Meetzorp

Langston Hughes: Beaumont to Detroit (1943)

Looky here, America What you done done – Let things drift Until the riots come

Now your policemen Let the mobs run free. I reckon you don’t care Nothing about me.

You tell me that hitler Is a mighty bad man. I guess he took lessons From the ku klux klan.

You tell me mussolini’s Got an evil heart. Well, it mus-a been in Beaumont That he had his start –

Cause everything that hitler And mussolini do Negroes get the same Treatment from you

You jim crowed me Before hitler rose to power – And you’re still jim crowing me Right now, this very hour.

Yet you say we’re fightin For democracy. Then why don’t democracy Include me?

I ask you this question Cause I want to know How long I got to fight BOTH HITLER – AND JIM CROW.

My parents have been sharing stories of what they lived through during the military dictatorship in Argentina in the 70s, because now it feels more relevant than before.

The parallels are chilling. For example:

My mom once had to hide under a car parked on the street while agents kidnapped people on the street.

One night, in the middle of the night, agents tried to kidnap my parents' neighbor. He was a prominent lawyer and had a bolted door. The agents tried to kick the door open and left boot marks all over it. The lawyer, fearing for his life, stepped out on a ledge from his window on a 9th floor and waited there for hours.

It turned out they had the wrong address (allegedly.)

My mom shared how every week there'd be less and less people at class at her university. Students were either kidnapped or too afraid to go to class.

She was instructed to never walk alone, just in case.

Hundreds of private companies helped the military dictatorship to apprehend, torture, and kill activists and terrorize the rest of the population to not speak up/protest. People were detained at work, for example.

Those detained didn't have the right to a judge, speak to the press, or international observing entities.

It is estimated that over 30,000 people were disappeared and murdered. Those who had kids, had their kids taken from them and given to military families to raise them as their own, hiding their true identities from them. Many are my age, and groups are still trying to find the kids of the disappeared.

About 500,000 people had to exile.

Those who disagreed with the regime were called "terrorists" and the dictators claimed they were doing what they were doing (sic) to protect national security, with the support of... the US.

/End text.

Reply by mom_e_clare, text:

In early 2017, right after his 1st inauguration, I was in the grocery store right before closing, standing in a long line for the one cashier. An older woman behind me pointed at a newspaper headline about Trump & said "Everyone is saying he's Hitler but I escaped Spain in the 60s and that man is America's Franco." The picture accompanying the headline she pointed to was Trump with Evangelists "laying hands" around him. "Keep a diary" she said. "It will keep you sane as they tell you lies."

Everyone keeps asking the same question over and over: what's wrong with the leftists? Why are they so noisy, why do they support the Gaza Strip, but remain completely silent when it comes to Iran? The answer is simple: because the truth exposes the lie. Because acknowledging Iran destroys the ideological fantasy they have built. Let's be clear: the Islamic Republic of Iran is not a victim of Western imperialism. It is a theocratic authoritarian regime that exists by exporting violence, funding Islamist groups, and suppressing its own people. Yes, it funds Hamas. It funds Hezbollah.

All these small proxy groups in the region and worldwide are financed with Iranian money — not government or regime money, but stolen funds: money taken from workers who today in Iran cannot even afford bread; from families destroyed by inflation; from women who are beaten, imprisoned, tortured, and raped for refusing religious submission. And that is exactly why the leftists are silent: because Hamas feeds their narrative, but the Iranian people do not. Because Islamist violence against Israelis can be turned into "resistance," but Islamist violence against Iranians reveals the truth. At this very moment, as you read this, Iran — a country with over 92 million people — is being destroyed in real time.

Almost a complete blackout for more than 24 hours: no internet, no phone connection, no communication at all. And — silence. No "urgent protests" at Western universities, no hashtags, no statements of solidarity, no megaphones. Because the suffering of Iranians does not fit their agenda.

Because modern leftist movements are no longer driven by human rights — they are driven by selective outrage and ideological loyalty.

They will scream about censorship — unless it is done by an Islamist regime.

They will condemn state violence to the fullest — but will never say a word if that violence is wrapped in religious language. They chant "Free Palestine," but will never say "Free Iran," because that would require one difficult admission: that political Islam is not liberation — it is domination. And, by the way, this is happening in the West today as well. The Islamic Republic is not anti-imperialist; it is imperialist toward its own people. Hamas is not an isolated resistance group; it is part of a broader Islamist ecosystem funded, trained, and supported by regimes like the Islamic Republic of Iran. Here is the part they do not want to hear: You cannot claim moral superiority while justifying a regime that kills women and punishes them for refusing the hijab, kills protesters, cuts off the internet for a 92-million-strong nation, and uses foreign proxy groups to cover up its own internal collapse. You cannot pretend to care about Palestinians while ignoring Iranians who are being shot, tortured, and killed by the Islamic Republic. This is not solidarity — this is ideological blindness.

The Iranian people are not silent — they are forced into silence. The silence of Western leftists is their choice: a choice to defend ideology, justify Islamism, and turn a blind eye to the suffering of millions because the pain of the Iranian people complicates the slogan. History will remember this moment. It will remember who spoke about universal freedom and who decided that some lives are less important than preserving a narrative. Long live Iran."

