Russell Brand Subscribe to my channel here: http://tinyurl.com/opragcg (make sure to hit the BELL icon to be notified of new videos!) Listen to my Under The Skin podcast here: http://luminary.link/russell Get my book “Recovery” here: https://amzn.to/2R7c810 Get my book “Mentors” here (and as an audiobook!): https://amzn.to/2t0Zu9U Instagram: http://instagram.com/russellbrand/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/rustyrockets Produced by Jenny May Finn (Instagram: @jennymayfinn)
Monthly Archives: September 2020
Caroline Myss – The world is going to start over again.
Caroline Myss Join Riding the Phoenix Part II – The Journey of Your Empowerment: https://bit.ly/2SThAIq We have been in preparation within ourselves and within this whole journey of transformation to discover our capacity to influence our reality. To take charge. To create a world that maybe we’ve envisioned, but haven’t really put our shoulders into. We haven’t really gone after it with the force of our soul the way we now can. The world is going to start over again and we have the opportunity to make it a more humane place. We need a more balanced, humane system. We need a more honorable government. We need people to come first. We don’t get to that place without a crushing transformation. We need to know how to awaken that power in ourselves. As overwhelming as it is for each person, it is this experience in which we discover how truly empowered we are. You don’t discover that you really influence your reality until you really need to do it. — Visit the Caroline Myss WEBSITE: http://myss.com Join Caroline’s Newsletter: http://bit.ly/2GOLfvk Like Caroline Myss on FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/2qh6ZGB About Caroline Myss: Caroline Myss is a five-time New York Times bestselling author and internationally renowned speaker in the fields of human consciousness, spirituality and mysticism, health, energy medicine, and the science of medical intuition. Caroline established her own educational institute in 2003, CMED (Caroline Myss Education), which offers a diverse array of programs devoted to personal development and draws students from all over the world. In addition to her written work, Caroline maintains a rigorous international workshop and lecture schedule, and has produced more than eighty audio/visual products on subjects that include healing, spirituality, personal development, and the study of archetypes. © Copyright 2020 CMED LLC. All rights reserved.
Why Socrates Hated Democracy
The School of Life We’re used to thinking hugely well of democracy. But interestingly, one of the wisest people who ever lived, Socrates, had deep suspicions of it. To buy books on philosopy and other themes from The School of Life, visit our online shop: https://goo.gl/mQYmze Join our exclusive mailing list: http://bit.ly/2e0TQNJ FURTHER READING “We are used to thinking very highly of democracy – and by extension, of Ancient Athens, the civilisation that gave rise to it. The Parthenon has become almost a byword for democratic values, which is why so many leaders of democracies like to be photographed among its ruins…” You can read more on Philosophy and other topics on our blog TheBookofLife.org at this link: https://goo.gl/Sc9kXf MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE Our website has classes, articles and products to help you think and grow: https://goo.gl/VY9gDt Watch more films on Philosophy in our playlist: http://bit.ly/TSOLphilosophy Do you speak a different language to English? Did you know you can submit Subtitles on all of our videos on YouTube? For instructions how to do this click here: https://goo.gl/wE1wvm SOCIAL MEDIA Feel free to follow us at the links below: Download our App: https://goo.gl/hjJSjx Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theschoolofl… Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschoolof… CREDITS Produced in collaboration with: Mike Booth http://www.youtube.com/somegreybloke#TheSchoolOfLife
Bio: Hal Call
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Hal Call | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 1917 Grundy County, Missouri, US |
| Died | December 18, 2000 (aged 83) San Francisco, California, US |
| Alma mater | University of Missouri |
| Occupation | Businessperson, LGBT rights activist |
| Known for | President of Mattachine Society |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance |  United States |
| Service/branch |  United States Army |
| Service years | 1941–1945 |
| Rank | Captain |
| Battles/wars | Pacific War |
| Awards | Purple Heart |
Harold Leland “Hal” Call (September 1917[1]–December 18, 2000[2]) was an American businessperson, LGBT rights activist, and U.S. Army veteran. He served as president of the Mattachine Society and in the 1950s, was one of the first gay activists to speak publicly on television. Call founded printing presses for LGBT publications and later opened gay adult shops and pornographic film screening venues. He received a Purple Heart for his service in the Pacific War.
