#but he also grew up among a mixed-class group of his peers

[meat-loving-meat]

I’m thinking about Tylendel Frelynnye’s ipod nano circa 2007

[liquid-luck-00]

Creatures and Cryptids

@maribatmarch-2k21 Day 10: Creatures and Cryptids

Hogwarts Au

~~~~~~~~~~

So, this all started when Jon introduced Damian to his cousin, Marinette, on the Hogwarts Express during their first year. She was bubbly and sweet much like her cousin.

So, when the sorting began and she was sorted into Slytherin it shocked them all, Damian Slytherin and Jon Gryffindor.

The three of them were inseparable even if they were in two different houses.

How they got their hands on the Marauders map their first year was a Mystery. (James and Albus lost it to Filtch their seventh year. And they decided to leave it for future troublemakers like their uncles.) But who were they to look a gift horse in the mouth. The three split their time between their three homes during the summer break. Unlocking most of the Map's secrets.

That meant their entire second year was spent exploring the castle and grounds. But without out any disguise any invisibility hindered them.

Which is why in their third year when they learned about Animagus they started planning. Marinette was the best of the three in potions and herbology. So, she created a secret and dark garden in one of the empty dungeons, as to not be touched by humans she left it grow on its own after a year. During that time, Damian the best in transfiguration trained both Mari and Jon on the spell they needed. Thus, making it a routine and habit to not be broken later on. Jon the best of them in Astrology kept the cycles of the moon and the weather.

Jon made sure the two of them grounded and on track with course work and everything else. It all came to a head their fifth year when they decided to actually attempt the spell. They behind that their best chance to catch a storm would be if they started in September, as the fight full moon was close to the middle of the month and it led into the rainy season.

It was during the first Hogesmele weekend that they heard the incoming thunder.

They waved off their friends, saying they didn't want to be caught in the rain. They quickly made their way to the Room of Requirements where the trio had their potion vials stored. Each were holding a box with their names engraved in them, which held their vials. They listened for the rain that sounded outside. The ceiling had the same enchantment as the Great Hall casting a faint light on the room for them. When a streak of lightning crossed the ceiling, the thunder boomed outside. They opened their boxes to reveal their potions turned blood red.

"It's now or nothing." Jon announced raising his vial.

"No turning back now." Mari stated. "Scared?"

"Tt. Never." Damian responded to the tease.

They each took their vial and spoke the incantation are last time.

When they woke after the transformation there was a bit of a surprise. They had figured there was a chance that they would take the form their Patronus did, but they didn’t think it would be true. Jon had morphed into a peregrine falcon. His grey and white feathers almost shone blue in the faint light. Damian and Marinette both morphed into Iberian Lynxes. Both were small wild cats, yes, but Mari was the smaller and lighter of the two. Damian was slightly larger and darker.

All three tons formed back and laughed at what they had accomplished. This was literally a challenge the three set to accomplish for almost two years. And they succeeded in it.

The rest of their fifth year was spent either roaming the grounds and castle to their hearts content and the dreaded OWLS at the end of the year.

As the three were Prefects for their respective house they all had extra liberties which they used to explore further. Thanks to having a base with the Marauders Map the trio were able to locate a hidden corridor that lead to a clearing that was used from time to time for Care of Magical Creatures, leading Damian to adopt a couple of the creatures that lived in the forest.

The three of them made it a habit to sneak out through the dungeon corridor and out to the clearing at least once a week, to others it may have seemed random, but the creatures who visited them in this little clearing knew when they would show. After all it was regular and thanks to Jon, that they could recognize it always. The creatures that would come would range from Hippogriffs and Nifflers to Pegasus and even the occasional Unicorn.

It wasn’t until the middle of their seventh year that their relationship with them became known. One of the hippogriffs, they nicknamed Sky for his light sky-blue color, was crying, and screeching outside the castle. It came to the point that all classes had to be stopped and teachers went out to calm the distressed creature. Manny students rushed outside to see what would happen. Among them would be Damian, Jon, and Marinette, who immediately recognized Sky, how could they not Jon even helped him start to fly the year before.

When finally spotting them Sky dove towards them and they expected it unlike their peers. A quick bow from both parties and the three rushed to the hippogriff.

"What’s wrong boy," Mari cooed as Damian looked him over, it was no surprise that Damian was aiming to work with magical beasts.

"Mar," Jon pointed to Sky’s clenched talons. Who when they noticed dropped it into Jon’s hand, who gave it to Mari.

"This is Unicorn hair, it’s still a foal. Is it hurt?" She asked the hippogriff who nodded and looked over to the forest. They have an idea which unicorn it is because there is only one unicorn foal on their clearing. Only one who is guarded by the creatures they befriended. "Lead the way. "

And lead he did the three of them went off running following Sky, the teachers right behind them. When they arrived at the clearing, they found the Pegasus that adopted the little unicorn on the ground lying next to the injured creature, wing draped over them protectively. A ring of an assortment of magical creatures surrounded them, including a young manticore that stumbled upon their little group a few months ago. The creatures readily let the three of them in but went back on guard with the teachers.

"Let them in they came to help." Jon assured them all, as the other two went to check the unicorn.

"Mari is this." Damian pointed at an angry wound.

"I think so," she turned and went over to the manticore, the teachers tried to stop her, but they moved away when the manticore approached. "Do you mind if I check your tail? Please?" She spoke softly. The manticore obliged and let her handle his tail. "Yup the Manticore’s stinger grew back." She walked back with the manticore on her heels.

"We’ll need something to combat the poison."

Marinette pulled out a box from her bag, producing a small potion set and another covered box within it. She opened the second box and spoke "Accio Bezoar," a stone landed in her hand which she promptly placed in her mortar and began to prep it. "Damian can you prep a sugar water solution in a bottle please." When the bezoar was a powder, she took the bottle from Damian and mixed the powder in and fed it to the unicorn who happily took the sugary treat.

"Miss Dupain-Cheng, Mr. Wayne, and Mr. Kent explain yourselves." Professor McGonagall demanded.

This spot was near the black lake but still deep enough into the forbidden forest for concern. "You see professor a few years ago when we came down to the lake to do our homework, Sky here barreled into us." Not a complete lie as he had barreled into them, but they’d met and many of the others for a long time before that. "We decided to see If he was okay and when we did the others met up with him at of adopted us into their flock." Also, not far from the truth. "From time to time they seek us out when we are on the grounds if there is a creature in trouble, and we help if we can." The three spoke one after another.

"And you three saw nothing wrong with aiding magical creatures and entering the forest." She asked them again.

"Well most of the time was them seeing if we had any treats for them."

"It was only the manticore before this, and that was just to help him heal a split and pulled out stinger.

"You three are saying you aided a manticore, this little manticore heal a split stinger as he grew a new one." The Care of Magical creatures Professor asked.

"Yes," the three answered unsure.

"May I?" the Care of Magical creatures Professor asked.

Damian and Mari sat down, and Damian was speaking to the creature as the professor looked over the stinger.

"This is extraordinary work you can barely tell where the fracture occurred, and this was you’re doing. "

They only nodded unsure of where this was going. "It seems you three are already quite skilled and well liked between these creatures, trusted as well," the three couldn’t help but chuckle at that. "I see no harm in this so long as they don’t enter the forest wouldn’t you agree Professor."

With that they took the Unicorn to a small padlock and astable on the edge of the grounds and took the trio back to the castle. The rest of the two years passed rather uneventfully and they always made sure to visit the clearing regularly.

