#Civil Rights Investigation

[xtruss]

Yale University students celebrate graduation in 1914—despite what the date scribbled on the image says. In the early 20th century, U.S. elite colleges were panicked about an influx of Jewish applicants. They devised a system to screen them out that remains mainly in place today. Photograph By George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress

Why Do Colleges Have Legacy Admissions? It Started as a Way to Keep Out Jews.

Standardized tests. Interviews. Extracurricular Activities. In the early 20th Century, Universities used these Tactics to Ensure their Students were Predominantly Protestant.

— By Erin Blakemore | July 28, 2023

Should college students gain admission based on academic merit—or who their parents are? That question has become more pertinent than ever with the U.S. Supreme Court’s invalidation of affirmative action and the Department of Education’s announcement of a civil rights investigation into Harvard University’s preferential treatment of “legacy” students with family connections.

Although it may seem like a modern problem, it’s only been about a century since U.S. colleges and universities began factoring family relationships and other criteria like extracurricular activities, interviews, and standardized test scores into their admissions decisions. These policies, it turns out, are rooted in anti-Semitic attitudes that aimed to keep Jewish students out of elite schools.

Here’s how anti-Jewish discrimination fueled modern college admissions—long before affirmative action ever existed.

Training Grounds For Society’s Elite

Before the late 19th century, a college education was largely out of reach for anyone but wealthy Protestants, who founded universities and colleges to prepare their sons for cultural and community leadership. Though these institutions extended preferential treatment to the sons of previous graduates, their entrance requirements were relatively lax. In a time before widespread public education, few who could afford to pay were turned away.

But beginning in the 1840s, the makeup of American society changed with waves of immigration that brought Catholics and Jews into the country in large numbers. As these emigrants flooded into the nation, write sociologists Deborah L. Coe and James D. Davidson, their presence threatened white Protestant groups who had previously dominated mainstream culture.

“As a result,” Coe and Davidson write, “anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic sentiments found their way into a variety of mechanisms that were created in response to the undesirable demographic changes.” This soon filtered into college admissions too.

Catholics quickly founded their own universities and encouraged members of their religion to attend them. So it was Jewish college enrollment that generated special concern at predominantly Protestant institutions.

Panic Over 'Undesirable' College Applicants

Institutions historically tolerated some Jewish students, but only those whom officials felt had the proper class standing and had appropriately “assimilated” into mainstream American culture.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, newer arrivals from majority Jewish enclaves didn’t fit that mold, so elite Protestants attempted to close ranks. University officials who bought into longstanding stereotypes of Jews as clannish, conniving, and socially undesirable worried that admitting Jews would taint the reputation of the schools. Plus, they disliked the idea of their sons being educated alongside them.

No longer was mere money sufficient for acceptance into elite social circles. As historian John Higham writes, Protestant elites of the era “grasped at social distinctions that were more than pecuniary,” including “the cult of genealogy.” Suddenly, institutions including social clubs, sports organizations, prep schools, and even neighborhoods emphasized family connections as part of the price of entry—shutting Jews out by default.

It was no different in higher education, where leaders were alarmed by rising Jewish enrollment. In response, they began to brainstorm how to limit Jewish applicants without endangering public funding or damaging their reputations.

Elite Universities’ Anti-Semitic Legacy

Yale University was one of those institutions. “There seems to be no question that the University as a whole has about all of this race that it can well handle,” wrote Robert Nelson Corwin, Yale’s admissions chairman, in 1922. Though Jewish students showed the same academic achievement as their counterparts, Corwin wrote, “members of this race…graduate from college as alien in morals and manners as they were upon admission.”

He recommended that Yale implement “non-intellectual requirements,” including letters of recommendation, in-person interviews, and psychological testing, to limit its number of Jews.

Corwin was far from alone. From Harvard to Rutgers, Columbia to Tufts, elite colleges and universities began trying anything and everything to control the makeup of their student bodies. Some implemented quotas to limit the number of Jews in new classes. Others focused recruiting in areas they knew had lower populations of Jews, and began looking more closely at extracurricular activities that indicated the social class and religion of applicants. More admissions requirements meant more reasons to turn down students—and a way to mask anti-Semitic school policies.

When Jews won more academic scholarships, schools like Harvard and Yale discontinued them in favor of financial aid. They also embraced the new field of psychological testing, offering tests that measured aptitude and not achievement, such as the Thorndike Tests for Mental Alertness.