Early life and education
Born and raised in Grundy County, Missouri, Call enrolled in the University of Missouri in 1935 on a scholarship. He studied journalism. Call enlisted in the United States Army in June 1941 as a private. He was promoted to sergeant within the year and, after completing Officer Candidate School, was promoted to lieutenant. He saw combat in the Pacific War, where he was wounded and received the Purple Heart. Returning to the United States in 1945, Call left the army at the rank of captain and returned to the University of Missouri to complete his journalism degree.[3]
Career and activism
After graduating, Call worked for several news outlets, including the Kansas City Star.[4] In August 1952, while working for the Star, Call was arrested for “lewd conduct” and paid an $800 bribe to have the charges dismissed. Call resigned his job and he and his lover Jack moved to San Francisco.[5]
With his arrival in the city, Call became involved with the Mattachine Society, the first sustained gay rights group in the United States. Following the resignations of the original leadership in 1953, Call became president of the Society.[6] Call frequently appeared on local television programs in the 1950s, as one of the few openly gay men who spoke about gay issues, and appeared both in The Rejected, the first-ever television documentary on homosexuality,[7] and “CBS Reports: The Homosexuals“, the first network broadcast on the subject.
In 1955 Call co-founded Pan Graphic Press, which printed The Mattachine Review, The Ladder and other homophile publications. He also founded Dorian Book Service, a gay and lesbian literature clearinghouse.[8] With the liberalization of obscenity laws beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Call began marketing gay erotica through the Adonis Bookstore, the first gay adult shop in San Francisco. He later expanded the business to include peep shows, eventually opening the Circle J club as a venue for screening pornographic films and hosting “circle jerk” parties. Call also began filming pornographic “loops” of men masturbating on a gold couch in his office. These Gold Couch Capers became collector’s items.[9]
The June 1964 Paul Welch Life article entitled “Homosexuality In America” was the first time a national publication reported on gay issues; Life ‘s photographer was referred to the gay leather bar in San Francisco called the Tool Box for the article by Call, who had long worked to dispel the myth that all homosexual men were effeminate. The article opened with a two-page spread of the mural of life size leathermen in the bar, which had been painted by Chuck Arnett in 1962.[10][11] The article described San Francisco as “The Gay Capital of America” and inspired many gay leathermen to move there.[12]
Call died of congestive heart failure in San Francisco on December 18, 2000, at the age of 83.[2][13] He was survived by three brothers who did not approve of him. They visited Call a few months before his death to say goodbye. At Call’s request, he was cremated and did not have a funeral.[13]
Legacy
Season 2, episode 3 of the podcast “Making Gay History” is about Call.[14]
QAnon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
US Vice-President Mike Pence with members of the SWAT team of Broward County, Florida, on November 30, 2018; the man at the left of the image is displaying a red and black “Q” patch used by believers of the QAnon conspiracy theory. The photo was tweeted, removed, and then substituted in Pence’s feed.
Detail from photo showing the QAnon patch. The black-and white patch to the left has been reported to be that of the SWAT team. Regulations forbid wearing either patch, and the deputy was reprimanded and removed from the SWAT team as a result.[1]
QAnon[a] (/kjuːəˈnɒn/) is a far-right conspiracy theory[2][3][4][5][6][7] alleging that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles running a global child sex-trafficking ring is plotting against President Donald Trump, who is battling them,[8] leading to a ‘day of reckoning’ involving the mass arrest of journalists and politicians.[9] No part of the theory is based on fact.[10][11][12][13] The theory began with an October 2017 post on the anonymous imageboard 4chan by “Q“, who was presumably an American individual,[14] but probably became a group of people.[15][16] Q claimed to have access to classified information involving the Trump administration and its opponents in the United States. NBC News found that three people took the original Q post and expanded it across multiple media platforms to build internet followings for profit. QAnon was preceded by several similar anonymous 4chan posters, such as FBIAnon, HLIAnon (High-Level Insider), CIAAnon, and WH Insider Anon.[17]
Q has accused many liberal Hollywood actors, Democratic politicians, and high-ranking officials of being members of the cabal. Q also claimed that Trump feigned collusion with Russians to enlist Robert Mueller to join him in exposing the ring and preventing a coup d’état by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and George Soros.[18][19][20] “Q” is a reference to the Q clearance used by the U.S. Department of Energy. QAnon believers commonly tag their social media posts with the hashtag #WWG1WGA, signifying the motto “Where We Go One, We Go All”.
