at a time of life when people experimented with scents that screwed him up at close quarters) usually his dad picked him up after school.  That’s where Metamun picked up his politics, those drives home with dad.  Dad listened to a lot of Rush Limbaugh, and so Metamun did too.  Metamun was already sort of inclined to conservatism—he had a pessimistic view of the world, distrusting the US government and feeling that people ought to be able to protect themselves (i.e. own guns).  Rush did not convert Metamun, but he did affirm Metamun.  He didn’t usually say anything that seemed greatly outrageous to Metamun. (Mark that “usually”.) Now, as Metamun was living in suburban New England, it happened that conservative politics did not go unchallenged as they might have, say, farther south.  To Metamun it seemed as though he was in a tiny minority, especially where authority figures were concerned.  Looking back he’d realize this wasn’t the case— particularly not in terms of his actual views.  But remember, Metamun didn’t get out much.  And furthermore, although he considered himself conservative, he found he usually didn’t like the company of conservatives— they tended to be less interested in the things he was, like books and acting.  So most of his friends and acquaintances tended to be, if not self-identified progressives, at least the kind of people who sneered at conservatives and made the obligatory comparisons of Bush II to Hitler. Because that was who Metamun dealt with day-to-day, he was left with the impression that this was the norm for the society he lived in.  Most of what was on TV, with the exceptions of Fox News and South Park, seemed to confirm this. And so Metamun became genuinely terrified of people learning that he was not like the majority. Being homebound so often, Metamun spent a lot of time online.  That did nothing to lessen his terror.  Lonely as he was, Metamun went looking for conservative blogs.  Pajamas Media was the big one, but there were plenty of smaller ones.  One important thing he learned was that post 9/11, there were a lot of people who sort of fit his description—socially liberal, but mistrustful of leftist politics for various reasons.  Ex-leftists. Neo-Cons.

One important factor was patriotism: It seemed like all progressives genuinely hated the United States on principal.  Unflattering and quite often spurious comparisons to other countries seemed to abound on the Left.  One of Metamun’s new acquaintances explicitly wrote on their blog that they’d always wondered how the Right “co-opted” patriotism before concluding the Left simply threw it away. This acquaintance, a gay Seattleite, would be a touchstone for Metamun’s sense of political self for some time.  During the Tea Party era, the Right genuinely felt more fun and open than the Left.  Metamun still felt like an underdog, but also like he was part of a ragtag resistance movement with real emotional bonds.  And yet, even with all that, his prime political emotion was fear. (Mark the recurrent theme of fear.) Some of you might see the shape of this narrative and guess that Metamun was fed a steady diet of paranoia by nasty wingnuts.  Yes and no. The conservative blogosphere was a scary place—it told him that his basic values were under constant assault. That some of the “basic values” in the package were not actually his was beside the point, because Metamun just generally hated the thought of State force being used to coerce people into violating their own principals.  Metamun was happy to fight for values that were not his own, on that account.  It did bother him, sometimes, the assumptions conservatives made, but by this time he had gotten used to thinking of himself as a minority, so the majority being different wasn't so jarring.  Of course there would be a few differences of opinion. But the Right accepted those differences in the way that surely the Left would not.  And he knew that this was true, because he’d seen it with his own eyes. The Left was VICIOUS to conservatives, sometimes in a very personal way.  In some ways, sick and often absent though he was, Metamun still got the basic high school experience as he watched insults and worse fly fast and thick.  Leftists expressed GLEE at any conservative misfortune.  They made absolutely insane comparisons between conservative pundits and Nazis.  “Republican” was a punchline to very cruel (and sometimes racist and sexist) jokes. Sometimes they seemed to outright lie.  Metamun remembered a novelty song about Satan claim he was “in all Rush Limbaugh’s rants”, and Metamun KNEW that was untrue because he’d been listening to Rush for years and couldn’t recall the man even referencing scripture outside of holidays. Metamun heard people casually cite Glenn Beck as routinely opposing gay marriage when Metamun had heard the man himself arguing that the government shouldn’t even be involved with marriage (and thus that it couldn’t compel churches to validate gay marriages, sure, but that seemed a separate issue). But it was watching his conservative friends’ comments sections and twitter feed that solidified the image of progressive-as-persecutor.  It was blatantly apparent that these people hadn’t come to engage, they just wanted to take potshots.  Ad hominem abounded, total lack of reading comprehension was displayed, and just general delight in cruelty was rampant.  He was particularly appalled by the treatment of minority conservatives, who received all sorts of abuse based on race, sex, and orientation. Something that stuck with Metamun for years was watching conservative women get rape threats, death threats, and admonitions to kill themselves.  One of his best friends got such an admonition in response to mentioning on twitter it was her birthday.  That was it. Nothing political.  Just excitement for a special, personal day.  And none of his Leftist friends seemed to understand what their own wing was doing.  They talked about the Right doing such things, which baffled him—he’d never seen anything like that, or, if he did, it was only once or twice and never anybody HIS friends actually associated with.  Every movement has a few bad apples, right? (Mark the irony.) It didn’t help that once, depressed, Metamun DID admit on twitter that he was a conservative, and moreover that he was afraid people would stop being his friends over that. He promptly lost two friends. When he asked a third friend if they could please ask if he’d been unfollowed on purpose, they said they’d do it. And then THEY never talked to him again, even when he reached out.  He was convinced the only reason he didn’t lose everybody was that they hadn’t all seen the tweets—he deleted them quickly. So there Metamun was: Lonely, convinced that even if he didn’t line up perfectly with conservatism that at least conservatives accepted him, and very angry at the Other Tribe that was so cruel and callous to him and his friends.  But he was starting to grow up, and as he did he began noticing certain discrepancies.  Now and then the movement that was supposed to have a Big Tent felt oddly crowded. People sometimes rubbed each other the wrong way.  Metamun particularly hated it when the term RINO got thrown around, because he was all too aware that might apply to someone like him. Then there was the lack of nuance.  He slowly came to realize people on both sides of the aisle would sometimes use “nuanced” as a snide insult.  When the Dalai Lama described himself as anti-capitalist Metamun was disappointed, but understood (and also His Holiness was on record as saying when someone’s shooting at you it’s reasonable to shoot back, which Metamun thought made up for a lot). He did not expect certain conservatives to not only sneer at His Holinesses “nuanced” relationship with capitalism (accepting material support to fight against Mao) but actually accused him of being a PRC puppet. What?  Hadn’t they read anything about the man’s life?  Or his own writings?  Yes, he’d tried to work with Mao, but that fell through because Mao hated religion unequivocally—how could any religious leader work with that?  Why were they jumping to such insane conclusions?  This wasn’t what conservatives were supposed to do! There were a thousand other cracks in the façade, but two stand out. First, Metamun admitted to a dear friend, full of apprehension, that he voted for Mitt Romney. And not only did she not cut him out of her life, she explained WHY she wouldn’t do that.  Metamun was elated but also very confused—this wasn’t how the script in his head went.  He was admitting this because the pain of keeping a secret was too much, and he fully expected to pay a price for that.  He was (and remains) a drama-addled moron that way.  He was also a creature who put a lot of stock in narrative, and this narrative was nothing like he expected. Next, Metamun himself cut two friends out of his life over politics—years apart, but the number is important.  The first hurt, but felt very justified.  The second haunted him.  Metamun was easily haunted, but by this point he’d started really struggling with intrusive thoughts.  Around and around they went in his head, and although there was extreme, maddening monotony, now and then he’d see angles he’d missed before. The number was important. Two friends he’d definitely lost (he was never really sure of the third).  Two friends he’d rejected.  Why did he reject them?  Because he figured they’d hate him if they knew he didn’t agree with them.  He figured they had made their positions so strident that it was just inevitable that they would cut him out if he didn’t cut them out first. And he realized, stupidly, after years of realizing nothing, that maybe that’s exactly how the people who left him had felt.  Oh, perhaps they didn’t.  But what if they did?  What did that say about what, ultimately, they had in common? We’re getting closer to the present, so I’m going to start talking about myself in first person again. I recognize this version of myself more easily. As time went by I grew more and more jaded with American conservatism, but I still thought of myself as a conservative.  A lot of people were like that, children of the Tea Parties who had thought that the Right was the only alternative to all the abhorrent things we saw on the Left. But familiarity breeds contempt, and soon we were well acquainted with abhorrent things on the Right.  It seemed as if there was a rot spreading, something that had started as a speck and was now growing.  The spirit of fellow feeling was starting to evaporate.  There were a few things going on, but by this point I was barely paying attention to any of them.  I hadn’t looked at a conservative blog in years.  I didn’t listen to Rush.  The fracture of American conservatism could probably be better documented by someone who still gives a damn, but we all know what was the final crack in the glass. Donald Trump’s candidacy split the Right seemingly overnight, and not neatly down the middle. The big question is, of course “love him or hate him”, but even people who don’t go to those extremes get caught up in the animosity.  This, really, was when I couldn’t call myself a conservative anymore—no, not because his election was an indictment of conservatism, but because as the jagged rift grew, I suddenly realized that literally everything that scared me about the Left was present in the Right, both the MAGAheads and the Never Trumpers. All the bile.  All the cruelty.  All the callous disregard for our shared humanity.  All the absurd stereotyping and reductionism. Everything I’d seen on the Left that made me feel that the Right, imperfect as it was, was my only refuge, was suddenly EVERYWHERE, from quarters I’d thought were safe.  A lot of my conservative friends were hit even harder than I was; a few people desperately tried to reconcile people who had once laughed and dined together, but were now swearing never to speak again, or worse, verbally assaulting each other on a daily basis.  This wasn’t supposed to happen.  This was not the way we were supposed to work.And then, at last, I realized that the only reason I was just seeing all this awfulness NOW was because it hadn’t been directed at me and mine in the past.  And here we come to the main point I want to impress on everybody who’s bothered to read this far: My short-sightedness was in no way unique. We always try to show our best face to our friends—and to our Tribe.  We are thoughtful and considerate of people on our side.  We roll our eyes at the people on our fringe—silly things, aren’t they?  Imagine someone taking them seriously. Our enemies do not see our best face.  They see our war face.  We fight them tooth and nail.  We exult in their defeats, which become our triumphs—somehow.  And we see this horrible, poisonous crest at the top of their wave that threatens to engulf everything—their fringe. A leftist is not going to be threatened and insulted for being a rightist—at least not consistently outside of “purity” arguments.  A leftist will be more cognizant of the threat posed by rightist fringes, because those fringes are not attacking the Right, per se.  And you know, this goes for all conflict.  You don’t see a problem as clearly if it’s not directly shoved in your face every day.  And you will become convinced that the problems that ARE shoved in your face every day are the only ones really getting worked up about, because everything else seems so ephemeral. I read people scoff at their own fringes—“Oh, nobody REALLY believes that stuff, and people who complain about it are just showing their white fragility/race baiting/gay agenda/whatever the key phrase to stop critical thought is in a given situation”. Guess what?  Those fringes are constantly needling at the other side. THEY are what is representative of your tribe to the Other Tribe.  They are loud, and they are cruel, and ignoring them because the other guys “deserve it” or you hope “now they’ll know how it feels” is fucking insane.  And yes, one of the reasons the Other Tribe sees it so often is that they go looking for it, but they go looking for it BECAUSE THEY ARE AFRAID OF IT and they want to make sure they know what it’s up to. The only thing worse than seeing the devil is losing sight of the devil. I’m no longer a conservative because that ideology is poisoned by hate.  But I didn’t become a progressive, because that ideology is also poisoned by hate.  Or maybe both ideologies have actually been abandoned, and now we just have two flavors of hate in opposition to each other.  Please believe me, I do not WANT to be apolitical.  Everybody hates the apolitical—we don’t even like ourselves much. And anyway, I’m one of nature’s conformists; I like belonging to a group.  But at this point committing to ANY political movement feels like I would be sacrificing my integrity.  And I would not want to be part of a movement that accepts people without integrity. I call myself a localist these days.  Something risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb came up with.  Keep power close to the ground, don’t try to manage everything from the top down, resist interventionism in communities where you don’t have skin in the game.  Not aiming for a world without blowups, but keeping them at a smaller scale than we currently experience.  Forget fussing over socialism and capitalism; both are bad at large scales.  Both can work together at smaller scales.  The false dichotomy is a tool of tyrants. I want my country to get better.  But that’s not going to happen until people admit there are malicious, corrupting forces even in their own Tribes.  It’s not all the Other Tribe’s fault.  I still see people I love treating other people I love as subhuman.  And when I point this out, tentatively, people nod their heads and tell me I’m correct and then go back to thoughtless hatred. What I want people to understand, please, is that I want nothing to do with  political mass movements.  It’s all about different flavors of hatred.  It’s all about hurting people.  It’s all about hypocrisy and cruelty.  Fuck it. I am going to try to be a good person without hitching my ego to too many abstractions.  I am going to try to make the world around me a more pleasant place, and I am going to do that without giving a fuck about whatever sacred cows the Left Tribe and Right Tribe are busy genuflecting to. So.  I’m going to work harder not to deal with it here.