“The primitive and biased tests effectively reduced Jewish enrollment [at Columbia] by half,” write education historians Jim Horn and Denise Wilburn, noting that many such tests were developed by eugenicists in search of “a purportedly objective way to quantify the structural racism of the day and to have it accepted as scientific.”

Another new requirement was so common it became almost ubiquitous during the period: the photograph. Historian Marianne R. Sanua writes that at Columbia, one fraternity publication satirically recommended that to get around newly tightened admissions requirements, applicants should dye their hair blonde, pretend they were taller, and have photos taken that downplayed stereotypically “Jewish” facial features.

Finally, higher education institutions also implemented internal legacy admissions policies, actively recruiting relatives of alumni and offering them a leg up on other applicants.

“All properly qualified sons of Dartmouth alumni and Dartmouth College officers will be accepted,” wrote Dartmouth College in its alumni magazine in 1922. The school also required applicants to submit multiple letters from Dartmouth alumni, promising that it would prioritize “men who plainly possess the qualities of leadership or qualities of outstanding promise” over those “qualified by high scholarship ranks but with no evidence of positive qualities otherwise.”

The Persistence of Legacy Admissions

As anti-Jewish sentiment became less mainstream in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust and with the rise of the civil rights movement, many universities phased out their more overtly anti-Semitic policies. But many of the restrictions put in place to limit Jewish applicants stuck. Standardized testing and interviews are still common requirements for college admissions, and today’s institutions of higher learning still admit more wealthy students.

One recent analysis found that children from the top 0.1 percent income bracket are more than twice as likely to gain admission to Ivy League schools compared to poorer students with the same test scores—and that 46 percent of their advantage can be attributed to admissions policies that extend preferential treatment to “legacy” students.

Despite some institutions like Amherst, Johns Hopkins, and Wesleyan announcing that they’ve abandoning the practice, the system is still common today. In a 2018 survey by Inside Higher Education, 42 percent of admissions directors at private colleges and universities said legacy status is a factor in their admissions process, compared to 6 percent at public institutions.

Among those institutions is Harvard, whose legacy admissions policy is now facing scrutiny by federal civil rights investigators. The Harvard Crimson reports that among its 2022 freshman class, more than 14 percent surveyed said they were legacy students, and self-reported legacies were likelier to be white. Over a third with one or more parents who attended Harvard reported a combined family income of $500,000 a year or more.

Will legacy admissions go the way of affirmative action? Until the results of the Department of Education’s reported investigation become clear, there’s no way of knowing. But many of the policies once implemented to keep Jews out of higher education in the U.S. are likely to persist.

[my-midlife-crisis]

[nando161mando]

FBI Targets Muslims and Palestinians in Wake of Hamas Attack, Civil Rights Advocates Warn

[thedreadvampy]

hey fun thing. fun thing I'm experiencing lately. is that the case which every terf journo in the fucking UK is freaking themselves about FINALLY being able to put on the front page - trans woman convicted of rape sent to women's prison - is uhhhhhhhh. really close to home? emotionally? for me? and it's on every fucking newsstand????

(obviously transparent as fuck every time that everyone's suddenly so concerned about the wellbeing of women in prison when all the same publications are usually in the CRIMINAL SCUM PRISONS ARE TOO SOFT TRAIN but OKAY. OKAY. since you suddenly care so much about female prisoners shall we uhhhhh idk address the rate of sexual assaults by guards? police? other cisgender prisoners? maybe rethink the whole 'prison' thing as a whole? oh this is just about how you think trans women are scary again? cool. cool cool cool.)

[ausetkmt]

Dozens of community members, families of police violence and activists joined a rally outside of the Antioch Police Department on April 18, 2023, to protest the racist and homophobic text messages shared among the department. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

The FBI arrested nine East Bay police officers on Thursday for alleged civil rights violations, interfering with investigations and defrauding their employers, Ismail Ramsey, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, said at a press conference on Thursday afternoon.

The arrests were made in a series of raids early Thursday morning across and beyond the Bay Area, following an 18-month FBI investigation and the release of four federal grand jury indictments against the officers. Charges include conspiracy to commit wire fraud, deprivation of civil rights and destruction of records.