QAnon adherents began appearing at Trump reelection campaign rallies in August 2018.[21] TV and radio personality Michael “Lionel” Lebron, a promoter of the theory, was granted a photo opportunity with Trump in the Oval Office on August 24, 2018.[22] Bill Mitchell, a broadcaster who promotes QAnon, attended a White House “social media summit” in July 2019.[7][23] At an August 2019 rally, a man warming up the crowd before Trump spoke used the QAnon motto “where we go one, we go all”, later denying that it was a QAnon reference. This occurred hours after the publication of a report that the FBI had determined QAnon to be a potential source of domestic terrorism, the first time the agency had so rated a fringe conspiracy theory.[24][25] According to analysis conducted by Media Matters, through August 20, 2020, Trump had amplified QAnon messaging at least 216 times by retweeting or mentioning 129 QAnon-affiliated Twitter accounts, sometimes multiple times a day.[26][27]
Into 2020, the number of QAnon adherents was unclear, but they had a large presence on social media, particularly Twitter. On June 24, 2020, Q exhorted followers to take a “digital soldiers oath”, and many did, using the Twitter hashtag #TakeTheOath.[28] In July 2020, Twitter banned thousands of QAnon-affiliated accounts and changed its algorithms to reduce the theory’s spread.[29] A Facebook internal analysis reported in August found millions of followers across thousands of groups and pages; Facebook acted to remove and restrict QAnon activity later that month.[30][31] Followers had also migrated to dedicated message boards such as EndChan and 8kun, where they organized to wage information warfare to influence the 2020 elections.[32]
Theory
The conspiracy theory, disseminated mainly by supporters of Trump as The Storm and The Great Awakening—QAnon’s precepts and vocabulary are closely related to the religious concepts of millenarianism and apocalypticism,[33] leading it to be sometimes construed as an emerging religious movement[34][35][36]—has been widely characterized as “baseless”,[21][37][38] “unhinged”,[39] and “evidence-free”.[40] Its proponents have been called “a deranged conspiracy cult”[20] and “some of the Internet’s most outré Trump fans”.[41]
According to Travis View, who has studied QAnon and written about it extensively for The Washington Post, the essence of the theory is that:
there is a worldwide cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who rule the world, essentially, and they control everything. They control politicians, and they control the media. They control Hollywood, and they cover up their existence, essentially. And they would have continued ruling the world, were it not for the election of President Donald Trump. Now, Donald Trump in this conspiracy theory knows all about this evil cabal’s wrongdoing. But one of the reasons that Donald Trump was elected was to put an end to them, basically. And now we would be ignorant of this behind-the-scenes battle of Donald Trump and the U.S. military—that everyone backs him and the evil cabal—were it not for “Q.” And what “Q” is is basically a poster on 4chan, who later moved to 8chan, who reveals details about this secret behind-the-scenes battle, and also secrets about what the cabal is doing and also the mass sort of upcoming arrest events through these posts.[33]
Followers of QAnon also believe that there is an imminent event known as “The Storm”, in which thousands of people, members of the cabal, will be arrested, possibly sent to Guantanamo Bay prison or to face military tribunals, and the U.S. military will brutally take over the country.[33] The result of The Storm will be salvation and utopia on earth.[42]
History
Background
See also: Pizzagate conspiracy theory
| David Goldberg | |
|---|---|
| @DavidGoldbergNY |
Rumors stirring in the NYPD that Huma’s emails point to a pedophila ring and @HillaryClinton is at the center. #GoHillary #PodestaEmails23
October 30, 2016[43]
On October 30, 2016, a Twitter account posting white supremacist material which said it was run by a New York lawyer falsely claimed that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) had discovered a pedophilia ring linked to members of the Democratic Party while searching through Anthony Weiner‘s emails.[44][45] Throughout October and November 2016, WikiLeaks had published John Podesta’s emails. Proponents of the theory read the emails and alleged they contained code words for pedophilia and human trafficking.[46][47] Proponents also claimed that Comet Ping Pong was a meeting ground for Satanic ritual abuse.[48]
The story was later posted on fake news websites, starting with Your News Wire, which cited a 4chan post from earlier that year.[44] The Your News Wire article was subsequently spread by pro-Trump websites, including SubjectPolitics.com, which added the claim that the NYPD had raided Hillary Clinton‘s property.[44] The Conservative Daily Post ran a headline claiming the Federal Bureau of Investigation had confirmed the theory.[49]
Anons
In its most basic sense, an “anon” refers to any anonymous or pseudonymous internet poster.[50]
The concept of anons “doing research” and claiming to disclose otherwise classified information, while a key component of the QAnon conspiracy theory, is by no means exclusive to it. Before Q, a number of so-called anons also claimed to have special government access.
On July 2, 2016, an anonymous poster known as “FBI Anon”, a self-described “high-level analyst and strategist” who claimed to have “intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the Clinton case”, began offering lies about the 2016 investigation into the Clinton Foundation and claimed that Hillary Clinton would be imprisoned if Trump became president. Around that time, another figure known as “HLI Anon”, standing for “High Level Insider Anon”, hosted long question-and-answer sessions, dispensing various conspiracy theories, including one that claimed Princess Diana was murdered after trying to stop the September 11 attacks.
