#Afghanistan team announced

[meetinginsamarra]

mayprompts2024,#20 do-over

Apparently there will be another AU happening. No beds but tats.

A Tattoo Shop AU.

I've no idea where this will go so I'll surprise us all. LOL

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White Pony Tattoo - Part One (do-over)

Dr John Watson stood in front of 221 Baker Street and – for the first time in a very long time – felt anxious.

He was wondering why this actually happened to him right now. The London afternoon was mild and sunny, summer was about to begin and yet, an aura of foreboding seemed to hover around the well-kept Victorian building.

John shook himself mentally. This was completely ridiculous. There was nothing to be afraid of. There was no danger.

For God’s sake, he had fought for Queen and Country in Afghanistan, had saved several lives and countless limbs in the field hospital and also on the battlefield under heavy fire. He had not felt anxious then. Wary, yes. Cautious, of course. High on adrenaline, surely.

He had been shot in the shoulder while he was on a scouting mission with his team and had woken up in his own field hospital. When his fellow army doctor had disclosed to John in blunt medical terms that he might lose his arm, then John had been frightened.

After a long rehab process the arm was functioning again but John had been honourably discharged because of an intermittant tremor in his hand that made him unsuitable to work as a field surgeon.

Two years ago, John had returned to London and after struggling for three months he had found work as a physician in a local clinic. He had soon met a wonderful nurse named Mary Morstan, fell in love with her and they had married quickly.

Which brought John back to the reason why he was standing in the middle of the pavement in front of 221 Baker Street, staring at the tattoo shop like a village idiot.

The tattoo on his right upper arm needed a do-over.

“White Pony Tattoo” was not what John had expected. It was located in a small shop with a red awning above its single window. There were no flashing neon signs or colourful and enlarged pictures of tattoo designs the artist had created. No advertising of the shop’s services whatsoever. Everything was clinical and sterile, even off-putting. Had it not been for the single metal sign placed in the middle of the window, no one would have thought a tattoo shop would be behind it.

Maybe it was the sign that made John feel so anxious.

It read “White Pony Tattoo” and showed a stylized white running pony on its right side. On the left the sign read “no arguing, no crying, no boring designs”. This did not bode well. Just by the look of it, John would never have thought about setting a foot in there.

Yet, John had done his fair share of internet research to find the best tattoo shops in London because he really did not want some would-be tattoo artist botch up his skin.

White Pony Tattoo had topped several lists. The only shortcoming that people regularly mentioned was that the artist was capricious. The lesser polite said that he was a total dick. However, Sherlock’s – John assumed it was a pen name -artistry was highly acclaimed and he had won several competitions over the last years. Getting an appointment was difficult and being accepted as a client was even more so. But sometimes, when Sherlock was interested enough, he accepted walk-ins.

John straightened his back, raised his chin, took a deep breath and opened the door of the tattoo shop. A melodious door bell chimed and announced his presence.

IIt was cool and dim inside the shop and it smelled faintly of a fresh lemon fragrance. A thick purple curtain behind the wooden counter closed off the rearmost part of the shop. Quiet classical violin music played in the background.

“Hello?” John called out, taking off his jumper to let his tattoo show. “Is there anybody here?”

The curtain moved and a man stepped up to the counter. It was easy to recognize Sherlock from the few pictures John had seen on the internet.

“Hello, I’m here for a do-over…” John began.

“Shut up.” Sherlock commanded. His baritone voice was silky and opulent just like the luscious black curls that framed his aristocratic and unusual face.

John was so surprised that he closed his mouth with an audible plop.

Sherlock’s eyes roamed over John’s face and upper arms, then the rest of his body. Piercing blue grey eyes took in every detail, precise like an x-ray machine or better, like a computer tomograph. They missed nothing, pinning John to the spot and stripping him down to his very bones, unable to hide anything. It was uncanny. Disconcerting.

“Firstly, it’s called a cover-up, as you should very well know.”

Sherlock chided, frowning. His voice rumbled like the high-end engine of a race car and filled John with an unknown desire.

“Secondly, I’ve already deduced what you want. I won’t do it because it’s boring.”

+++++

The one(s) who know and tell me where the shop's name comes from will get a cameo in this AU (nothing bad, I promise). Are you game?

tagging @peageetibbs @totallysilvergirl @calaisreno @lisbeth-kk @raina-at

[mariacallous]

In mid-January, Phil Gordon visited Guatemala to hand deliver a letter from Kamala Harris to a man who very likely owed his presidency to U.S. diplomatic intervention.

Bernardo Arévalo de León had just been inaugurated as Guatemala’s new leader, despite efforts by the country’s outgoing government over months to derail a democratic transition of power. Gordon, the U.S. vice president’s national security advisor, was in Guatemala to attend Arévalo’s inauguration with a delegation of other high-level Biden administration officials.

The letter congratulated him on his victory and invited him to Washington for a meeting with Harris, according to a copy reviewed by Foreign Policy. But its real significance was spelled out between the lines. A senior administration official involved in the discussions said the letter was a “signal that the U.S. gives full-throated support to Arévalo and Guatemala’s democratic transition of power.”

The inauguration itself took place after midnight on Jan. 15, following a dramatic final effort by members of Guatemala’s outgoing government to halt the proceedings. Gordon and other members of the U.S. delegation were instrumental in ensuring the transition of power took place, having imposed sanctions and visa restrictions, and back channeled with other embassies to pressure Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei to accept the election results and step aside.

The democratic transition in Guatemala represents one of the clearest victories of U.S. President Joe Biden’s agenda to promote democracy worldwide, as well as a rare example of Vice President Kamala Harris’s national security team playing a distinct and direct role in shepherding it through, according to interviews with multiple administration insiders and Central America experts. The episode provides possible insights into how Harris’s foreign-policy team would work should she win the presidential election in November.

While it went relatively unnoticed in Washington, where people are largely focused on wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the U.S. maneuver to bolster democracy in Guatemala was a policy win—in stark contrast to some of the administration’s endeavors in other parts of the world. The Biden administration has faced criticism for embracing autocrats in ways that undermined his stated goals of promoting global democracy. Across West Africa, the United States has failed to stem an “epidemic” of coups that dealt a heavy blow to U.S. interests. In Afghanistan, which the United States withdrew from chaotically three years ago, democracy is more distant than ever.

“Probably the most key player for securing this transition for Arévalo was the international community and specifically the United States,” said Marielos Chang, a Guatemalan political consultant and professor at the Universidad del Valle in Guatemala.

When Biden announced his withdrawal from the presidential race last month and endorsed Harris, one of the many questions posed about the vice president was: What role had she played on foreign-policy issues? Many current and former U.S. national security officials say it is hard to discern where Harris and her small national security team have made a mark—but Guatemala stands as an exception.

Harris became the administration’s point person on Central America’s Northern Triangle region to tackle the root causes of migration, an assignment that later became a point of controversy on the campaign trail—and a source of criticism from Republicans. Migration encounters at the U.S. southern border hit a record high at the end of 2023, and border security and migration remains a major issue for both parties on the campaign trail, particularly for Republicans.

“President Biden gave Vice President Harris one job—‘border czar’—and she failed miserably,” Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said last month, echoing similar charges across the board from Republicans that the Harris campaign has sought to push back on.

Throughout her time as vice president, Harris and her national security team worked closely with Giammattei’s government to try to tackle the root causes of migration from the source, even before Guatemala’s transition crisis.

Guatemala is Central America’s most populous country and a key hub for the flow of migrants north toward the U.S. southern border.

One key initiative Harris’s team and other National Security Council (NSC) officials worked on with Giammattei was the “safe mobility office” initiative, to try to establish offices in the region where people could apply for asylum in the United States from afar or learn about the convoluted U.S. migration system before ever reaching the U.S. border.

Gordon met with Giammattei for over nine hours in one of his numerous trips to Guatemala as they hashed out these proposals, according to a senior administration official familiar with the matter. This official and others spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak on the record about internal government deliberations.

The National Immigration Forum, a nonprofit organization that tracks migration issues, has said that “much remains unclear about the offices’ operational realities” but that it is aimed at lessening the burden on immigration systems at the border and deterring people from trying to venture there in the first place.

Arévalo won Guatemala’s presidential election in August 2023 by a comfortable margin on a campaign of anti-corruption reforms. In the wake of the election, “we were starting to see signs that Giammattei’s administration was seeking to block the outcome of the free and fair elections and prevent a peaceful transfer of power,” said Katie Tobin, the former top Biden migration advisor at the NSC.

From there, Harris’s team was well placed to launch the pressure campaign on the outgoing government to accept the election results. It was also coordinated by the top U.S. diplomat at the time in Guatemala, Patrick Ventrell, and other State Department and Treasury Department officials, according to the officials familiar with the matter.

In October, the administration announced sanctions on Guatemalan officials linked to corruption. In November, Gordon traveled again to Guatemala to meet with both Giammattei and Arévalo separately to “reinforc[e] the importance of the peaceful democratic transfer of power,” according to a White House readout of the meetings at the time. Days after his visit, the Biden administration sanctioned another former top Guatemalan official for his role in “ongoing efforts to undermine the democratic transfer of power.”

Then, on Dec. 11, the State Department announced visa restrictions on nearly 300 Guatemalans, including over 100 Guatemalan members of Congress and other business elites, for “ongoing anti-democratic actions” that sought to interrupt the transition of power.

“That sent a really strong message to all politicians, that the United States was not going to be just waiting to see what happens,” Chang said. Chang said that Guatemalans paid close attention to the diplomatic campaign by the United States, and in particular the top U.S. diplomat there, Ventrell. Harris’s personal role, Chang said, wasn’t visible in Guatemala in the same way it was back in Washington in internal government deliberations.