Year 1 Week 1

year 1

week 1

day 1

identity and position 5th october

let the tutors know if there are any problems

independent work and collaborative work

learning on studios

developing self directed practise and presentation skills

manage your time 7th december is the deadline meet the deadlines make sure your meet the deadline you have opportunities to succeed take pictures of everything and record the work and the processes of the ideas and work to be professionals know what your work is about 

day 2 

day 2 (online class) 1000-1245

so we were asked 3 questions:

1.  is illustration? A form of art communicating a message or showing a visual idea , recording a plant/ form of life in the wild recording an event unfolding before you (I remember seeing a painting on my trip to Russia of a massacre bloody Sunday) in fact in one could say Communist Russia and Germany when run by Adolf Hitler used art and radio to push their ideology and communicate a positive facade of their horrid plans for their respective countries.Especially illustration in newspapers which at the time people were an important part in human life especially in Europe.Your everyday reliant on newspapers to tell them the truth new shops to check out new restaurants to visit new products and services to buy,2. what is its purpose?- One's expression to bring joy or to just feel and create sometimes there is no reason you just felt like making something - to model or demonstrate a service ( a digital animated character walking) a potential product (iPhone 11pro), building,space,enviroment,scene,character etc.- to communicate ideas,views,opinions,thoughts,irony e.g political cartoons in british newspapers or films - to entertain / divert the masses - film/comic strips in newspapers or online,books,animation,games etc.- to make people think - painting or film or anything Banksy does his instagram is awesome 3. what can illustration do?anything literally it can impact all industries: helping pharmaceuticals and chemists on how to perform an experiment or how the lab should look the possibilities are endless- restaurant menus- visual ideas - storyboards for tv and films et design etc.- product design cars electric devices- where the fire exit signs- online training videos for companies animation for scenarios how to videos - a brand logo apple,The Walt Disney Company, the vue cinema logo etc.From wikipedia - ' Contemporary illustration uses a wide range of styles and techniques, including drawing, painting, printmaking, collage, montage, digital design, multimedia, 3D modelling. Depending on the purpose, illustration may be expressive, stylised, realistic or highly technical.Specialist areas include: Architectural illustration Archaeological illustration Botanical illustration Concept art Fashion illustration Information graphics Technical illustration Medical illustration Narrative illustration Picture books Scientific illustration' here are the groups i was in zoom group 5 answers :an interesting find i find whilst researching :/An illustration is a decoration, interpretation or visual explanation of a text, concept or process,[1] designed for integration in published media, such as posters, flyers, magazines, books, teaching materials, animations, video games and films. An illustration is typically created by an illustrator. Illustration also means providing an example; either in writing or in picture form.The origin of the word “illustration” is late Middle English (in the sense ‘illumination; spiritual or intellectual enlightenment’): via Old French from Latin illustratio (n-), from the verb illustrare' research sites:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illustration#:~:text=An%20illustration%20is%20a%20decoration,typically%20created%20by%20an%20illustrator. https://www.wordsense.eu/illustrare/ for me illustration is my expression whether via biro pen or watercolours etc. whatever medium this discipline can bring joy it can evoke an emotive memory it can inspire civilians to  go to war and 'fight the huns' which many cartoons in newspapers did it during the first world war and second world wars.evoking a sense of comradery a call for heroes a call to 'do your bit' 'keep calm and carry on' and 'do your bit for the war effort'. illustration has the power to communicate an idea or various ideas therefore it has the ability to influence people and inspire and positive or negative reaction illustration and therefore art has power ...where do we get our info or inspo from?the internet - images,text,youtubecinema - filmstv- adverts games - ubisoft's assassin's creed 2,brotherhood what are you inspired by in accordance to the senses?Sensory integration is the process by which we receive information through our senses, organize this information, and use it to participate in everyday activities.An example of sensory integration is: Baby smelling food as they bring it to their mouth Tasting the food Feeling the texture Determining what this food is and if they want more https://pathways.org/topics-of-development/sensory/You read that right! Most people think there are just 5 sense, but there are actually 7!  So what are the 7 senses?How might we use these senses in art Sight (Vision) - light the effect of light,everything we see nature social media,traditional media fine art in newspapers, film,photography,books,cartoon,animals,water,rocks,buildings and products,food, clothes,people etc. 