Soon after the 2016 United States elections, two anonymous posters known only as “CIA Anon” and “CIA Intern” falsely claimed to be high-ranking CIA officers, and in late August 2017, an account called “WH Insider Anon” offered a supposed preview that something that was “going to go down” regarding leaks that would supposedly affect the Democratic Party.[17]
Origin
A person identifying as “Q Clearance Patriot” first appeared on the /pol/ board of 4chan on October 28, 2017, posting in a thread titled “Calm Before the Storm”,[14] a reference to Trump’s cryptic description of a gathering of United States military leaders he attended as “the calm before the storm”.[14][51] “The Storm” is QAnon parlance for an imminent event when thousands of alleged suspects will be arrested, imprisoned and executed.[33] The poster’s username implied that they hold Q clearance,[52][53] a United States Department of Energy security clearance required to access Top Secret information on nuclear weapons and materials.[54] An NBC News investigation found that in November 2017, two moderators of the board, “BaruchtheScribe” and “Pamphlet Anon”, reached out to YouTuber Tracy Diaz to promote Qanon. The three then created a Reddit community (subreddit) “CBTS_Stream”, which was key in spreading the theory. Posts by “Q” later moved to 8chan, citing concerns that the 4chan board had been “infiltrated”.[17] The theory then spread to Facebook and YouTube.[17] In March 2018, the subreddit, which had 20,000 subscribers, was banned for “encouraging or inciting violence and posting personal and confidential information”. “Pamphlet Anon” then launched “Patriots’ Soapbox”, a YouTube livestream channel dedicated to the theory. One archived livestream appears to show him logging in to “Q”’s 8chan account before the feed quickly cuts out.[17]
False claims and beliefs
See also: Murder of Seth Rich conspiracy theoryHRC extradition already in motion effective yesterday with several countries in case of cross border run. Passport approved to be flagged effective 10/30 @ 12:01am. Expect massive riots organized in defiance and others fleeing the US to occur. US M’s will conduct the operation while NG activated. Proof check: Locate a NG member and ask if activated for duty 10/30 across most major cities.
—QAnon‘s first post on the /pol/ message board of 4chan, on October 28, 2017[55]
Q’s posting campaign has a history of false, baseless, and unsubstantiated claims. Beginning with the first posts incorrectly predicting Hillary Clinton’s imminent arrest and followed by more false allegations, such as claiming that North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un is a puppet ruler installed by the CIA.[56] Q’s posts have become more cryptic and vague, allowing followers to map their own beliefs onto them.[57] By generating a keyboard heatmap of Q’s supposedly coded messages, information security researcher Mark Burnett concluded that they “are not actual codes, just random typing by someone who might play an instrument and uses a QWERTY keyboard”, adding that “almost all the characters” in the codes alternate between the left and right hands, or the characters are close to each other on the keyboard.[58]
Some of Q’s other allegations include their February 16, 2018, false claim that U.S. Representative and former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz hired Salvadoran gang MS-13 to murder DNC staffer Seth Rich,[51][59] and their March 1, 2018 apparent suggestion that German Chancellor Angela Merkel is Adolf Hitler‘s granddaughter.[60] A July 7, 2018, article in The Daily Beast also noted that Q falsely claimed that “each mass shooting is a false-flag attack organized by the cabal”.[61] Other beliefs held by QAnon adherents include that Obama, Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and others are planning a coup while simultaneously involved as members of an international child sex trafficking ring. According to this idea, the Mueller investigation is actually a counter-coup led by Trump, who pretended to collude with Russia in order to hire Mueller to secretly investigate the Democrats.[20] Another recurring theme is that certain Hollywood stars are pedophiles, and that the Rothschild family leads a satanic cult.[19] By interpreting the information Q feeds them, QAnon adherents come to these conclusions.[20]
On multiple occasions, Q has dismissed their false claims and incorrect predictions as willful misinformation, claiming that “disinformation is necessary”.[62] This has led Australian psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky to emphasize the “self-sealing” quality of the conspiracy theory, highlighting its anonymous purveyor’s use of plausible deniability and noting that evidence against the theory “can become evidence of [its] validity in the minds of believers”.[55] Author Walter Kirn has described Q as an innovator among conspiracy theorists by enthralling readers with “clues” rather than presenting claims directly: “The audience for internet narratives doesn’t want to read, it wants to write. It doesn’t want answers provided, it wants to search for them.”[63]
QAnon theorists have touted drinking an industrial bleach (known as MMS, or Miracle Mineral Solution) as a “miracle cure” for COVID-19.[64][65][66][67]
As in Pizzagate, QAnon followers believe that children are being abducted in large numbers to supply a child trafficking ring. By 2020, some followers began using the Twitter hashtag #SaveTheChildren, coopting a trademarked name for the child welfare organization Save the Children, leading to an August 7 statement by Save the Children on the unauthorized use of its name in campaigns.[68][69] Data from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children indicate that the overwhelming majority of missing children are runaways; the second-largest cause is abduction by family members, with less than 1% being nonfamily abductions.[70][71]
Identity of “Q”
There has been much speculation about the motive and the identity of the poster, with theories ranging from a military intelligence officer, to Trump himself, to an alternate reality game by Cicada 3301.[15] Because 4chan is anonymous and does not allow registration by users, any number of people originally may have posted using the same handle. The poster came to use a frequently changing tripcode to authenticate on 8chan after migrating there as they feared 4chan had been “infiltrated”.[35]