She was trying to the best for her kids and just didn’t know how to interpret the validity of information or its sources, an actual skill that can be actually difficult and that is under-taught and a necessary first step to being able to trust vaccination research, so chose no action over taking an action she wasn’t sure of. She kept looking into it with family and friends and even eventually came to the right conclusion before her kids became sick, but it was still too late.

Honestly it was pretty brave of her to publicly admit she was wrong. She could have just quietly vaccinated her kids and not become a national news story, but instead she spoke out, even saying “I’m writing this from quarantine, the irony of which isn’t lost on me.” and also “I am not looking forward to any gloating or shame as this ‘defection’ from the antivaxx camp goes public, but, this isn’t a popularity contest.  Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear.  I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk.”

The movement is pushed by women, especially suburban moms, because they know damn well you cannot trust doctors. You cannot trust the medical industry, the billion-dollar corporate zone of “you should lose some weight and maybe the pain will stop.” Cannot trust the ones who keep changing diet advice - is it no sugar? No carbs? No fats? Is it dangerous to let kids eat things in wild colors? Food pyramid: good or bad? They cannot trust the BMI chart that says they should lose 75 lbs to be “healthy.” (Whether or not they “should” lose 75 lbs, they know damn well that “healthy” does not describe any part of the journey to getting there.) Cannot trust the ones who keep giving them incomplete and sometimes incorrect information about contraception. The ones who said “that’s false labor; you have two weeks more” 12 hours before they gave birth. And so on.

So they have their kids, and they want so much for their kids to be safe, and the doctors and nurses say: Get them vaccinated.

So they ask: What about if there’s complications? An allergic reaction? Side effects?

And the doctors and nurses say: Get them vaccinated.

This is… not reassuring.

And they ask, My sister-in-law’s cousin had a really bad reaction to the MMR shot and I want to know how I can tell it’s safe for my kids.

And the doctors and nurses say: Get them vaccinated.

Throw in the right-wing/libertarian faction yelling YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO and the insurance companies saying “hey um you need a specific type of coverage for that; we probably cover those vaccinations but you’ll need this special paperwork to be sure” - and then you have the actual anti-vax propagandists yelling some combination of cherry-picked statistics and outright lies, and you get a whole lot of moms willing to say BUGGRE ALL THIS FOR A LARKE.

There is no amount of facts that can fix this. They’re swamped with facts from 300 directions. What they need to fix this is empathy and the kind of connections that lead to trust.

Kindness doesn’t just matter because it’s more ethical - it'salso a more effective strategy.

The concept of a "white Christmas" is pretty rare to experience anywhere in Europe southern than Amsterdam (so 3/4ths of Europe, population-wise). Hell, even some of the nordic capitals (Copenhagen and Stockholm) only get white Christmas maybe once per decade or so. Sure, it can snow everywhere, but in December? It's rarely enough for the snow to actually settle.

Behold, Anglocentrism I guess. ^

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage

This too, Anglocentrism.

https://www.drought.gov/what-is-drought/snow-drought

Movie Howl is a soulful and quiet. Book Howl is a drama queen and Causing Problems and has a long string of jilted exes and couldn't shut up if you paid him.

Sophie and Howl drive each other up the wall at the beginning and it's really funny. Sophie and Howl are (despite themselves) very much in love by the end and they still drive each other up the wall and it's even funnier.

In the movie, Howl has been ordered by the king to participate in The War, and Howl is avoiding it because he is a brave conscientious objector. In the book, Howl has been ordered by the king to rescue his lost brother from the Witch of the Wastes, and Howl is avoiding it by any means necessary because he is a cowardly weasel who wants to stay as far from the Witch as possible.

In the movie, the Witch cursed Sophie because she was jealous about Howl speaking to Sophie for five minutes. In the book, the Witch cursed Sophie because Sophie had been doing surprisingly powerful magic for years without knowing it and it was actually starting to cut into the Witch's plans. (Sophie does not discover any of this until nearly the end of the book, but the reader can start to pick it up much earlier and the way Sophie's magic works is pretty darn cool.)

In the movie, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens, but this is implied to be nothing but nasty fearmongering. In the book, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens because Howl started the rumor so people would stop asking him to do wizard junk all the time.

The book lightly parodies a couple of tropes from Western fairy tales. In particular Sophie has internalized that, as the eldest of three sisters, her "destiny" is to fail so that her younger sisters will look cooler when they succeed, which is why she's so resigned to the hat shop at the beginning. (Sidebar: Sophie's sisters come up much more in the book and they're great.) There's also a really funny bit where Sophie attempts to operate a pair of seven-league boots.

It’s unclear whether he finished his PhD or is still a grad student in the process of slithering out of his actual viva.

Here is Calcifer’s “silly saucepan song” that he sings to himself, which Howl sings when drunk (and Sophie doesn’t understand.) It’s a Welsh rugby song.

I didn't even know it was possible to find a house like this for $59k. It's a 1914 Craftsman in Rolfe, IA. 4bds, 2ba, 1,728sqft. We were wondering what's the catch, and someone answered. She said, "It’s just Rolfe, that’s the reason for the price. Middle of nowhere, Iowa. I grew up in that town and loved it. Population is about 400-500. I used to take piano lessons in that house. It was beautiful!" So, that doesn't sound so bad, right? Let's take a look.