#Public Property Act Violation

[rightnewshindi]

अरविंद केजरीवाल पर FIR: दिल्ली पुलिस का बड़ा एक्शन, होर्डिंग्स से जुड़ा है मामला! #News #HindiNews #IndiaNews #RightNewsIndia

[zvaigzdelasas]

“Very aggressive” homeless encampment sweeps, as recently touted by Mayor London Breed, began Tuesday morning in San Francisco following a major U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

The Standard witnessed aggressive enforcement action under the Central Freeway, carried out by police, the Department of Public Works, Department of Emergency Management, Homeless Outreach Team and San Francisco Fire Department.

Homeless people were not notified of the sweeps ahead of time, as has previously been the norm, according to a schedule of encampment clearings and a city official who was on the scene.[...]

“One of the DPW workers started hollering past me, ‘I’m taking everything today,’ ” Tannahill said. “They were adamant that there wasn’t going to be enough time to pack up the tent.”

By 10:30 a.m., all city workers who were clearing the encampment had moved down the block, to the corner of 13th and Harrison streets.

Brandon Cunningham, the fire department’s incident commander at the scene of an encampment sweep near 13th and South Van Ness streets, told The Standard he was unsure whether people living at the site were notified beforehand. Tuesday’s schedule of encampment clearances, obtained by The Standard, does not list the location.[...]

City staff have previously given notice to encampment occupants days before conducting a clearing.

In a video captured by The Standard, a police officer can be heard explaining to a person whose belongings have just been thrown onto a truck bed that encampments are “no more.”

“London Breed, the mayor, Gov. Gavin Newsom says no more on the streets, no more encampments. No more. This is what it’s come down to. This is our laws,” the officer said.

Max Gunn and Kara Sullivan, who have been homeless in San Francisco for roughly two years, told The Standard the city threw away some of their clothes. Gunn said members of the Homeless Outreach Team told him there were no shelter beds available.

“They got my clothes,” Sullivan said. “They laughed at me and did a mocking New York accent and acted like they were tough.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Emergency Management disputed the individual’s account, saying everyone was offered shelter during Tuesday’s action.[...]

Nisha Kashyap, an attorney representing the Coalition on Homelessness in the suit against the city, called the sweeps “alarming” and “unacceptable.”

“The city’s conduct blatantly violates the existing injunction against property destruction and disregards its own laws and policies that mandate advance notice and the provision of shelter and services,” Kashyap said in a statement Tuesday. “By ignoring the injunction, the city is not only acting unlawfully but also stripping people of their basic survival necessities, making it harder for them to exit homelessness.”

A statement from the mayor’s office said the city’s “street response will consist of offers of services and support on a daily basis, targeted encampment resolutions, and coordinated efforts to prevent re-encampments and new areas from being encamped.”

In a memo shared Tuesday by the mayor’s office, officials said they seek to prevent encampments from cropping up again once they have been cleared.[...]

The memo also outlines the consequences homeless individuals may face if they continue to camp on the city’s streets and refuse shelter. These penalties include citations and possible arrest.

“The goal is not punishment, it is compliance,” the memo reads.

30 Jul 24

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Canada’s ground-breaking, hamstrung repair and interop laws

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/15/radical-extremists/#sex-pest

When the GOP trifecta assumes power in just a few months, they will pass laws, and those laws will be terrible, and they will cast long, long shadows.

This is the story of how another far-right conservative government used its bulletproof majority to pass a wildly unpopular law that continues to stymie progress to this day. It's the story of Canada's Harper Conservative government, and two of its key ministers: Tony Clement and James Moore.

Starting in 1998, the US Trade Rep embarked on a long campaign to force every country in the world to enact a new kind of IP law: an "anticircumvention" law that would criminalize the production and use of tools that allowed people to use their own property in ways that the manufacturer disliked.

This first entered the US statute books with the 1998 passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), whose Section 1201 established a new felony for circumventing an "access control." Crucially, DMCA 1201's prohibition on circumvention did not confine itself to protecting copyright.

Circumventing an access control is a felony, even if you never violate copyright law. For example, if you circumvent the access control on your own printer to disable the processes that check to make sure you're using an official HP cartridge, HP can come after you.

You haven't violated any copyright, but the ink-checking code is a copyrighted work, and you had to circumvent a block in order to reach it. Thus, if I provide you a tool to escape HP's ink racket, I commit a felony with penalties of five years in prison and a $500k fine, for a first offense. So it is that HP ink costs more per ounce than the semen of a Kentucky Derby-winning stallion.

This was clearly a bad idea in 1998, though it wasn't clear how bad an idea it was at the time. In 1998, chips were expensive and underpowered. By 2010, a chip that cost less than a dollar could easily implement a DMCA-triggering access control, and manufacturers of all kinds were adding superfluous chips to everything from engine parts to smart lightbulbs whose sole purpose was to transform modification into felonies. This is what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business-model."

So when the Harper government set out to import US-style anticircumvention law to Canada, Canadians were furious. A consultation on the proposal received 6,138 responses opposing the law, and 54 in support:

https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2010/04/copycon-final-numbers/

And yet, James Moore and Tony Clement pressed on. When asked how they could advance such an unpopular bill, opposed by experts and the general public alike, Moore told the International Chamber of Commerce that every objector who responded to his consultation was a "radical extremist" with a "babyish" approach to copyright:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/copyright-debate-turns-ugly-1.898216

As is so often the case, history vindicated the babyish radical extremists. The DMCA actually has an official way to keep score on this one. Every three years, the US Copyright Office invites public submissions for exemptions to DMCA 1201, creating a detailed, evidence-backed record of all the legitimate activities that anticircumvention law interferes with.

Unfortunately, "a record" is all we get out of this proceeding. Even though the Copyright Office is allowed to grant "exemptions," these don't mean what you think they mean. The statute is very clear on this: the US Copyright Office is required to grant exemptions for the act of circumvention, but is forbidden from granting exemptions for tools needed to carry out these acts.

This is headspinningly and deliberately obscure, but there's one anecdote from my long crusade against this stupid law that lays it bare. As I mentioned, the US Trade Rep has made the passage of DMCA-like laws in other countries a top priority since the Clinton years. In 2001, the EU adopted the EU Copyright Directive, whose Article 6 copy-pastes the provisions of DMCA 1201.

In 2003, I found myself in Oslo, debating the minister who'd just completed Norway's EUCD implementation. The minister was very proud of his law, boasting that he'd researched the flaws in other countries' anticircumvention laws and addressed them in Norway's law. For example, Norway's law explicitly allowed blind people to bypass access controls on ebooks in order to feed them into text-to-speech engines, Braille printers and other accessibility tools.

I knew where this was going. I asked the minister how this would work in practice. Could someone sell a blind person a tool to break the DRM on their ebooks? Of course not, that's totally illegal. Could a nonprofit blind rights group make such a tool and give it away to blind people? No, that's illegal too. What about hobbyists, could they make the tool for their blind friends? No, not that either.

OK, so how do blind people exercise their right to bypass access controls on ebooks they own so they can actually read them?

Here's how. Each blind person, all by themself, is expected to decompile and reverse-engineer Adobe Reader, locate a vulnerability in the code and write a new program that exploits that vulnerability to extract their ebooks. While blind people are individually empowered to undertake this otherwise prohibited activity, they must do so on their own: they can't share notes with one another on the process. They certainly can't give each other the circumvention program they write in this way:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/28/mcbroken/#my-milkshake-brings-all-the-lawyers-to-the-yard

That's what a use-only exemption is: the right to individually put a locked down device up on your own workbench, and, laboring in perfect secrecy, figure out how it works and then defeat the locks that stop you from changing those workings so they benefit you instead of the manufacturer. Without a "tools" exemption, a use exemption is basically a decorative ornament.

So the many use exemptions that the US Copyright Office has granted since 1998 really amount to nothing more than a list of defects in the DMCA that the Copyright Office has painstaking verified but is powerless to fix. We could probably save everyone a lot of time by scrapping the triennial exemptions process and replacing it with an permanent sign over the doors of the Library of Congress reading "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."

