https://www.europesays.com/1985118/ Prominent Turkish academic ends political commentary, fearing imprisonment #AKParty #akp #democracy #erdogan #HumanRights #Justice #law #NurayMert #oppression #RuleOfLaw #Turkey #turkiye
https://www.europesays.com/1985118/ Prominent Turkish academic ends political commentary, fearing imprisonment #AKParty #akp #democracy #erdogan #HumanRights #Justice #law #NurayMert #oppression #RuleOfLaw #Turkey #turkiye
What Naomi Klein is not saying because most USians don't want to hear it and violently reject it is US prisons have been lacking in that respect for ever even when the US believed their democracy mostly intact.
https://www.europesays.com/1978209/ Turkish mayor faces backlash over derogatory social media post targeting Armenians #AKParty #akp #democracy #erdogan #HateSpeech #HateSpeechAgainstArmenians #Justice #law #oppression #PKK #TanjuÖzcan #Turkey #turkiye
Now you're taking the debate back to the 1876 split of the First International. Centralists vs decentralists, stateist vs anarchist and which side of that fence you're on.
"Bakunin characterised Marx's ideas as authoritarian and argued that if a Marxist party came to power its leaders would end up as oppressive as the ruling class they had fought against"
Statism and Anarchy: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/mikhail-bakunin-statism-and-anarchy
Obsta principiis, nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards.
John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
Essay (1775-02-06), “Novanglus,” No. 3, Boston Gazette
Sourcing, notes: wist.info/adams-john/6069/
The powers wielded by #police officers in public places have been rapidly expanding across the nation, at the expense of civil liberties.
Housing Segregation and Redlining in America: A Short History
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5FBJyqfoLM
In 1968, Congress passed the Fair Housing Act that made it illegal to discriminate in housing. Gene Demby of NPR’s Code Switch explains why neighborhoods are still so segregated today.
Another standard of liberal governments is that people who present themselves through #legal pathways as #refugees fleeing #oppression are vetted & provided #DueProcess, not disappeared into foreign gulags.
And yet, here we are.
"Anarchists are quick to recognize that #racism, #sexism, and #homophobia will not simply go away upon the #collapse of #capitalism and they must be fought here and now. These same #anarchists, however, are often unwilling to apply this logic to #speciesism. If we want total #freedom, we must cultivate new relationships in our everyday lives. This means fighting #oppression on every line, including the line of species. Refusing to do so is not coherent with #anarchist and #autonomist practices."
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/biting-back-a-radical-response-to-non-vegan-anarchists
When the cost of living goes up, when people go hungry, when the future is gloomy and when the rich celebrate the governments they purchased.
The end goal of rich people and politicians is to keep people miserable enough to keep them busy but not so miserable to not have anything to lose.
And as the result, society finds an easier target, a less protected and the most unfortunate part of itself to blame and destroy. People will start stealing from one another to survive, and that's when compassion, empathy, and sympathy die.
When a group of people rises against the oppressors, the rest of the society would stand and watch. And when they themselves rise, there's no one else left to rise with them.
By not rising against the oppressor all together, people will pass on the burden to their children and their children's children until a generation comes that have nothing to lose and nothing to fight for, so they become numb.
I'm an Iranian who lives in Australia. The above is what I witnessed in my country. And unfortunately, I can also see the seeds of what happened in my country being planted in Western civilization. The US and the UK are already advancing in this path. The AU and NZ are starting the process. And I can see it happening in other countries around the globe.
Will people of these countries recognize the threat and rise against it? Will society stand up for itself or sacrifice part of itself? I can't tell, but at this stage, I don't see it happening.
I saw a feminist video yesterday that made me see something I can't now unsee. That zombie apocalypse genre is white supremacist. Making a whole class of subhumans so that the (usually white, cishet) protagonists can take what they want when they want it and slaughter the subhumans by whatever means desired, violently.
I've always seen it as an allegory for capitalism. The zombies have sped up from the shamblers of Night of the Living Dead as we've accelerated ecosystem destruction. Now there's another layer.
It's the same with the show I've been watching on Max, Falling Skies (circa 2011-2016). I'm pushing through it because I like post apocalypse stories (civilization has finally fallen so the natural world can regenerate--hooray!) but it's such a patriarchal, white supremacist show that I'm spending most of my time grumbling at it while I note the many ways in which it's fucked up.
The main character (a cishet white man, and intellectual history professor) and his three sons, plus his father figure (commander in the militia he belongs to after alien invasion) are the only characters with any depth. Everyone else is an NPC. They kill off people of color willy-nilly (starting with black men), and white women also including the prof's own daughter end up being just two dimensional plot devices, vehicles for showing the suffering and heroics of the leading men.
I'm almost to the end of it and nearly turned it off for good last night because of a plot line in which the eldest son's girlfriend is badly wounded and they want to infect her with alien biotech to save her. She clearly and plainly told him no, she didn't want that in her and he had to let her go. So he lied to the doctor and they infected her anyway. A clear violation of consent because he "just couldn't do it" selfishly. After she miraculously recovered, she ended up belting him across the face for doing it against her will then kissed him in thanks for saving her life. The female doctor, a stepmother figure, told him that she'd have done the same for his dad. Making violating consent "romantic" and excusing it.
It's gotten really hard to watch cheap and easy sci-fi and horror because of awareness of the systems of oppression that permeate these offerings and reinforce these fucked up narratives. I'm only interested now because I've only one season out of five to go so I'm probably going to keep watching it and hating it the whole time. Mainly because it's nearly impossible to find anything that isn't this politically awful and I'm not a rom-com person.
If I was younger and had the chops I'd try to write something feminist and anti-racist set in a dystopia, for TV or film. But I don't have it in me to do that anymore and even if I did, there wouldn't be any studio that would make it more likely than not, because the storytelling machine that is the film and TV industry is there to prop up the themes of patriarchy, racism, and the state, not warn us about them.
As per usual I'm barely awake and still ingesting coffee so no doubt there will be multiple edits for clarity and typos.
Germany’s Scholz criticizes Turkey over detention of Erdoğan’s main political rival: report https://www.byteseu.com/851115/ #AKParty #AKP #Democracy #GermanChancellorOlafScholz #HumanRights #İstanbulMayorEkremİmamoğlu #LAW #oppression #RepublicanPeople’sParty(CHP) #RuleOfLaw #Turkey
These are dangerous times... 1st Amendment vs EU freedom of Expression in the current times
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PkXZmweNCMs
Mass protests as Turkey detains Erdogan's main election rival •
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-ypY0VwfIo #Turkey #Istanbul #Imamoglu #protest #demonstration #Erdogan #tyranny #oppression #dictatorship #elections #politics
The 37 #Democrat senators who held the line were not enough, we need unity for effective action.
https://buff.ly/rfUm58A
Vice News reporters acquitted in Turkey after 9-year terrorism trial https://www.byteseu.com/842001/ #AhmetAy #AKParty #AKP #Democracy #Erdoğan #HumanRights #JakeHanrahan #justice #LAW #oppression #PhilipPendlebury #RuleOfLaw #Turkey #ViceNews
Belgian journalist denied entry to Turkey over 2015 Kobani celebration https://www.byteseu.com/839121/ #AKParty #AKP #ChrisDenHond #Democracy #Erdoğan #justice #kobani #LAW #oppression #RuleOfLaw #Turkey