The Italian leftist Wu Ming foundation has speculated that QAnon is inspired by the Luther Blissett persona, which leftists and anarchists used to organize pranks, media stunts, and hoaxes in the 1990s. “Blissett” published the novel Q in 1999.[72]
As Q relies on a tripcode to verify themself, and the tripcode is verified by 8chan’s server and not reproducible on other imageboards, Q was not able to post when the website went down following the 2019 El Paso shooting.[73] This apparent conflict of interest, combined with statements by 8chan’s founder Fredrick Brennan, the use of a “Q” collar pin by 8chan owner Jim Watkins, and Watkins’s financial interest in a QAnon super PAC that advertises on 8chan, have led to widespread speculation that either Watkins or his son, 8chan’s administrator Ron Watkins, knows Q’s identity.[35][74] Some have speculated that Jim Watkins himself is Q.[75] Both Jim and Ron Watkins deny knowing Q’s identity.[35][76]
Analysis
QAnon may best be understood as an example of what historian Richard Hofstadter called in 1964 “The Paranoid Style in American Politics“, related to religious millenarianism and apocalypticism.[33] The vocabulary of QAnon echoes Christian tropes—”The Storm” (the Genesis flood narrative or Judgement Day) and “The Great Awakening”, which evokes the historical religious Great Awakenings from the early 18th century to the late 20th century. According to one QAnon video, the battle between Trump and “the cabal” is of “biblical proportions”, a “fight for earth, of good versus evil.” The forthcoming reckoning is said by some QAnon supporters to be a “reverse rapture” which means not only the end of the world as it is now known, but a new beginning as well, with salvation and a utopia on earth for the survivors.[42]
Within less than a year of existence, QAnon became significantly recognized by the general population. According to an August 2018 Qualtrics poll for The Washington Post, 58% of Floridians are familiar enough with QAnon to have an opinion about it. Of those who had an opinion, most were unfavorable. The average score on the feeling thermometer was just above 20, a very negative rating, and about half of what other political figures enjoy.[41][77] Positive feelings toward QAnon were found to be strongly correlated with being susceptible to conspiracy thinking.[77]
According to a March 2020 Pew survey, 76% of Americans said they had never heard of QAnon, 20% had heard “a little about it”, and 3% said they had heard “a lot”.[78][79]
Role of antisemitism
The conspiracy theory’s targeting of Soros and the Rothschilds has led The Washington Post and Jewish-American magazine The Forward to accuse it of containing “striking anti-Semitic elements” and “garden-variety nonsense with racist and anti-Semitic undertones”.[80][20] An August 2018 Jewish Telegraphic Agency article said, “although not specifically, some of QAnon’s archetypical elements—including secret elites and kidnapped children, among others—are reflective of historical and ongoing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories”.[81]
The Anti-Defamation League reported that while “the vast majority of QAnon-inspired conspiracy theories have nothing to do with anti-Semitism”, “an impressionistic review” of QAnon tweets about Israel, Jews, Zionists, the Rothschilds, and Soros “revealed some troubling examples” of antisemitism.[82]
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, another example of a conspiracy theory likely to have been subtly exploited by foreign intelligence services to exacerbate preexisting weaknesses and suspicions in a national culture for the purpose of stoking internecine damage to its unity and institutions, has intersected with the QAnon conspiracy theories, with a Republican QAnon fan retweeting a Twitter thread about the Rothschild family, Satanic High Priestesses, and American presidents saying that “The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion Is Not A Fabrication. And, It Certainly Is Not Anti-Semitic To Point Out This Fact.”[83][84] The retweeter later denied knowing the content of the thread, although anti-Semitic references appeared in the first few tweets.[85] Similarly, Trump has denied knowing anything about QAnon except that QAnon fans like him and “love our country.”[86]
By 2020, QAnon followers were advancing a theory that Hollywood elites were engaging in “adrenochrome harvesting,” in which adrenaline is extracted from children’s blood to be oxidized into the psychoactive drug adrenochrome. Adrenochrome harvesting is rooted in antisemitic myths of blood libel dating to the Middle Ages, claiming that Jews murder Christian children for their blood for use in religious rituals.[87][88][89]
QAnon believers have promoted a centuries-old antisemitic trope about an international banking conspiracy orchestrated by the Rothschild family.[90] Mary Ann Mendoza, who sits on the advisory board of Women for Trump, was scheduled to speak at the 2020 Republican convention, but was dropped hours before her appearance after it became known she had promoted the trope on Twitter.[91]
More at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAnon
Book: “Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair”
Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair
From intimate relationships to global politics, Sarah Schulman observes a continuum: that inflated accusations of harm are used to avoid accountability. Illuminating the difference between Conflict and Abuse, Schulman directly addresses our contemporary culture of scapegoating. This deep, brave, and bold work reveals how punishment replaces personal and collective self-criticism, and shows why difference is so often used to justify cruelty and shunning. Rooting the problem of escalation in negative group relationships, Schulman illuminates the ways cliques, communities, families, and religious, racial, and national groups bond through the refusal to change their self-concept. She illustrates how Supremacy behavior and Traumatized behavior resemble each other, through a shared inability to tolerate difference.