~~~~~~~~~~

Permanent Taglist: @itsmeevie01 @adrestar @miraculouspenta @vixen-uchiha

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Ian's idea of giving up smoking on doctor's orders was to cut down from sixty a day to thirty … and on instruction he reduced his intake of Vodka Martini from three lethal doses to one. He was very shaky, his normally brick-red complexion the dry mauve of a paper flower.

- AIan Ross, Coastwise Lights

Fleming was 56 and indifferent about living longer. He once revealingly described his own character thus: "I've always had one foot not wanting to leave the cradle and the other in a hurry to get to the grave." This strange mixture of the infantile and the world-weary seems very typical of the man. A few months earlier he had been visited by Evelyn Waugh. Waugh was a friend of Fleming's glamorously waspish wife Ann and didn't like Fleming much. The feeling was mutual. Waugh wrote to Nancy Mitford: "[Ian] looks and speaks as though he may drop dead any minute. His medical advisors confirm the apprehension."

Where did this implicit death wish come from? In some ways it's a very English slow suicide – one that Waugh, incidentally, was also participating in – obesity, cigars, alcohol and assorted drugs hastening him to an early grave two years after Fleming. Yet, on paper, Fleming had everything to live for. Born into a rich and well-connected Scottish banking family, he went to Eton, briefly to Sandhurst and then became a remittance man, notionally working in the City – "the world's worst stockbroker", in his own estimation – enjoying pretty girlfriends, fast cars and foreign holidays. After the war, during a spell at the Sunday Times, he began to write the James Bond novels, one a year from 1953 to his death. To new global fame could be added even more riches. Why was he so unhappy?

It's hard to explain this taedium vitae when it seems that most of life's injustices, hassles and difficulties – large and small – have been erased by wealth. A few biographers and friends have said Fleming couldn't get over the second world war. I think this rings about true.

For many of his generation the war was both a gigantic upheaval and an astonishing adventure in his life, an unparalleled episode in which he had found himself and felt his work had been both meaningful and useful. In other words, during the war, paradoxically, he had been happy. When it was over the meaninglessness of his feather-bedded existence slowly re-established itself.

Fleming's good fortune was to be recruited in 1939 into the Naval Intelligence Division as personal assistant to NID's head, Admiral John Godfrey. He had a rank in the RNVR – commander – wore a uniform and went to work in the Admiralty. Everything about his life had changed. As a result of this key role and position he not only was connected to the very centre of the secret world of spies and spying but he could also actively participate in it – travelling to France and Spain, the US and Canada – suggesting ideas and schemes as they came to him, some of which were taken up and provided notable covert successes.