The pressure appeared to be working, and Giammattei and his proxies began backing down. But there would be one last dramatic political battle, and members of Harris’s national security team would find themselves at the center of it.

Biden in January announced he was sending a delegation of eight senior U.S. officials to Guatemala for Arévalo’s inauguration, led by U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) chief Samantha Power. The delegation also included Gordon and Tobin, as well as Brian Nichols, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs.

Lawmakers who opposed Arévalo threw up more roadblocks, delaying the special session of Congress to finish the inauguration and sparking fears of a last-minute coup. Arévalo’s supporters rallying to celebrate his inauguration grew increasingly restive and impatient as the hours dragged on, eventually clashing with riot police and gathering outside the congressional building.

The showdown also intersected with the U.S. election campaign, as one of former President Donald Trump’s top confidants, Ric Grenell, traveled to Guatemala in the days leading up to the inauguration and threw his support behind the efforts to derail Arévalo’s ascent to the presidency, as the Washington Post reported. Grenell reportedly backed hard-line conservatives who sought to block the transition and alleged that the U.S. foreign-policy establishment was trying to “intimidate conservatives” in the country. Grenell, Trump’s former acting director of national intelligence and ambassador to Germany, has emerged as one of the most influential voices in the MAGA movement advising Trump on his 2024 run.

On the day of the planned inauguration, Biden’s delegation went into crisis mode. “We were at the [U.S.] ambassador’s residence during this, for nine hours,” Tobin recalled. “The [USAID] administrator, Phil [Gordon], our charges d’affaires [Ventrell] were all making tons of calls to the outgoing government and incoming administration” and “coordinating with foreign delegations” in response to the eleventh-hour crisis, she said.

“We worked out a unified message as the international community there that we were expecting the Guatemalan government to do the right thing and uphold democratic values,” she added. They weren’t alone. Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s president, who was also in Guatemala for the inauguration and has outsized political influence in the region, vowed not to leave until Arévalo was inaugurated.

In the end, the pressure from Guatemalan protesters and the international community worked. Arévalo was sworn in shortly after midnight on Jan. 15. “That transition almost didn’t happen, until it finally did,” Tobin said.

Shortly after the inauguration, Harris issued a statement “commend[ing] the people of Guatemala for making their voices heard and this important transition.” Her team has maintained close contact with Arévalo in the months since; Gordon met him along the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in Germany in February and Arévalo took Harris up on her offer for a White House meeting, visiting Washington in March. Giammattei, meanwhile, has been barred from entering the United States over U.S. allegations of “his involvement in significant corruption,” according to the State Department.

“A lot of people have critical views of the United States as not always a good player regarding their actions in Latin America,” Chang said, citing Guatemala among other cases. “With this specific example, however, you can see how the United States can actually help in countries that are struggling with democratic transitions.”

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week - January 09, 2023

1. Top British universities offer Afghan women free courses until Taliban lift learning ban

Afghanistan's ruling Taliban announced last month that women would no longer be able to study at universities and higher education establishments. Institutions were told to implement the ban as soon as possible.

Now, a number of British universities have teamed up through FutureLearn to offer the women in Afghanistan free access to digital learning platforms. Girls and women with internet access will be able to study more than 1,200 courses from top institutions at no cost to themselves.

2. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs extends protections to LGBTQ+ state employees and contractors

Arizona’s newly elected Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) signed an executive order extending employment protections to state employees and contractors who are LGBTQ+.

As the Human Rights Campaign reports, the executive order, signed on Hobbs’s first day in office Tuesday, directs the state’s Department of Administration to update hiring, promotion, and compensation policies for all state agencies to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and include provisions in all new state contracts to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

3. EU Carbon Emissions Drop To 30-Year Lows

It was supposed to be a dirty autumn and winter, with European nations scrambling to replace Russian gas with high-polluting coal. But according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, the cold seasons so far have been the cleanest in more than 30 years.

4. Critically endangered rhinoceros gives birth to calf at Kansas City Zoo on New Year's Eve

The Kansas City Zoo got a special start to the new year: A critically endangered subspecies of rhinoceros gave birth to a calf on Dec. 31, officials announced. The calf is walking, nursing and even playing with its mother, Zuri, animal specialists said.

5. Cancer Vaccine to Simultaneously Kill and Prevent Brain Cancer Developed

Scientists are harnessing a new way to turn cancer cells into potent, anti-cancer agents. A new stem cell therapy approach eliminates established brain tumors and provides long-term immunity, training the immune system to prevent cancer from returning.

link to the paper …

6. The US has approved use of the world's first vaccine for honey bees.

It was engineered to prevent fatalities from American foulbrood disease, a bacterial condition known to weaken colonies by attacking bee larvae. As pollinators, bees play a critical role in many aspects of the ecosystem.

The vaccine could serve as a "breakthrough in protecting honey bees", Dalan Animal Health CEO Annette Kleiser said in a statement. It works by introducing an inactive version of the bacteria into the royal jelly fed to the queen, whose larvae then gain immunity.

7. Cat missing for nearly 6 years reunited with owner thanks to microchip

West Sacramento woman got the surprise of a lifetime Saturday when she was reunited with her missing cat after nearly 6 years thanks to microchip. 

- - -

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[cowgurrrl]

Getting Older

Author’s note: FUCK IT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT TOMMY’Y GRIEF

Summary: "I love my little brother so much. I wish I could take back the years I spent treating him like I didn't." aka Joel and Tommy Talk [1.5k]

Warnings: discussions of deployment/Army, mentions of Sarah and Tess, pregnancy, deceased parent, learning to love someone even when you can't recognize them anymore

The brothers had been avoiding the topic pretty much since Joel learned of Maria. They were close once. Of course, they were. Joel let Tommy live in his home, work with him, and help him raise his daughter once he came back from Afghanistan. When the nightmares got bad, Joel was there in his stoic, big brother way to ask about therapists and support groups for veterans. When Joel didn't have enough money to buy Sarah a bike for her birthday despite scraping together pennies and dimes for months, Tommy miraculously came up with it after a few rounds of Texas Hold' Em at the local bar. They were a team. Had been since their mom died. 

But twenty years of a world ruled by fungus is enough to break any bond. The first few weeks in Jackson are rough. Not only are Joel and Ellie recovering from their journey, but Jackson offered up a whole new world of pain that Joel didn't even know existed. Kids Sarah's age running around without a care in the world. His baby brother suddenly no longer a baby anymore but a husband and a father-to-be. The little graveyard a little further away with lovingly etched headstones that make his stomach turn when he thinks about the river his little girl died next to. Couples walking the street hand-in-hand, and he knows Tess hated PDA, but maybe she would've made an exception. You don't realize how big a bed can be when it's suddenly empty for the first time in a decade. They struggle. All of them. There is no one in this little fucked up family that goes untouched by the hurt. 

It takes a month before Joel invites Tommy and Maria over to their house for dinner. Joel does his best to make a niceish dinner and even buys freshly cut flowers from the market. Ellie teases him about it, and he teases her back, but deep down, he just wants everything to be okay again. Normal. Tommy and Maria arrive with a wave of polite smiles and offerings of help, which Joel refuses like any good host. He finishes dinner while Ellie tells her aunt and uncle about school and her new friends. It's quaint when they sit down at the table together. If you squint, you could almost believe this is how it's always been. 

They shoot the shit and tell stories and enjoy the meal Joel lovingly made for them. Joel even asks about the pregnancy, which makes his insides clench like a vice grip, but he doesn't let it show. Maria gives surface details: how far along she is, how she's feeling, how the nursery's coming along. He's silently grateful they don't talk about names or clothes. He'd always saved Sarah's baby clothes in little boxes in the attic. "Just in case," he told himself. Whether it was in the event of a sibling for Sarah or a cousin, he never got to find out. Now he wonders what became of the boxes of pastel pinks and yellows somewhere in Austin. 

When Maria yawns and announces she's tired, Tommy offers to take her home. She refuses and looks at Ellie. "I've got some more clothes for you back at the house. Wanna come look at them with me?" She asks. Ellie looks to Joel for permission or maybe reassurance that she's safe to go with Maria. He nods and picks up her empty plate. "You better get a move on." He urges, and just like that, they're out the door and talking like they've known each other forever. Joel and Tommy collect the dirty plates and wash them in the sink side by side, a tradition their mother instilled in them so young they can barely remember a time when they didn't do it. Tommy's the first one to break the silence.

"She's a good kid." He says, testing the waters, and Joel nods. 

"Most of the time," Joel says, laughing to himself. "She's nothin' like Sarah." It's the first time they've talked about her. Really talked about her for a long time. Tommy freezes like he's trying to figure out what to say or do, but Joel continues. "They're both smart and funny and strong. I think they woulda even been friends. But Ellie…" he trails off. "Ellie's just different. A pain in the ass, sure, but different." He shrugs as he puts a cup face down to dry on the towel next to the sink. "And your little one'll be different, too."

"Joel-" 

"I know you're gonna wanna compare them to Sarah 'cause that's what I did, but it don't work like that. Every kid's different. You just gotta figure out how. You gotta give 'em a chance to show you who they are." He continues. Tommy knows not to interrupt him when he gets on a soapbox like this. So, just like he did when they were kids, he stays quiet and follows his big brother's lead. "I'm happy for you. I really am, and not 'cause I'm forcin' it or anything. I always knew you were gonna be a good dad, and I know it now."

"But?" Tommy asks, and Joel shakes his head. 

"No 'but.' I'm just thinkin'." 

"'Bout what?"

"Your wife kinda scares me," Joel admits, making Tommy laugh. The sound is reminiscent of summer days spent roughhousing in the backyard or playing with little green Army men in the kitchen while their big chocolate lab, Arlo, lay on the cool tile nearby. 

