#They commit murder without impunity

[drunk-with-dreams]

I beg people that if you’re going to post and share the video of the murder of Tyre Nichols please put a warning over it. I understand it’s important to show how he was brutally murdered by the police for absolutely no reason and if you want to watch it/share it that’s your right but I personally can not see it. I’m in a very fragile state right now and *I* just can not handle it. Please be respectful of others in the same boat.

[txttletale]

also and this i think is specific to anarchists i find it profoundly worth emphasizing the point that one of the reasons the communists in both the russian and chinese civil wars were able to gain mass support is because unlike the other side they didn't rampantly rape and steal from the people with impunity--something which could only be enforced through extremely strict discipline in which a hierarchy (!) of command established authority(!) over the actions of soldiers. & you know any cursory examination of military history will in fact show you that 'raping and looting and mass murdering civilians with impunity' has in fact for centuries been the universal norm for any military without strict discipline and a clear and ironclad chain of command.

which is ofc not to say that such organization is some kind of inherent safeguard against atrocities, plenty of well-organized militaries have committed brutal atrocities simply because the people at the top of the chain of command wanted those atrocities to happen--but that it is a prerequisite for any such safeguard to be established!

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Benjamin Kerstein

The U.S. decision to finally end Iran’s perennial impunity and force its theocratic regime to pay a price for its genocidal imperialism is welcome, but it means we are about to meet a familiar personage once again: the weeping terrorist.

The weeping terrorist is a bifurcated creature. First, there is the terrorist part: He slaughters large numbers of people in the most sadistic and public way imaginable; wipes out entire religious, ethnic and racial groups of which he disapproves; undermines and topples governments; foments civil war; props up dictators and tyrants; and finally commits genocide.

Then comes the weeping part: When the victims retaliate, the terrorist erupts into floods of tears at his unprecedented and unspeakable suffering, the brutal assault on his rights and freedoms, the vile racism and bigotry of those who persecute him, the immutable purity of his motives and the righteousness of his cause.

The weeping terrorist has been here before, particularly in his Palestinian nationalist form.

For over a century, the Palestinian national movement has murdered, raped, dismembered, incinerated, assaulted, slandered, demonized, ethnically cleansed and religiously persecuted not only Jews and Israelis but anyone who stood in its way. For just as long, the Palestinians have responded to any retaliation with a deluge of tears. No one has suffered as much as they, they sputter, no one’s “resistance” has ever been more justified, and no people has faced such racist and genocidal enemies. After all, look at all these dead women and children, the weeping terrorist wails after having murdered scores of women and children.

This piece of theater has been performed by many empires, nations and religions. But it must be said that it is embedded particularly deep in the history of Islam. To this day, Muslims view Muhammad as a persecuted prophet without honor in his own country, when he was an immensely powerful and notably aggressive warlord. One may feel he was justified in being so, but the fact that he was is incontrovertible.

The Muslim world today often brands its enemies as “crusaders,” although the Crusades were essentially a belated response to the Muslim conquest of the entirety of the Middle East and North Africa, the subjugation of their indigenous populations, and the establishment of a settler-colonial empire. Indeed, Muslims still lament the loss of Andalusia, even though they had merely lost what they had conquered and colonized from Christians a few centuries before.

[holden-norgorov]

"What are The Hunger Games for?" An essay on the fans' puzzling response to Snow.

This is basically my take on the entire TBOSAS discourse. [Warning: this will be long.]

The assertion that showing why a villain makes villainous choices (and why often from the villain’s POV they get reframed as morally good or right choices, so as to allow him to justify himself or self-excuse his own behavior to carry them out) is somehow “problematic” because it runs the risk of legitimizing his evilness or even praising it as a valid and commendable response to the world is by itself insulting and implicitly insinuates the idea that good and evil are not choices every human being makes, but rather independent constants that have nothing to do with each individual’s autonomy – when in fact the whole point of the book is that good and evil much closely resemble multiple differential functions whose variables can be extremely varied in both nature and number. In the case of Snow alone we already have: childhood trauma about the war, physiological trauma about starvation and malnutrition, staunch supremacist and totalitarian upbringing from Crassus and Grandma’am, poverty and scarcity that culminated in some kind of block or impairment in his physical growth and development during his teenage years and that most likely forever altered his metabolic and neurological processes to a significant degree, philosophical and ideological indoctrination from Dr. Gaul, social and economical collapse of his family’s wealth and reputation combined with the need and pressure to keep up appearances, etc. Claiming that Snow’s ultimately sick moral compass cannot derive from any of this is like claiming that nothing we experience in our formative years bears any role in shaping and defining who we become and what kind of choices we end up making.

That of Choice is, in my opinion, one of the most important themes of the book, and we really get a sense of this in the way Snow’s kills progress through the story, and particularly in how every next kill he engages in is the result of less independent variables that find themselves out of Snow’s direct control:

Bobbin; killed in straightforward self-defense after Snow is forced by Gaul to enter the Arena.

Mayfair; killed not in a life-or-death situation, but as a consequence of her threat to have both Lucy Gray and him hanged (so, this time the threat of creating a life-or-death situation is sufficient to provoke the same response).

Sejanus; killed as a result of a variety of fairly complicated variables, with most of them being directly dependent on Snow’s sphere of influence, intentions and interests, and deriving from what he deems as more important or morally correct for himself or what he believes in.

Highbottom; killed in cold-blooded cruelty and premeditation, with the murder being exclusively motivated by a desire to carry out evil without remorse, as Snow has finally reached the same conclusion Dr. Gaul was so eager to instill in him by appealing to his emotional attachment to his past and to his ambitions (which in turn stemmed from the traumas he went through), which is that every human being is actually evil at its core, and that the world is made up of victors who can exert evil with impunity and losers who just become victims of it.

Obviously Collins is not stupid and knows perfectly well that there are predispositions (also, if not mostly, genetically inherited, because at birth we all get handed a deck of cards we don’t choose and just have to learn to handle and master, whether we like it or not) that may make someone more inclined to do good or commit evil (Snow is indeed described from the start with narcissistic traits and sociopathic tendencies, but these seeds of his character get nurtured and watered instead of sublimated and eradicated because of what happens to him and the choices he’s pressured to make or deliberately chooses to carry out as a response to his circumstances), but I absolutely disagree with the kind of interpretation according to which the prequel demonstrates that Snow was always “destined” to be a villain because he was rotten right from his mother’s womb, just because it seems to me that there’s this giant terror in indulging the question “oh my God, what if evil is always a choice?” as it could be seen as an attempt to legitimize or excuse Snow’s behavior as an adult, when in fact, as far as I’m concerned, if would do nothing but condemn him doubly.

Essentially, claiming that Snow is a villain because he has always been evil and could have not been anything different literally provides ground to justify his actions behind the idea that he really didn’t have any other choice, and that everything he did was just the result of his villainous nature. This is exactly the same kind of thinking Dr. Gaul is able to inculcate in him, and that he exploits to be able to sleep at night knowing what he chooses to do during the day. The book obviously states the exact opposite, and in order to do so it has to argue that yes, Snow is a human being with the same moral layers and the same innate capability to be good and virtuous that everybody else has, but he has constantly rejected every chance he had to embark on a different path than the one he ended up travelling. Showing that Snow, the Villain, was made and not born DOESN’T mean that the author is justifying the character or that she’s patronizingly saying to us “oh poor soul, you better weep for him because he was a misunderstood victim of the system, etc” as I’ve seen so many fans argue since the novel was released back in 2020. It actually means that the character gets condemned twice by the narrative because he’s ultimately the conscious product of himself and the way he chose to respond to the world – and yes, that also includes to personal injustices and blinding traumas he experienced as a kid and didn’t deserve, and to circumstances that, as opposed to make him sympathetic to fellow victims who went through similar or comparable experiences, shaped him into someone who denies (or more likely, convinces himself of the impossibility) that human beings can even be genuinely sympathetic to each other in the first place.