  Hearing (Auditory) - hearing a problem and trying to figure out how to fix it,hearing sound and figuring how to visualize it or incorporate it 

  Smell (Olfactory) - thinking of a memory how one felt at a specific time and trying to encapsulate that feeling that emotions and expressing that emotion or how one feels before during and after a smell e.g the air during a hot salty windy day at bournemouth beach 

  Taste (Gustatory) - memories,good food the feeling of gooey melting chocolate in my mouth trés delicieux! 

Demonstrate that in a physical tangible state and or image whether it be traditional analogue on paper perhaps a 3D digital 

  Touch (Tactile) - textures and grains and movements of a rock of thing feathers and feeling and recreating that or recording it perhaps Vestibular (Movement) - the movement and balance sense, which gives us information about where our head and body are in space. Helps us stay upright when we sit, stand, and walk. - Dance the feeling of a wave hitting the rocks or water against you

  Proprioception (Body Position): the body awareness sense, which tells us where our body parts are relative to each other. It also gives us information about how much force to use, allowing us to do something like crack an egg while not crushing the egg in our hands. - inspire to create an animation or a short film of various movements and how the character walks runs etc. various body movement prior to filming character development *FILM/TV/THEATRE mechanical horse like in war horse etc. 

* Emotion and feeling - making people feel a different emotion or various emotions feeling empathy or anger making people feel inspired to better society 

skills that I am confident in : paying Attention to detail

- Interpersonal and Communication Skills - Teamwork and Multi-tasking - Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, InDesign, After Effects, Premier Pro and Capture One 10-  Drawing- Painting-  Illustration- Calligraphy-  film and digital Photography as well as editing I care about and hope for :

Our World:- Education for everyone - ignorance is not  bliss but a trap to be manipulated and controlled.Critical thinking discussions and emotional and mental growth is a positive thing is is an asset to society.Every human being able to have a full education for them and their needs if they are great at art and history they should not be shamed for not doing good in science!The current Prussian educational system is not helping everyone excel in the subjects they are good at - it was meant for military education in the ancient world after all however we need an improvement.Especially on the teachers hired and trained.Some countries are allegedly failing students just so that they can work in a specific manual labour industries when the kids are intelligent enough to be doctors and scientists they are purposefully failed and told to smash rocks or other manual labour jobs.

I care about the safety and innocence of the next generation globally for kids to be safe from men and woman who want to use them for their own benefit e.g greedy parents,predators,human traffickers and cult leaders

 The ending of homeless (people being able to work and have their own home in the UK especially in London)

The end of human trafficking one human forcing another human being to do something for free and forcibly take away their own freedom their God given free will that is not okay to me that will never be okay we are all priceless.

a few pro-Nazi myths I’d like to address

queeranarchism:

the-moon-in-the-water:

hiddenww2:

cumaeansibyl:

“Sure, Hitler did terrible things, but you have to admit he was a brilliant man!” I have to do no such thing. He was a shiftless, self-absorbed layabout who found pontificating and rabble-rousing easier than doing actual work. Like many essentially worthless human beings, he did have a great deal of skill in manipulation, which enabled him to draw people in and use them, but I don’t call that genius.

“The Nazis eliminated unemployment!” Any improvements the Nazis made in the German economy were short-term and unsustainable. Unemployment was eliminated in a manner of speaking – by running up ridiculous amounts of debt, cutting wages by 25%, and interning or declaring ineligible a sizable portion of the work force. Rationing began in 1937, two years before the invasion of Poland – a healthy peacetime economy does not have rationing. Their economic model relied on taking over other countries and stealing their resources – it was the only hope they had of making up the deficit.

“The Nazis were brutally efficient!” Nothing the Nazis did was even remotely efficient. Hitler’s idea of governing was to put businesses and state departments in direct competition with each other for his personal favor. This resulted in massive corruption, bureaucratic bottlenecks, and an untold waste of time and resources. The economy wasn’t put on a full wartime footing until 1942 because no one was able or willing to do so.

“Okay, maybe Hitler wasn’t that smart, but he was still a military genius!” Germany’s military successes during the first half of the war can best be explained by their choice of opponents – most countries were hopelessly overwhelmed, while France not-so-secretly wanted to be Germany’s girlfriend – and by the skill of the senior officers who came up through the old imperial system. When faced with opponents who actually had their shit together (and in the case of Soviet Russia that’s being charitable) Hitler’s vaunted strategic abilities were shown for their true worth – little to none.

“Nazi science was phenomenal!” Please stop learning things from History Channel specials about “Hitler’s UFOs.” The Nazis sucked as bad at science as they did at everything else, in large part because they outright rejected a lot of theoretical advances as “Jewish science” and drove some of their greatest minds out of the country (who promptly came to the US). There’s a reason we developed the atom bomb first, and it’s because we had all their best scientists and they were left with the time-servers and jackboot-lickers.

“But if they hadn’t invaded Russia they would’ve won the war!”Anyone who offers this as a counterfactual has completely failed to understand what Nazism was about, and it bugs the shit out of me.  This wasn’t some accidental miscalculation. It was actually the entire point of National Socialism, the entire point of the whole war – carving out “living space” in the East. Was it a stupid thing to do? Sure! But here’s the thing you need to understand about the Nazis: hatred always won out over practical considerations. They hated Russians, they hated Communism, they wanted to destroy Russia’s Jews, and they weren’t about to let silly things like “reality” or “good sense” get in the way of their glorious destiny. It’s the same thing as rejecting good science because it was developed by Jewish people. They didn’t give a shit about objective reality; all they cared about was the glory of the German race and the destruction of all others. If you don’t understand this, you will never understand Nazi Germany, and you will continue to swallow lies like the ones listed above.

tl;dr: Nazi Germany was a huge fucking mess from beginning to end and anyone who says otherwise is totally ignorant and very likely a Nazi apologist.

The SS changed their whole organization about once a month and then told no one about it. Leaders were constantly fighting each other, destroying each others little empires within the third reich. Their bussiness ventures were bizarre and senseless and they made money by forcing people to buy stuff even if they didn’t want it. A significant group of powerful nazis believed that all modern medicine could be replaced with ancient german herbs. It was such a mess.

I cannot imagine living in a society where random people will say these things in actual conversation. I know it happens because I see these posts and I see the neo Nazis online. But if you’re from a country where any of these sentences is not met with outright rage/being fired/possibly getting a police fine (for the Hitler salut), you’re from such a fundamentally different culture that I can’t even begin to relate.

In my country, we don’t joke about Nazis, we take these things seriously and if anyone ever said anything remotely like that to my face, you can count on it I’d have them evicted from whatever space we’re in and ensure they’re socially disgraced forever. Their boss will know, their friends will know, their wife will know. I will tell everyone because social conditioning works.

Oh, I’m from the Netherlands by the way. We got overrun. Most of us were murdered.

Never again.

Hey, I’m from the Netherlands too and to be honest, i can’t relate to what you’re saying at all.

I’ve heard all of these things said by people who had no affiliation to the far-right at all, many had just finished some sensationalist documentary about blitzkrieg or tiger tanks and now believed nazis were masters of engineering and military strategy because a voice-over that usually talks about UFOs  had told them so. The people echoing these claims were not ill-intentioned and would never knowingly distribute nazi propaganda, they were just very badly informed.  

