#Independent Police Monitor

[davidblaska]

Only 2 Madison alders had the courage to vote NO

against the $22 million City spending referendum! We don’t play identity politics here at the Werkes, although we suspect that the Lovely Lisa may be of Polish extraction. Her last name has the letter Z in it, among an abundance of consonants. Pronounced properly, as a Warsaw telephone operator once corrected us, her name sounds like a violent sneeze. But the pool in which we swim here in…

[russianreader]

"Face the Wall, Don't Look Down": Solidarity Becomes a Criminal Act in Moscow

“Face the Wall, Don’t Look Down”: Solidarity Becomes a Criminal Act in Moscow

A view of the entrance to Open Space Moscow. Photo courtesy of Mediazona On the evening of November 24, masked security forces officers broke into Open Space in Moscow, where fifty people had gathered to support the anarchists arrested in the Tyumen Case and write postcards to political prisoners. The security forces, who were probably commanded by a colonel from Center “E”, made the visitors…

[bobbile-blog]

Okay so I've finally gotten to Jessicalter's Oprec and now feel qualified to talk about Come Catastrophes or Wakes of Vultures. holy shit. This went straight into my list of top Arknights events. Fantastic event, spoilers will be under the cut so I HIGHLY RECOMMEND reading the event first. It's really good and worth your while.

Anyway, what follows is a scattered mess of thoughts about this event and things that stuck out to me.

First off, plot stuff! I'll probably cover this when I do my next plotline recap post, but what I took away from the end is that Clip Cliff seems to want to make Blacksteel independent, or at least more self-determining than it is now. He seems to be gathering resources and assets like mobile city plates and investing in long-term infrastructure like merc training, so he definitely has a long game he's pushing for. I don't think we know enough go speculate about his goals, but we'll definitely be coming back here again. After all, Tila has an infection monitor in her art, which probably means she's going to be playable at some point in the future.

Next, having looked into this a little on my own, I was interested in some of the previous places Raythean has shown up. Specifically, the ones that stood out were the drones in the Kazimierz Major and arming Silverash's forces in Kjerag, which might be referring to the Tschäggättä. It's not just notable for their apparent level of technology, but also as a faint connecting thread between three separate capitalism plotlines. I don't know if that's going to be meaningful in the future, but I found it interesting enough that I thought I'd bring it up.

Now on to more narrative things. While I love Liskarm and Franka, I do think it was the right choice to give them less screen time in this event. They're both (for the most part) fully-realized characters who understand their own motivations and morals. This is above all else an event about Jessica learning to stand on her own as an adult, so it makes sense that they're more here to support her than they are to play their own roles in the story.

Speaking of said roles, I liked the event's commentary on cops. It pointed out an interesting distinction that I wouldn't really have ever thought of, that between mercenaries and cops. To start: cops exist to protect property, not people. The police exist to protect things and do not have an obligation to err on the side of people over things, and in fact are supposed to do the opposite. This event understands that, and that role os the core of how the bank treats the Blacksteel mercs. CV, however, raises an interesting point that mercenaries are bound by the letter of a contract and not the larger obligation to property cops are, so they can actually raise moral objections and point to their contracts, sort of a Lawful Evil/Lawful Neutral to cops' Neutral Evil. The independence of their position with respect to cops allows for more of an independent morality than you'd get in a cop story and I like that, I think it's a really smart direction to take your writing in.

On a (mostly) separate note, holy shit Arknights is really good at writing cowboy stories. Between this and chapter 9 (and I would argue An Obscure Wanderer), Arknights has repeatedly made it clear that they Do Not Fuck Around with their cowboy stories and I'm surprised I haven't heard more people talking about it. It kinda has everything:

- It takes place in a rural, working-class setting undergoing a larger imminent societal shift that can inform the larger narrative, and deals with a semi-mythologized past that is rapidly disappearing.

- It has a protagonist and an antagonist that serve as foils, both very heavily affected and defined by the (same) violence in their past that they've both had different reactions to. Our protagonist has come to terms with the violence as a tool to maintain order, while our antagonist has used it for personal gain and in some ways lost control of it.

- It's a story about community, and heavily emphasizes local and personal community over larger artificial corporate "community". That's my reading of the recurring motif of the cold btw, warmth represents the close, personal community Davistown used to have and the cold that now pervades it comes from how the bank has systematically dismantled that community.

- And, I'd argue most importantly, it understands the narrative power of a bullet. The Showdown at the end of a cowboy story is powerful because we've spent the entire runtime of our story with these characters, and they are now facing each other down with the intent to end one of their collective two stories. The entire weight of the narrative so far comes to rest on a single moment of tension. It's really hard to gather up the kind of narrative momentum you need to make that hit like it does in CV. For example, it requires a really light hand with actual action in the story, so that it really does feel like it's an even standoff between our protagonist and antagonist. On the other hand, though, you do actually have to establish the relative skill of both parties and actually sell the danger of the moment to the audience. It's really hard to toe the line between tension and actual action in a way that makes for a satisfying resolution, and CV does it extremely well.

Honestly, Arknights just seems really good at getting the vibes of American media right. This is something I noticed in DV and Lonetrail too, and I haven't really been able to put my finger on what it is about them, but the vibes are just really on-point. I want to write more about this at a later point once I actually figure out what it is that I'm feeling, but maybe it's the setting, maybe it's the cast, maybe it's the plot points, maybe it's something in between — it just seems to understand the spirit of period cowboy stories in a way that I can't describe. Good shit.

Finally, I wanna end this with where Jessica is now. The events of CV take place In between the events of Loneterail and Ideal City, so the current "now" of the story is a few months ahead. Jessica left for the frontier along with Woody, Helena, and Miles. They live together in a small new settlement, building the place from the ground up with Woody and Jessica acting as town sherrifs. At the point we're at now, rhe town is fairly well-established and Woody has temporarily left on other business, leaving Jessica the sole sherrif of their new settlement. However, she's risen to her new station, and is growing into a stronger person than she ever was before.

[homeboundmonsters]

More Jumbled Thoughts on the Psychology of Inspector Javert

Building on the mention of Prison Mother and Law Father:

Javert exits his mother's womb into another symbolic womb: the prison, a place where transformation happens, where men are turned into beasts. Like a womb the prison entraps, monitors, maintains and sustains the life of its prisoner, but also can kill him. Because of her ethnicity and estrangement from society, Javert divorces himself from his biological mother and, in this way, the prison system holds the symbolic role of the mother in Javert's life. Because Javert is born without a father there is a symbolic void, an absence which he fills with The Law. In the philosophy of Carl Jung the Father archetype represents authority and responsibility; he is the protector and provider. Javert requires this figure to form a family triad, every child requires stability and that stability is found in parental figures- whether biological or otherwise. It is in prison where Javert adopts his affinity with observing: observing is safe, observing is a guilt-free activity because it is amoral: the observer does not partake in, and thus approve of, or disapprove of the activity he observes. In addition, observation is a passive activity. Prison and the Law teach Javert to be passive, because to be passive is to be safe from unwelcome observation, it is to be small and unseen. We see this in how Javert behaves at the barricade, like Valjean he turns into himself returning to the state of dissociation that gave him comfort in childhood. 

By the time Javert leaves the womb he is already a man and so he is trapped in a sort of psychological infancy. He cannot develop beyond the idea of black and white right or wrong. He cannot move, like a man does, away from the overbearing and domineering psychological influence of his parents. He seeks to please them and when he feels he has failed he suffers mental and emotional distress and anguish. He prefers straightforward tasks, requires reassurance and praise, and seeks out the attention and approval of his parents in all things. He has been taught to be obedient and passive from birth and has not had the experience of a life outside of ‘the family’ with which he might compare his way of living. As he divorced his biological mother, Javert divorces his symbolic mother by abandoning the prison system and moving to the Law pure to work as a police officer. This is because, as a man, he seeks to identify with the masculine identity in himself as if represented by his Father. But also because the approval of his father is the ultimate form of safety because in reality, Javert’s Father figure is the Dark Father: he is critical, often cruel, emotionally distant, he is the father who consumes their own child. For what does the Law give Javert? Not social status, not family, not community, not love, not an appeasement of hunger or the safety of a good solid income.  

Like the son who never flies the nest, he forms few to no other social or sexual relationships. How can he when all of his psychological and emotional energy is going into fulfilling his parents' perceived needs? This is part of the danger of Jean Valjean. He disrupts, he invites in Javert sentiments and psychological excitements which draw him away from his primary focus of satisfying his parents. He entices with an alternate way of life in which a man might live by his own values, independent and seeking only his own approval. And he introduces physical desire into Javert's life also, forcing him through a sort of psychological puberty from sexless child to confused and frustrated yearning adult. What emotions he should have had years to understand he is forced to process in short and destabilising bursts. He does not even have the language to express to himself what he desires, beyond the framework of service and pleasing a superior figure or destroying and harming the cause of the destabilisation.

Jean Valjean also entices because he is The Father. This can be seen in the development of his relationships: as a young man he is the father figure to his nieces and nephews, then he is Father Madeleine to M-Sur-M, then he is Cosette’s adopted father. Valjean represents what Javert has searched for since childhood, a figure to fill the symbolic void of the absent father. Unlike his cruel, judgemental Dark Father in the figure of The Law, Valjean is accepting, merciful, gentle, patient and forgiving. He offers praise, community, tenderness, but without the lack of any traditional masculine traits; he is strong, powerfully built, handsome, respectable, wise, intelligent, masterful, dominant, and holds social influence. To put it in a vulgar terminology: Javert has Daddy Issues. Valjean is the symbolic Father he has yearned for to treat the wounds of his agonised childhood. Now, this is not to say he wishes Valjean to be his father, that would be a naive interpretation. It is to say that he requires a figure to take that role in his emotional and psychological hierarchy. But it is also why he has such an internal conflict: to abandon the Law Father is to turn his back on a lifetime of programming, but worse: to accept that he is lovable and deserving of respect, mercy and tenderness without having to deprive himself and exhaust himself mentally and emotionally to earn those things. And worst of all, to face the belief that he has already proven through his acts that he is not worthy of this freely given love and approval that his potential Good Father offers him. The Dark Father is ingrained in Javert’s very psychology, even outside of his presence (as outside as he can ever be) he is ruled by the critical and cruel judgements and strict rules that his Dark Father has set for him. In a moment of agonised realisation, Javert comes to understand that he is worthy of Love and that he has made himself unworthy of it all at once: the perspectives of two warring Father symbols whose conflict ultimately tears apart Javert’s fragile psyche. 