Moreover, since I’m already on the subject, I’d like to add a little consideration regarding the fact that, if all of this about Snow’s character escaped so many people, then I’m not positive that the full political and philosophical message of the novel has been adequately understood by the fanbase, or that Collins’ brilliant idea underneath it has been adequately appreciated in its genius. The movie more or less manages to give it justice, but not completely. Because the book basically tells you: okay, The Hunger Games are the product of a school project by two drunk students, but they have been set up by a sadist (Dr. Gaul) and kept alive for 75 years by her pupil who she shaped in her likeness (Snow). Both Gaul and Snow argue that The Hunger Games exist to preserve all humanity (the so-called overarching order of things), and the reasoning they provide behind this conviction of theirs is very mechanistic, almost mathematical, stemming from naked economics and scarcity at least as much as, if not more than, existential considerations on the flaws of human nature. Gaul says, and Snow repeats: human beings are instinctively wired to be evil. This is testified by the fact that human beings, much like every other living beings, are dominated by a survival instinct that is capable of turning them into predators in order to avoid or preempt the risk of becoming preys. The possibility to become prey is a realistic prospect that the human being assesses and that, according to Dr. Gaul, demonstrates the inherent distrustful nature of Man (you don’t trust others not to kill you, as soon as you know they have the chance to and have to weigh that chance with the preservation of their own life). So, the notable conditions at the so-called “natural state” (civilization disappears in the Arena because the tributes are purposefully stripped of it) support the Hobbesian “homo homini lupus” view of humankind. Immediate consequence: if the species is to survive in any way, a means to control this primitive impulse towards self-destruction has to be devised (by the way, it’s interesting to me that Katniss herself also concludes that the human species gravitates towards that very thing at the end of Mockingjay, right after both Coin and Snow are dead). This impulse requires, so to speak, to be “parametrized”. So yes, Gaul says, and Snow repeats, that the world is nothing but a battlefield where a constant fight between people who are driven by this self-destructive impulse is carried out, and that whichever artificial construction built upon that impulse can only serve the purpose of obfuscating or hiding it, and therefore making us forget “who we really are”. So, this would apparently be what The Hunger Games are for: to remind us of who we are at the natural state, and therefore of what we need to keep human nature under control. And the movie (more or less) communicates this successfully.

But there’s actually a subtler layer to this. Because in the book Dr. Gaul even argues that, if the world itself is an enlarged Arena, if mankind is instinctively wired to self-destruct, and if peace is impossible, then The Hunger Games are not only a useful solution: they are a noble solution. Because their purpose is not to punish the defeated of a settled war. It’s to contain the scope of a war that hasn’t yet ended, and will never end. Even the conflict between the Capitol and the districts isn’t actually over: it’s just routinely ritualized, televised and sold as entertainment to the masses. And it’s much more convenient for everyone that a war taking place in the real Arena (the world) is contained in its catastrophic effects by periodically absorbing them in a highly supervised representation of a warlike conflict confined to a small, parametrized ground, which is much easier to control and leads to the loss of fewer human lives overall and the waste of fewer resources (let’s always keep in mind that Panem is a post-apocalyptic state). The genius behind the idea of The Hunger Games lies in this: in the ability, from those who have the upper ground, to believably reframe them as a noble management strategy for a problem that is actually without solution, but whose total control is of utmost importance.

All of this obviously applies IF one moves from the idea that human beings are innately evil. But the saga shows countless times, both in the original trilogy and in this prequel, that this is not the case, and therefore that The Hunger Games cannot be justified by any means, and are nothing more than a barbarity. And yet, Collins’ ability to pull you into the thoughts and meanderings of a sadist whose conclusions mostly derive from her own prejudices (which she takes as axiomatic) in order to make you understand why and how The Hunger Games have come into existence and have been gradually accepted by the dominant society is astounding and nothing short of genius. And this is also why I think TBOSAS was a necessary addition to write, as it basically fills a gap left by the original trilogy. You read the trilogy and you are left thinking “okay but Capitol City is beyond unrealistic because only a society made up of psychopaths could tolerate such an inhumane instrument”. Then you read the prologue and you understand that Capitol City’s point of view (deeply sick, but now scarily comprehensible) is that The Hunger Games, in the face of a deeply flawed human nature dominated by survival instinct and self-destructive impulses, are merely a strategic device whose ultimate function is to preserve civilization (by “parametrizing” the scope and development of a never-ending war) and allow the ruling class to maintain enough resources to keep the government afloat (thereby proving successful in contrasting the hegemony of the “natural state”).

Now, if I also deeply believed in this worldview and had been convinced since birth of its validity, and I belonged to the winning faction of a post-apocalyptic society that’s been relentlessly torn apart by war, I don’t know if I would see the apparent callousness of The Hunger Games as such an absurd price to pay in order to maintain what, according to what has been taught to me, is the only order capable of assuring the survival of the entire human species. As ugly and uncomfortable as it is, it’s still a political and philosophical dilemma that whoever is in charge of government and is responsible for keeping the whole country of Panem alive and functioning is obligated to face, whether willingly or not. So here we come to the typical leitmotiv of how power inevitably corrupts, but dealt with much more interestingly and thoroughly than how it’s conventionally explored in these kinds of stories.

All of this to say that, if we move from the assumption that to “humanize” Snow is to legitimize his evilness, and that he has engaged in all these monstruous acts purely because he was a monster through and through from the start, then we are playing right into Dr. Gaul’s hands and supporting her own thesis, as we are reducing the human experience to some kind of conflict between victors and losers whose nature is already predisposed and independent from the choices they make, and not only that: we are implicitly supporting the existence of punitive instruments like The Hunger Games. Because, if I take for valid that someone can be born evil and never escape this ontological condition, no matter what he does or doesn’t do, what prevents me from inferring that this may be the case for other people as well (or for everyone, even) and that something about human nature has to be fundamentally wrong? What prevents me from concluding that punitive or corrective methods to keep at least these unredeemable, inherently corrupt individuals under control should be established, and that to do so is a moral good? What prevents me from justifying the validity of barbaric, inhumane strategies detrimental to the fundamental rights of people in order to confront what I perceive to be as morally sound and perfectly justified needs because they are grounded on beliefs I think are true, or I’ve been sold as such?

A lot of still existing ideologies originate from specific beliefs about the intrinsic nature of certain groups of people in order to reach conclusions that appear to be legitimate for whoever embraces them but that in reality are actually horrendous and disgusting, which historically can lead (and in some cases have already led) to the establishment of sociopolitical systems characterized by such a disconcerting inhumanity as to be horrifying. And yet those were and are real people, with a personal moral conscience, that were and are able to do this (and still sleep at night) because so confidently self-assured to be right thinking “yes, those people are inherently subhuman/inferior/defective/violent/uncivilized and that’s because it’s their own nature, so I’m fully justified in the measures I take against them, no matter how dehumanizing they might be”.

Snow wasn’t a monster from the start. He chose to become a monster because he chose to believe Dr. Gaul when she said to him “any and all atrocities you might commit are not actually your own fault, because evil is inherent in all of us and coincides with our natural state, which means we can exploit it to impose what we deem as the most beneficial kind of control and order so as to save humanity from itself”.

And it’s in the climactic scene with Lucy Gray that every thematic knot is finally unraveled and Snow concludes (rather, chooses to conclude) that Dr. Gaul is right. Indeed, as soon as Lucy Gray realizes she’s now the only obstacle in the way separating Snow from gaining back the wealth and prestige of his family’s old name, she chooses to prioritize her own safety to the idea of trusting him or even giving him the benefit of the doubt, and quickly puts herself out of his reach to observe his next course of action from a comfortable distance, minimizing the risk of becoming prey. She fears he intends to kill her, so she grabs a knife and gains the upper ground, placing herself out of his sight. But from Snow’s internal monologue we know that at first his actual intentions are really just to speak with her, and doesn’t seem willing to hurt her at all. It’s the fact that he is still holding the rifle while making these internal considerations that ultimately prompts Lucy Gray to feel threatened, and therefore distrustful of him. So she hides and places a snake under the orange scarf, knowing he would be drown to it. She picks a non-venomous kind, because her intention is NOT to kill him, but to prevent him from killing her, which is what she thinks he is planning to do. She wants to neutralize him, or induce him to give up. And it’s, ironically, that very gesture that finally plants in Snow the idea of killing her, because he believes that she has tried to kill him and therefore that she wants him dead. The entire scene is genial because it’s a small-scale reproduction of a typical Hunger Games edition, where the theme I was talking about before comes to the fore-front: it’s the mere suspect, or the fear of turning into prey that urges someone to become predator. You don’t need to actually be a prey, you just have to believe you might become one. She fears he wants to kill her when he just wants to talk to her, so she sets up a trap for him: he misunderstands the trap as attempted murder, and reframes as self-defense his subsequent decision to try to kill her before she kills him. It’s a downward spiral of madness that Snow falls victim to that finally legitimizes, in his eyes, what Dr. Gaul has been telling him, because he sees that reflected both in his own behavior and in what he thinks is Lucy Gray’s behavior as well here: the survival instinct makes human beings evil at the natural state, so it has to be the role of civilization to keep this tendency towards self-destruction in check by constantly reminding people of what they actually are, bare of all their superficial artifices. Therefore, The Hunger Games are an instrument of civility.