All of this was well understood by 2010, when Moore and Clement were working on the Canadian version of the DMCA. All of this was explained in eye-watering detail to Moore and Clement, but was roundly ignored. I even had a go at it, publicly picking a fight with Moore on Twitter:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130407101911if_/http://eaves.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/Conversations%20between%20@doctorow%20and%20@mpjamesmoore.jpg

Moore and Clement rammed their proposal through in the next session of Parliament, passing it as Bill C-11 in 2012:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Modernization_Act

This was something of a grand finale for the pair. Today, Moore is a faceless corporate lawyer, while Clement was last seen grifting covid PPE (Clement's political career ended abruptly when he sent dick pics to a young woman who turned out to be a pair of sextortionists from Cote D'Ivoire, and was revealed as a serial sex-pest in the ensuing scandal:)

https://globalnews.ca/news/4646287/tony-clement-instagram-women/

Even though Moore and Clement are long gone from public life, their signature achievement remains a Canadian disgrace, an anchor chain tied around the Canadian economy's throat, and an impediment to Canadian progress.

This week, two excellent new Canadian laws received royal assent: Bill C-244 is a broad, national Right to Repair law; and Bill C-294 is a broad, national interoperability law. Both laws establish the right to circumvent access controls for the purpose of fixing and improving things, something Canadians deserve and need.

But neither law contains a tools exemption. Like the blind people of Norway, a Canadian farmer who wants to attach a made-in-Canada Honeybee tool to their John Deere tractor is required to personally, individually reverse-engineer the John Deere tractor and modify it to talk to the Honeybee accessory, laboring in total secrecy:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/12/canada_right_to_repair/

Likewise the Canadian repair tech who fixes a smart speaker or a busted smartphone ��� they are legally permitted to circumvent in order to torture the device's repair codes out of it or force it to recognize a replacement part, but each technician must personally figure out how to get the device firmware to do this, without discussing it with anyone else.

Thus do Moore and Clement stand athwart Canadian self-reliance and economic development, shouting "STOP!" though both men have been out of politics for years.

There has never been a better time to hit Clement and Moore's political legacy over the head with a shovel and bury it in a shallow grave. Canadian technologists could be making a fortune creating circumvention devices that repair and improve devices marketed by foreign companies.

They could make circumvention tools to allow owners of consoles to play games by Canadian studios that are directly sold to Canadian gamers, bypassing the stores operated by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo and the 30% commissions they charge. Canadian technologists could be making diagnostic tools that allow every auto-mechanic in Canada to fix any car manufactured anywhere in the world.

Canadian cloud servers could power devices long after their US-based manufacturers discontinue support for them, providing income to Canadian cloud companies and continued enjoyment for Canadian owners of these otherwise bricked gadgets.

Canada's gigantic auto-parts sector could clone the security chips that foreign auto manufacturers use to block the use of third party parts, and every Canadian could enjoy a steep discount every time they fix their cars. Every farmer could avail themselves of third party parts for their tractors, which they could install themselves, bypassing the $200 service call from a John Deere technician who does nothing more than look over the farmer's own repair and then types an unlock code into the tractor's console.

Every Canadian who prints out a shopping list or their kid's homework could use third party ink that sells for pennies per liter, rather than HP's official colored water that cost more than vintage Veuve Cliquot.

A Canadian e-waste dump generates five low-paid jobs per ton of waste, and that waste itself will poison the land and water for centuries to come. A circumvention-enabled Canadian repair sector could generate 150 skilled, high-paid community jobs that saves gadgets and the Earth, all while saving Canadians millions.

Canadians could enjoy the resliency that comes of having a domestic tech and repair sector, and could count on it through pandemics and Trumpian trade-war.

All of that and more could be ours, except for the cowardice and greed of Tony Clement and James Moore and the Harper Tories who voted C-11 into law in 2012.

Everything the "radical extremists" warned them of has come true. It's long past time Canadians tore up anticircumvention law and put the interests of the Canadian public and Canadian tech businesses ahead of the rent-seeking enshittification of American Big Tech.

Until we do that, we can keep on passing all the repair and interop laws we want, but each one will be hamstrung by Moore and Clement's "felony contempt of business model" law, and the contempt it showed for the Canadian people.

Image: JeffJ (modified) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tony_Clement_-_2007-06-30_in_Kearney,_Ontario.JPG

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

--

Jorge Franganillo (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Duga_radar_system-_wreckage_of_electronic_devices_(37885984654).jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[read-marx-and-lenin]

I’m following the DPRK debates (or trying to at least) but ultimately I’m struggling to understand how to glorify a nation that impedes so heavily on its citizen’s human rights, any insight?

Two things:

First, you shouldn't be trying to glorify anything. You should be trying to understand things and separating truth from fiction.

Second, in that vein, you should be seriously questioning what is being said about the DPRK and why. The US and its allies have a vested interest in ensuring that any socialist project fails, and when they are unable to cause a real failure, they work to make the public believe that it has failed anyway.

The two main sources of the most egregious human rights violations are defector testimony and US/ROK intelligence. If you've been following what I've posted about the DPRK on this blog then you should already know the problems with defector testimony (you can watch this short documentary if you want to know more about that and hear from a few former DPRK residents who rebut many typical defector narratives,) but suffice it to say that the ROK actively pays defectors to make false and scripted statements in the South Korean media, and those who do not go along with the ROK government narrative or who actively contradict it are censored and even face prison time.

Meanwhile, Western intelligence is inherently unverifiable. The best you're going to get is a satellite photo with a building labeled "torture facility" as if we're supposed to look at a roof and be like "uh-huh, that looks like a torture facility to me". US and ROK intelligence officials can and do say whatever they like, but at the end of the day they are the direct enemies of the DPRK and their claims cannot be trusted.

The two Korean governments are still at war; they have never signed a peace treaty. Their conduct must be viewed first and foremost in this context. Both the ROK and the DPRK block movement of people across the DMZ. Both the ROK and the DPRK prevent the dissemination of information coming from each other's nations. Both the ROK and the DPRK surveil their citizens and place controls on the media. Both the ROK and the DPRK place limits on political and cultural activity. The ROK acts to suppress anti-capitalist movements and protect the capitalist way of life, and the DPRK acts to suppress anti-socialist movements and protect the socialist way of life, as both sides view their own political and economic systems as vital to the protection of human rights. On any of these grounds, you cannot fault one side without faulting the other, which is why Western media often opts instead to focus on the more exaggerated and unverifiable claims except when explicitly advocating in favor of capitalism over socialism.

Finally, there is the issue of contradictory ideas of human rights. The capitalist West will insist time and time again that the right to private property is a basic human right, while avoiding or even denying the idea of a right to food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, etc. as a basic human right. To the West, a landlord's right to evict a tenant is inviolable. To the West, denying a person shelter is more of a human right than granting them shelter. The opposite is true in socialist nations such as the DPRK. That the DPRK holds different values as human rights does not then mean that the DPRK is some terrible oppressive violator of human rights. The right to be a capitalist should not be considered a human right. The right to be a saboteur should not be considered a human right.

The DPRK Association for Human Rights Studies, a non-governmental organization in Pyongyang, published a report in 2014 on human rights from the perspective of the DPRK, outlining their objections to US-led international human rights standards and the progress being made in the DPRK towards guaranteeing human rights. You can call it propaganda if you like, but if you do not even look at the statements coming out of the DPRK, how can you have a rounded view of the situation?

Had the DPRK not succeeded in withstanding the attacks against it, had it managed to become subjugated by the US and other imperialist forces, I do not think we could then say that human rights in North Korea would have been secured and safeguarded. The poverty and inequality that the proletariat of South Korea are afflicted with today would have become the norm across the whole peninsula. Even if you believe that human rights are violated today in the DPRK, you must at least admit that the victory of the US and its puppet government in the South cannot be a means of combating any alleged human rights violations in the North.

[see-arcane]

Examining the Nosfertrio

I must uphold my position as Words Georg and yammer about the Nosferatu Trio (Nosfertrio) that makes up the core of Nosferatu (2024). Specifically in terms of the love triangle and their roles within it.

Spoilers and a massive monolith of text below.

Ellen and Orlok

I’ve already seen a handful of posts going into the metaphors inherent to their relationship. Orlok as Ellen’s id, as the repressed darkness and fey nature she must keep bottled up for the sake of her era and society, as brutality and sensuality, et cetera. And there’s definitely truth in that. Just as it can be found in a lot of horror-attraction (I hesitate to give all of them the blanket of ‘romance’ but attraction is key on one or both sides for hero and antagonist) stories in various degrees from bodice ripper to outright nightmare. There is a definite cathartic itch that’s scratched in everything from Labyrinth’s Jareth to The Phantom of the Opera’s Erik all the way to this, Orlok at his most cadaverous and insidious.

