#Please don’t actually commit an act of domestic terrorism

[unhingedcanadianbacon]

You know what at this rate I’m just going to become the U.S Department of Housing Chair and just yeet that stupid law that (accidentally) made it illegal to build places like where I used to live because if I see one more suburbia I’m going to become a terrorist

[berserk-jewel]

SFW ALPHABET with FELIX ESCELLUN

A = Affection (How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?)

He's not affectionate in public and comes off as very smug most of the time. When you're alone, he can be swayed to show affection but he'll get really flustered about it. The most he'll initiate is showing you some macabre trinket or sitting close together while the two of you read.

B = Best friend (What would they be like as a best friend? How would the friendship start?)

Felix is the type of friend you have if you like to shit talk other people. He's not genuinely mean though and he'll be worried you don't think the two of you are as close as he thinks. He takes his friends seriously though considering his family life.

C = Cuddles (Do they like to cuddle? How would they cuddle?)

He likes to cuddle but he'll never ask. Rest your head on his lap when he's reading aloud and he'll immediately stutter over his words.

D = Domestic (Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning?)

Felix would secretly love to settle down. He's okay at chores at least in comparison to Anisa and Sage.

E = Ending (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?)

Very sadly. Seriously, he'll be inconsolable for weeks at the very least.

F = Fiance(e) (How do they feel about commitment? How quick would they want to get married?)

Felix has been hurt before and he takes commitment very seriously so it would take awhile before he even begins to seriously consider marriage and even longer before he brings it up to you.

G = Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?)

Physically, he's very gentle. Emotionally, he tries to come off as cold but immediately softens if he sees he genuinely hurt your feelings.

H = Hugs (Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?)

Felix will never initiate but he loves hugs. If you two are alone, he'll stare at you from across the room but turn away when you look up. Please go over and hug him or he won't stop.

I = I love you (How fast do they say the L-word?)

Felix will think it constantly and wonder if it's too soon so it'll probably take him awhile. He's likely to admit it if you confess first though.

J = Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they’re jealous?)

He gets jealous easily and it'll out him in a bad mood but he won't admit it. He'll just sulk in a corner until you figure out why he's upset.

K = Kisses (What are their kisses like? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?)

Felix kisses softly but once again, won't initiate. He likes to be kissed on his forehead or his cheeks and he'll very hesitantly kiss you on the cheek.

L = Little ones (How are they around children?)

Felix is painfully awkward around children. He doesn't hate them per se, just doesn't know what to do with them.

M = Morning (How are mornings spent with them?)

Felix is not a morning person really. More like, you'll go say good morning to him and find him just going to bed. If he sleeps with you through the night though, he's extremely hard to get out of bad.

N = Night (How are nights spent with them?)

Felix is canonically a night owl so he'll probably be up and moving around as you're going to bed. He'd love if you stayed up with him to keep him company but if not, he'll try to stay quiet so you can sleep.

O = Open (When would they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything all at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?)

Felix isn't as closed off as Sage but he's reluctant to let people get close or show his soft side. For you, he'll make an exception though.

P = Patience (How easily angered are they?)

Sage is usually patient but can get annoyed easily. Getting him actually angry though is pretty hard.

Q = Quizzes (How much would they remember about you? Do they remember every little detail you mention in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?)

Felix remembers everything very studiously. He probably started planning a party for you as soon as you told him your birthday.

R = Remember (What is their favorite moment in your relationship?)

He's unbelievably proud the first time you do magic and everytime you learn a new spell.

S = Security (How protective are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?)

Felix always tries to keep you out of harms way but likes that you try to do the same for him. Consequently, you both usually end up in bad situations together.

T = Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?)

Felix tries very hard and will usually get you the perfect gift or pick the perfect date place. Sometimes his gifts are a bit eccentric though like cursed books or poison plants.

U = Ugly (What would be some bad habits of theirs?)

Acting like an ass. He tries so hard to seem like he doesn't care that sometimes he genuinely hurts people's feelings.

V = Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?)

Felix is very put together and always looks his best. If he ever looks disheveled, he's probably sick or in trouble.

W = Whole (Would they feel incomplete without you?)

If you have to go somewhere without him, he'll go into an organizing frenzy and probably terrorize Sage and Anisa until you get back. When you do get back, he's immediately back to normal and acts like he didn't miss you.

X = Xtra (A random headcanon for them.)

Felix absolutely hates the cold. And the heat. And bugs. And grass. And mud.

Y = Yuck (What are some things they wouldn’t like, either in general or in a partner?)

I headcannon that Felix is a picky eater. His range of foods he'll eat is very specific and some earth foods you describe disgust him.

Z = Zzz (What is a sleep habits of theirs?)

Not sleeping. Seriously. Good luck getting in bed. When you do get him to sleep, however, he's the type to demand that you hold him and run your fingers through his hair.

[sueboohscorner]

#Bull - Season 5 Episode 7 "The Head of The Goat" - Review and Breakdown

The Review of Bull Season 5 Episode 7 - The Head of The Goat

Hello and Welcome Back, Bull Fans and Long-time viewers of my content; I hope you are well and healthy this week. As I have re-watched the latest episode that I base this review upon. I wanted to come into my review and write my thoughts on the episode and create a discussion about the show’s seventh installment at large. This review is going to cover Episode 7 of Season 5 of Bull. Season 5 Episode 7 of Bull gave more development in Benny, Bull, and Izzy's character arc. And we finally get some more information about Issy and what she has been doing in the past since we have met her again in Season 4.

 In this review, I will be tackling the character and relationship development that is happening in this episode. Towards the end of the review, I will give my final thoughts of the episode, and I think it could happen in the next couple of Bull episodes. As always, let me know in the comment section below. Or on Social Media @tvfanaticau (#ad) of all platforms. Hey Bull writers, can we have more scenes of Bull and Issy not in bed together? Because I feel like I have to start a drinking game and take a shot of when they are in bed together. (P.S. I don’t condone binge drinking alcohol just wanted to make this point.)

But anyway, enough about my drinking game for Bull and Issy, let’s dive into the seventh’s installment of Season 5 of Bull. “The Head of The Goat.” 

Episode 7 - Plot Overview

"Bull and Benny mount a difficult federal trial defense for a young mother accused of aiding and abetting her extremist husband in an act of domestic terrorism. When the controversial case makes news, Benny’s commitment to TAC complicates his burgeoning political career."  -- Show Junkies. 2021

Character Development of Episode 7 - “The Head of The Goat”

This week was a chance for the Bull writers to give meaning and context to the Benny running for the DA’s office and the relationship between Bull and Issy. And the relationship between Benny and Bull.

In the first two sections of my review, we will be looking at the character + the relationship development for this episode. What I think can happen in the next couple of episodes for Bull and The TAC Team in the future. 

1. Benny

As we move closer to Benny running for DA’s office, we can see that Benny is becoming more confident in his approach. In the courtroom. And for what he believes, everyone shows get a day in court. And so when his friend and his sister come to see him in his office. We get to see that confidence that we know and love from Benny. And with that ending scene for the episode, we get to see that all of Benny’s hard work has paid off. So I hope that in the next couple of Bull episodes, we get to see more of this storyline for the character arc as I am really enjoying this arc for Benny. 

2. Issy

As YM was brought on as a series regular for the show, I wondered what the Bull writers were going to be doing with this arc for Issy as we have to see her go through several things over the past with Bull and Her Brother. As so, I like this more relaxed version of Issy.

With Baby Bull's addition to the mix, I think that there is has been a chance to reconnect with her family. Because in the earlier seasons of the show, we see Issy is distant from her Brother and maybe other family members. Due to the trauma of her divorce and the miscarriage that she suffered.

But I hope we get to see more of the current version of Issy and that we have to see her becoming her own person again after having baby bull.  

3. Bull

As we have discussed, we have seen some reconnection as a family for the Bull and Colon Family. In Issy’s section. But I want to talk about how Bull feels about the changes in his company, what the writers and MW will achieve on the show.

Now I believe Bull is still was reluctant for Benny to take the job in the beginning. I think by the end of this week’s episode, we can see that Bull has seen that Benny is ready to take the next step forward in his career. Bull needs to step back and let Benny complete the task at the head. I hope for Bull in the next couple of episodes, and we get to see that change for Bull and Benny. 

The Relationship Development of Episode 7 - “The Head of The Goat “

As I have discussed the key character development in Season 5, Episode 7, let’s dive into more of the other side of the show, the relationships in Bull.

1. Bull and Issy

Season 5 for Bull and Issy has been a relaxed ride for this relationship in terms of the reconnecting and the communication they have. But we have not seen some of that witty banter that I know them for on the show. And in this episode, we get to see that again as we move through the show's season. I hope that the Bull writers will give the audience or fans of these relationships some more scenes outside of the bedroom. But I love this couple together, so I will take what scenes that they have together gladly. 

2. Bull and Benny

I know some people are in Benny's camp leaving the show; that is not the case at the moment. These two are, I think are on the same path for the promotion that Benny so deserves. But I still think that Bull will be more reserved still as if he is about to lose his friend to an important job. Again, I hope writers will pull it off as I have been liking the storyline surrounding Benny and Bull and the TAC Team. 

3. Benny and Issy

From Season 1, Episode 1 of the show, we have known that Benny’s sister married his best friend in Bull, and I think they were on the outs with each other as brother and sister, now fast forward a couple of seasons and a niece to the picture. I think that they have become more of a brother and sister again. When this episode came out, I loved the development of the relationship that they are going to work together to help Benny’s campaign. I love that relationship and interactions, so I hope that Bull writers and showrunners give us more future episodes. 

4. Bull and The Tac Team

During My Review last week, I look at the Bull and The TAC Team’s relationship, and from what I can gather that from this week’s episode, we got little to no development on the team; for instance, it was more focused on Benny, Bull, and Issy. But I expect that in the next couple of the coming episodes, I think we are going to explore this side of the relationship that Bull has with his employees. 

The Defense Strategy of Episode 7, “The Head of The Goat”

As we have a look at the relationships explored in this episode. I think we will see more in the future with some other established relationships on the show soon. I would look at the defense strategy used to move the case forward and get the trial's intended outcome. 

Defense Strategy.

This week’s defense strategy was not as laid out for the audience as normal, or I could not find it in my rewatching on the show’s episode. I think it’s an innocent to prove guilty strategy. Please let me know in the comment section below or on Social Media that I may have got it wrong and let me know the actual strategy. 

The Moments of The Head of The Goat

The Best Moments of The Episode.

The finest moment is shouting out to the pre and post-production team to produce the program to the crowd every moment it is on the broadcast. Freddy was the standout actor on the show’s seventh installment of the fifth season. In specific, the Benny that we know and love goes to town on a witness in question. Some of the minor moments that Bull and Issy shared through the episode, including the bedroom scene. A moment, Chuck being on the side in the courtroom and going to town on the witness. Also, I would like to mention that the new actor who played the wife stood her ground in the episode overall. 

Emotional Moments

I like to add the section in my reviews and show those tear-jerker moments on the show's sentimental side. During this week’s episode for me, anyhow, there were no emotional moments to talk about. Hopefully, we will get to see those moments in the coming episodes.

The Cringe moments

As the title suggests, there were moments on the show’s installment this week. Are the following, the awkward scene between Benny and his friend at the DA’s office. A cringe moment is the bedroom scene with Bull & Issy. I am seriously thinking of a drinking game for every time an identical scene comes on. 

As we leave those moments in the episode, lets' get into my final thoughts on the episode. I think to happen in the next couple of episodes concerning character & relationship arcs that have been established.

Overall Thoughts and Opinions on The Episode

Bull Season 5 Episode 7 was a perfect addition to the story canon of the show. For myself, it was one of the strongest episodes so far of the season. It provided an understanding of how some storylines are going to happen going forward in season 5.

In the next couple of episodes, we are to see further of these storylines shine through. I hope to see the development that they promised us in press interviews for season 5. Moving forward, I think we will see this story come to be a large one for Benny and Bull and Issy.

So going forward, I hope that the bull writers are going to give Danny a storyline that is true of her character. Has she been the one character that I have been waiting for that development since season 2 of the show? They have not developed the press release for Episode 8 of Season 5. We are to see things may wait on or taken by surprise.

I want to make a note to my viewers and The Bull production team that I have been enjoying this season more than previous seasons, as I feel like the show has returned to its roots in Season 1, that we have become to know and love about the show. And I believe that Season 5 of Bull has had more major character & relationship development so far. 

Overall Rating of the Episode: 7.5/10

Until Next Time, I will See you Later.

The Woman Who Writes TV Reviews.

[alison-anonymous]

flawsome bandits pt. 3 ♡ sonic

Flawsome Hotel-Bound Feelings

Warnings: some sad feelings, but mostly a lot of bonding fluff 

Welcome to part 3!!! I've been so excited about this fic that I've been writing every night so if you're reading, please let me know if you think I should keep uploading parts! I love hearing from you guys!! Love you all, darlings, enjoy😘💙

♡♡♡

“Did you see how much toilet paper I used?” Sonic gushed as he jumped up and down on the bright red motel bedsheet. “The next time someone goes in there, they’re going to have to use their hands!”

Y/n giggled, standing up on her knees and turning her hands into a finger gun, pointing it at the lampshade while Tom scooped up some homemade ice packs. “The brawl was intense, hands being thrown in every corner of the bar. The odds were against us…”

“But no one could best the Blue Blur, Star Chaser, and Donut Lord!” Sonic finished for her. “Scratching another one off my bucket list!” He flopped down to the nightstand and scratched off the one labeled “start a bar fight.”

“Very ambitious of you,” Y/n joked, flopping onto her back and letting her hair dangle off the side of the bed. Tom made his way over to the other bed and sat down on it, handing Sonic and Y/n each an ice pack while pressing his own against his face.

“You are one weird little dude. You’ve got a lot in common with Y/n,” Tom sent her a smug smile. She brushed some loose strands of h/c hair back and pressed the ice pack against her throbbing temples. Y/n had been one of the lucky few to have not gotten punched in the face, but she did get hit in the head by some airborne nachos. Sonic watched the two for a little bit and mimicked Y/n, pressing it against his cheek. 

“So what are we going to do now?” He asked excitedly, his ever constant adrenaline still pumping and ready to jump at whatever was next. Tom began taking off his shoes and plopping them on the floor as he glanced over at the TV set.

“I’m going to pass out watching TV, and the two of you should, too.” 

“But it’s my last day on earth!” Sonic protested, leaning against Y/n’s stomach. She slowly pushed herself up to sitting position and glanced over her shoulder at her dad. 

“I mean, he has a point,” she nodded. He sighed.

“Alright, well, anything the two of you can find in this room that might be noteworthy, have at it.” He plopped down onto the bed and in a couple of minutes, Y/n and Sonic could already hear the soft snores coming from his mouth. And he didn’t even have to turn the TV on. Sonic took this as his opportunity and flew around the room, tossing toilet paper like confetti, screwing with the TV guide, and doing… something in the bathroom. In a matter of seconds, he was already back on the bed next to Y/n, wearing a towel on his head and no shoes.

“Good times,” he smiled. The girl couldn’t help but giggle, leaning back against the headrest of the bed and staring at the TV. Sonic had left it on the news, and just as she concentrated on it, she suddenly saw two photos float across the screen.

Her stomach dropped.

“Y/n and Tom Wachowski have been accused of committing acts of domestic terrorism. They are to be considered armed and dangerous. Any information of their whereabouts must be-” She quickly shut off the TV before she could hear any more. Her breath caught in her throat as she stared blankly at the spot where she had seen her mugshot. 

“Hey, N/n, you okay?” Sonic’s voice snapped her back into reality. She glanced down at the hedgehog sitting cross legged in front of her, looking into her e/c eyes with pure concern. 

“I’m fine,” she offered him a half-hearted smile, running a shaky hand through her hair. “Just a little nervous… hey, what is this new planet you’re heading to like?” Sonic’s expression grew solemn as he began messing with the fabric of his gloves.

“It’s pretty horrible really… it’s a world full of nothing but mushrooms and breathable air, no humans. No friends. No Donut Lords or Star Chasers…” He drew off. Y/n felt her heart ache for him. She felt horrible knowing that her one new friend was now being forced to live on some planet with no other humans on it, and all because of what? Because he was different? When it came down to it, Sonic was probably one of the greatest, funniest, kindest people she had ever met.

“I’m really going to miss it here… I know I have to leave earth to keep everyone here safe, but what if Longclaw was wrong? What if I could have a life here on earth?” He closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. Y/n felt her heart deflating in her chest. It was so sad, so heart wrenching to watch this little blue ball of excitement become so dejected. All that he wanted was a home, someone to hang out with and love. People who wanted him to be around. 

“I don’t want you to leave either,” she spoke slowly, almost as if she were afraid to say the words. "It isn't just because of the deja vu, I swear. You just… you're the only true friend I've ever had. And I hate seeing you unhappy…" His emerald eyes widened to the size of saucers as he stared at the girl before him in shock. The whole time he was on earth, he had to stay a secret. The only friends he had ever truly had were himself, no one even knew he existed until now. So the fact that this beautiful girl was sitting her in front of him, telling him that she didn’t want him to leave and that she hated to see him so unhappy? Well…

"That's the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me,” Sonic breathed. His heart pounded against his chest so loud he was scared that she would be able to hear it. Luckily, his fur was able to hide the blush that was rising on his cheeks. What was happening? Why did he feel like throwing up rainbows? 

Y/n smiled warmly at him, her eyes glittering from the faded light of the lamp. “You’re the only friend I’ve ever had, or that I can remember having anyway. That’s what friends are for.” Sonic leaned back on his hands, eyes scanning Y/n’s thoughtfully.

“Has anyone ever told you that you are insanely easy to talk to? I don’t know, I just feel like I’ve known you all my life,” he chuckled softly, being serious for a rare moment. Usually he was all hyped up and sarcastic, but right now was one of the times where he was completely and utterly serious. Y/n pulled her legs up to her chest and hugged them, resting her chin on her knees.

“I mean, maybe we did at one point. Who knows? I don’t remember a thing of my life up until I was twelve and got found in the woods.” Sonic went quiet for a moment, debating whether or not the question he wanted to ask would come off as offensive. But finally, he decided to put on some big boy pants and ask.

“...What is it like?”

“What’s what like?”

“Not remembering who you are,” Sonic spoke softly, terrified to hurt her feelings. But luckily, Y/n simply gave him a small smile and looked down at the rough bed sheets, collecting her thoughts in her head. She grew silent for a moment before she finally lifted her head up once again.

“It’s… complicated. Every morning I wake up. I can hear the sound of my mom cooking breakfast downstairs. It’s gotten to the point where I can guess what she’s making by the sound of the utensil she’s using. I get up out of my bed, and leave my room, and walk down the stairs and give my dad a hug just before he leaves for work. And then I have breakfast with my mom and we talk about anything and everything. And… for a little while, I feel like I actually belong there. I feel like they are my actual family. But then I go outside, and things… are different,” she sucked in a shaky breath though her lips. “Everyone else knows exactly who they are. They know what weed killer works the best for their plants, they know where they were born, who their parents were, what they looked like when they were babies, what their favorite midnight snack is… what their last name is…

“And then I’m just standing there, not knowing any of that. There aren’t any records of me in any of the hospitals or law agencies. It’s like I didn’t even exist on this planet. And while some people can be patient and loving with me, others… can’t. My heart is still beating, and I’m breathing and I’m here. But for what? What purpose could I possibly have when I can’t even answer basic questions about myself? Tom and Maddie have been the only people to make me truly feel welcome… and then you came along.” The smile slowly returned to her lips at the mention of him. He waited patiently for her to continue, hooked onto every word she was saying. “I’ve never met anyone like you before, and not just because you’re a hedgehog. It’s just… you. You make me feel like I belong somewhere, and, god, I’ve never laughed harder or had as much fun as I have with you with anyone else. You make me feel like I’ve known you my whole life and yet I’ve only known you for a day. It’s insane,” she chuckled, shaking her h/c locks. 