“Today is a dark day in our city’s history, as people trusted to uphold the law, allegedly breached that trust and were arrested by the FBI,” Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe said in a written statement shortly after the arrests. “As our city absorbs this tragic news, we must come together as one. Today’s actions are the beginning of the end of a long and arduous process.”

The FBI arrested nine officers on Thursday and a total of 10 have been charged across four indictments, federal law enforcement officials said at the press conference Thursday. Eight of those arrested have made initial court appearances so far.

“This case is one of the highest priorities for the San Francisco Field Office,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert K. Tripp. “Law enforcement officers bear a tremendous responsibility to police out communities lawfully in keeping with the constitution, and we must always be true to that guiding principle.”A chart showing the list of charges against Antioch and Pittsburg police officers by a federal grand jury on Aug. 16, 2023. (Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman/KQED)

“Today’s announcement reporting the arrest of current and former APD officers is disheartening and undermines the incredible work our staff does on a daily basis,” Acting Antioch Chief of Police Joe Vigil said in a press release. “Any police officer who breaks public trust must be held accountable, especially because our effectiveness relies heavily on confidence and support from our community.”

The first indictment includes charges against Morteza Amiri and Samantha Genoveva Peterson of the APD, along with Pittsburg Police Department officers Brauli Rodriguez Jalapa, Ernesto Juan Mejia-Orozco, and Amanda Carmella Theodosy-Nash, for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and faking college credits in order to receive pay bumps.

The second indictment alleges that APD officers Daniel Harris and Devon Wenger illegally obtained and distributed anabolic steroids, and for attempting to destroy evidence that they had tried to do so.

Timothy Manly Williams of the APD was indicted on obstruction of evidence and for destroying and falsifying records to obstruct a federal investigation using a wiretap.

The fourth and final indictment announced Thursday alleges that Morteza Amiri, Eric Rombough and Devon Wenger, all with the APD, carried out what Ramsey called a “disturbing litany” of civil rights violations. The violations include inappropriately deploying a canine and other weapons in order to deliberately harm individuals in Antioch.

Ramsey said that officers shared photos of their victims’ injuries and collected mementos from attacks, such as ammunition used against people of Antioch. “Defendants boasted about their illegal uses of force,” the federal attorney said.

The investigation is still ongoing.

The indictments and subsequent arrests mark a turning point for many members of the community who have been reeling from the recent police scandals.

The investigation kicked off in 2022 after concerns were raised about police officers who lied about their college degrees. But the FBI and Contra Costa County district attorney’s investigation into the local police department would reveal far more crimes and civil rights violations from Antioch and Pittsburg officers.

Among discoveries was a culture of explicitly racist and homophobic messages sent between numerous Antioch police officers. The investigation revealed officers not only using racial epithets including the N-word and describing Black people as “gorillas,” but it also showed officers had falsified confessions to build cases and physically assault suspects.

In several messages, the officers bragged about racial profiling and beating suspects.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta launched a separate civil rights investigation into the APD in May, after it was revealed that officers had exchanged racist and homophobic text messages about community members and people in custody.

“It is our job to protect and serve all of our communities,” Bonta said in a press release announcing his investigation. “Police departments are on the front lines of that fight every day as they work to safeguard the people of our state. However, where there are allegations of potentially pervasive bias or discrimination, it can undermine the trust that is critical for public safety and our justice system. It is our responsibility to ensure that we establish a culture of accountability, professionalism, and zero tolerance for hateful or racist behavior, on or off duty.”

Former Antioch Police Chief Steven Ford announced his retirement last month and officially stepped down on Aug. 11 amid the scandal.

The spiraling revelations have impacted nearly half of the department’s sworn officers, and texts were exchanged between nearly 45 Antioch officers. As of July, 40 out of 90 officers were no longer working, the East Bay Times reports.

Dozens of cases that officers in the probe were involved in have since been dropped or derailed.

Robert Collins, whose step-son Angelo Quinto was killed by Antioch police in December 2020, told KQED that the arrests were an important step in rebuilding trust that has been lost between the community and its law enforcement officials.

“It’s amazing and shocking and sad that the lack of transparency and accountability has led to a police department that is so culturally deficient and problems that are so ingrained, so pervasive. But it’s good that there is some accountability and transparency coming out of the results of this federal indictment,” Collins told KQED. “It’s painful, but it’s a first step in improving the situation.”

Bella Quinto Collins, Quinto’s younger sister, was cautiously optimistic.