People want to be wanted. On some level, we want to express the repressed depths of ourselves, be they perverse and violent or weird and whimsical. 99 times out of 100, we still restrain ourselves from doing the Immediate Gratification action—anything from snatching the last piece of cake because we know someone else is looking forward to it or taking a hammer to an annoying customer’s skull—because appeasing that kneejerk urge will have consequences. We will feel bad about having done it or else outside forces will punish us. Repression is a fact of life, with some forced to constrict themselves more than others. Not always for good reason. Case in point, poor Ellen stuck in period piece hell.

Ellen was suffering as a young girl. Her clairvoyance and supernatural susceptibility made her an early outcast and the death of her mother left her alone with a father who we learn had a period where he seriously considered sending her to an asylum. A period we also learn came after Orlok began either causing or infinitely worsening her epileptic fits. The one Ellen describes to Von Franz involves her being found naked mid-spasm. Something to do with her flesh.

Was she found orgasming? Had she clawed at herself, perhaps at her breast where Orlok couldn’t yet feed and bleed her? Maybe she was caught in a masturbatory act that Orlok played puppeteer to. We don’t know because we’re only meant to conjure something mortifying for Ellen to be caught at; just as her other public fits have been. Her father is disgusted by it, whatever it is.

Sometime in this miserable window, Thomas enters her life.

Thomas Hutter who is in every way Count Orlok’s antithesis. He loves where Orlok only wants. He wishes only to give to Ellen, to make himself and their life a thing worthy of her—note, she lived in a stunning mansion as a girl and Thomas needed a loan from Friedrich Harding to afford their tiny home; Ellen married down to be with him and he knows it. If Ellen is an owed piece of property in Orlok’s view, Ellen is precious beyond words to Thomas, who even in his terror and ailment, loves her more than he fears anything.

Then comes Orlok in person, slapping Wisborg with plague and murdering friends and children and threatening to go after Thomas if Ellen does not ‘willingly’ submit to him. A big bloodstained temper tantrum is needed before Ellen dons her wedding dress again and gives herself to Orlok for the sake of being the Judith to his Holofernes. When Orlok’s time comes it is an agonizing thing. A final dose of pain for him to suffer in recompense for years of violation inflicted on a girl since puberty.

Ellen kills him. Ellen dies for the sake of killing him and guarding Thomas. In pure emotional math, she is true to what she told Orlok outright:

No. I love Thomas.

I care nothing for your affliction.

I abhor you.

You revel in my torture.

Nothing but truth here. She loves Thomas. She doesn’t give a shit how ‘afflicted’ Orlok is by him wanting her. She abhors him. And, with almost a lifetime of evidence on her side, yes, Orlok appears to get off on casually, repeatedly, flashily subjecting Ellen to her spasms, however pleasurable or painful they might be, to say nothing of her embarrassment and being ‘helped’ by the era’s dehumanizing quackery.

And yet.

Ellen has two visuals and two lines that suggest that buried in her hate and horror at Orlok and all he does, there is still one wisp of…I really hesitate to call it love. Attraction might be in it. ‘Affliction.’ Whatever it is, it is the tiny buried stretch of spiritual ore that I imagine brought Orlok sniffing in the first place. Ore that has been honed by years of abuse and the hopeless inescapability of his attentions into something that Ellen shelves with the rest of her shame and fear, but cannot let go because it is a part of her and part of what kept her from succumbing to total despair in her time before Thomas.

Because Ellen was lonely once upon a time. Did she know Anna as a young girl? Or did that come later, after Thomas? Either way, she prayed for a companion. For comfort. She felt alien and alone and wrong. Which Orlok scented as she called out blindly—a familiar essence he could take advantage of. Because he is a tyrant. A monster. And he is alone too. 

You are not for the living. You are not for humankind.

The visuals:

Ellen meets him in Anna’s room. Comes close close close to kissing him—and reverses (I abhor you).

Ellen stays with him in the bed, lightly cradling Orlok as the sunrise kills him; and he does not claw or tear at her in his death throes, even knowing her betrayal. Only lays a gentle grasp on her shoulder. They recline again as they die, Ellen letting him lay rather than letting him fall off.

The lines:

Before Orlok strikes her mind: He took me for his lover! (Not victim. Lover. She believes it.)

While Orlok has reached out and pressed his influence on her again, her words possibly not wholly her own: You could not please me so well as him. (Is it Orlok goading? Is it Ellen telling a truth or a lie to prod Thomas into sex? Is it a jumble?)

Ellen loves Thomas more than Orlok or her own life. But there is a grain of care for the monster who obsessed over and menaced her for so long. It’s the grim and heady little whisper under all the trappings of horror-attraction, why fiction loves a demonic dom or a pining terror.

I was never alone with them infecting my life. I was the focus of all their attention and passion. I saw so much violence done for the sake of them coercing me to their side. I had these throes forced on me and in being forced to endure their darkness I was absolved of any guilt in moments of pleasure from it. I held hands with Death in a dream and I was so happy when everyone I knew—everyone I smother myself to accommodate—was dead.

It’s there. Of course it’s there.

But what else is there with it?

Ellen and Thomas

Enter the newlyweds who didn’t deserve Any of That Shit.

We don’t really get much time with these two beyond establishing that they are very genuinely in love, have been thoroughly enjoying a too-short honeymoon, and are each prepared to kill and die for each other.

But something I’m seeing around the edges of post-film analyses is a phenomenon that I recognize from certain unfortunate reads of Jonathan Harker’s character, both from Dracula’s book canon and almost 130 years’ worth of trash adaptations. Already this boy is teetering on the precipice of being done dirty the exact same way Jonathan was via sanding down his full role and character in the story. I’ve seen takes that reduce him to the Normal Guy Your Weird Ex Hates, the Guy Who Doesn’t Listen to His Wife, the Useless Guy, the Boring Normie Guy, the Connecticut Clark to Ellen’s Malfina, et cetera et cetera.  

But like. You have to miss a mountain of context clues to land on any of these statuses as Thomas’ deal.

Let’s look at the chief offense: Thomas disregards and/or shuts down Ellen.

First:

Thomas tries to shush Ellen about her nightmare(s). For a moment. But Ellen insists, and so he listens to the dream of wedding Death. He does shush her then, but in the way of soothing. It was just a dream, not a portent. All will be well. What is he supposed to say otherwise? Yes, I believe you. Yes, something horrible is about to happen. Worry, fear, fret. It’s the best course of action.

As for him leaving the bedside and ultimately going out to Orlok’s castle despite Ellen’s pleading? Again, what else is he logically meant to do? This boy does not know what genre he’s in. Ellen does because she’s Ellen. Thomas thinks he’s in a period piece romance with a happy ending and his moneyed best friend repaid for his loan and his beloved back to living in the luxury he knows she left behind to be with him. To do that, he must work for it. He must jump through whatever hoop Herr Knock tells him to. Between the latter and the bait of the commission he and Orlok dangle in front of him—Friedrich paid back, a step toward a plush future to gift to Ellen—and the fact that Ellen’s warning plea comes from dreamt vapor, it’d make no sense for him to just kick off his shoes, endanger his job and roll back in bed with her because his permission slip would read:

‘My wife said no :)’

Even if he wanted to, and it’s hard to think he doesn’t want to going by how uneasy he was the moment Knock put the job in his hands, Thomas had no real room to refuse without putting himself and Ellen in real economic and interpersonal trouble. At best he might have feigned illness, but even that would be a gamble. All the things Ellen wanted him to do—stay longer with her, heed her premonition, don’t go on the journey—Thomas did want to do. But couldn’t.

Second offense:

Thomas ignores Ellen when she says their petite home (and ohhh doesn’t that sting in the 21st century to think that a place like theirs was considered ‘small’ or lower class once upon a time) is fine and Thomas need not push himself to extremes to finance a bigger better household with a maidservant and other bells and whistles to satisfy her. True! No denying it! Just as there is no denying that, out of the entire ensemble, Thomas Hutter is from the lowest class out of everyone.

Friedrich is his friend, a wealthy inheritor to a father’s shipping company who lent Thomas the money needed to pay for the little home and possibly his and Ellen’s wedding. Anna is Ellen’s friend, two girls with a friendly and possibly amorous history from what we can infer is a similarly well-off social level. Thomas is only in their circle by dint of somehow crossing paths with Friedrich and being charming enough to win an otherwise Classically Masculine and Rich Man’s regard.

And Ellen, again, stepped out of the wealthy life to be with him out of love. In her dream her father was there, one of the dead, but he is absent for the entire film. Considering her only other mentions of him were a childhood of his calling her a changeling girl or an unclean thing meant for a madhouse, we can assume the man did not empty his pockets for or applaud her choice of husband. Hence Friedrich’s loan. But for all the discomfort of her family life, Ellen did live a far more polished life than the one Thomas can give her as-is.