Her laugh was contagious as Sonic found himself chuckling before long too. 

“Well, I still made a promise to you that I plan to keep,” he began. “I will find a way to help you remember. Everything will be okay in the end.”

“How do you know?” Y/n asked curiously. Sonic simply shrugged, smiling.

“I just have a feeling.” A moment of comfortable silence floated between the two as they stared at one another. Y/n felt her stomach become full of butterflies, then finally giving up their hesitance to fly around freely in joy. The feeling of nostalgia had become something that she enjoyed experiencing as it helped her feel like she had a closer connection with the bright blue hedgehog. Maybe they did meet sometime in her life and she just forgot about it for whatever reason. Perhaps Sonic could help her find a way to remember, though she had no clue how he planned to try and accomplish it. Sonic hadn’t the slightest clue either, but he did know that he would be willing to run to the ends of the earth in order to make her happy. 

No, it couldn’t be. It wouldn’t make any sense! Were they… falling in love? 

“Um,” Y/n cleared her throat, the time suddenly becoming very apparent to her as she glanced down at her snoring father. “We should probably get to bed. He wants to leave by eight.”

Sonic nodded rapidly, tossing the towel off of his head and onto the floor. Y/n chuckled, not having even realized he was still wearing it. “Right, I can take the floor.”

“Don’t be silly, you can sleep in the bed too,” Y/n moved the comforters down and slid her legs underneath the sheets. “I’m not going to make you sleep on the floor and my dad tends to be a cover-hog.”

Sonic scrunched up his features in slight uncertainty, not wanting to make things awkward between him and his new friend. However, she had already made up her mind.

“Sonic. Get in bed.” She ordered. He quickly nodded and dove under the covers, snuggling up on to the pillow and letting out a surprised sigh. Back in his cave, he had only ever had a bean bag chair that he absolutely adored to sleep on. But a bed? It was like what he imagined sleeping on a cloud to be like. The pillow molded around his head and the blankets kept his body warm. It was like being wrapped up in a hug by a marshmallow. Y/n couldn’t help but giggle at his reaction.

“Never slept in a bed before?”

“It. Is. Amazing.” He slowly lowered his face under the covers until only his eyes could be seen, staring straight at Y/n. She laughed, getting comfortable in the bed as well after turning off the lamp next to the bed. As they settled in the darkness, staring at one another (hopefully without the other knowing), their breaths began to slow down as the drowsiness finally kicked in. But just before they nodded off, they were reminded of each other.

“Goodnight, Y/n.” Sonic whispered.

“Goodnight, Sonic.”

♡ a.a.

[justjessame]

Babysitting Butcher Chapter 7

Joseph looked like he’d like to swallow glass when Billy opened my office door and stood glaring down at him. I rolled my eyes and focused on Mallory’s voice coming through the headset of my phone.

“The Church won’t be able to contain Adana’s absence forever, they’ll have to announce that he’s dead, but from what my source is telling me, they aren’t looking to make him a martyr, yet.” Of course not, the Church acted like a fucking rehabilitation for supes gone wild and it was a fucking con. “I know you have Vought’s files and you’re working through them. Have you come across anyone-”

“With the ability to do what this one seems capable of?” I had to be vague, I couldn’t be sure Joseph couldn’t hear me from his position at the door. “Not that I can think of, but I haven’t gone over Billy’s notes yet.” I sighed. “When this comes out-”

“It won’t.” Mallory sounded convinced. “The Church is bargaining for the same status as other churches, the tax free bullshit that organized religion always gets, but since it works under different structures, it’s been denied. They won’t make waves by making accusations, not while Vought is working hard to rehabilitate the Seven and Compound V.” She sighed and I felt another one of my own build. “We have to find out who this rogue supe is, Dr. Taylor, preferably before Billy goes-”

“Completely outside of the bounds of control?” The sigh I’d felt growing finally forced its way out of me. “I think I managed to-” I felt a blush burn on my face and couldn’t finish. There was no way I was going to tell Mallory or anyone outside of Billy and I just how I managed to calm him down. Nope. Not going to happen.

“Yes, well, as long as he’s not making himself famous for domestic terrorism again, I’ll trust your methods.” Fuck. “Let me know if you find what we’re looking for in those files. A name, a location. Something that would let us get a bead on what the hell is going on.” I agreed and then hung up.

“Joseph,” I forced my lips into a smile, walking to the door and stepping around Billy’s hulking figure. “What brought you to my office?” I watched the man swallow hard, his eyes darting at Billy and back to me.

“I-” another gulp. “I came across this request from-” He was sweating and I came close to closing the door behind the two of us so Billy would be trapped in my office and the man in front of me would be more comfortable speaking, but it was MY office. “Here.” He thrust the paper into my hand and turned to rush away. Well, that was interesting.

“You terrified him,” I accused, turning to see the amusement on Billy’s face. Shaking my head I moved back to my desk as I read the request that Joseph deemed important enough to bring to my attention. My eyes roved down the paper and I grew confused. Why would anyone ask for- And then my eyes landed on the name of the person who requested it and I sat down in the chair that Mallory had used. I was trying to make sense of what I was reading.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he muttered, but I didn’t pay much attention. “What does it say?” I handed it to him and waited for him to read through it, while I was still turning it around in my head. “What the fuck?”

“Why would they want to know where-” My eyes met his and I had to shut mine because I swore he was going to ask for more distraction, but he didn’t. Yet.

“He’s supposed to be kept safe and secured away,” he muttered, pacing. “I was told he would be.” I nodded, that was the deal. “Why would-”

“I don’t know,” I answered, reaching for my phone. “But I’m going to make sure it doesn’t happen.”

 A call up the chain of command, telling them about the request that had been brought to my attention and wanting verification that the information requested would be denied, I felt marginally better when I hung up. Marginally.

“Why would he run it through this office?” I asked, once the handset was back in the cradle. “Isn’t that tempting fate that you’d find out?”

“He wanted me to find out,” and I could see his point. “He knows I was recruited for this little endeavor, and he wanted to poke the bear.”

“And did he?” I wanted to know if I needed to have Billy contained before we moved on with the next fucking shitstorm.

“Am I asking for a distraction?” His eyebrow raised and I felt like Joseph must have, although I doubted that Joseph felt a twist of something dark and pleasant in the pit of his stomach and I definitely knew he didn’t have the memory of how it felt for Billy’s facial hair to burn my skin as he worked his mouth down my neck. Shit. “I’ll let you know when that cunt pokes me hard enough to need-” he licked his lips and his eyes were on mine. “I’ll let you know.”

 Somehow, maybe because there wasn’t a whole shit ton we could do with the hint of intelligence we currently had on the mystery supe who could pop people’s heads like a dart flying into a balloon at a carnival game, Billy and I managed to go back to working through the files from Vought. We worked just as quietly as we had before he’d asked for me to distract him. And I was trying very hard to NOT notice how close he was, or how his body heat seemed to invade my personal space.

When lunch rolled around, I decided I didn’t want to eat in my office. I wanted to go at least a short distance away from the entire fucking situation. I didn’t assume he’d come with me, in fact, I thought I gave him an out to leave my company to do whatever it was he did when he had downtime. As we were seated by the hostess of one of my favorite restaurants, Billy across from me, I held back from asking why he didn’t take the escape from my company I’d offered.

Ordering was simple, since all we had to give our server was our drink orders. Chinese buffet, simple and as fast or slow as anyone cared to enjoy it, was what I’d picked. He seemed surprised by my choice, and confirmed it once we gave the waitress our drink preferences and moved to the steaming tables.

“Didn’t peg you for a buffet fan, Ronnie,” he said, as we wandered up and down the offerings with our plates in hand. Shaking my head, I carefully filled my plate.

Looking up, seeing Billy Butcher in a loud Hawiian shirt holding a plate in a buffet was a pretty fucking weird sight, and it caused me to smile. “Guess you don’t know me much, Billy.” I could hear the small snort he gave as he too filled his plate.

Walking back to the table while he continued to peruse the offerings, I smiled as our server set our drink glasses down. Thanking her, I took my seat and waited for him. It didn’t take long, and there he was sitting across from me again. “You didn’t have to wait for me to get started,” he offered, taking up his utensils as I did the same.

“Etiquette, hard to get past, Billy.” He studied me as I took my first bite. I was curious as to what fascinated him about what he was seeing, but with a shake of his head, he too tucked into his lunch.

As we ate, Billy started asking questions. Not work related ones, but ones that if I didn’t know better would make it seem like he was trying to get to know me better. “Why’d you pick the CIA?” His voice was quiet, and the dining room wasn’t full of people, so it wasn’t like we had an audience.

A shrug of my shoulder, my go to gesture, as I took a drink from my glass was my first answer, but he didn’t say anything else so I wasn’t getting off that easily. I sighed. “The FBI has an abundance of agents that can profile criminals, being one of a herd didn’t appeal to me. And actually, the CIA approached me.” They had, once I’d started being published more in journals and other media. My ideas on the inner workings of criminals weren’t that far off from known profilers, but my psychological background, coupled with the fact that I didn’t focus on serial killers, but on those people who committed differing atrocities helped highlight ways they could better utilize my abilities.

“Why’d you become a doctor?” I snorted so hard a noodle nearly popped out of my nose. Taking a moment to compose myself as he stared at me like I’d lost my mind, I shook my head again.

“If you ask my parents, I’m not a REAL doctor.” A distinction they make during every fucking dinner party they force my ass to attend. “I chose psychology because the inner workings of the human mind and the reasons for their behavior fascinates me.” The absolute truth.

“Parents can be fucking useless.” He muttered, his understanding dripping through his voice. “Come from money?” He was looking at me as he took a bite, and I nodded. “Makes it worse, don’t it?”

I sighed around my own bite. When I knew that I could without shaming myself, or my mother, I answered him. “It makes it less agreeable than most people assume.” Like my ex husband for example. He really expected my inheritance to come fast and furious to me when we got married, but boy was he in for a shock. “They never seem to factor in the expectations that come with the perks.”

His eyes were still on me as I ate and spoke, and I knew I should be uncomfortable with the attention, but it didn’t feel strange somehow. “You eat at places like this-” a gesture around at the simpler surroundings than my parents would appreciate, made me nod. “Drive a truck that’s HUGE, and you carry a gun.” Another nod from me. “I’m sure your mum and dad are just pleased as punch with all three.”

I laughed at that. Maybe Billy Butcher was more than he seemed. Then again, I knew that, I’d written the fucking report on it.

 Lunch was pretty interesting, as was getting back to work after. The easiness we moved beside one another, pads and pens ready, working through each file made me wonder why it was this simple. I chose not to dwell on it. If Billy Butcher and I could coexist without friction, then I was more than willing to take it. Just not, you know, take IT. With friction. Shit.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Pre-Trial: Introducing Dr. Rosa

I wrote half of this like forever ago and decided to go ahead and finish it, because I love Dr. Rosa and everyone should get to meet her, she’s my favorite random bit character who shows up in everything I do set in a modern universe.

Danny’ s first meeting with Dr. Rosa. 

Timeline: Shortly after returning to the United States, pre-trial.

Tagging @special-spicy-chicken, @spiffythespook, @bleeding-demon-teeth 

Dr. Rosa Martinez has been in the business of treating the survivors of long-term traumatic experiences for twenty-three years. In that time, the methodologies have somewhat changed, as has the understanding of trauma’s physical components interacting with its psychological ones, but she has never wavered in her commitment.

She has worked with the survivors of child abuse, rape, domestic violence, abduction cases involving non-custodial parents, one stranger abduction, a woman who had lost two husbands, firefighters both, within ten years of each other to the wildfires that race through California when the winds are hot and the air stays dry. She’s been working with an increasingly large subset of military veterans returning from war with wounds within them that struggle to heal. She has, as they say, seen (or heard) just about everything. 

Today, though, she is meeting someone whose experience differs from anyone she’s treated before.

Dr. Rosa Martinez, fifty-eight years old, feels something she hasn’t felt since her first year after changing her practice to focus on long-term trauma and PTSD; genuine nerves and concern that she may falter and fall short of a patient’s needs. She pats at her hair, twisted tightly at the nape of her neck to keep it out of the way, only a few of the speckled coarse white-and-black hairs escaping here and there. 

She rearranges the photos on her desk in the corner of her office, over by the window, shifting the framed pictures of her daughters with their own families back and forth, smiles at the only photo with a single person in it - a brown-haired woman smiling under the blaze of sun on their last visit back to see family down in the islands - pressing her finger to her lips and then, lightly, over the woman’s mouth.

Wish me luck, Liz.

She had rearranged the bookshelves this morning, had the cleaners come in twice this week instead of once to ensure everything is well-dusted and spotlessly clean, as she’s been informed the patient is hyper-aware of mess and might become distraught if he is not able to clean it.

She stands by the window, looking out through the blinds at the parking lot, waiting for him to arrive. The patient’s profile questionnaire and basic information rests on her desk, and she’s been reading through it over and over, preparing herself. 

There is a wealth of information hidden between the lines in those questionnaires, when you know what you’re looking for. Rosa Martinez has always had an eye for the unspoken, the unwritten, the details that her patients fear to speak and so tiptoe around instead.

The younger brother is the only emergency contact. The brother’s number is listed on everything, no number for the patient himself. The brother’s name is written in the space for the potential sharing of details if considered medically necessary in the event of an emergency. The brother, the brother, the brother. There’s something to grasp onto there, a detail she shouldn’t let slide. Every inch of the initial paperwork tells her that the brother is trusted implicitly, but no one else is. 

She’s seen him on the news, of course. Everyone in this part of the state has heard about the Daniel Michaelson case, his reappearance after four years of prolonged captivity and essentially total isolation. Everyone has seen his parents on the news expressing gratitude and delight that he has returned home.

But the parents are not on his paperwork, and the brother had been clear, on the phone, that they would not be attending any family sessions, only he and Daniel - and that it would be best not to talk about their parents unless Daniel brought them up himself.

It’s a situation that involves similarities to previous patients of hers, but every similarity was intensified, twisted, rearranged in new ways. The conversations about the parents suggested, to Dr. Rosa, a certain scapegoat/child abuse situation she would consider more in the future.

In the captivity there was abuse and sexual assault, but it was a vicious, ritualized cycle of violence that went far beyond abuse and into pure torture. Torture for torture’s sake, the brother told her, his own jaw shaking with the effort of keeping his voice calm in their initial consultation as to whether or not she would consider taking his brother on. Torture for fun, torture to twist his brother into something else, something less.

Neither of us is going to get through this without help, Ryan Michaelson had told her, all of twenty-four years old but with the gravity of a much older man in his voice and the way he held himself, without some help. I need you to help my brother, please, because-… because I just have no fucking clue what to do. Oh, I’m sorry for my language, it’s just been a bad few days, just… just really since he got home, he’s been-… I don’t-

It’s fine, She had said, handing him a tissue to wipe his eyes while both of them pretended the tears weren’t there. Where is your brother now?

At home with his… with… I don’t know what Nathaniel Vandrum is. But he’s home with him. I’ll bring him for his first appointment, but he’s so fragile… he picked your photo out of the others, so I think he’ll come willingly, but… please. We need help, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to make someone believe they’re human, Dr. Martinez. I don’t know how to help him.

This will probably be a challenge, even for someone with her experience, but she can’t imagine turning it down. 

She twists the wedding band on one finger, letting her fingertip play over the square diamond at the top, trace the line of smaller circular diamonds that ran down each side of the band. Liz knows who the new patient is, of course, but she’ll also know not to ask - they’ve always had a “no work talk” rule, protecting Rosa’s patients even from her own family’s curiosity. 

She knows some of her colleagues speak about their patients in oblique terms with their own families, keeping their identities secret but discussing the trials of their day, but Rosa has never done that. Her patients come to her with terrors they trust with no one else, and she would never betray that, not even with Liz.

Only with other professionals, in very specific circumstances, and with all identifying details carefully stripped does she seek advice or counsel when needed. 

She recognizes the car when it pulls up - she’s seen it on the news, when the cameras catch Ryan Michaelson in his array of perfectly tailored suits in a series of richly deep colors when he gets out each day, waving them off, his jaw set as he gives the occasional statement as they prepare to take Abraham Denner to trial.

Today, Ryan steps out of the car in a purple sweater that probably cost more than Rosa’s health insurance premium and she’d swear even his jeans were tailored. Brown shoes, soft leather, perfectly worn. Ryan’s a handsome one, that’s for sure - all bright smiles and warm brown skin, wild black curls. He is smiling now as he turns and speaks into the car, before closing his own door, brushing some invisible wrinkles out of his sweater, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket.

First, to meet Daniel Michaelson.

She has seen photos of him, of course - but he hasn’t been in any photographs or interviews, so she was not quite prepared for the incredibly tall, thin man who unfolds himself out of the passenger side. He’s wearing an oversized, dark blue heavy sweater, heavier than the weather really calls for, with a high crew neck and cable-knit braids down the front, his sleeves pulled hard to cover the backs of his hands, head dipped down so his wavy red hair falls down over his face, wearing jeans that are clearly too big and, she suspects, only staying up because of a belt. 

Daniel makes it to the curb and then stops, shaking his head, saying something to Ryan and acting like he’ll get right back in the car. Ryan steps closer to him, hands out without quite touching him, gesturing towards the office. Daniel shakes his head again, and she can see they need a minute, and steps back to give it to them.

She watches them for just a second longer, than steps out of her office into the waiting room before they can make their way inside. 

“Krista,” She says in a honeyed voice, slightly high-pitched, with only a hint of the island accent she grew up with. “Send Daniel Michaelson into my office as soon as they come in, don’t make them wait. And be sure to pour Ryan Michaelson a cup of the good coffee we all pretend I don’t know you keep in the breakroom.”

“Of course, Dr. Martinez,” Krista says brightly, looking up from the book she’s studying behind the desk to give her a bright smile. “I serve everyone the same coffee, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Mmmhmmm. Oh, and don’t try to shake Daniel’s hand,” Dr. Martinez adds, and disappears back into her office.

She has everything ready, but rearranges her desk one more time anyway just to be on the safe side. She has a couple of photos, as well - a photo of Daniel Michaelson pre-abduction that his brother provided, a post-abduction photo she is keeping only for reference. I put this up on Facebook like the week before he was gone, Ryan had said, shrugging his shoulders, as he handed her the pre-abduction photo. I printed it out to bring. God, I don’t even know when the last time I actually used Facebook was… 

22 year old Daniel, one week before he vanished, is at what she assumes is the company Christmas party. It has that sort of look, people milling in the background in cocktail dresses and suits. He’s wearing a navy suit as perfectly tailored as Ryan’s always are on TV, his hair clipped shorter than it seems to be now. The shoulders are thinner in the past, she thinks, but his body overall is definitely skinnier now than then. He’s holding a glass of some brown liquor, one arm around 20-year-old Ryan’s shoulder, the two of them smiling for the camera.