From Snow’s point of view, he just wanted to talk to Lucy Gray in a civilized manner, but she hid in the forest to set a trap for him and tried to kill him with a snake out of the fear that he was going to abandon her and travel back to District 12. From Lucy Gray’s point of view, she sought refuge away from him to save her own skin and tried to neutralize a lethal attack with the hopes that a non-venomous snake bite could prove successful in disincentivizing his intention to shoot at her. Both misunderstood the ally-opponent by listening to their own instincts thus determining in the ally-opponent the kind of response that could justify their own convictions. Lucy Gray’s destiny is left uncertain, but Snow reenters the district borders having gone through some kind of existential epiphany, and the fundamental detail that the snake was non-venomous doesn’t even cross his mind in its implications and doesn’t seem to put at all into question what he has just concluded, because the actual, true realization he experiences in the forest is first and foremost about himself, and the way his own paranoia has completely validated what Dr. Gaul previously told him about human beings, and even about how Lucy Gray (in his own twisted recollection of events) has finally proved to him that they were not any different after all.

So, once he has chosen to believe that Lucy Gray was out to kill him, the circumstantial fact that the snake was non-venomous is quickly dismissed by Snow as non-relevant. But the snake being non-venomous is, incidentally, the defining element that finally allows the reader to properly differentiate Lucy Gray from Coriolanus when it comes to the dichotomy the entire novel rests on and that Collins herself has spent the entire story joyfully playing with (serpent/songbird). Because, confined again to the natural state, despite realistically fearing that he was going to kill her, and despite gaining even the upper ground and a significant chance to effectively anticipate him in the act, she ultimately chooses not to kill him. She merely chooses to try to neutralize him to secure a way out of the situation, or to force him to desist from any bad intention he may have in mind. This is not because Lucy Gray is incorruptibly good and Snow is incurably evil (the author strives for this to be particularly clear by reminding us that Lucy Gray still chose to kill inside the Arena even when she might have decided not to, sometimes with slyness and premeditation, prioritizing in that occasion her self-preservation to her moral integrity), but because in this occasion she chooses not to, in order to demonstrate to him the validity of what she had told him before: which is that human beings are not inherently evil, even when stripped of civilization, but that good and evil are always the products of conscious choices. Snow obviously needs to believe the opposite, because he needs to exonerate himself from the consequences of his own deeds and decisions. And Dr. Gaul gives him exactly that. And it’s within this framework that The Hunger Games become a justifiable instrument for the powerful, and for the society that it’s trained to accept and normalize them.

However, Collins’ own thesis is incredibly staunch on this: from Lucy Gray in this very chapter, passing through Reaper refusing Clemensia’s food and slowly dying of starvation to send a message to the Capitol, Lamina mercy-killing Marcus mirroring Cato’s death at the hands of Katniss in the original trilogy, Thresh sparing Katniss’ life as a tribute to Rue, all the rebel victors sacrificing themselves for Katniss and Peeta during the Third Quarter Quell, and arriving to all the oppressed civilians who willingly give up their own life to join forces and sabotage the Capitol’s industries, we are given plenty of demonstrations on how the natural state doesn’t eradicate human’s capability for choice, and how aprioristic thinking on the inherent evilness of our species (or of some subgroups of it) is not only wrong, but also extremely dangerous and easily conducive to the legitimation of barbarity and atrocity.

So no, I don’t agree with the idea that Snow was inevitably destined to be a horrible person because he had actually always been, and I absolutely don’t think Collins’ intention was to tell us this. He starts off the novel showcasing specific predispositions that cause him to oscillate between good and evil several times, and a lot of potential to eventually channel in either direction, but he ultimately makes the choices that he consciously decides to make (sometimes genuinely believing them to be the right or best choices, other times gaslighting himself and us into thinking he thinks that) up until Dr. Gaul offers him on a silver plate the ultimate opportunity to abdicate any and all responsibility on what he has done and what he’s going to do, which by the way stems from the same kind of reasoning behind this interpretation a lot of fans so desperately want to give of Snow (“man is evil by nature, so I’m just acting according to my own nature, and I’m doing it with the goal of safeguarding humanity and for morally positive ends”).

TL; DR: In a nutshell, what I mean is that the entire message of the saga, but especially of this prequel, is that The Hunger Games are an inhumane barbarity because they suppress and deny fundamental human rights behind a false promise to keep humanity safe from a self-derived tendency to devour itself that mankind supposedly strives towards because of its inherent evilness at the natural state. Collins demonstrates that such a promise is false because it’s fallacious, and therefore that The Hunger Games are nothing more than a gratuitous instrument of torture and death, discrediting the Hobbesian hypothesis that human beings descend into evil outside of the borders of civilization. And if that applies to all human beings, then it has to apply to Snow too (or Gaul, or Coin, for what is worth).

[anarchotahdigism]

"

Content warning: contains accounts of war crimes, including rape.

In the previous issue of Anarchosyndicalisme, the CNT-AIT echoed the call for solidarity from anarchists in Sudan.

Since a terrible war broke out on 15 April 2023 between two military factions – the Rapid Support Forces (or Janjaweed militias) against the official army – civilians have been living in a climate of “pure terror” because of a “ruthless and senseless conflict”, denounced by the UN with general indifference. At least 15,000 people have died, and more than 26,000 have been injured, but these figures are certainly underestimates.

There are 11 million internally displaced people, 1.8 million people in exile, and 18 million people at acute risk of starvation. 8 million workers have lost their jobs and their income. 70% of areas no longer have water or electricity, 75% of hospitals have been destroyed, 19 million students have stopped studying, 600 industrial plants have been destroyed and looted, as have 110 banks, 65% of agriculture has been destroyed, 80% of inputs (fertilisers, pesticides, agricultural machinery and harvesters) in the Geziera irrigated area – the largest in the world – have been looted and destroyed, etc.

The media and activist silence surrounding Sudan is allowing soldiers on both sides to commit genocide with impunity. The conflict between the two clans has many components: ethnic, with its trail of reciprocal genocides (according to the UN); “imperialist”, because each of the two opposing groups is supported by various foreign powers that covet Sudan for its natural resources and its strategic location. But above all, it is a “counter-revolutionary” war. By putting the country to fire and blood, it has crushed the hopes of the civil and democratic revolution. And drove many of the revolution’s activists into exile. By completely destabilising the country, this war has enabled the leaders of the former regime to remain in power without being tried for the crimes they committed over decades (during the military dictatorship and then the coup d’état).

Following the appeal for solidarity, we received more than 1,200 euros (including 200 euros from the companions of the Kurdish-language anarchist forum, KAF), which we were able to pass on to our Sudanese companions. This solidarity enabled them to organise humanitarian distributions of blankets, hygiene products (sanitary pads, soap, toothpaste) and infant milk. A reception area for children was organised, with drawing materials and elementary classes, giving the children a chance to escape the madness of war.

But today, the situation is becoming impossible. The violence of the military groups is unleashed. The Janjaweed militias are behaving like barbarians towards civilians. They murdered our companion Sarah after raping her. For their part, the soldiers are arresting and torturing revolutionaries, accusing them of being allied with the Janjaweed. Our companions urgently need to seek shelter in neighbouring countries. We are relaying their desperate appeal to the international anarchist movement.

If you would like to make a contribution, please send cheques made payable to CNT AIT to CNT-AIT 7 rue St Rémésy 31000 TOULOUSE, or via PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/cntait1 "

[nikethestatue]

thoughts on trump being president? seriously scared for the future. honestly at a loss of what to do.

Listen Anon, I avoid discussing politics on here, because everyone's got too many opinions but I am older and I've been through quite a few presidents by now in my lifetime.

All I can say is that the last one was by far one of the worst. Socially, fiscally, and in every other way. What is there to cling on to and celebrate exactly? The erosion of free speech? People getting cancelled over an opinion that doesn't fall in line? Riots on the streets? Looting? Theft with impunity? I am 36--never has there been a time where all the basic necessities were locked up in supermarkets because of rampant theft. Kids in schools barely able to write and read? Teachers barely able to barely read and write! Kids throwing violent tantrums everywhere and god forbid anyone says something? Outrageous bureaucracy? Cities overrun by drug addicts who receive no social help or services and are just left to their own devices? Fires that are burning because reservoirs aren't filled with water? Collapsing infrastructure? A president who was wheeled around and whose raging diminished mental capacity was hidden by his handlers? Presidents of Ivy League Universities unable to say when it's not okay to call for the murder of Jews? The un-affordability of everything? 6-8% interest rates? Still no universal healthcare!

