Gondwanaland: a moral panic-free zone
In a video released on International Men's Day (November 19), Chris Votey has announced that he and Catherine McLain will be publishing a magazine dedicated to boys' and men's issues. To keep it true to its mission, it will be an entirely volunteer effort supported by readers and donors; only advertising by people affiliated with the men's movement will be accepted. The first issue is planned to be published next summer.
Here's the website: boysmenissues.com
A message from the Canadian Association for Equality:
On International Men's Day, Support Canada's Most Effective Champion for Boys, Men & Fathers.
And Have Your Donation Doubled Today!
Today is November 19th, International Men's Day, an opportunity to celebrate the progress you've helped us achieve at the Canadian Association for Equality and the Canadian Centres for Men and Families, and to take stock of the monumental work that remains to be done for boys and men.
Yes, I will mark this occasion by renewing my support for boys and men, and please double my donation so we can open the new Family Shelter in time for the Holidays!
Despite it being a challenging year, here's what we accomplished in 2020:
We received intervenor status in the Supreme Court case of R v Langan, and argued before Canada's highest court that male gender stereotypes can lead to wrongful convictions.
Our Suicide Prevention Billboards attracted public and media attention in Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa.
The first Family Shelter for Men and Children is on track to open for the Holidays following our purchase of a beautiful home in Toronto.
We completed our first government funded research project, "Studying Male Homelessness as a Consequence of Domestic Violence."
On December 10th we'll host MOMENTUM 2020, the Canadian National Men's Issues Conference.
Erasing Family, a CAFE-produced documentary, was released to critical acclaim, and we hosted premiere screenings at 15 Canadian venues.
Unelected Officials Override The President To Continue Wars (But Only Kooks Believe In The Deep State)
Outgoing US envoy to Syria James Jeffrey stated in a recent interview with Defense One that
US officials have been “playing shell games” about the number of troops in the
region to deceive the Trump administration into thinking there has been a
military withdrawal. Here are some excerpts:
“We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” Jeffrey said in an interview. The actual number of troops in northeast Syria is “a lot more than” the two hundred troops Trump agreed to leave there in 2019.
…
“What Syria withdrawal? There was never a Syria withdrawal,” Jeffrey said. “When the situation in northeast Syria had been fairly stable after we defeated ISIS, [Trump] was inclined to pull out. In each case, we then decided to come up with five better arguments for why we needed to stay. And we succeeded both times. That’s the story.”
…
Officially, Trump last year agreed to keep about 200 U.S. troops stationed in northeast Syria to “secure” oil fields held by the United States’ Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS. It is generally accepted that the actual number is now higher than that — anonymous officials put the number at about 900 today — but the precise figure is classified and remains unknown even, it appears, to members of Trump’s administration keen to end the so-called “forever wars.”
Some mass media propagandists find it hilarious that the US war machine used
deceit to thwart the president’s attempts to withdraw from its illegal
occupation of Syria:
https://twitter.com/LizSly/status/1327137565288378370
This would not be the first time that Jeffrey, a foreign policy
insider with the past three presidential administrations, has
admitted to deceiving the public about what’s happening in Syria. Earlier this
year he admitted at a Hudson Institute video event
(these Beltway insiders always get extra honest in the company of
fellow think tank denizens) that, contrary to the official public narrative of
the US military being in Syria to fight terrorism, it’s actually there to
create “a quagmire for the Russians”.
This would also not be the first time we’ve heard reports of the US war machine hiding the facts from the elected commander-in-chief of the most powerful military force ever assembled. Last year The New York Times cited anonymous US officials in a report on cyber intrusion operations against the Russian government that the US military had deliberately kept Trump in the dark about.
“Two administration officials said they believed Mr. Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the steps to place ‘implants’ — software code that can be used for surveillance or attack — inside the Russian grid,” NYT reports. “Pentagon and intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into detail with Mr. Trump about operations against Russia for concern over his reaction — and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials.”
America's special envoy to Syria publicly admits that the continued illegal US military occupation of parts of the country isn't about fighting ISIS or other terrorists, as Washington claims. Instead the US aims to "make it a quagmire for the Russians."
https://twitter.com/jm_szuba/status/1260256224890826752?s=21 …
Mainstream liberal US discourse has accomplished an amazing feat
of Orwellian doublethink with regard to the notion that unelected power
structures are running things without the consent of the nation’s official
elected government. On the one hand there’s been a nonstop deluge of Daily Beast articles since Trump’s election saying
anyone who dares to suggest the existence of a “deep state” in America is a
conspiracy kook, but on the other hand there’s also been constant praise for
the insider “adults in the room” who ensure from within the administration that
Trump doesn’t demolish America’s precious norms while in office.
This cognitive two-step became even more reified after comments from the likes of Iraq war architect Bill Kristol tweeting that he’d “prefer the deep state to the Trump state”, and the famous anonymous New York Times op-ed authored by a “senior official in the Trump administration” (now known to have been former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security Miles Taylor) saying administration officials are working together against Trump to “thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations”.
The
understanding of a deep state in America has become even more obfuscated by the
other side of America’s fake partisan divide, with Trump supporters now using that
term to essentially mean “anyone who doesn’t like Donald Trump”. That erroneous
understanding has now become so prevalently associated with the term “deep
state” that it has lost all use in meaningful discourse and is better off being
avoided altogether if you want to point at something real.
In reality the term deep state is meant to refer not to anyone who
opposes Trump, nor to a secret cabal of baby-eating Satanists, but simply to
the tendency among government agencies and plutocrats to form loose alliances
with each other and collaborate toward common agendas. It’s a term used for
political analysis to describe large-scale power agendas that are largely
playing out right out in the open, hidden in plain sight.