The most remarkable and lasting of these was his suggestion that a special commando be set up – a small group of intelligence-gathering raiders – who would attack and plunder targeted German establishments – radar stations, Kriegsmarine offices, naval installations and the like – and "pinch" anything that that might be useful – code books, movement orders, bits of Enigma machines and so forth.

The force that was established as a result of Fleming's brainwave was called the 30 Assault Unit, a commando that saw its first operation during the disastrous 1942 raid on Dieppe. Fleming was on board a destroyer not far from the beaches during the raid and it was not an auspicious start, as even he had to admit, but 30AU was to prove itself invaluable in north Africa, Sicily, Italy, Rhodes, Yugoslavia, the invasion of France – and, most effectively, in Germany during the final days of the Third Reich when, among the wholesale larceny of German technology that was taking place as the war ended, its most audacious "pinch" of all was achieved, namely, the entire archive of the German Navy – the Tambach Archives, a vast document haul that weighed more than 400 tons.

As well as being intrepid fighters it seemed as much a requisite of joining 30AU that the soldiers possessed strong, not to say eccentric, personalities. These included such extraordinary men as Bon Royle, Lofty Whyman, Patrick Dalzel-Job, "Sancho" Glanville and Peter Huntington-Whitely among others. Together they went on audacious exploits from 1942 onwards.

Many of 30AU's pinches facilitated the code-breakers of Bletchley Park. Captured Enigma machines, cipher books and coded messages were sent back for analysis and, as the code-breakers grew ever more efficient at their work, it is clear that Fleming's commandos actively aided the general war effort and possibly shortened the conflict.

The commandos were unaware of the actual contribution and long-term effects of their looting – as, probably, was Fleming. He remains something of a background figure to the group itself. Fleming occasionally visited the men on the front line (and complaining about the quality of the brandy he was served) and not much loved, it has to be said. This again is probably a result of a particular trait of the privileged English classes. Fleming found it hard to mix with others outside his own society and to express emotion, like many of his peers, and cultivated instead the very English phenomenon of putting on a façade of nonchalance.

If the war made Fleming feel fulfilled as a man it also provided him with a vast store of memories that consciously or unconsciously fed into the plots, characters and situations of the novels themselves. "M" in the novels is a portrait of Fleming's old NID boss Admiral Godfrey. The "Lektor" machine in From Russia with Love is clearly modelled on the Enigma encryptors.

An old 30AU member, Tony Hugill, became a minor character under his own name in The Man with the Golden Gun, and so on.

Most telling of all is the late story Octopussy that can be interpreted as a deliberate self-portrait of the author as embittered, self-loathing drunk, living off the capital of his war.

For Fleming, one feels, nothing ever matched the intensity and excitement of his life between 1939-45 and all his worldly success after it could not drive away his demons. His wife, Ann, described him in his last days as living in a state of "total misery".

Alan Ross, however, an old friend and together they would watch Sussex cricket at the Hove would write his own memoirs of his dear friend. Ross just saw another multifaceted and complex man and also a naval officer in the war: "Not many of [Fleming's] wife's friends cared for him, a feeling that was reciprocated, but to me he was a good and entertaining friend and I missed him greatly."

[yukiwrites]

Henry, Sharing Experiences

Thank you so much for the patience and constant support, @xpegasusuniverse! I hope you like it!

Summary: Interestingly enough, there was no known School of Magic at the Altean continent -- apart from a very specific one only known to Plegians. Henry was pleasantly surprised when he found out that there were people who went to a magical school just like him when he overheard them talking in Askr...

Commission info HERE and HERE!

__________________________

Askr, home to the one and only Summoner who’s rumored to be able to lead the Order of Heroes to victory against any foe. In such a place where many people from differing backgrounds joined hands to work together side by side, a wide variety of groups were formed.

What started as a simple meeting between fellow practitioners of their preferred art of war turned into complex classes with a rich curriculum during the time the Heroes had between battles. One of the most prominent of those were the magic classes: they varied from beginner to intermediate to the Mastery class, which only consisted of the teachers of the previous two courses.

There were mages from all walks of life within this niche, which in turn only enriched the students’ experiences. As a matter of fact, some of them had met one another back in their home world, as it was the case with the four mages who attend to the School of Sorcery in Fhirdiad: Annette, Constance, Lorenz and Mercedes were all attending to the lectures in Askr just as they had done so in Faerghus.

Though, this time, they were all classmates.

“As riveted as I am to be able to attend magical classes with you, Mercedes, the mere thought of not being able to do so back at the School of Sorcery is enough to make me want to reverse the hands of time myself!” Constance shook her shoulders after a sigh, walking close enough to Mercedes to hold her arm.

“Oh, yeah, Mercie mentioned you two just missed each other, right? Wah, I’m so sorry, Constance… But hey, at least now you’re together! And we’re all together!” Annette hyped up beside Mercedes, puffing her cheeks and chest up.

“I suppose, yes,” Constance lifted her chin, “still, to think that we could have been reunited much sooner…”

Mercedes smiled softly, basically sandwiched between her friends. “What matters is that we’re all here now, right? And learning so much, too!”