Then the next photo, which Ryan tells her the police took and gave him a copy of. Danny is standing in front of a blank wall, looking at nothing, his eyes focused off to the side. He’s wearing nothing but a thin T-shirt, which could not have been easy for him, since they showed up at the police station in Alberta on December 11th. All the brightness and sparkle is gone, replaced by a dull terror and uncertainty that can’t quite break through the placid submission in his face. She taps one finger over his face, the slightly bloody red wounds that cut into him, and then she slides the older picture onto the top as the door to her office opens.

Ryan steps in first, giving her a friendly smile that doesn’t quite meet his eyes. She can see Daniel just behind him the taller man has his arms folded, nearly hugging himself, his eyes focused on the floor. “Dr. Martinez, we’re here, they told us to go ahead and come right in.”

“That’s lovely, Mr. Michaelson, thank you, but I’ll have to ask you to sit outside for the duration of the appointment.”

Ryan’s face falters, but only slightly, and Rosa watches with interest and curiosity as he shifts his stance to be even more directly between she and his brother. Only name listed on any of the emergency contacts, only person given permission for sharing of medical information, and he is standing in the hallway of my office trying to protect him from me. “Are you sure? He, um, he struggles being alone-”

“N-No,” Danny says from behind him, so softly Rosa almost can’t hear him. “No, I can do it, Ryan, it’s okay. C-Can, can you let me go in? Can I go in?”

“Hey, if you’re not totally sure, you don’t have to, I can sit right here with you.” Ryan half-turns to face his brother, and they are standing within inches of each other without ever touching. Rosa watches all of it, taking the details in, committing them to memory. 

“I can try to do it. I can be good,” Daniel says softly, and Rosa’s head tilts, unconsciously, as she watches Ryan Michaelson wince at the words. She’ll need to write that down, keep that in her memory, too.

It’s come in deeply handy, over the course of her career, that she has an excellent memory for the details like this.

“Okay. Let me know if you can’t do it, we can try again later, yeah?” Daniel nods, slowly, and Rosa watches Ryan take a deep breath, close his eyes, and then turn back to her. As he does, his shoulders go back, and his voice changes - the softness slides away, replaced by a kind of hard melodic sound, the voice of the company man he is being groomed into and not the caring, worried, frazzled younger brother. “Okay, here’s the thing - don’t touch him, don’t get too into his space, and, um-”

“My name is Red,” Daniel Michaelson says, and he’s still not looking up, he still has his eyes firmly on the floor. “My name is Red and I belong to Abraham Denner.”

“… and he still does that,” Ryan says tiredly, and steps back. “Call him Red, he gets really worked up if you call him anything else.”

“Because it’s not my name anymore,” Danny says, and there’s just the barest hint of annoyance there. Ryan rolls his eyes and Rosa fights back a smile; you can hold someone captive for four years, she thinks, but brothers are brothers, still, in the end.

Rosa doesn’t move from her desk as Daniel Michaelson steps into her office. He’s even taller in person than he seemed in the parking lot, all hunched over like he can make the height or his bright and eye-catching red hair disappear if he just curls over far enough. He glances at her, briefly, and she catches a hint of light blue eyes and the circle of red scarring across his face, the scars that wrap his neck like a collar he can’t take off.

She knows about the collar - Ryan warned her it comes up in conversation. She is prepared for this. She has a career uniquely situated to make her absolutely perfect for this. She has the experience that no one else in Northern California has, the experience and the dedication and the passion for helping people like Daniel Michaelson.

And yet the nerves that flutter within her stomach never quite subside.

When Daniel is all the way in and Ryan has closed the door to return to the waiting room, Rosa waits for a beat of silence, watching Daniel put his hands in his pockets, looking for all the world like a small child awaiting punishment for an infraction rather than a grown man seeking therapy. “Do you prefer to be called Red?” She asks, finally, with no change to the warmth and welcome in her voice.

“My name is Red,” Daniel says, a little more firmly this time. “You, you have to call me that. That’s my name. I get, I get in trouble if I have the wrong thoughts, and that name is a wrong thought. Puppies don’t have wrong thoughts. My name is Red and I belong to Abraham Denner.” The words seem to have a calming effect on him, some of the tension bleeding from his shoulders and the way he is holding himself. “Can I, may I have permission to sit down?” 

“Of course,” She says warmly, and then watches with surprise as Daniel Michaelson sits on the floor in front of the couch, pulling his knees up to his chest. “Ah, Daniel-… my apologies, Red. Would you prefer to sit on the couch for our first session?”

“Not allowed,” Daniel says, and she watches him begin to rub, compulsively, at one of the red scars dug hard into his jaw on the left side, rubbing and rubbing with his thumb, his other arm sliding around his legs. His hands are scarred along the lines of his veins, heavy obvious markings. Ryan had warned her about those, too. 

He is curled into the smallest little ball she can imagine someone so tall turning himself into. 

“I’m not allowed. Only people get the couch, puppies stay on the floor. Not allowed. I, I have to be good, I want to be good. I want… I want to be good,” He repeats to himself, plaintively, and Rosa’s heart breaks, just a little.

Nothing shows on her face, but Rosa takes in the moment and wonders if she is perhaps in far, far over her head with this one.

Then she picks up a pad of paper and a pen and settles herself into a small armchair off to the side, nodding. “Is that one of your rules? Your brother told me that there are… guidelines, that you live by.”

Daniel Michaelson nods, his eyes down on the floor. She can see he’s rubbed the scar at his jaw until it’s open and a little bloody, and she takes the tissue box from the table next to her chair and slides it across the floor until it bumps into his shoes - worn-out Converse sneakers that can’t be comfortable in the rainy chill outside.

Probably they were shoes he wore before, and probably Ryan offered him new ones, and probably he refused.

Daniel looks up at her, confused, and she takes in the blue eyes again, surprisingly vibrant in the pale, freckled face. She doesn’t let her eyes drop to his scars, not at all. She holds his gaze and smiles, slightly. “You are bleeding, Red.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” He takes a tissue and presses it to his jaw, dropping his eyes back to the floor. Rosa settles back and makes a couple of introductory notes on her notepad, trying to decide where to begin. 

“Th-they want me to testify,” Daniel says, surprising her by being the first to speak. “But I, I don’t want to. He’ll look at me, he’ll look at me. I don’t want to. But they said I, I need to, they want me to. Ryan wants me to. I’m… he’s going to look at me. I don’t want to, but Ryan says, but I need to be good…”

“I understand,” Rosa says softly, nodding. “So is that what you’d like to focus on, as we get started seeing each other, Red? On being able to tape the testimony for the trial?”

There’s a silence, and then Daniel slowly nods. “I want to be able to do it,” He says softly. “For Ryan. Ryan wants me to do it. I want to, I want to do it, but I don’t want to do it. I feel both, at the same time. I want to do it but I shouldn’t, against the rules, against… against the rules. But I want to, Ryan does, Ryan wants me to. I want to but I don’t want to.”

“You’re feeling ambivalent about this - torn in two directions by your competing instincts. That’s perfectly understandable,” Rosa says softly, still writing, a constant stream of her impressions and thoughts and what Daniel is saying. “I think you’ve identified a very strong starting point for us, Red. I’m very happy to meet with you today, and your brother has scheduled you to see me twice a week while we get to know each other and once a week after that. Does that sound acceptable?”

Daniel frowns at her, confused, as though he can’t figure out why she’s asking. Then he slowly nods. “Can you make me able to do it?” He asks, from behind his knees. “Talk to the lawyers about what happened?”

Rosa takes a breath. “I can’t make you do anything. But if you want to, I think that your sessions with me may be able to help you work through what you need to have the skills to make that decision for yourself, and begin building a foundation for future decisions from there. Does that sound like a good plan to you?”

Daniel is silent, tissue still pressed to his face, then he slowly nods. “Oh, okay,” He says softly. “Whatever you want. I can be good.”

Rosa nods, slightly and gives him an encouraging smile. “Wonderful. And if you need to, we can call your brother in at any time. All right, Red. My name is Dr. Rosa Martinez, and I know you’re aware of that, but while you’re in this office, I want you to call me Rosa or Dr. Rosa, is that all right?”

He nods at her again, but a little more of his face comes up from behind his knees. “Y-Yes, I can do that, um, Dr. Rosa.”

“Perfect. That’s perfect, Red. Now let’s begin.”

[creepingsharia]

A Month of Islam in America: August 2019

Jihadis, sharia and Islamic scams in every state. And this is just what was found using public sources. What‘s happening in - and to - your state?

Click any link below for more details and link to original source.

Jihad in America in July

New York: Pakistani Muslim immigrant in Queens plotted jihad attacks at World’s Fair Marina and Flushing Bay Promenade

Awais Chudhary, 19, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Pakistan, identified the pedestrian bridges over the Grand Central Parkway to the Flushing Bay Promenade (the Promenade) and the World’s Fair Marina (the Marina) as locations for the attack.  On Aug. 23, 2019, Chudhary told an undercover agent that he intended to use a knife “because that’s what he knows,” but if the undercover agent could instruct him on how to build a bomb, he would consider using an explosive device at a “mini-bridge over a busy road with many cars.”

Florida: Muslim immigrant gets 20 years for distributing bomb instructions

Tayyab Tahir Ismail, 33, of Pembroke Pines, Florida, previously pled guilty to Count 2 of an Indictment that charged him with distributing information pertaining to explosives, destructive devices, and weapons of mass destruction, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 842(p)(2) (Case No. 18-60352-CR-Moore).  U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore sentenced Ismail to 240 months in prison,  followed by three years of supervised release.

Arkansas: Muslim Immigrant Charged With Providing Material Support to Al Qa’ida While Overseas

Bilal Al-Rayanni, also known as Bilal Kassim Alawdi, 28, a Yemeni national and resident of Helena-West Helena, Arkansas, was charged on August 8 in a two-count superseding indictment with providing and attempting to provide material support to Al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula, also known as Ansar al-Shari’a, a designated foreign terrorist organization, and making a false statement in a passport application.

Wisconsin: Second Milwaukee Muslim gets 5 1/2 years in plot to join Islamic State

Yosvany Padilla-Conde, a Cuban immigrant convicted of armed robbery at 17, converted to Islam and swore allegiance to ISIS.

Padilla-Conde made videos in which he swore allegiance to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and said he planned to travel to the Middle East. 

“In 2015 and 2016, ISIS perpetrated hellish levels of violence. To this, Padilla-Conde was drawn and sought to contribute,” prosecutors said in a sentencing memo.

Missouri: Bosnian Muslim refugee who funded Islamic State gets 5 1/2 years prison

Armin Harcevic, 41, who supplied money to help a man who fought and died for the Islamic State in Syria was sentenced Friday to five and one-half years in prison.

Harcevic, who came to the U.S. in December 1999, will be deported after he is released from prison. He was one of six people originally from Bosnia who were indicted in 2015.

Connecticut: Muslim Immigrant Pleads Guilty to Conspiring to Provide Material Support to ISIS

Azizjon Rakhmatov, 32, a citizen of Uzbekistan and resident of New Haven, Connecticut, pleaded guilty today to conspiring to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). New York: Two Muslim Women in Queens Plead Guilty in Plot to Wage Jihad in the U.S.

Queens, New York: Two Muslim Women Plead Guilty in Plot to Wage Jihad in the U.S.

Asia Siddiqui and Noelle Velentzas, both citizens of the United States and residents of Queens, pleaded guilty to teaching and distributing information pertaining to the making and use of an explosive, destructive device, and weapon of mass destruction, intending that it be used to commit a federal crime of violence.

Noelle Velentzas goes by the name Amtu Shahid and she worked on behalf of the notorious Muslim organization Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA).

Montana: Muslim Immigrant Pleads Guilty to Lying About Jihad

Fabjan Alameti, a New York City resident who was arrested at a Bozeman shooting range, today pleaded guilty to charges of making false statements involving international terrorism to the FBI, announced U.S. Attorney Kurte Alme for the District of Montana.

Alameti, 21, pleaded guilty to two counts of false statements to a federal officer in a matter involving international terrorism. He faces a maximum eight years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release.

Maryland: Muslim Immigrant Indicted for Attempting to Provide Material Support to Islamic State

A federal grand jury today returned a superseding indictment charging Rondell Henry, 28, of Germantown, Maryland, with federal charges of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, specifically, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), and interstate transportation of a stolen vehicle.

Texas: Muslim Charged with Conspiring to Provide Material Support to ISIS

Omer Kuzu – a 23-year-old U.S. citizen born in Dallas, Texas – was detained overseas by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and recently transferred to FBI custody and returned to Texas. He made his initial appearance before Magistrate Judge Irma C. Ramirez in the Northern District of Texas today.

[No Photo Available]

Mexico arrests Muslim - a U.S. citizen - suspected of supporting violent jihad

Federal officials have arrested a United States citizen and suspected jihadist at a migrants’ center in Huehuetan, Chiapas, near the Guatemala border.

The suspect, identified only as Mohammed “A,” is being investigated in the U.S. for supporting jihadist groups and was sought by Interpol citizen” jihadist caught in Mexico.

More on the “U.S. citizen”  jihadist caught in Mexico

The man, identified by Mexican media as “Mohammed Azharuddin Chhipa”, was found and arrested at a migrant detention center in the town of Huehuetan...

I was told that Chhipa actually was outbound from the United States and on his way toward a foreign jihadist group to join them, at least initially to Egypt. The reason Chhipa was traveling southward away from the United States was because he was on the American “no-fly” list and couldn’t depart from an American airport.

More Jihad in America in August

Florida: Muslim tries to slash Walmart employee, yells threats in Arabic

NYC: Muslim shouting “Allah Akbar” shoves NYT illustrator onto subway tracks

Philadelphia: Man who shot six cops attended radical mosque

New York: Imam Active in Interfaith Work Disseminates Extremist Propaganda on the Side

Immigration Jihad

New Jersey: Former Afghan Interpreter Indicted in Scheme to Smuggle Illegals from Afghanistan to U.S.

Somali, Algerian and Iranian arrested for smuggling scores of illegals from Africa and Middle East into Brazil, and ultimately into the U.S.

Bangladeshi Muslim Pleads Guilty to Bringing Illegals to the U.S. from Mexico

Minnesota: Iranian national pleads guilty, stole restricted U.S. technology and exported to Iran

California: Muslim immigrant in LA gets 30 years for scheme to sell surface-to-air missiles to Libyan militants, Hizbollah

Missouri: Somali Immigrant Charged with Kidnapping Daughter of Girlfriend Found Dead, Stuffed in Suitcase

Sharia in Schools aka Education Jihad in America

Michigan: All the meat in Dearborn schools is now halal, i.e., sharia compliant... at taxpayer expense

Tax-Payer Funded Islamic Propaganda Forced on Teachers in Michigan, California, Georgia, Texas, Florida

Virginia: Methodist-Affiliated Shenandoah University Hires Muslim Chaplain

Submission to Sharia in America

CAIR Official Admits Women Don’t Have Equal Rights Under Sharia Law

Connecticut: Terror-linked CAIR tries to shakedown minor league baseball team owner, fails

Minnesota: Bloomington Mosque Blasting Neighborhood with Islamic Call to Prayer (VIDEO)

Pennsylvania: Minor league stadium, home to the Iron Pigs, to host Muslim “festival of sacrifice” event

New Jersey: Muslims take over Metlife (Giants) Stadium for (segregated) Islamic “festival of sacrifice” prayer

Previous monthly reports here.

Sexual Jihad in America

Texas: Muslim cleric ordered to pay $2.55M in sexual exploitation of teen girl

Philadelphia: Immigrant Uber Driver Convicted of Raping Unconscious Female Passenger

Fraud for Jihad

Missouri: Somali Immigrant Day Care Owner Gets 4 Years in $556,000 Fraud Scheme

Maine: Muslim pleads guilty in tax preparation scheme run out of Portland halal market

California: Egyptian Physician to Pay Back $5M in Medicare Fraud Scheme

Dhimmitude in Elected Office and Courts

FBI Report: Question the Islamberg Compound, You're a Potential “Domestic Extremist”

California: Judge vacates sentence of convicted terrorist, blames CAIR lawyer’s incompetence

Democrat Presidential Candidates Bernie Sanders, Julian Castro to Speak at Terror-linked Group’s Islamic Convention

Minnesota: City of Bloomington pays $28K for driveway that increases fair market value of terror-linked Dar Al Farooq Property

Texas: First Known Convicted Terrorist Asked For ‘First Step Act’ Early Prison Release

Saudi judges: American woman “too Western” to raise daughter she had with Saudi ex-husband

And if that wasn’t enough, Muslims who live by, and want everyone to live by the sharia, are going to try and make that a reality by getting elected.

Tennessee: Nigerian immigrant  woman could become first Muslim voted to Nashville city government:

Ohio: Somali Muslim refugee seeks to become first in 25th House District

Please share this report on your social media sites before it’s too late.

Previous monthly reports here.

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 34

Okay, we finally hear from our saboteur, and why she did it.

Once Conor was escorted from the room to wait in the corridor, I braced myself for what was to come. Where the other members of the Council had their assistants standing behind them to locate and send them relevant information, I was surprised to see my sister standing behind my chair. “It’s temporary, until we can find someone else to fill the role,” she responded to my questioning glance.

Translation: I don’t trust anyone else to be here right now. “What did you have to promise to be allowed in here?” She had previously injured herself pretty badly trying to break down the door between her and the woman who would shortly be standing in the room with us.

“No assaulting her, no talking to her, I can’t even walk on the same side of the room where she will be,” Tyche rolled her eyes and sighed before perking up. “But, if she comes over here, I’m allowed to take any action necessary in defense of myself or my sister.” A shiver trailed down my spine at the feral and bloodthirsty grin on her face.

Time to change the topic. “Did you really have to sedate Conor?”

She just shrugged. “He was shouting, and it was upsetting you even worse than you already are. When your nose started bleeding like that, I thought you ruptured your sinuses again. I would have sedated you if I was one-hundred percent sure it wouldn’t have reacted badly with the medications you’re already on.”

“Fair enough.” Wait. “What d’you mean, rupture my sinuses again?”

“Short answer is: your sinus cavities were crushed when you were assaulted, plus internal soft-tissue damage.  At one point while you were unconscious, your blood pressure spiked hard enough that several of the blood vessels in there ruptured because they hadn’t healed enough. Noah induced a coma to keep that from happening again. You almost both drowned and exsanguinated, which I didn’t even know was a thing, but they got you right again.”

I shook my head carefully. “When am I going to get the full list of what all needed fixing?” I gestured to my head.

“After the trial, which is about to start,” she shushed me, nodding to the opposite side of the table.

Some cruel trick of fate, or possibly putting my sister as far as possible from her potential victim, had placed me directly across from the space where Arantxa would stand for her trial. I tried to remind myself that, while I would have to face my attacker and traitorous former friend, she would also have to sit directly across from the person she failed to kill.  There was at least a little sense of drama from whoever decided the seating arrangements. Eino called for us to stand as ‘accused’ was ushered into the room.  Once she was escorted, hands bound and head held high, to the empty space, the charges against her were read.

“Arantxa Bidarte,” Eino intoned. “You are here on trial for the charges of attempted murder of a sentient being, conspiracy to commit murder of a sentient being, conspiracy to sabotage a rescue vessel, and conspiracy to exterminate the human race. Evidence of your actions has already been provided to those present.  Under Galactic Law, which we have chosen to exercise here, you are allowed an interval of time equivalent to no less than twenty Terran minutes, unless you waive the minimum, and not to exceed six Terran hours in which to make a statement in your defense.  After your statement has been given, you will be questioned in regards to the crimes of which you are accused.  Do you understand what will take place here?”