"Yeah, me too," Tommy says, and now it's Joel's turn for childhood giggling. When the laughter dies down, Joel turns and looks at his brother fully. If he looks past the beard and the long hair, he can almost see the eighteen-year-old he dropped off at boot camp all those years ago. It pushes on an ache in his heart, and maybe that's what prompts him to finally say what he's been dodging this whole time.

"I wish I was there," he mumbles. "Your wedding." The weight of the admission hits Tommy square in the shoulders, and he clears his throat. 

"Me too." 

"Was it… I mean, was it nice? Did you get all fancy or anythin'?" He asks, and Tommy chuckles. 

"Yeah, it was nice. Borrowed a suit that was a little too big, and Maria wore a dress that was a little too old, and we got married down at the courthouse few years ago. I've got a few pictures if you wanna see 'em." Tommy smiles, and Joel does too, and for a second, they're not men beaten down by wars and death. They're two little boys with missing teeth and red popsicle staining their mouths. 

"That's nice," Joel nods. "You deserve nice. I want you to have nice. Always did." The words drown out the dripping sink and the wind blowing through the trees and shaking leaves against the windowpanes. They land somewhere deep in Tommy's stomach, where he stored all emotion and grief down after that September night when he dragged Joel away from Sarah because he was being a "fuckin' idiot." They don't fully relieve him of what he feels is his share of the blame for how things happened, for what happened to Sarah, but they made it a little less heavy. Tommy didn't realize tears had sprung to his eyes until Joel sucked his teeth and pulled him into his chest like he did when Tommy scraped his knees, falling off his bike in second grade. 

"I love you. I'm sorry I acted like I didn't for so long." Joel whispers, his own tears threatening his lash line, and Tommy tightly wraps his arms around his big brother. 

"Love you too," Tommy says, removing a stone from the pile on Joel's shoulders. "Thanks for comin' back for me."

"I'll always come back for you. You're my brother."

Not a soldier. Not a hunter, a raider, or a smuggler. Not even a patrolman. A brother. It's been a long time since Thomas Miller has been allowed to only be a brother. He thinks he likes it. He thinks he can get used to it. He thinks there will never be a day after this one where he doesn't include brother in his list of titles because, for once, he's proud to be Joel's brother, and he will be until the day he dies. 

When they were little, and they used to fight over stupid things like bikes and what music to play in the car, their mama would look at them in the rearview mirror and raise her eyebrows in the exact way Joel is prone to doing and shake her head. "Now you two better settle it 'fore I settle it for you," she'd scold. "Y'all are gonna have to learn to live with one another 'cause I'm not gonna have all this fightin' all the time. Y'all are brothers, and that's gotta count for something." Tommy thinks he can hear his mother's voice in his head as they cry together for the first time in decades. He thinks she'd be happy with the way they turned out. He thinks she'd be proud of them for coming back together in this way.

They're brothers, after all. That's gotta count for something. 

TAGLIST: @abbyhaslongshorts @kiwiharrykiwi @sumsworldz @myloveistoolittle @anavatazes @marantha

[ltash]

Forever

Ep-7 "The Valkyrie" SimonGhostRileyxFemaleReader

"I am a Valkyrie. And I will take the dead to the feast."

**Kabul, Afghanistan. 

5 years Later:**

Special forces had been deployed to Kabul to restore order. Special Agent Activities Andrea Shepherd sat in a helicopter, her eyes scanning the barren landscape below.

"How long until we land?" Andrea asked the helicopter pilot over the roar of the engine.

"Just about an hour, ma'am. We're reaching the hills now," the pilot replied, his voice steady.

"Hmm," Andrea mumbled, gazing down at the sparse, rugged terrain.

The hour passed slowly, but eventually, the helicopter descended, touching down on the roof of a building. Andrea was the first to step out, her boots hitting the ground with purpose. A soldier approached and guided her to a corridor where her superior awaited.

Laswell, a white, middle-aged woman with short hair, stood with an air of authority. Andrea snapped to attention and saluted. "Agent Andrea Shepherd, at your service, ma'am," she announced.

"Andrea!" Laswell's voice was warm but firm as she shook Andrea's hand. "You're our most trusted agent. That's why you're here. Al Qaeda has become a significant threat. I know you won't hesitate to take action if needed."

"Thank you, ma'am. I won't disappoint you. I promise," Andrea replied, determination gleaming in her eyes.

Laswell nodded approvingly. "Good. Let me show you your room, Shepherd. Follow me."

As they walked through the narrow corridors, Andrea glanced at her watch. It was 4 p.m. The base was a hive of activity, soldiers moving with a sense of urgency and purpose.

"How's the situation on the ground?" Andrea asked, breaking the silence.

"Tense," Laswell admitted. "The locals are on edge, and the insurgents are getting bolder. We need someone with your skills to tip the balance."

"I'll do whatever it takes," Andrea assured her.

They reached a modest room, sparsely furnished but functional. "This will be your quarters," Laswell said, opening the door. "Settle in. Briefing is at 0600 hours."

Andrea nodded. "Understood, ma'am."

Laswell placed a reassuring hand on Andrea's shoulder. "We're counting on you, Shepherd. Welcome to Kabul."

"Thank you, ma'am," Andrea said, stepping into her new room. She set her bag down, the weight of her mission settling over her. There was no time to waste. She had work to do.

"It's your room. Inform James if you need anything," Laswell said, pointing toward a young soldier standing nearby.

"Okay, ma'am. Thank you," Andrea replied. She headed into her quarters, took off her coat, and tossed it onto the couch. Moving to the window, she looked out over the city, a mix of large and small buildings sprawled before her. The reflection of the narrow, muddy roads and bustling market filled her blue eyes.

The city was small, its bazaar filled with people scattered about, creating a lively, if chaotic, scene. Andrea took a moment to absorb the view, letting the reality of her new surroundings sink in.

Later, as she entered the briefing room, she noticed a group of Special Air Service soldiers. Laswell introduced them with a firm, confident voice.

As Andrea entered the briefing room, her eyes scanned the gathering of Special Air Service soldiers before her. A mix of anticipation and uncertainty washed over her. Each soldier embodied the raw intensity and determination that defined the elite unit. These were men who had seen the worst the world could offer, and yet continued to fight on, their spirits unbreakable.

Laswell stepped forward, clearing her throat to get their attention. "Everyone, this is Andrea Shepherd, our CIA field agent. She'll be joining you for this mission."

Captain Price, a seasoned veteran with a steely gaze, stepped up and extended his hand. "Captain John Price. Welcome to the team, Andrea."

She shook his hand firmly. "Thank you, Captain. It's an honor."

Beside him, a younger soldier with a focused demeanor nodded in greeting. "Sergeant Kyle Garrick. It's good to have you with us."

Andrea nodded back. "Likewise, Sergeant."

Laswell continued, "This mission is critical. We have intelligence on a Taliban compound where women and young girls are being held captive. Our objective is to infiltrate, secure the hostages, and extract them safely. Andrea will breach the security code and enter with the women, disguised in an abaya."

Price's face hardened with determination. "Consider it done."

Andrea appreciated the confidence in his voice. "I'll make sure the security systems are down before we go in. We won't have much time once we're inside."

Laswell handed out the mission details. "You'll need to be fast and precise. We don't know how many hostiles are in the building, so be prepared for anything."

Price looked at his team, then back at Andrea. "We move out in ten. Gear up."

The soldiers quickly gathered their equipment, checking weapons and ammo. Andrea followed suit, ensuring her M14 rifle was ready and her combat knives were in place. The weight of the mission pressed on her, but she channeled it into focus.

As they boarded the helicopter, the rotors cutting through the air, Andrea felt a sense of unity with the team. These men were her brothers in arms for the duration of the mission, and they all shared a common goal.

The flight to the target was tense but silent. Each soldier was lost in their thoughts, preparing for what lay ahead. When the pilot announced they were approaching the drop zone, Andrea tightened her grip on the rope.

Descending onto the roof, the team moved with practiced precision. Andrea's heart pounded in her chest, but she kept her breathing steady. They kicked the door open and stormed into the building, Price leading the charge.

Inside, the chaos erupted. Gunfire echoed through the corridors as they engaged the militants. Andrea moved swiftly, her training kicking in as she neutralized threats with deadly accuracy.

Inside, one of the women wearing an abaya had gone to the bathroom. It was Andrea. There, she unbuttoned her long black abaya and removed her veil, revealing a black T-shirt and jeans underneath. She was armed with combat knives and an M14 rifle. Her mission was to rescue the captive women from the Taliban.

Silently opening the bathroom door, she emerged, ready for battle. As a trusted CIA agent, she was a lethal fighter who never hesitated to kill, yet she carried a deep sense of justice, especially for the women held captive and abused.

She began shooting the Taliban soldiers, aiming for their heads and chests. The women screamed and ran in panic, trying to avoid the bullets. This chaos was happening on the first floor of the building.

Captain Price and Garrick methodically cleared each floor, breaking down doors and neutralizing militants. As they reached the second floor, Price saw Andrea running down from above.

"Get them out of here," he shouted to one of his men, hearing gunshots from below.

"Who's down there?" he demanded.

"I don't know, sir," a team member replied.

"Let me see for myself," Price said, descending the stairs. He was shocked to find Andrea in the lounge on the ground floor, fighting the militants with incredible skill and agility.

"Holy shit," he muttered, awestruck. He had never seen a woman fight with such precision and ferocity. She moved like a seasoned warrior, dispatching the militants effortlessly.

Price took cover behind a marble statue, watching her in awe. Despite his admiration, he knew he needed to assist her. As he stepped out to shoot, his rifle jammed.

"Shit!" he cursed, expecting to be gunned down. In a flash, Andrea grabbed a sword from a fallen militant and hurled it toward an attacker. The sword pierced the militant's chest, killing him instantly. She used his body as a shield and shot another militant, eliminating both threats.