“This arrest is really good news,” she told KQED, “But at the same time, I don’t see this as necessarily the end of anything. It’s pretty clear that there’s still an ongoing issue within the culture of APD and there’s so much more work to be done to look into other officers that seem to be involved in various other issues and who are implicated in those text messages.”

Gigi Crowder, executive director of National Alliance on Mental Illness in Contra Costa, called the arrests “one step in a long road,” and that a lot of young people and families she works with have grown fearful of their own law enforcement agency.

“This might send a message to officers who hold those beliefs but hadn’t been involved … that you can’t get away with being asked to protect and serve and carry these racial belief systems about a community.”

She added: “We get complaints from across the county. If they do deeper probing, they will find it’s not isolated to Pittsburg and Antioch.”

Mayor Thorpe has previously faced criticism for seeking accountability for officer misconduct. In his written statement on Thursday, the mayor wrote: “Today’s arrests are demonstrative of the issues that have plagued the Antioch Police Department for decades. Seeking to reform the Antioch Police Department is not anti-police, it is pro our residents, and pro officers that have served and continue to serve with honor.”

[reasoningdaily]

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is facing a federal civil rights investigation over how the Los Angeles hospital treats Black women who give birth there, an official with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services confirmed.

The investigation comes after allegations of racism and discrimination emerged in the years after the death of Kira Dixon Johnson.

Johnson went to Cedars-Sinai in April 2016 to deliver her second son by cesarean section but died hours later after hemorrhaging blood. News of the incident spread over social media and led to her husband, Charles Johnson IV, filing lawsuits against the hospital over her death.

The Times obtained a copy of a letter the federal agency sent to Charles Johnson in March indicating that it was aware of the allegations involving the hospital’s level of care for Black women.

The Office of Civil Rights “has been made aware of concerns regarding the standard of care provided to Black women in the care of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,” the letter said. “Specifically, OCR is aware of allegations that Black women are provided a standard of care below what is provided to other women who are not Black when receiving health care services related to labor and delivery.”

The letter noted that based on the allegations and the fact that Cedars-Sinai receives federal funding, the agency is reviewing whether the hospital is complying with federal civil rights laws.

Melanie Fontes Rainer, director of HHS’ Office of Civil Rights, confirmed the agency’s investigation in an emailed statement.

“Maternal health is a priority for the Biden-Harris Administration and one in which the HHS Office for Civil Rights is working on around the country to ensure equity and equality in health care,” Fontes Rainer said. “To protect the integrity of this ongoing investigation we have no further comment.”

In 2017, Johnson sued Cedars-Sinai in state court as well as the doctor who attended to his wife during her hospital stay, alleging wrongful death and emotional distress.

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

According to the lawsuits, Kira Johnson was admitted to Cedars-Sinai for a cesarean delivery, but hours later, Charles Johnson said he noticed her catheter was draining blood. Dr. Arjang Naim, her doctor, was made aware of her predicament and a “surgical emergency” CT scan was ordered.

But the scan was never performed, according to the lawsuits. By the time she was sent in for surgery, doctors found three liters of blood in her abdomen, and she soon died from hemorrhagic shock due to the blood loss, the lawsuits say.

The hospital said in a statement last year about the lawsuit that officials “reject any mischaracterization of our culture and values” and they were actively working to “eradicate unconscious bias in healthcare.”

In an emailed statement to The Times, Cedars-Sinai officials referred questions about “any potential investigation” to Health and Human Services.

“Cedars-Sinai clinicians, leaders and researchers have long been concerned with national disparities in Black maternal health, and we are proud of the work we’ve done (and continue to do) to address these issues in Los Angeles as well as at the state and national levels,” the statement said.

Hospital officials also pointed to their work to improve maternal health outcomes, including working with the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative, which brings state agencies, hospitals and health provider associations together to look for ways to prevent pregnancy complications and deaths.

The hospital also noted it is conducting clinical studies aimed at improving Black maternal and infant health; providing annual unconscious bias training for staff members; and giving more than $2.2 million in grants to Los Angeles County-area nonprofit organizations seeking to improve Black maternal health.

The hospital also has a partnership with Cherished Futures for Black Moms & Babies, to connect healthcare organizations and Black community leaders to develop solutions to reduce inequities in Black maternal and infant health.

Cedars-Sinai helps nearly 7,000 women deliver their babies each year, according to the hospital’s website.