“I do,” she answered crisply.

“Council, be seated,” Eino allowed.  I noticed that Arantxa was forced to remain standing and had not been provided a seat. I made a mental note to ask about it later.  Once seated, he nodded once more at Arantxa. “You may begin.”

Head still high, she looked around the table before her gaze fell on me. She had the decency to look ashamed once she saw the purple and green splotches making up much of my face. “Ladies and Gentlemen of the Council,” she began. “I stand here today accused of several atrocious acts against this ship and the community within it. I was caught in the act of one such act by two of the Councillors in this room, and I am sure you have already spoken with the others involved while I was convalescing, so I will not insult your intelligence by claiming innocence.”

“Humanity is a plague,” she spat, her tone changing from one of righteous dignity to one of disgust. “We made the planet we came from unlivable.  We gave priority status to the rich, the same people who exploited Earth’s resources for profit, again and again.  Hundreds of species of plants and animals, none of which did anything to deserve what we did, were driven to extinction when we stole and destroyed their habitat. When the Global Parliament was instated, we told ourselves that everything would be better.”

“We lied. We lied to ourselves, to those who trusted us to lead them, and to any future generations. The only thing that changed was that we spent all the time we previously used to wage war on each to wage war on our own planet.  The sheer amount of processing and production of materials needed to complete the Icarus Project caused irreversible climate change. More animals driven to extinction, more plants.  Millions died from heat waves, droughts, floods… and we promised it would be okay! We told ourselves, over and over, that we could fix it by solving the problem of overpopulation. A new world, we said.”

“An entirely new world for us to destroy and exploit.  And again, the rich were given priority, allowed to leave the planet they convinced us to ruin in the first place.  We could not allow that; yes, Earth was already past the point of supporting our lives, but we could not allow humanity to spread like a virus to other worlds, drive whole new species into extinction.  So yes, we sabotaged the ships headed to Goldilocks.  And yes, we fully expected it to cause all global power and information systems to go dark. Humanity was supposed to die on that planet, quarantined to protect any other species out there.”

“But even then, as Councillor Reid has summed up so well when recounting waking on the Ark for the first time, we can’t even die properly.  Instead of the inevitable decline that a plague deserves, our gracious hosts have decided to spread us around to the rest of the known universe.  How kind of them!  Imagine my horror waking up here, realizing that all the hard work my people had done was for nothing!  Ten thousand plague-bearers, chosen for how robust we were and being taken to a new world to grow like a bacterial culture. Everything I had worked against, coming to fruition.”

“I was not the only one, as you already have discovered.  I was assigned as an Administrator, and cultivated a relationship with Tyche Reid.” I could hear my sister growling from behind me. “Imagine how fortuitous it was for me when I was assigned to her sister, the newest member of the Council.  I knew the gods were smiling on me when I was given a perfectly solid reason to have access to human staffing for every portion of the Ark.  I already had a friendly working relationship with Sophia’s sister, and further ingratiated myself into her little so-called family at every opportunity.  Ridiculous woman just adopts people,” she scoffed.  I felt like I was being stabbed; I realized that part of me still hoped that our friendship had meant at least something to her, but here she was practically admitting I was nothing but a tool she had used.

“Yes, my conspirators and I made a plan to hopefully destroy the ship, or at least throw it off course far enough that we would have time to take more drastic measures.  No one anticipated the Ark would immediately drop out of FTL when the sensors went offline. Then, that damned pilot was on board. How did a pilot who was supposed to be dead get on board this ship!?  Can we not just die properly!?” she practically shouted before taking breaths to calm herself. “Even drugging everyone on Level One could not work properly, because Tyche Reid had to be allergic to a drug that has been in use for centuries, and that damned idiot pilot wouldn’t fucking eat!”

“And then,” she blew a harsh breath out through her nose. “Then, Sophia had to start figuring things out, connecting all the dots. As soon as I heard her talking to herself in the shower, I knew something had to be done.  It was already known that someone on Level One was responsible, thanks to the slip up with the drugged food being found out.  If she reasoned out that I was primarily the one behind all of it, she would have stopped us. I realized no one would ever suspect me; I was her best friend, her sister, and all that nonsense.  Yet again, she wouldn’t just die. Oh no, she fought back, and by the time I thought she was dead, they had to walk in while I was trying to get my hand out of her fucking hair.” She gestured at Xiomara and Grey before shaking her head. “You have to understand, we cannot be allowed to spread into the universe.  We are death incarnate.  We killed a planet that, by all rights, should have killed us first.  We wiped out several entire animals on our home world that should have eaten us alive, but we domesticated them and killed off the rest.  Being allowed to start all over again is a mistake. Please do not allow this.”

I was stunned.  She had just admitted to acts of global terrorism, two attempts at genocide on humanity, and two attempted murders. And she wanted us to listen to her?

What the actual fuck.

Looking around at my fellow members of the Council, their faces betrayed the same thoughts.  She apparently saw the same thing, because she started speaking again. “Do not discount my words because of my actions.  Instead, take my actions into evidence of how barbaric we are, deep down. Take into account Derek Okafor’s actions against me, as well; if a kind, shy boy can deliberately inflict pain, deliberately break bones, what does that say about humanity?  Tyche Reid, as well, in regards to her attempted actions when her sister was injured: instead of waiting by her bedside, her first instincts were to attempt revenge and damage herself in the process.  We are savages,” she growled.

Grey Hodenson was the only person who could unclench their jaw long enough to speak. “Do you have anything further to say, Ms. Bidarte?”

“There is nothing that will convince you people,” was the response. “So, no.”

Grey nodded and stood. “Under Galactic Law, intended victims of the accused who are aware of the crime committed are allowed to speak.  Miys has waived their right to such a statement due to need for impartiality, which is customary for their kind.  Sophia Reid, would you like to make a statement?”

I took a deep breath to brace myself before nodding and standing. “Do I have the same time constraints as she did?”

Grey nodded. “We cannot stop you before twenty minutes have passed, and you may not exceed six hours.”

“I won’t need six hours,” I shook my head. “I doubt I will need twenty minutes.” I turned my head to where the fuming accused stood. “Arantxa Bidarte.  You were one of the first people I met on this ship. We worked hand in hand for several months, two parts of a whole.  I welcomed you into my home, shared my family and dreams of what humanity could become with you. I watched one of my dearest friends fall in love with you, with no reservations. Yet you stand here today, admitting that it was all a lie on your part, that you used us.”

“As much as that hurts – and it does, worse than being cut in half did – what hurts even more is knowing that you listened to nothing that we talked about in all that time.  The entire reason that Noah and their people tried to save humanity is because they saw something worth saving.  I do not deny that the wealthy and corrupt held power for too long, and that is a mistake we have all recognized.  You yourself said to me that you thought I would be a good leader because I did not want to lead.  Maybe that was the problem on Earth; we allowed those who wanted to lead to take the reins, but that is something that we can fix, if we have the chance that you want to deny us. See, for all the evils that you stand there accusing our entire species of, there are amazing things that we have accomplished as well.  We always try to better ourselves, to learn from our mistakes.  You mention Derek’s reaction to seeing what you did to me, but you cheapen it.  Derek is not a vicious monster, like you try to make him sound.  Despite the fact that he doesn’t like touching people, he overcame that to protect his family rather than stand there helpless and watch me die. That’s not barbaric.  Tyche’s actions as well: she was willing to injure herself to make sure you could never hurt me again, and from what I understand she hurt herself pretty badly.”

“Yes, we made our planet unlivable, but we are trying to learn as much as we can to prevent doing that once we reach Kepler 442b.  How can you have spent so much time around Conor and not noticed how we are trying to adapt our plants to Kepler’s environment, if and only if the native vegetation will not sustain us?  And all of it is being engineered to prevent it from becoming invasive and killing local species off.  Animals will not be released into the wild, not even the aquatics, for the same reason. Giang’s people are trying to create sustainable structures that require minimal natural resources.  But all you see is what you want, that we wrecked one planet and presumably will wreck this one.  No one on this ship wants that to happen, except you.  We just spent a decade surviving a slow apocalypse that you admit you caused, on an already dying planet, because the rich and wealthy left us nothing.  We are so much better than you think we are, and we deserve the chance to prove that.”

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[marcjampole]

The ultimate hypocrisy is Trump GOP response to Las Vegas & Texas church shootings & New York truck mayhem

When a mentally ill ISIS supporter plows a truck into bicyclists in New York, killing eight and injuring 15, Donald Trump calls for the ending of an immigration program that has given our country hundreds of thousands of highly productive and patriotic Americans over the years.

But when mentally ill gunmen perpetrate horror after horror, all Trump and the GOP can do is ask us to pray and blame it on mental illness. Not a word about making it harder for the mentally ill to purchase guns. Nothing about prohibiting automatic rifles, expanding the national no-gun registry, prohibiting perpetrators of domestic violence and people on the government’s terror list to buy or own a gun, extending gun waiting periods and making them apply to gun shows or making people take gun tests to own a gun license.

Las Vegas, Sutherland Springs, Charleston, Orlando, San Bernardino, Sandy Hook.Those are some of the biggest shootings over the past few years. And so far in 2017,there have been 307 mass murders committed by firearms in the United States. Most of these were not acts of terrorism. All of them involved guns. Some of these mass murders could have been prevented by more restrictive gun laws. Others, like Las Vegas and Sandy Hook, would have been much less destructive if automatic weapons were prohibited.

Survey after survey shows that most people—and most gun owners—want greater restrictions on gun ownership. And yet, state legislatures and the Congress refuse to pass any law restricting gun ownership and in recent years sought to expand gun rights. As a group, legislators have displayed a craven disregard for life and a dismissive disrespect for voters. A persistent theme in news media coverage is the fear that candidates have of offending the voters. More often than not, however, and certainly in the case of gun control, candidates and legislators don’t care a gnat’s hindquarters about the voters’ wishes. What they care about is pleasing their corporate masters. The gun industry was one of the first industries to recognize the value of investing in the political process. It would be more accurate to write that politicians worry about what their constituencies think, and leave it to the insiders to understand that big money interests and not the voters are the constituencies being referenced.

The hard facts support gun control. While a federal law prevents federal dollars from supporting research into gun violence (yes, Congress did that!), enough research does exist to demonstrate without a doubt that the more guns in a society, the more deaths and injuries from gun violence will occur. The causes are various: self-inflicted, friendly fire, accidents, mass murders. But very few gun deaths and accidents occur in defense of life and property. The conclusion is obvious: the more we restrict guns, the fewer gun deaths and accidents we’ll have.

The facts disprove the main argument of the gun industry that owning a gun keeps you safe. You may feel safer with a gun in the house or strapped to your side, but you have actually put yourself at greater risk of injury or death.

Of course, gun ownership is not the only issue in which Trump and the GOP talk and act against the facts. On immigration, education, the environment and taxation, Trump and the GOP persist in spewing myths, lies and disproven theories.

There is a second edge to the Trump and GOP hypocrisy, which the events of the past few weeks have sharpened. When a Muslim or immigrant commit a mass murder, it’s terrorism. But when a red-blooded American commits a mass murder, it’s the act of a lone looney. Make no mistake about it: this racialization of mass murder is another attempt to distract us from the real problems. Sowing resent against Muslims and immigrants helps to create an us-and- them world in which poor and middle class white Christians learn to hate and fear people of color instead of hating and fearing the group that is really hurting them—the rich folk who want to curtail social welfare, infrastructure, healthcare and education programs that help poor and middle class white Christians more than any other group.

[squareallworthy]

We are not having a civil war

Recently, you may have heard people speculating about whether we Americans are going to have another civil war. No, we’re not. Things have been bad lately and it doesn’t look like they’re going to suddenly get better. But not long ago, they were much worse than this without plunging us into war.

In the 1990s, just as now, far rightists began to organize themselves into armed groups because they thought social changes were about to destroy the country. Today they would be called alt-right; back then they were called the militia movement. In 1995, a couple of them, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, built a truck bomb and did this:

They killed 168 people, including 19 children. It was the worst act of domestic terrorism in the history of the United States, and it did not lead to a civil war. The militia movement continued, peaked in 2001, and is still around today.

In the 90s, as now, police violence fell especially hard on young black men. In Los Angeles, after a car chase, the LAPD pulled over Rodney King and repeatedly beat him with batons and Tasered him. This was not an unusual occurrence, but this time someone happened to videotape the assault. The officers involved were charged with use of unlawful excessive force, but were not convicted. On April 29, 1992, Los Angeles erupted into riot.

Rioting went on for six days and 68 people died. It was the deadliest civil unrest in the United States since the New York City draft riots of 1863, and it did not lead to a civil war. Racist police violence continued, and continues today.

Please understand that I am not drawing a moral equivalence between these two episodes in our history. I am not saying that they are two sides of the same coin, or that the rioters are just as bad as the terrorists, or any such nonsense. The only similarity I want to draw between them is this: they were violent beyond living memory, they scared a lot of people, and they did not spark a new civil war.

I am also not saying “you kids don’t  know how soft you have it; back in my day we faced REAL violence.” We’re not there yet, but things might get worse now than they ever were in the 90s; I don’t know. But now, just as in the 90s, they are not going to lead to civil war. We’re not going to have a war because Americans don’t want to have a war. Not enough of us, not by a long shot.

In a country of this size, a civil war doesn't require just a few jackasses on the fringes, it requires millions and millions of people who want to go out and start shooting at the feds. There just are not that many people who want that. It requires tens of millions of people to say, "Well, I've tried democracy and it's hopeless. Forget that. I want to leave my home, go sleep in the mud for a few years, and get into firefights with the US Army. Who's got a revolution I can sign up with?" There are always a few idiots who say that, a smaller number who actually mean that, but there is no mass movement that thinks that way. 

This may be belaboring the obvious, but you can't have a revolution without revolutionaries. In recent talk about a supposedly immanent civil war, I have't heard people saying they want an armed rebellion. I've heard them saying they're afraid of other people starting an armed rebellion, but nowhere is the necessary constituency that wants to do that. However bad political violence gets now, we will turn back from war because there aren't enough of us who want war.

Nazis who rally to "unite the right" and "take back our country" aren't even calling for war, they're just trying to get people who think like them installed in office. When the police in Charlottesville shut down their rally, they did not respond by shooting the police and holding their rally anyway. Because they are gutless cowards who don't even buy their own bravado, they didn't attack the state, they attacked civilians. One of them rammed a car into a crowd of counter-protesters. Police arrested a suspect, James Fields, who had been photographed holding a shield showing the logo of Vanguard America, a white supremacist organization. Vanguard America immediately disowned him, saying that he wasn't a member. That's not revolution, that's meekly cowering before the power of the state. They did this because they know that they command no real support in this country.

There is no mass movement in support of a civil war.  And that's why there isn't going to be a civil war.

Nevertheless, it matters whether people talk as if we're headed for a war. It frightens people who should not be frightened, and it emboldens people who should not be emboldened. We need thoughtful people of good intent to engage with the political system. We need to do the boring, constructive work of cooperative politics. And we need to punish politicians who flirt with violent bigots. If we scare people into thinking that our political order is about to collapse, we undermine the usefulness of that order. We contribute to the current crisis, making it last longer and cost more than it has to.

By talking about a civil war, we discourage the good, and we also encourage the bad. People who already think violence is good will think that this is the time to do it. People who don’t want to commit violence themselves will try to use the violence of others as an implicit threat. By magnifying the specter of a civil war, we yield power to the violent, encouraging more violence.

The fabric of our republic is incredibly strong. It can hold up under nearly any strain. The Civil War, the real one, happened only because a third of the country heavily invested in the legal ownership of human beings. There is no issue dividing us today that is comparable to that. We are now passing through a bad era again, but we will pass through it. We did not resort to war during the terror attacks in the 1990s by the militia movement, or in the 1970s by the Weather Underground, or in the 1920s by the Ku Klux Klan, and we won’t resort to war now.

[preserving-ferretbrain]

The Reading Canary: Chaos Sucking

by Robinson L

Sunday, 29 March 2015

Robinson L tears into the second and third books of Patrick Ness' "Chaos Walking" trilogy

Uh-oh! This is in the Axis of Awful...~

Patrick Ness began the Chaos Walking trilogy with The Knife of Never Letting Go, which our esteemed editor reviewed here. I can't be bothered to give a synopsis, so please read the review if you need filling in on the particulars of New World, the characters, Noise, etc.

I don't have much to add to Kyra's assessment of Knife, except that the phonetic spelling coupled with the first person narration really, really bugged me.

Anyway, Ness followed up Knife with book two, The Ask and the Answer, and rounded out the trilogy with book three, Monsters of Men. Since my primary issues with the two books are very different, I'm going to structure my analysis differently for each one. I'm also going to spoil the hell out of both of them, but I won't claim to do anywhere near as good a job of spoiling them as Patrick Ness did by writing the blasted things.

The Ask and the Answer

At the end of

The Knife of Never Letting Go

, Todd and Viola arrived in Haven only to find it taken over by Mayor Prentiss. The Mayor arranges for Viola to receive treatment at a local medical facility, but hides her location from Todd, making further contact with her contingent upon Todd's cooperation. Todd reluctantly goes to work for the Mayor, at first to assure Viola's safety, but as time goes on he begins to identify more and more with the role, even as the things he does grow more and more horrific.

After a brief convalescence, Viola escapes Haven (by now renamed New Prentisstown) and joins the Answer, a partisan group led by the head healer, Mistress Coyle. Though repulsed by the Answer's terrorist bombings in Haven/New Prentisstown, Viola throws her lot in with them to resist the Mayor's tyranny.

There's actually a lot of promise to this book, and Ness works that potential to a certain amount of success. This is simultaneously the book's biggest strength and its ultimate downfall. First off, let's look at what Ness is doing right before we examine how and where it all goes wrong.

Themes and Style

(Warning: The following section contains possibly triggering content in brief discussions of domestic violence, violence against women, and political terror)

It has happened throughout history: peoples who go to war tend to become mirror images of their enemy[1]

The tendency of two sides in an armed conflict to grow increasingly similar in the atrocities they commit against each other is one of the major themes Patrick Ness explores in

The Ask and the Answer

. Every attack by the Answer provokes Mayor Prentiss to implement another crackdown and increasingly draconian methods of social control … which in turn provokes the Answer to even greater acts of terrorism.

The other major theme Ness tackles in this book is corruption, how good people become party to political oppression, torture, murder, even wholesale massacres. By throwing in with Mayor Prentiss, Todd quickly finds himself on a very slippery slope, with each barely excusable but apparently necessary infraction leading to another, slightly less conscionable one. By the end of the novel, Todd has put a group of the local sentient species (Spackle) to work in a concentration camp, branded them with metal bands, branded the human women left in Haven/New Prentisstown as potential allies of the Answer, and helped torture women suspected—on no real evidence—of collaborating with the Answer

[2]

. He hates his job at every step of the process, but he's just about able to convince himself of the necessity of each step, helped along by classic apologist rhetoric courtesy of the Mayor, such as “Surely truly loyal women would be happy to make such small sacrifices to protect law and order” (I paraphrase, but that's the gist of his argument).