(I envy you, said to Friedrich outright.)

This is Thomas’ most standout flaw in my opinion, one that amounts to a single facet of a wider issue: Thomas Hutter feels inadequate on multiple fronts.

He is not wealthy enough to give Ellen the lifestyle he wants to return to her. He has not made up enough savings to repay a man he wishes were only a friend rather than an all-but-in-name sugar daddy. He’s unequivocally not within spitting distance of any other male character’s classic forms of manliness. Just an ongoing mantra of ‘not X enough,’ and that’s before Orlok gets in his head. More on that later.

He’s not shutting out Ellen’s insistence that she’s happy with their simple surroundings because he doesn’t care about her opinion. He’s shutting it out because he can’t get out of his own head about how much lesser he feels compared to her and their friends, feeling as if he has to make up for not coming from where they do and for basically taking his princess away from her metaphorical castle. Fittingly, it’s the complete reverse of Orlok’s treatment.

If Ellen is the prize to be conquered for Orlok, she is the undeserved prize on a pedestal to Thomas. One who needs precious things foisted on her to make him worthy of her loving him despite her saying otherwise. The guy can’t see past his own low view of himself to accept that she is sincere in his insistence that he is enough.

And that brings us to the third issue:

Ellen says she wants to come Orlok-hunting. Thomas shoots her down.

Bit of an echo from Dracula there, with Jonathan and the rest of the Drac Attack Pack unanimously deciding Mina has to be kept out of the villain’s reach while they go a-hunting..! Only for that very move to be what puts her in an unprotected position when said villain comes skulking up to her. It is a very old school Protect the Fair Maiden! move. Fitting for the genre and the time period and so on.

But unlike in Dracula, Thomas and Ellen’s playing of the scene makes much more sense.

They are not dealing with Dracula the Conqueror. They are dealing with Orlok the Repeat Rapist and Tantrum-Murderer Obsessed with Ellen. If there was one person in the entire ensemble not to bring into closer proximity to Orlok, even if she were at maximum anachronistic girlboss badass levels, or even just armed with her own stake and pistol, it would still very much be Ellen. Orlok’s been making her life hell at a distance. Willingly putting her in arm’s reach would make me blue screen too if I were Thomas. This isn’t Jonathan fearing the chance that Dracula might go after Mina out of convenience. This is Thomas rightfully clocking that Orlok will 110% go directly after Ellen. Obviously he says Ellen shouldn’t be on the hunt.

Which was just as obvious to Ellen before she even suggested it.

Because with or without Von Franz promising to lead Thomas and Sievers on the wild goose chase for the sarcophagus, Ellen was already planning to barter herself in exchange for protecting Thomas and Wisborg. Which Thomas would also 110% slam the brakes on if he knew what she was up to. She didn’t suggest her joining the hunt because she had any intention or expectation of them agreeing. It was to make sure that the suggestion was shut down and that Thomas and the others would be far away when she baited Orlok to her.

Both Hutters are terrified for the safety of one another and would rather face Orlok themselves and risk dying than put their beloved in danger. They are too alike in that regard, just as the Harkers are, and that love and desire to protect is abused by both versions of the Count to get what they want. It’s just that Ellen knew exactly how to ensure Thomas would do what she wanted by nettling him with the concept of her coming along and risking proximity to Orlok; perhaps intentionally implying she meant to put herself between him and Thomas as a shield. Cue him declaring absolutely not. Irony of ironies.

But alllll this is just window dressing compared to my main nitpick when it comes to some folks’ view of Thomas paired with Ellen. And that’s that he is the milquetoast nothingburger ignorant could never truly understand or please her! husband.

Shut the hell your mouth. I am a proud monsterfucker. I am all for the dark gothic fuckeduppedness of Orlok and Ellen’s whole dynamic. But as Stoker and Murnau are my witness, You Shall NOT Slander This Lad as Jonathan Harker was Before Him.

Ellen was the one wheedling Thomas to stay home and roll around in bed while he was late for work, wanting more of whatever he was dishing out. They were left unsupervised in someone else’s foyer for 0.5 seconds and immediately started tongue wrestling while sinking to their knees and cutting away to [REDACTED INTIMACY WHILE STILL VERY VISIBLE IN THEIR FRIENDS’ HOUSE]. Thomas jumped into a river, dragged himself from the brink of undeath, and rode half-dead all the way home to reach Ellen and try to get her out of Orlok’s range. Thomas, who was terrified of Orlok, still put that horror aside because he learned of Orlok’s torturing of Ellen and intended to kill the fucker for it to keep her safe.

Before all of that, Thomas earned Ellen’s love in their even greener youth.

Ellen, the girl who was strange and Other and tormented by Orlok’s spells and despondently alone with her monster? That was the Ellen who Thomas met. Who Thomas fell in love with. Who fell in love with him. And it was a love intense enough to blot Orlok’s shadow. When that shadow came back—

I am become a demon! I am unclean!

—Thomas stayed in the dark with her—

I love you! I love you!

—resolving to either kill the thing that had preyed on her or die trying.

Even if we knew none of this, Ellen’s final act is its own proof of what he was to her. We saw what she’s like with someone she clocks as an asshole when she confronts Friedrich for his actual ignorance and actual callousness. If any character is the starched ‘refuses to believe the supernatural reality/adheres to patriarchal bullshit’ figure, it’s him, not Thomas. (Hello echoes of Jonathan Harker versus John Seward, but I digress.) Ellen calls that shit out.

Why do you hate me? How can you be so stupid? So cruel?

She feels what she feels and says what she means and is the most observant character in the entire story.

And in the end, she deems whole fucking murder-suicide as a price she’s willing to pay to protect Thomas. Whatever we could not see before the film began, whatever romance the Hutters shared, it was true and powerful enough for her to do this.

Which leaves Thomas behind, her cold hand in his, all tears and grief at this—his last failure to tally on his internal chalkboard. He was not the Hero, but the Damsel unaware. He could not protect Ellen because she and Von Franz tricked him into safety as the latter schemed and the former gave herself up to the martyr role. Thomas was too trusting and too late and too much himself rather than the Man ™ who should have saved her from throwing herself on Providence’s pyre.

On that note.

We have to address the mess in the castle.

Thomas and Orlok

Eggers added a lot of meat to the very trimmed-down characters of the 1922 Hutters and Count. Original concepts and harvested bits from Dracula were all applied. The way he composed them served to fix what I still consider to be a barely-concealed plot hole.  

In 1922 and 1979, the Count sees a girl in a locket and immediately becomes obsessed with her. That’s it. That is the entire bulk of his awareness of her before Thomas arrives at his castle. An arrival that was very much based in the original Dracula’s desire to move himself and his deadly presence away to a new place. Original 1922 Orlok seems to just be in it for mysterious plague harbinger reasons. 1979 Dracuorlok seems to be genuinely distraught and resigned to some kind of irresistible condition that says He Must Go Bring Death. But Orlok 2024?

According to Von Franz and his reading, Orlok wants to kill the whole world with his plague..! But has just been chilling for a few centuries I guess. No rush. Not until Ellen happens. She and her covenant and—gasp!—marrying another man!? Barely a man at that.

Ellen Hutter and her new marriage is Orlok’s impetus in coming out of the castle and planting himself in Wisborg. Him stealing the locket and being obsessed with her now makes far more sense than it did in any preceding film because we get the new context of him preying on her since she was a teenager…

…which was interrupted because of Thomas.

The other man. The boy. The laughable gentle meek shivering rival who Knock sends to his door and into his power.

Where 1922 Count was rigid and awkward to the point of seeming like he had to fight rigor mortis with every step and 1979 Count was glassy-eyed and frantically grasping with lonesome eagerness, 2024 Count is stewing over jealousy and disbelief and derision and only the flimsiest attempt at playing client to fool the young man into signing his status as Ellen’s husband away. A farce, a farce. But the covenant demands he cannot kill him outright. That would be theft, not Ellen ‘giving herself freely.’

But after? After the signing, surely he could wring the boy’s neck. Could sit and watch as the wolves tear him to pieces. He could fill him up with plague or snap him in half or drown him like the Pied Piper with a rat… All these things he could have done after he tricked Thomas’ signature out of him on the occult document.

And didn’t.

Let’s retreat to that first strange night together.