And rarely were they corrected by better informed bystander, because most people don’t have any actual knowledge about nazi engineering or strategy. If phrases like “The Nazis eliminated unemployment!” and “if they hadn’t invaded Russia they would’ve won the war!” are promptly corrected by people in your social circle then you are lucky to be part of a social environment educated and aware enough to know better but that is by no means the country-wide standard in the Netherlands at all.

Oh, and for historical accuracy I’d like to point out that unless you are speaking from a specific Jewish, Roma or Sinti minority perspective ‘most of us were murdered’ is not remotely true about the population of the Netherlands. In 1939 the population of the country was 8.7 million. The total number of casualties is estimated at 200.000. That’s 2.3%, certainly not ‘most of’. The truth is that the occupation of the Netherlands wasn’t anywhere near as brutal as the occupation of countries like Poland, were 18% of the population was murdered.

So yeah, never again.  

History lessons.

This is going to be a bit of a long post so apologies, I’ll try to keep it brief and of course include a hider.

The TL;DR of it is: Some insane self-proclaimed SJW on Twitter made a ‘chart’ outlining how Men’s Rights and Gaming are responsible for neo-Nazis, and every website in existence is to be held responsible should anyone using their website ever commit a crime.

So, in essence, stupid people on Twitter.

To start off with, before we get onto the words, let’s discuss the Venn Diagram and how that’s immediately flawed:

Right off the bat, we have complete misrepresentations of the Men’s Rights Movement, and Gamer Culture. Men’s Rights has nothing inherently to do with Feminism, and it never has. While yes, it is typical that a Men’s Rights Activist might oppose Feminism, it’s only because Feminism has done plenty in the past to disenfranchise the movement, not the men, the movement. Very clear and important distinction. No, Feminism hasn’t “taken rights away from men”, and no one is claiming that they are, but it is also quite clearly not helping men either, despite openly claiming to be in favor of equality among the sexes and in fact they do more to inhibit the Men’s Rights Movement from trying to help men.

As for Gamer Culture, the definition here is only half-right and entirely disingenuous. It’s true that technically-speaking, men make up most gaming, but it’s still disingenuous to imply that it’s “overwhelmingly male”. We’re not talking about a 99:1 ratio here, not even a 75:25. It’s far closer to 50:50 than people seem to realize. Even being generous to this assertion, I would say 60:40 is significantly closer, albeit still too low compared to reality.

As for the claim that video games ‘objectify women’, this is a topic that has been thoroughly addressed numerous times by others, but the short and sweet response is: “women are objectified, but so are men”, and again the split isn’t as wide as you might think, however the focus might be fairly skewed which could be the problem. There are plenty of objectified men in games, but (at least in my experience) objectified women are given more of a spotlight, likely due to the fact that, for whatever reason, men AND women prefer to see women naked than they do men (don’t ask my gay ass why, I don’t know either).

What’s interesting here, is that they clearly outline a distinction between Pick-Up Artistry and Men’s Rights yet somehow fail to see that they’re separate and distinct. Pick-Up Artists aren’t interested in Men’s Rights, and neither are Incels, they just want their dick sucked, and they’ll perform whatever scumbaggery they think will accomplish that, so the definition for that is apt, but the implication that there is cross-over with Men’s Rights is laughable.

Is it possible there are Pick-Up Artists and/or Incels out there interested in Men’s Rights? Of course, but this diagram suggests that Men’s Rights is the cause of Incels, even though that literally does not make any sense unless you have a significantly warped understanding of what Men’s Rights is, which this author seems to have.

Then, of course, we have the misrepresentation of GamerGate. Honestly, that’s a can-o-worms I’m not looking to open right now because it’ll add another 10-15 paragraphs to this. There’s plenty of resources out there that are available for you to do the research yourself if you don’t know enough about it already. I suggest you start with @gamergate-news and work your way from there.

“Cool Girlism” is, admittedly, a new term to me but the definition of it is recognizable. It’s essentially saying any girl who happens to A) disagree with Feminism, B) is a gamer, C) is “red-pilled” or not immediately Far-Left, or D) All of the above, is considered a “cool girl” and is clearly just putting on an act so she can get some of that sweet gamer dick.

OR, in simpler terms, it’s an example of how misogynistic the author of this diagram is because she refuses to accept that any women can possibly disagree with their point of view and have a unique thought of her own. We’ve seen this all before, nothing new.

“Nu-Misogyny” is also a new term, apparently coined by the author as far as my research shows and is meant to be defined by the culmination of the entire graph. Frankly, even if we suspend disbelief and pretend these are all salient points, I don’t see how any of this is ‘new’ misogyny, except perhaps in reference to the method in which it’s received, that being the digital space (internet, online video games, etc.). As a completely personal gripe, I hate this fad of using made up language to replace old language. Just say new, not “nu” or “neo”, just new.

Great, now that we’ve covered that mess, moving on:

“Milo and Breitbart also used Gamergate to recruit nu-misogynists and gamers to white nationalism.”

While I won’t pretend Milo or Breitbart are bastions of integrity, the simple fact is that whatever they might’ve been using to “recruit” people (which is still a hilarious concept to consider) it wasn’t Gamergate. Never mind the fact that there’s little to no significant overlap between Gamergate and White Nationalists, there’s no overlap between Gamergate and Breitbart OR Milo. The only reason they are misconstrued as being a part of Gamergate is, perhaps, because they didn’t disparage the movement like every other media outlet did.

“As these communities grew more violently extreme, they were increasingly relegated to fringe platforms, notably 8chan.”

Now, at a surface level I don’t see anything inherently wrong with this statement, but allow me to extrapolate a bit:

Given the misconceptions of many groups throughout this post, I’m not inclined to believe they’re being genuine about these so called “extremely violent communities”.

If we were genuinely talking about white supremacist neo-Nazis actively rising up, then I wouldn’t care, but because outside of “the media says so, so it must be true”, there’s little to no evidence of this actually happening, I’m instead inclined to believe they’re referring to people genuinely critical of their world view. You know, the imaginary people harassing Anita Sarkeesian or Zoe Quinn; the people who are just pointing out how these people are wrong who are then vilified by them and their media peers.

What’s also interesting to note here is, again, if we suspend our disbelief, we see here she’s actively admitting that they aren’t doing anything to solve the problem either, something which later in the post she criticizes the chan boards for doing.

“On 4chan and 8chan, pro-terror nazis mingled with pro-terror nu-misogynists.”

Remember when I pointed out that her Venn diagram that was meant to define her coined term “nu-misogyny” didn’t define anything other than just regular old misogyny? Well apparently, it was supposed to define it as “violent” or “pro-terror”. Now, I’ve never been on 4chan, 8chan, or any chan board really, so I can’t comment on the validity of there being white supremacists, neo-Nazis, misogynists, etc. From what I’ve been told it wouldn’t really surprise me.

“Nu-misogyny (especially incel-inflected nu-misogyny) was already explicitly pro-violence and obsessed with evolutionary/racial pseudo-science, and they cross-pollinated more and more.”

I’m not too familiar with many ‘Incels’, but frankly other than right after the Joker movie released, I had never once heard exclaimed that they were “explicitly pro-violence”, let alone “obsessed with evolutionary/racial pseudo-science”. That last part doesn’t even make sense. What does “racial pseudo-science” have to do with wanting to get your dick sucked? Is it like “Yeah I had my chance to have sex, but the chick was Asian so I couldn’t do it. Whites only, ya know?” Whatever, I’m not about to defend Incels.

“And, that’s the (very) short version of the story of how you get a new generation of nazis marked by an unusually high level of hatred for women and advocacy for gynocide.”

In summary, video games and men’s rights will apparently mark the rise of Hitler 2.0.

Credit where credit is due, the sheer fact that she’s outlined this with a neat little diagram, and everything only helps to further the point that she has no idea what she’s talking about. Her chart alone never refers to an overlap between gaming and men’s rights with white supremacy.