Judith L. Herman, author of

Trauma and Recovery

, makes the point that in cases of both domestic abuse and political kidnappings, perpetrators employ intermittent acts of kindness and “gifts” as part of the process of breaking their victims. Ness neatly illustrates this principle early on, with the Mayor using just such an application of strategic mercy to gain first Todd's cooperation, and then the people of Haven's.

The narrative in this book is split between Todd and Viola—fortunately, Viola's narration can actually spell, which significantly cuts down on the reading problem I encountered in the previous book. Even Todd's portions have gone down from literally painful to just occasionally irritating, either because Ness has eased off on the “creative” spelling or just because I've grown desensitized to it.

So to sum up: the book has good, well-observed discourse which deals with important contemporary issues, and even the spelling has upgraded to “tolerable.” And I couldn't effing stand it.

Presentation

My first major problem with

The Ask and the Answer

is that Ness employs all the grace and subtlety of an industrial sledgehammer in putting his points across. By page 100, even a functionally brain dead reader will understand how the Mayor is shaping Haven/New Prentisstown into a police state and shaping Todd into a model enforcer, how Mistress Coyle is just as bad as Mayor Prentiss, and how each atrocity by the one provokes a bigger atrocity by the other. Ness has made all his points crystal clear, but he takes the following 415 pages to beat them even further into the reader's skull, just to make sure. I can appreciate the points he's making, and under other circumstances would applaud him for making them, but I resent being bludgeoned by them.

My second major problem is that the themes Ness is playing with pretty much necessitate his main characters (especially Todd) acting absolutely horrible for 90% of the book—and spending most of the remaining 10% passive victims of forces beyond their control. As a reader, I can just about understand Todd's actions, but I still find them incredibly alienating. Perhaps there are authors who can write a good person who spends the majority of the story doing exactly what the reader desperately wants them not to do and still have it be engaging and not off-putting—if so, Patrick Ness is not among their number.

Part of the issue, I suspect, is that I came into the novel expecting an action adventure story with a dystopian setting, like Scott Westerfeld's

Uglies

or Suzanne Collins'

Hunger Games

. The latter two work as action adventure stories by carefully balancing out the dystopia's horror: even

The Hunger Games

at its grimdarkest, understands there are some places it must not go, so it doesn't. Ness dives recklessly into that dystopian horror, but still insists on retaining the action adventure elements: good wins over evil, the heroes emerge scarred but not permanently damaged, and no matter how badly they behave they never cross the

Moral Event Horizon

. The two styles clash horribly, and if there was any hope of Ness pulling off the “Todd becomes police state enforcer” scenario, making the series also an action adventure story drives the last nail into its coffin.

I'd probably have given up on the book early on, but the last damnable thing about Ness is that he's so masterful when it comes to tension that one can't stop reading—in that highly manipulative, almost drug-addicted mindset: “I don't want to keep doing this but it's so hard to make myself stop.” As it was, I frequently had to take a break from reading to cuss out Ness for feeding me this dreck.

The book has other problems. Early on, Ness introduces

two

young women who manage to feel like essentially the same character despite taking diametrically opposed reactions to Viola's arrival (one becomes instant Best Friends Forever while the other despises Viola and only helps her out of principle) and serve the exact same function in the story: get fridged in order to prompt Viola to action. Is it any less skeevy when a female character is fridged to further another female character's story instead of a male's? Somehow I doubt it.

At the climax of the novel, Mayor Prentiss also kills his son Davy, because Ness was worried he might be getting too subtle. Davy, of course, was in the middle of an awakening process and had almost become human, and his murder, along with sending the melodrama up to eleven (yet again), cut short a potentially interesting and enjoyable character arc. Looking at it that way, I suppose Davy had to go before he brought up the novel's enjoyment factor.

Davy's death is arguably the emotional high point of the book, but here Ness' “creative” spelling comes back to bite him in the arse. We have Todd the narrator standing over Davy's body, listening with tears in his eyes to the other's dying confession, and casually mentions hearing an “explozhun” in the distance. At that point, any pathos Ness had managed to achieve evaporated in a puff of abject silliness, and the whole scene instantaneously degenerated into unintentional hilarity. I'm given to understand, the technical term for this is “bathos,” or, if you're a fan of TV Tropes, “Narm.”

Final Thoughts

As one last method of annoying me, Ness spends the bulk of the book having Viola and Todd questioning each other's motivations for working for a despot and throwing in with terrorists respectively, and questioning each other's loyalty into the bargain. This ties into the theme of enemies in wartime becoming mirror images—with each side treating the other's atrocities as unforgivably monstrous while excusing its own atrocities as regrettably necessary. And it is equally alienating.

It also bears the distinction of playing to the cliché romance trope of misunderstandings cropping up between the lovers to cast doubt on their respective commitment. In other words: insufferable from two directions at once.

Nothing could make up for the excruciating alienation of the first 450+ pages, but I have to admit the ending, where Todd and Viola reconcile, agree to save each other like they always do, and proceed to lay a righteous smackdown on the Mayor is both sweet and greatly satisfying. Not good enough to be cathartic, but probably the best Ness could realistically have managed at that point.

In terms of sheer unreadability,

The Ask and the Answer

is the worst book of the trilogy, though it does have hands-down the best climax. It's probably the worst book in most other ways, too, but its awfulness is spread out over a space of 515 pages. There's no one moment where the reader stops, and—after double- and triple-checking to make sure that yes, they really did read something that abominably wrongheaded—says, “You know, I was with you more or less up to this point, but this part right here ruins it all.” For that, we shall have to look elsewhere …

Monsters of Men

In the final installment of the trilogy, Todd releases Mayor Prentiss to fight off a vicious attack by the Spackle. Meanwhile, a scout ship containing Viola's friends Simone and Bradley arrives on New World to prepare the way for the colony ships. Todd and Viola forge a reluctant alliance between the Mayor, Mistress Coyle, and the two scouts to protect the humans from the Spackle, and eventually secure peace. Naturally, this proves a difficult task, and divisions among the three groups constantly threaten to ruin the whole process.

What I Liked

I found

Monsters of Men

exponentially less excruciating than

The Knife of Never Letting Go

and

The Ask and the Answer

. There is some amount of the protagonists (especially Todd) doing bad/incompetent stuff when they should know better, but unlike in the previous book there's a lot of other things going on, most of which aren't nearly so alienating.

I scored this from the library on audio, obliterating any concerns over spelling, although I did catch the guy narrating for Todd's pronunciation of “reckernize” a couple times. Listening to the audiobook may also have helped with the difficult bits, as they went by quicker and with less active participation on my part.

The three narrators all do a terrific job. Nick Podehl (Todd) took a little while to grow on me, probably because he does such a swell job of nailing down Todd's voice, and spelling aside, Todd's narrative voice is definitely an acquired taste. He does a fantastic Mayor Prentiss, though. I'd always imagined Prentiss speaking with an affably evil, faintly patronizing tone; Podehl's Prentiss is straight-forward and conversational, which arguably works even better.

Angel Dawe (Viola), apart from narrating like a pro, has a thoroughly lovely voice. The pleasure of listening to her is only marred towards the middle, when Viola develops an infection, and her dialogue is interrupted with constant fits of coughing.

Rounding out the cast is MacLeod Andrews narrating for the Return, a Spackle whom Todd saved in the previous book, and the only survivor of the Mayor's massacre. Andrews plays his role well, adopting a faintly unworldly voice which conveys the character's alien nature quite well.

For the last installment in a series with such a propensity for mowing down supporting characters,

Monsters of Men

actually has a fairly low body count among the characters we're supposed to sympathize with, and many of the most likable supporting characters do, in fact, survive. Moreover, I can think of three specific scenes where I was sure Ness was setting up to kill off Bradley, Lee, and Angharad respectively, and in the end none of those things happened. I find it kind of nice when an author can fake me out that way.

The last compliment I'm going to hand out is for the world-building. The Spackle are still a bit more human than the sci-fi hardliner in me would prefer, but Ness does a fabulous job of fleshing out their society. For instance, they refer to themselves collectively as the Land, and their leader is the Sky. This confused me at first, trying to differentiate between people and geographic markers, but then the Sky refers to the time of the first war, when “we were a different Land under a different Sky”—which is beautifully poetic if you ask me.

What I Disliked

You remember what I said about a surprisingly low bodycount? Well of course, Ness had to balance that out somehow, and being Ness, his solution naturally rates approximately 80 MegaBrooks on the

predictability scale

. No points for guessing that the only semi-reasonable authority figure in this book dies, only to be replaced by one of our young protagonists.

And while Ness aptly demonstrates how warfare is always the product of some combination of misunderstanding, misinformation, prejudice, paranoia, and demagoguery, sometimes he seems to be saying that it can still be necessary. Many people will agree with Ness on this point, but I don't and it bugs me. A lot. If warfare is predicated on lies and behavior which is the height of iniquity in all other circumstances—then surely there are other ways to find solutions to the issues warfare is supposed to resolve.

Then there's all the bollocks about leaders and followers. As might be expected from the villain of the piece, Mayor Prentiss has a very elitist view of human nature, insisting that most human beings deep down really want to be led—people like himself and Todd and Viola and a few others are the exceptions, the ones born to lead instead of follow. This is how he's able to control large groups of men through their Noise, and how Todd occasionally does the same to one or two at a time. Even after he's semi-reformed, Mayor Prentiss still believes a benevolent dictator who shapes the people's will through their Noise is the best kind of leader.

The problem is that the text bears him out on this point. With a rare handful of exceptions, the people of New World really do behave like sheep, unquestioningly throwing their support behind one charismatic leader or another. The only amount of independent thinking they ever display is deciding which charismatic leader to align with. In short, they behave

exactly

like the born followers the Mayor describes. Sure, controlling them through Noise is bad, but controlling them through demagoguery is only bad if it's evil people like the Mayor and Mistress Coyle doing it.

Speaking of the Mayor, though, Ness actually does something very interesting with him during the middle third of the book. With the help of the scouts—Simone and Bradley—Todd and Viola force the Mayor to help them try to make peace with the Spackle. Nobody trusts him, of course, and Mistress Coyle vehemently insists that he must be up to something.

But Mayor Prentiss really does seem to be helping out and genuinely seeking peace. After a while he starts talking of having been “redeemed.”

[3]

Todd doubts this, and a couple times tells the Mayor flat-out “yer not redeemable,” but with a little less conviction each time. It gets to the point where Todd chooses to save the Mayor's life over Simone's.

There comes a time when the main characters have got all their problems pretty much sorted out. They've made peace with the Spackle, with the fate of Mayor Prentiss being the only major sticking point; the political situation among the humans has died down—Prentiss is still around, but the colonists will be able to deal with him when they arrive in a few weeks; Viola has recovered, Todd has a new father figure; all-in-all, things are looking up.

The interesting thing would be to stop there; Ness has things approximately where he wants them anyway, and sorting out the remaining loose ends will entail some tough decisions with no easy answers. It leaves us with the question of the Mayor, the terrible ghoul built up over the course of the first two books, now redeemed like Darth Vader, and inconveniently alive following his redemption, unlike Darth Vader. What is his place in society now? What manner of punishment will the Spackle and human communities impose upon him for his atrocities? How much punishment

should

they impose? How will he reconcile those atrocities with his own conscience?

Well yes, Ness

could

do that. Or he could have Mayor Prentiss yell out “Surprise! I really was evil along! And now I'm going to restart the war and try to get every single human being on this planet killed off in glorious battle! Muahahahahahahaha!” and have Todd and Viola et al. reply “Ahhh! Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!” and proceed to stop him, though only after a dully predictable climax involving a forest fire, a flood, and retreading territory Ness has already covered amply over the course of the book. Which is precisely what he does.

As a humanist, I reject the notion that any human being is beyond redemption, so I admit I'm biased. But that objection aside, having the Mayor prove a villain in the end is exponentially less interesting from a narrative perspective. The previous two books built up Mayor Prentiss as horrifyingly powerful and completely devoid of redeeming virtues. Fair enough, I could name a couple billion such villains from literature, and Ness does a better job than many of making his villain believable and threatening. Such characters exist to be righteously killed off in one fashion or another, and they're deliberately kept unsympathetic so the reader can cheer unreservedly when they get their fatal comeuppance.

However, when an author deliberately raises the question “is this villain redeemable?” there are only two ways things can go. Option #1 “No,” tells the reader absolutely nothing, does nothing to enhance the story, and goes nowhere. It's the worst kind of lampshade hanging: drawing attention to a stock trope while simultaneously playing that trope by the numbers and completely failing to do anything new or interesting with it. Option #2: “Yes,” on the other hand, leads immediately to the question “What then?” This opens up a vast field of questions and possibilities to explore, as illustrated above.

So, of course, Ness goes for Option #1. He does throw me a halfhearted bone by having the Mayor magnanimously commit suicide to spare Todd from murdering him. I'll admit that's better than nothing, but it still comes directly after the Mayor's own acknowledgment that he's “not redeemable,” and,

as our esteemed editor has pointed out

, having a character make amends immediately before nobly sacrificing their life is a lot easier than having them live with the consequences. In short, it's a cop-out.

The big climactic conflagration set off by the Mayor's return to form is tediously predictable. The Spackle turn against the humans again, but their leader comes around just in the nick of time to stop hostilities from flaring up again. Both Spackle and human characters have to relearn the lessons they spent the last four hundred effing pages learning in the first place.

[4]

Todd, Viola, and the other named characters run around putting out fires. Lots of characters whom we neither know nor care about die in the ensuing fire and flood, and Haven gets destroyed and it makes no difference. Todd and the Mayor have a showdown that—apart from taking place on a beach instead of Haven city hall—is a recycle of their battle at the end of

The Ask and the Answer

, bringing nothing new to the table.

For decades, action-adventure readers have been conditioned to expect a big, apocalyptic climax and final clash of good and evil, and to have a villain who's thoroughly evil, although the option of one last altruistic gesture immediately before they die has grown increasingly popular in the last ten or twenty years. It would've made for a much more original story to have the surprise twist be that the plot ends at the point where the characters had things mostly worked out anyway, with no big catastrophes or confrontations, leaving Todd and Viola et al. with the thorny question of what to do with a reformed but still troublesome Mayor Prentiss. And yes, that is counter-factual criticism but frankly, I'm beyond caring.

All this was irritating, but it was hardly unexpected. Indeed, as I've just explained, it would've been surprising if Ness

hadn't

thrown all that stuff in, cheap and annoying as it was. Unfortunately, there's more. Much more.

Minority Warrior

The following section covers aspects of the book which gave me pause. While they don't offend me personally, I suspect they might offend others—notably those who don't share my privilege—and I feel it behooves me to give fair warning.

Many people have objected to the fact that, in Ness' universe, human men have Noise but human women do not. Towards the end of

Monsters of Men

one character says that women probably do have Noise, and they have to figure out how to access it. At no point does Ness ever explain why Noise manifests so radically differently in women as opposed to men, and one is forced to assume it must be because women and men are so fundamentally different as to be practically two separate species. Which, um, they aren't.

When Bradley begins manifesting Noise, it quickly transpires that, big surprise, he has the hots for Simone, who for whatever reason isn't interested. Lee also has a hopeless crush on Viola, as if you hadn't figured that out long since. Ness uses their conditions to explore unrequited love, just as he's previously used the Noise to explore frustrated erotic desire.

The thing is, the only characters depicted as experiencing unrequited love are male. The only characters depicted as experiencing erotic desire are male. Viola desires Todd emotionally, and he reciprocates, and I think there's a brief allusion to Todd thinking about her sexually, but no hint that Viola might have such thoughts for herself.

It smells faintly of Nice Guy Syndrome, as does Viola's conversation with Simone, encouraging the other woman to give Bradley a chance because “he's a good man.” Maybe I'm paranoid or getting off on playing More Feminist Than Thou or both, but I think it may be telling that Ness has Viola appeal to Simone in terms of a rational assessment of his good character, rather than his desirability as a boyfriend or lover.

And getting back to that low body count among the sympathetic characters, arguably the most prominent sympathetic character to die in the book is Simone herself. Simone is the leader of the two-person scouting party; strong and competent and resourceful and pretty damn cool. And the thing is, once both she and Mistress Coyle are dead, the only female character of any importance to the story is Viola. Next runner up is Todd's

horse

for heaven's sake. Contrast this with the six prominent, sympathetic male characters who also survive to the end. Bit of a gap, there.

I've also seen Ness criticized for failing to consider homosexuality in the earlier books. In

Monsters of Men

, two of the most prominent sympathetic characters had same-sex Love Interests—both of whom were fridged earlier in the series, so I'm not sure Ness is scoring many points there, either.

Text Bomb

Getting back to the climax, the Mayor throws himself into the sea and dies, and Todd and Viola share a joyful embrace on the shore, knowing that whatever happens now, everything is going to be okay. And then the Return shows up and semi-accidentally kills Todd.

Excuse me, my melodrameter just overheated again.

…

Okay, that's better. My first thought on reading this was that it had to be the single most gratuitous bit of sensationalism Ness has ever written, and keep in mind this is

Patrick Ness

we're talking about.

Then he launched into a tortuously drawn out

[5]

scene between Viola and the Return. Like the rest of the series, it's all overblown and takes five times longer than it ought to in a mishandled attempt to enhance tension. But for all that, there's some decent character development for both Viola and the Return, and it does serve to underline many of the trilogy's themes. It even manages to tie in Todd's murder of a helpless Spackle fisher in

Knife

—the Return absorbed Todd's guilt for that act through his Noise, and now he bears a similar guilt for a similar murder.

Not that any of this was strictly necessary. Ness had already explored those themes quite satisfactorily, and Viola's and the Return's character development basically amounted to relearning lessons they'd already learned. The sequence added nothing new, but it did sharpen the recycled material.

Yes, it was inane and drawn-out and dumbed-down and more melodramatic than Russell T Davies on steroids, acid, and meth all at the same time, but coming out of the sequence I grudgingly admitted that it was more than just Patrick Ness indulging in yet more cheap sensationalism.

… And then he pulled a J. K. Rowling. Turns out, Todd's alive.

What the f***?

What the f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***?

Over on my livejournal, I coined the term “Text Bomb” to denote a development so unexpected and so ridiculous or awful or both that the reader's brain initially rejects it as impossible. In those terms, Todd's resurrection at the end of

Monsters of Men

is a Thermonuclear grade Text Bomb.

Mere words cannot describe the head-banging inanity of this move, but I'm damn well going to make them try.

I believe a number of people found Harry's resurrection in

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

a cheap cop-out, but in my view, Todd's is much, much worse. My reason is that Rowling had long since squandered any thematic coherence she might once have had. Harry's death and resurrection are equally meaningless because there are no themes to

Deathly Hallows

, just Stuff Happening.

Whereas Patrick Ness knows how to carry a theme. Sure, he's hamfisted and his repertoire consists almost entirely of cheap tricks, but as Dan pointed out somewhere in the

Girl Books for Girls series

(I believe it was Part Four) the thing about cheap tricks is that they do work. It's the crassest, basest way to say what you have to say, but it gets the job done.

Harry's return in

Deathly Hallows

has no thematic consequences—it's just Rowling wanking. Todd's return in

Monsters of Men

goes back and nukes all the thematic and character development Ness poured into the preceding scene. The whole thing—the emotional high point of the book, and probably the series—instantly implodes when the linchpin which gave it its driving force (Todd's death) is pulled away. In that one moment, the entire trilogy lapses into farce.