I can go on and on, but let's be rational. Trump is no walk in the park, but I think it's premature to spiral. Realistically, people are crying over TikTok ban and some imagined atrocities that haven't and aren't going to be committed.

Oh, women will lose rights! Women's rights? What rights? They were all lost under Biden, not Trump.

I am not a rich white woman. I am an immigrant. A refugee actually, who came to the US without any money or a citizenship (conditions imposed on anyone who left my country of origin). My parents started here with nothing, I started here with nothing. I didn't know any English. But there was acceptance and the ability to build a life in the US because things...worked. No one gave us anything other than opportunity.

I don't know what will happen. None of us do. But I choose to be optimistic. Because there is no other way to go.

[starsnores]

Purplebloods seem to be okay with committing murder and violence, but what do you think they would consider "too far"?

Idk i cant imagine there's a ton, at least that they could do to outsiders, that would be too far. They would probably line up with the rest of troll society, whatever you imagine that is. They just have more freedom being higher up on the spectrum to subjugate ( :o) ) the castes under them with impunity. Like, for example, I imagine public executions would be common, though they would have their own circus-y spin on it. And sexual abuse/exploitation wouldn't be uncommon for the same reasons. If anything is "too far" it probably has to do with specific religious or cultural clown stuff. Like purposefully exposing a fellow clown without their paint. Stuff more along those lines.

[belit0]

So, this is a request I got on my AO3 collection.

@1thequeensouls4 asked for this piece, so there we go!

I decided to make the reader part of the Uchiha clan, so yeah, hope you like it!!

Blood of all shades covers his ANBU equipment, hot liquid as the only witness to the massacre he has just committed. Itachi looks down at his fingers, moves them slowly to watch it drip through his hands, and listens to the drops hit the pavement. There is only one difficult decision left to make, and then it's over.

His initial plan involved a single survivor, but things changed a few days before his move, and now his head is a mess. The Uchiha has been psyching himself up for this moment, ever since the evening he saw his best friend being swallowed by the raging waters of the river. Shisui's sacrifice was all it took for him to understand the gravity of the matter and the need for action.

In the days that followed, he had to feign aloofness as he enlisted preparations and plotted routes, deciding where to start and where to end. Which house would be first and which would be last. From the beginning, he had only one survivor in mind, annihilating every bearer of Uchiha blood but his younger brother, leaving a loose nail that would take care of his existence later.

He didn't count on (Y/N) coming to announce an unanticipated pregnancy days before his move, with tears of happiness in her eyes and many, many illusions about how they would build a life together. Being an Uchiha, she was also included in the casualties, and Itachi was mentally mourning her with his parents when receiving the news.

An unborn child changed everything, and no matter how cold-blooded he tried to be, it would never be enough for him to kill his own offspring. Slaughtering her would mean destroying the only ray of light he might have after executing his plan, yet what right did he have to enjoy a baby after taking so many innocent lives?

Itachi would murder both young and old, children and adults without discriminating, so with what impunity did he think himself capable of loving his own family, having stolen the opportunity from so many people who were not involved in the issue?

At the moment, he did not know how to react to the news, pretending an empty smile and professionally hiding any torments within himself. His mind became a sea of conflict, and just when he thought he had everything figured out, (Y/N) dared to drop a bombshell of this magnitude.

Itachi spent days confined in his thoughts, deciding what he should do, and how to handle the situation. If he wanted to save the life of his future baby, he had to alter the plan completely and allow (Y/N) not to end up dead. At the same time, her being an Uchiha made it more difficult. According to his analysis, the only one who would be spared was his younger brother, with the motive of having Sasuke execute him when old enough and avenging them all.

The plan was as perfect as it was painful, and everything had been so meticulously articulated it was unthinkable to modify it days before its execution. He had hours left to decide, and not a single idea what to do.

He refused to see her during the time he had left to make up his mind, and (Y/N) took it as a rejection of the news of their future family. The woman was outraged to the point of talking it over with Fugaku, hoping the clan leader would knock some sense into him. It was his father's words which finished filling his metaphorical glass.

The night of his plan, he readied himself in his armor and set out to begin. Analyzing the Uchiha compound from the heights, the moonlight looked beautiful over the houses he would admire for the last time. He could make out some windows with light inside, people not yet ready to crawl into bed, and made a silent apology to all those who would have to see his face in their final moments.

He wanted to do it quickly and with as little misery as possible, firing himself like a gun in the darkness of the sky and engaging his first targets. The houses he started from helped him warm up, shutting down his mind and getting used to the slash of his weapons, the smell of Uchiha blood in the air, and the sticky sensation on his clothes.

Shouts of surprise and pain soon became ambient sound, and Itachi went into autopilot. Not paying attention to the faces and not wanting to evoke memories, he eliminated each relative with no qualms, erasing their existence in a heartbreaking second and giving no room for wistfulness.

Some tried to fight, others questioned him amidst screams, and some simply surrendered to the mercy of his actions.

His parents were the most difficult, and the only time he rethought his plan. Amid tears and sorrow, he took their lives with remorse, and repented of his fate, but was unable to do anything to change it. Itachi surrendered to the plan that life had for him and left his family lying in a pool of their own blood, while his younger brother cried out in grief.

If he stopped even for a moment to think, he would return to embrace him and beg for forgiveness, so he resumed a steady pace and headed for his ultimate goal.

(Y/N)'s house was located at one end of the Uchiha grounds, far from the commotion of the center. The girl slept peacefully, not awakened by the disturbances, and Itachi tried to let her keep that peace as long as he could. He eliminated her parents without waking them, providing a simultaneous and painless death.

He concluded not being able to annihilate her once confronted with the scene he himself had created, surrounded by death and destruction. She carried within her the only reason Itachi would have for not letting himself collapse in the future, and maybe (Y/N) could even give their child a decent life before his brother came to exact revenge. Of course, those were all unrealistic fantasies to keep him sane, because the three of them would be subjected to constantly running away and being hunted by the village.

When he reached the girl, he took her in his arms and trying not to disturb her, set off on his escape. It would not take long for the guards to notice the trouble, and he did not have much of an exit. Reaching the point where he was to lose himself in the trees, (Y/N) began to wake up, and opened her eyes.

She found an Itachi covered in blood and dressed in his armor, in the middle of the night, stealing her from her bed. The surprise was such that she managed to free herself from his arms, and with her feet on the floor, she looked around.

The panorama was tinged with black and red, moonlight highlighting the stains of death on the ground and the walls of the houses. All was silent, and a single shuddering cry could be heard in the distance, a small child sobbing disconsolately.

Itachi watched her walk away, paralyzed and unable to react, unable to justify or decide anything about it. Dismayed and speechless, he witnessed (Y/N) give up on her knees, collapse to the dirt, and scream in terror, sorrow, agony, panic, suffering.

The girl grabs her hair and tries to hold her head up in order to see the scene, understand it in its entirety, but there is no way. The entire clan has been wiped out, with only blood on the floor as a witness. Trying to comprehend, slow for having woken up so abruptly and finding this terrible image at first instance, the Uchiha picks her up from the ground and carries her over his shoulder to disappear into the darkness.

(Y/N) pounds his back with her fists and kicks with all her might to force him to let her go, but Itachi's grip on her hips is so strong she doesn't stand a chance. Traveling among the tree branches and cover of night, they make their way briskly away from what they once called home.

After hours of escaping, Itachi finally decides to put her down and let her rest. She speeds away once she hits the ground, and tries to run away from the one she now sees as her captor and murderer. There is no way to outrun his speed, and she soon finds herself with her back to the ground and trapped under his body.

He looms over her like a predator who caught his prey, covered in blood and with a metallic scent permeating his clothing. The image is eerie, and (Y/N) cannot believe this is the father of her child, the person she fell in love with so many years ago, the one she thought she would build a life with.

Connecting glances, she realizes his eyes look sadder than ever, full of agony and grief, and she can see tears fall from those red orbs. They both cry in disconsolation, joining their lips in a kiss full of nerves and gloom, not knowing how to react in a scenario of such caliber.

Their exchange is salty, brimming with distress and hopelessness, two lost souls who don't know how to find relief. They don't even know when they removed their clothes, lying in the middle of the forest and covered by a blanket of stars. There is not much foreplay, not much preparation, if not a shared need for physical stimulation to bring them out of that shock.