“Aptly put, Mercedes!” Lorenz intervened from the side as they were all leaving the library that had been hijacked by the mages to be used as a classroom. “To think that all of us attended the Royal School of Sorcery but only ended up as classmates in another world! The goddess truly plays her cards well, do you not think?”

Hearing Lorenz’s words, a white-haired head popped up from behind him, as someone who had also just come out of the library. “Ohhh, so there are magical schools in other worlds, too! I wonder how different they were from the one in Plegia, though.”

“What manner of-” Lorenz jumped out of his skin, almost letting out a disgraceful yelp. “Good lad, I would ask that you do not sneak up on your peers! A word of caution.”

“Oh, whoops, sorry about that. Robin sometimes scolds me about that, too -- guess I’ve been hanging out with Kellam too much, nyaha!”

“Whyever are you speaking to us, good sir? We’ve places to be, so if your business is over…” Constance lifted her chin condescendingly, ready to wrap her arm around Mercedes’ to lead the way back to where they were going.

“No, no, wait! I got curious about this sorcery school in your world. You see,” Henry matched the pace, inserting himself between Constance and Lorenz, “the one back in my world -- heck, back in my country -- taught a veeeery specific kinda magic. Eeevery mage born there only does dark magic!”

“My word, dark magic?!” Lorenz let out an exclamation of surprise. “Back in our world, I’ve known only a few who are capable of wielding such dangerous yet powerful magic…”

“See?” Henry pointed to Lorenz. “I was actually surprised when I got here and found out that there were so few dark mages! I mean, back home they were made in the HEAPS, nyaha!”

Annette’s eyes shone. “How different was your school life, uh-”

“The name’s Henry! I’ve been here for a while so I know allll about you guys!” His smile grew pointedly as a shadow covered his thin eyes. He then giggled, shaking off the cold that had crept in their spines. “But I asked first! How’s the School of Sorcery back in your world?”

“Um, being asked like that at point blank, it’s kinda hard to even remember what to say, you know? Um, umm…” Annette widened her eyes, then scrunched her face in deep thought. “We had… different classes? Ahah, wait, that’s obvious-”

“If you are asking about how the classes were divided, Henry, then the curriculum here in Askr wildly differs from the Royal School of Sorcery in Fhirdiad.” Constance stepped in as Annette mumbled and Mercedes patted her head. “There were classes focused on potion-making, illusory magic, red and white magic, summoning circles-”

“Whoa, whoaaa! Potion? Summoning? Illusory? That’s the same thing back home! How come you’re not a dark mage, then?” Henry tilted his head to the side in wonder.

After all, to him, making potions, illusions and summoning ghastly beings were simply different kinds of hexes. One would collect materials, which could serve as the sacrifice needed for the hex to work depending on the complexity of it; dissect the magical property of each piece of each ingredient (because bat wings were a common material for memory-related hexes, but bat eyes were great for indigestion) and how they interacted with one another so they could be mixed into a magical instrument.

Yet, what Constance meant by those were pouring magical power into concoctions and culinary as a means of enhancing them as well as summoning stronger red magic. The four classmates exchanged curious glances, indeed confused by Henry’s, well, confusion.

If their classes were the same, why, indeed, weren’t they versed in the same kinds of magic?

Noticing the silent conversation going on between them, Henry widened his smile. “Hey, hey, what else? Did you have long-range concentration? Magical energy expansion? I can throw a curse from wayyyyy into Embla from this spot, nyaha!”

All four gasped in unison. “E-Embla?! Surely you jest! No matter how much it borders Askr, it is still another country entirely!” Constance was the one who spoke first, followed by Annette’s vigorous nodding and Mercedes’ sigh of wonder.

“Huhh, so no magical energy expansion? I mean, I heard that a guy managed to curse one of Ylisse’s princes from the Plegian Castle, so doing it from here to Embla is a piece of cake!” He threw his head back in laughter, remembering how excited his teacher was to talk about the ‘glory of the past’ of a guy that died hundreds of years ago. “So how does your magic work, then? Only short range? Ohh, wait, but dark magic in combat is more limited, so maybe I mixed the horses there, nyaha!”

Lorenz awkwardly cleared his throat. “I-indeed, it would be unthinkable to send a highly concentrated mass of magic across countries so easily. I am, however, intrigued by these so-called ‘hexes’ -- as I have only heard worrisome words about them…”

“They’re the most fun things to do! We had a whole term on ‘how to spread a curse from someone’s little finger until their heart without anyone noticing’ and boy was it a BLAST to do all those experiments -- literally! We exploded so many things...” A shade covered Henry’s thin eyes once again as he giggled happily, which made Lorenz gulp instinctively.

“That was rather specific!” Mercedes mentioned. “I don’t recall the Royal School of Sorcery to have anything like that…”

“Perhaps the seminar ‘the art of levitating oneself as a second-nature’ that had been part of the curriculum since the foundation? It IS completely different from the ‘Levitating’ class…” Constance twisted her lips.

Annette, who had her head down the whole time, suddenly jumped from Mercedes’ side to Henry’s. “OH! You know what I just remembered?” 