Thomas gets subjected to Orlok’s trance the second he reaches the crossroads that leads to the castle. He does not walk as much as float into the coach that has no driver, his next scene showing him abruptly on his feet with his eyes shut in sleep. The doors open to him without hands, leaving him to trail after the Count as if on a string. Orlok gives Thomas two orders the moment they reach the dining room.

One, get out the paperwork. Two, Thomas will address Orlok as his Lord.

“Pardon, sir—?”

“Your. Lord.”

“yesmylordforgivememylord”

Thomas takes his seat and gets treated to Orlok very obviously flexing his powers by doing his little teleportation trick around the table, getting right up in Thomas’ space to pour him his wine, his hand nearly brushing Thomas’ face before retreating.

Thomas asks about the vampire hunting scene he saw in the graveyard and—

“SPEAK NOT OF IT AGAIN!”

Thomas speaks not of it again. Orlok tells him to eat. Cue the mishap with the bread knife and the bleeding thumb. Orlok sounds caught between snarling like an animal or climaxing at the table at the sight of the blood and insists Thomas go sit by the fire where Orlok can see to the wound. Thomas blinks and has lost time again: Somehow he’s been moved to the chair by the fire, fully paralyzed and in tears as Orlok closes in on him, locked in a waking nightmare as the innkeeper woman warned him. This is where Eggers cuts away. All we know for certain is that Orlok fed at Thomas’ breast at least once in the night.

And that he went out of his way to leave Thomas laying face down on the floor come daylight.

The reveal shot is posed as almost comical when coming straight after Ellen’s pining comment about him. I heard some people laugh in the theater. But combining this visual with others to come makes it one of the most awful scenes in hindsight. Because I believe it’s the clearest sign that Orlok outright raped Thomas.

No jokes, no implications, no metaphors. I think he performed the literal act. The only way it could stop short of that in my mind is if Orlok abused his trance state to force Thomas to his knees before or after feeding on him for some emasculating puppeteer work. But no. I think it was genuine rape. It may have happened again in the next feeding night, where Orlok is shown wholly naked as he feeds on Thomas’ breast again. Both times Thomas wakes up dressed. Both times Thomas was preyed on in the exact same way Orlok preys on Ellen.  

And notably, not in the same way as Anna Harding, who immediately got whacked with a dose of plague. Her children had their throats torn out. Ditto the ship’s sailors. Everyone else just sickens and rots and blood-vomits to death.

Thomas and Ellen are the only ones Orlok goes out of his way to prey on in an erotically posed way that results in trauma and ailment, but not the plague or raw slaughter Orlok’s throwaway victims get. Ellen makes sense because she’s ‘his enchantress.’ Thomas because..?

Hm. How does jealousy really fit in here as a reason, Count? Why is it that Thomas is the only man in the film you go out of your way to target by mounting and suckling on him? Why is it that you put words in Ellen’s mouth to describe him as a swooning lily of a woman who fell into your arms? Why is it that you still have your feelers in Thomas’ head to airdrop visions of yourself and your last assault on him? And—big big question here—how much influence did you have on Thomas and Ellen during their spontaneous lovemaking scene? Were you watching like Ellen implied? Did you want to?

Last and certainly not least:

You say you couldn’t kill Thomas or it would spoil the covenant. Yet you were surprised that he was still alive. And you reacted Violently+ when Knock suggested he be ordered to go out and kill the young man in your service. Why is that?

(Who made that vampire in the graveyard?)

((Which of those coffins in the crypt was going to be Thomas’?))

This is dancing around the subject, I know. The gist is this: Orlok wasn’t just angry at Thomas for stealing Ellen from him. He was incensed at Thomas being just as out of place as Ellen herself was. Ellen is not a classic fair maiden. Thomas is not a classic manly man. Thomas is, to Orlok’s surprise, making him pissed and horny. And that opens the door to the Count attacking Thomas in a way that seems to be a warmup for his future laying with Ellen. He wants to ‘make a woman’ of Thomas, the lesser, weaker, kinder, prettier, chosen man.

See? See? She has no husband to thwart his conquest! This quailing thing under him can be no man, so it must be a woman. Ha. Ha.

Cue him leaving Thomas on the floor, ass up, for Reasons.

Whether Orlok blithely accepts his attraction to Thomas (he is merely an Appetite, after all) or is grimly wrestling with ye olde compulsory heterosexuality and quietly framing all his weird attentions to Thomas as just him humiliating/emasculating the young man, we also have to turn the lens on Thomas himself.

Theories have been passed around that, given the queer elements of the film, Ellen and Anna, Thomas and Friedrich, all had romantic pasts of their own. Or at least friendships as intimate as they could get away with before they paired up with their respective significant others. Ellen and Thomas especially are heavily bi-coded. Ellen has Anna, naturally (Thank you for loving me), but Thomas has beats with Friedrich, with the unnamed and charismatic leader of the vampire hunting party in the graveyard, and, if only due to Orlok’s trance, Orlok himself.

Even if it was magically induced, Thomas saw a vision of Ellen in Orlok’s place as he was fed on. Seeing it, seemingly experiencing it, Thomas looks to be in a heady stupor as Orlok feeds—blearily welcoming the initial attack and whatever might have followed it.

Cut forward to his breaking from his fever in Ellen’s company, still in traumatized shock, unable to speak on everything that happened to him. She’s seen the bite wounds on him. That isn’t a secret. Something else, something worse—I can’t breathe! Get off me! Get off!—is left unspoken, and he cannot bring himself to admit it to Ellen. Not even after she divulges her history with Orlok. Not even after the fight or the sex or the broken spell and their embrace. Orlok did an awful thing to Thomas that he is too afraid and ashamed to speak aloud, at least on screen. Would it be better or worse if there had not been a memory of pleasure to taint it as it taints Ellen’s assaults? 

Ellen calls Orlok her shame. Now he’s a shame for both of them.

…

With all that said. Yes, ‘love triangle’ is the easiest name to pin on this entire hot mess, if not a perfectly accurate one. Ellen and Thomas are in love, but the right words don’t exist to label the lines that connect Ellen and Thomas to Orlok.

tl; dr: Orlok was never going to make this polycule happen and I will not give him kudos for trying. 

[dostoyevsky-official]

Musk’s DOGE seeks access to personal taxpayer data, raising alarm at IRS

Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service is seeking access to a heavily-guarded Internal Revenue Service system that includes detailed financial information about every taxpayer, business and nonprofit in the country, according to two people familiar with the activities, sparking alarm within the tax agency. Under pressure from the White House, the IRS is considering a memorandum of understanding that would give DOGE officials broad access to tax-agency systems, property and datasets. Among them is the Integrated Data Retrieval System, or IDRS, which enables tax agency employees to access IRS accounts — including personal identification numbers — and bank information. It also lets them enter and adjust transaction data and automatically generate notices, collection documents and other records. IDRS access is extremely limited — taxpayers who have had their information wrongfully disclosed or even inspected are entitled by law to monetary damages — and the request for DOGE access has raised deep concern within the IRS, according to three people familiar with internal agency deliberations who, like others in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. [...] It’s highly unusual to grant political appointees access to personal taxpayer data, or even programs adjacent to that data, experts say. IRS commissioners traditionally do not have IDRS access. The same goes for the national taxpayer advocate, the agency’s internal consumer watchdog, according to Nina Olson, who served in the role from 2001 to 2019. “The information that the IRS has is incredibly personal. Someone with access to it could use it and make it public in a way, or do something with it, or share it with someone else who shares it with someone else, and your rights get violated,” Olson said. A Trump administration official said DOGE personnel needed IDRS access because DOGE staff are working to “eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, and improve government performance to better serve the people.” [...] Gavin Kliger, a DOGE software engineer, arrived unannounced at IRS headquarters on Thursday and was named senior adviser to the acting commissioner. IRS officials were told to treat Kliger and other DOGE officials as contractors, two people familiar said.

the holocaust denying 25-year-old neonazi now has access to your bank information

[gatheringbones]

How do you tell the difference between being angry with the way someone’s acting and “playing cop”? Or how do you remove the second from the first?

the cop defends property and boundaries, not human beings. Objects and concepts, not people.

it also does something for him to throw people onto the hood of his car or stop and frisk the elderly or throw away someone’s important paperwork, tent, and sleeping bag. it goes beyond the necessity of making an arrest or probing pedestrians to see if they’re secret criminals or hounding the unhoused out of public life for the sake of white supremacist capital. he enjoys it. it makes him feel better and more secure about who he is and would like to be as a person. it calms him down. it contributes to his positive self-image. once he’s activated, and he’s legally allowed to objectify someone in the pursuit of the Law, the process of objectification results in dividends for him personally. he gets a spring in his step. a bit of a hard on. He finally has tangible reasons to like himself. His coworkers clap him on the back and tell him he’s a good boy. His boss gives him a raise and his pick of the women in the drunk tank. and so on.

so you’re angry, which is the sign of a boundary violation of some kind.

the questions become: how to address that boundary violation without objectifying anyone, least of all yourself? how to address that boundary violation while centering the humanity of those involved? How to pay attention to what you get from anger and its expression— what it does for you, who you become in the presence of it, and what you need other people to become for your anger to be transformed.