[beguines]

. . . it can be more accurately hypothesised that the current popularity of mental health self-surveillance and mental illness self-labelling results from psychiatric hegemony and its imbued neoliberal ideology of risk and personal responsivity. As Clarke et al. have stated of this focus on medical surveillance in neoliberal society: "[H]ealth becomes an individual goal, a social and moral responsibility, and a site for routine biomedical intervention . . . the focus is no longer on illness, disability, and disease as matters of fate, but on health as a matter [of] ongoing moral self-transformation.

Through psychiatric hegemony, then, we are all implicated as "at risk" of mental illness and must constantly self-monitor for potential signs of disorder (as many professional associations and drug adverts advise us). Clarke has summated the importance of this mental health self-governance in neoliberal society with reference to the rise of disorders such as ADHD. She states:

"Neo-liberal governance is typified by its emphasis on citizen involvement as individuals take independent action and become enterprises (or entrepreneurs) unto themselves and in a sense police themselves by internalising and enacting prevailing truths about the identification and management of risks . . . Neo-liberalism depends on self-governance (or in the case of children, governance by parents and similar authorities). For instance, mothers increasingly turn to . . . individualising children's (mis)behaviour as disordered through mental illness discourse, of which attention deficit disorder (ADD)/Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most prevalent around the globe today."

The parent has successfully sought help and aided the medicalisation of the child's deviant behaviour. This is a neoliberal process of social control which is so successful that Norris and Lloyd have noticed that the mental illness diagnosis often comes as a relief to the parent, "first, because they have located the 'cause' of their child's distress, and secondly, because they, as parents, are not to blame . . . Their child's 'abnormal' behaviour is, in this account, a medical issue to be rectified through medication that makes 'normal' their child's brain dysfunction."

Bruce M.Z. Cohen, Psychiatric Hegemony: A Marxist Theory of Mental Illness

[just-horrible-things]

On The Amnestic Issue

The issue of strong amnestic drugs is not a highly publicized one. It is not a polarizing topic of debate like immigration, reproductive rights, or the human pet industry. Most people do not even have a strong opinion on amnestics. They are not front and center in the public view. The pharmaceutical industry and its supporters have done an excellent job of suppressing debate.

This is not an issue to take up lightly as a bit of collegiate activism to soothe the soul. Even to write about the topic is to invite lawsuit, defamation, and harassment. You probably haven’t heard much about anti-amnestic activists, not because we don’t exist but because that is how effectively we are silenced. I have friends who have been jailed for speaking out, and many more who have been publicly targeted, harassed, accused, and made into laughing stocks.

This is not an issue to take up unless you truly feel passionately about it.

But I am passionate, and I think you should be too. I think we all should be. 

Detractors will attempt to paint anti-amnestic discourse as radical left wing pet-lib propaganda. They will attempt to paint us as far right anti-vaxxer paranoids lashing out against the medical industry. But the amnestic issue ought to concern you regardless of your political alignment.#

Whatever your stance on the human pet industry, whatever your stance on pharmacological reform, the amnestic issue goes far further than either of those. This is not about criminals or contractees, although they form part of the picture. This is primarily about the effects of strong amnestic drugs in the general population, the failure of our government and regulators to protect us from unregulated use, and the complete lack of unbiased, verifiable information about amnestic safety even in a medical context.

Use of prescription amnestics has more than doubled in just the last three years, despite the complete lack of any independent studies demonstrating benefits in the vast majority of use cases. Un-monitored, un-reported “home use” is estimated at anywhere between half as many people again, and three times as many, and in many cases these unprescribed drugs are being used to “medicate” entirely non-medical issues such as domestic quarrels.

Crime involving the forced administration of strong amnestics to unconsenting victims is estimated to have increased twenty-fold since these substances were first approved for prescription. The volume of illegal amnestics circulating in the black market is completely unknown, and the lack of separation between the markets for aggressive criminal use and for unregulated “self-medication” is bringing naive would-be patients into contact with hardened drug dealers and organized crime.

In the context of our progressively failing criminal justice system, some victims are even administering the “cover up pills” to themselves rather than face the traumatic experience of trying to push a report through to court. In a recent survey, 20% of university students said that if they were victims of “date rape” they would rather take a pill and forget, than take the issue to the police. Cited reasons included shame, fear of stigmatization, fear that the police would do nothing, and, conversely, fear that the police would respond with excessive force.

Perhaps most troubling of all, the second most popular reason given was simply that taking an amnestic would be “less effort”. The same attitude is reflected in a growing media trend towards portraying drug-induced forgetting as the “easy option” : a quick, effortless, and effective solution to any and all of life’s problems. 

Needless to say there is no evidence to support the idea that amnestic abuse actually improves happiness, health, or any other measure of wellbeing. And it should be beyond obvious that choosing to forget certain problems such as unpaid bills, unsettled debts, or an angry spouse will not actually cause these problems to go away.

Even industry giants such as Santex Pharma and WRU have recently put out statements advising against unregulated, unsupervised home use. These statements describe the medical applications and the use in the pet industry (respectively) as highly controlled, carefully monitored use cases and not comparable to the growing trend of unlicensed use. Santex state, both in their recent statement and elsewhere, that every approved use of their strong amnestics has been rigorously safety tested and found both safe and effective. They cite a number of published studies, in addition to an undisclosed quantity of private, internal investigation.

Every single published study involving strong amnestics was either conducted or funded by a manufacturer of strong amnestics, a business that uses strong amnestics as a core part of their business model (i.e. the human pet industry), or a subsidiary of one of these businesses.

There are no published independent studies. All attempts at independent studies have been heavily suppressed by the above industries, or else taken over by these business interests long before completion. It has long been well known – if rarely successfully prosecuted – that pharmaceutical companies regularly misuse statistics, massage data, and even outright fabricate results to produce conclusions that are favorable to their bottom line.

Even those few independent investigators who have resisted the pressure exerted by the industry have found that no reputable publication – scientific or otherwise – will take on the risk of publishing their results if they fail to corroborate the claims of safety. When such studies are made publically available on the internet they are invariably taken down within weeks or even days, and the authors – if remotely identifiable – can expect a slew of life-ruining lawsuits. In many cases even criminal charges have been leveled against such investigators.

Consequently it is extremely difficult to form an accurate picture of the extent and form of the risks posed by the use of strong amnestics. However, certain themes come up over and over in these vanished studies. The use of strong amnestics, especially but not exclusively long term or at high doses, has been associated with any or all of the following:

cognitive decline or impairment

anterograde amnesia (loss of the ability to reliably form new long term memories)

anxiety and depression

emotional instability and dysregulation

intrusive thoughts

increased rates of suicide

increased mortality (all causes)

false recall (remembering fictive events as if they were real, or events that happened to other people as if they happened to oneself)

nightmares, night terrors, insomnia and other sleep disturbances

migraines, cluster headaches, and other forms of headache

increased impulsivity

increases vulnerability to addiction

impaired executive function (difficulty making and adhering to plans, reduced decision-making ability)

While none of the above symptoms have been conclusively linked to amnestics on account of the industry stranglehold on data, it is worth noting that the incidence of all of the above problems in the general population has increased sharply over the last few years, with no other obvious explanation for the increase.

Some of the most striking evidence has come from the study of parents who made the choice to forget a child when that child entered into the human pet industry. The fact that WRU discontinued this as an official service after only a year and a half speaks volumes. But small numbers of parents (and an unknown number of other friends and relatives of new human pets) continue to seek out this option either under the supervision of a medical professional or independently “at home” with illicitly procured amnestics.

While the desire to forget is perhaps an understandable response to the loss of a child or loved one, the outcomes of such a choice are rarely happy. Suicide rates in this group are extremely high, as are rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses. 

Testimonials can be found on parenting boards across the web urging other parents not to make the same decision. They describe intense feelings of guilt, crushing anxiety, dread and/or a sense of “impending doom”, and a constant, gnawing awareness of the period of “lost time”. Feelings of hopelessness, futility and lack of purpose or fulfillment are extremely common.

One mother described the feeling as not only having lost her now-unremembered child, but also having lost herself.

The wider societal impact of amnestic abuse is also making itself felt as the prevalence rises year on year. Courts have already agreed that forgetting a crime or other offense does not absolve the perpetrator of any guilt or responsibility, but how exactly to handle such cases is far from settled. 

Detractors of pharmacological reform are quick to point out the double standard here. Amnesia can be enforced by the state in the name of correcting entrenched behavioral patterns and preventing reoffense, but those who have already self-administered this treatment are still considered just as guilty and just as likely to reoffend as if they had not forgotten.

Neither is it clear how to help or compensate victims of amnestic-related crimes. The use of amnestics to cover up crimes – most commonly date rape – is nothing new. Even prior to the invention of the modern drug class, weak amnestics such as alcohol and benzodiazepines have long been used for this purpose. However, the rise of the strong amnestic has both expanded the criminal’s toolkit for cover-ups and opened entire new spheres of crime.

Every month it seems that allegations of a new kind of crime hit the courts, from corporate espionage cases in which corporate agents are accused of using amnestics to wipe ideas, trade secrets, or experience in the field from their competitors, to domestic abuse allegations involving the long term use of amnestics to keep the victim ignorant of their own abuse. While some of these cases are clearly less plausible than others, there can be no doubt that criminal elements are hard at work finding new ways to abuse these substances.

If you follow the mainstream news cycle, you are also doubtless already aware of the rise of “perpetual amnesiacs” – a small but highly visible minority of amnestic “addicts” who take the drugs repeatedly in high doses to forget practically everything. 

(While strong amnestics are not physiologically addictive drugs like heroin or cocaine, phenomena such as gambling addiction and pornography addiction have long taught us that people can become addicted to all manner of things that are not physiologically addictive drugs.)