At the absolute best, she’s made a point (albeit an easily disproven one) that gamers are sexist, but not once does this diagram point to a significant overlap, or any overlap at all, with white supremacy. All of this boils down to an argument akin to “Nazis drink water so water must be bad”, which hopefully for obvious reasons, you can understand why that logic doesn’t hold up.

“If we’d booted 8chan from the web earlier, if Reddit and 4chan had shut down extremist communities when they first started advocating violence against women, that cross-pollination might never have happened.”

Now we’ve entered the full authoritarian-brand delusion. Never mind the fact that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are far far worse at this very thing she’s accusing the chan boards of, or that Reddit is quite obviously in favor of doing exactly this since they ban communities at the drop of a hat, what she’s asking for is quite literally impossible.

If not 4chan, then 8chan. If not 8chan, then Twitter. If not Twitter, then Facebook. If not Facebook, then Tumblr. If not Tumblr, then literally anywhere else, repeat ad nauseum forever. Removing their platform doesn’t prohibit them from speaking, it just prohibits them from speaking there, where we can see them, where we can mock them, where we can discredit their views. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather be able to see and know people are talking about killing me than pushing them to some fringe site where they can do it without my knowledge.

Earlier, she pointed out that they pushed these people to the chan boards, thereby admitting to ‘solving the problem’ by simply making it someone else’s problem, and here she is now openly criticizing the chan boards for not dealing with this problem that they themselves created for them.

“That online nazi/gynocidaire population boom wouldn’t have occurred.”

Again, removing their platform doesn’t prohibit them from speaking. They simply would’ve organized elsewhere. You aren’t solving any problem by banning them from a website, you’re simply making it someone else’s problem, and then you blame whoever’s problem you just made it.

“But the platforms were greedy. And now, there’s blood on their hands.”

This is by far the most egregious part about this entire post. “We pushed the bad people off onto you and you didn’t immediately push them off onto someone else so that means you are liable for the blood they spill.” Never mind the overarching implication this borderline psychotic statement has. Apparently, every single website ever is to be held responsible should anyone on their site ever commit a crime. Holy fuck, the delusions from this woman.

Apologies if there are any grammar/spelling mistakes. I wrote this in a Word Document and then transferred it over because Tumblr is notoriously terrible when it comes to these longer posts.

...There are two related, yet distinct, kinds of anti-Semitism that have snuck into mainstream politics. One is associated with the left and twists legitimate criticisms of Israel into anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. On the mainstream right, meanwhile, political leaders and media figures blame a cabal of wealthy Jews for mass immigration and left-wing cultural politics in classic anti-Semitic fashion.

[Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN)] tweet was a pretty clear example of the first kind of anti-Semitism. Plenty of Jews who are critical of the Israeli government, including me, found her comments offensive...

But it’s also clear that a lot of Omar’s critics don’t have much of a leg to stand on. Conservatives have been trying to label Omar an anti-Semite since she was elected in November, on the basis of fairly flimsy evidence. (...) Trump once told a room full of Jewish Republicans that “you’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money,” adding that “you want to control your politicians, that’s fine.”

The fact that Omar apologized under pressure, and that Trump and McCarthy have never faced real consequences for their use of anti-Semitic tropes, tells you everything you need know about the politics of anti-Semitism in modern America.

...There are two core truths about this incident. First, Omar’s statement was unacceptable. Second, Republicans going after her — including the president — should spend less time on Democrats and more time dealing with the far worse anti-Semitism problem on the right.

...In the day and a half since Omar’s initial comments, a number of left-wing writers have emerged to defend her. They argue that Omar was attempting to point out the financial clout of the pro-Israel lobby — the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC — and not to make generalizations about Jews. The pushback against Omar, they say, is part of a broader campaign to smear a young Muslim congresswoman and silence criticism of Israel.

...It’s true that in some cases, all criticism of Israel or AIPAC, even if it’s legitimate, is labeled anti-Semitic — and that’s a real problem. Omar’s faith has made her a particular target, and it’s fair to want to defend her against these smears in the abstract.

But the specifics of Omar’s tweet make things quite different. In the original context — where she was quote-tweeting [Glenn Greenwald]— she says that US lawmakers’ support for Israel is “all” about money. Yes, it’s a Puff Daddy reference, but she’s a member of Congress and maybe should be a little more careful about the implications of what she says...

There are two problems here: First, the tweet isn’t true. The US-Israel alliance has deeper and more fundamental roots than just cash, including the legacy of Cold War geopolitics, evangelical theology, and shared strategic interests in counterterrorism. Lobbying certainly plays a role, but to say that “US political leaders” defending Israel is “all” about money is to radically misstate how America’s Israel politics work (and discount the findings of the scholars who study it).

Second, and more important, totalizing statements like this play into the most troubling anti-Semitic stereotypes. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an infamous early-20th-century Russian forgery, describes a plot by Jewish moneyed interests to subvert and destroy Christian societies through their finances. This in turn draws on longstanding European anti-Semitic traditions that portray Jews as greedy and conniving.

After World War II and the creation of the state of Israel, the conspiracy theory shifted. Anti-Semites started using “Zionist” or “Zio” as a stand-in for “Jewish,” using Jewish activism in favor of the Jewish state as proof that they were right all along about the Jewish conspiracy. David Duke, the former Louisiana state representative and Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, released a YouTube video in 2014 that bills itself as an “illustrated” update of the Protocols. The video features footage of leading Democratic and Republican politicians speaking to pro-Israel groups, with the caption “both are in the grips of Zio money, Zio media, and Zio bankers.”

...Omar is, of course, not coming from the same hateful place as Duke is. But by using too-similar language, she unintentionally provides mainstream cover for these conspiracy theories. After her comments, Duke repeatedly defended her, even tweeting a meme that said “it took a Muslim congresswoman to actually stand up & tell the truth that we ALL know” (he rescinded the praise after her apology).

This is not to equate Duke and Omar — which, to be clear, would be absurd — but rather to point out how if you’re not careful when talking about pro-Israel lobbying, you can provide ammunition to some awful people. By saying that US support for Israel is “all” about money, Omar was essentially mainstreaming ideas that have their roots in anti-Semitism, helping make them more acceptable to voice on the left.

...There’s a real dilemma here. Pro-Palestinian activists, writers, and politicians have every right to point out what they see as the pernicious influence of groups like AIPAC. The group is undeniably powerful, and it’s worth mentioning in our conversations about both Israel policy and money in politics. You can and should be able to say, “AIPAC’s lobbying pushes America’s Israel policy in a hawkish pro-Israel direction,” without saying that it is literally only about dollars from (disproportionately) Jewish donors.

At the same time side, there is a special need on the left — where most pro-Palestinian sentiment resides — to be careful about just how you discuss those things. It’s not just a matter of providing ammunition to the David Dukes of the world; it’s about the moral corruption of the left and pro-Palestinian movement. If references to the baleful influence of Jews on Israel policy become too flip, too easy, things can go really wrong.

...When left-wing insurgent Jeremy Corbyn won the center-left Labour Party’s leadership [in Britain] in 2015, the people who inhabited these spaces seized control of the party power centers.

Corbyn, who had once referred to members of Hamas and Hezbollah as his “friends,” opened the floodgates for the language of Labour’s left flank to go mainstream. The result is a three-year roiling scandal surrounding anti-Semitism inside the party.

Dozens of Labour elected officials, candidates, and party members have been caught giving voice to anti-Semitic comments. One Labour official called Hitler “the greatest man in history,” and added that “it’s disgusting how much power the Jews have in the US.” Another Labour candidate for office said “it’s the super rich families of the Zionist lobby that control the world.” The party has received 673 complaints about anti-Semitism in its ranks in the last 10 months alone, an average of over two complaints per day.

...This is why Omar’s tweet was so troubling, and why the pushback from leadership really was merited. If the line isn’t drawn somewhere, the results for Jews — who still remain a tiny, vulnerable minority — can be devastating.

...The way Omar handled the controversy is interesting. Her apology was certainly given under immense pressure, but it reads (at least to me) as quite sincere[, and] this kind of sincere willingness to reconsider past comments is characteristic of Omar. She had previously gotten flak for a tweet about Israel “hypnotizing” the world, and recently gave a lengthy and thoughtful apology for the connection to anti-Semitic tropes during an appearance on The Daily Show.

