ANTEBELLUM BLOG: STAY INFORMED

Showing posts with label STAY INFORMED. Show all posts

5/6/19

RICK CASTRO: FUCK CENSORSHIP

For better or,(mostly) worst the largest social media platforms have become the dictators of culture for early 21st century.
They do this by deciding who and what will be posted on their servers. Ironic since WWW, (worldwide web) was created as a way for everyone to express whatever they wanted to everyone, without corporate input.
Facebook, Instagram, (owned by FB) and Tumblr have now become the harshest censors using Trumpworld’s Russian hackers as excuse to remove content.
Homeland security may have been the impetus, but quickly overreached to sexual content. Social media uses faux community standards as defense for discriminatory practices that are blatantly hypocritical.

Without question, GLTBQ postings are the hardest hit with rampant over-censorship and arbitrary removals. This is unfortunately nothing new. “blame the gays” rhetoric has been part of the American justice scapegoating for as long as we care to remember.

On March 29th, 2019, I posted a link to the Advocate story about my exhibition
RICK CASTRO: FETISH KING. This was immediately removed and Facebook banned me for 30 days, even though it was no more provocative than a Madonna image. The only difference; it was with two men.

The Advocate then asked me to write a statement about my censorship. Posted on my behalf, this was also removed adding an additional 30 days suspension.
BTW, the image was of me, fully clothed sitting on a bench! I’ve had numerous friends try to repose the statement. All have been removed by Facebook.
(SEE IMAGES BELOW TO UNDERSTAND HOW ABSURD AND RANDOM IT IS)

This arbitrary removal on social platforms is alarming. It goes to the larger picture of mainstream media corporate structure choosing what should be consumed by whom.

Numerous people I know, mostly GLBTQ, have had images & writings removed, and access to their own profiles placed on suspension.
Surprisingly, I’m witnessing complacency of this practice. So I’m asking the community; why are you accepting this?
My generation and generations before fought all our lives to achieve some equality within hetro institutions. Certain nudity and kink imagery is accepted when it depicts heterosexuality without anyone batting an eyelash.
GLBTQ have the same rights.

Do not take this lightly. We are the canaries in the coal mine. If it happens to me and my peers, it will eventually happen to you.

KNOW YOUR HISTORY. This is the beginning of the end. Take a look at the broad picture and understand how much has changed in a mere two years.
Currently in my book club we are reading The Pink Triangle, (Richard Plant, 1986). This was the symbol gay people were forced to wear in Nazi concentration camps.
This symbol allowed gay men zero rights. ZERO!
From 1933 to 1935, (two years) German Jews, gays, gypsies ie: minorities and handicapped people were subjugated with censorship, removal from media, access to earning a living, then all civil rights removed, thus allowing for extermination.

Now in the 21st century I’ve been banned on social media 21 times in the two years since the November 8th, 2016 election, which I call Black Friday.
Please don’t read this as innocuous and write it off as victim mentality. Censorship combined with liberal media labeled fake news, white supremacy laden propaganda, muslim bans, Mexican children in cages, separation of immigrant families, church ,mosque and synagogue fires, mixed with rampant hate crimes, attacks on GLBTQ people, police brutality, and killings of black people is the new normal. This is a recipe for disaster.
Wake up and push back against social media’s stranglehold on culture. Do not accept censorship in any form.

I have always been, and always will be a sex positive artist.
Besides themes of fetish, lust & desire, I represent an in-your-face- pushback to American censorship. If we accept these restrictions as a community, we’re doomed.
FUCK CENSORSHIP.

Rick Castro, April 22nd, 2019

4/18/19

HERE IS THE MUELLER REPORT

MUELLER: Trump "dictated" message for Lewandowski to give to Sessions to interfere with probe. On June 19, 2017, Trump met one-on-one in the Oval Office with former campaign chief Corey Lewandowski—who was not a White House employee at the time of the meeting—and dictated a message for him to give then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. According to the report, that message told Sessions to publicly announce that, notwithstanding his recusal from the Russia investigation, the probe was “very unfair” to the president, that the president had done nothing wrong, and that the attorney general planned to meet with Mueller to “let [him] move forward with investigating election meddling for future elections.” Lewandowski said he understood. Mueller's investigation "established multiple links between Trump Campaign officials and individuals tied to the Russian government. Those links included Russian offers of assistance to the Campaign. In some instances, the Campaign was receptive to the offer."