These “perpetual amnesiacs” usually have substantial problems before the amnestic abuse. They may be homeless, in debt, stuck in abusive relationships, or addicted to other substances. They begin taking the amnestics to forget their very real troubles. What separates the addict from other “home users” is the very high doses involved, and the taking of additional doses as soon as further difficulties arise. 

These afflicted individuals become increasingly disengaged from life, drifting from one short term pleasure (often other substances of abuse) to another, and taking additional amnestics whenever consequences threaten to disrupt their existence in the moment.

Most become homeless if they were not already, and over time almost all develop severe symptoms from the list above. Reporting has focused particularly on impulsivity, cognitive decline, and anterograde amnesia. We hear of the violent deaths of addicts killed attempting the wildly ill-conceived crimes that their impulsivity leads them into.

Eventually the “perpetual amnesiac” needs no further doses of the amnestics, because their ability to form new memories has been completely destroyed. 

Despite industry insistence that these sobering results are only a result of the extremely high doses taken by the addicts, the recent news coverage has awoken public fears regarding the safety of strong amnestics. 

However, reporting of these concerns has been notably muted and seems to have almost ceased as I write these words. All major news agencies seem to now prefer to parrot the company line that it is the quantity and the frequency that is the problem, not the drugs themselves. One can only imagine that money or favors have changed hands to facilitate this shift in focus.

One can only hope that the public will remember nonetheless, and that the plight of these most severely affected “perpetual amnesiacs” will prompt at least a few to look into the effect that amnestic drugs are having on us as individuals and as a society, and that we might start to look beyond the horizon of the company line.

-- A. Correspondent

[beardedmrbean]

madrid — 

As Abraham Jimenez Enoa walked his 3-year-old son home from kindergarten, two men sidled up beside them.

“We know you are near your home,” one of them said.

The experience shook the exiled journalist, who says he decided to leave his adopted city of Barcelona for a while after the encounter in July.

Despite being expelled from Cuba last year for writing what he says is the truth about the country’s communist government, Jimenez Enoa says he has been targeted by unidentified men in Europe, including in Madrid and Amsterdam.

Each time, the men spoke with Cuban accents.

The journalist, who writes for The Washington Post, said he believes those targeting him are Cuban agents.

Members of his family were senior military figures, so Jimenez Enoa once lived a cushioned life at the heart of the Communist Party establishment. His family had close ties to the late Fidel Castro and Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.

The 34-year-old turned his back on this life to forge a career as an independent journalist.

Neither the International Press Center in Havana — a government agency that handles media queries — nor the Cuban Embassy in Madrid replied to requests for comment from VOA about Jimenez Enoa's allegations.

Jimenez Enoa, like other dissidents who flee hostile regimes, says he is a victim of “transnational repression,” a tactic in which governments target critics outside their own borders.

Freedom House, which has been monitoring the phenomenon, says there were 854 verifiable incidents from 2014 to 2022, which included abductions, assassinations and attacks. Of these, 11% involved journalists.

Journalists in exile are targeted because they reveal uncomfortable facts about what is going on in their own countries — information that their governments do not want to make public.

China, Egypt, Russia, Turkey and Tajikistan were involved in the largest number of cases, according to Freedom House reports. China has been involved in 30% of the incidents, it said.

Jimenez Enoa believes the incident in July was an attempt by the Cuban government to intimidate him. He told VOA the two men approached him and said they knew where he lived.

“I didn’t know who said it. There were lots of people around,” he told VOA in an interview in Barcelona. “I saw two men who were laughing to themselves. They were dressed as Cuban diplomats [with a shirt and tie], then they went.”

Jimenez Enoa, who published The Hidden Island, a book about Cuba, said he was also followed at a book fair in Spain’s capital in May.

“At the book fair in Madrid, during the whole day, there was a man watching me and filming me. He did not say anything. Someone I spoke with said they had spoken to him and they said that he had a Cuban accent,” Jimenez Enoa recalled.

In March of last year, at a meeting in the Netherlands, Jimenez Enoa came face-to-face with a man he believes was a Cuban agent.

"A man started to offend me, saying everything I did was a lie. He continued to offend me. The organizers had to get him out of the place,” he said. “A diplomat [later] showed me a picture of the man and said he worked at the Cuban Embassy in Holland.”

Of his three encounters in Europe with what he believes were Cuban agents, the last incident was most disturbing, he said.

“I was with my son, and it was around the corner from my house. Each time these people had Cuban accents,” he said.

Jimenez Enoa said he did not report the incidents to the Spanish or Dutch police because he did not have any evidence to present.

The Committee to Project Journalists, which in 2020 honored Jimenez Enoa with an International Press Freedom Award, has called on Spanish authorities to investigate and ensure his safety.

The experiences are unsettling because Jimenez Enoa fled Cuba to avoid threats after enduring a campaign of harassment.

“I was put under house arrest; my phone was bugged. I was later arrested, handcuffed, strip-searched and questioned by security officers. Then they secretly filmed me and put my image on television, claiming I was a CIA spy,” he told VOA in an earlier interview.

“Later, they telephoned me and said I had to leave the country, or they would put me in prison and ‘terminate’ my family and the family of my wife.”

[gemsofgreece]

By now you probably have heard of the tragic train crash that killed 57 young people in Tempi and how it unveiled all the perilous faults of the Greek railway system as well as the loud negligence of the Greek state towards its citizens.

What you might not know yet is that this seems to have been the last straw for many people in the country, who often appeared apathetic and lethargic towards the serious problems and dysfunctions of the state before this accident. The train crash led to a massive and collective reaction, especially coming from the young people of the country. At the same time, it revealed the true faces of many politicians and journalists who try desperately to eliminate the political cost, as the elections are fast approaching, often exposing their dimwittedness and questionable morals on air in their despair.

Unfortunately I can’t describe everything that has been revealed to us the last days as it would take too long but I can give you some information about one specific situation about which there is a lot of information in English and which should interest you particularly if you are an EU citizen.

There is an EU committee, LIBE, its full name being the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. Its role is to check upon the maintenance and protection of the rule of law and civil rights in the members of EU. The national governments are obligated to ensure LIBE does its work undisturbed, in a common fight against corruption.

LIBE came in contact with the Greek government to meet for their monitoring checks in Greece. The government refused several times. Recently, the government discouraged LIBE from visiting Greece, with the excuse that Greece now was in national mourning.

In their effort to proceed with their investigation, LIBE came in contact with multiple Greek authorities. Let’s count them:

The Prime Minister

The Chief Prosecutor. So, you know, the most powerful judge in the country.

The secret services.

The Head of the Police.

The “politically neutral” President of the State.

One by one, they ALL refused to meet with LIBE and assist them in their duties. The government, the courts, the secret services, the police, the head of state. They all discouraged LIBE to come to Greece and downright refused to collaborate with them. Let that sink in.

However, LIBE did come to Greece and they announced their independent findings. If this post interests you so far, please do watch this below, as it is a summary of LIBE’s conclusions in English. The relevant part begins in 41:44 and it’s very short.

Btw if you are Greek, I recommend watching the whole of Radio-Arvyla’s episodes these days. I understand if you don’t like Kanakis or distrust them after what happened with Stathis but right now they are making one of the very few if not the only unbiased show on TV, at least regarding the train crash. The episodes of this week have all been incredibly informative for me.

So I leave you to your conclusions. But before you go, here’s also this article on EURACTIV about the Greek obstructions in the work of LIBE.

[mariacallous]

The Athens Joint Court of Appeal on Wednesday found two men guilty of the 2018 murder of the well-known Greek LGBT activist Zack Kostopoulos.

Spyros Dimopoulos, an 80-year-old jewelry store owner, and Thanassis Hortarias, a 65-year-old house agent, were found guilty of the murder of Kostopoulos in Athens in September 2018.

Dimopoulos was sentenced in the first instance to five years in prison and the other defendant to six. Owing to Dimopoulos’ age, the court ruled that he could serve his sentence at home.

Kostopoulos, 33 at the time of his death, was a well-known activist for the LGBT community, HIV-positive people, sex workers and refugees. He worked as a drag performer under the stage name Zackie Oh.

According to the case file, for unknown reasons, in September 2018 he entered Dimopoulos’s jewelry store in Omonoia Square in Athens. Dimopoulos locked the door but Kostopoulos tried to escape by hitting it with a fire extinguisher.

The lower level of the glass door was shattered and Kostopoulos tried to crawl out, but was punched in the head and body by the two men. Four police officers rushed to the scene and handcuffed Kostopoulos.

The two defendants claimed he had been holding a knife, and that their reaction was violent because they were trying to defend their property. Media reports claimed that Kostopoulos had entered the jewelry store to steal goods, and died of a drug overdose.

But the autopsy showed that Kostopoulos’s death died from the beating and had not consumed drugs or alcohol. According to the report, the blows on his body “contributed to the induction of organic stress, which in turn caused the ischemic-type lesions of the myocardium that were the final cause of death.”

The four police officers in court were found not guilty.

ZackieOh Justice Watch. an initiative formed by journalists and independent media, which also monitored the trials of members of the far-right Golden Dawn, broadcasted the trial on social media.

The Ministry of Justice in July called for new legislation to ban the transmission of court cases via the Internet. A ban on television and radio coverage has been in place since 2002.

ZackieOh Justice Watch said that the role of such observatories “is to ensure the publicity of the trial, which is a guarantee of a fair trial in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights and the Greek constitution,”

[randomshyperson]

Yellow Curtains - Chapter Two - Wanda Maximoff Series

Summary: Wanda Maximoff's senior year at Novi Grad School is duly planned for her. She has good friends, good grades, and a good system to hide who she really is. Or, the one based on Evak from the Norway Skam series, where Wanda is queer and tries to survive the last year without anyone knowing about it.

Warnings: (+18), general warnings about language and violence, legal drug use, mentions of underage drinking, high school, internalized homophobia and discovery of sexuality, explicit mentions of mental disorders (bipolarity and depression), dysfunctional family, making out, and eventual smut.

Skamverse | Series | General Masterlist | AO3 | Wattpad

--//--

Chapter Two - The Cabin

Ponedeljek 7:30 (Monday 7:30 am)

"Who can dissertate on the Sokovian Revolution of '74?"