This important and sure to be controversial book illuminates such contemporary and historical issues of personal, racial, and geo-political difference as tools of escalation towards injustice, exclusion, and punishment, whether the objects of dehumanization are other individuals in our families or communities, people with HIV, African Americans, or Palestinians. Conflict Is Not Abuse is a searing rejection of the cultural phenomenon of blame, cruelty, and scapegoating, and how those in positions of power exacerbate and manipulate fear of the “other” to achieve their goals.
Sarah Schulman is a novelist, nonfiction writer, playwright, screenwriter, journalist and AIDS historian, and the author of eighteen books. A Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellow, Sarah is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. Her novels published by Arsenal include Rat Bohemia, Empathy, After Delores, and The Mere Future. She lives in New York.
PHILOSOPHY – René Descartes
The School of Life Rene Descartes is perhaps the world’s best known-philosopher, in large part because of his pithy statement, ‘I think therefore I am.’ He stands out as an example of what intellectual self-confidence can bring us. Please subscribe here: http://tinyurl.com/o28mut7 If you like our films take a look at our shop (we ship worldwide): http://www.theschooloflife.com/shop/all/ Brought to you by http://www.theschooloflife.com Produced in collaboration with Mad Adam Films http://www.madadamfilms.co.uk#TheSchoolOfLife
Pope Maintains Divine Buzz By Microdosing Eucharist Throughout Day
September 4, 2020 (theonion.com)
VATICAN CITY—Revealing that the practice helped him reach a state of sanctifying grace, Pope Francis confirmed Friday that he maintains a divine buzz by microdosing the Holy Eucharist throughout the day. “I’ve started to feel way more connected to the Heavenly Father ever since I started consuming a few crumbs of communion wafer every few hours,” said the pontiff, explaining how taking a 10-microgram dose of diluted liquid Holy Supper on regular intervals has made it much easier to compose epistles, lead his flock, and serve as a witness to his faith. “I figured I’d try it out after hearing how a bunch of high-powered, successful clergy members did it, and it’s been great. Ingesting small amounts of consecrated substances have worked wonders for my piousness. I mean, just yesterday I blessed, like, 500 parishioners and I wasn’t tired at all.” At press time, a completely nude Pope Francis, who had accidentally taken too much Eucharist, stormed into a meeting of cardinals screaming about demons crawling under his skin.
Your Mind is an Excellent Servant, but a Terrible Master – David Foster Wallace
After Skool David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American writer and university professor in the disciplines of English and creative writing. This speech is from his graduation address at Kenyon College in 2005. The most profound ideas are the most difficult to articulate because they express thoughts that transcend words. Many of us struggle through life because we are stuck in our “default setting”, where we unconsciously see ourselves as the absolute center of the universe. David Foster Wallace presents an alternative way to see the world in this timeless speech. This animation took over a month to create. If you like this video and want to see more, please consider supporting After Skool on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/AfterSkool Order the After Skool Children’s book https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/057… If you want to get in touch, feel free to send an email of visit https://www.afterskool.net And please subscribe and hit the notifications bell to see future animations! Thank you!
Caption author (Korean)
Caption author (Filipino)
Unitary executive theory
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The unitary executive theory is a theory of United States constitutional law which holds that the President of the United States possesses the power to control the entire executive branch. The doctrine is rooted in Article Two of the United States Constitution, which vests “the executive power” of the United States in the President. Although that general principle is widely accepted, there is disagreement about the strength and scope of the doctrine.[1] It can be said that some favor a “strongly unitary” executive, while others favor a “weakly unitary” executive. The former group argue, for example, that Congress‘s power to interfere with intra-executive decision-making (such as firing executive branch officials) is limited, and that the President can control policy-making by all executive agencies within the limits set for those agencies by Congress. Still others agree that the Constitution requires a unitary executive, but believe this to be harmful, and propose its abolition by constitutional amendment.[2] Plural executives exist in several states where, in contrast to the federal government, executive officers such as lieutenant governor, attorney general, comptroller, secretary of state, and others, are elected independently of the state’s governor. The Executive Branch of the Texan state government is a textbook example of this type of executive structure. Another type of plural executive, used in Japan, Israel, and Sweden, though not in any US state, is one in which a collegial body composes the executive branch – however, that collegial body does not comprise multiple members elected in elections, but is rather more akin to the US Cabinet or UK Cabinet in formation and structure.