Itachi thrusts into her roughly, (Y/N) feeling an imperative burning the moment he begins to move. The ache helps, and they both grind to a familiar rhythm for their bodies. The Uchiha groans more than usual, and the girl feels shivers from the mix of emotions.

She carries the child of a murderer, the one who wiped out her entire family, the one who’s fucking her dejectedly in an attempt to feel... something. There is a mingling of fluids and excited exhalations between their mouths, tongues connecting with need, and soon the Uchiha finds himself cresting his peak.

He gives himself resignedly to pleasure and allows the overwhelming feeling of satisfaction to wipe everything from his mind. For a moment, he can imagine nothing happened and sees himself on top (Y/N) as if they were sharing a random afternoon of sex and love.

However, the ecstasy soon ends, and he meets his reality squarely.

He tied his girlfriend to his destiny and dragged her with him into a life she never asked for. The girl imagined a future together, and he was sure it was nothing like this.

They would make do.

[goodqueenaly]

What was the tacit "hostage" agreement when Quentyn was sent to Yronwood to foster? Like, was it "as long as Quentyn's here, we know Oberyn won't kill any of our other family members, lest we kill Quentyn?" Or "no matter what geopolitical mess comes up, you'll have to do what we say, cuz we have Quentyn?"

I think on the surface, the idea was that Quentyn would be taken from the Martell family and re-branded, so to speak, as an Yronwood in all but name. Oberyn Martell had seemingly (certainly in the view of the Yronwoods) murdered old Lord Yronwood, removing not just a member of the family but the head of the family with no legal repercussions. This event created what Doran grimly refers to as a "blood debt" in discussing the situation with Mellario: without going so far as to judicially murder a member of the Martell family to even the score, the Yronwoods would remove a son of House Martell and raise him as an Yronwood, in a way replacing Lord Edgar (at least as an individual in the overall count of the Yronwood dynasty). The longterm, if not precisely permanent, absence of Quentyn from the Martell family unit would not only echo the actually permanent absence of the dead Lord Edgar, but also serve as a reminder to Prince Doran that the Yronwoods were a powerful enough family within Dorne to demand, and receive, a prince and the second in line to Sunspear as recompense - in other words, a family not to cross with impunity.

Now obviously, as Gyldayn notes (reflecting on another fostering arrangement), "every ward is also a hostage, as a wise man once said". In a worst case scenario, if the Martells committed some further major transgression or grievous insult against the Yronwoods, it might have seemed at least possible that the Yronwoods would kill Quentyn. It's not, to be clear, that I think Lord Anders was actually looking to do as much: indeed, Quent seems to have felt very fond of and comfortable as a de facto member of the whole Yronwood family, from the foster father to whom he pointedly gave the honor of knighting him to the foster brother who was his best friend to the foster sister whom he dreamed of eventually marrying (a comfort Anders returned by sending his heir, two of his sworn swords, and his kinsman Arch with Quentyn across the Narrow Sea). Nevertheless, the mere fact of Quentyn's fostering with the family most openly opposed to the Martells generally and Doran's family (specifically his brother) in particular may have made it seem like there was a sword over Quentyn's head so long as he was with the Yronwoods.

[sapphire-weapon]

All I can say is that Biden by far one of the worst Presidents we've had. Socially, fiscally, and in every other way. What is there to cling on to and celebrate exactly? The erosion of free speech? People getting cancelled over an opinion that doesn't fall in line? Riots on the streets? Looting? Theft with impunity? I am 36--never has there been a time where all the basic necessities were locked up in supermarkets because of rampant theft. Kids in schools barely able to write and read? Teachers barely able to barely read and write! Kids throwing violent tantrums everywhere and god forbid anyone says something? Outrageous bureaucracy? Cities overrun by drug addicts who receive no social help or services and are just left to their own devices? Fires that are burning because reservoirs aren't filled with water? Collapsing infrastructure? A president who was wheeled around and whose raging diminished mental capacity was hidden by his handlers? Presidents of Ivy League Universities unable to say when it's not okay to call for the murder of Jews? The un-affordability of everything? 6-8% interest rates? Still no universal healthcare!

I can go on and on, but let's be rational. Trump is no walk in the park, but I think it's premature to spiral. Realistically, people are crying over TikTok ban and some imagined atrocities that haven't and aren't going to be committed.

Oh, women will lose rights! Women's rights? What rights? They were all lost under Biden, not Trump.

I am not a rich white woman. I am an immigrant. A refugee actually, who came to the US without any money or a citizenship (conditions imposed on anyone who left my country of origin). My parents started here with nothing, I started here with nothing. I didn't know any English. But there was acceptance and the ability to build a life in the US because things...worked. No one gave us anything other than opportunity.

I don't know what will happen. None of us do. But I choose to be optimistic. Because there is no other way to go.

Holy fuck.

I can tell that you're not a naturalized citizen -- because you don't seem to know how anything in the government or in politics works. Reading this, I'm not even sure that you know that a President's term is only 4 years long.

>What is there to cling onto and celebrate exactly?

Rejoined the Climate Accords, Infrastructure and Jobs Act, Chips and Science Act, Inflation Reduction Act, first US President to stand on a picket line with workers, commitment to and execution of Afghanistan withdrawal (Trump said he would've stayed in), bolstered NATO, staunch defense of Ukraine, aided in the eradication of Hamas and Hezbollah, stopped the pandemic and got people vaccinated, restored US's respect on the world stage, capped prescription drug costs for seniors, student debt relief, ended ban on transpeople serving in the military...

There's more. I could go on. Joe Biden is, in fact, the best President the US has had in my lifetime and has accomplished more in 4 years than most Presidents do in 8.

>The erosion of free speech?

What, exactly, did Joe Biden do to erode free speech? Can you name me a law that was passed? Can you name a single person who was arrested for speech?

>People getting canceled

How did Joe Biden get people canceled? How did he contribute to that culture?

>Riots

The riots happened in 2020, which is when Trump was in office, not Biden.

>Looting

There will always be looting after a disaster, natural or otherwise. This is not an American thing. This is a human thing. To pin this on Joe Biden is absolutely insane.

>Theft

Theft is a state crime, not a federal crime. The President has nothing to do with it. Call your governor.

>Schools

The gutting of education started under Ronald Reagan, and the complete destruction of public school learning was exacerbated under George W. Bush. Do you think that, like, Joe Biden waved a magic wand at some point in the last 4 years and retroactively made schools shittier all the way back in the 80s? LMAO

>Kids throwing tantrums

What does Joe Biden have to do with this????

>Bureaucracy

Do you think Joe Biden invented bureaucracy?????

>Cities with no social services

Nothing to do with the President. Call your mayor, governor, and state congress (which is different from the federal congressperson representing your state).

>Unfilled reservoirs

I don't have the fucking time or patience to debunk this conspiracy theory, but that's not what caused the fire, and they don't use that water for disasters like that. This is also not a Presidential issue. This is a state of California issue.

>Collapsing infrastructure

Biden passed the Infrastructure and Jobs Act. The problem with laws is that they don't magically heal things as soon as they're passed. It takes a series of years to fix infrastructure. You may not see the effects of what Joe Biden did right now this very second, but you will.

>Wheeled around

No he wasn't you fucking idiot.

>Ivy League Presidents

What does Joe Biden have to do with that????? Is he their handler? Their puppetmaster? Do you think that Joe Biden is actually a disembodied spirit that possesses people and forces them to speak certain ways?

>Unaffordability

The President does not set price points. We live in a capitalistic society. This is not under his power to fix.

>Inflation and interest rates

The US has the lowest inflation of all first-world countries and recovered from the pandemic the fastest. The current interest rate is 2.9% -- not 6-8%.

>Still no universal healthcare

The President can't write laws. It's actually kind of amazing that Biden got Congress on board to pass as much as he did -- but universal healthcare was never going to be on the table with the current GOP chokehold. Elect a Dem supermajority and see just how fast universal healthcare happens.

>Women's rights

Women's rights were lost because of the Supreme Court justices that Trump put on the bench. Not Biden.

>TikTok ban

Uh, the TikTok ban is actually a huge cause for alarm -- not because it was passed, but because Trump refuses to enforce it. Congress passed a law, and the Supreme Court upheld it; it's Trump's duty and obligation to enforce it. The Constitution of the United States does not grant the President the power of discretion when it comes to enforcing the law. In so doing, he has granted himself greater power than the other two branches of government -- which are supposed to be co-equal. This is a gigantic crisis for our entire system of governance. And, for as stupid as it is, the TikTok ban has turned out to be our first step towards autocracy.