[serpentface]

a bit morbid, but could you describe what the (i believe Wardin) process for ritual suicide is?

The complete act requires preparation with a full body ablution and prayers, and then cutting one's hair. It is completed by kneeling and slitting your own throat at the jugular. The language surrounding this act distinguishes it from suicide and frames it more like a sacrificial act (though not an outright Sacrifice)- it's not so much killing yourself as it is making a Total offering of your blood to right your wrongs. The element of it being type of blood offering requires the act to be performed upon fertile earth or in clean water (the ways for a blood offering to be received if not through fire).

If you're in a hurry (such as on the defeated side of a battle) limiting the act to just kneeling and cutting your throat is deemed appropriate.

Virtually all other methods of suicide are considered dishonorable deaths, and the majority are widely believed to damn the person's soul to being trapped as an earthbound ghost. (The act of throwing oneself on a funeral pyre is a lite exception. This is not actually a widespread cultural practice but appears to have been a Thing in earlier history, and still tends to make appearances in romantic tragedies and not be framed as dishonorable/spiritually fraught.)

The situation where ritual suicide is most specifically Demanded is for the breaking of sworn oaths in certain priestly orders and public offices. It effectively is considered to pay a sort of blood price for the damage of the broken oath, as well as allowing the oathbreaker to die with their honor intact and to restore that of their office. Even if a broken oath is not actually involved, HEAVILY disgraced public officials are often pressured to commit ritual suicide to avoid further shame and negative publicity.

The act of ritual suicide is most prominent among Odonii because the restorative properties of the act has the most psychological importance placed upon it- their oaths center around the integrity of their bodies as a physical embodiment of the State/Peoples' might, safety, and integrity, and around their service to a living Face of God Itself. In breaking these oaths, they have violated this integrity and service in a way that is believed to have material consequences far beyond them. Committing this act of ritual suicide restores this metaphysical integrity along with their personal honor.

Acceptance into some of the higher warrior orders also involve swearing oaths to die in combat rather than surrender. The aim of this is to be killed in the act of Fighting, but cutting the throat becomes a legitimate option if this is no longer viable (such as in the case of disarmament and capture) and warriors carry small concealable razors for the purpose. There's related longstanding practices (far predating Imperial Wardin) of women being encouraged to kill themselves in this or similar fashions during military defeats to avoid capture and subsequent violence and degradation.

The option to commit ritual suicide is sometimes offered in leniency to convicted criminals in place of execution, functionally an act of mercy via allowing a person to die by a method that keeps their honor intact and involves no mutilation (most executions are performed by severing the head). Having a family member who has been executed is exceptionally disgraceful and socially damaging, so yielding to a (coerced) self-inflicted death instead is functionally an act of familial piety as well.

It's not culturally Expected or Enforced that you commit suicide if you utterly disgrace yourself and/or your kin in general, but there are definitely pressures that Encourage thinking of this as a good way out of that situation (or that make it easier to coerce a person into doing so). This sort of thing is BY NO MEANS a common everyday occurrence, but isn't negligibly rare either. You'll hear these sorts of suicides in the contexts of women who got pregnant in affairs attempting to/possibly being coerced to right the shame they've brought themself/their husband, or men caught in particularly embarrassing affairs and/or ones with grave legal consequences, or people who get their families into debt via gambling/drinking/hiring sex workers. One famous (and probably mentally unstable) chariot racer made a scene in recent history by cutting the throat immediately after a humiliating defeat.

Occasionally a family member may be found dead, having cut the throat for no obvious reason. It's often just assumed that they must have done something horrible and it might be better not to talk about them much anymore.

[comeonamericawakeup]

• Let the bribery and corruption begin! said Timothy Noah. In his first term, Donald Trump ran the most blatantly corrupt administration in recent history, and now he returns to the White House protected by unprecedented levels of immunity, with the Supreme Court "practically inviting you to bribe your president." Since Trump left office, the high court has expanded its protection of public officials who take money and gifts from beneficiaries of their policies, ruling that such rewards are "gratuities," not bribes, as long as they're received after the official acts. To protect Trump from prosecution, the Supreme Court also invented a new rule that presidents cannot be prosecuted for official acts. During his first term, Trump violated the Constitution's "emoluments clause" by billing China, Saudi Arabia, and other foreign governments $13.6 million for stays at his properties, but the Supreme Court declined to hear cases on that issue. In his second term, anyone seeking the grifter in chief's favor not only can pay him for use of his properties but also invest in his Truth Social social media firm, his crypto business, or just give him a "gratuity." Ladies and gentlemen, "the Trump presidency is open for business."

THE WEEK November 29, 2024

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from the Wes Siler Substack:

Claiming a violation of the Constitution, state senators in Wyoming have filed a resolution “demanding” that the federal government turn over all public lands and mineral rights within their borders by October 1, excluding Yellowstone National Park. The 30 million acres they’re demanding include Grand Teton National Park, Devil’s Tower National Monument, several national forests, and BLM land. The state’s own constitution would then force those lands to be sold.

The joint resolution is the latest move in an all out assault on America’s unique public lands system. Already this year, the House of Representatives adopted a rule that will enable it to sell public lands without consideration of their value, the Ways and Means committee proposed selling public lands as a way to offset tax cuts for billionaires, legislation was introduced to Congress proposing the elimination of a President’s ability to create national monuments, and the Supreme Court decided not to take up a poorly conceived lawsuit from the state of Utah, thereby avoiding a ruling which may have added further precedent for protection of public lands.

That Utah lawsuit is relevant here. It attempted to argue that areas managed by the Bureau of Land Management are somehow “unappropriated,” and therefore the Constitution dictates they be sold off to Mike Lee’s campaign donors. And while the court didn’t give any reason why it declined to hear the case, it seems logical to conclude that argument simply wasn’t strong enough to override two century’s worth of legal rulings confirming the constitutionality of Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2 of the actual Constitution, which states:

“The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.”

Wyoming (along with 13 other states) actually signed onto that lawsuit with Utah. Ambition by politicians there to take over federally managed land is nothing new, nor are harebrained, half-assed attempts to realize that.

Which brings us to the joint resolution filed by the Wyoming Senate’s Agriculture, State and Public Lands and Water Resources committee on Thursday. Its central arguments seem to be that A) if you stop reading that section of the Constitution after the word “dispose,” then you might come to the conclusion that it’s telling Congress to sell public lands. And B) eastern States don’t have as much public land as Wyoming, and that’s just not fair.

Aside from the limited attention spans and childlike sentiments here, there’s actually some real facts with which all of that is easily rebutted: A) the right to sell something is necessary to the right to own something, and two Supreme Court cases have confirmed that: first with United States v. San Francisco in 1940, and then with California Coastal Commission v. Granite Rock Co in 1987. B) the American people owned land in what’s now Wyoming (and in other western states) before it became a state, a fact acknowledged by the state’s own Act of Admission, which is what made it a state in the first place.

Section 12 of the Wyoming Act of Admission reads:

“The state of Wyoming shall not be entitled to any further or other grants of land for any purpose than as expressly provided in this act.”

Aside from the trust land granted to the state by the federal government upon its establishment, Wyoming ruled out entitlement to any other public lands as a condition of its creation.

And the state Senate is acknowledging the primacy of that Act. Because Yellowstone was made a national park before Wyoming became a state, they themselves say they have no right to it.

[leftistfeminista]

Testimonies of sexually enslaved Marxist revolutionary women

Women's bodies do not belong to women; they have historically been the property of men, the state and the church. Women's bodily autonomy and sexuality is a public matter that is based on oppressive patriarchal moral norms.

Sexual torture of women in a dictatorship is not just any kind of torture. It is focused on punishing women who transgress the gender contract that we have established in this heteropatriarchal society. Women who are fighters, emancipated, revolutionary are punished. The aim is to annihilate the freedom of women who have broken with established patterns and occupy public space.