The National Center for Health Statistics reported in March that 1,205 pregnant women died in the United States in 2021, a 40% increase over 2020, when 861 deaths occurred. The total was 754 in 2019.

Pregnant Black women continued to have the highest risk of dying, according to the report. In 2021, the maternal mortality rate for Black women was 69.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, 2.6 times the rate for white women at 26.6 deaths. Among Hispanic women, the report found there were 28 deaths per 100,000 live births.

[michael-j-dean]

Michael J Dean Videographer Journalist Director Producer Civil Rights Daily 🍞 Intelligence Report News About Corruption In Pittsburgh Pennsylvania Washington DC Hollywood CA. America ©™®{P}

[msclaritea]

Rev. William Barber hires civil rights attorney Harry Daniels to investigate movie theater incident | abc11.com

REV. WILLIAM BARBER HIRES CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY HARRY DANIELS TO INVESTIGATE MOVIE THEATER INCIDENT

Absolutely fucking ridiculous. #AMC publicly apologized and I never hear other incidents like this, so what is Progressive #RevBarber up to?

Monday, January 8, 2024 5:21PM ET

[enerdsout]

north Carolina GOP decides to make secret police force

[youtwitinmyface]

THE STORY OF FRED HAMPTON AND COINTELPRO by Michael Harriot

            Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, Dirksen Federal Building, 1969                                    Photo by Paul Sequeira, Fair use image         NOTE: HE MEANT J. EDGAR HOOVER, NOT HERBERT HOOVER. Preventing the rise of a ‘messiah’ by Jonathan David Farley           FBI – KING SUICIDE LETTER   NOTE: HE’S ABOUT TO WRITE MARK O’NEAL WHEN HE MEANS WILLIAM…

[queenvlion]

[communist-ojou-sama]

Like, this may come as a shock to people like Tumblr liberals who are totally stuck in the Western anglophone neoliberal ideology echo-chamber but like, outside of the west, out there where the majority of the worlds people live, Kwame Nkrumah's thought is taken more seriously than Milton Friedman's. So why will left liberals engage with Friedman's thought, even if only to debunk it, but not engage at all with Nkrumah's writings on neocolonialism, and just write it off?

There's a common charge leveled by supposedly "open-minded" liberals toward anti-imperialists, that we just 'blindly' support any force that's contravailing US the US on a regional or global scale, but how am I supposed to take this seriously as anything but projection?

We anti-imperialists often make specific, verifiable claims about happenings in global geopol, such as that the so-called "Free Syrian Army" consisted mostly of salafi jihadists allowed into Syria through their northern border with Turkey, and that it doesn't make sense that a civil war could simply Materialize in a country like Syria which right before the war started had one of the lowest ratios of guns to people in the world, or that the Maidan coup regime that swept into power in Kiev in 2014 was heavily infiltrated with fascists, and would not have been able to consolidate power without the instrumentalisation of fascist gangs and paramilitary organizations.

The liberal response to these specific claims, then, is to point to reports from corporate media with every incentive to lie, themselves doing no independent investigation but instead parroting verbatim the word of the State Department as fact, and dismissing all independent media investigations out of hand with no further thought.

In a situation such as this, can that response really be considered "open-minded"? It seems that time and time again intellectual rigor is reserved for discussions of technocratic tinkering within the west's iron curtain, and not the lives of people outside of it.

There's plenty of brain-juice to be expended on justifying why the US economy is actually in good shape and the people saying they're struggling more than before are just stupid, but when it comes to considering why African heads of state choose the China Development Bank over the IMF as an economic partner or Russia over the NATO states as security partners, these leaders of millions are dismissively written off as histrionically anti-Western, paranoid, and too mentally weak to see through Russian and Chinese propaganda. Is it this really a 'rational' way to look at the world?

Personally, I think not.