“I had to take a deep breath and understand where people were coming from and what point they were trying to make, which is what I expect people to do when I’m talking to them, right, about things that impact me or offend me,” she told host Trevor Noah.

This is not the kind of behavior you see from deeply committed anti-Semites. Yair Rosenberg, a journalist at the Jewish magazine Tablet who frequently writes about anti-Semitism, argued on Monday that Omar has earned the benefit of the doubt:

“I’ve covered anti-Semitism for years on multiple continents, and this level of self-reflection among those who have expressed anti-Semitism is increasingly rare. Not only did Omar apologize for the specific sentiment, but she put herself in the shoes of her Jewish interlocutors and realized that she ought to extend to them the same sensitivity to anti-Semitism as she would want others to extend to racism.” 

...This is what it looks like when the system works. A member of Congress says something offensive, most of her party explains why it’s wrong, and then she issues a sincere apology and demonstrates an interest in changing. That is a healthy party dealing with bad behavior in a healthy way.

This is not what you see on the Republican side when it comes to most forms of bigotry — up to and including anti-Semitism.

...Last summer, McCarthy sent a tweet accusing three Democratic billionaires of Jewish descent — George Soros, Tom Steyer, and Michael Bloomberg — of trying to buy the midterm election...

...Around the same time, President Trump claimed that protesters against Brett Kavanaugh were being paid by Soros...

And Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz suggested Soros was behind the so-called “migrant caravan” coming to the US through Mexico, a theory spread when Trump tweeted the video in Gaetz’s original tweet...

This all follows years of Soros demonization in the conservative press, with everyone from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to Fox News anchors blaming the Jewish billionaire for various ills in the United States.

The defense of these lines is the same as the left-wing defense of Omar: It’s not anti-Semitic to simply state facts. But many of these “facts,” like Soros masterminding immigrant caravans, are false. Moreover, creating a narrative in which Soros and other left-wing Jews are puppet masters, using their money to undermine America from within, they are engaging in the same normalization of Protocols-style anti-Semitic tropes as Omar.

What’s more, they’ve done it with virtually no official pushback. The GOP has not reacted to the Soros hate and other anti-Semitic conspiracy theories with the same fierceness with which the Democrats responded to Omar’s comment. There has been no leadership statement condemning the mainstreaming of anti-Semitism; in fact, demonizing Soros has long been part of the overall party strategy. In 2016, Trump released a campaign ad that played a quote from one of his speeches over footage of Soros and former Fed Chair Janet Yellen (also Jewish) that comes across as an anti-Semitic dog whistle...

...“Don’t kid yourself that the most violent forms of hate have been aimed at others — blacks, Muslims, Latino immigrants. Don’t ever think that your government’s pro-Israel policies reflect a tolerance of Jews,” Jonathan Weisman, the New York Times’s deputy Washington editor and author of the new book (((Semitism))), writes. “We have to consider where power is rising, and the Nationalist Right is a global movement.”

...While the Democratic Party handled an offensive comment quickly, Republicans have never shown a willingness to do the same when it comes to right-wing anti-Semitism. There’s a reason most Jews in the United States are Democrats, and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future.

[Read Zack Beauchamp’s full piece at Vox.]

I wanted to write a time travel fanfic and about Evan Rosier/Hermione Granger as a main pairing but... I'm stuck. I didn't choose the most redeemable character (Rosier was killed by Moody after a magical fight) and it's complicated bc how Hermione can fall in love with someone like Evan no matter how charming and smart he is ? How did you deal with that (Hermione, Death Eater and their ideology) ? All I can see is something like Jaime/Brienne (GoT) and a very slow burn. But it still feel wrong.

(Please bear with me as this is going to be a super long response.  I’ll put it underneath the cut so those who want to read it can read it and those who want to scroll past it can do so quickly.)

To be perfectly honest, if a story feels “wrong”, you shouldn’t be writing it.  Trying to force something that you don’t feel comfortable writing and don't fully believe in will not only make for a story that feels forced and unnatural to the reader, but it will also become a story that you will not enjoy writing.  (Never forget that this is our hobby, not our job.). Eventually, you would likely hit a wall where the story was unable to progress further and you’d be stuck.  Lots of writers try to write a story with certain elements or pairings that are “trendy” and end up stuck because they forced a story.  Writing should flow fairly smoothly.  I’m not saying that writers should never stumble or feel blocked, but I am saying that if you’re not allowing a story to remain organic and grow naturally, you will find you quality and likely your own enthusiasm and enjoyment in writing the story suffer.

Why do you want to write a story with Evan Rosier?  Is it because you find his character fascinating or you want to uncover more about him?  Or is it because he’s not a character that’s written about a lot and you’re hoping to stand out in a growing sea of Death Eater stories?  

I promise I’m not trying to be rude or condescending, even if it seems like it.  This is an honest question.  If your answer is on the first couple, awesome.  Go for it.  

But, if you’re hoping writing about him will get you instant recognition and a large number of followers on your story immediately, I’m sorry to tell you that that probably won’t happen.  Most readers don’t want to take a chance on unknown characters.  They just don’t.  I’ve mentioned this many times, but when I first started writing Thorfinn Rowle as more than just a one-dimensional bad guy in the background in first, The Dark Mage’s Captive and then Parolee and His Princess, I frequently got PMs and reviews asking me who the fuck Thorfinn Rowle even was and that I might actually get more people to read my stories if I didn’t write such weird pairings. 🙄 (Let’s not forget the troll who commented “This should’ve been a Dramione” on literally every single chapter at least twice.  Sigh.) So it’s both amusing and incredibly frustrating to have readers in the fandom announce that Thormione is their OTP when most of them wouldn’t have given my stories the time of day when I was writing them and they were the ONLY Thorfinn stories in existence on FFN for certain and probably everywhere else.  Because so few people were interested in reading a story with Thorfinn as the main love interest when I was actually writing Parolee and His Princess, if I was only writing the story in an attempt to stand out and not because that was the story I wanted to write, then I likely would’ve gotten frustrated and quit before I ever finished.

So, if you’re serious about writing an Evan Rosier story because it’s what you want to write, I wish you the best of luck.  It’s always challenging to write a character with little to no background info in canon.  Challenging can also be a great deal of fun.  If we never challenge ourselves as writers, we won’t ever get any better.  Writers must be willing to learn and try new things if they want to get better.  Practice is crucial.  Too many writers (professional and otherwise) get to a place where they don’t believe they need to improve and their writing gets stagnant.  It’s sad.

Now to your question about how or why Hermione might fall in love with someone with such a different and dangerous ideology... there are many different ways this can be tackled.  I must stress thought that you make sure the decision you make makes sense within your story.  Don’t try to force something.  Let it grow naturally.

First of all, I don’t believe anyone is unredeemable.  (Or irredeemable. Same meaning, right?) Perhaps it’s because of my own personal faith and religious beliefs, but I don’t believe anyone is wholly evil or wholly good.  Yes, even in this hyper-partisan world we now live in, I don’t believe that anyone (even those who might disagree with me) are pure evil.  This has actually gotten me a lot of grief from angry trolls and super sensitive former readers alike.  I’ve been accused of being an “apologist” for all manner of depravity including, but not limited to, rape, violence, murder, racism, all the bad things ever, etc. simply because I believe that no is unredeemable... irredeemable.  Ugh, whatever.  You know what I mean.  

Everyone has good qualities in them, even those who appear to be nothing but evil.  Far fewer good qualities than most certainly, but still there.  I’m also a firm believer that people, even really bad people, can have an existential change of heart and want to be a better person.  Many just have to be given the opportunity to change.  Of course, I don’t believe that they shouldn’t be punished for their crimes or they should be excused just because there’s something good about them.  I’ll never understand why I’ve been accused of being an apologist.  🙄 Some people are truly exhausting.