Henry smiled widely. “Eh? What?” 

“The way you’re talking about these awesome stuff like they’re normal-- we gotta take you to Lysithea! She didn’t go to the same School of Sorcery we did, but she’s AMAZING with magic, like you! I saw her snap a lightning bolt from the other side of the battlefield like it was nothing!” Annette went from admiring to bragging about her classmate, listing the many occasions that Lysithea managed to impress her -- and how she considered the other as a rival of sorts.

“Woow! I don’t really think I’m that amazing with magic, but I can crack a few skulls more than other people, nyahaha…!” He chuckled darkly before taking Annette’s hand. “Let’s go back to the library! She’s that girl with white hair, right? She stayed behind!”

“Ohh, ohh! She did? I gotta try harder to catch up to her, then! C’mon, Mercie, let’s go!” Full on her try-hard mode, Annette’s eyes shone with the prospect of being among two magical prodigies and the amount of knowledge she could acquire from them.

“Heehee, don’t pull, Annie, I’m coming!” Mercedes dangled behind her over-excited best friend. “Constance, sweetie, you too!”

“Very well! Surely my vast knowledge will be needed!”

Lorenz watched the scene unfold with wide eyes, suddenly finding himself alone. “Why- how dare you abandon your peer in such a manner!” He ran after the group with an offended tone.

Little did they know about the barrage of questions Lysithea would ask Henry after hearing about his magical prowess, wondering if they, perhaps, shared a circumstance…

[redorblue]

The Story of a New Name, by Elena Ferrante

I just finished reading The Story of a New Name, the second part of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, and I’m completely blown away by how good this book is. The first one, too, and I can’t wait to read the third and fourth part, but this one genuinely makes me want to bow down to Elena Ferrante and promise her my firstborn child. I’m not saying that it doesn’t have its lengths, but the amount of detail that she puts into the settings and the richness of the characters’ inner lives makes me want to read twenty more of its kind - it’s just that good. It even makes me want to freshen up my Italian because the difference between speaking standard Italian and the Neapolitan dialect is an important part of the book and would probably add a lot more depth, but... I can’t wait that long.

The first two installments of the tetralogy are mostly set in Naples in the 1950s and 1960s, in a poor neighborhood at the outskirts of the city. This is where Elena and Lila grow up: two girls with very similar backgrounds (working class fathers, stay-at-home mothers, miserable living conditions, a lot of domestic and street violence), but with very different personalities. Lila is a very extroverted person, direct to the point of rude or aggressive, courageous, impulsive, sometimes manipulative, very passionate, and gifted with a very creative and astute kind of intelligence. Elena is more of an introvert, a very diligent, responsible and disciplined person who tries to avoid conflict at all cost and has a good eye for unwritten social rules, with a rich emotional life but an aversion to sharing it with others. She’s also gifted intellectually, but rather as a result of hard work; she’s what you’d call booksmart as opposed to Lila’s intuitive intelligence that’s mostly focused exclusively on her rather volatile fields of interest.

In short, in many regards they’re each other’s opposite, which makes their friendship incredibly fascinating from the outside and alternately fortifying or toxic from the inside. When things are good, they ignite each others’ brains with ideas and they support each other no matter what; when they aren’t, Lila manipulates Elena into things that hurt her (or both of them really) and intentionally ignores her discomfort, while Elena distances herself, judges Lila and tries to assert her own superiority. The competitive streak that runs through their friendship at times inspires both of them to surpass themselves, but it also leads to them constantly trying to outdo each other - and let the other know. No matter how fraught their relationship gets though, they are always the most important person in the other’s life, both the anchor that stabilizes them as well as the benchmark that they measure themselves against. It’s a defining element of both the main characters’ lives, even as their paths drastically diverge: Elena, because of a combination of luck and hard work, gets the chance to continue her education after primary school and even goes to university, while Lila, who has the talent but lacks the luck, is not allowed to go to school any longer and is ultimately forced by circumstance to get married at 16 - which, considering her personality and the society she lives in, obviously does not go well. All in all, it’s a fascinating portrayal of a lifelong friendship under (at times) incredibly difficult circumstances that shapes both of them at their very core. It doesn’t romanticize or trivialize a bond like that, but shows it in all its ugliness and glory, and what’s more: it makes this friendship the central relationship of the book.