With the area clear, she stood with her back to Price, breathing heavily. Price emerged from his cover, stunned by her prowess.

"That was impressive," he said, his voice filled with respect.

Andrea turned to him, her expression unreadable. "We need to get those women out of here. Now."

Price nodded, signaling his team to proceed. Together, they escorted the rescued women to safety, ensuring no one was left behind. The mission was a success, but for Price, the real revelation was Andrea's extraordinary capabilities.

Back at the base, as the sun rose over Kabul, Andrea felt a sense of accomplishment. The war was far from over, but in that moment, they had made a difference. And for Andrea, that was enough to keep fighting.

Laswell stood in the small, windowless room, her attention focused on a series of screens in front of her. Each screen displayed a different camera angle, offering unique views of the mission unfolding before her eyes. The hum of electronic equipment filled the cramped space, punctuated by the occasional static crackle or murmured radio conversation.

Her eyes flicked from one screen to another, absorbing the details: the movement of soldiers, the flash of gunfire, the chaotic dance of a mission in full swing. Each screen told a part of the story, and she stitched them together in her mind, forming a comprehensive picture of the operation.

"Agent Shepherd is in position," a voice crackled over the radio.

Laswell leaned closer to the screens, her eyes narrowing as she watched Andrea move with practiced ease, dispatching enemy combatants with lethal precision.

"Good," she murmured, more to herself than to anyone else in the room. "Let's get those women out of there."

On another screen, she saw Captain Price and his team advancing, methodically clearing each floor. Price's voice came through the radio next.

"Laswell, we've got heavy resistance on the second floor. Shepherd's engaging the hostiles on the ground level."

Laswell's jaw tightened. "Understood, Price. Maintain your position. Shepherd, do you copy?"

Andrea's voice came through, steady and controlled. "Copy, Laswell. Engaging hostiles and securing the captives."

Laswell watched as Andrea moved through the building, a blur of motion and efficiency. Her heart pounded in her chest, but her face remained impassive, her focus unyielding. Every second counted, and she knew the stakes were high.

"Price, Shepherd, proceed with extraction," she commanded, her voice cutting through the static. "Let's get them out safely."

The room fell silent save for the soft, constant hum of the equipment. Laswell's eyes remained glued to the screens, her mind racing with a thousand possibilities, each one more dire than the last. But she trusted her team. She trusted Andrea.

The mission was far from over, but in that small, windowless room, Laswell held on to hope, her belief in her team unwavering. They would succeed. They had to.

As the team returned to base, Andrea felt a surge of satisfaction. The mission had been dangerous, but they had succeeded. She had proven herself once again, not just to the CIA, but to her team.

Price approached her as they disembarked from the helicopter. "Andrea, I've worked with many soldiers in my time, but you... you're something else."

Andrea smiled slightly, a hint of pride in her eyes. "Thank you, Captain. Just doing my job."

Price nodded, respecting her humility. "Let's debrief and get some rest. We've earned it."

As they walked away, the sun began to rise over Kabul, casting a new light on the city and their mission. The war was far from over, but in that moment, they had won a significant victory.

The debriefing was a long and arduous process, but necessary for them to discuss the mission's successes, failures, and ways to improve their tactics for future operations. The team gathered in a small conference room, their eyes heavy with exhaustion, but their minds still focused. Captain Price stood at the front, while Laswell sat beside him, her gaze moving across the room as she listened to the different reports and observations.

Price cleared his throat, commanding the room's attention. "Alright, let's start with a rundown of the mission. Shepherd, you first."

Andrea leaned forward, her expression serious. "We breached the building as planned. Encountered heavier resistance than anticipated on the first floor. Managed to neutralize hostiles and secure the captives."

Laswell nodded, making a note. "Good work, Shepherd. What about the security breach? Any issues?"

"No issues," Andrea replied. "The code was simpler than expected. We were able to move quickly."

Price turned to his team. "Garrick, your report?"

Garrick rubbed his eyes, fighting off fatigue. "Second floor was a nightmare. More militants than intel suggested. We cleared it, but it took longer than planned."

Laswell interjected. "Do we know why there was an increase in numbers?"

Garrick shook his head. "Not yet. Could have been a recent regrouping or reinforcements we weren't aware of."

Price nodded. "We'll need better intel next time. Any injuries?"

"Minor ones," Garrick replied. "Nothing that would compromise future operations."

Laswell leaned back, absorbing the information. "We need to review our intel sources and ensure this doesn't happen again. What about the extraction? Any issues there?"

"Smooth," Price said. "Once we had the captives, we faced minimal resistance on the way out. The helicopter extraction was on point."

Andrea spoke up again. "The women were in poor condition, but they responded well to our presence. They're safe now."

Laswell made another note. "Good. We'll arrange for their care and debrief them separately."

The room fell silent for a moment as everyone processed the debrief. Price broke the silence. "Any suggestions for improvement?"

Andrea glanced around the room. "We need better intel, as Garrick mentioned. And perhaps more support on the ground for unexpected increases in enemy numbers."

"Agreed," Price said. "We'll adjust our protocols accordingly. Anything else?"

The team shook their heads, too tired to think of more at the moment.

"Alright, get some rest," Laswell concluded. "We'll reconvene tomorrow to finalize our report and prepare for the next mission. Good work, everyone."

As the team began to disperse, Andrea caught Price's eye. He gave her a nod of respect, which she returned. Despite the exhaustion and the lingering adrenaline, there was a sense of accomplishment in the room.

Andrea sat in the dimly lit conference room, the quiet hum of the ventilation system the only sound breaking the silence. The mission had been intense, the rush of adrenaline now slowly ebbing away, leaving her with a sense of weariness that seemed to sink into her bones. As she replayed the events of the night in her mind, she couldn't help but feel the weight of her responsibilities as a part of her job.

Lost in her thoughts, she was startled when Captain Price's voice broke through the stillness, clearing his throat to get her attention. Andrea looked up, her senses sharpening as she focused on him.

"Andrea! Can I have a moment?" Captain Price's voice was calm yet firm, the kind of voice that demanded attention in any situation.

"Yes, of course, sir," Andrea replied, straightening up in her chair. She was always respectful of Captain Price, admiring his leadership and experience.

"Please, have a seat," he gestured to the chair opposite him at the conference table. Andrea complied, her mind racing with thoughts about what he could possibly want to discuss.

"Why don't you join the task force with us, Andrea?" Captain Price's question hung in the air, his tone serious yet inviting. "Your father, General Shepherd, has founded Task Force 141—a team comprised of the best of the best. Judging by your skills back there, I'm amazed. You did a fantastic job. We could put your skills to good use."

Andrea's heart skipped a beat at the proposition. Task Force 141 was legendary in military circles, a covert unit known for taking on the toughest missions with unmatched precision. The idea of joining such a team was both thrilling and daunting.

"Thank you, Captain Price," Andrea responded, her voice steady despite the excitement bubbling within her. "I'll talk to my dad about this."

Captain Price nodded, a hint of approval in his expression. Andrea couldn't help but feel a surge of pride at his words. She knew that whatever decision she made, it would mark a significant turning point in her career—and possibly her life.

As she left the conference room, Andrea's mind raced with possibilities. Joining Task Force 141 would mean stepping into a world of secrecy, danger, and unparalleled skill. It was a challenge she was ready to face, knowing that her father's legacy and her own abilities would guide her through whatever lay ahead.

[cal-daisies-and-briars]

🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸📚📚📚📚🦮🦮🦮🦮🦮🔮🔮🔮

keeeeen!

HEYYYY!!!!! THANKS!

15 for 🌊:

---

Eddie takes the ambulance by himself. This is technically outside of his job description and may get him reprimanded. Lyall and Wendy promise not to say a thing. 

Driving through the rising winds and rain proves to be a challenge. El Paso sure doesn’t get this kind of weather. Neither did Afghanistan. Eddie is literally out of his element. Nevertheless, he persists, driving slow and steady - taking care to avoid windswept debris in the road - until he reaches Buck’s house. 

Buck and Maddie’s vehicles are gone. The house is boarded up, but looks otherwise abandoned. They’re not waiting the storm out here, Eddie realizes, relieved. Maybe they left the island? Or… Or maybe they went slightly more inland, to the bar. Fuck. 

Eddie drives in that direction.

---

15 for 🩸:

---

It’s hard to separate. To let Eddie get into a different vehicle. He kind of wants to put Eddie on one of those kid leashes parents use at amusement parks. He can’t quite get his heart rate to slow when he thinks about taking his eyes off of him. 

“I promise I’ll follow you back to the house,” Eddie tells him, when he notices Buck hesitating to get back in the Jeep. “I’m not leaving again.”

Buck remembers the way Eddie exposed his throat. The way he’d laid it all down on the line, given Buck total power over his life. He’ll just have to trust him. As hard as that is, after all this time. 

“Okay,” Buck agrees. “See you at home.”

He climbs in the driver’s seat of the Jeep and tries to stop his hands from shaking. 

There are a lot of things he needs to process in the short drive back to the house. Not all of which he has time to think about.

---

12 for 📚:

---

“I want to make it clear that if what your brother said was true - and you don’t have to confirm or deny - it doesn’t change anything.” Bobby’s words are stern, but his eyes are kind. “If there is support you need that I can provide, please tell me. Otherwise, this team is operated based on merit, and you are an excellent young firefighter, Ravi. End of story.”

Ravi exhales, relieved. 

“Thank you, Bobby,” he says. “Uh, it is true. Sorry I didn’t say anything before.”

Bobby shakes his head. “Not any of my business unless it impacts the job. And in my opinion, it hasn’t.”