The history teacher's question echoed in the classroom, but all he got in response were crestfallen students and soft giggles. T'Challa sighed, a small smile on his lips. "Come on guys, pay attention." He asked, nodding to the digital board where some information from the day's subject matter read. "We discussed last class how the labor revolution allowed Sokovia to become a first-world country in less than fifty years and about how that..."

Wanda's attention fell on the outside, birds flying in the sky above the main courtyard. She watched a few students walk by, and monitors asking what they were doing outside the room, before trying to force her attention back to the matter. 

The minutes dragged on as Professor T'Challa explained about Sokovian independence. Wanda didn't usually have trouble with humanities subjects, but lately, she had been so distracted.

Suddenly, the professor's talk was interrupted by the arrival of Vice Principal Harkness at the door. And she was not alone.

"Hi, T'Challa, good morning. We have a new student; She is late but is my fault, we had a problem with the paperwork. Is it okay if she watches the class?" Asked the woman - practically pushing the new student inside. 

The teacher agreed, of course, smiling gently, and the whole room looked at the student. 

Wanda held her breath, those eyes were so familiar...

"Shit, it's her!" Natasha whispered beside her with some indignation, and Wanda blinked away the new student to her best friend.

"Sorry, what?" the girl asks confused. Natasha nods to the new student's chair.

"It's the girl Carol brought to Tony's party." Nat explains in a low tone so the teacher won't hear. "Shit, I can't believe she's going to study right in our class. I am so unlucky."

T'Challa called for silence from the excited students, and Wanda tried to pay attention to the subject, not understanding why it bothered her that a stranger might be taken.

She was curious about the new student, but everyone else was. And when the class was over, and the table was filled with several other students greeting them and asking where they were from, Wanda gave up trying to find out too.

Natasha seemed willing to run away and practically dragged Wanda out into the courtyard.

They sat down at one of the outside tables, and it wasn't long before Pietro and Clint joined them. 

"Maximoff, you have something of mine." Barton declared as soon as he sat down, and Wanda sighed in defeat.

"I don't." She retorted. "I probably lost it at the party."

"What? Damn it, Wanda, it was three hundred euros!"

"I know, sorry." She asks immediately. "What can I do to make it up to you?"

Clint raises an eyebrow. "Well..."

"Dude!" Pietro interrupts with an angry grimace, giving his friend a hard shove. "It's my sister!" He recalls, but Clint laughs, raising his hands as a sign of peace.

"I'm joking, relax!" He assures between laughs. He then slips an arm around Wanda's shoulders, hugging her for a moment. "You don't worry either. It was because of the police at Tony's apartment, right? You were quick to think of getting out of there, he would have gotten in trouble."

Wanda forces a smile. "Yeah, but now I owe you 300 euros."

Clint shrugs. "Pay me back when you can." He says pushing her shoulder against his lightly. "You can do my homework too."

Wanda rolls her eyes, laughing weakly. "I'll think about it."

They fall into casual conversation after that. Clint comments about the party, and the boys on the team, and Pietro talk about his date with Crystal going well. Natasha is distracted, her gaze keeps going to the other side of the yard, and Wanda sighs slightly when she realizes who her friend is staring at.

"Have you talked to Carol yet?" The younger Maximoff asks, receiving a deep sigh in return.

"Not really, but I don't need to right?" Nat retorts looking at Wanda. " She clearly moved on."

Wanda frowns slightly, looking at the small group. The new student seems close to Carol, and they're all laughing, but she's not as sure about it as Natasha is.

"I don't know, Nat, maybe they're just friends." She tries, and Natasha gives a sad laugh.

"Whatever, Wands. It's not like we have anything official." 

"I think you should talk to her." Wanda insists, and Pietro and Clint join the conversation as well.

"Me too." Barton says. "Make things clear."

"I don't think so." Pietro comments shrugging. "Avoid her, make her anxious. She'll get the message."

Wanda rolls her eyes. "Don't listen to him." 

Nat laughs lightly, and when he sees Tony's group entering the courtyard he lets out an exclamation. "Shit, speaking of crushes, I'll be right back." And walks off towards Tony Stark the next moment.

Wanda feels her blood run cold. From her friend's excitement and the giggles of the boys and glances Tony steals in her direction, she knows exactly what they are talking about.

Natasha runs back to them with a proud smile on her lips.

"Great news, Maximoff." She declares. "Tony told me he's taking his brother for the cabin on the holiday, so we'll all be together and you'll get a chance to get to know him better."

The boys make teasing sounds, and Wanda can only force a laugh. 

When the bell rings, announcing the next class, and her gaze meets the new student's on the other side, she wants to believe she is imagining the way her heart speeds up.

The Independence holiday means four days off, and since eighth grade, Wanda's friends organize some trips, mainly to Stark’s winter cabin, even though it's not really cold.

The weeks go by quickly - which is great. Wanda's attention span at school doesn't improve, and she grows irritated at her brain's insistence on stealing glances at the new student, with whom she shares a single history class a week. 

She learns a few things about the new student. Their first name, the taste for rock bands that she notices due to the black T-shirts, the skateboarding skills from the item they use to leave school. She learns that they are from New York and that they are not Carol's partner.

It is Natasha who is investigating, of course. And Wanda was in the middle of reading an article when her best friend addresses the whole thing.

"You won't believe it, Maximoff! I'm so stupid!"

Wanda frowns. "What? What are you-"

"Y/N is not Carol's girlfriend! They are sisters!" She declares, holding out her cell phone at the brunette's eye level. "She just posted this."

It is open on Instagram, a photo of Carol with the new student riding her skateboard in the city park. In the caption 'I missed you, little sister! Glad you're here now!" Wanda feels a wave of relief fill her body and doesn't know why.

Natasha exclaims excitedly, "You know what that means, right?"

"Žal ne (No, sorry)." Wanda mutters uncertainly, but Nat chuckles.

"Silly girl, it means I'm back in the game!" Declares the redhead. "I'll like her last few stories and put her back in the best friends. She'll get the message."

"Or you could just talk to her..."

Nat laughs through her nose. "You're funny, Wanda." Says the girl, turning her attention back to her cell phone.

Wanda doesn't want to think too much about the whole matter. She doesn't really know you, and it seems ridiculous that you don't leave her thoughts. She is sure that it is Nat's fault and her momentary obsession with Carol.

When the Independence holiday arrives, and she finds herself in a crowded car heading for Tony Stark's cabin, her anxiety returns. She remembers that there, it would be Vision, and that everyone expected her to leave the cabin with a new boyfriend. Would it be too late to give up the trip?

"I'll take the window bed!" Clint and Pietro got into a pushing fight over the largest room as soon as they arrived. Wanda just wanted to sit down, because Tony's group was finishing checking out the entrance to the cabin's compound - Rich people's stuff - and they were all stealing glances at her.

By the time Carol's car arrived, Wanda was dressed more comfortably and smelled of soap. She had taken advantage of the fight for rooms to use the shower before everyone else, and although she only got one bunk, she was satisfied with the impossibility of sleeping with someone else next to her. It read Vision.

"I swear to god this girl is trying to kill me." Natasha gasps low from the balcony next to Wanda, watching Carol get out of the car in short shorts and a button-down shirt practically all open, showing off a sports top underneath. Wanda laughs at her friend's reaction, but when you get down from the back of the truck, she shallows dry.

You are busy pulling a motorcycle out of the back, and Wanda's brain clicks.

She recognizes the vehicle, and the helmet, and her heart speed up so much that it's the only thing she hears in her ears for a moment.

"Her sister's hot too, huh?" Natasha comments half-impressed, and Wanda immediately looks away. 

"I don't know, I don't like girls." She retorts, surprising Nat with her aggressiveness. The redhead gives a confused laugh.

"Okay? But you can tell a girl is pretty without being attracted to her." The redhead says, but Wanda clears her throat and hugs her own body.

"Sure, whatever." She murmurs. "I'm gonna take a nap, I'm tired from the trip." She says, practically running inside.

She doesn't notice your gaze searching for her.

–//–

Petek, 20:40 (Friday, 8:40am)

Wanda awoke in a very quiet cabin. 

She wasn't surprised that everyone went to bed early, after all the trip had been equally tiring for everyone, yet it bothered her a little to be the first to wake up.

She left her bunk as quietly as she could, watching her brother in the bottom bed snore lightly as he slept on his stomach.

After going to the bathroom, she was disappointed to find a completely empty kitchen and thought about waking Nat or Tony for a company to the market when she heard footsteps in the living room.

You opened the door making some noise, because the key got stuck in the doorknob.

"Shit." You muttered to yourself, struggling a bit to unhook the item. Wanda stepped into the kitchen doorway, hands in front of her body, and you jumped slightly when she wished you good morning half uncertainly. But your surprise gave way to a smile the next second. "Zdravo! (Hello) Sorry about the noise!"

Wanda shook her head, smiling as well. "Don't worry, you're Y/N, right? Carol's sister."

You raise an eyebrow at her, a charming smile playing on your lips. Wanda hates it. Hates how gorgeous you look right now, the twist in her stomach. She swallows dryly, and you lean on the door.

"She mentioned me, huh?" you ask. "Or maybe you asked."

Wanda's cheeks flush, and she grimaces to disguise it. "She mentioned it." She assures you with a half-trembling voice, which seems to amuse you. "Anyway, do you know where I can find food in this place? I'm starving."

You chuckle lightly, tossing the door key on the small table next to you and reaching out to grab your wallet from there and another set of keys from the support, which has a keychain that Wanda recognizes as belonging to Carol.

"Of course, princess, we'll find food for you." You say, and Wanda knows she is blushing at the nickname, but follows you anyway, just like the first night. And outside, walking side by side toward Carol's truck, you extend your hand to her. "I'm Y/N Danvers, by the way. We haven't officially introduced ourselves."

Wanda shakes your hand. "I'm-"

"Wanda Maximoff." You complete with a small smile, still holding her hand. "And I asked about it."

Wanda pulls her hand away before you realize that she is shaking.

You get in the car first, whistling lightly as you start the truck. Wanda tries to play it cool, keeping her arms crossed the whole way to the market. It's not far, but it seems like every minute drags.