Maybe refrain from having an opinion in the future until you know what the three branches of government do, even.

[so-i-grudgingly-joined-this-site]

About The Corinthian...

So, while I’m on about individual character analyses and The Sandman, I thought it was about time I addressed The Corinthian.

                Now, since he’s a nightmare, naturally the fandom is bound to ask exactly what type of nightmare he’s supposed to be.  I’ve seen a handful of great posts that examine him specifically through the lens of being a queer man, of how he represents the danger of intimacy and “eyes that devour” in a culture where being any variety of LGBTQ+ is stigmatized.  While I think that analysis holds true, I also feel like that’s not the only way in which The Corinthian is a culturally relevant nightmare.

                The Corinthian is a man.

                He is a white man.

                With an accent from the Southern USA and (in the show at least) clothes and mannerisms that suggest some level of wealth or class.

                He can very easily hide the fact that he is a monster.

He can escape any human attempt at arrest, punishment, or justice.

                I feel like The Corinthian does not just represent a queer community fear, but a collective fear held by minorities—or at least minorities in America—more generally.  Obviously those fears are probably similar in other countries too, but his accent places him specifically in association with a region of the US infamous for inequality.  He also invokes the American Dream in his speech at the Cereal Convention.  I find it fascinating that the character is actually so much older than the USA, yet is associated so heavily with the country.   If he is the “dark mirror of humanity,” perhaps that says something about how the author perceived America?  (Note: the books were written around the Reagan and Bush Sr. years… notably bad times for minorities there)

                Complicating this otherwise near-painfully straightforward symbolism is that Cori himself is queer.  What exact label one might apply to him isn’t exactly clear and a matter of minor fan debate, hence my choice of the broadest label.  The Sandman Companion, the official analysis book from 1999 (which I am loathe to quote since I find it unreliable), states that The Corinthian “doesn’t have sex, he eats eyeballs” and that he’s “homosexual, in the sense that he prefers to eat the eyeballs of boys.” (It’s on page 57 of my edition.)  In the context of the time, I interpret this as Hy Bender and Neil Gaiman feeling that, somehow, audiences in 1999 would’ve been too shocked by the supernatural creature being outright gay that they made the strange half-excuse of “he likes men but not in a sex way, but in a murder way, which is also a sex way.”  Meanwhile, the Netflix version of the show features him definitely having sex with men in addition to eating their eyes (and sometimes without eating their eyes), while also flirting with the female serial killer The Good Doctor and eating the eyes of the female social worker he kills.  So, he’s certainly not heterosexual, but his eye-eating is no longer exclusive to boys… but heck if anyone knows what exactly to label him, or if human labels could apply at all.

                So, then, The Corinthian is a layered fear.  He not only represents a member of the majority who can hide a monstrous nature and commit injustice with impunity, but also the danger, perhaps, of someone whom you thought you could trust turning out to be harmful.  Someone whom you thought was “like you,” a potential partner, ally, confidant, or community member turning out to be the exact opposite.  One could also argue that from a heterosexual majority viewpoint, Cori’s queerness also functions as a “hidden danger,” at least for those who are intolerant.

The Corinthian, then, exists at an intersection that makes him threatening to everyone in some way, on an ideological level and not just a physical one.  Obviously, the whole murder thing makes him threatening to everyone on a base level, but, ultimately, it is not the fact that he has mouths for eyes that makes him monstrous.

(Oh, and one last side note.  I never found the eye mouths scary.  I actually thought he looked goofy the first time I saw him.  The dude can just faceplant in a bowl of popcorn and munch away if he wants.  The scarier thing would be having three mouths—imagine all the flossing! imagine the extra dental/orthodontic work!—than meeting someone who had three.)

If you liked this, you may enjoy my other metas:

My extra-long analysis of the endings and the implication of Morpheus being suicidal

An addendum to the above focusing on Season of Mists

Another addendum focusing on Fear of Falling

Analysis of Death of the Endless as a flawed character

@serenityspiral @duckland @notallsandmen @ambercoloredfox @roguelov

[infrared135-36]

holy shit they were so fucking lucky the NA server shut down before this absolute shitshow of a character was released there. The white girl at 2010 Coachella “warbonnet”. The boomerang weapon which is used by Aboriginal Australians. The “Witch Form” named after a town in Mexico. I wonder if they’ll put her in the new madoka magica gacha. tbh I find putting any female character with this very shallow “aesthetic” in a gambling game that banks on sex appeal inherently disgusting in and of itself due to the overwhelming amount of specifically sexual violence committed upon the women of these communities. this is a very condensed set of facts

text:

Rape and violence are committed against Indigenous women with almost total impunity in the United States. Native women are 2.5 times more likely to be raped than non-Native women in the United States.: 1 in 3 Native women will be raped during her lifetime. At least 86% of perpetrators of these crimes are non-Native men. Native women face significant barriers to securing justice following rape or sexual violence, including inadequate police response, inadequate health and forensic services, and a lack of prosecutions.

Many survivors struggle to get even the most basic post-rape care, including access to a rape kit, which can provide crucial evidence for a successful prosecution if they are collected and stored properly. The quality of provision of such services to Native American and Alaska Native women varies considerably from place to place. Indian Health Service centers are severely underfunded and lack resources and trained staff, including sexual assault nurse examiners or even rape kits themselves. Survivors may have to travel over 150 miles to reach a facility where a forensic examination can be performed. Without a rape kit, there is almost no chance a trial will move forward, meaning perpetrators enjoy total impunity and Native women receive no justice.

Indigenous women and girls are disappeared or murdered each year at alarming rates. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that murder is the third-leading cause of death among Native American and Alaska Native women. Rates of violence on reservations can be up to ten times higher than the national average. No government research has been done on the rates of violence against Indigenous women living in urban areas-despite the fact that approximately 71% of Native American and Alaska Native women lives in urban areas. According to a 2018 report by the Urban Indian Health Institute, there were 506 current cases of missing and murdered American Indian and Alaska Native women across 71 cities, though this is likely an undercount due to the lack of data collection by cities, states, and the federal government.

The U.S. federal government has failed to keep data rates of violence and disappearances of Native American and Alaska Native women and girls. States and U.S. cities are also not adequately tracking this data, sometimes lacking basic classification options in their databases for Native American and Alaska Native women. The lack of data on this issue impedes the ability of communities, tribal nations, and policy makers to make informed decisions on how best to address this violence.

[mariana-oconnor]

The Copper Beeches pt 2

I observed that he sat frequently for half an hour on end, with knitted brows and an abstracted air, but he swept the matter away with a wave of his hand when I mentioned it. "Data! data! data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay." And yet he would always wind up by muttering that no sister of his should ever have accepted such a situation.

Holmes is worried. He really does seem to always worry about women in potentially abusive situations. This is also why the werid Enola Holmes law suit was weird, btw. The argument for that was that Holmes wasn't depicted as caring about women until the later works, which were not out of copyright, yet this was published in 1892. He's literally referencing a theoretical sister here in a way that clearly shows he would be a concerned brother.

"Please be at the Black Swan Hotel at Winchester at midday to-morrow," it said. "Do come! I am at my wit's end. HUNTER.

I love the tone of this telegram. It's got that 'please' at the beginning, to be polite, but then at the end it's less 'I'm scared' and more exasperation.

"That will do very nicely. Then perhaps I had better postpone my analysis of the acetones, as we may need to be at our best in the morning."

Alas, the acetones will have to wait. Holmes is both willing to postpone his chemistry, but also concerned that he will need to be his best.

By eleven o'clock the next day we were well upon our way to the old English capital.

Such a weird little historical note there. London's been the capital city of England since... Idk... around the Normal conquest in 1066? I don't know if there's an exact date. Most people these days wouldn't even know that Winchester used to be an important city, but Watson's just slipping that in there.

Holmes had been buried in the morning papers all the way down, but after we had passed the Hampshire border he threw them down and began to admire the scenery. It was an ideal spring day, a light blue sky, flecked with little fleecy white clouds drifting across from west to east. The sun was shining very brightly, and yet there was an exhilarating nip in the air, which set an edge to a man's energy. All over the countryside, away to the rolling hills around Aldershot, the little red and grey roofs of the farm-steadings peeped out from amid the light green of the new foliage.

Another lovely description of the scenery and the weather. Everything's so nice. What a lovely day to prevent a crime. And Holmes taking time to look at the scenery.

"You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there."

Holmes is super optimistic. This entire speech about the country is why Midsomer Murders exists. Lolol. Look at the idyllic countryside, just full of crime and violence.