---

15 for 🦮:

---

Eddie and Chris come over a few days later. Buck orders pizza. Eddie brings a case of beer. Chris arrives holding a large stuffed dog toy in the shape of a duck. 

“Because golden retrievers are used for duck hunting!” He proclaims, passing Cranberry the toy and sitting next to her on the floor. He hardly even notices Buck, he’s so excited about the dog.

“I’m old news,” Buck chuckles, watching Chris rub Cranberry’s belly and she wiggles on her back, stuffed duck in mouth.

“I promise he does actually miss you,” Eddie whispers. “He was talking about tonight for two days straight.”

Buck smiles. “Well, I missed him, too. And you.”

They eat at the table and Cranberry lies beside Chris on the floor. 

“I think she likes me,” Chris announces, pizza sauce smudged on his upper lip.

---

9 for 🔮:

---

What belief did Buck have in him that Bobby has mistakenly broken? 

“Just hold on a second.” Bobby pleads. “We can talk this out.”

“Can we?” Buck asks, walking towards the door and grabbing his keys. “Because you’re not really talking, Bobby.”

That’s not true. That’s definitely not true, is it?

[fizzing-imagines]

My mum's Billy Part 2

Notes: The bitch is baaack!!

Words: 977

Warnings: None

The two of you were 57 already, married for over 20 years and still as happy as ever. You still had your desk job in the navy while Billy ran his own mechanic shop. Leo was a successful Lieutenant in the marines while Leia eventually got from Infantry to special operations. While Leia was still single, Leo married a nice woman who worked as a high school teacher. Both siblings worked out an early christmas present with you for their dad: Come home for christmas.

"Go hide, he's coming!" You hurriedly made your kids, 33-year old Leo and 26-year old Leia, hide in the broom closet. It was december, close to christmas and your kids were supposed to be on deployment, one in Afghanistan and one somewhere neither of you knew. At least that's what Billy thought.

He would never admit to it, but it upset him when one or both of his kids weren't home for christmas. For the past seven years, one or both of his kids were gone on deployment. Especially Leia was missing on most holidays. So they decided that it was the perfect presents, amongst the other ones they got.

"I'm home!", Billy announced while dropping his keys in the keydish next to the front door. It was one Leia made in elementary school years ago. The kids, both still in uniform, hid just at the right moment. "Welcome back!", you happily said to him while walking into the hallway. The two of you shared a quick kiss before walking into the living room. It was the kids que to quietly sneak into the big kitchen. Your husband and you were sat on the couch and talked about your day for a bit before you brought the attention to what you were buzzing to tell him. "Oh, Billy, I got you an early christmas present!" You pulled your iPhone out of your pocket and pressed the camera app. "Let me go first, I need to record this. The kids helped me with it." Both of you got up, you skipping a bit ahead while he talked about "You guys didn't need to do that." and "I'm fine just having a nice evening with you." while you took position, pressed record and waited for him to come in. Both kids were grinning in excitement to see their father again, Leia being particularly jiggly since she hasn't been home in over a year. "(Y/N), what did you-" He cut off his own sentence as soon as he entered the kitchen.

There they were, his two kids, both home for christmas. "Shit.", he choked out before hugging his son and his daughter at the same time. All three started crying, which is when you cut off the video and walked over to them. Tears left your eyes as well at the sight of the three. "This has to be a dream.", Billy said under tears. "It's not.", Leia replied while crying herself. All three were just a mess of tears and sobs while you stood and watched while silently crying. "Get in here.", Leo said to you before you entered their group hug.

"This is gonna be the best Christmas ever.", Billy mumbled, to which his daughter chuckled. "It's better than MRE for christmas dinner.", she joked. Billy and Leo both laughed as the four of you let each other go.

Both kids stayed for two weeks. Leo was with his wife while Leia slept in the guest room of your house, which used to be her old bedroom. Leo and his wife came over for Christmas Dinner and stayed until Christmas morning.

"Not to sound like a regular dad", Billy started. "but Leia, are you seeing someone?" It has been on Billy's mind for a while, now that she was 27 already and still single to his knowledge. "Uhm, well...", your daughter mumbled. "I am, actually. Someone from my team." The smile on her face was huge, beaming. And in that moment, Billy knew she found the right person. "His name is John, he's a Lieutenant. He's in his hometown in Chicago right now, but maybe I can convince him to come over." Billy asked more questions about his daughters new boyfriend. Leo was asking a lot as well, having his overprotective brother instinct kick in. But both were pleased by what Leia told them. Meanwhile, it had to sink in that your daughter, just like you once did, was dating a Lieutenant and especially a man. It scared you. You kept trying to remind yourself that not every man is like Dean, but it barely helped. However, you made a good job at hiding it.

But Billy knew you too well. He asked you about it in the evening, while both of you got into bed.

"You've been off since Leia told us about her boyfriend.", Billy stated. You let out a sigh, knowing you couldn't hide anything from him. "She's dating a military man.", you said while getting under the covers. He immediately understood where you were going with this. "It doesn't mean that he has to be like Dean.", he said while getting next to you in bed. "I know, I just..." You sighted. "I'm scared. Leia is strong and independent, but so was I." Billy pulled you closer to his body and kissed your cheek. "You still are. You're strong for making it out in the first place.", your husband said while wrapping his arms around you. More than 20 years later, it still felt just as comforting to you as it did since day one. "Leia will he fine. Plus, you know that Leo and I will beat that guys ass if he dares to touch her." You laughed a bit at his words.

"I think you two keep forgetting that I'm the strongest one in the family"

[misfitwashere]

Yesterday, Special Counsel Robert Hur, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in January 2023 to investigate President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents before he was president, released his report. It begins: “We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter. We would reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.” The Department of Justice closed a similar case against former Vice President Mike Pence on June 1, 2023, days before Pence announced his presidential bid, with a brief, one-page letter. 

But in Biden’s case, what followed the announcement that he had not broken a law was more than 300 pages of commentary, including assertions that Biden was old, infirm, and losing his marbles and even that “[h]e did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died” (p. 208).

As television host and former Republican representative from Florida Joe Scarborough put it: “He couldn’t indict Biden legally so he tried to indict Biden politically.”

Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and their teams came out swinging against what amounted to a partisan hit job by a Republican special counsel. The president’s lawyers noted that it is not Department of Justice practice and protocol to criticize someone who is not going to be charged, and tore apart Hur’s nine references to Biden’s memory in contrast to his willingness to “accept…other witnesses’ memory loss as completely understandable given the passage of time.” 

They pointed out that “there is ample evidence from your interview that the President did well in answering your questions about years-old events over the course of five hours. This is especially true under the circumstances, which you do not mention in your report, that his interview began the day after the October 7 attacks on Israel. In the lead up to the interview, the President was conducting calls with heads of state, Cabinet members, members of Congress, and meeting repeatedly with his national security team.” 

Nonetheless, they note, Biden provided “often detailed recollections across a wide range of questions, from staff management of paper flow in the West Wing to the events surrounding the creation of the 2009 memorandum on the Afghanistan surge. He engaged at length on theories you offered about the way materials were packed and moved during the transition out of the vice presidency and between residences. He pointed to flaws in the assumptions behind specific lines of questioning.” 

They were not alone in their criticism. Others pointed out that Republicans have made Biden’s age a central point of attack, but Politico reported last October that while former House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was publicly mocking Biden’s age and mental fitness, he was “privately telling allies that he found the president sharp and substantive in their conversations.” Dan Pfeiffer of Pod Save America and Message Box noted that the report’s “characterizations of Biden don't match those relayed by everyone who talks to him, including [Republicans].” 

He explained: “There are few secrets in [Washington], and if Joe Biden acted like Hur says, we would all know. Biden meets with dozens of people daily—staffers, members of Congress, CEOs, labor officials, foreign leaders, and military and intelligence officials…. If Biden was regularly misremembering obvious pieces of information or making other mistakes that suggested he was not up to the job, it would be in the press. Washington is not capable of keeping something like that secret."

But the media ran not with the official takeaway of the investigation—that Biden had not committed a crime—or with a reflection on the accuracy or partisan reason for Hur’s commentary, but with Hur’s insinuations. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo noted that the New York Times today ran five front-page stories above the fold about the report and Biden’s memory.

Matt Gertz of Media Matters collected some of the day’s headlines: “Eight Words and a Verbal Slip Put Biden’s Age Back at the Center of 2024 (New York Times); “1 Big thing: Report Questions Biden’s memory (Axios)”; “Biden tries to lay to rest age concerns, but may have exacerbated them” (CNN); “Biden disputes special counsel findings, insists his memory is fine” (CBS News); “Age isn’t just a number. It’s a profound and growing problem for Biden” (Politico); and so on. 

As far back as 1950, when Senator Joe McCarthy (R-WI) insisted—without evidence—that the Department of State under Democratic president Harry Truman had been infiltrated by Communists, Republicans have used official investigations to smear their opponents. State Department officials condemned McCarthy’s “Sewer Politics” and the New York Times complained about his “hit-and-run” attacks, but McCarthy’s outrageous statements and hearings kept his accusations in the news. That media coverage, in turn, convinced many Americans that his charges were true.

Other Republicans finally rejected McCarthy, but in 1996, congressional Republicans frustrated by the election of Democratic president Bill Clinton in 1992 and the Democrats’ subsequent expansion of the vote with the so-called Motor Voter law in 1993 resurrected his tactics. They launched investigations into two elections they insisted the Democrats had stolen. They discovered no fraud, but their investigation convinced a number of Americans that voter fraud was a serious problem.