Admittedly, Ness puts together a pretty good excuse for why Todd seemed dead without actually dying, but this does nothing to address the thematic mess Todd's return leaves in its wake. If Ness really felt he needed to include all that development for Viola and the Return he should have had the guts to give his scenario the conclusion it demanded and have Todd stay dead. If he truly couldn't bear to kill off his protagonist, then, as I've already pointed out, it would've been perfectly plausible from a thematic perspective to cut the action off after the Mayor's defeat and not raised the prospect of killing his protagonist in the first place.

Ness chose neither option; he went ahead and wrecked his own discourse instead.

The Canary Says

The Ask and the Answer

is an excruciating read, constantly alienating the reader and dragging out its points

ad nauseam

.

Monsters of Men

is enjoyable if occasionally irritating, but its ending—when compared to the quality of the rest of the book—is one of the worst affronts to good literature ever published.

Maybe I'm being too harsh with Ness. He's obviously trying to be sophisticated and engage with some pretty complex ideas. In my view he sabotages himself by his heavy reliance on repetition and on sensationalism and grandstanding, but perhaps I give him too little credit. I found

The Ask and the Answer

just shy of unreadable, but people who are less bothered by protagonists doing wrong will probably have an easier time of it. And while the conclusion to

Monsters of Men

is a narrative travesty, people without my peculiar sensibilities may find it highly enjoyable despite its technical failings. If I really liked Todd rather than feeling mostly indifferent towards him, I'd probably cheer his resurrection even though it undermines everything Ness was trying to say.

Maybe I'm being too harsh with Ness, but I don't care.

I'm not here to be fair, I'm here to be judgmental

, and these books got right up my nose. My advice: stay away.

[1]

Nonviolence: 25 Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea

, by Mark Kurlansky.

[2]

The Mayor's method of interrogation is essentially waterboarding, and it is unambiguously treated and referred to as torture.

[3]

Granted, he attributes this to Todd's influence as if he were some sort of secular effing Messiah, which I didn't much appreciate.

[4]

Having to learn the same lesson over and over again is realistic, and I expect it's possible to depict this process in narrative fiction without being incredibly fecking annoying, but the task is beyond Patrick Ness' abilities.

[5]

What did you expect? Short and to the point?Themes:

Reading Canary

,

Books

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

,

Young Adult / Children

~

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https://ronanwills.wordpress.com/

at 19:51 on 2015-03-30I was initially kind of surprised to see this in the axis of awful, but then I read your actual post and thought back to my own experiences with the books and it's perhaps not that surprising.

I read The Knife of Never Letting Go more than six years ago, loved it and ran out to buy the other two. But I found The Ask and The Answer's relentless pacing and breathless prose so exhausting I felt like I had to take a break before tackling Monsters of Men.

That break kept getting longer and longer, and now the book is sitting on a shelf in my room, unread. Now that I know where the story ultimately goes, I'm kind of glad I didn't bother.

I'm willing to bet that if I went back and reread the first two books I'd probably be far less taken with them- it's been long enough that my tastes have changed significantly, and at the time I was young enough that "it turns out that both sides are just as bad as each other" still felt interesting and somewhat revelatory. When the same theme comes up in fiction now (the example that comes to mind immediately is Bioshock Infinite) I find it trite and not at all useful or worth saying.

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https://thatcharacterdies.wordpress.com/

at 01:07 on 2015-04-02On the subject of making a story about how both sides are committing terrible acts without making your protagonists monsters or completely passive- I think perhaps the best way is the noir approach. In other words, have your protagonist be basically decent, but caught up in the world of powers far beyond them, and thus unable to enact more than a little change. A good example of this would be John le Carre- take The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Lemas is more or less trying to be an okay person, but his attempts can't compare to the ruthlessness of the powers he's caught between. Of course, there's a reason le Carre tends to have downbeat endings, and noirs tend to be bittersweet or downers.

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https://francessmithsite.wordpress.com/

at 21:53 on 2016-02-19

Is it any less skeevy when a female character is fridged to further another female character's story instead of a male's? Somehow I doubt it.

I'm going to have to disagree with you there. I can see what you're getting at, but I don't think it's useful or even possible for a work of fiction to treat every character as equally valuable, for want of a better word, and everyone's story as equally important. Any attempt to try is likely to result in a shapeless, bloated mess. You have to decide whose story it is, and then you have to render everyone whose story it isn't subordinate to the person whose story it is.

To take the example that you've given, it sounds like the two young women are introduced solely for the purpose of getting killed later on in order to motivate Viola. And, to be honest, that sounds perfectly reasonable to me. If he had introduced them, developed them over several volumes, brought you to care about them and then killed them off in a perfunctory manner like poor Lian Harper then that would be something to complain about, to be sure, but I've always felt the real problem with fridging was not that it kills women but that in doing so it disrespects both the characters, the care and attention that other artists have put into them, and the love that they have inspired in the fans. None of which applies when the victim is a redshirt, and all of which conversely can apply when the character dies in a thematically valid conclusion to their character arc (looking at you, Adrian Tchaikovsky).

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Robinson L

at 22:30 on 2016-02-19Okay, good point about the difference between killing off an established, long-running character to motivate another character as opposed to killing off a walk-on. (I may be misremembering here, but I thought I heard somewhere that the original Woman in a Refrigerator was always intended to die to motivate her boyfriend - the Green Lantern - to do something or other, but was still given a good whack of development so that the reader would feel her loss along with him.)

I'm not entirely convinced, but no counter-arguments immediately spring to mind. If somebody else wants to take up the argument, I may or may not agree with them, but I'll let the point stand for now.

I mean, it can also be skeevy if a) female guest and walk-on characters are frequently stuffed in the fridge to motivate the main characters, or b) the tone of the piece gives the implication that this death is especially tragic or heinous because the victim is female, but these aren't always the case.

That said, introducing a character, and developing them just enough to make the reader mildly invested in them as such, and then killing them off to motivate a main character is often a cheap-shot. In this case, from what I remember, there were plenty of other potential motivations for Viola to take the actions she takes. (Another case in point:

The Night of the Doctor

.)

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[mascandolasletras]

The Case of the Prison-Monger

Hama Tuma

Great Expectations make frustrated men. Our parents, being realists, teach us from the outset not to yearn for big things – when you stretch up to reach higher things you drop what you had under your arms. Moral of the saying? Hold on to what you have and be satisfied. The more you want, the more chance you will lose what little you already have.

Still, we produce ambitious men. Anomalies, actually; a handful among millions. However, try to keep what you have is a standing order for all. Without exception. This is why an Ethiopian is surprised, even if opposed, at the extent to which the State goes to protect itself. Or, say, the Great Chairman himself. He has liquidated many of his close friends, he has struck alliances which change swiftly, he has ordered Terror and Massacres (what we call the TM diet) against the people, he has peddled the country’s sovereignty to the highest bidder (in this case none other than Russia which came big and fast with the item the Chairman needed most at the time – arms). From a rabid anti-socialist he has metamorphosed himself into the symbol of socialism in Africa (even if many say it is play-acting). All in order to keep what he has – absolute power.

The wife who expects affection and not love lives happily ever after with her husband who, like all husbands, spreads his love around. Parents who expect some consideration from their children and no more end up with disappointment. Pray to God but don’t expect miracles. Watch your health, but you may die soon. The less you expect, the less you get frustrated, and the greater is your happiness if you get more.

It is a philosophy of poverty and servility, you may say. Perhaps. Actually, it was expounded in a coherent form for the first time in the eighteenth-century manuscript by St Gebre the Poor. The manuscript, which read like a ‘How-to-live-satisfied-with-an-empty-stomach’ manual, could have sold well in the present weight-and-diet-conscious western world. It dealt not only with the filling capacities of a one-fruit-a-day-meal and warned how one can get fat and lazy by not exercising the mind, but it also advised believers on how to let ambition steam in its own pot and how to realize happiness through deprivation. A Chinese philosopher said to have plenty is to be confused. St Gebre said to want plenty is more than being confused, it is to court frustration, sin and eternal damnation. Next to Zarayacob, St Gebre is our only philosopher – and in themselves the two are also anomalies in this society of ours which looks at mental exercise with extreme contempt.

Over the years, the art of wanting little or being satisfied with what we have has become part of our culture. We do not even think about it, we just act by reflex. Contradictions and wars arise when our rulers want more. Take the late king. He raised the price of food and petrol. There we were, enjoying our starvation and famine, when he pops out with his price increase measures to take even the little we had left. He was reaching for more money, we rebelled and he lost what he had. A simplified but precise rendition of the revolution we had. Take the guerillas in the rural areas. They are seeking higher things like freedom, equality, peace and democracy. They want more than the slavery they have. The result? They lead a hard life of war and suffering, facing death and the TM diet. St Gebre wouldn’t have approved for sure.

Let it be said, however, that not all Ethiopians subscribe to the teachings of St Gebre. This is why we have upheavals, mutiny, unrest, wars and destruction. But the adherents of reduced expectations are still in the millions. It’s the only way to survive. When you live in the valley of the shadow of death you cherish life even if it is a mere existence. The case of the prison-monger was a good example of the philosophy of satisfaction with poverty. In my opinion, the man should have been given a medal (if not the Lenin Prize or the Chairman’s Medal of Valor, at least the Medal of Ingenuity in Accordance with the Teachings of Our Great Chairman). But let me not rush you… ‘Look at the accused,’ said the prosecutor pointing at the man in the Cage. ‘He’s young, I believe somewhere in his early thirties. He is robust, he is healthy. He could contribute to the building of the New Ethiopia. But no! For the last ten years, he has been continuously in and out of jails and prisons. As soon as he serves one sentence out he goes to commit another crime and to come back again. And each time he deliberately makes sure that the crime he commits does not get him the death sentence. He is an expert of the Articles of our Penal Code. He readily admits his crime every time he gets, or rather lets himself be, arrested. He has shown great inventiveness in managing to get himself behind bars. He is a prison addict, a real prison-monger. While in prison he studies via a correspondence school and is now in his third year of law. Can you imagine!?’

‘Our prisons are congested: we want to empty them. This prison-monger must, however, be punished. Up to now he has been arrested six times; if he reached the legal limit of ten then he would automatically get death, whatever the gravity of his crime. But he also knows this. I suspect he has plans to go up to the ninth with his petty crimes and prison sejours. How do we punish him? Do we send him back to prison? He wants that. To labour camps? He would be pleased. I think the best punishment is to set him free. If he goes to commit another crime, he should be arrested and set free again till he reaches his tenth arrest. Then we shall execute him. We want the prisoner freed, Comrade Major Judge.’

‘Objection, Your Honour!’ said the defence lawyer. ‘The accused admits his guilt. He has confessed to his crime and wants to pay for it. He has the right to be punished. , he has the duty to receive punishment. The law demands it. We can’t just set him free.’ ‘I agree,’ said the judge. ‘The prosecutor must realize that this is an open court with its own message to our enemies. So, we must hear what the accused has to say, at least. And then give him the necessary punishment. Proceed,’ he added to the defence counsel. ‘Thank you, Your Honour. I shall call the accused to the witness stand.’ The accused walked briskly to the witness stand – a healthy, athletic figure indeed. ‘You are Matteos Gudu?’ ‘Yes.’ A firm voice. ‘Is it true you have been in jail six times?’ ‘Very true.’ ‘What have you done this time?’ ‘Shoplifting.’ ‘Do you admit it?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Are you a kleptomaniac?’ ‘No. But I am a prisonomaniac. I love prison.’ ‘Why?’ ‘I was born poor. I lived with my family – all eight of us – in one single room which was so small that my friends used to joke about it, by saying that every time I turned over in my sleep I left the room. As a result, big rooms and open space suffocate me. Reverse claustrophobia you can call it. In prison, where close to seventy of us are stacked in a room fit for twenty, I feel alive and at peace.’ ‘Come now! We know that even if you stay outside you can easily get a small room to rent. In fact, that is the only thing you can get if you are lucky.’ ‘Yes, I know that. It brings us to the second reason why I love prison. Money.’ ‘Money?’

‘You see, after my first stint in prison, I looked desperately for work. I couldn’t get any. I had lodging problems as well; you must know that I haven’t had any living relatives in this city for a dozen years or so. Broke, hungry, sleeping on the pavement – I was destined to be a guttersnipe. I refused to submit to this. I stole again and got back to prison. This time for a year. No lodging problem, food was little but regular and even if it does not arrive, you can do nothing about it really. So you don’t worry. In prison, you could say, I found happiness and calm. When they came to release me, I begged them to let me stay but they refused. But I went out and came back again.’

‘Prison is a punishment. How could you not feel the lack of freedom? Being cooped up in a little hole? Being unable to move around as you desire?’ ‘What is freedom, I ask you?' said the prison-monger. ‘Who is he who can roam freely in our country nowadays? You need permission. When you are hungry, worried about it,  broke and with no place to sleep, freedom is an illusion. Your aching stomach does not enable you to sing with the birds or to roam like a well-fed ibex. You suffer and writhe, that’s all you get. But in prison, I found freedom even if I was hungry. My mind was at rest.’ ‘But you studied?’

‘That’s another thing which made prison lovely. In prison, I found a lot of intellectuals. They were ready to help me continue the studied I had interrupted a long time ago. I threw myself into books, I finished the school leaving certificate exams with honours and qualified for the university. I chose law since I am interested in this field. I am now in my third year.’ ‘Your teachers are anarchist?’ ‘They are political prisoners. We don’t discuss politics; I am not interested in it. But they are capable teachers and as you know the students who get the highest grades in the national exams are the ones in prison.’ ‘Theirs is a wasted life. Why do you fashion yours accordingly?’ ‘They are in prison for what they believe in. That’s their life. Mine: it would have been wasted on the outside. Can you guarantee me work? Do that and I will leave prison with joy.’ ‘I am a lawyer, not an employment agent. Maybe when you finish your studies, I could see. Anyway, don’t you feel ashamed to be a burden on the State?’ ‘I am not a burden on nobody. The State sends me to prison to punish me. I receive this willingly. Once in prison, I work, and I am now one of the best carpenters in the prison workshop.’ ‘You found no job as a carpenter outside prison?’ ‘Are you joking? There are hundreds of more able carpenters who are unemployed.’ ‘What about as a domestic servant? Or maybe you think that’s a lowly job?’ ‘No job is lowly if you need it. The servant field is saturated. Besides, not many people can afford servants these days. Others think maids and servants are becoming spies and are troublesome. So, no job.’ ‘Doesn’t it bother you to spend ten years of the prime of your life behind prison walls?’ ‘I told you no. you are in prison if you believe it to be so. Your house can be your prison. A palace can be a gilded prison for a king. The monk who shuts himself up in total isolation in a cave is not in prison. In prison, I met very many really free people.’ ‘Do you expect us to believe this?’ ‘I believe it.’ ‘What you want from life seems to be very little.’ ‘I yearn not for riches or high positions.’ ‘Commendable, indeed. But by being in prison, you try to escape the anguish and pain which gives life its salt.’ ‘Life has its miseries wherever you may be. King or beggar, free or a slave – each will get his share, though not equally.’ ‘Into each life some rain must fall…’ ‘It floods onto the poor. They try to dam it somewhat. My prison is such an attempt.’ ‘What sentence do you now expect for your crime?’ ‘I should be sent to prison for five years as Article 689 of the Penal Code states.’ ‘What if you are set free?’ ‘That will be a crime!’ The accused looked really shocked. ‘I have violated the law and I should be punished.’ ‘But if you are set free, would you commit a crime again?’ ‘I couldn’t avoid it. For the public good and mine, I belong in prison. To finish my studies as well. You know I can’t go to college on the outside with thousands of eligible students still on the university waiting list.’ ‘If you commit three more crimes, you will be killed.’ ‘Then death will be a relief indeed. Not punishment but real salvation.’ The prosecutor looked pensive. ‘You can cross-examine him,’ said the lawyer to the prosecutor. ‘I think you are insane!’ the prosecutor shot at the accused. The accused kept quiet. ‘I think you are a no-good lazy person,’ the prosecutor added. The accused remained silent. ‘I think you are a parasite who likes being one,’ stated the prosecutor. The accused said nothing. ‘I think you are a fellow-traveler of anarchists and a shame on your country,’ said the prosecutor. The accused just looked back at him. ‘I think being set free will fry your testicles to ashes,’ the prosecutor added in a matter-of-fact way. The accused looked startled but remained silent. ‘I think, Your Honour, I have no more questions,’ concluded the prosecutor. Judge Aytenfistu exhaled a lot of air and cleared his throat. The ritual over, he spoke. ‘You, the accused, you are a no-good, fast-talking, lazy, strange, crazy person. As the prosecutor said you are a parasite. You are also dangerous. Whoever finds joy in prison, whoever feels free in our jails goes against the order of things, goes against the expected. A cow can’t give birth to a puppy. Prison is punishment, not a source of calm and freedom. If such feelings as yours spread, our society will be in chaos. I agree with the prosecutor, you are hereby sentenced to immediate freedom.’ ‘But Judge…’ the accused began to protest. ‘No more! You are freed! Case dismissed!’ ‘You can’t do this! You must send me back to prison!’ the accused screamed. ‘Take him away!’ the judge ordered the policeman. As the policeman signaled the accused to get moving back to the Cage, the latter seemed to be struck by a revelation. He turned to the judge and what came out from his throat paralysed the whole court. ‘You call yourself a judge, you fat pig! You are an ignorant fool! Half the time you sleep on your bench! Your only qualification is your stupidity. I bet you are an impotent sissy. You…’ ‘SHUT UP!’ The scream came from the judge as well as from the prosecutor and the defense council. ‘You motherless squit!’ the judge fumed. ‘I will show you who is impotent. You castrated parasite! You can’t insult a judge and get off scot-free. I sentence you immediately to ten years of hard labour in the Robi Desert state farm. Take this dog away at once!’ the judge was beside himself. ‘Your Honour! That’s what he wants!’ protested the prosecutor. ‘That’s what this foul-mouthed son of a slut is going to get! Case dismissed. Court recess for ten minutes!’ The judge got up and walked out of the court angrily. Well, what can I say? The prosecutor growled at the accused, the defense lawyer did the same, the audience just stared. The policemen manhandled him. And the accused? If I ever saw a smile of happiness and satisfaction, there it was on his face. I wonder if St Gebre would have approved of such unorthodox methods to keep what little one has. The prison-monger went back, not to prison but to a state farm, and no one who knows state farms will say that they are not worse than prisons. The accused will even get anarchist teachers there. What more could he ask – a small over-filled room to sleep in, a piece of bread  or two for the day, backbreaking work, possibility of study, no worrying, freedom. He had it made, the lucky prison-monger. Still, I wouldn’t trade places with him. I will cling to my own little world. Who is free; me or the prison-monger? As St Gebre said centuries ago, it’s a world of relative freedom and relative bondage.

[yashuazbabygirl]

Ok friends, I’m about to lay some hardcore truth on you right now, and many of you are not going to like it. Some of you are going to get immediately defensive. But before you comment from an emotional place, I encourage you to stop, re-read this post, do a little bit of research about casual racism and white privilege and then come back and re-read the post again. After that, if you still want to comment, please feel free.

Ok, here we go....

Many of you are the problem. Yes, you read that right. Many of you are the reason why these riots are happening. Many of you are the reason why it’s come to this. This is especially true if you’ve ever (but especially in the last week) said any of the following;

1. “It’s awful but...” - No. No buts. In the English language, the word “But” is often used to deflect or to justify behavior. Police murdering black people in the street is awful. Period. End of discussion.