"Did you get home safely after that day?" Your sudden question surprises her a little. Wanda frowns until she remembers what you are talking about.

"Hmm, yeah." She answers. "Someone else gave me a ride home." She says with a small smile.

You don't take your eyes off the road. "You lied to me, Maximoff." You comment then, to which Wanda looks at you with confusion. A small smile plays on her lips. "You are not part of the Avengers. You snuck into an event of ours, I could have ended up in trouble..."

"Hey, you're the one who practically kidnapped me from Tony's party!" Wanda defends herself. "And you asked if I was his friend, which I am, not if I was part of his group of protesters!"

You laugh, shaking your head. "Relax, I'm just messing with you." You comment, but Wanda can only give a nervous laugh because you give her thigh a gentle squeeze and she forgets how to breathe. The touch fades away at the same speed as it happened, your hands returning to the steering wheel, but Wanda's skin is still prickling. "I asked Carol about the mystery girl and she told me you weren't part of the group, but you were trustworthy and welcome in everything. So relax."

Wanda smiles half proudly, glad that Carol trusts her so much even though they are not so close. You cross a green light, and at the next turn, you find the supermarket parking lot.

Whatever this conversation means, it completely improves the atmosphere between you, making the interaction very light and fun. Wanda is unfamiliar at first - Pietro would recognize that Wanda had a shy and alert nature even better than she did. He would constantly tease her about being too self-conscious, and in need of relaxing, and would surely be surprised to see her laugh as easily as she is doing now. 

You picked up a shopping cart and seemed to have made it your morning mission to make her laugh as you sort through the groceries. You did little dances with the objects, threw bad jokes and flirtations at her, and even told loose facts as if you were close friends.

Wanda now knew that you lived in a shared apartment with Carol and two other girls and that you could speak Sokovian fluently. You were not a vegetarian even though you tried about three times, and you couldn't have pets even though you really wanted a cat because your roommates were allergic. And you could sing Lorde.

"She's so dramatic, I love it." You declare as the music starts on the speakers in the marketplace. You and Wanda are in the pasta aisle, and she giggles softly. "She's like a Taylor Swift of lesbians, but more alternative."

Wanda chuckles, soft anxiety rising in her stomach. She follows you down the hallway. "But there's a theory that Taylor Swift likes girls too, you know?"

You chuckle, shrugging. "Yeah, I've heard of it. But I think I prefer the ones who actually came out.  Nothing against Taylor, of course, she's a great artist. I just won't refer to her as a queer icon when she's never really taken her place in the community."

Wanda bites her tongue, the question about your sexuality on the tip. Would it be weird to question whether you liked girls in the middle of pasta hall? And why would that make a difference to her?

Your cell phone vibrates, and as soon as you read the notification, you huff softly. Wanda is curious to know what it is, but you put the device away and hurry up the pace. "Come on, Maximoff, our friends are hungry too."

You are distant on the way back, and Wanda twists the fabric of her shorts in curiosity as to why. 

Luckily, you accompany her to the kitchen with the groceries. 

The guys in the cabin are waking up a bit, but the space is small enough that no one will bother you two with breakfast, even if the living room fills up with teenagers.

"Can you make the coffee while I prepare sandwiches for us?" You ask so gently that Wanda doesn't even hear the question properly, and only nods in agreement. She moves around, trying not to touch you - which is practically impossible in that small space - but you don't seem to notice much, busy with bread and cheese. "You're not a vegetarian, are you Maximoff? I was going to put some ham on this."

"I'm not, you can follow your recipe." Wanda retorts with a small smile, a curious look at the double sandwiches you are preparing. She bites her lip when you catch her looking and offers her a wink before returning to the task.

Carol appears in the kitchen doorway next.

"Good morning, cuties. Got any coffee?" She asks. Wanda denies it with her head.

"It's not ready yet."

Carol yawns, moving closer to look at the market bags you have brought. She chuckles then. "Jesus, Y/N, did you buy anything healthy?" You shrug, indifferent to the question. Carol sighs. "You know you have half the soccer team here, right?"

"If they're bothered they buy their own food." You retort impolitely. Carol rolls her eyes.

"Don't be rude; you know you should eat better too-"

"Sure, Mom." You cut her off, turning your back on her to hand Wanda her sandwich. "Here you go, princess."

The brunette smiles half-heartedly at the nickname in Carol's presence, but the blonde only sighs in defeat at the argument and doesn't even seem to notice. She leaves the kitchen, and you stare at Wanda expectantly. She smiles shyly before taking a bite of the sandwich and is surprised at how good it tastes.

"Wow, what did you put in here?"

You chuckle. "Chef's secret." You joke, wrinkling your nose in an adorable way as you pick up your sandwich. You eat together for a moment until the kettle beeps and Wanda leaves the rest of the sandwich on the countertop to finish the coffee.

"Did you like it?" you ask as she pours the drink. Wanda smiles.

"Yeah, quite a bit." She assures you. "Too bad it's a chef's secret, I'd love to learn how to make it."

You chuckle, finishing chewing your piece before clarifying:

"Well, it's a family recipe. That's why it's a secret. You'd have to be part Danvers to earn the legal right to know the ingredients." You joke, getting a soft chuckle from Wanda. You stare at her, almost fascinated. "What about you? Don't you have any family traditions?"

Wanda is thoughtful for a moment, an expression on her face that you would describe as adorable to say the least. And then she gives a small laugh.

"I think so." She says, pouring a mug. "Mom always prepares Šišky on birthdays. I think it looks like American doughnuts."

"Yummy." You murmur causing me to smile in agreement. "And when is your birthday?"

Wanda is surprised but smiles, "February 10th." She answers and watches you pull your cell phone out of your pocket at the same minute.

"Well, let me save the date then." You comment, putting her birth date into the calendar app with the greatest tranquility in the world. Wanda thinks she is blushing.

"What about your...?"

But her question goes unanswered because a tall boy appears in the kitchen doorway. It's Peter Parker, another of Tony's classmates who is on the soccer team. He stretches out gently and you put your cell phone away, placing your snack away on the counter to greet him.

"Good morning, sleepyhead." You say, and it is so affectionate that Wanda swallows dry. He chuckles sleepily, moving closer. Wanda's heart stops when he kisses you on the mouth. "Did you sleep well?"

He mumbles in agreement, shrugging before looking at Wanda and wishing her good morning. 

"What's for breakfast?" He asks.

"Food." You retort amusedly, making him chuckle and roll his eyes.

"Okay, smarty pants." He grumbles, yawning a little. "Clearly you didn't buy anything healthy, you know Steve's gonna give you a hard time for that, right?"

You shrug, letting him hug your waist. "I'm terrified." You comment wryly, making Peter laugh.

Wanda feels sick. He kisses your cheek again, and she clears her throat. She grabs the coffee mug, and barely manages to force a smile before practically running out of the kitchen.

The rest of the folks are gradually waking up, and when Wanda is on the porch drinking coffee, Vision comes over to greet her.

"You're Wanda, right? Tony told me about you." 

He is gentle, and he is good-looking. And Wanda remembers Peter Parker kissing you in the kitchen, so she smiles and asks Vision to sit with her. It's exactly as it should be, she convinces herself.

–//–

Ponedeljek, 14:30 (Monday, 2.40 am)

Whatever Wanda expected from this holiday, she was not prepared for anything that actually happened. 

On Saturday, everyone played paintball between the cabins. Vision was her partner. He was a good player, but you hit him on the top of his helmet two minutes into the game.

You looked Wanda in the eye but didn't shoot her, disappearing between the cabins the next minute. She kept thinking about this interaction all day.

On Sunday, the gang went outside to play soccer and it was a real mess. Wanda was discreetly watching you play, annoyed at the line her thoughts took with the image of you sweating and panting, but she had no choice but to stay outside because Carol and Natasha were making out in her bedroom. She wasn't sure when they happened again, but she wasn't surprised that she missed it, having been too busy the whole holiday trying not to pay attention to you.

When it was finally time to leave, and everyone was finishing cleaning the cabin in pairs, Wanda caught you and Peter fighting outside when she went to put some bottles out for recycling.

"I don't need a babysitter, Parker!" You angrily declared, gesturing a little. 

"I'm just taking care of you-"

"I'm not a fucking child!" 

Peter rolls his eyes. "No, but you act like one." He accuses annoyed, and you chuckle humorlessly, crossing your arms. He sighs in defeat, raising a hand to your arm but you pull away from the touch. "Okay, whatever. Go chill out, then we'll talk."

He walks off angrily into the cabin through the kitchen entrance, and Wanda makes a noise so as not to startle you.

You run a hand across your face, forcing a smile before approaching her, "Let me help you with this." You say, taking the case of beers from her hand without waiting for a response. Wanda swallows dryly, but decides to follow your cue, and picks up another box further away before following you to the recyclable trash cans.

You place one box next to the other on top of Carol's open truck, in the intention of separating the bottles and cans. Wanda takes a risk:

"Is everything okay between you and Peter?"

You chuckle weakly, grabbing two bottles from the pile.

"Sure, just a silly argument." You mutter moving away to put the bottles in the correct garbage can. "He's sweet, but he's still a man."

Wanda frowns. "What do you mean?"

You short, shrugging; "You've never had a boyfriend?" You ask, and Wanda denies it with her head. You sigh, searching for the right words. "Well, boys can be... obnoxious." You comment with a short laugh. "It's just, they're different. How they treat us, how they act with us and with other people. Peter is really sweet when he's with me, but when he's around his friends he's a jerk and kind of controlling. And by god, don't even get me started when it's around my father... Fucking treating me like I'm something he owns just to please the old man."

Wanda separates a few bottles, thoughtful towards your statements. "I'm sorry."

You hum, shrugging. "Okay, it's not really our fault that society is patriarchal and sexist. It's going to take Peter some time to break the norms and act decently, but I'm under no obligation whatsoever to deal with it."

Wanda swallows dryly. "D-did you broke up with him?"

You look at her with surprise. "No? I meant that I don't have to take pity on him. If he acts like an idiot, we'll fight. And if he doesn't change, then we'll break up."

The brunette tries to hide her disappointment with a hum of understanding. You look at her curiously.