During the civil-military dictatorship in Chile, women suffered torture in a different way than men. Sexual torture, based on rape, the introduction of objects and the use of animals to harm bodies, was common in torture and extermination centers. This practice has been made invisible, firstly because many women who were subjected to these acts do not speak about them, which makes legal proceedings against the abusers difficult. In addition, sexual violence is equated with "traditional" torture without considering the profound damage it causes in the development of women's lives and finally, because many of the abusers today walk free, unpunished and protected by nefarious pacts of silence.

Our bodies are violated, occupied and invaded, as an extension of the war. They are spoils for the agents of the State and for negotiating with capital.

Today, women are still punished when they break with the imposed stereotypes, that is why Nicole was murdered; the repressive forces of the State, forcing the lagmien Lorenza to give birth in shackles; they abuse women in police stations with impunity, groping high school students when they raise their voices. The judicial system protects violence against women by letting abusers go free. The State institutionally violates women through all kinds of discrimination.

We continue to resist, we are their political enemy. WE DO NOT FORGET WE DO NOT FORGIVE WE DON'T RECONCILE For all of us, for a feminist memory. Feminist Propaganda Brigade

[beardedmrbean]

In a classic example of better late than never, a Federal Court in Canada ruled on Tuesday that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's invocation of The Emergencies Act in 2022, used to crush the largest and most peaceful protest in Canadian history, was "unreasonable," "unjustified," and "violated the fundamental freedoms" set out in Canada's constitution.

The case was brought to the court by a number of individual applicants as well as several Canadian civiil liberties groups, including the Canadian Constitution Foundation and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. And in the decision, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley expressed what every trucker and other participant in the trucker's Freedom Convoy knew to be true: There was no justification for granting the government powers that amounted to near Marshall Law over a protest that was 100 percent peaceful, with no violence or property damage committed—that is, until the Emergencies Act was passed, and the police trampled grandmothers under horses, fired tear gas canisters at journalists within point blank range, beat protesters down and smashed the windows of the truckers rigs, and generally deployed the type of violence that the government had knowingly falsely accused the truckers of engaging in.

The government also froze the bank accounts of truckers, seized donated funds, and shut down of the economic lives of hundreds of Canadian citizens, a draconian measure which shocked the world.

Every protester and trucker who took part in the Convoy knew that the government and it's bought and paid for media were lying to the public about the Freedom Convoy, and though it feels good to once again be proven correct, that doesn't change what happened. It also doesn't change the division in Canadian society which took place under COVID, and it remains to be seen if this ruling will put an end to the ongoing punishments of various Freedom Convoy protesters which continue to this day.

For example, the trial of Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, who emerged as public faces and leaders of the Ottawa portion of the Freedom Convoy, has now become the longest mischief trial in Canadian history. Finally getting underway in September of last year, the trial proceeded in fits and starts into December, and is set to resume in February.

Or take Guy Meisner, a trucker from Nova Scotia, was one of the first to be arrested and charged when the crackdown began after the Emergencies Act was invoked. He will be back in Ottawa near the end of February for the ninth time to face his "mischief" charges.

Then there is the case of Christine Decaire, a woman who protested in Ottawa and was charged by the police, who was acquitted last year; much like this ruling today, however, The Crown has decided to appeal her acquittal. To drag an innocent person back to court is the kind of grossly vindictive behavior on the part of the Trudeau Government that they have become well known for.

There are dozens of cases like this working their way through the system.

And then we have The Coutts Four, a group of men who were arrested in Alberta right before the Emergencies Act was invoked and have been kept in custody without bail nor trial ever since. Hopes are high that this ruling may help change their circumstances, but it has now been two years since they have seen their families, which is a grossly offensive situation, especially in a country where nearly everyone gets bail.

All of these cases point to a level of vindictive cruelty on the part of this government as constituted under Trudeau, who was only too happy to champion the fair treatment of someone who fought on the side of The Taliban in Afghanistan and was later apprehended by American forces. Champion the rights of his own peaceful citizens to a fair trial? Apparently that is beneath the Prime Minister.

Trudeau's deputy, Chrystia Freeland was behind the bank account freezing acting as Finance Minister, and she appeared almost immediately after the ruling to announce that her government would be appealing, claiming to "remind Canadians how serious the situation was." This though all the evidence and testimony presented in 2022 at the official inquest into the invocation of the Emergencies Act found that no threats existed, and everything the media said about the truckers was a fabrication.

Justin Trudeau has remarked in the past that Canada is a "post-national" state that has "no core identity," yet when that identity asserted itself to say enough is enough to the strictures of his punishing COVID Regime, he was only too happy to unleash the full power of his "post-national" state to attack these citizens whom he holds in utter contempt.

It appears that there is no ruling Trudeau will not appeal or lawfare he will not pursue to ensure punishment of the enemies of his party.

Justin Trudeau is not a leader, but merely a narcissistic tyrant. This week was only the latest evidence.

Gord Magill is a trucker, writer, and commentator, and can be found at www.autonomoustruckers.substack.com.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

[ivystoryweaver]

I have thoughts about Nathan Bateman

Heads up, you're getting tagged if you talk about him, and yes, I will miss someone and I'm sorry for that - tag people if you want!

I just rewatched Ex Machina and I have feelings. Okay, so Nathan has what we might call some character flaws? Ego?

He clearly lures an employee out to his home to conduct and experiment and he is less that forthright about the exact nature of the experiment and Caleb's role in it. So just his treatment of Caleb shows some...problems.

Then there's the treatment of his inventions. This is more a gray area because one could argue they are not human - that they cannot feel and think and suffer. Even if they do, Nathan may not partially or fully be aware of this fact.

He also mines data/has an inappropriate level of access to people's cell phones. Let's just leave it at that. He's not what I would call a "good" person. He's at least in the gray area, let's say.

Aside from all that, ^ observe Nathan's behavior. He has Caleb sign an NDA that is kind of insane. But it is Caleb's choice to sign it. He lives in isolation. Maybe because he's just that weird. Maybe he wants to conduct his experiments in secret. Maybe he doesn't trust anyone.

And who can blame him?

It takes like what, a day? Two? For Caleb and/or Ava to start conspiring. Ava cannot be blamed (I suppose). She is following the directives given to her. To exercise free will.

But Caleb. He is there a week. And in less than that time, he does exactly what Nathan is afraid of.

He violates his NDA.

He conspires against Nathan.

He intends to steal/release Nathan's property and trade secrets into the public.

He treats Ava more human than Nathan.

He intends to get Nathan blackout drunk and lock him inside his home with no means of escape, which will most likely lead to his death.

So it's, "Welcome to my home" to "you want me dead" in six days.

So Nathan has every right to try to protect himself. What he's afraid of is exactly what only takes days to happen. He predicts Ava will go through Caleb to gain her freedom. He underestimates what she will do to him though.

My point is, Nathan can't trust anyone and maybe that's why he acts this way. But why? Is it because something in his past or is it because he knows how vile his own actions are, and he is protecting himself from someone perhaps behaving as badly as he himself behaves?

This viewing just gave me a slightly new look at Nathan. If Nathan is a true narcissist, I don't think he could be that isolated. Narcissists have a deep self-hatred that is covered over with a false self, and they need reflections from others to reflect back an image of themselves. To do this, they need humans around them that they can manipulate, love bomb and get that "reflection" from, to inform them of who they are.

A true narcissist can't be alone, even with androids.

If he's not a narcissist, what is wrong with him? Why is he like this?

I'm not saying he's a great guy, but the exact behavior he expected from a human was what he got. It's Ava who surprised him.

Thoughts??

@missdictatorme @marshmallow--3 @my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction @pygmi-cygni

@nathanbatemanfucker @reallyrallyauthor @campingwiththecharmings @boredzillenial @silvernight-m

@faretheeoscar @femmeanonymelives @winniethewife @midgardian-witch @mooksmouse

@ominoose

[phanboyo]

Okay I'm gonna rant a bit about the "Anti-Ecto Acts" trope for a minute so feel free to scroll past if you aren't interested but

It just feels so unnecessary in almost every fic it's used in. Like, okay, there's definitely some fun angst in Danny's existence being made illegal but people either take it too far or not far enough.

Okay, so when people find out that he is legally considered nonsentient and property of the US government for experimentation, they don't really do anything about that but get mad on Danny’s behalf. The only people who would hear about it and even think about turning him in are literal supervillains, why is Danny so worried about it, as if most humans go out of their way to obey obscure laws that require action. It's hard to find a person unwilling to jaywalk, let alone someone who cares about the law (and doesn't care about human rights) enough to actually figure out how to contact some hyper-specialized branch of the government.