There were ten investigations into the 2012 attack on two U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans were killed and several others wounded; Republican-dominated House committees held six of them. Kevin McCarthy bragged to Fox News personality Sean Hannity that the Benghazi special committee was part of a “strategy to fight and win” against then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 

The strategy of weaponizing investigations went on to be central to the 2016 election, when Trump ran on the investigation of Clinton’s email practices, and to the 2020 election, when Trump tried to weaken Biden’s candidacy by trying to force Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to say that Ukraine was opening an investigation into Hunter Biden and the company he worked for. 

Going into 2024, the House is investigating Hunter Biden, and while witness testimony and evidence has not supported their contention that President Biden is corrupt, the stench of the hearings has convinced a number of MAGA voters of the opposite.

And now the media appears to be falling for this strategy yet again.

Political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen outlined how Biden’s performance disproves the argument that he is unfit for the presidency: “The thing about Biden’s memory,” Cohen wrote, “is that he’s presided over the addition of ~15 million jobs & 800k manufacturing jobs, 23 straight months of sub-4% unemployment, surging consumer sentiment, wages outpacing inflation, the American Rescue Plan, Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPs Act, PACT Act, infrastructure law, gun safety law, VAWA, codified marriage equality, canceled $136 billion in student loan debt for 3.7 million borrowers, bolstered NATO, and presided over electoral wins in ‘20, ‘22 and ‘23.”

Political strategist Simon Rosenberg had his own take: “As we end this crazy week I am struck that somehow the claim that Biden's memory is faulty has gotten more attention than a jury confirming that Trump raped E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room.”

It may be, though, that the report has been a game changer in a different way than Hur intended it. Hur’s suggestion that Biden does not remember when his son died seems to echo the moment in the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings in which Senator McCarthy was trying to prove that the U.S. Army had been infiltrated by Communists. Sensing himself losing, McCarthy attacked on national television a young aide of Joseph Nye Welch, the lawyer defending the Army. 

“Have you no sense of decency, sir?” Welch demanded. “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” McCarthy didn’t, but Americans did, and they finally threw him off the public stage. 

Biden supporters took their gloves off today, producing videos of Trump’s incoherence, gaffes, and wandering off stages, and noting that he mistook writer E. Jean Carroll, whom he sexually assaulted, for his second wife, Marla Maples, when asked to identify Carroll in a photograph. They also produced clips of Fox News Channel personalities Sean Hannity and Jesse Watters messing up names themselves on screen, and gaffes from Republican lawmakers.  

Senior communications advisor for the Biden-Harris campaign T.J. Ducklo released a statement lambasting Trump for a speech he gave tonight in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, saying: “Tonight, he lied more than two dozen times, slurred his words, confused basic facts, and placated the gun lobby weeks after telling parents to ‘get over it’ after their kids were gunned down at school. But you won’t hear about any of it if you watch cable news, read this weekend’s papers, or watch the Sunday shows.”  

But it was Biden who responded most powerfully. “There’s even a reference that I don’t remember when my son died,” he told reporters. “How in the hell dare he raise that…. I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away.” And when asked about Hur’s dismissal of him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Biden responded with justified anger: “I am well-meaning, and I’m an elderly man, and I know what the hell I’m doing. I’ve been President. I put this country back on its feet.” 

—

Notes:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kevin-mccarthys-truthful-gaffe/2015/09/30/f12a9fac-67a8-11e5-8325-a42b5a459b1e_story.html

Twitter (X):

Acyn/status/1508615008833314816

BidenHQ/status/1756136424271692148

Acyn/status/1756146709636456756

BettyBowers/status/1755987497689964644

acnewsitics/status/1755777812907143188

catincoggnito/status/1755778702531580341

BidenHQ/status/1756032511933604123

JoeNBC/status/1755731886167515190

danpfeiffer/status/1755974366523949371

HerbieZiskend46/status/1756030282300322176

SimonWDC/status/1756083030353965165

MeidasTouch/status/1756155795568541757

[chaotic-bisexual-dumbass]

Chapter 2 | Reunited through Death

Bucky Barnes x daughter!reader (platonic)

The wind blew the girl's hair once she reached the helicopter. She graciously climbed inside, detaching the harness from her utility belt. Guerra had reached it shortly before her. She was now standing in an impossibly straight posture, her arms clasped to her sides.

“Rosita Guerra, Hydra operator for the last decade. Became Lieutenant a year and a half ago. Fought in the Kosovo War in ‘99 and served in Afghanistan for two years.” A man stood in the middle of the cabin, two files in hand. He was reading the first one with a weird neutral expression.

The woman he was talking about remained in position, her face serious, internally wondering if she should talk or not. The man closed the file and looked up from it, his eyes landing on Lieutenant Guerra. “How come we’ve never met?”, he asked, his bizarre expression shifting into a different one which was unidentifiable as well.

“I was previously stationed at the Ideal Federal Savings Bank and only recently got transferred to the Sokovian research base.”, the woman answered matter-of-factly. Her gaze flickered slightly tho, a sign of nervousness that the smaller girl next to her picked up from the corner of her eye.

“Well, I hope you haven't found your transfer too difficult, because you’re being transferred, again.”, he announced, faking compassion in a caricatural way. Guerra’s brows furrowed, silently indicating that she was looking for more answers.

“Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to introduce myself.”, he chuckled without any humor. “I’m Director Schatten, we haven't officially met since your arrival in Sokovia.”, he twisted his thin lips in a poor excuse of a smile. His light blue eyes pierced Rosita’s black ones, as if he was reading her very soul. He pointed to the two women in alternance, his smile dropping. “Have you two been introduced yet?”

Rosita shook her head. “Not really no. I know she goes by ‘DeathStalker’ and aside from that, I’ve only heard some rumors back in the U.S.”, she explained.

“And what have you heard?”, he asked, his unsettling eyes questioning her on their own.

The Lieutenant glanced at the girl next to her quickly, gulping in nervousness. The wrinkles on her forehead deepened. “Huh”, she gulped, “one of them was that she's killed five men in a bar once.”, she paused. “With a pencil.”

The Director nodded, averting his gaze. “Well, that is partially true. They were six actually, and they weren't just men, no. They were trained Chinese mercenaries.”, his face slowly turned into a smirk. “And also, she doesn't just ‘go by’ the name DeathStalker. It is her name, her identity. The name of a weapon stronger than any machine gun or bomb you’ve ever seen.”, he bragged as if he was showing off his creation.

Said ‘weapon’ remained immobile, staring straight ahead and not moving an inch. The rise and fall of her chest was only slightly visible if you focused on it. Her black attire dissimulated her body in the dark of the cabin. The Director stepped towards them, circling the DeathStalker to go stand behind the two women. He handed the Lieutenant the second file that had remained unopened the whole time.

Rosita took it and shot him a quick glance before turning her attention to the yellowish folder stamped with the signature red logo. She opened it, her face showing slight confusion upon seeing the first picture on top of the papers.

“You will accompany the asset on a mission overseas. Earlier today, Project Insight failed, Hydra Uprising was compromised and we are no longer in the dark. Captain America and his hero team will most likely try and dissemble Hydra as soon as possible and this entire organization’s survival is threatened. To top it all off”, he slammed a finger on the picture in the file. The photograph showed a red star seemingly painted on metal. “The Winter Soldier disappeared. Ran away like a teenage girl after a fight with her daddy.”, he mocked.

He continued his monologue. “A team will be waiting for you in Ohio’s secondary base. Your mission, Miss Guerra, will simply consist of supervising the operation from afar. You will escort the asset to Ohio, and you and your team will serve as reinforcements if deemed necessary.” He turned to the other girl. “DeathStalker’s mission on the other hand, will be to hunt down and retrieve the Winter Soldier. Too much money was spent on him for him to go to waste and we wanna try and salvage what we can. Bring him in alive. Kill him only if absolutely necessary.”, he ordered.

The atmosphere significantly tensed up, as if it wasn't tense enough as it was. His gaze pierced through DeathStalker’s skull, but the assassin remained focused on looking forward. He finally stepped back and walked back in front of them, going to sit on one of the benches. He made himself comfortable and closed his eyes, leaning his head back. After an awkward minute, he spoke up again.

“You both should take a seat, it’s gonna be a long flight.”

Bucky will be in the next part don't worry!!

[harrison-abbott]

On 11 September 2001 I was at soccer practise. After school I went to train with the football team. And then I walked home after it ended.

And I remember going into my house, and my elder brother met me upstairs, and he said:

"America's been attacked!"

I didn't know what he meant and I thought he was joking. Then I went up stairs and my brother had the TV on. And there were all of these crazy images replaying their footage of these famous American skylines being obliterated.

When I usually got home from soccer practise, I watched the Simpsons or Hey Arnold or Robot Wars.

And what I remember vividly was that all of the channels had been shut away from their regular shows and that they were showing footage of the twin towers instead.

It was like some nightmare, that it wasn't real.

But I often thought that, when there was a mass killing in another country, there wasn't a similar reaction in the media.

There were huge genocidal assaults around the year bracket of what happened on that day, but they didn't attract a similar attention in the worldwide news.

Either way, when I was a kid, I knew that the world wouldn't be the same again. Even when at that point I hadn't been travelling yet or didn't know so much about the planet anyway.

And when the whole Iraq and Afghanistan wars kicked off, I simply didn't understand why they were happening. Didn't get it.

I remember listening to the BBC radio and they would routinely announce how many people had been killed in the recent suicide bombing.

But I didn't know until I was a man that the Americans and UK forces had killed over seven thousand civilians on their first night of bombing Iraq. This atrocity didn't seem to make the news at all. 7000 civilians.

I've written about this point before on this blog, ^ about this last case, but I feel it's worth repeating.

[zvaigzdelasas]

THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY is quietly broadening its efforts to curb speech it considers dangerous, an investigation by The Intercept has found. Years of internal DHS memos, emails, and documents — obtained via leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, as well as public documents — illustrate an expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platforms.