"You and Vision seem to be getting along well."

She forces a chuckle, nodding. She grabs more bottles and runs away from your gaze as she replies, "I guess so."

"Is he your boyfriend now or what?"

Wanda laughs nervously, shaking her head. "No, not really."

"He seems interested in changing that." You insist, studying her reactions. Wanda swallows dryly, putting away other bottles.

"I think so." She murmurs. You hum almost angry all of a sudden - Wanda jumps when you mash a can with a hard punch - and she swallows dryly before raising her gaze to you again. "Do you think...I should accept? If he asks."

You stare at her with an indecipherable expression, biting the inside of your cheek. Wanda almost takes back the question, but you sigh and look away.

"I don't know, you're the one who has to know." You retort with forced casualness. "If you like him, say yes. You were together the whole holiday, I don't see what the problem is."

Wanda stares at the bottles in her hands, her heart racing in her chest.

"Maybe... I was just scared." She murmurs, surprising you. You stare at her expectantly, but Wanda doesn't meet your gaze, her fingers on the bottles. "Maybe I think Vision is likely my only option."

You grimace softly. "What are you talking about?"

Wanda laughs sadly, looking at you. "Like... I don't think there's anyone else to love me. Maybe Vision is my only option, and I just... I'm tired of being alone."

The heartfelt confession takes her by surprise as well. But at this point, Wanda shouldn't be impressed that your presence in her life has come to turn everything upside down at once.

And when you simply step forward, and bring a hand to her face, pulling a lock of hair out of front of her eyes, Wanda thinks you are doing it on purpose.

"Don't you think it's selfish to stick by someone just for convenience, Wanda? Vis has feelings too." The seriousness of your words doesn't do justice to the gentle touch on her face, and Wanda feels a mix of conflicting emotions in her chest.

"Maybe I'm just a bad person." She declares with a sad laugh, but you don't smile.

"I don't think so." You whisper, your thumb caressing her cheek. "I think you are very sweet. And maybe you just need to understand that lots of people love you. And you won't be alone if you say no to a boy you don't like."

Wanda lets out a shuddering breath. "Who says I don't like him?" She teases, her knees going weak as you firm your grip on her cheek and lean in all at once. 

Your breath hits her lips, and Wanda closes her eyes, waiting for the impact that doesn't come. You gasp softly, your breath heavy against her cheek.

Your hand leaves her cheek and goes down to a bottle beside you.

You step back a half second before Carol appears in the area where you are standing. Wanda didn't even hear her coming, in fact, she doesn't think she heard much beyond her own heart beating in her ears.

"Aren't you guys done with that yet? Come on people, we have to get on the road soon." Carol repressed, but you forced a laugh at her, muttering something about her being a pain in the ass. 

If you noticed how Wanda's hands were shaking as she held the next bottles, you didn't say.

[aiteanngaelach]

Heavy garda presence and 11 arrests as hundreds of anti-immigration protesters march through Dublin (msn.com)

?????

"A little boy of around six-years-old led a chant at one point, standing with his father, on an elevation opposite Custom House.

“Ireland for the Irish,” at which his father beamed and the crowd responded back with the same chant.

While a little girl of around nine asked her dad why they were at the protest on O’Connell Street and he told her, “This is because of all the undocumented men.”

A black couple observed the protest outside the Custom House, as members of the Freedom Party spoke over a tannoy, that much of the back of the crowd couldn’t make out.

The couple looked uncomfortable as they realised what the protest was about.

A man handed out copies of The Irish Patriot, a free newspaper, with a cover story reading “Censors And The Tans,” and “Imposing the New Plantation”.

The front cover story featured a photograph of Leo Varadkar and stated "Increasing police heavy handed was against peaceful protesters is giving a vicious twist to Ireland’s asylum crisis”.

Another front page story was “Schools Brainwashing” and “Activism For Ireland. Exposing the asylum scam”.

Within the centre pages was a free “Ireland is Full” poster and on page 3, was the headline “The truth about gay conversion therapy”.

A heavy garda presence monitored the right wing protest as it snaked its way round the north city and a garda helicopter hovered overhead.

Even some protesters were surprised by how many had turned out from communities, including Coolock and Finglas.

There was visible anger displayed during the protest, particularly at Government housing policies, and chants such as “Ireland for the Irish”, and “House the Irish, not the world”, were sung, as well as nationalist Irish songs.

The Irish Independent estimates around 500 to 700 people attended the anti-immigration protest and there were many families, women and children, as well as groups of men."

^^^^ Quote from the article

[daydream-cement]

Heavenly Aether Ch. 3

Miranda Hilmarson x Reader

Miranda is able to learn more about The Church of Mithras and comes to see the true depth of police corruption.

Thank you to @bri-sonat for being my beta buddy <3

TW: cults, suicide, death, corruption, brief descriptions of violence

February 6th, 2023

“Take a seat, please...” You pass the armchair placed before your desk, gesturing for the blonde to take a seat. 

Miranda quickly dropped into the chair, shifting to sit on the edge of the cushion. Her posture was pulled taut, and you could feel the energy radiating off of her. Little did you know that the constable was overflowing with pride, beyond excited for the potential of being a step closer to breaking the case. 

“Please tell me everything you know. Start wherever you would like.” Miranda rested her hands on her knees, earnestly leaning forward, trying to display her gratitude for you taking the time to talk with her. Rather than pulling out her notebook, Miranda was opting to take mental notes, wishing to be present in the moment with the information you had to offer. 

You settle down into your desk chair once more, releasing a small sigh, trying to shake the annoyance of still being in the office this late into the evening. Pausing for a moment, you are unsure of where to start, no one had ever wanted to hear the full story before. 

“Well... I’ve traced the roots of the church back to January of ‘95. At first, it just seemed to be an elite social group of sorts. One percenter’s, more specifically, the one percenter’s children. For the most part, the organization was quiet until that first mass death.” With the press of a button, you turned on your computer once again. As you wait for the computer to boot up, you lean back in your desk chair, mulling over even the most minute of details. “They were operating out of a commercial outlet in Tamarama. It’s hard to find all the documentation, but from what I could find, they would have been needing to pull in at least $50k a month to keep the lights on.”

Miranda’s mind was reeling from the very baseline information you offered her. As the future detective Miranda was, her mind was already attempting to connect the dots, “Who is leading it all? Must be someone elite from Tamarama, don’t you think?” 

“I know plenty about the church, but I don’t know who is leading it all. Whoever it is, they stay shrouded in the darkness. Even the few followers I’ve spoken to say they have never seen his face. My guess is the leader is independently wealthy, has a powerful parent, or is leaching from someone else... Could be a mix...” You gave a shrug, wishing you had more information on the hierarchy of it all. 

“Hmm...” The constable paused, visibly vexed by the lack of information you provided her with. Rather than dwelling on it, however, she chose to move onward, “What does the church worship? Is it connected to one of the larger global religions?” 

“It’s not my best journalism, but they keep a tight lid on their religious texts and documents. If I trace back the names and dates of the killings, it all leads back to the Cult of Mithras. It was a Roman mystery religion centered on the god Mithras with connections to astrology.” Your voice became hushed, nervous to admit the following pieces of evidence as you hadn’t revealed them to anyone prior, “From the members I interviewed, there seems to be an absurd amount of symbolism and Gods, but they use those components to justify harming their followers.”

“And what are those symbols and icons?” Miranda probed deeper, her hands shifting away from her knees so her elbows could rest on the edge of your desk. The constable was no doubtably enthralled by the case at hand, never had she worked on a case that was so undoubtedly messy. 

The question made you hold your breath, knowing the answer was longer and more arduous than Miranda anticipated. Turning your attention to your computer monitor, you swiftly log into the system, pull the flash drive from around your neck, and plug in the USB. If you were going to thoroughly answer her questions, you would need some of your own notes. 

With a few clicks, you found your notes, giving the constable a sympathetic glance before starting to go through the thorough research you had completed on each of the church’s iconography. From time to time, you would glance up at Miranda as you read off the document, and each time you did, she was completely engaged, eyes trained on your face. 

It took nearly a half hour to work through the belief system of the cult, all of which you found to be trivial information. In your personal opinion, the church seemed to adopt a surface-level complexity that was only motivated by greed at the end of the day. All of the rituals had a price to attend and a price to take part in, but if you opted out, there were consequences for not being as dedicated as your peers. 

You saved the most important God for last, knowing it was responsible for the more unethical and criminal portions of the case, “Moreover, they recognize an icon named Cautes which appears to be in connection with the Roman god Caelus and the Greek god Uranus. This is huge. Each of the dates of the mass deaths matches up with Uranus entering different zodiacs.”

Miranda’s brow furrowed, a wave of righteous anger overtaking her, “So we know when each of these is happening? How long have you known about the dates of the mass deaths?”

You made eye contact with the constable, the weariness and disappointment from the years of witnessing constant police corruption evident in your eyes, “I’ve known since the 90s. Nothing has been done so far.”

“No. No. That can’t be. This... this could have all been prevented?” From Miranda’s facial expressions, you felt as though she was going through the seven stages of grief. She was well aware of the systematic flaws built into the career she had chosen, but some cases of corruption were hard for the blonde to comprehend.

“Yeah.”

Miranda sat in silence for a long moment. She was searching her index of superintendents and leaders within the department that could be responsible for such an oversight. The name at the top of her list was her direct supervisor: Adrian Butler. 

You interrupted her thoughts with a question of your own, “How do you expect to solve this case when there is so much obvious police corruption?”

“I- I don’t know…”

The next few hours fly by and before you know it, the lights in the main office space turned on: the night janitors were in. It must be about 11 pm. 

Miranda had covered your office wall in sticky notes and taped notecards as it was her way of visualizing the case at hand. Now she sat before her creation, having turned her chair away from your desk towards the webbing expanse of clues. She was entirely slouched down into the chair, her butt was nearly off the seat and her arms were folded over her chest. Her face was scrunched up in an intense level of focus, and if you weren’t mistaken, she looked kinda… cute.

“We have a bit of a hierarchy created. Like you said, we have the head ‘guy’ or whatever, then we have these two public relations people, Marco and Penny Penfield, and the next level is temporary, you get that job and you die.” Miranda raised an arm, finger pointing out the different levels within the church, ending with the rotating group of five individuals that were akin to middle managers.