"But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law."

I feel like that's a little rude of you. I'm pretty sure that even in the countryside people know that murder and theft are illegal.

"I have devised seven separate explanations, each of which would cover the facts as far as we know them."

I want to know what these seven explanations are. I really do.

"In the first place, I may say that I have met, on the whole, with no actual ill-treatment from Mr and Mrs Rucastle."

I feel like this is more luck than anything else. The man is very creepy. We have not yet met the wife, but if she is anything like her husbad described her, she too is very creepy.

"I have gathered that they have been married about seven years, that he was a widower, and that his only child by the first wife was the daughter who has gone to Philadelphia. Mr Rucastle told me in private that the reason why she had left them was that she had an unreasoning aversion to her stepmother."

The fact that she's a stepmother doesn't fill me with confidence in this matter. Still not sure Alice isn't buried under the floorboards. Not to malign stepparents, but in stories like this, they're often the bad guys.

"Mrs Rucastle seemed to me to be colourless in mind as well as in feature. She impressed me neither favourably nor the reverse. She was a nonentity. It was easy to see that she was passionately devoted both to her husband and to her little son. Her light grey eyes wandered continually from one to the other, noting every little want and forestalling it if possible."

This is the most insulting description of a person. She's just nothingness personified. Although this in itself is unsettling. The fact that her husband seems to have such a big personality and she just fades into the background and tries to pre-empt his needs. Eeeh... I'm getting weird vibes. Maybe she's just a naturally retiring and quiet person. But it feels more like a woman who is scared of upsetting her husband. We once again have only the husband's reported word that Alice left because of her.

And sometimes she's just found crying?

Yeeeah. I'm not into this. Nope. Not good.

More than once I have surprised her in tears. I have thought sometimes that it was the disposition of her child which weighed upon her mind, for I have never met so utterly spoiled and so ill-natured a little creature. He is small for his age, with a head which is quite disproportionately large. His whole life appears to be spent in an alternation between savage fits of passion and gloomy intervals of sulking. Giving pain to any creature weaker than himself seems to be his one idea of amusement, and he shows quite remarkable talent in planning the capture of mice, little birds, and insects.

Ah, our earlier suspicions about the child are accurate, it seems. This is a serial killer in the making. If this were a modern story he would have killed his older sister by pushing her down the stairs and his parents would be covering it up.

I don't know where the creepy servants come in. Maybe they just don't like the Rucastles because they're serial killers?

"'Oh, yes,' said he, turning to me, 'we are very much obliged to you, Miss Hunter, for falling in with our whims so far as to cut your hair. I assure you that it has not detracted in the tiniest iota from your appearance. We shall now see how the electric-blue dress will become you. You will find it laid out upon the bed in your room, and if you would be so good as to put it on we should both be extremely obliged.'"

Creeeeepy creepy creepy creepy. Just skin-crawlingly creepy. Don't comment on her appearance, dickhead. This is just a whole pile of weird.

"The dress which I found waiting for me was of a peculiar shade of blue. It was of excellent material, a sort of beige"

I've looked up beige but I still don't really understand what this means, because yes it did used to refer to a fabric, but the fabric was specifically undyed wool. This fabric is definitely dyed, so... Is it a woollen dress?

"...then Mr Rucastle, walking up and down on the other side of the room, began to tell me a series of the funniest stories that I have ever listened to. You cannot imagine how comical he was, and I laughed until I was quite weary."

So he wants her to dress up pretty and listen to his stand-up routine?

"They were always very careful, I observed, to turn my face away from the window, so that I became consumed with the desire to see what was going on behind my back. At first it seemed to be impossible, but I soon devised a means. My hand-mirror had been broken, so a happy thought seized me, and I concealed a piece of the glass in my handkerchief."

I'm always so happy when the people who come to Holmes do their own detective work. Like Mr Melas in the last story, getting the information out of poor Paul under the villains' noses. Miss Hunter here is not just accepting what's going on, she's trying to actively decipher it. Alas, her subterfuge is discovered and she is turned into an active participant in whatever game the Rucastles are playing on the man in the street outside.

Interesting that Mrs Rucastle is the one who takes the initiative here. Clearly she's not as silent a partner in this as she appears.

"'It's only Carlo, my mastiff. I call him mine, but really old Toller, my groom, is the only man who can do anything with him. We feed him once a day, and not too much then, so that he is always as keen as mustard. Toller lets him loose every night, and God help the trespasser whom he lays his fangs upon. For goodness' sake don't you ever on any pretext set your foot over the threshold at night, for it's as much as your life is worth.'"

Ah good. Animal cruelty and oblique threats to her life. That's what we like to see. 'We essentially starve our dog to make sure he's aggressive' is such a dick move. I can see where little Edward gets his animal cruelty from. A chip off the old block, that one.

This family is just so messed up.

Holmes has connections with loads of people, he must know someone who needs a governess and isn't a complete nightmare of a person.

"The very first key fitted to perfection, and I drew the drawer open. There was only one thing in it, but I am sure that you would never guess what it was. It was my coil of hair."

Yep, that's Alice's hair. I don't think I remember Alice being buried under the floorboards, but I honestly wouldn't put it past these people.

"There was one wing, however, which appeared not to be inhabited at all. A door which faced that which led into the quarters of the Tollers opened into this suite, but it was invariably locked."

Oooooh. Alice is locked in the secret wing of the house. How very Bluebeard.

I once saw him carrying a large black linen bag with him through the door.

The mind does automatically go to 'body', doesn't it? I don't think it is a body, but that is what I thought immediately on reading this.

Violet Hunter does pretty much all the leg work in this story. She works out that there's someone behind her, she discovers the forbidden rooms, she sneaks into them. She gets so close to discovering the truth and then...

I turned and ran—ran as though some dreadful hand were behind me clutching at the skirt of my dress. I rushed down the passage, through the door, and straight into the arms of Mr Rucastle, who was waiting outside.

Well... this isn't going to end well.

"'My dear young lady! my dear young lady!'—you cannot think how caressing and soothing his manner was—'and what has frightened you, my dear young lady?' "But his voice was just a little too coaxing. He overdid it. I was keenly on my guard against him."

Glad to see that she's finally seeing through him and has the sense not to tell him what she saw. Although she probably shouldn't have left the door open.

"'Well, then, you know now. And if you ever put your foot over that threshold again'—here in an instant the smile hardened into a grin of rage, and he glared down at me with the face of a demon—'I'll throw you to the mastiff.'"

Ah, there it is, a direct threat to her life. His illusions of civility are peeled back and he's no longer just creepy, but actively horrible.

I do like Violet Hunter, she's such an active participant in events. She doesn't just present a puzzle and then let Holmes tell her what's up, she sniffs around and tries to work out what's going on. And what's going on is a whole lot of bad news.

I'm not sure why Alice is locked in the forbidden wing of the house, but that really doesn't matter. I didn't think she was in Philadelphia. It might be a story a little similar to Miss Sutherland's. She has an inheritance and if she marries, her father and stepmother will no longer have access to it, so locked in her rooms she must be and a doppelganger brought out to pretend that Alice is still happy and healthy.

A whole house full of horrible people. And that poor dog.

I wonder what happened to Alice's mother.

[convertgrapeling]

Let's not pretend it actually matters whether anyone from UNRWA actually did anything illegal. Not when Israel commits genocide without impunity. Not when police in all western countries practice murder, rape and violence against civilians with impunity. Not when the West funds atrocities all around the world.

Let's not pretend this is about anything other than supporting Israel's campaign of genocidal violence. I am donating to the UNRWA and I strongly recommend you do the same if you can.

[davidaugust]

"In its purest form, the concept of immunity boils down to a maxim— '[t]he King can do no wrong' —a notion that was firmly 'rejected at the birth of [our] Republic.'"

"'No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity. All the officers of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law, and are bound to obey it.'"

We have long lived with the collective understanding that 'decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen,' for 'in a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously.'"

"…our Government has long functioned under an accountability paradigm in which no one is above the law; an accused person is innocent until proven guilty; and criminal defendants may raise defenses, both legal and factual, tailored to their particular circumstances, whether they be Government officials or ordinary citizens. For over two centuries, our Nation has survived with these principles intact."

"…even a hypothetical President who admits to having ordered the assassinations of his political rivals or critics… or one who indisputably instigates an unsuccessful coup… has a fair shot at getting immunity under the majority's new Presidential accountability model."

"In the end, then, under the majority's new paradigm, whether the President will be exempt from legal liability for murder, assault, theft, fraud, or any other reprehensible and outlawed criminal act will turn on whether he committed that act in his official capacity, such that the answer to the immunity question will always and inevitably be: It depends."