For every story about a Death Eater falling for Hermione, there’s a different explanation.  If you’ve ready any, you’re probably already familiar.  Because I try very hard to make every story I write unique from the others I’ve already written, I’ve mixed it up.  Antonin only joined for knowledge and power without realizing until too late what was really happening.  Rodolphus was pressured by his wife in one and his grief and depression made him fall further in than he meant to.  Sometimes the Death Eater was pressured by family to follow in their footsteps; others by their peers.  There are countless reasons why people join these kinds of groups.  Disillusionment, looking for a place to belong... you really could make it anything.  I’ve known people who were drawn in and brainwashed by cults because they were desperate for purpose, for belonging, for a feeling like their life actually mattered.  It can be super easy to get sucked into a cult and takes years to get out... if you can.

JKR wrote the Death Eaters as being simply bad for bad’s sake.  They’re almost all one-dimensional.  No person is actually one-dimensional.  They have hopes and fears and dreams just like everyone else.  Maybe they thought they believed in the sort of pro-Pureblood world that Voldemort imagined, but once they got in they were in over their head.  Reality rarely meets our expectations.  People grow and change.  Even my own beliefs have changed as I’ve grown older.  What I used to think was important no longer is and there are issues I have done a complete 180 on as I’ve grown up and begun to live in what I call “grownup reality”.  (Life is much different for me than it was even when I was just in my twenties and how I see the world has changed drastically in some instances.). So if experience and time has been able to shape and change my beliefs and even my values to a minute degree, why could the same not be said for a Death Eater who discovered all was not as it seemed when they were recruited?

It’s also important to remember that no one thinks, acts, or believes like everyone in their set group one hundred percent of the time.  Each individual has their own thoughts and beliefs.  Maybe they joined because they hated Muggles, but then they realized they were wrong to do so.  Maybe their family pressured them to join but they didn’t agree.  Maybe they were afraid to die so they joined.  I know a lovely man whose father died in World War II fighting for the Nazis - not because he was an admirer of Hitler and believed in everything dreadful and evil the Nazi party believed in.  No, his father was conscripted into the German Army and fought because he would’ve been arrested in the best case scenario and executed in the worst.  His young wife and their two small children could’ve also been in danger had he refused.  It’s a terribly sad story.  And hardly the only one.  That’s just one example.  History has countless other incidents all over the world when scared people fought and fell in line with a terrible leader because they had no other choice. Or at least it seemed like they had no other choice.  Not everyone is strong and brave enough to stand up to injustice and evil when their lives are on the lines.  Humans by our very nature can be quite cowardly at times.

It’s possible that a person who has done evil deeds or believed just absolutely atrocious things could want to change and be a better person.  Though it wouldn’t be easy, someone like Hermione could choose to forgive them for their past.  Especially if they’re truly remorseful.

Of course, it’s also unfortunately true that there are sometimes relationships that are just absolutely toxic.  Love can make idiots of us all.  How many women (and men to an extent though not nearly as often) see the potential in a man and want to change them into something good and perfect?  It happens so often it’s a cliche.  Woman falls in love with bad boy.  Wants to change him.  Stays with him with hopes and dreams that he’ll stop being so awful.  Is disappointed over and over again.  Have you ever known someone who fell in love with a truly terrible person and even though their relationship wasn’t healthy whatsoever never seemed to quit them?  Kept going back for more even when everyone told them it was a terrible idea?  I’m pretty sure you have.  You might’ve even been in one of those relationships yourself.  I know I was.  No, he might not have been a murderous minion of a madman, but he certainly had his terrible qualities that I thought I could help him get past.  Tale as old as time.  

I could go on and on and on about reasons why Hermione might fall in love with a completely unsuitable man who might even wish her dead, but there’s no reason.  It could be for a thousand reasons.  And don’t forget, Hermione isn’t exactly some innocent paragon of virtue herself.  She’s pretty dark even in canon.  Trapping a lady in a jar?  Cursing a girl’s face possibly permanently?  Leading another witch into a forest knowing there are centaurs in there who are dangerous?  And those are just the things that unobservant Harry noticed!  Who knows what she was doing off-stage?  She has her own darkness and her own demons to fight.  She’s not perfect nor is she some pure angelic creature who only uses light magic for good.  Nah, she’s pretty twisted at times. (On a side note - Please don’t try to write her as being all-powerful, perfect, and never do anything the least bit bad.  That’s not her character at all.  It bothers me to see her written as some sort of pearl-clutching virgin who has never done anything bad in her entire life.  That’s NOT the Hermione I read in the books.)

You just have to find the right motivation in your own story.  If you’re not forcing the story and allowing it to develop naturally, you’ll figure it out.  If you’re forcing it, I’m afraid you’re going to stay stuck.

I hope this can be so some help!  Sorry I’m rambled on and on and on.

those Big Questions central to philosophical concepts that surround life

the universe and everything, the realms of theology and religions and the nature of deities continue to fascinate. Opinions proliferate in books, articles, videos, conversations in bars and pubs, and in fact anywhere and everywhere two or more humans are in proximity. There's the pro side; there's the anti-side. There aren't too many fence-sitters. I'm still in the anti-theist camp as the following bits and pieces illustrate.

Regarding Religion

*Even if America was founded as a Christian nation - a myth [#] perpetuated by the extreme religious Right, threesome fun especially Right-wing pseudo-'historian' David Barton who insists that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were founded on the Bible even though neither mention Christianity, God, Jesus or the Bible - that would still not of necessity mean that Christianity is the be-all-and-end-all of religious truth.

The founding fathers were deists, not theists.

*The biggest threat to any religion is its own doctrine. (via Dark Matter 2525)

*There are two types of gods, or God. There are the religious gods (or God) which collectively have numbered in the thousands each with their own specific set of traits. Zeus is but one example. Then there is the philosophical concept of a god or God. 1000 theological philosophers would come up with 1000 variations on the theme of what a deity should be like. No matter which way you slice and dice things, you can find a deity to match your philosophical or theological worldview. What we need is for god, God or the gods to actually show their damn faces and settle these ever ongoing theological and philosophical issues once and for all.

Of course maybe there are no gods, god or God.

Then too the gods, god or God would have been just E.T. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic if you aren't in possession of that technology or don't understand that it even is technology. A flashlight to a human being who lived 50,000 years ago would be something supernatural.

Regarding Religion vs. Science

*The good thing about science is that it remains true regardless of whether or not you believe it.

*Another illustration of the double standards that religion adopts is that if science should support their beliefs, then it is a thumb's up and science rules, OK? Of course if that exact same science refutes their beliefs, then it is an absolute thumb's down. For example, if one finds a piece of wood that might have some connection to Noah's Ark and carbon dating dates that wood to the time frame associated with Noah's Ark, well that's a thumb's up. Of course when carbon dating doesn't support a suitable age for the Shroud of Turin, well of course carbon dating is totally unreliable and lacks credibility so it's a thumb's down. Sorry True Believers, you can't have it both ways.

Regarding Faith & Belief

*Say you walk into a bar and tell all and sundry loud and clear that you believe in the actual existence of the following: the Creature from the Black Lagoon; the Cyclops; dragons; the Easter Bunny; fairies at the bottom of your garden; human-alien hybrids; an invisible magic man in the sky; phantom trains; Santa Claus; spectral hounds; talking snakes; Thor; the Tooth Fairy; unicorns and the walking dead (zombies). In nearly all cases, you'd be given rather strange looks and avoided like the plague as a nut case. I said "nearly" all cases. What's the exception to the above, the one example where nobody would think you odd at all? If you answered "an invisible magic man in the sky" you'd be correct! [Actually you might also get brownie points for dragons, talking snakes, unicorns and zombies since they are all cited in the Bible.]

*It is much easier to be told what to think than to actually think for yourself. That's the whole beauty of religion. (via Dark Matter 2525)

Regarding Murder

*Why is murder wrong? Either murder is wrong because it is independently, fundamentally, intrinsically wrong, or else is murder is wrong just because God says it is wrong. Let's examine the latter first.

God Says Murder Is Wrong 1: If God says murder is wrong, then God is a total hypocrite since God Himself murders. God's philosophy with respect to murder is do as I say, not as I do. That's God of the double standard. If it's not murder when God does it, then isn't this a case of special pleading? In any event, this theological paradox then suggests that if murder is wrong just because God says it is wrong, even though God murders, then all that just means is that morality is arbitrary on the grounds that it is different strokes for different folks (and deities).