It doesn’t take a ton of investigative reporting and WikiLeaks
drops to understand that there’s been a collective of operatives mostly running
the Trump administration while the actual elected president yells at the
talking heads on Fox News and tweets. It’s also not hard to brush away the insubstantial narrative fluff and
see that US policies have remained more or less unbroken regardless of which
elected officials have been in office, and it doesn’t take a Nostradamus to
predict that that will continue to be the case after Trump is replaced by the
next empty husk in the White House.
The US government simply is not what Americans were taught it is in school, and it is not what they tell you it is in the news. It’s a mostly unelected power establishment which operates in the interests of imperialist expansionism and oligarchic control, with the official elected government operating sort of like the unplugged video game controller you hand your kid brother to keep him from whining for a chance to play.
All
this fuss over who really won the election is missing the point. People are
bickering over which oligarchic puppet should be sworn in on January 20th when
all the evidence we’ve been given shows that nobody gets to become president if
they inconvenience real power in any way, and if they do inconvenience real
power they are simply ignored.
That
is the direction we should all be looking. Not at who’s president, but why
things stay the same no matter who’s president.
Autistic People Care Too Much, Research Says
https://neuroclastic.com/2020/11/07/autistic-people-care-too-much-research-says/ via @NeuroClastic
In this video, Diana Davison discusses the question of what are true rape myths vs. what are rape-culture myths. "Our laws should not demand that human beings conduct themselves in ways not natural to human beings."
https://falseaccusations.ca/myths-about-human-sexuality-and-consent/
Please support the fight against false accusations with a donation to the Lighthouse Project!
Statement of the Green Party of Philadelphia concerning the police shooting of Walter Wallace, Jr. on October 26, 2020
It's reported today that Warner Brothers has fired Johnny Depp from his role in the Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts. They are doing so because of Amber Heard's claims that he physically abused her during their relationship, in spite of a lack of physical evidence for these claims and despite evidence not only that she has faked evidence of abuse, but also that she was actually the aggressor in their relationship.
I have written WB today to let them know I won't be watching the movie unless they rehire Depp.
https://falseaccusations.ca/heres-the-audio-where-amber-heard-mocks-johnny-depp/
This video was shared by Olivia Faison, Green Party candidate for PA auditor general. Her comments follow. I would note that there's no reason to think the cop who shows how to do it right was able to do so because of her sex.
https://www.facebook.com/1682635196/videos/10215209751352091/?t=40
Law Enforcement Is a Job for the Brave, Not the Craven
There is no doubt that the job of a police officer has potential life-threatening risks and dangers. Unfortunately, part of their job is knowing that at any time, you could lose your life. But the last I heard, this was a choice that people made freely, and that is to become LEOs (Law Enforcement Officers)/aka: cops. No one asked, nor forced them to choose such a dangerous line of work.
Nonetheless, law enforcement is a choice that many courageous individuals happily make in order to serve the general public.
Lately, police behavior has made it painfully obvious, and visibly clear, that they are afraid of some of the folks whom they are sworn to protect and serve. In fact, when dealing with a disturbance that leads to the killing or death of black boys and men, these officers are always citing the fear of the threat of losing their own lives. This seems to be the only reason necessary to justify the killing or murdering of mostly unarmed black men. Sadly, it appears that they feel safe and secure, only after they have eliminated the source of their fright.
Not so with a female police officer in Arizona. It’s funny how just about one month ago, a lone female police officer was able to back away from a deranged man, who was not only brandishing a knife, but was aggressively approaching her with threats, taunts, curses, and screaming for her to shoot him and shouting how he was going to kill her. Only when he ran towards her, shouting he was going to kill her, and rapidly closing the gap between them, did the female officer fire her gun one time to bring down her aggressor. The entire incident was captured on video attached.
One Facebook reader expressed that this guy was …“More disrespectful than Walter Wallace, more vulgar than Walter Wallace, more threatening than Walter Wallace, but this police officer, by herself, keeps her cool, lets off 1 shot and takes him down. Not 14 shots, not 5, but 1. She assessed the situation properly and took proper action. Heck she might have been too patient. Why couldn't the cops who shot Walter Wallace show contrition like this? Was it really necessary to shoot one person that many times? 2 cops, 14 shots, dead and gone vs 1 cop, 1 shot, down but alive. Makes no sense”.
Supposedly trained in the many socially difficult encounters with the public, highly trained on firearms, martial arts and physical combat skills, the use of deadly force, armed to the teeth, and fortified with support and back-up units, and still, the craven law enforcement officers will panic, and will shoot to kill! Unbelievable!
Clearly, people who quaver and react so violently in the presence of black skin, should not choose a career that fills them with such obvious fear and terror when they encounter one. For clearly, the brandishing of a knife does not discombobulate all police officers, especially the lone female police officer in the video. The same cannot be said for the 2, 3, or however many police officers involved in the Philly shooting, or the many other police shootings of Blacks across the country. It has become patently clear, and far too easy, for many of these men to hide their fears behind their badges, and then to rely on this status as a license to kill, and a power to take a precious life, that they have no right to take.
Perhaps we should be utilizing many more female police officers with methods like the intrepid and intelligent LEO, who decided in a split second, that even though her own life was being threatened, she did not have the right to just take, and end someone else’s life, simply because she wore the badge that would have allowed her to justify that act. She did not take the cowboy way out of “shooting first, and asking questions later”, (after someone lay dead).
Bravo to her! Police work in the 21st century is clearly a job for the intelligent Braveheart, not for the foolhardy craven!
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