Mueller makes clear on page 220 that he disagrees with Barr's view that a president cannot obstruct justice by using his powers to undermine an investigation, and he believes Congress can "prohibit a President's corrupt use of his authority." The President 's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.“ There DOES NOT need to be an underlying crime for there to be obstruction of justice. "The injury to the integrity of the justice system is the same regardless of whether a person committed an underlying wrong."

After Flynn withdrew from his defense agreement with Trump, Trump's lawyer left Flynn's lawyer a voicemail demanding a "heads up" if Flynn was giving Mueller any info that "implicates the president," and asking Flynn to "remember" that Trump had warm feelings for him.

“Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked," Trump said after learning that a Special Counsel had been appointed.

At another private meeting, a month later, Trump asked Lewandowski about the message to Sessions “to limit the special counsel’s investigation to future election interference” and, per the report, “Lewandowski told the president that the message would be delivered soon.” Hours after the meeting, Trump criticized Sessions in a New York Times interview.

Ultimately, according to the Mueller report, “Lewandowski did not want to deliver the president’s message personally, so he asked senior White House official Rick Dearborn to deliver it to Sessions. Dearborn was uncomfortable with the task and did not follow through.”

The special counsel's investigation into possible collusion found that members of the Trump campaign knew they would benefit from Russia's illegal actions to influence the election, but didn't take criminal steps to help, the Mueller report said. The report says that people being investigated, "including some associated with the Trump Campaign," "deleted relevant communications." The report says there are "gaps" in the special counsel's knowledge, and they can't "rule out the possibility" that there is more.

4/15/19

AMERIKKKA THE HIDEOUS

THESE ARE THE KIND OF ATTACKS I'VE SEEN IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES,

NOW AN EVERYDAY PART OF AMERIKKA. KNOW YOUR HISTORY.

FIGHT HATE. RESIST. REPORT. PROTECT GLBTQ

4/12/19

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

FOOTAGE LEAKED, (AMONG MAY OTHER FILES)

FROM CHELSEA MANNING TO JULIAN ASSANGE WIKILEAKS CIRCA 2007.

9/25/18

THE DISUNITED STATES

The Disunited States: Is the Trump presidency causing irreparable damage to America?

America has never seen anything like this. Time and again, Donald Trump has attacked the very fabric of US democracy. He has called the press ‘the enemy of the American people’. He says that claims that Russia interfered in the US election are a hoax. And that the FBI - currently investigating his campaign - should be personally loyal to the president. And it’s not just political institutions Trump is damaging, his opponents say: in America he has stoked racial tension, coddled Wall Street and given succour to the gun lobby. On the world stage, he’s alienated key allies, slapped $50 billion in tariffs on China that may spark off a trade war, and appointed the hawkish John Bolton, who has advocated regime change in Iran and North Korea, as national security adviser. If Trump is a new kind of threat, the big question is whether the damage he is doing to America will be permanent. Will the country that survived two world wars, the Cold War and the attacks of 9/11 really be put off its stride by a reality show host who could be gone in less than three years’ time? Or is Trump dismantling the robust system that has kept America united and irreparably damaging its standing as the most powerful nation on earth? But perhaps this is all liberal hand-wringing. Could Trump, in fact, be that rarest of things -

a politician who delivers on his promises - and prove to be the reformer the American electorate voted for? To examine the political health and standing of the United States at this crucial moment, Intelligence Squared brought together Ronan Farrow, former US government adviser and journalist, who has just been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for breaking the Harvey Weinstein scandal; Mark Lilla, the American political scientist who hit the headlines last year with an article arguing that it is the left’s preoccupation with identity politics that opened the door to Trump’s victory; Lionel Shriver, award-winning novelist and commentator; and Brian Klaas, an expert on authoritarianism who claims that with every autocratic tweet Trump is edging America away from its democratic norms.

The Disunited States: Is the Trump presidency causing irreparable damage to America?