Theory
The Vesting Clause of Article II provides, “The executive Power [of the United States] shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Proponents of the unitary executive theory argue that this language, along with the Take Care Clause (“The President shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed …”), creates a “hierarchical, unified executive department under the direct control of the President.”[3]
The general principle that the President controls the entire executive branch was originally rather innocuous, but extreme forms of the theory have developed. Former White House Counsel John Dean explains: “In its most extreme form, unitary executive theory can mean that neither Congress nor the federal courts can tell the President what to do or how to do it, particularly regarding national security matters.”[4]
According to law professors Lawrence Lessig and Cass Sunstein, “No one denies that in some sense the framers created a unitary executive; the question is in what sense. Let us distinguish between a strong and a weak version.”[1] In either its strong or weak form, the theory would limit the power of Congress to divest the President of control of the executive branch. The “strongly unitary” theory posits stricter limits on Congress than the “weakly unitary” theory.[1] During his confirmation hearing to become an Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court, Samuel Alito seemed to endorse a weaker version of the unitary executive theory.[5]
Some scholars oppose even the “weakly unitary” theory and favor creating a plural executive, as in the many state governments that separately elect an attorney general.[2] However, those scholars acknowledge that a constitutional amendment would be required to eliminate the federal unitary executive.
Proponents of a strongly unitary theory argue that the president possesses all of the executive power and can therefore control subordinate officers and agencies of the executive branch. This implies that the power of Congress to remove executive agencies or officers from Presidential control is limited. Thus, under the strongly unitary executive theory, independent agencies and counsels are unconstitutional to the extent that they exercise discretionary executive power not controlled by the president.[3]
The judicial branch implications are that a part of the executive branch cannot sue another part because “the executive cannot sue himself.” If the federal courts were to adjudicate disputes between executive agencies, it would violate the doctrine of separation of powers.[6]
Adoption of constitutional provisions
The phrase “unitary executive” was discussed as early as the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, referring mainly to having a single individual fill the office of President, as proposed in the Virginia Plan. The alternative was to have several executives or an executive council, as proposed in the New Jersey Plan and as promoted by Elbridge Gerry, Edmund Randolph, and George Mason.[7][8]
At the Pennsylvania ratifying convention in 1787, James Wilson emphasized the advantages of a single chief executive, including greater accountability, vigor, decisiveness, and responsibility:
[T]he executive authority is one. By this means we obtain very important advantages. We may discover from history, from reason, and from experience, the security which this furnishes. The executive power is better to be trusted when it has no screen. Sir, we have a responsibility in the person of our President; he cannot act improperly, and hide either his negligence or inattention; he cannot roll upon any other person the weight of his criminality; no appointment can take place without his nomination; and he is responsible for every nomination he makes. We secure vigor. We well know what numerous executives are. We know there is neither vigor, decision, nor responsibility, in them. Add to all this, that officer is placed high, and is possessed of power far from being contemptible; yet not a single privilege is annexed to his character; far from being above the laws, he is amenable to them in his private character as a citizen, and in his public character by impeachment.[9]
In 1788, the letters of the Federal Farmer were published, generally considered among the most astute of Anti-Federalist writings. The pseudonymous Federal Farmer defended the proposed unitary executive, arguing that “a single man seems to be peculiarly well circumstanced to superintend the execution of laws with discernment and decision, with promptitude and uniformity.”[10]
Meanwhile, Federalists such as James Madison were emphasizing an additional advantage of a unitary executive. In Federalist No. 51, he wrote that an undivided executive would strengthen the ability of the executive to resist encroachments by the legislature: “As the weight of the legislative authority requires that it should be thus divided [into branches], the weakness of the executive may require, on the other hand, that it should be fortified.”[11]
Alexander Hamilton later pointed out that the Constitution grants executive power and legislative power in different ways, with the legislative powers of Congress being expressly limited to what is “herein granted,” unlike executive powers which are not expressly limited by an enumeration. Hamilton wrote:
In the article which gives the legislative powers of the government, the expressions are “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a congress of the United States.” In that which grants the executive power, the expressions are “The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States.” The enumeration ought therefore to be considered, as intended merely to specify the principal articles implied in the definition of executive power. …[12]
In other words, the principle of expressio unius may be more applicable as a limitation upon congressional power than upon executive power. According to Hamilton, the unenumerated executive powers that are vested solely in the President “flow from the general grant of that power, interpreted in conformity with other parts of the Constitution, and with the principles of free government.”[12]
Those other parts of the Constitution include the extensive powers granted to Congress. Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive power to make laws, which the President then must execute, provided that those laws are constitutional. Article I, Section 8, clause 18 of the Constitution known as the Necessary and Proper Clause grants Congress the power to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution all Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof”. The Constitution also grants Congress power “To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.” The theory of the unitary executive can only be legitimate insofar as it allows Congress to wield its constitutional powers while ensuring that the President can do the same.