[sayruq]

The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med) released a report on 30 April urging an investigation into Israel’s potential use of illegal thermal weapons. “An international committee of experts must be established to look into the weapons Israel has been using as part of its genocide in the Gaza Strip … including the potential use of bombs that produce such high heat that victims’ bodies evaporate,” the Euro-Med report said. The rights group cites testimonies received from Gaza which revealed a “horrific new level of killing in the Strip.” The bodies of Palestinian victims appear to have been vaporized by the weapons Israel used against residential buildings. “Thousands of victims remain missing, either because it was impossible to recover them from under the debris in light of insufficient equipment and technical know-how, or because their bodies were either hidden by the Israeli army or no longer exist,” the Euro-Med report reads. The report continues to say, “A number of the victims killed in these horrifying Israeli raids on residential buildings have vanished and may have turned to ashes, raising questions about the type of bombs used in the attacks.” Thermobaric weapons, also referred to as vacuum bombs, are two-stage munitions. The first charge disperses a fine aerosol cloud of materials ranging from carbon-based fuel to metal particles. The second charge ignites the materials used, creating a fireball, shock wave, and vacuum as it sucks up the surrounding oxygen. The blast from these weapons can last significantly longer than conventional explosives, enabling it to vaporize human bodies. Mass graves in Gaza hospitals previously raided by Israel show that civil defense staff found “bodies without skin,” according to Gaza’s Government Media Office. According to the Euro-Med report, “The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and international humanitarian law all forbid the use of thermal bombs against civilians in populated civilian areas. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court also classifies the use of thermal bombs as a war crime.” Israel has also illegally deployed white phosphorus weapons on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon. According to a Washington Post analysis, the white phosphorus munitions used in Lebanon’s south were supplied to Israel by the US. Palestine’s Agricultural Work Committees Union said that Israel intentionally uses chemical weapons on farmlands in the Gaza Strip to contaminate its soil, posing an increased cancer risk to farmers.

[sunboki]

— MR. FIREFIGHTER.

Christopher Bahng x fem. reader

TROPE. firefighter! au, neighbors! au, coincidences, power outage.. hehe

WARNINGS. cursing? chan being a firefighter bc HELLO

AUG'S NOTES. hi hi, ya’ll wanted more firefighter! chris? me too i gotcha

In a neighborhood like yours, power outages were common. But of course, with your luck just moving here, nobody paid any mind telling you.

Perhaps that’s the best explanation as to how you ended up at a strangers doorstep, your phone’s flashlight making the entire experience look a thousand times more pathetic the longer you shifted from foot to foot.

You’d been plugging in your charger, only for your entire bedroom to fall pitch black. Initially, you assumed it was simply a broker malfunction, leading to—after carefully hobbling out to the garage—a multitude of failed attempts to ensue.

About halfway from leaving does the front door open, and upon turning around are you met with a sight pitifully breathtaking.

Blond, messy hair rests atop a well sculpted face, masculine features on tanned skin, dark chocolate eyes belonging to that of the finest sweets.

“Hello?” He asks, voice thick with an accent you deem Australian.

“Oh yeah uh, the.. the power?” Winding your index around haphazardly, the man looks you up and down (an action that shouldn’t have brought such blood to your face), glancing around and wetting his lips before inviting you inside.

Sure, he may be a serial killer, but if that man strangled you, you’re not sure you’d be too upset. Shameless, but who disagreed?

Without a word nor greeting, he slinks into a small kitchen area, leaving you to curiously investigate your surroundings. You note the huge, beige boots by the doorway, the firefighter’s hat lingering on a coat hook.

And he’s a firefighter? Good fuck have mercy.

“‘Happens a lot,” The frustratingly attractive stranger grumbles as you enter the living area, candle-light illuminating the plushness of his lips. It takes you a moment to register he’s talking, too busy reigning yourself into a sane headspace.

He hands you a small mug of tea that’s warm to the touch, beckoning you to take a seat.

“And by the looks of it,” He laughs a low, bemused laugh. “You didn’t know that…?”

“Y/n, it’s Y/n.” You introduce, sipping the steaming beverage carefully.

“Scared?”

“Mm, little bit.” Truthfully answering, you scorn your bashfulness, hating how the way he’s merely looking at you disorients every sensible article of your brain.

Reaching forward, he fondly pats your head, eyes crinkling in the corners when smiling.

Just then you abandon all hope of remaining civilized.

“There’s nothin’ to be scared of, just light some candles ‘n wait it out. Plus, it’s good sleeping conditions.”

If he keeps talking you’re certain you’ll dig a human sized hole and bury yourself in it, because of course you had to knock on his door, him who you’ve become smitten with without even knowing his name.

Before you can apologize for likely waking him up, he interjects.

“But be careful with candles. ‘Don’t wanna start a fire.”

Recalling his firefighter status, you raise your brows, leaning back into the cushions.

“You’d save me, right Mr. Firefighter?”

Momentarily, surprise etches his face.