Miranda had pinned a list of names beneath the final level of the hierarchy. This list contained all of the people who have died, and one additional name: one of the current low-level functionaries that was fated to die in 30 days. 

Before the last grouping of church members had died, you had been able to interview one of them: Andrew Slosser. It was four days before November 6, 2018, and you had caught Andrew as he was walking to his car from the church. In his efforts to blow you off, he gave a blustering and angry spiel, inadvertently revealing the last name of the person who would be taking his place: Alexandra Terion. 

“We need to talk to her. We get her to talk to us about what’s happening and maybe we can figure out how to contact those two.” Miranda's hand was gesturing about to the different people, outlining a plan for herself. You glanced down at the constable’s face and saw how heavy her lids were; this was far later than she had stayed up in a long time. 

“Perhaps we should call it a night, constable?”

“Do you have time to talk more about this tomorrow? I’d like for my partner to hear some of this directly from you.” She sleepily turned her head, glancing up at you with the softest eyes. 

Your breath caught for a moment before you turned away, unsure of why the policewoman had made you feel warm and tingly inside. Turning your attention to the calendar on your desk, you had a couple of meetings in the morning and another in the early afternoon, “The earliest I can do is 3 pm.”

Without hesitation, Miranda nodded, confirming the meeting, “We will be there.”

You gathered your belongings once more and locked up your office, repeating the same steps as you had earlier that afternoon. Both you and Miranda made your way down to the first floor and out the front doors in relative silence. 

Miranda veered to the left when you continued straight, but she stopped in her tracks when she realized your cars were in opposite directions. She jogged back to your side, falling into stride with you, “Let me walk you to your car.”

“No, you really don’t ha-” You began to argue, but Miranda only cut you off.

“Please. I’d like to walk you to your car. I want to see you get home safe.” Miranda was adamant, showing no signs of wavering from your side as you led her toward the parking garage. 

You kept your face forward, hoping the constable couldn’t see your growing smile as you passed under the city street lights, “I- Okay...”

----

“Drop it!” Adrian ordered, his scowl growing deeper and angrier as Constable Hilmarson continued her aggressive offense of how they should put more resources into following the case of The Church of Mithras. 

Miranda was quick and uninhibited with her retort, the blonde’s face growing redder as she continued arguing, “Stop avoiding the question! Why are you preventing us from pursuing this?”

“I said drop it, Hilmarson!” Adrian stood from his desk, leaning in towards Miranda as an unconscious intimidation tactic. 

Miranda turned away from Adrian, pacing slightly as she raked a hand through her hair out of pure frustration. The constable’s voice was growing in volume, her rage was becoming more unbridled, “Adrian! You know this is-”

Detective Butler was only partially lying. He knew the case wasn’t to be pursued, but he had never been given a real reason for shelving the case (other than his career being at stake), “I don’t know anything, Miranda. Now drop it before I put you on desk duty for the next month.”

Miranda went silent, but her glare was louder than words could ever be. 

“Promise me you will drop this, Hilmarson.” Adrian was pleading with his ex, knowing trouble would only come if she were to pursue this. 

The constable hesitated for a moment. She hated lying to anyone, but this was an instance where her sense of righteous justice was far greater than her duty to her boss, “Yes. I’ll drop it.”

Adrian shook his head with a sigh, gesturing to his office door for Miranda to leave. The constable could be the most stubborn person in the world, not often dropping things when she was ordered to. Against his better judgment, Adrian trusted the blonde as she strode from his office.

Miranda moved past her desk and headed towards her usual spot out in the parking garage so she could smoke a cigarette and mull over the fact Adrian was obviously hiding something. 

Once Miranda was in the parking garage, she assumed her normal position, allowing her back to hit the wall before she slid down to sit on the concrete floor. She paused for a brief moment, listening to see if anyone had followed her or was lingering in the garage. When a soundless garage reverberated back to Miranda, she pulled out her phone and dialed your number.

When your phone buzzed and you glanced down to see Miranda’s contact (she had offered you her number as she stood outside your car), you moved a little too quickly to answer the call, pushing the phone up to your ear when you accepted it, “Hello? Miranda?”

“Care to grab lunch?”

[ukrfeminism]

3 minute read

Imagine it. You’re at the end of your tether. Perhaps it’s an undiagnosed or untreated mental health problem, or maybe a financial or family disaster has pushed you to the edge. You do the unthinkable and try to end your life. The police are called, you survive. But because we do not have enough mental health beds in this country, you are sent to prison as a “place of safety” or “for your own protection”. 

This is completely legal and happened to six women in three months from May to July 2022. While most of us enjoyed the warmest summer in over 10 years, they were sent to HMP Styal during one of the lowest periods in their lives. This was in addition to seven other women who were sent there solely on mental health grounds.

HMP Bronzefield, another women’s prison, was sent 75 women by the courts between 2021 and 2022, because there were not enough mental health beds in the community. That was more than double the number of women that they received the year before.

The cases above were highlighted by the Independent Monitoring Board’s (IMB) latest report on mental health concerns in women’s prisons, which came out earlier this month. But this awful phenomenon is not a new one. About a year ago, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons reported concerns to the all party-parliamentary group (APPG) on women in the penal system.

At the time, politicians called for a change to laws that give courts the power to remand people in prison “for their own protection” under the 1976 Bail Act (meaning you can be sent to prison if you are considered a danger to yourself, which could include a suicide attempt). 

And now, the the reformed Mental Health Act is set to end the use of prison as a “place of safety” too, which sometimes happens under the 1983 Mental Health Act (this law permits the authorities to put people with severe mental health needs in prison until there is space for them to be admitted to hospital). 

That law change cannot come soon enough. There’s no doubt it will make all the difference for women who are not legally “guilty” of any crimes but find themselves in prison because they are mentally unwell. 

From oversubscribed healthcare and specialist units at HMP Eastwood Park and HMP Bronzefield, to mentally unwell women who are segregated because the necessary support is not available, and prison staff who are struggling because they are not trained mental health professionals, the IMB report makes it clear that prisons are no place for vulnerable women who need mental health support. 

However, the real question is where women with mental health needs will go if they don’t end up in our prisons. Mental health services outside prisons are also oversubscribed. Last year, an 18-year-old woman going through a mental health crisis had to wait eight-and-a-half days in A&E before she got a bed in a psychiatric hospital. Right now, 23 per cent of adults with a mental illness must wait more than three months to start treatment.

To truly break the link between mental health needs and women in prison, we must expand our mental health services on a grand scale. 

More than 80 per cent of women in prison told a Justice Inspectorate Survey they had some form of mental health problem (compared with 59 per cent of men). That means people in prison without mental health problems are the minority.

Pavan Dhaliwal, the chief executive of Revolving Doors, a charity that aims to reduce reoffending said: “All evidence points to a clear solution: the end to short prison sentences and instead well-funded, trauma-informed, and personalised support in the community that addresses the root causes of crime.

“Yet, over four years after the Female Offender Strategy’s promise of fewer women entering the criminal justice system and better management of their needs in the community, the Government continues to fall short.” 

Women in the prison estate are some of the most vulnerable and overlooked women in our society. I have heard first hand from a woman who had such a difficult and unstable life that prison was the first place she had any semblance of security. 

I once interviewed a woman in prison with schizophrenia. When I asked her for examples of kindness she’d received from prison staff, worryingly, her best example was when a nurse had let her miss taking her medicine five times so she could get to her prison job on time.

A woman who served time in prison for murder wrote for iabout witnessing self-harm on a massive scale, and group therapy sessions that left her suicidal. She tried to take her own life during her sentence in 2016.

When asked about her experience of prison and mental health, Natalie* said: “When I was sent to prison, I spent 24 hours in a cell and found myself experiencing an anxiety attack. I rang the alarm bell six times, asking to speak to a healthcare professional, but no one came. It wasn’t until the next morning that a prison officer came to find me in my room. I was on the floor and I hadn’t gotten any sleep because of how distressed I was. Things didn’t get any better during the rest of my sentence. In fact, my mental health just spiralled, and I was in an even worse place than when I came in. 

“When you’re having mental health issues before being charged, prison does nothing to help – it just turns your life upside down.” 

This is the truth. Whether they are innocent or guilty, women in prison with mental health needs desperately need so much better than what is currently on offer. The question is whether our Government will do anything about it. 

Natalie* is an alias 

[connoisseursdecomfort]

Now, I don’t really understand why Yuri is YURI because I have a (younger) brother and Yuri is so very weird to me. But to be honest, I truly think what would be the most heartbreaking is the confrontation between Yor and Yuri when they reveal their identities.

As a lot of people have pointed out, Garden and WISE are not against each other as they seem to share similar ideologies towards peace between two nations. At least, Garden is definitely not a puppet of the Ostalian government. One would even assume that Garden, to some extent, is against Ostalian policies, given that the establishment of the secret police is often one of the characteristics of authoritarian regimes. Obviously they don’t mind torturing and killing people openly, why do they need extra hands to do their dirty work?

Now, while there is a possibility that Garden would work for the Ostalian government, it is more likely to work with WISE, or an organisation or even an individual (that no longer works for a certain nation/power/country) to achieve its political goals. Garden remains to be independent of the government for a reason, and it seems redundant for the Ostalian government to accept a truce with Garden if they already have their secret police to do the dirty work. Given how young Yor started her training and thus how deeply she would be influenced by the ideologies of the Garden, Yor certainly doesn’t seem to have a good impression on what the secret police is doing - the secret police terrorises the people instead of providing a sense of security. And most importantly, from the start we are already shown how Yor is threatened by the secret police - even if she’s not an assassin, she is not “normal” simply because she’s a 27-year-old single woman who fails at “most of the womanly duties”. On the other hand, the manga seems to hint that Yor always believes that Loid, or Twilight, could understand her. And Twilight did sympathise with her quite a lot.