God Says Murder Is Wrong 2: Many argue that if God created you then God has the right to uncreate you (i.e. - murder you). Of course God may have started the human race off by creating Adam and Eve, but God didn't create any other human and certainly didn't create me and so therefore has no moral right to kill them or me.

God Says Murder Is Wrong 3: Most theists would say that murder is against God's nature (in which case these theists haven't read the Bible), but then what gives these theists the authority to decide what God's nature should be? In any event, if murder is against God's nature, was it God Himself who determined what His nature would be or was it determined by circumstances beyond God's control?

God Says Murder Is Wrong 4: If God murders, then that murder / those murders are all done according to God's Master Plan and God's Master Plan is ultimately good. Of course theists are just inventing things here, like a Master Plan and further that any Master Plan of God must by definition be good. That logic doesn't follow. Hitler had a Master Plan and look how that turned out!

Murder Is Really Wrong 1: If murder is wrong because it's really wrong, and wrong whether or not God exists or whether in fact God says murder is wrong, then morality doesn't require God which would mean God isn't a requisite of or for morality.

Murder Is Really Wrong 2: On the other hand, if there really is no God then murder is unjustifiable (because there is no God setting us a bad example) and thus highly consequential.

Murder Is Really Wrong 3: Well the non-believer doesn't believe in an afterlife which means their current life is all they get. So, a) if they murder someone then their only shot at life is ruined by spending time in prison or being executed; b) by taking someone's life they would believe that they had shortened that person's life forever - the ultimate violation. Empathy, whether for self or for the victim, would make that act of murder therefore a highly untenable proposition.

“When I was pregnant with my first daughter, she would kick responsively, and then she would take naps. It seemed logical. This baby never stopped moving, but she never did anything responsive, either. The movements were so random…

“Because of that worry, at 35 weeks, my midwife sent me for a “peace of mind” ultrasound...

“I know [the nurse] said the words “Dandy-Walker,” which I know now is a brain syndrome that has varying degrees of severity. I remember asking, “Are babies with this ever normal?” and she said that sometimes they were. She told me they couldn’t know the severity of the situation until after I had an MRI. That’s how they would determine if my baby would be OK or if she would be “incompatible with life.” Those are the words they used. Incompatible with life…

“Waiting was awful. I imagined every possibility: What would it be like to have the miracle baby who was OK and exceeded all expectations? What if she died at birth? What if she lived only a couple of years? What does it mean to get a DNR (a do-not-resuscitate order), for an infant? Hospitals are legally protected from trying to save a baby and not legally protected from letting a baby die…

“The neurologist, who told us that our baby had Dandy-Walker malformation, [said it was] the most severe presentation of the syndrome. It basically meant there were holes in her brain. She also had agenesis of the corpus callosum, which meant the bridge between the two hemispheres of her brain didn’t grow. So we had two malformations, each of which had a wide range of outcomes, but, combined, had a horrible prognosis. The doctor said, “We expect your baby to have moderate to severe mental retardation; she’s going to have moderate to severe physical disability; she is probably never going to walk or talk; she will possibly never be able to lift her head; she is going to have seizures all of the time.” At first, I was thinking, “This doesn’t make sense, she’s always moving,” and then he mentioned seizures, and I understood…

“In that moment, I had to shift my thinking. I was hoping for special ed, and had been focusing on questions like: How much should you save to know your special-needs daughter will be OK after you die? I was thinking about long-term care and mild to moderate disability. Instead, I had to think about a baby who was probably not going to live very long, and the longer she lived, the more pain she would be in. That realization – that I was more scared of her living than of her dying — is what made the choice for me…

“The doctor asked if we had any questions, and I said, ‘What does a baby like this do? Does she just sleep all day?’ The doctor looked so uncomfortable. He said, ‘Babies like this one are not generally comfortable enough to sleep.’ 

“[at the abortion] After the injection, he asked how I was feeling, and I just said,  “I feel so sad. I’m going to miss her…

“Then on the fourth day, they induced my labor. I got Pitocin, and it was actually a very natural birth. It was quite healing for me. I couldn’t do anything for this baby — I couldn’t fix her brain or make her well, but I could deliver her from my body. I chose to view her, so they cleaned her up and brought her in and she looked a lot like my older daughter. She was beautiful and she was whole. I got her footprints and had her cremated and they sent us her ashes in the mail a few days later. We wanted to name her after a flower, so we called her Rose.”

A few things strike me about all these late-term abortion stories. When the potential parents learned their child would have a disability, they weren’t angry. They may have been sad, but they started planning and researching how to give a disabled child a good life. The only people who chose late-term abortions are those who believe there is no good life possible: that the baby’s suffering will only increase more and more until an early death. 

But, again, here’s a sampling of the comments this story received… they were vastly negative. 

“Pro-Life Comments”

Those medical problems aren’t that bad.

“Apparently medical necessity doesn't matter anymore. It's just a matter of if it feels right to abort or not. This is an appalling story. That baby had unique, unrepeatable DNA and this was her one chance at life. Now she's been erased.”

“Very sad story for many reasons! Of course, I can't help but wonder what the child's life might have been like had mom had the will to allow him/her to be born. Perhaps the child would have overcome many of the disabilities and had a reasonable life, or perhaps the medical problems would have been so severe, the child would have died. But, did mom had the right to decide whether the child lives or dies? I still don't think so.”

“This article has not swayed my opinion on late term abortions in any way. Everything about the story from the way the doctors informed the patient to the concerns of the parent were fairly biased and selfish. Even with the severe malformation, the child could have lived a very fulfilling life. My brother has lived a full life (he's now in his 40's) with a similar condition. Sure, he's never going to be a neurosurgeon or complete college, but he has held down a job for the last 25 year, owns a home and even got married to someone with a similar condition. He does require some home care, which the family provides, but it was far from a burden.”

The parents wanted a “perfect” baby

“She murdered a baby because it wasn't perfect? She murdered Rose. MURDERER ! ! !”

“Sorry but I don't agree with this mother's decision. She got pregnant and when she found out that it was not perfect, she had this poor little baby euthanized. that was so selfish of her. If this baby was not viable, her little heart would have stopped on its own… Many children have medical problems & live well with support of family who LOVE then UNCONDITIONALLY. I'm sure some one with a huge heart would have loved to adopt and love Baby Rose. These parents stole that opportunity of that life option away. And who said she died peacefully. I'm sure it was a quiet and very painful death. Shame on these parents. They never gave Rose the chance at life, all because she wasn't perfect.” 

“This is heartless and she is trying to make it sound like she's not selfish. She is sending her [older] daughter the message that if your aren't perfect, healthy, you don't deserve to live. This is sort of sick. Probably a shallow pretentious woman and husband who can't be bothered with ‘less than.’”

You should count on a miracle/God/Nature instead:

“I was told at 6 months [pregnant] that my daughter would be very sick and disabled. That she would never walk, and most likely would die after 3 weeks and if she lived, she would never be able to take care of herself…. Sometimes you have to trust yourself that you can handle it, and trust GOD that is will all work out. I did not trust these doctors and I am so HAPPY I didn’t, or I wouldn’t have my beautiful daughter.” [I’m happy for you too! But miracles don’t happen every time.]

“Don't even TRY to normalize this. Being a nurse in my younger years, I saw babies born that would not have a chance These mothers knew that, and carried to term, delivered, and held their precious babies until they passed. Don't even try to act like this 8 month termination is anything but murdering the poor baby. Let NATURE take its course. Barbarians.” [Author was certain she wouldn’t be allowed to hold her dying baby; that the hospital would work hard to extend her painful life.]

Murder

“You murdered your baby just in time to celebrate your birthday... selfish.”

“Just pretty much another Mother destroying a new life! The value of life does not stop and start on an liberal ideological timeline!”

“What in the name of everything good and holy is wrong with these sick SOB's? They actually believe they can chop up an infant child as "their" body. These people are monsters of the worst kind in human history, Hitler, Stalin, Pal Pat had nothing on these despicable women and those that butcher children. Get an education, look at what you are doing before you comment or do anything. How does anyone make it OK to butcher a baby with no pain killer, NOTHING!” [reminder that in this case, the fetus was given a single shot and died peacefully, then was delivered whole vaginally.]