2. “I support the movement but not these disruptive protests...” - No, you don’t. Right now, the movement is taking the form of disruptive protests. They’re the same thing. You either want police to stop murdering black people in the street, or you don’t. If you do, then support the protests — even if you find them disruptive and frustrating — because that’s black people fighting for their lives.

3. “All lives/White lives matter too..” - no one said they didn’t. The conversation is specifically about black lives right now because police are murdering them in the street. Until police stop doing that, and White people stop dismissing it, it’s not “All lives matter,” it’s “MOST lives matter.” It’s not “ALL Lives” until Black Lives Matter too. Stay focused.

4. “There are good cops...” - There are two categories of cops; bad cops and complacent cops. There are many levels of Bad cops. The most obvious one is those officers that are murdering black people in the street. Bad cops are also sharing the hashtags “blue lives matter.” Bad cops are trying to shift the focus. Bad cops don’t stop their colleagues when they murder black people in the streets. Complacent cops just show up, follow orders and try not to take sides. Complacent cops are bad cops. Until they turn in their badge and gun, they are supporting state sanctioned white supremacy and terrorism against minorities. ACAB.

5. “I don’t support the looting and destruction...” - no one says you have to, but please stop acting like looting nullifies the entire protest. And definitely stop acting like looting is “just as bad.” That’s like comparing someone stealing your car to someone murdering your child. They’re not equally bad. Stop pretending they are. Police murdering black people in the street is definitely worse than robbing a Target.

6. “Just because I’m white doesn’t mean my life has been easy...” Of course not. Everyone struggles. But being white has never been one of those struggles. Being poor has been a struggle. Being a woman has been a struggle. Being gay has been a struggle. But being white has never been a struggle. The same can’t be said for people of colour. I could go on and on about white privilege, but it would be so much easier if you educated yourself instead. This isn’t about how you, a white, cisgender, straight man has suffered in your life. This is about police murdering black people in the street. Stop trying to make it about you.

7. “I really wish they would protest peacefully...” - of course you do. They’re easier to ignore that way. People of colour have been peacefully protesting for hundreds of years. It hasn’t been all that successful. The reason riots and violent demonstrations work is because it makes people — especially white people — uncomfortable. We can’t ignore them when they’re waving torches in our faces. It scares us. It puts us on edge, which is precisely where we need to be. People only pay attention to the extreme. If you have trouble recalling a single one of the hundreds of peaceful protests that BLM held across North America last year, but you can still recall, with crystal clarity, the 1992 Los Angeles riots, then you’ve just proved my point.

8. “I don’t see color...” — Congratulations, you’re lying to yourself. Of course, you see color. And that’s good! Black people want you to see their color. Their colors are beautiful and the very foundation of who they are. If you don’t see their color, then you also don’t see their culture. If you don’t see color, then you erase their very identity. If you don’t see their color, then you also can’t see the pattern of violence they’re confronted with every day. If you don’t see color, then you’re blind to more than just racial injustice. You’re blind to the world.

9. “They shouldn’t have committed a crime...” - This one is a big one for me. Consider me triggered. A boy who steals a can of pop from a 711 does not deserve to be shot in the back three times. A man illegally selling CD’s on a street corner doesn’t deserve to be shot to death in front of a record store. A man who runs a red light does not deserve to be shot while reaching for his registration. This isn’t about their crimes; this is about bad policing. Stay on topic.

10. “Black people kill white people too...” yes, murderers exist in every race and walk of life. But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking police brutality, and the reality is, black officers are not murdering unarmed white men in the street. That seems to be almost exclusively white officer behavior. Stop gaslighting.

11. “Black people kill other black people...” - Yes, they do, just like white people kill other white people and Latinos kill other latinos etc. Crime related violence does not adhere to any imaginary racial boundaries or allegiances. But, we’re not talking about criminal violence right now. We’re not discussing drug violence or gang violence or sexual violence or domestic violence or bar brawls or whatever random type of violence you’d like to bring up. The conversation is specifically about POLICE BRUTALITY. Say it with me. Police. Brutality. Any other form of violence you bring up is entirely irrelevant. Please stay on topic.

12. “I support black people, but I can’t support the violence...” — In other words, you would prefer people of color continue to be murdered by police, rather than have them rise up violently against their oppressors. Got it. That’s not support.

13. “It’s not about race. We are all human beings...” yes, except people of color often aren’t treated like human beings. For instance, they’re being murdered in the streets like animals. On video. While people watch. While people do nothing.

14. “The looting and arson distract from their message. It’s their fault for not controlling it...” If you’d like to lay blame, how about we start by blaming the police who frequently murder unarmed people of color. If they didn’t frequently murder unarmed people of color, the protest wouldn’t be necessary. The protest wouldn’t have turned into a riot, the riot wouldn’t have turned violent, and looting wouldn’t have happened. Blaming the oppressed for not better “controlling” their social unrest is asinine.

15. “More white people are killed by cops than black people. Here are the statistics...” - I love when people do research! Thank you for that! But those stats that you’re proudly flashing around aren’t an accurate reflection of the issue. According to data, there are approx. 234,370,202 white people In the United States. Comparatively, that same data states that there are 40,610,815 “Black” Americans. So, when your stats show 1,398 white people have been killed by officers since 2017 and only 543 Black people, what those statistics really show is .0005% of white people were killed by police in those 3.5 years, while .0011% of black people were killed by police. That means black people were killed at a higher rate. 220% higher, to be exact. Math has no racial bias. Those aren’t great stats. Stop using them to defend your position.

16. “Black people commit more crime...” - Do they really, though? According to data released in 2017, there were 475,900 black prisoners in state and federal prisons and 436,500 white prisoners. That’s a difference of about 9%. So for argument's sake, let’s say those numbers are an accurate reflection of the amount of crime committed. If people of colour commit only 9% more crime, why are they killed by police at a rate of 220% higher?

17. “Well, the same stats you mentioned shows that even though they’re only 12% of the population, they commit 54% of the crime.” - Good Catch! You’re right. But those numbers don’t actually reflect the amount of crime committed. That’s why I said to assume they’re correct. Those numbers only reveal how many people are incarcerated. The reality is, while those numbers are all we have to go on, they don’t tell the complete story either. In the United States specifically, socioeconomic racism, which was designed to keep POC in poverty through district red-lining, lower quality of education and other systemic obstacles, is a huge component. Thanks to redlining (look it up) and other zoning and banking practices, the quality of education in “black” neighborhoods are significantly lower, which means the average income for POC in those neighbours is lower and the unemployment much higher. Also, thanks to redlining, the unemployment rate, and lower-income rates, crime in those neighborhoods tends to be higher. That means those neighborhoods are patrolled by police more often. Thanks to racial bias, POC are followed, stopped, harassed and arrested more frequently than the white people who live in those same neighborhoods. What all of this means is that, when POC are arrested more frequently, they often can’t afford fancy lawyers to help them. They usually end up with Public Defenders, who are often overworked, and they often encourage POC to plead guilty in exchange for less time. Then there’s the fact that, because white people make up 73% of the population, they also tend to make up a bigger percentage of Jurors. There’s lots of factors to consider. So don’t assume that just because they make up 54% of the people in jail, that they make up 54% of the crime. The entire system is broken. That’s part of the problem.

18. “You’re promoting violence and destruction, shame on you...”. - I don’t remember encouraging anyone to riot. I also don’t remember encouraging anyone to loot or commit arson. The truth is, looting and arson is certainly not my preferred form of protest. But it’s important to remember that protesters haven’t committed most of the violent behavior. Civil unrest tends to cause chaos and confusion. That chaos provides the perfect opportunity for poor-intentioned people to do poor-intentioned things. That doesn’t mean the civil unrest should stop. I don’t condone the violence. I just don’t think it should dominate the conversation. If you want to focus on the violence, try focusing on those officers who’ve killed POC in the street. You’re focusing on the wrong violence.

If any of you are guilty of saying any of the above, then I have unsettling news for you. YOU are the reason it’s come to this.

YOU are the reason peaceful protests haven’t worked.

They haven’t worked because YOU haven’t been listening.

YOU haven’t been learning.

These violent riots are happening because YOU have left people of colour, no other choice.

These riots are happening because no matter how people of colour have said it, taking a knee, marching the streets, bumper stickers, Banners, signs, or chants, YOU still don’t get it.

That doesn’t mean you’re bad people.

That doesn’t mean you’re racist. It only means you’re white. And that’s not a crime, any more than being black is.

The difference is, police aren’t going to shoot you in the street for it.

[alomgv86-blog]

State of our "Union"

I have been processing what is happening in our country as of last week. I really worry about what we have become. I want to say that I feel like this hits close to home since I was born and raised in Virginia. I lived there until I was 18 years old and during my time there I saw racism. People casually making racist jokes, stereotypes, and the love of the confederate flag. I would cringe at the amount of ignorance present but my hope was that future generations would exhibit less of these traits. As I watch or read news regarding the tragic events at Charlottesville, I think how did we get to this point. I feel like I want to say so many things I don’t know if I can even put this information into words. Sorry in advance if this sounds jumbled, I am just so frustrated. First, I think why are people marching to begin with, the basic premise is to save a statue of Robert E Lee. Why do people want Robert E Lee’s statue’s saved, he was a general yes, but what he fought for was slavery. The South fought to continue to have the right to own people. White people think about this, let’s say you were born black during this time, you didn’t have freedom at all, you were owned like a piece of furniture or an animal. Imagine your life, imagine people thinking you are inferior due to the amount of melanin in your skin. This man supported slave owners enough to fight a war to protect this right. This is the man you are looking up to. When statues are put up, it is in honor of something, this person doesn’t deserve this honor, and the statue should be removed. Imagine being black today, walking past a statue celebrating this person, going to a school with the name of a confederate on it, or with a confederate flag flying proudly above it. Would you feel welcome in your own country or state? I hear people defending the confederate flag saying it is southern history, history of treasonous acts toward America and slavery. Why do we have these things on display? When learning about history, this information will still be around, but shouldn’t be celebrated. I don’t understand why this is so hard for people to understand. Do you see people in Germany putting Nazi flags above their schools or naming schools Adolf Hitler Middle? The premise being that the Nazi flag is part of German history and Adolf was a general from our past supporting our rights (same poor logic applied here). Why do you figure they don’t put this on display, because it is history that is frowned upon not celebrated. Second, I feel so ashamed of our country when I think of people in the crowds yelling Nazi chants, holding Nazi flags, wearing Nazi shirts, and making heil Hitler gestures. Do you remember that America fought against the Nazis? How can you be an American while being a Nazi? White men marching about their country being taken from them. EXCUSE ME, I remember this time that Native Americans lived here and we killed them for this land that didn’t belong to us. White people are still the majority and have actually faced no oppression. What are you talking about? I hate to sound cliche, but really CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE. Looking at pictures of the crowds, seeing white men literally up in arms, marching, if that isn’t white privilege I don’t know what is. Imagine for one instant if during Black Lives Matter, 100’s of men had guns, they would have been SHOT and KILLED by the police even if the guns were registered and not being pointed at anyone or being reached for. Native Americans that were protesting the oil pipeline were hit with water cannons by cops. A black person getting pulled over for a basic traffic stop can get murdered at the drop of a hat. Yet you actually are attacking people, holding weapons, and the cops are like “Now Now Everyone Breathe”. People are chanting White Lives Matter, who said they didn’t, when were you oppressed? I challenge anyone reading this post to tell me when the white man was held down. I will save you the time, it doesn’t exist. White men have oppressed people since the beginning, now that the minorities have fairly equal rights white men are bent out of shape. Just because a minority has rights doesn’t mean yours are taken away. Why is this so hard to figure out? But PLEASE tell me more about the oppression you feel. Third, the people stating they have the right to free speech. I agree that is their right, they have the right to assembly as well. I understand that, I also have the right to disagree with the reasoning. You know who also had the right to assemble and that is the counter-protestors. Funny how when you are making a point about hate it’s free speech but when a point about love is made you try to stop it with violence. When I see photos or video of counter protestors being hit with a car, I cry. How could this happen in our country, a country that is supposed to be free? How could Heather Heyer die and so many others be harmed so maliciously? How can this not be labeled an act of terrorism? Fourth, the Nazi blog The Daily Stormer, writes a libelous blog post entitled “Heather Heyer woman killed in road rage incident was a fat childless 32 year old slut”. WTF. There are no words to how atrocious this is. Your piece of shit supporter kills a woman in a crowd protesting your garbage and you ATTEMPT to disgrace her name. How foul a “human being” must you be to think this is “OK”? I love how they put childless in this title. So she was a worthless human being because she wasn’t a barefoot, pregnant slave, CLASSY. Fifth, is the perpetual embarrassment I feel when I see our president. When he is to address this tragedy and he proceeds to say that this is on many sides. NO IT WAS ON YOUR SIDE!!! You say that you are a “no holds barred kinda guy or tell them like it is” this is a domestic act of terrorism, call it as such. This is group of your supporters that committed this heinous crime yet you can’t call it out. After hearing how he is just brushing this under the rug, the neo-nazi groups are celebrating his response. Basically to them it is a stamp of approval for their actions. “Make America Great Again”, boy our country really feels great doesn’t it? Finally I just don’t understand how the Alt-right and the rest of this group states to be so into America, they talk of the constitution and founding fathers. Yet they hold the flags of the enemies of our UNITED states. Do they not look at history books or remember the saying “melting pot”. Our country was founded on that principle. We were never founded to be all White men. If you want to live in a fascist society, go create one somewhere else. If you don’t like the “melting pot” then get the hell out. Sorry for the long rant, just so many different emotions, angry that so many years have gone by and we are apparently regressing. I am also sad that people have this much hate in their hearts that they feel the need to protest the existence/rights of other people. I want to be hopeful but it is difficult in the current climate.

[thedawgsblog]

TIME FOR THE DA TO “TAP OUT”

April 10, 2017, a day which will live in infamy in Stanislaus County judicial history. That is the day that Judge Zuniga made her ruling in the preliminary hearing. It was a day of surprises, disappointments and premonitions.

The morning started off with a warning from the judge for the gallery not to react when hearing the results of her decision. The gallery was full with 95% of the gallery in support of the innocent Carson 8. Those warning words did not bode well for the Carson 8 faithful.

The judge first dealt with Georgia Carson and Frank Carson’s stepdaughter Christina De Flippo who were dragged into the fray by overly zealous DA fladager whose sole intention was to disrupt the lives of innocent people in her attempt to subvert justice and cause as much misery, stress and financial loss as her wretched hands could squeeze out of them.

It is a terrible affront to taxpaying citizens and innocent persons to waste hard earned citizen’s taxes to try to destroy a person that is far more intellectually, professionally and knowledgeably gifted than herself. DA fladager brings shame and disrespect title of District Attorney. She has the attitude to destroy and damage anyone or anything that gets in the way of her getting on that pedestal that she hopes people will look up to. Not in this lifetime birgit!

She forgets history. Dictator Saddam Hussain had a huge statue of himself erected there in Baghdad. When the people of Iraq became tired of his egregious and dictatorial conduct, and with the help of others overthrew that dictator, they toppled his statue and hammered it into pieces. DA fladager will soon have to realize history will be repeating itself here in Stanislaus County very soon .

Right before the judge came to the bench, a parade of “investigators “came marching from the lobby down the aisle and inside the barrier that separates the gallery from the bench area. Why they were there is anybody’s guess. They should have been out working to solve crimes or to conjure up more false evidence to try to convict innocent persons. Another waste of taxpayer dollars. The only reason they could have been there is to gloat if any of the innocent Carson 8 were held to answer.

The whole shitamarie were there. Jon “don’t mention domestic violence around me cuz I got away with it “Evers, nummy rhymes with you know what Navarro, “Piltdown Man” Brody, “Lurch” Fingerfelt and of course don’t forget the leader of the rat pack, Capt. Crunch Bunch. I did not see “Jake from State Farm “Jacobson there. He must have been back in the DA’s office writing up another phony search warrant so that he and Capt. Crunch Bunch could go into a law-abiding citizens business and wave their guns around threatening people while looking for documents. Check out the terror attack on the office of AJ Pontillo.

Oh and we can’t forget the judges favorite bailiff, Timothy Luke Schwartz. Old Timothy is the center of and preparing to fight his own battle in federal court in Fresno for viciously assaulting an innocent citizen, Gene Forte in Patterson California. The whole incident was recorded on video and shows Timothy knocking a proned out face down citizen in the back of his head with his elbow pushing the innocent citizens face into the pavement. I will be keeping everyone advised as to the progress of that case as it continues. You can go to badgerflats.com to see what the system does to people fighting corruption in the government.

Prior to continuing my commentary, I feel it necessary once again to post my disclaimer so here it is:

“As a disclaimer for this commentary, I wish to go on record as I have in numerous other commentaries that have been posted. I spent 27 years in law enforcement and fully support all legitimate, ethical and unbiased law enforcement in our country, state, county and city where dedicated men and women who put their lives on the line 24 hours a day to protect us. The three keywords in my commentary are “legitimate”, “ethical” and “unbiased”. This description covers 98% of our law enforcement personnel in the United States”.

Those three qualities do not exist in the case of the Carson 8. This case is rife with liars including both current and pending felony dirtbags and law enforcement officers. Mishandled and tampered with evidence, blatant Brady violations, promises made to dirtbags for help in their case if they will testify a certain way in the Carson case, paying a glorified cell phone salesman over $350,000 for alleged expert testimony which was completely disintegrated by the defense attorneys.

A deputy district attorney (ferreira) who tells the court that no deals were made to any of her criminal witnesses for help in their cases for their testimony. Then Deputy Public Defender Ben Rosenstein comes in and testifies that on the contrary, deals were made for two of the criminal witnesses he represents. That makes ferreira a big fat lying deputy DA. No surprises here folks! And no sanctions either. What’s up with that. Read further and you may be enlightened.

This is a shameful, unethical and sick personal vendetta against Frank Carson, et al, by a DA with the prowess of Algonquin J. Calhoun (Google him) whose motto is “If you can’t beat him, book him”. If you don’t have Google, Calhoun “is best known as the shyster lawyer Algonquin J. Calhoun in the Amos ‘N’ Andy Show”. I certainly hope that the Amos and Andy show will not sue me for defamation of character by comparing fladager to attorney Calhoun who actually had some measure of legal prowess that fladager does not possess. But I do believe they went to the same law school.

For the record at this point, DA fladager has never once shown her charming face inside of this preliminary hearing. She has preferred to throw Ferreira under the bus!!!!!!!

While the judge was delivering her verdicts, I noticed Piltdown Man Brody who always slouches down in his seat, looking around with just his head showing looking like an imbecilic bobble head going back and forth and up and down. Kind of creepy looking. And why is a state employee here today anyway? He doesn’t realize how really entertaining it is to watch him.

Because I am a “go for the throat” kind of guy, even though that would be hard to imagine from my commentaries, I am not going to go into elaborate detail regarding all that was said in the hearing. You can read detailed reports of the hearing at DAWGONNIT.COM. I will be taking bits and pieces of Marty and Tom’s commentaries with their permission to comment on. Please remember that my unbiased fair and balanced comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the ideology of those who print them or read them. So here goes…

All comments used from other sources will be italicized and underlined to delineate them from my comments.