The clash of ideologies could be the most damaging. To a certain extent, because of Twilight or Loid, or her newly found family, Yor is slowly gaining independence. She is starting to have a life, really. To have her own social circles. To rethink why she is continuing to do what she is doing. And when the time comes, when she finally makes her own decisions and choose sides, it will be painful to see Yor confronting Yuri if Yor and Yuri are put in an opposing position, with Yuri knowing Twilight’s true identity, and believing Yor choosing “Twilight’s stance” over ‘his’. Ironically, both Yor and Yuri chose to do what they are doing now because they want to protect each other. Unfortunately they went on different paths.

And that is why I desperately need Yuri the grow the fuck up and to be a more understanding brother. Chapter 68 shows how Yor is slowly moving away from the past, while Yuri seems to be stuck. Yuri is a complicated figure. He hopes that Yor has a “normal” life (mainly stressed in the beginning of Loid’s and Yor’s marriage) and conforms to the social expectations. But on the other hand, Yuri is still the child who needs Yor’s undivided attention, and unintentionally traps her in his own childish needs. That is weirdly very characteristic of him being a secret police - to have absolute control over a monitored normality. And he is losing control.

[socially-awkward-skeleton]

Chapter 1

Summary: After the attack on Piccadilly Circus, Sgt. Rory Sinclair hopes to get back in the fight, seeking justice for what happened in London at the hands of Al-Qatala. An OC POV on the events of the first COD: MW reboot game

Warnings: Minors DNI - canon typical violence, referenced terrorism, swearing, military inaccuracies

Pairing: Captain John Price x Fem!OC (3rd person POV) *they are in a secret relationship as she is an enlisted soldier, not an officer*

Word count: 1.4 k

A/N: A continuation of Rory's story, highly suggest reading "All Along the Watchtower" first to understand her character. Follows the canon events of the game, but told from Rory's POV as she gets dragged into things. The first few chapters follow her emotional turmoil after the attack on Piccadilly Circus.

[AO3]

October 25, 2019 - SRR HQ, Stirling Lines, Credenhill, Herefordshire UK

Chaos.

Sheer and unbridled.

Total calamity. 

Phones rang non-stop like sirens and alarm bells wailing, information passed along like a piss poor game of tag. Nothing solid. Fragments. Bits and pieces scrounged together as more radio calls came in from ground zero. 

Piccadilly Circus. London. 

Home . 

Bodies rushed around the pool of cubicles, raised voices barking. They had run drills regarding this sort of circumstance, but it could never truly prepare them for the real thing – a terrorist attack on home ground. They were meant to be safe, complacency having set in, all to keep the image of protected borders at the forefront of everyone’s minds. These types of things didn’t happen here, certainly not in England, attacks like this happened on foreign soil and the war machine could keep running, chugging forward to flatten its enemies and make someone, anyone pay for what happened. But not now, not today. All sense of control had been utterly thrown out the window. 

Rory’s breath froze, held in her chest and burning her lungs, that same imprisoned breath she would take before firing her weapon, held hostage but with no sign of the exhale coming any time soon. In a situation like this she couldn’t step away from her desk and catch it, getting fresh air and a cigarette. Time was of the essence. She had to grit her teeth and carry on, pushing her way through it, forcing the emotions that wanted to rise to the surface into the background, even as her brain tried to drift into a total fog. She had to separate her own personal anxieties from the work at hand, collecting and navigating the intel, sorting out what was conjecture and what was fact – the only thing that held absolute was that this was the work of Al-Qatala. 

Filtering the radio chatter from the police on site, reports of men screaming about ‘The Wolf’ made her stomach twist. Stabbed by a dozen stinging blades, the flaming hot heat of a bullet cutting through the body and the blood that would bloom forth from the seeping wound. Searing . She saw this coming, knew an act of aggression like this was a certainty. A shot fired to start a war for so-called independence , revenge for a nation that had been ravaged by “civil war” for twenty years, an attack on one of the foreign powers that had stepped foot into Urzikstan years ago as an ally. She had put in the work to prevent it from happening. Two years . Two years of her life focused on AQ and it had mattered for naught. 

CCTV footage played on the monitors in front of her, drones sent in to track enemy movements – but it was too late. It was all too late . Sitting there from the safety of her desk, Rory was forced to watch images of terrified people freeze or drop to the ground, while others ran, all of them forced to take part in the evolutionary reaction to fear at the first sight of a suicide bomber stepping out of a van, strapped into his vest. It should have been a normal Friday night, people traveling home from work, the bustling streets full of pedestrians, the lights and sounds of the West End. Alive . Instead, it was a war zone, blood and bodies. Her heart squeezed, crawling up into her throat in a lump as she reviewed the feed of the first moments of the attack, working with facial recognition software. Witnessing the faces of men, women and children caught in their final moments – the looks of desperation, fear, regret – lives both long and short flashing before their eyes. Civilians trapped in the middle of it all – the casualties in such a populated area would be immense.

Casualties . Such a dehumanizing word. A term she had come to both loathe and make a constant in her lexicon. Numbers and names added to a list, made into statistics rather than face the real cost of war: the families left behind, the suffering they would face in the aftermath. Mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, children – some of them wouldn’t be coming home that night. Despite having learned to cut the emotion out of things as a soldier, a death toll like this, having to watch the footage and see the faces of those actually affected, seeing their names and information appear on her screen from the database, the detachment simply wasn’t possible. She knew better than to make this a personal responsibility, to carry the burden of lost lives, her mind could only take so much, and yet that need to find justice coursed through her. Justice , or was it closer to vengeance? The lines were blurring now, especially as she found herself checking the footage subconsciously for one person she knew was likely caught in the middle of it all. 

Dad – her father might have been counted amongst those numbers; he still took the time to walk from the office to the Tube each day. A flurry of images flashed across her mind’s eye, the worst horrors she could picture until she knew otherwise. Things that made her blood run cold. There would be no word as to whether he was alive or dead until the fighting was over and the threat dealt with. 

Even a soldier in her position got left in the dark.

Her thumb tapped against her desk, her leg jittering underneath it, her nerves firing at a mile a minute. She couldn’t think straight even if she wanted to, no amount of training helped to prepare her for this. Diving headfirst into a fire fight was less nerve wracking than the fear of the unknown. Not knowing whether – as of ten minutes ago and that first bomb going off – she was an orphan or not. 

She wouldn’t make it another minute without knowing. 

Slipping the mobile from her fatigue pants, she scrolled past the five missed call notifications from John and swiped through her directory to reach her father. Raking her hand through her hair as she rested her elbows on her desk, she squeezed her eyes shut in silent prayer to who-knew-what considering she had never once been religious in her life. The phone held to her ear rang, each one feeling like an eternity in between. Once. Twice. Three times. Voicemail .

Fuck. 

Biting at the sore hangnails that hung on the side of her fingers, red and raw. She had been on high alert since the message was passed through SRR HQ by MI6 about the Russian gas that had gotten into terrorist hands a day prior, leaking the info to Price the moment she heard. It was all she could think to do on such short notice, and it still wasn’t enough. It hadn’t stopped a damn thing. She’d been left to flounder while everyone else in command seemed to have their heads shoved up their arse about the threat – they couldn’t bury themselves any longer. 

Her mobile dinged, and a text popped up in her notifications: Know ur busy with shit hitting fan. Heading in. 

Rubbing her hands down her face, her chest tightened further. She knew Price could handle himself, he had entered the fray often in the two years they had been together and yet, every time, it still caused a cold sweat to overtake her. A part of her wished she could be there with him. More complications added into the mix, more fear of the unknown settling in like a bony, clawed hand sending chills down her spine. There was something to be said for soldier’s superstitions however, he had never skipped texting her before heading into an op, he also never added a note about loving her, and as far as they were both concerned that was enough to make sure he kept coming back home. The sentiment was always implied anyhow in the simple fact that he had sent the message to her in the first place – thinking of her as he faced constant danger. 

That didn’t stop her from texting back with her heart on her sleeve, however. Come back home to me in one piece, love. That, or call her in for the fight. Having to sit at her desk, unable to serve the way she knew she could best – it made her anger swell like a venom coursing through her constricted veins. 

Wolves were territorial beasts and her home, her family, had been threatened.

tagging @efingart

[argyrocratie]

In reconstructing the Degenerate Art debates, we shall see that Susa’s belief that the Egyptian surrealists of the Art and Liberty group were “blindly enslaved” to “Western art and its latest blunders” (which is to say, European modernism) is at the heart of much of al-Risala’s criticisms. Such remarks point to the growing nationalist concern among the Egyptian liberal intellectual elites that cosmopolitanism in arts and ideas was a form of European cultural imperialism and dependence. The al-Risala writers who spoke out against Art and Liberty regarded it as a mouthpiece for “foreign” ideas that would interfere with the development of an independent “Egyptian for Egypt’s sake” national style of art.

What is interesting to note, though, is how the liberal-nationalist attitudes at al-Risala closely paralleled those of anti-surrealist critics in other nations. Surrealists’ valorization of incomprehensibility, uncertainty, irrationality, and desire (as well as their repugnance for civilization’s coercive objective conventions for determining what is “real”) drew contempt from all corners throughout the 1930s. They were denounced as Germanophiles, Bolsheviks, bourgeois snobs, and social-fascists by a variety of commentators in France; in the US, they were mocked as silly, trendy foreign aesthetes whose theories were suitable only for high fashion and department store advertising (and, later in the 1940s, for FBI surveillance); in Yugoslavia, Romania, and Peru, surrealists were thrown into forced labor camps; in Denmark, they were vilified by the press as pornographers and jailed for morals offenses; and the Soviets condemned them as “anti-proletarian” for their criticism of socialist realism. The Japanese Imperial Higher Special Police monitored and arrested them and forced them to recant their deviant views; they were persecuted in Salazar’s Portugal, Franco’s Spain, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany; and they were forced into clandestine activity by constant threats of arrest and execution in Greece and Czechoslovakia. In response to a 1938 exhibition in London of Belgian surrealist René Magritte’s work, one newspaper critic reported himself “almost persuaded to be a Nazi,” since “Goebbels, at any rate, will not tolerate such stuff.”

In this sense, at least, the anti-surrealist writers at al-Risala were themselves more cosmopolitan than they liked to believe.

-Don LaCoss, “Egyptian Surrealism and ʻDegenerate Artʼ in 1939″