It makes way more sense for it to be just a passing comment when talking about how obnoxious the GIW is. Like "oh yeah and they passed a law that makes my existence illegal, as if that would make them any less incompetent at ghost hunting haha."

And then when the Acts actually become a problem? Just let any random character know and suddenly its been repealed and the GIW is under investigation and the bad people are in prison and everyone lives happily ever after as they work through their trauma together <3 You know what would actually happen? A few puppets would be arrested to make it look like the courts are actually taking action, effectively nothing would change, except the public would incorrectly think that they saved the poor mistreated ghosts from the bad guys. If he were in their facility, Danny would disappear to a new facility with even less of a trace than before, and if he weren't, he would still be on the run and the GIW would be after him all the same, just as willing to hurt and kill people to get to him as when they were "government sanctioned."

My biggest issue with the Anti-Ecto Acts? Why on Earth would the GIW even pass them? You think the US government isn't ready and willing to break the law and commit unthinkable human rights violations at the drop of a hat? Even if they "snuck it in another bill" (which. What.) Drawing any attention to their organization or even the existence of "ectoplasmic entities" is incredibly counterproductive for their goals. That's why they're called the Guys in White. They don't give out their organization name because it's so secretive that it's even questionable whether they actually have any authority at all (and that's a point that I wish people explored more often, the possibility that the GIW isn't even part of the government at all), or if it's all just empty threats. If people go on thinking that ghosts aren't real, that's all the better for them. Can't commit moral attrocities on creatures that don't exist.

I could go into it more, especially when it's used in crossovers like DC or Marvel where there are existing enhanced/metahuman rights politics but really, the Anti-Ecto Acts being used as an actual plot device almost never makes any sense.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

In other news today, a Georgia judge delivered a rousing defense of reproductive rights and overturned the state's six-week rule: “Whether one couches it as liberty or privacy (or even equal protection), this dispute is fundamentally about the extent of a woman’s right to control what happens to and within her body.”

"Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property ... forcing (her) to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights ..."

full ruling at: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25178630-mcburney-sistersong-final-order

Summary by Marcy Wheeler on her substack:

Here is how Judge McBurney frames the issue:

Whether one couches it as liberty or privacy (or even equal protection), this dispute is fundamentally about the extent of a woman’s right to control what happens to and within her body. The baseline rule is clear: a legally competent person has absolute authority over her body and should brook no governmental interference in what she does -- and does not do -- in terms of health, hygiene, and the like.

(There is the vaccine exception, wherein the government can condition some receipt of benefit (such as public education or Medicaid/Medicare coverage) on the administration of vaccines or other preventative medicine -- or outright mandate the treatment through a valid exercise of state police power.)

And the issue to be decided here: how to balance the rights of a not-yet-viable fetus against the rights of the only person in this great wide world who can -- by choice or by legislative imposition -- maintain that pregnancy until it is viable?

Judge McBurney writes:

While the State’s interest in protecting “unborn” life is compelling, until that life can be sustained by the State -- and not solely by the woman compelled by the Act to do the State’s work -- the balance of rights favors the woman.

Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote. Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy, even taking into consideration whatever bundle of rights the not-yet-viable fetus may have.

And then he invokes the Handmaid’s Tale:

For these women, the liberty of privacy means that they alone should choose whether they serve as human incubators for the five months leading up to viability. It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from The Handmaid’s Tale to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb any more so than society could -- or should -- force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another. Considering the compelling record evidence about the physical, mental, and emotional impact of unwanted pregnancies on the women who are forced by law to carry them to term (as well as on their other living children), the Court finds that, until the pregnancy is viable, a woman’s right to make decisions about her body and her health remains private and protected.

When someone other than the pregnant woman is able to sustain the fetus, then -- and only then -- should those other voices have a say in the discussion about the decisions the pregnant woman makes concerning her body and what is growing within it.

He then addresses the mental health issues at hand:

A law that saves a mother from a potentially fatal pregnancy when the risk is purely physical but which fates her to death or serious injury or disability if the risk is “mental or emotional” is patently unconstitutional and violative of the equal protection rights of pregnant women suffering from acute mental health issues.

He concludes:

A review of our higher courts’ interpretations of “liberty” demonstrates that liberty in Georgia includes in its meaning, in its protections, and in its bundle of rights the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her healthcare choices.

Accordingly, Section 4 of the LIFE Act is hereby DECLARED unconstitutional. The State and all its agents, to include any County, Municipal, or other local authority, are once again ENJOINED from seeking to enforce in any manner the LIFE Act’s PECAP termination ban in Georgia. Because Section 4 is stricken and thus its amendments to O.C.G.A. § 16-12-141 are gone, Section 11 necessarily fails as well, as a woman does not require a legislatively bestowed exception to pursue a pre-viability PECAP termination. Finally, O.C.G.A. 16-12-141(f) is DECLARED unconstitutional. It, too, shall not be enforced by the State or any of its agents.

How this ruling plays with the Georgia Supreme Court is another matter. Professor Anthony Michael Kreis says it fails to “center legal history and the evolution of the common law in the analysis much at all, which is going to be a real missed opportunity-- and a limitation of its reach-- on appeal.”

(Thanks Rebecca Solnit)

[morlock-holmes]

In one of those things that makes you feel like reality is slipping away, Neil Gorsuch, in his majority opinion, essentially paraphrases that famous Anatole French quote,

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."

Here's Gorsuch (Page 3 of the decision):

Grants Pass’s public-camping ordinances do not criminalize status. The public-camping laws prohibit actions undertaken by any person, regardless of status. It makes no difference whether the charged defendant is currently a person experiencing homelessness, a backpacker on vacation, or a student who abandons his dorm room to camp out in protest on the lawn of a municipal building.

The man isn't an idiot. His argument is that, in the precedent cited, the Supreme Court ruled that one cannot criminalize a status. Specifically, it cannot criminalize the status of being an addict.

(c) Plaintiffs insist the Court should extend Robinson to prohibit the enforcement of laws that proscribe certain acts that are in some sense “involuntary,” because some homeless individuals cannot help but do what the law forbids. See Brief for Respondents 24–25, 29, 32. The Ninth Circuit pursued this line of thinking below and in Martin, but this Court already rejected it in Powell v. Texas, 392 U. S. 514. In Powell, the Court confronted a defendant who had been convicted under a Texas statute making it a crime to “ ‘get drunk or be found in a state of intoxication in any public place.’ ” Id., at 517 (plurality opinion). Like the plaintiffs here, Powell argued that his drunkenness was an “‘involuntary’” byproduct of his status as an alcoholic. Id., at 533. The Court did not agree that Texas’s law effectively criminalized Powell’s status as an alcoholic. Writing for a plurality, Justice Marshall observed that Robinson’s “very small” intrusion “into the substantive criminal law” prevents States only from enforcing laws that criminalize “a mere status.” Id., at 532–533. It does nothing to curtail a State’s authority to secure a conviction when “the accused has committed some act . . . society has an interest in preventing.” Id., at 533. That remains true, Justice Marshall continued, even if the defendant’s conduct might, “in some sense” be described as “ ‘involuntary’ or ‘occasioned by’” a particular status. Ibid.

My counterargument would be that not all alcoholics drink, and they certainly do not all get drunk in a public place.

All homeless people must sleep.

My big picture question is that, if you have a status that essentially requires certain behavior, what, in practice, is the distinction between criminalizing the status and criminalizing the behavior?

Suppose I do not have private property on which I am allowed to sleep; how might I avoid getting arrested for violating this ordinance?

The answer is that I literally cannot. By definition.

The court, I suspect, would argue back that essentially "Not having private property on which to sleep" is itself not a status, but a behavior, and the state may have a justified reason to criminalize the behavior of not acquiring private property on which to sleep.

I hope I don't need to explain why I find that barbaric (And frankly, stupid as well).

PS - The conflation between behavior that is occasioned by a status and behavior that is involuntary in Powell seems like a moral mistake by the court. An Alcoholic may get drunk in his house, rather than in public; therefore, even though public drunkenness is clearly occasioned by his status as an addict, it is not involuntary.

For example, imagine a state law which makes it illegal to check your blood sugar. Does this not essentially criminalize the status of being Diabetic? If the state objected that it had not criminalized being a diabetic, because all citizens were forbidden from checking their blood sugar, I hope we'd be able to dismiss that as the absurdity that it is.