The work, much of which remains unknown to the American public, came into clearer view earlier this year when DHS announced a new “Disinformation Governance Board”: a panel designed to police misinformation (false information spread unintentionally), disinformation (false information spread intentionally), and malinformation (factual information shared, typically out of context, with harmful intent) that allegedly threatens U.S. interests. While the board was widely ridiculed, immediately scaled back, and then shut down within a few months, other initiatives are underway as DHS pivots to monitoring social media now that its original mandate — the war on terror — has been wound down.[...]

“Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain,” Microsoft executive Matt Masterson, a former DHS official, texted Jen Easterly, a DHS director, in February.

In a March meeting, Laura Dehmlow, an FBI official, warned that the threat of subversive information on social media could undermine support for the U.S. government. Dehmlow, according to notes of the discussion attended by senior executives from Twitter and JPMorgan Chase, stressed that “we need a media infrastructure that is held accountable.”[...]

According to a draft copy of DHS’s Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, DHS’s capstone report outlining the department’s strategy and priorities in the coming years, the department plans to target “inaccurate information” on a wide range of topics, including “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”

“The challenge is particularly acute in marginalized communities,” the report states, “which are often the targets of false or misleading information, such as false information on voting procedures targeting people of color.”[...]

In June, the same DHS advisory committee of CISA — which includes Twitter head of legal policy, trust, and safety Vijaya Gadde and University of Washington professor Kate Starbird — drafted a report to the CISA director calling for an expansive role for the agency in shaping the “information ecosystem.”[...]

Last Thursday, immediately following billionaire Elon Musk’s completed acquisition of Twitter, Gadde was terminated from the company.[...]

DHS’s expansion into misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation represents an important strategic retooling for the agency, which was founded in 2002 in response to the 9/11 attacks as a bulwark to coordinate intelligence and security operations across the government. At the same time, the FBI deployed thousands of agents to focus on counterterrorism efforts, through building informant networks and intelligence operations designed to prevent similar attacks.[...]

The subsequent military defeat of ISIS forces in Syria and Iraq, along with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, left the homeland security apparatus without a target. Meanwhile, a new threat entered the discourse. The allegation that Russian agents had seeded disinformation on Facebook that tipped the 2016 election toward Donald Trump resulted in the FBI forming the Foreign Influence Task Force, a team devoted to preventing foreign meddling in American elections.

31 Oct 22

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Matt Davies

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 9, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

FEB 10, 2024

Yesterday, Special Counsel Robert Hur, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in January 2023 to investigate President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents before he was president, released his report. It begins: “We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter. We would reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.” The Department of Justice closed a similar case against former Vice President Mike Pence on June 1, 2023, days before Pence announced his presidential bid, with a brief, one-page letter. 

But in Biden’s case, what followed the announcement that he had not broken a law was more than 300 pages of commentary, including assertions that Biden was old, infirm, and losing his marbles and even that “[h]e did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died” (p. 208).

As television host and former Republican representative from Florida Joe Scarborough put it: “He couldn’t indict Biden legally so he tried to indict Biden politically.”

Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and their teams came out swinging against what amounted to a partisan hit job by a Republican special counsel. The president’s lawyers noted that it is not Department of Justice practice and protocol to criticize someone who is not going to be charged, and tore apart Hur’s nine references to Biden’s memory in contrast to his willingness to “accept…other witnesses’ memory loss as completely understandable given the passage of time.” 

They pointed out that “there is ample evidence from your interview that the President did well in answering your questions about years-old events over the course of five hours. This is especially true under the circumstances, which you do not mention in your report, that his interview began the day after the October 7 attacks on Israel. In the lead up to the interview, the President was conducting calls with heads of state, Cabinet members, members of Congress, and meeting repeatedly with his national security team.” 

Nonetheless, they note, Biden provided “often detailed recollections across a wide range of questions, from staff management of paper flow in the West Wing to the events surrounding the creation of the 2009 memorandum on the Afghanistan surge. He engaged at length on theories you offered about the way materials were packed and moved during the transition out of the vice presidency and between residences. He pointed to flaws in the assumptions behind specific lines of questioning.” 

They were not alone in their criticism. Others pointed out that Republicans have made Biden’s age a central point of attack, but Politico reported last October that while former House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was publicly mocking Biden’s age and mental fitness, he was “privately telling allies that he found the president sharp and substantive in their conversations.” Dan Pfeiffer of Pod Save America and Message Box noted that the report’s “characterizations of Biden don't match those relayed by everyone who talks to him, including [Republicans].” 

He explained: “There are few secrets in [Washington], and if Joe Biden acted like Hur says, we would all know. Biden meets with dozens of people daily—staffers, members of Congress, CEOs, labor officials, foreign leaders, and military and intelligence officials…. If Biden was regularly misremembering obvious pieces of information or making other mistakes that suggested he was not up to the job, it would be in the press. Washington is not capable of keeping something like that secret."

But the media ran not with the official takeaway of the investigation—that Biden had not committed a crime—or with a reflection on the accuracy or partisan reason for Hur’s commentary, but with Hur’s insinuations. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo noted that the New York Times today ran five front-page stories above the fold about the report and Biden’s memory.

Matt Gertz of Media Matters collected some of the day’s headlines: “Eight Words and a Verbal Slip Put Biden’s Age Back at the Center of 2024 (New York Times); “1 Big thing: Report Questions Biden’s memory (Axios)”; “Biden tries to lay to rest age concerns, but may have exacerbated them” (CNN); “Biden disputes special counsel findings, insists his memory is fine” (CBS News); “Age isn’t just a number. It’s a profound and growing problem for Biden” (Politico); and so on. 

As far back as 1950, when Senator Joe McCarthy (R-WI) insisted—without evidence—that the Department of State under Democratic president Harry Truman had been infiltrated by Communists, Republicans have used official investigations to smear their opponents. State Department officials condemned McCarthy’s “Sewer Politics” and the New York Times complained about his “hit-and-run” attacks, but McCarthy’s outrageous statements and hearings kept his accusations in the news. That media coverage, in turn, convinced many Americans that his charges were true.

Other Republicans finally rejected McCarthy, but in 1996, congressional Republicans frustrated by the election of Democratic president Bill Clinton in 1992 and the Democrats’ subsequent expansion of the vote with the so-called Motor Voter law in 1993 resurrected his tactics. They launched investigations into two elections they insisted the Democrats had stolen. They discovered no fraud, but their investigation convinced a number of Americans that voter fraud was a serious problem.

There were ten investigations into the 2012 attack on two U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans were killed and several others wounded; Republican-dominated House committees held six of them. Kevin McCarthy bragged to Fox News personality Sean Hannity that the Benghazi special committee was part of a “strategy to fight and win” against then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 

The strategy of weaponizing investigations went on to be central to the 2016 election, when Trump ran on the investigation of Clinton’s email practices, and to the 2020 election, when Trump tried to weaken Biden’s candidacy by trying to force Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to say that Ukraine was opening an investigation into Hunter Biden and the company he worked for. 

Going into 2024, the House is investigating Hunter Biden, and while witness testimony and evidence has not supported their contention that President Biden is corrupt, the stench of the hearings has convinced a number of MAGA voters of the opposite.

And now the media appears to be falling for this strategy yet again.

Political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen outlined how Biden’s performance disproves the argument that he is unfit for the presidency: “The thing about Biden’s memory,” Cohen wrote, “is that he’s presided over the addition of ~15 million jobs & 800k manufacturing jobs, 23 straight months of sub-4% unemployment, surging consumer sentiment, wages outpacing inflation, the American Rescue Plan, Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPs Act, PACT Act, infrastructure law, gun safety law, VAWA, codified marriage equality, canceled $136 billion in student loan debt for 3.7 million borrowers, bolstered NATO, and presided over electoral wins in ‘20, ‘22 and ‘23.”

Political strategist Simon Rosenberg had his own take: “As we end this crazy week I am struck that somehow the claim that Biden's memory is faulty has gotten more attention than a jury confirming that Trump raped E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room.”

It may be, though, that the report has been a game changer in a different way than Hur intended it. Hur’s suggestion that Biden does not remember when his son died seems to echo the moment in the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings in which Senator McCarthy was trying to prove that the U.S. Army had been infiltrated by Communists. Sensing himself losing, McCarthy attacked on national television a young aide of Joseph Nye Welch, the lawyer defending the Army. 

“Have you no sense of decency, sir?” Welch demanded. “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” McCarthy didn’t, but Americans did, and they finally threw him off the public stage. 

Biden supporters took their gloves off today, producing videos of Trump’s incoherence, gaffes, and wandering off stages, and noting that he mistook writer E. Jean Carroll, whom he sexually assaulted, for his second wife, Marla Maples, when asked to identify Carroll in a photograph. They also produced clips of Fox News Channel personalities Sean Hannity and Jesse Watters messing up names themselves on screen, and gaffes from Republican lawmakers.  

Senior communications advisor for the Biden-Harris campaign T.J. Ducklo released a statement lambasting Trump for a speech he gave tonight in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, saying: “Tonight, he lied more than two dozen times, slurred his words, confused basic facts, and placated the gun lobby weeks after telling parents to ‘get over it’ after their kids were gunned down at school. But you won’t hear about any of it if you watch cable news, read this weekend’s papers, or watch the Sunday shows.”  

But it was Biden who responded most powerfully. “There’s even a reference that I don’t remember when my son died,” he told reporters. “How in the hell dare he raise that…. I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away.” And when asked about Hur’s dismissal of him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Biden responded with justified anger: “I am well-meaning, and I’m an elderly man, and I know what the hell I’m doing. I’ve been President. I put this country back on its feet.” 

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[beardedmrbean]

Iran has for the first time reported that more than 300 people have died in over two months of protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody.