He grins.

“Nah I’d—”

You smack his arm and he laughs—a kind of laugh that makes the entire room burst alight.

“Of course I would. And It’s Chan by the way, but you can call me Chris.”

Already getting comfortable with conversation, you rest your chin upon your hand, studying.

His mannerisms (as much as his looks could kill) are rather adorable. They’re nervous, fiddling opposed to the career he chose.

A man with a deadly duality.

Charming.

“Oh? Nickname privileges?” You mischievously pique, witnessing that shyness once more.

He covers his face with his hands, dissolving into the couch, evidently embarrassed. The urge to continue becoming irresistible.

“Say, Chris, are you flirting with me?”

Peering through his fingers, Chris’ lips pull tug upward slightly, seeming to mirror your sly attitude.

“I don’t know, am I?”

Perhaps it’s your imagination, but his voice seriously just lowered a pitch and all ability to bite back has turned to dust. And now you can certainly say your feelings are justified, especially from his eyes. Brown hues boring into you, sending your heart a thundering mess.

No, no no, don’t say that. That’s not fair.

As if on cue the lights flash awake and you spring up from your place, attempting to hide the flush of your cheeks.

Barely making it out the door before Chris pulls you back around, his hand loosely grasps your wrist, stuffing a piece of paper into your palm adorning that same stupid smile you’re effortlessly falling in love with.

Inside his number is written, and more than ever you feel like a teenage girl passing notes to her boyfriend in class.

“Just in case,” He claimed, clearing his throat as if that would magically cure his noticeably pink ears.

Take it back, you’re both teenage losers fighting to see who cracks first. Nervous wrecks, red faces.

“In case my house burns down?”

“That’s a plus, yep.”

“You’re awful.”

Chris, walking you up to your door despite being a mere foot away, giggles his delight, bidding you good night. But seconds before he turns around it’s your turn to be spontaneous, and you press a soft kiss to his cheek prior to racing inside, shutting the door as quickly as possible.

Oh my god. Oh my god.

Covering your mouth with your hands in order to suppress the utter squeal threatening to break your lungs, you feel seconds from physically imploding — ignorant to the fact that outside the door, Chris is currently doing the same thing.

sunboki, may 2022 ©

[msclaritea]

Hungary's investigation of Scientology results in indictments of 11 for tax fraud

As part of a 2017 police raid, the National Tax and Customs Administration (i.e. the Hungarian IRS) seized a large amount of documents as part of an investigation into Scientology.

Scientology is registered in Hungary as a religious association and chose not to adopt Value-Added Tax – this means they do not charge VAT (i.e. sales tax) but they can’t reclaim it either. The problem is, if you are providing business services and you are engaged in commercial operations, you can only do that if your annual income is a maximum of $34,000 USD. Scientology in Hungary claims that all they do is for the public benefit, that they are selling religious services and artifacts, so therefore this does not apply to them.

The Hungarian tax office launched an extensive investigation, looked into their books, interviewed suspects and witnesses etc., and determined that Scientology operations were commercial in nature. They calculated a sum of $1.7 million USD in tax debt, which is basically the sum of all the VAT they did not charge for the Purif, courses, auditing, books, E-meters, etc., for the fiscal years between 2012 and 2017.

Eleven executives and treasury personnel of the Church of Scientology Budapest have now been charged with $1.7 million USD tax evasion (VAT fraud) committed in a criminal conspiracy. The prosecutor is asking for actual prison time to be served and appropriate fines.

According to the investigation, the Scientologists fraudulently and knowingly reported fees paid as part of business transactions (training courses, purification programs, books, CDs etc.) as tax-free charitable donations in order to avoid taxes.

So, the tax authority considers this a knowingly committed tax fraud, executed by the defendants as a part of a criminal conspiracy.

There is no statement from the church yet, but the apologist journal Bitter Winter, perhaps anticipating today’s news, in October criticized the Hungarian government for investigating the Scientologists.

“Tax laws were weaponized to discriminate against religious and spiritual minorities and violate internationally recognized FoRB (freedom of religion or belief) principles,” the journal complained.

We will see how it develops. There will be a trial, appeals, Supreme Court petition etc. So it will take a few years to see the end results.

— Péter Bonyai

NOT ONE MAJOR OUTLET HAS REPORTED ON COS, WHICH HAS BEEN INVOLVED WITH MIKE FLYNN.