But the story is not only a brilliant examination of female friendship (and it is very distinctly female: both characters can never escape their roles as girls/young women in a heavily patriarchal society), it’s also a very observant analysis of the ways that class and gender intersect to shape and constrain the paths and personalities of Elena, Lila and their friends and neighbors. I’m tempted to add ethnicity to the mix, too; I’m not sure if ethnicity is the right term, but I can’t think of a better one, so I’ll stick with that. I’m not exactly knowledgeable about Italy’s demographic makeup, but if I remember it correctly, there is a quite distinct divide - culturally, economically, socially, linguistically... - between the North and the South, with the North as the economically stronger (and possibly less corrupt) part and therefore in a position to look down upon the South. This is an especially important aspect of Elena’s story in The Story of a New Name, when she goes to Pisa to study and feels forced to hide her Neapolitan background as much as possible. However, in the neighborhood where Elena and Lila grew up and where most of the first and second book takes place, ethnicity plays less of a role. Externally, within the framework of greater Naples, the main dividing line is class, expressed as income, way of speaking, access to education, clothing, and general display of wealth. The neighborhood itself, on first glance, is more homogeneous: even the local bigshots, who own a car, give out shady loans to the entire neighborhood and maintain ties to the mafia, aren’t particularly educated or refined in comparison with the Neapolitan upper classes. What they do have is money, and that’s one of the observations that I love about this book: money, no matter how much of it you amass, can never be the same as being born upper class; it can buy some privileges, but it can’t buy parity with the truly powerful. Within the limited domain of the neighborhood, however, money is one of the main mechanisms of stratification, the other being gender.

Toxic masculinity plays an important role in the story, and it shapes the lives of everyone in the neighborhood in different ways. We don’t meet many of the older men (= parent generation), but that’s a statement in and of itself: many of them are either dead, dying, or in prison. Those that are left are characterized by submissiveness and resignation to those with more power, and they channel their feeling of powerlessness and the resulting emasculation by beating and abusing their wives and children. The older women have lived too long under such circumstances: they do care about their children in some way, but the methods they use to make especially their daughters conform to patriarchal expectations and thereby protect them from male wrath end up doing just as much harm as the fists of the fathers. Female solidarity and close personal friendships such as that of Elena and Lila are rare because of the women’s feeling of disempowerment, trauma from a lifetime of violence and general economic hardship. And so the vicious circle repeats itself, with everyone caught up in it absolutely miserable, but unable to do anything about it, since class limits make it virtually impossible to get out.

This is equally true for the younger generation. The boys are taught from a young age to associate male behaviour with violence, aggression, a very prickly sense of honor, and a superiority over women that allows them to possessively watch over them and use violence against them to keep them in line. This holds true for rich and poor neighborhood boys alike, which proves that it is not an issue of class alone. The author further supports this argument by giving counter-examples like Alfonso, who in theory is just as predisposed to toxic masculinity as all the other boys: a violent father, (temporary) economic deprivation, violence in his peer group... What makes Alfonso different from most of the other boys is his personality on the one hand and his advanced education on the other. I think the author is saying that education is the key to overcome at least the worst outgrowths of violent male behavior. Of course education is contingent upon the class a person is born into, but with Alfonso, and partially Enzo (and Nino, too, much as I hate to admit it), she proves that neither class nor gender automatically make a man violent - and that neither one is an excuse for toxic masculinity. This claim is strengthened further by a counterexample, namely Bruno Soccavo, the son of a rich industrialist who leads a privileged life and still thinks it his right to sexually exploit the female workers at his factory.

But since the focus of the story is on Elena, Lila and their female friends and frenemies, this is where we get the most intimate insights into what toxic masculinity and economic deprivation/dependence together do to f**k up the lives of girls and young women. The girls mostly display a pretty thorough understanding of how things work: they know what they can and can’t tell the boys in order to avoid violence among the boys and towards the girls themselves. I’m pretty sure that even Lila knows how to avoid offend the boys’ sense of honor, but between her recklessness courage, her desire for freedom and her self-destructive streak, she just doesn’t care very much. But even this understanding, the result of a lifetime of studying the behavior of the men around them, does not help them very much because it doesn’t leave them enough room to put their feet down, let alone breathe. Lila is the best example of this: after being denied further education and blossoming into a beautiful teenager that attracts the attention of every male around her, including a rich mafioso, she really has no other option than to marry the (seemingly) most acceptable of her suitors at 16 years of age. But of course, he turns out to be violent and controlling, too, and since he’s more powerful than her brother and father, she really has nowhere to turn to. And as I mentioned already, neither the older women nor the girls have enough emotional or material capacities to meaningfully help each other. Some of them also simply don’t want to (the author doesn’t romanticize anything here, either), but I dare say that even that is a result of economic deprivation plus toxic masculinity: from a very young age they’re drilled to think of marriage as their only way to relative economic security, and their future husband’s affection as the only way to avoid being beaten or even killed. So it’s natural that female solidarity, as desirable as it’d be, is not very wide-spread in the neighborhood. Basically, what the book says about toxic masculinity and patriarchal systems is this: yes, it hurts both men and women, young and old, rich and poor; but in the end, it’s always the women, and especially the poor women, who end up with bruises on their face.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

President Trump seems ready to declare victory in his effort to make America great again; last month, he said the slogan for his 2020 re-election campaign will be “Keep America Great.” But how much has really changed, particularly for the “everyday, working Americans” whom Trump said were the “backbone and heartbeat of our country” — and whose votes helped him secure the presidency?

Recent decades have been cruel to working-class Americans, a group I’m roughly defining as the 84 million prime working-age1 people in the U.S. who lack a college degree. But in the first year of Trump’s presidency, there was some good news. Workers with high school educations finally saw a sizable wage increase after years of scant growth. The economy added more than 200,000 manufacturing jobs, something that was unimaginable a decade ago when cheap imports from China put around a million Americans out of work.