"…the majority holds that the President, unlike anyone else in our country, is comparatively free to engage in criminal acts in furtherance of his official duties.

That point bears emphasizing. Immunity can issue for Presidents under the majority's model even for unquestionably and intentionally egregious criminal behavior. Regardless of the nature or the impact of the President's criminal conduct, so long as he is committing crimes 'pursuant to the powers invested exclusively in him by the Constitution…' or as needed 'to carry out his constitutional duties without undue caution,' ante, at 14, he is likely to be deemed immune from prosecution.

Ultimately, the majority's model simply sets the criminal law to one side when it comes to crimes allegedly committed by the President."

"Under the majority’s immunity regime, by contrast, the President can commit crimes in the course of his job even under circumstances in which no one thinks he has any excuse; the law simply does not apply to him."

"First, by changing the accountability paradigm in this fashion, the Court has unilaterally altered the balance of power between the three coordinate branches of our Government as it relates to the Rule of Law, aggrandizing power in the Judiciary and the Executive, to the detriment of Congress. Second, the majority’s new Presidential accountability model undermines the constraints of the law as a deterrent for future Presidents who might otherwise abuse their power, to the detriment of us all."

"With its adoption of a paradigm that sometimes exempts the President from the dictates of the law (when the Court says so), this Court has effectively snatched from the Legislature the authority to bind the President (or not) to Congress’s mandates, and it has also thereby substantially augmented the power of both the Office of the Presidency and itself."

"…while Congress (the branch of our Government most accountable to the People) is the entity our Constitution tasks with deciding, as a general matter, what conduct is on or off limits, the Court has now arrogated that power unto itself when that question pertains to the President."

"…the Court today [July 1, 2024] displaces the independent judgments of the political branches about the circumstances under which the criminal law should apply. Effectively, the Court elbows out of the way both Congress and prosecutorial authorities within the Executive Branch, making itself the indispensable player in all future attempts to hold former Presidents accountable to generally applicable criminal laws."

"What is left in its [Monday's decision's] wake is a greatly weakened Congress, which must stand idly by as the President disregards its criminal prohibitions and uses the powers of his office to push the envelope, while choosing to follow (or not) existing laws, as he sees fit. We also now have a greatly empowered Court, which can opt to allow Congress’s policy judgments criminalizing conduct to stand (or not) with respect to a former President, as a matter of its own prerogative."

"Our Constitution’s 'separation of powers was adopted by the Convention of 1787, not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was, not to avoid friction, but…to save the people from autocracy.'"

"The Court has now declared for the first time in history that the most powerful official in the United States can (under circumstances yet to be fully determined) become a law unto himself."

"In short, America has traditionally relied on the law to keep its Presidents in line. Starting today [July 1, 2024], however, Americans must rely on the courts to determine when (if at all) the criminal laws that their representatives have enacted to promote individual and collective security will operate as speedbumps to Presidential action or reaction. Once self-regulating, the Rule of Law now becomes the rule of judges, with courts pronouncing which crimes committed by a President have to be let go and which can be redressed as impermissible. So, ultimately, this Court itself will decide whether the law will be any barrier to whatever course of criminality emanates from the Oval Office in the future. The potential for great harm to American institutions and Americans themselves is obvious." - Justice Jackson

[girlactionfigure]

PALESTINIANS CAN BE SCHMUCKS

Palestinians can be schmucks. I know the world doesn’t want to say this. But Palestinians can be schmucks. And idiots. And buffoons. Palestinians can also be bastards. Palestinians can be murderers. Palestinians can be scumbags.

So can people of any nationality, ethnicity or group identity.

So why are people uncomfortable saying Palestinians can be schmucks? Bastards? Scumbags? Or murderers?

Why are Palestinians so dehumanised that the natural flaws possessed by all human beings are deemed absent from Palestinians?

You can feel people clench if you say Palestinians can be disgusting, murderous, racist bastards.

And some Palestinian individuals are disgusting, murderous, racist bastards.

Moreover, they are buttressed by Palestinian institutions that encourage, support and reward murderous bastards.

Last week, a Palestinian who fits the description above brutally murdered two British sisters and their mother because they were Jewish. He shot them to death at point blank range whilst they were on their way to a hike.

This was the act of a pig. There is no justification. It was unambiguously evil. It was simply the work of a racist acting out the antisemitism nourished within Palestinian culture.

Yet there was barely a word of condemnation for this crime. In fact, many non-Jews fought hard to exonerate the murderer and blame the victims instead: Jewish women.

How brainwashed by anti-Israel propaganda are these people that they’ve completely lost their moral compass?

And what nonsense logic makes Palestinians so magical that can’t be held to account for the murder of innocent children?

We live in a world where we’re constantly told we must all do better.

Except, it seems, for the Palestinians.

Apparently they are perfect people.

No criticisms there.

They were made in Willy Wonka’s side hustle: “Willy Wonka’s Darling Angel Factory”.

According to the world they need never reflect or take personal responsibility and we must never think wrong of their crimes.

It’s obviously absurd.

But it’s not by accident.

This is war propaganda pushed by Palestinian extremists who seek the genocide of Jews and the destruction of Israel.

This is much easier to do if the world endorses it.

The propaganda is willingingly embraced by those who know what the game is, and also by those who are useful idiots seduced by such infantilising narratives.

But it is a narrative in service of war. It hasn’t emerged for the purpose of debate.

Dissolving the Palestinians of all responsibility is an act of warfare. It allows them to act with impunity and without restraint. It allows them to commit civil crimes and war crimes. It is a shield to let Palestinians murder Jewish women and children. It allows Palestinians to commit atrocities without the world calling for justice. It allows reasonable defensive actions taken by Israelis to seem insane and cruel.

Those who push the narrative deliberately hide Palestinian crimes and their racist motivations because they’ve taken it upon themselves to become brand managers for the Palestinian cause.

They want to shield the Palestinian brand from any negative publicity.

Or rather - truthful publicity.

They want to lie.

By tinkering with facts, headlines and the subtleties of language - politicians and journalists attempt to wipe the fingerprints off every Palestinian crime scene.

They do all they can to hide, obfuscate and provide alibis for the most bestial, individual acts of Palestinian immorality that are buttressed by institutional support.

In this respect they are participants in a pact of scum.

Let’s put to one side those who knowingly engage in this lie because they’re at war with Israel.

Fine.

They’re doing what they have to do to be evil scumbags.

Let’s address those who actually want peace in the middle east:

You have been played by war mongers.

You have to be brave and oppose them.

You are not serving peace by participating in the lie that Palestinians are somehow the only humans on earth who have no responsibility.

You are not serving conflict resolution.

You are not serving truth.

You are not serving a solution.

Palestinian bigotry - largely of an Islamic persuasion - is not a by-product of the conflict - it is a contributing cause. It must be condemned without embarrassment if you seek peace.

Palestinian violence against Jews is not a by-product of the conflict - it is a contributing cause. It must be condemned without inhibition if you seek peace.

Palestinian society is not antisemitic because there is a conflict. There is a conflict because Palestinian society is antisemitic. It must be challenged without qualification if you seek peace.

And Palestinians don’t hate Jews because there is Israel. They hate Israel because it’s Jewish. This must be denounced without delay if you seek peace.

Until you engage with the above you have nothing to offer the situation.

Some things are just wrong. Let’s start with the murder of two Jewish sisters and their mother. Do not let yourself be played by warmongers who want you to ignore every moral instinct you have so that you become a person who excuses or legitimises the murder of children. Don’t let them make you into that person. You have one life. Do not become a person who thinks there are circumstances in which it’s permissable to murder Jewish women.

Step up. Be brave. From now on try this impulse:

When Palestinians engage in acts of terrorism, instead of thinking you have to protect their “brand” in order to retain their public support - call out their violence without restraint - because Palestinian violence is a CAUSE of the conflict - and if you want the conflict to end for Palestinians - you must stop them doing what perpetuates it.

It’s also the right thing to do.

Attempting to bestow upon Palestinians a kind of moral infallibility is wrong and leads to a situation where terrible acts of abuse can take place. If it’s wrong to conceal child sex abuse in a religious organisation - or to cover up institutional racism within a police force - then it’s wrong to cover up institutionalised racism and murder within Palestinian society. It has to be exposed and condemned. Otherwise it leads to two sisters and their mother being murdered in cold blood. Who wins from that? No one.

Palestinians have responsibility to stop this.

And so do you.