Judge Zuniga now goes into her rulings. Things go well for Georgia DeFelippo and Christina DeFelippo. She finds no evidence at all for a homicide with Georgia DeFelippo. She finds no evidence for obstruction of justice for Georgia DeFelippo or Christina DeFelippo. She sees nothing that would indicate that either of them were involved with a conspiracy to obstruct justice. She states that there is no evidence to show that Christina was an accessory, or knew anything about a felony being committed. Marlisa Ferreira spouts out that she had argued for accessory for Georgia DeFelippo, and Judge Zuniga states that there is no evidence that shows that Georgia knew a felony had been committed.

The judge summarily dismissed the charges against Georgia Carson and Christina DeFilippo and exonerated their bail. Charges which should have never been brought in the first place but the demented DA tried to snare as many people as she thought she could into her vindictive web of deception. As the plethora of civil suits commence for this malicious prosecution, that will be the death knoll for this DA. Perhaps she could move to Podunk County, Kentucky, run for DA taking her investigator minions with her to persecute the moonshiners. She would have to be careful because moonshiners have been known to pick off them “revennewers”.

The judge admitted having a hard time ruling on Walter Wells, and stated that she had spent the most time looking at his situation. I noticed on the bench she was still having that conflict of her ruling. She had stopped and paused several times and she was referring to Walter Wells and deciding what she was going to do as she was still not sure.

If somebody is that conflicted in a ruling of this magnitude, there is something fundamentally wrong with what they are doing. That indicates to me that it probably did not rise to the level of probable cause, but the judge ruled that she be held anyway. MC.

We now go into Walter Wells. Judge Zuniga states that she struggled with this ruling. She starts out by stating that Marlisa Ferreira has taken homicide off the charges for Walter Wells. Judge Zuniga now starts speaking about obstruction of justice, and overt act #12. She states that there is no evidence of this. She now goes into the phone records, and states that the phone records are troubling for both the defense and the prosecution Based on the phone records, Judge Zuniga found enough evidence to hold Walter Wells over for count 2 of obstruction of justice. Marlisa Ferreira reminds the judge that she had asked for a charge of accessory, and Judge Zuniga states that there is sufficient evidence to hold Walter Wells over for a charge of accessory. Judge Zuniga states that there is insufficient evidence to hold Walter Wells over for a charge of murder. TJ.

The judge held Walter Wells to answer for obstruction of justice based on the fact that his cell phone pinged in the same area as Kory Kaufman’s cell phone after he disappeared. Of course, that means that thousands of other people’s cell phones pinged in the same area as Kory Kaufman’s cell phone and they are potential suspects. Could you be one of them? With fladager’s vindictive nature of throwing bull crap against the wall to see what sticks, you may be next.

More shoddy and discredited by defense attorneys information provided by slick cell phone salesman jungle jim cook and his monkey boy son Cheeta who was also sitting in court sucking up the taxpayer dollars so that he and dad could go on that world cruise at the expense of the gullible taxpayers in Stanislaus County. Gullible because the taxpayers have not made demands to the board of supervisors to remove fladager from office before her malicious nature costs Stanislaus County tens of millions of dollars in lawsuits. She is a definite financial liability for Stanislaus County.

Now we get to Frank Carson. Judge Zuniga states that the evidence shows that Frank Carson set this whole process into motion. She rules that Frank Carson, Baljit Athwal, and Daljit Atwal have to be held over for murder, and obstruction of justice. Judge Zuniga states that there is insufficient evidence to prove the special circumstance of lying in wait. She states that this would require a specific intent to kill, and that there is no evidence to show that Baljit Athwal intended to kill Korey Kauffman. She states that there is no evidence to show that a gun or a knife was present. TJ.

Of course there were no special circumstances. There were no other circumstances either. This whole case is based on believing that a drug addicted scumbag lowlife would even know the truth if it kicked him in the rectum. Obviously he would not since this is where his head is located. Woody was so afraid of being charged with murder and the death penalty that he would say anything that the prosecutor wants him to just save his rectum. That is as clean as I can make it folks.

This led to some conversation about the defendants being released on December 22, and I remember at the time the judge stated that she was releasing them to “save the integrity of the process.” But on Monday the judge made it very interesting, it’s on the record, that she had released those defendants from custody to save the District Attorney’s Office from losing this case.

Thinking about that comment, and it is resonating with me for some time, I am aghast that a Superior Court judge, who has been on the bench for a long period of time, would think that she has the responsibility of saving the district attorney’s case for them. I personally do not feel that is her job. Her job is to be an unbiased arbitrator of the facts of the case, and that thought process is in part why this preliminary hearing took 18 months to complete.

Judge Zuniga, A former prosecuter, bent over backwards for this District Attorney’s Office in this case repeatedly, even at times helping Marlisa Ferreira with her questioning of witnesses, and the proper way to ask a question. MC.

…Judge Zuniga states that she let the defendants out on their own recognizance to save the prosecution from having the case tossed out due to all the late discovery. Judge Zuniga states that the special circumstances of lying in wait have been tossed out. Judge Zuniga now states that she is not going to set bail for the defendants, and put them back into custody. TJ.

This statement by the judge about saving the DAs case on the surface appears to prejudice the defendants. It would seem evident to even the most uninformed observer that that statement means that instead of following the law and throwing out the DAs phony case on the first occasion of the DA failing to provide discovery in a timely manner, the judge stopped being an unbiased and neutral tribunal and aided and abetted the persecution in continuing this farcical and egregious miscarriage of justice to continue.

To the readers of my commentaries, I am not an attorney, but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night. Now you might have to go back a ways to remember that commercial. And I am not an attorney but I feel that a terrible judicial error was made when the judge failed to throw this thing out. It almost takes on the appearance of that old saying, “Give em a fair trial and hang em”. We know that the judge was a former prosecutor and apparently once that mentality gets in your blood it’s hard to get it out. A person should know their role and stick to it.

Judge Zuniga now takes up the perjury charge against Frank Carson. This involves a Form 700 that had some financial information that was missing on it. Frank had filled this form out when he ran for DA. She states that Frank Carson had filed an amended Form 700, but that she sees this amended form as not being done in good faith. TJ.

Ms. Ferreira, this count is so misjoined. You can’t do anything about it now, but it really is. It’s misjoined. It’s got nothing to do with the homicide. There isn’t — the evidence that is used for the homicide is not going to be also used to prove this count. It is really misjoined.

The additional charge that Frank Carson was held to answer on was a perjury charge that had to do with an IRS matter completely separate and unrelated to this case. The judge tells Ferreira on numerous occasions that the charge is misjoined several times to make her point.

Legal Definition of misjoinder: an incorrect joinder of claims or parties in a legal action; also : an impermissible joinder of criminal charges or defendants. (Emphasis mine) The DA rat pack knew exactly what they were doing when they dredged up this charge which had nothing to do with the case. The DA rat pack is scratching, digging and grasping at any straw they can to try to get people held to answer. It appears that when the DA uses lowlife dirtbags as their All-Star witnesses, they take on the same persona as the trash they deal with. It’s called the Stockholm Syndrome.

Definition of Stockholm Syndrome: the psychological tendency of a hostage to bond with, identify with, or sympathize with his or her captor. In this case, instead of a hostage, it is the constant close association of scuzball dirt bag prevaricating witnesses that the prosecution takes on the persona of. Just saying…

In case some of you started reading this in the middle, I feel it necessary to again host my disclaimer lest you think I am anti law and order which I am not:

“As a disclaimer for this commentary, I wish to go on record as I have in numerous other commentaries that have been posted. I spent 27 years in law enforcement and fully support all legitimate, ethical and unbiased law enforcement in our country, state, county and city where dedicated men and women who put their lives on the line 24 hours a day to protect us. The three keywords in my commentary are “legitimate”, “ethical” and “unbiased”. This description covers 98% of our law enforcement personnel in the United States”.

HOPE YOU ALL AREN’T GETTING BORED. I’M JUST GETTING WARMED UP!!!

It seems as though we are at the end, but Marlisa Ferreira spouts out that she wants the judge to remand the defendants to custody. TJ.

Ferreira says “Judge, I’d like to address the custodial status of defendants Baljit and Daljit –

Judge says: Ms. Ferreira, my releasing the defendants who have been charged with homicide and special circ., if you look at the law, that’s not allowed. And releasing them on their OR –the action I took was to save this case — and it’s in the record — from a dismissal by a reviewing court because of your office’s failure to supply discovery, because I knew you were going to be asking me this. I am not going to set bail on them, but you can make your record.

Ferreira now ranting and saying judge by virtue of the fact that the Court has issued holding orders now on murder, it’s our position that, in fact, the defendants should be remanded and that the Court should post bail on the charges as they’re set.

The judge retorts I set bail; I don’t post it.

Ferreira says set bail. Excuse me. COME ON FERRIERA “TAP OUT”!!!!

So now we have this champion caliber DA who is confused about who sets bail and who posts bail. Could it be that Ferreira may be looking ahead and considering how much her bail will be and who will post it. Just saying…

So the judge then refuses to remand the defendants and require them to post bail stating that they are already on OR and know all the parameters of being on OR. We need a new supply of crying towels for the Dist. Atty. side of the courtroom.

Now, Ferreira begins sniveling again stating we would ask, then, at this time that the continued release on OR, given the Court’s holding order, that the Court impose GPS trackers on the remaining defendants who are held on murder due to the fact that, when you released them on their OR, you made a specific order, and that was that they would not communicate or contact each other.

The judge responds I am not going to have them have GPS. COME ON FERRIERA “TAP OUT”!!!!

The judge’s parting words to Ferrera, which should dishearten the Ferrera fan base were “You know, Ms. Ferreira, there are so many problems in this case. You have lots of problems in this case”. COME ON FERRIERA “TAP OUT”!!!!

Court reconvenes on April 24, 2017 at 9:30 AM for the arraignments of the defendants held to answer. DA fladager can cut to the chase and just dismiss the charges on all of the defendants on April 24th. But she will hold out to the bitter end like General George Custer which also proved futile. 0h, by the way, did you know that Custer wore Arrow shirts!

Well now that the Carson case is on hold until next Monday, I noticed an interesting article in the Bee on April 14, 2017. It read: “District Attorney Birgit Fladager will have competition in 2018 election”. YA THINK? This latest declared candidate is just the first one. How many more will declare is anybody’s guess.

This young attorney compared to fladager, Patrick Kolasinski looks like a clean-cut young attorney. There is no question that any attorney, including Algonquin J Calhoun would make a far superior DA then fladager. Remember old Algonquin?

I am going to take a few quotes out of the Bee article and designate them with italics and underlining so that I have not accused of plagiarizing the Bee.

“I have been watching the management side fall apart and watching prosecutors resign in frustration,” Kolasinski said Thursday.

Truer words were never spoken Patrick!!!!!!! fladager can be compared to Humpty Dumpty and his fall. And no kings horses or no kings men will ever put her back together again either. She has been sitting in that penthouse at the top of the DA’s office for far too long. Well we all know that she has never been sitting in Department 26 during the Carson 8 preliminary hearing. Lack of intestinal fortitude or as we commoners call it “Guts”. But we already knew that.

Fladager, who’s had a contentious third term as district attorney, said she will “absolutely” ask Stanislaus County voters for a fourth term next year.

Really birgit, really????????????????? You have to be bullpooping us. When is the last time you ever read something positive about you in the Bee and I have certainly never seen any positive comments about you in the comments section of the Bee. There is dumb and dumber which usually refers to two people. But in this case they both refer to one person. YOU!!!! Maybe you will come to your nonsenses and decide not to run. Maybe a better term would be 15 to 20 if you get my drift! COME ON FLADAGER “TAP OUT”!!!!

“I very much enjoy the job,” Fladager said. “We have a great office. We have been able to make tremendous strides in bringing the office into the modern age.”

Stand far enough back people, the bullpoop is flying. Don’t get it on you because the stink stays there. She very much enjoys the job. It is such a pleasant change from her prior job of tearing the wings off of butterflies. Don’t know if she could decide which job she enjoys the most. Her most recent job has been to try to prosecute innocent people that attorney Frank Carson defended in which the juries either acquitted the defendants or there was a hung jury. Then her job became spewing hatred and vindictiveness against a defense attorney she cannot beat in court. COME ON FLADAGER “TAP OUT”!!!!

We have a great office. Really, birgit, really???????????? Well when delusional people keep saying the same things over and over to themselves, kind of like insanity, they begin to believe it. If a great office is where the employees are afraid for their jobs if they happen to disagree with the boss on something, the office is only great for the boss. COME ON FLADAGER “TAP OUT”!!!!

Brought the office into the modern age? Really, birgit, really???????????? The only thing modern about the office is your sixth floor private penthouse. From there you can look down on the masses as if you were a drone. Delusional, delusional, delusional!! COME ON FLADAGER “TAP OUT”!!!!

“There is no accounting of the staff time spent on court cases and the total cost of cases”, Kolasinski said. The challenger proposes to track the time of district attorney employees, including investigators and prosecutors, at least to provide cost accounting for certain types of prosecutions.

Patrick, Patrick! We have been trying for over a year and a half to make the District Attorney’s Office account for and show all of the expenditures into how much money has been wasted in the Carson 8 prosecution and several others such as AJ Pontillo’s case and Mayor Carmen Sabatino’s case. The District Attorney’s Office refuses to provide the information and says there is no way that they can actually give a breakdown of all of the expenses of these prosecutions. Obviously another ton of FLADAGER’S BULLPOOP!

An administrator who is honest, forthright and not afraid of the answers of such an investigation would have no problem having an audit done. That type of administrator is not present in the District Attorney’s Office. Another reason to give birgit and many of her minions of swift boot in the derriere and send them on their way somewhere else. Possibly in a sheep shearing factory where they can pull the wool over somebody else’s eyes. COME ON FLADAGER “TAP OUT”!!!!

According to his website, better accounting would offer a clearer picture of how to allocate the office’s limited resources to protect the community.

Patrick, Patrick! Truer words were never spoken. Under fladager’s tenure, accountability is like a four letter word. Not allowed to be spoken in the office and employees are not allowed to even have that thought in their head with this administration. Only problem with sticking your head in the sand is that another part of your anatomy is showing. That ain’t pleasant.

In December, the judge in the Korey Kauffman murder case lambasted the DA’s office for serious shortcomings in sharing evidence in the discovery process, creating an opening for anyone who runs against Fladager next year. Judge Barbara Zuniga said she had never seen a district attorney’s office make so many mistakes in discovery.

The judge has never seen a District Attorney’s Office make so many mistakes in discovery. Well Your Honor, you have never presided over any other cases in Stanislaus County or you would know that refusing to provide discovery in a timely manner is a favorite attribute of fladager’s way of doing business. There have been many. Here is just the latest one:

April 12, 2017 – Mesiti, 49, has been in jail since June 2011 and chose to act as his own attorney in October 2015. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Mesiti.

On Tuesday afternoon, the judge was forced to delay the trial again because a prosecution investigator discovered photos collected as evidence that had not been provided to the defense. The prosecution handed over those photos to the defense last month.

Reeves wanted to give the defense time to review those photos and conduct any needed further investigation, so she decided to reschedule the April 10 trial. Now, the trial is scheduled to begin July 10 with jury selection.

Read more here: http://www.modbee.com/news/local/crime/article144225714.html#storylink=cpy

So now Judge Zuniga get this! Mesiti, 49, has been in jail since June 2011 and now almost 7 years later, Mr. Mesiti is getting some more discovery from the District Attorney’s Office. Would anyone care to bet whether or not Capt. Crunch Bunch has his fingerprints on this case? Your Honor, this is just business as usual in fladager’s house. So if you are going to try any more criminal cases here in Stanislaus County, GET USED TO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! COME ON FLADAGER “TAP OUT”!!!!

Kolasinski said “it’s unacceptable the office lacks a system for tracking the volumes of evidence gathered in criminal investigations”.

Patrick, Patrick! You catch on fast and I think that says it all!

Fladager disagreed, saying, “He does not know much about our office.” She said the DA’s office has been converting to a paperless system and has been providing discovery to defense attorneys electronically.

Disagreed? Really birgit, really????????????????? Who woulda thunk that you would ever disagree with someone pointing out egregious flaws in the way you administer your office. Providing discovery electronically? Really birgit, really????????????????? Well maybe you better make sure that your server is working properly. Maybe the photos that had not been provided to Mr.Mesiti for almost 7 years were in an investigators garage or sitting along with the missing game camera from the Frank Carson case. Accountability at the DA’s office, fa gedda bout it.

The district attorney was challenged by Frank Carson, a leading defense attorney who’s a defendant in the Kauffman case, in a bitterly contested campaign in 2014. Carson assailed the incumbent for approving what he claimed were excessive wiretaps for criminal investigations.

Ah yes. Wiretaps! The favorite toy of fladager and some and only some, of her radically overzealous get anybody that disagrees with us concrete cowboys. And we know who you cowboys are. When fladager’s excessive and vindictive use of wiretaps was exposed, I don’t remember the full numbers, but I believe fladager and her cowboys had something like fourteen wiretaps and other very large real District Attorney’s Offices had three or four. Again I don’t remember the exact numbers but they are out there. Did someone mention Gestapo or KGB around here?

Fladager oversees an office with an $18.7 million budget last year and 120 employees. She acknowledged there has been turnover among prosecutors but said that is common for district attorney offices.

An $18.7 million budget. Really birgit, really????????????????? And how many millions of dollars in last year’s budget and years before that were urinated away with malicious prosecutions which resulted in acquittals or hung juries. Mostly acquittals! But when you are tucked away in your sixth floor penthouse you are far removed from the huddled masses with our pitchforks and torches. But remember, even the Frankenstein monster was eventually destroyed.

Turnover is common for District Attorney’s Offices. Really birgit, really????????????????? If you were to compare the per capita turnover rates in other District Attorney’s Offices, I’m sure that they Stanislaus County district attorney’s office would take the cake. However with birgit’s Marie Antoinette attitude, “Let them eat cake”, it is just business as usual.

“We have been through a tremendous economic hardship as a result of the downturn and county fiscal impacts,” Fladager said. “We have lost folks to larger counties because they pay more.”

Sorry fladager but excuses are like armpits. We all have at least two when they all stink. You forgot to use as an excuse that many leave your office because of your Stalinistic method of keeping your employees in line. It’s my way or the highway fladager. We don’t need experienced deputy district attorneys in Stanislaus County, just bring them in directly out of law school and indoctrinate them. We can stamp them out like gingerbread cookies.

“I am looking forward to running for a fourth term,” Fladager said. “I will address any issues as they arise and look forward to being elected for a fourth term and serving the citizens of this county.”

What a crock birgit!!!! It’s time to call out the poop police. As was stated before a term of 10 to 20 would be real nice.

I will address any issues as they arise. Really birgit, really????????????????? You have failed miserably to address current issues that are glaringly real. Why would anyone believe that you would all of a sudden hold yourself accountable?

A person cannot change who they are (their character), no matter how hard they try. This idiom comes from the Old Testament.

Jeremiah 13: 23 Can the Ethiopian change the color of his skin? or a leopard take away his spots? Nor can you who are so used to doing evil now start being good.

24 Because you have put me out of your mind and put your trust in false gods, I will scatter you as chaff is scattered by the fierce winds off the desert.

25 This then is your allotment, that which is due you, which I have measured out especially for you.

26 I myself will expose you to utter shame.

COME ON FLADAGER “TAP OUT”!!!!

THE END FOR NOW!!!!

WARREN YATES COMMENTARY……. TIME FOR THE DA TO "TAP OUT" April 10, 2017, a day which will live in infamy in Stanislaus County judicial history.