Zoom in and this story about the turnaround of blue-collar America gets a lot less clear. That’s partly because it lumps together large swaths of the population — rural and urban residents, white and black people, men and women — in a way that obscures the sometimes-gaping fissures between these groups. And the hidden reality doesn’t always match up with the way politicians talk about blue-collar Americans, particularly when it comes to the plight of rural America and embattled white men.

Think the rural heartland is the struggling core of modern America? Actually, America’s middle has been outperforming the coasts for decades. And while Trump’s ascendance has shined a spotlight on the plight of white men left behind by a changing economy, they still enjoy vast advantages over blue-collar black and female workers.

Large parts of rural America are doing fine

If you gather all of rural America into one homogeneous blob, the story looks bleak indeed, with the population shrinking as job growth lags. But this rural vs. the rest approach muddies the picture more than it reveals — because the experiences of rural areas vary widely across the country.

In particular, counties in the Plains states and the resource-rich middle of the country have enjoyed some of the largest per capita income gains in the entire country. And that includes lots of thinly populated spaces that easily fit the definition of rural.2

Consider the 200 counties that had the strongest per capita income growth nationwide from 2000 to 2016.3 More than 60 percent of those counties — 122 — are designated “completely rural” by the U.S. Census Bureau. And the vast majority of those — 99 — lie in a vertical band of 10 states that stretch from North Dakota and Montana south to New Mexico and Texas.4 That’s five times what you’d expect from chance alone; rural counties in this region make up just 10 percent of all counties nationwide, but nearly half of the top 200 with the highest income growth.5

Look to rural areas elsewhere in the country, and it’s a different story. The median change in per capita income for the rural counties in the band was 38 percent, compared with just 21 percent for all the rural counties outside of that area. Only two rural counties in the entire area that stretches from Mississippi across to Florida and up to Delaware6 even crack the list of the top 200. Nebraska alone has six in the top 10.

Looking at average incomes in this way has limitations, though, because it tells us nothing about distribution. Gains could have gone into the pockets of a highly educated few while everyone else was left with crumbs.

But that doesn’t seem to have been the case, at least not in that high-performing band of states in the middle-west. If you look specifically at wage gains among low-wage workers7 — instead of per capita income as a whole — the states where people saw the biggest wage increases from 2000 to 2016 are North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.8 Montana, Oklahoma and Nebraska are also among the top 10.

Another way to see that blue-collar residents in these states are outpacing peers elsewhere is to look at employment rates.9 The Plains states — including North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska — stand out for having large shares of 25- to 54-year-olds without college degrees who are employed.10 As you can see from the map below, some of the weakest areas are in the southern parts of the country.

White workers fare well when compared with black workers

Add race to the mix, and the story of working-class America fractures into pieces. Whether you focus on wages or employment, black workers seem to be struggling far more than white or Hispanic workers.

In 2017, black workers with just a high school degree saw their wages fall, even as paychecks grew for similarly educated Hispanic and non-Hispanic white workers. And while Hispanics at every education level still earn less than non-Hispanic whites, the gap between whites and blacks is substantially larger. Black high school grads earn 78 cents for every dollar that white high school grads take home; Hispanic high school grads get 87 cents.

Nationwide, 65 percent of 25- to 54-year-old black Americans without a college degree have jobs, well below the 73 percent rate for Hispanics and 74 percent rate for non-Hispanic white people. But the gaps aren’t uniform across the country.

As you can see from the map below, some of the areas with the highest employment rates for working class blacks are in the South, a very different regional pattern than you see for white workers.11 In contrast, the Midwest remains a region of relative strength for whites even though it has become a kind of shorthand for working-class woes.

Working-class men far outearn women

Across blue-collar America, working-class men are a relatively privileged group, with prospects that are vastly better than those of women: At every education level — from those with less than a high school degree to those with some some college — men outearn women by at least 20 percent.

These advantages are even more pronounced among white men. A recent paper from economists at Harvard, Stanford and the Census Bureau found that white men with lower-income parents12 tend to have incomes around $31,000, while white women with similarly paid parents earned just $23,000. Black women (and men) can expect a similar salary, between $23,000 and $25,000.

And yet, even if they do make more than female and black workers, white men still aren’t able to outearn their parents — a bleak commentary on the American Dream. Simply finding a job can be a struggle. In 1980, about 88 percent of 25- to 54-year-old white men without college degrees had jobs; today, that number is 80 percent.

So Trump might want to pause before popping the champagne corks. Many in his base are still hurting, and some of those in other constituencies are doing even worse.

[uwianthropologygroupproject-blog]

Attitudes towards ganja in Trinidad and Tobago

The general attitude towards ganja in Trinidad and Tobago. 