The Islamic republic has deployed state security forces against what it labels "riots" that broke out after the 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian died on September 16, three days after her arrest for allegedly breaching Iran's dress code for women.

"Everyone in the country has been affected by the death of this lady," said Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in a video published by the Mehr news agency.

"I don't have the latest figures, but I think we have had perhaps more than 300 martyrs and people killed," among them some of "the best sons of the country", said Hajizadeh, head of the Guards' aerospace division.

The toll includes those who have taken to the streets as well as dozens of police, troops and IRGC militia who have died in clashes with demonstrators or who were killed elsewhere.

The latest official death toll is much closer to the figure of at least 416 people "killed in the suppression of protests in Iran" published by the Oslo-based non-government group Iran Human Rights.

The group says its toll includes those killed in violence related to the Amini protests and in distinct unrest in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, near the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Thousands arrested over protests, judiciary says

Thousands of Iranians and around 40 foreigners have been arrested and more than 2,000 people have been charged, according to judicial authorities.

Among these, six have been sentenced to death, with their appeals set to be heard by the Supreme Court.

Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 that overthrew the monarchy, Iranian law requires all women to wear modest dress and a hijab head covering that conceals their hair, rules enforced by morality police squads that patrol public places.

Over the past two decades, however, many women, especially in Tehran and other major cities, have shown more of their hair, before the rules were tightened again -- a flashpoint issue in the protests.

Iran has blamed its enemies for the civil unrest, pointing at the United States, other Western powers and Israel, as well as exiled Kurdish-Iranian opposition groups based in northern Iraq whom it has hit with repeated missiles and drone strikes.

Amid the heightened tensions, Iran's national football team will play the US side at the World Cup in Qatar from 1900 GMT Tuesday -- a match seen as highly political between the countries that have had no diplomatic relations since 1980.

Iran's judicial authorities Tuesday announced the release of more than 1,100 detainees in 20 provinces, including protesters, following Iran's World Cup win Friday against Wales, the Mizan Online news agency reported.

[usafphantom2]

Georgia base tapped to host F-35 fighters as A-10 fleet retires

Rachel S. CohenJun 27 at 04:15 PM

Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, is the service’s top pick to become the next active duty home of the F-35A Lightning II fighter.

The Air Force said Monday it plans to bring two F-35 squadrons to the Valdosta base starting in fiscal 2029, when it hopes to complete phasing out its fleet of A-10C Thunderbolt II attack planes.

The service must first study the proposed move’s environmental impact on the surrounding area before formally green-lighting the project. That review is slated to finish in fall 2025.

Switching missions at Moody isn’t expected to create any new jobs on base, the Air Force said, although it had previously announced that the U.S.’s most advanced fighter jet would bring in another 500 or so workers.

It’s unclear what other bases were considered as part of the process.

Winding down much of America’s combat operations overseas has prompted a significant shift in Moody’s missions at home. For almost two decades, the base’s A-10s watched over ground troops and strafed enemy forces with the Warthog’s iconic, armor-piercing 30mm gun.

Moody airmen also flew search-and-rescue missions in Afghanistan since the early days of the U.S. invasion and trained Afghan pilots on the A-29 Super Tucano ground attack aircraft to build the country’s fledgling air force.

The Air Force’s plan to swap A-10s for F-35s at Moody is emblematic of the Pentagon’s pivot from its longtime War on Terror to instead focus on military competition with China.

The service argues that the Warthog fleet must be retired because it is ill-equipped to face off against advanced air defenses, stealth jets and the vast distances of the Pacific. Critics say the A-10 can perform the close air support mission far better than the F-35, which was designed as the high-tech “quarterback” of the battlefield rather than to hunt convoys.

Georgia lawmakers hailed the decision as a long-term investment in the region’s military community as the country’s priorities change.

“This is a major step forward in our ongoing effort to strengthen and sustain Moody Air Force Base for decades to come,” Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Georgia, said in a release Monday. “I will continue to champion Moody AFB and its future as a home for U.S. Air Force tactical aviation.”

“For decades Moody AFB has been key for our nation’s defense,” Republican Rep. Austin Scott, who represents the base’s district, said on Twitter. “I am pleased that Secretary Kendall has selected Moody as the preferred location for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Moody is proud to maintain a fighter mission, carrying its strong legacy long into the 21st century.”

Active duty F-35 units already handle test, training and combat operations from Edwards Air Force Base in California, Nellis AFB in Nevada, Luke AFB in Arizona, Hill AFB in Utah, Eglin AFB in Florida, Eielson AFB in Alaska and RAF Lakenheath in England. Three more squadrons will start arriving at Tyndall AFB, Florida, this summer.

In May, the service announced that the Oregon National Guard will likely host the Air Force’s third F-35A training squadron at Kingsley Field, pending an environmental study. The decision would bring 20 jets but no new jobs to the installation.

“The Air Force needs F-35 squadrons available and fully mission-capable to prevail against peer adversaries,” the Oregon Air National Guard’s 173rd Fighter Wing said in a release. “That means they require more F-35 pilots. Team Kingsley’s adaptability and excellence allows us to fill this Air Force need.”

The U.S. plans to purchase 2,470 F-35s overall, more than 1,700 of which will be flown by the Air Force. The jets remain the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons program, at more than $1.7 trillion to buy, operate and maintain, the Government Accountability Office said last year.

Rachel Cohen joined Air Force Times as senior reporter in March 2021. Her work has appeared in Air Force Magazine, Inside Defense, Inside Health Policy, the Frederick News-Post (Md.), the Washington Post, and others.

[mariacallous]

Who is ‘General Armageddon?’ The new commander leading Russia’s forces in Ukraine is reportedly a proponent of targeting civilian infrastructure

On October 8, the same day a large explosion hit the bridge connecting Crimea and Russia, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that General Sergey Surovikin had been appointed the new commander of Russia's forces in Ukraine. The announcement marks the first time an individual has been officially declared to be in charge of the war effort; previously, only the commanders leading specific groups of forces were named publicly by the ministry. Surovikin, who Russian media has referred to as "General Armageddon" for his ability to act "brutally" in war, first made headlines during the failed 1991 Soviet coup, when three protesters were killed under his command. A summary of what we know about the new leader of Russia's troops in Ukraine.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has appointed a new commander to lead Russia’s forces in Ukraine: General Sergey Surovikin. In 2017, Surovikin was made the Commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces, and since the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine, he’s led Russia’s “South” group of forces, which captured the city of Sievierodonetsk.

This is the first time the Russian Defense Ministry has publicly announced the appointment of a commander to lead all of the country’s invading forces in Ukraine. Until Surovikin’s appointment, only the names of commanders of various military groupings were released publicly, while the only information about the people making the decisions guiding the Russian army as a whole came from sources speaking to journalists. In April, BBC News reported that General Alexander Dvornikov, the head of Russia’s Southern Military District, had been put in control of the country’s war effort in Ukraine. Later, a group of independent investigators from the Conflict Intelligence Team, citing a source, reported that Deputy Defense Minister Gennady Zhidko had replaced Dvornikov as the leader of Russia’s troops.

Sources told Meduza months ago that Surovikin was expecting a promotion. A source close to the Putin administration and a source close to the Russian government said that there was talk of Surovikin being given either a key post in the Russian Defense Ministry or a being put in charge of Russia’s forces in the Donbas.

As both Russian and Ukrainian Telegram channels have pointed out, Surovikin’s appointment comes amid a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive, which liberated Lyman, a city in the Donetsk region, in October as well as forcing Russian troops to flee the northern part of the Kherson region.

Surovikin’s name might sound familiar to people old enough to remember the failed 1991 Soviet coup. Now 55 years old, Surovikin once served in the Soviet special forces, including in Afghanistan. During the 1991 coup attempt, the then-24-year-old was in charge of the 2nd Guards Motor Rifle Division, which tried to break through the barricades at the intersection of Moscow’s Garden Ring and Novy Arbat Avenue. Three protesters were killed in the clashes: Dmitry Komar, Ilya Krichevsky, and Vladimir Usov. After the coup plotters’ swift defeat, the three men were posthumously named Heroes of the Soviet Union. Surovikin spent several months in custody, but the charges against him were ultimately lifted (the Moscow Prosecutor's Office determined that he had been “carrying out the orders of his command”).

Wagner PMC founder Evgeny Prigozhin (whose forces have played an active role in Russia’s war against Ukraine, and who has repeatedly criticized the leadership of Russia’s Defense Ministry) responded to the news of Surovikin’s appointment by harkening back to his role in the coup attempt. “After receiving orders,” Prigozhin said, Surovikin “got in his tank without hesitation and rushed to save his country.”

Sergey Surovikin later took part in the armed conflict that rocked Tajikistan in the early 1990s and in the Second Chechen War. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov wrote on Saturday that he’s known Surovikin well for almost 15 years, adding that “the united group of forces is now in good hands” and that he’s confident Surovikin will “make things right” at the front.

Surovikin also led Russian troops in Syria. Surovikin was appointed a commander of Russian forces in Syria in May 2017. In October of that year, he was put in charge of the Russian Aerospace Forces, and that December, he was named a Hero of Russia for the operation he led in Syria. In August 2021, Surovikin was promoted to the rank of general — the highest rank held by any officer currently serving in Russia’s military.

[starbiopic]

Afghanistan Announces Squad for New Zealand Test, Includes 3 New Players

Afghanistan has revealed its 16-member squad for the one-off Test against New Zealand, starting on September 9 in Greater Noida. The team has introduced three uncapped players – opener Riaz Hassan, all-rounder Shamsur Rahman, and fast bowler Khalil Ahmed. These fresh talents are expected to bring new energy to the team. Unfortunately, Afghanistan’s star all-rounder Rashid Khan will miss this…