Judicial decisions
In the 1926 case of Myers v. United States, the United States Supreme Court decided that the President has the exclusive power to remove executive branch officials, and does not need the approval of the Senate or any other legislative body. The Court also wrote:
The ordinary duties of officers prescribed by statute come under the general administrative control of the President by virtue of the general grant to him of the executive power, and he may properly supervise and guide their construction of the statutes under which they act in order to secure that unitary and uniform execution of the laws which article 2 of the Constitution evidently contemplated in vesting general executive power in the President alone.[13]
Subsequent cases such as Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (Presidential removal of certain kinds of officers), United States v. Nixon (executive privilege), and Bowsher v. Synar (control of executive functions) have flexed the doctrine’s reach back and forth. Justice Scalia in his solitary dissent in Morrison v. Olson argued for an unlimited presidential removal power of all persons exercising executive branch powers, which he argued included the independent counsel; the court disagreed, but later moved closer to Scalia’s position in Edmond v. United States.[14]
Criticism of the strong version of the theory
Loyola Law School professors Karl Manheim and Allan Ides write that “the separation among the branches is not and never was intended to be airtight,” and they point to the President’s veto power as an example of the executive exercising legislative power. They also cite other examples of quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial power being exercised by the executive branch, as necessary elements of the administrative state, but they contend that ultimately all administrative power belongs to Congress rather than the President, and the only true “executive” powers are those explicitly described in the Constitution.[15] In this understanding, Manheim and Ides follow in the footsteps of Lessig and Sunstein.[1]
David Barron (now a federal judge) and Marty Lederman have also criticized the strong version of the unitary executive theory. They acknowledge that there is a compelling case for a unitary executive within the armed forces.[16] However, they argue that the Constitution does not provide for an equally strong unitary executive outside the military context, and they argue that the Commander in Chief Clause would be superfluous if the same kind of unitary presidential authority resulted from the general constitutional provision vesting executive power in the President.[17]
Unlike the modern constitutions of many other countries, which specify when and how a state of emergency may be declared and which rights may be suspended, the U.S. Constitution itself includes no comprehensive separate regime for emergencies. Some legal scholars believe however that the Constitution gives the president inherent emergency powers by making him commander in chief of the armed forces, or by vesting in him a broad, undefined “executive power.”[18] Congress has delegated at least 136 distinct statutory emergency powers to the President, each available upon the declaration of an emergency. Only 13 of these require a declaration from Congress; the remaining 123 are assumed by an executive declaration with no further Congressional input.[19] Congressionally-authorized emergency presidential powers are sweeping and dramatic and range from seizing control of the internet to declaring martial law.[18] This lead the American magazine The Atlantic to observe that “the misuse of emergency powers is a standard gambit among leaders attempting to consolidate power”,[18] because, in the words of Justice Robert H. Jackson‘s dissent in Korematsu v. United States, the 1944 Supreme Court decision that upheld the internment of Japanese Americans, each emergency power “lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.”[18]
Contrary to claims of some authors,[20] the first administration to make explicit reference to the “Unitary Executive” was not that of President George W. Bush. For example, in 1987, Ronald Reagan issued a signing statement that declared: “If this provision were interpreted otherwise, so as to require the President to follow the orders of a subordinate, it would plainly constitute an unconstitutional infringement of the President’s authority as head of a unitary executive branch.”[21]
The George W. Bush administration made the Unitary Executive Theory a common feature of signing statements.[22] For example, Bush once wrote in a signing statement that he would, “construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power.”[23] Critics acknowledge that part of the President’s duty is to “interpret what is, and is not constitutional, at least when overseeing the actions of executive agencies,” but critics accused Bush of overstepping that duty by his perceived willingness to overrule US courts.[24]
In film
In the 2018 biographical film Vice, directed by Adam McKay, the unitary executive theory is explored in some detail and dramatized. Dick Cheney, the film’s subject, his lawyer David Addington, Deputy Assistant US Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel John Yoo, and Scalia figure prominently in the theory’s development and promotion. They brought it to the foreground of modern discussions on the topic of executive power beginning in 2001, continuing throughout the Bush administration and beyond. The application of this legal doctrine has implications for the prosecution of the war on terror, the subsequent 2003 invasion of Iraq, the use of enhanced interrogation techniques at sites like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and mass surveillance. These are highlighted in the narrative.
More at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory