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Old dude came in the shop and when I said "lemme know if you have any questions" he goes "what was the name of Alexander the Great's horse," thinking he was so funny. I told him Bucephalus, and he was so disappointed. Like his whole day was hanging on beating me at trivia. He says "you're only the second person who knew that" and I said "well, probably the third if you count Alexander the Great." He left without buying anything, and did not say goodbye. I think I honestly hurt his weird little feelings! Sorry I'm a bitch, old man!

Prevention through Deterrence.

What is Prevention through Deterrence? It is a strategy that the U.S Border Patrol implemented to make border crossing as difficult, dangerous, and expensive as possible, ultimately aiming to redirect migrants routes into the most inhospitable sections of the border, basically making the hot desert a weapon to discourage migrants from attempting the crossing at all. 

The U.S has made it abundantly clear that migration through crossing the border is illegal, making policies after policy to dismay the crossing, including Operation Streamline, a joint initiative of the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice in the U.S started in 2005 that adopts a ‘zero-tolerance’ approach to unauthorized border-crossing by criminally prosecuting them; up to 70 people, locked together in handcuffs through hands and feet are shown before a judge before being prosecuted and sent to the state jail, which affects the economy since all of the space being taken up is being paid at taxpayer’s expense, and destroys the judicial system because justice is not being served, and instead becomes corrupt.

  But then how did this all start? Why are migrants crossing the border in the first place? Because of colonialism and domestic violence, that’s why. Back in 1944, the allies like the U.S, the U.K, and France, etc. would connect their banks to the dollar, or regular paper money, making it the BrettonWood Agreement. The colonies under such big world powers, around the ’50s wanted independence, which caused immense turmoil for the world powers. The colonies wanted to rise independently, and could only do that economically. A man by the name of Jacobo Arbenz was elected president of Guatemala; he was a great military officer and politician. At this time he had drawn a land reform, where he wanted the U.S who owned land in Guatemala that they weren’t using to pay taxes and give that fallow land back to the Guatemalan government for land distribution. The U.S felt like they were being bossed around, and didn’t like that this small country was forcing them to give up their land’, so they, under the company United Fruit decided they couldn’t control this man, so they killed him and set a man who became a dictator by the name of Carlos Castillos Armas in his place. A series of coups and new presidents/dictators after Armas’s four years. It was only in the ’80s of Guatemala do things go from bad to worse, with the presidency of Rios Montt, who believes he was appointed by God.

The guerillas, a small attack force that was taking part in action against a large force, in this case, Montt, were being hunted down, killed, and tortured. In Guatemala, there are white Spaniards, brown Spanish people, and then the indigenous tribes called the Maya; some of the Maya, who lived in small towns away from the city, wanted to join and stop Montt, who became a dictator at this point. He believed that since the Mayan people had joined against them, then all of the Mayan people were guerillas. He, with the help of the U.S government, started the Scorched Earth Campaign, which was the legal use of killing and destroying every Maya and anyone else who was associated with the Maya, or the ‘guerillas’. 626 villages were burned down, and over 1.5 million were displaced, with many of them being children (kill the seed, a strategy of destroying the Mayan tribe.) People would hide in the mountains or they would migrate to Mexico or other countries, some able to migrate to the U.S. 

   I mention Guatemala because in the ‘Imaginarium of migration’, what we in the U.S think about these people who are crossing the border believe they do not just come from Mexico here to ‘steal our jobs’. They come from Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, etc. all over, so they could have a shot at supporting their families, and learn and be somewhat educated, then hope to go back home. So no, not all migrants are from Mexico, and not all of them are criminals. Many people are traveling through the desert knowing the risks and the dangers and doing so on the basis of hope that they could get through, hoping to find border patrol. Yes, they want to find border patrol, because border patrol offers them food, water, and shelter from the heat of the sun and the dryness of the desert. But sometimes many people do not even get that far, and their deaths become ambiguous because again, they have no rights; hundreds, if not thousands are dying in the desert. 

Colonialism and nationalism also play a big part in how the U.S writes immigration policy. ‘’Give me your needy, your tired and your poor’’ is a regular statement and not to be taken literally. The colonialist/capitalist mindset is that people can come to the U.S, they just have to be white and rich. State/space of exception is the concept where human rights are negated. There is a space where people are reduced to distribution, where they don’t matter enough for anything a person in the U.S might take for granted because they are ‘alien/illegal’. Since there are no laws to protect them, they have no rights to be protected. And the rise of nationalism is what we've been seeing a lot since the presidential campaigns of 2016 when Trump was stated into office. Nationalism is the ideology and movement that promotes the interests of a particular nation, especially the aim of gaining and maintaining the nation’s sovereignty over its homeland, in this case the U.S. Nationalism holds that each nation should govern itself, free from outside interference, that a nation is a natural and ideal basis for a polity, and that the nation is the only rightful source for political power. This is why racism, fascism, and classism always follow closely after. 

Information from Jason De Leon’s book, ‘‘The Land of Open Graves.’’

🥲

Honorable mentions:

The last SAMURAI- white.

Prince of PERSIA- white.

Just shut up.

The tale of Lilith

There are a lot of accounts about the ‘demon-ness Lilith’, and her origin story leads a lot to be desired. Apparently, she was the first wife of Adam in Sumerian folklore, and because she did not want to be under Adam’s control any longer, and became, depending on which account you read, a vampire, a demon-ess, or a harlot, or all three, for not wanting to be apart of ‘God’s plan.’ The Sumerian accounts, taken from the 3rd millennium, were the first accounts of what happened to her before the biblical Hebrews surmised of her.

She is described as a ‘beautiful maiden’ but was believed to be a harlot, who once took a lover, offered no satisfaction to him, nor would she ever let him go. According to the Sumerian epic, dating from around 2000 B.C, ‘Gilgamesh and the Huluppu Tree’ and was ‘‘believed to appear to have human eyes. She is slender, well-shaped, beautiful, and nude, with wings, and owl feet. She stands erect on two reclining lions which are turned away from each other and are flanked by owls. On her head, she wears a cap embellished by several pairs of horns. In her hand, she holds a ring-and-rod combination. Evidently, this is no longer a lowly she-demon, but a goddess who tames wild beasts, and as shown by the owls on the reliefs, rules by night.’’

Apparently, the earliest mention of the ‘she-demon, whose name is similar to that of Lilith is found in the Sumerian king list which dates from around 2400 B.C. ‘‘It states, that the father of the great Gilgamesh was a Lilu-demon. The Lilu was one of four demons belonging to an incubi-succubae class. The other three were Lilitu (Lilith), a she-demon; Ardat Lili, or her handmaiden, who visited men in the night and bore them ghostly children. There is also the tale of the Irdu Lili, who was her male counterpart and would visit women and beget children by them. Originally these were storm demons, but because of a mistaken etymology, they came to be regarded as night demons. On one brief reference to Lilith in the Bible, Isaiah 34:14, in describing Yahweh’s (God) day of vengeance, says: The wild cat shall meet with the jackals, And the satyr shall cry to to his fellow, Yea, Lilith shall repose there, And find her a place of rest.’’

You know what's wrong with this? I could totally see this happening. Like, they and all the avengers and Loki reading the books. Except Loki is with the four of them, and laughing maniacally ( EHEHEHEHE) when Steve and Tony look at Thor like this

Secrecy in anthropology

  NO. 1

 Anthropology is the scientific study of human beings, and social anthropology is the study of behavior in certain societies. Studying patterns of behavior means studying how humans think, react, and evolve in society, but that also means understanding human secrecy through ethnographic research. But what is secrecy? In the ethnographic record, initiatory secrets often stand for the quiddity of culture, and the revelation of concealed realities is an organizing trope in much ethnographic writing.

NO. 2

   ‘’Intellectual historiography shows that the concept of secrecy has carried overwhelmingly negative, antisocial, and primitive connotations in learned Western discourses since the Enlightenment and that early anthropological research often supported such an implicitly social evolutionist stance. Secrecy and risk are closely connected. Secrecy engenders risk insofar as concealment entails the possibility of unwelcome revelation; non-circulation also creates a risk of its own, such as the breakdown of social relations or cultural reproduction. However, risk can also, gender secrecy as a strategy to manage perilous social relations. In practice, the casual relationship between secrecy and risk can be difficult to disentangle because the subjective experience of risk and the urgency of secrecy are constitutive--in both ritual secrecy and strategic secrets of state.’’

NO. 3

Secrecy excludes outsiders, but the power it attracts lies in the possibility it may be disclosed and revealed to those same outsiders. ‘’This contradictory centrifugal and centripetal forces push and pull on secrets. Possessing secrets can make people intensely aware of the fragility of knowledge and the precariousness of their custodial position. Revelatory and initiatory practices within secretive practice activities are often carefully calibrated to induce a sense of risk. It is paradoxical also because it ‘must be performed in a public fashion in order to be understood to exist.’ The revelation of concealment is a way of socially mobilizing the secret as a form of sociocultural capital without dispersing restricted knowledge.’’ Basically, secrecy is a personal form of belonging, of being included in the intimate affairs of family, friends, or just knowing about something that you didn’t previously. 

That's amazing!

I’m Honestly Fed Up With All The Bad News, So I Illustrated 40 Of The Best Ones From 2021

We need more positive news to acknowledge that the world is actually getting better little by little. Here are some of the top performing positive news illustrations from 2021.

The Climate Change Conspiracy

  NO. 1

Climate Change is a widely talked about subject since the late 19th century. It is the rise of the average temperature on Earth’s climate system, and while there have been past periods of global warming, the rate it is going on right now is at an unprecedented level. But many conspiracy theorists believe that climate change must be a hoax, or has been invented for financial and ideological reasons.  Human influence is obviously the largest contributor due to climate change or global warming, but ‘’allegations have been made that scientists and institutions involved in global warming research are part of a global scientific conspiracy or engaged in a manipulative hoax. 

 Climate change denial ‘is a latecomer to neoliberal anti-environmentalism, it is now become the countermovement’s pivotal issue in battles against environmental regulations. Neoliberals hold that the issue provides license for wholesale intervention everywhere. Anti-environmentalism has been, from the start, a keystone of neoliberal anti regulatory politics.’’  Many politicians, celebrities, and magazines have stated that climate change is a hoax, scam or elaborate conspiracy, and this is dangerous because it convinces the public that climate change is a hoax as well; especially because the more power a person has the more convincing they become.

NO. 2

Donald Trump, in 2012, has stated that,  "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." Really? Climate change is not a scam created by a neighboring country, it is something real that affects everyone on the planet. ‘’The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that ‘human influence on climate has been the dominant cause of observed warming since the mid-20th century. These findings have been recognized by the national science academies of major nations and are not disputed by any scientific body of national or international standing. Impacts include the extinction or relocation of many species as their ecosystems change, most immediately in coral reefs, mountains, and the Arctic.’’

   Unfortunately, economic stability will always be the reason for ignoring or abusing the environment. Conspirators and those who deny climate change will also see it as changing the jobs they’ve taken, the lives they’ve led, and the politicians they’ve followed, not to mention that getting the American public to understand and care about climate change is a challenge, even with the many conspiracies out there. ‘’Reeling from conservative attacks over liberal bias, ‘mainstream media’, seeking ‘editorial balance,’ often grant parity to ‘climate skeptic’ news releases and policy papers, from right-wing think tanks and their bought experts and pundits, with peer-reviewed science. Having increased leverage in recessions and periods of economic insecurity, many Americans are receptive to conservative views--that regulating fuel efficiency, and thereby vehicle size weight, increases energy prices and taxes ‘kills jobs,’ violates freedom of choice and threatens overall liberty.’’

NO. 3

    The way the media frames climate change doesn’t help inform people either on how to safely combat climate change, where every frame somehow includes a doomsday scenario, so much that it disempowers how people will react, and respond. Tropical storms, rising oceans, heat waves, reduction of snow and ice, and high carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will only increase if we choose to do nothing and believe that the science is wrong. When Hurricane Irma hit Houston, it showed real life consequences to climate change--as ocean temperatures increase, more hurricanes will become more severe and catastrophic. But those who reported and interviewed people, mainly conservatives who deny or deflect climate change is in the wrong for even presenting that to their audience. ‘’Those supplying the media with information--scientists, politicians, and NGO’s--share some of the blame. The way they media frame climate change will affect how audiences respond. Challenges include making stories more relevant to audiences, raising the profile of adaption and the perspectives of the poor, and reporting on ways to address climate change that brings additional benefits.’’

   Conspiracies have the ability to be fun, cause drama, and bring people together---they can also bring disarray and be wildly inaccurate. They can also be dangerous to the general public for fueling theories over science; climate change is real, and whether these theorists believe it or not, is based on whether or not human influence. We have the power to change the way the world has become.