In Trinidad and Tobago, there are mixed attitudes towards ganja, because of its illegal status and the stigmatization of being a “criminal” that follows its use. This is caused by how the law categorizes ganja as an illegal narcotic that is punishable by law if caught in possession. However, in contemporary society in Trinidad and Tobago, the cultural negative norms towards ganja are being challenged and the citizens are advocating for the legalization of ganja. This is due to the arising positive benefits of the drug such as its medicinal benefits in treating cancer, asthma, anxiety disorders & the extraction and use of cannabis oil to treat epileptic seizures, relieve pain, and in the reduction of glaucoma among many others. Also, people want it to be legalized so they can smoke it freely without the threat of being arrested or labeled as a criminal/delinquent. 

Factors that influence these attitudes. 

Ethnicity and Social Class

Trinidad and Tobago is a multicultural country made up of many different ethnic groups which include: East Indians, Africans, Chinese, Whites, Mixed and other. East Indians comprise of the largest ethnic group in the population with Africans being the second largest. Therefore, attitudes towards ganja may vary according to certain ethnic groups and the geographical location plays a significant role as some places may be heavily populated by a certain ethnic group. It was observed that the areas where ganja was responded to positively are predominantly inhabited by persons of African descent. 

Figure 1: A table showing the attitudes towards ganja pertaining to ethnicity and location in Trinidad.

A trend was also observed with respect to the various locations mentioned and their development. The three communities mentioned ranged from the suburb (Roystonia) to urban (Charlieville) and developed (Haeland Park). The suburban and urban locations where the majority are populated by blacks and Indians respectively showed an acceptance of the narcotic to an extent which they used recreationally and the developed or what is deemed a “white community” showed unacceptance towards ganja. However, it is observed that young people from this community tend to use ganja.

In relation to social class persons from all social class wants ganja to be legalized although it is advocated for, more by the younger people than the older people from these different strata. 

Gender and Age

In relation to gender, it can be stated that in the past males were the primary users of ganja and this statement still stands in the present. Interviews conducted revealed that there were a higher usage and preference for the legalization of ganja in Trinidad and Tobago among the younger males aged 13 and up. The reason for the usage of ganja at such an early age starts when these males enter high school and are peer pressured into trying ganja because it is considered  “cool” and the “popular” kids do it. On the other hand, there are some females who smoke ganja but they are less open about it in order to escape scrutiny. 

Also, pertaining to age, it is the younger persons of Trinidad and Tobago that support the legalization of ganja as they have received more exposure to what ganja really is and what it can do, as more evidence of its benefits are coming to the forefront. This is in opposition to the much older generation in Trinidad and Tobago who grew up with the notion that ganja is a dangerous narcotic like cocaine and heroin, and its negative stigma of inducing violence and delinquency which creates a close-mindedness when it comes to new information emerging on it being considered “good”. However, they do believe that if ganja should be legalized, it should be so for medical reasons mainly. Whereas the majority of younger persons especially university students preferred to use ganja recreationally as it helps them from feeling stressed and makes them calm, relaxed and able to study more efficiently. Also, many persons who use it considered it an “escape from the harsh reality”. 

Religion

Although Trinidad and Tobago is multi-religious, the dominant religion practiced is Christianity followed by Hinduism and Islam. Therefore, the smoking of ganja is looked down upon, as it is considered immoral and deemed “the devil's lettuce”. Though, if used for medicinal purposes then it is okay, but most Christians still would not have anything to do with it. The same goes for Muslims and Hindus.  Interestingly, before and when they came to the Caribbean as indentured labourers, the Hindus used ganja in local religious practices, as deities are offered ganja as part of their religious ceremonies. However, this practice seems to have been abandoned. Besides, these views are mostly of religious persons who are traditional, whereas the younger persons of these religions have a more open mind to the use of ganja although they are discouraged to using it by their religion.

The Law

In Trinidad and Tobago, the possession of cannabis is still illegal and therefore remains classified as a dangerous drug. According to the Dangerous Drugs Act of Trinidad and Tobago (2015) section 5, subsection 2, a person who has in his possession any dangerous drug is guilty of an offense and is liable (a) upon summary conviction to a fine of twenty-five thousand dollars and to imprisonment for five years or (b) upon conviction on indictment a fine of fifty thousand dollars and to imprisonment for a term which shall not exceed ten years but which shall not be less than five years. This does not apply to persons who hold licenses and medical practitioners (p.13). Also section 5, subsection 3 states that a person who cultivates, gathers or produces any marijuana, except where he does so under a license granted under section 4, commits an offense and is liable (a)upon summary conviction to a fine of fifty thousand dollars and to imprisonment for ten years; or (b)upon conviction on indictment to a fine of one hundred thousand dollars or where there is evidence of the street value of marijuana, ten times the street value of the marijuana, whichever is greater or to imprisonment for twenty-five years to life(p.14). In sections 4 and 57, the Minister may make exceptions and issue a license to import marijuana for medicinal and scientific research purposes(p.12).

Therefore, these strict penalties pertaining to ganja creates a fear of usage among the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago. It allows the stigmatization of ganja as “criminal” to continue to last which affects persons who do use the drug as they are looked down upon by society. Also, those who are caught in possession of ganja, even if it is only a little is permanently affected by having this label of being a criminal on their record which jeopardizes future opportunities. The Report of the Caricom Regional Commission on Marijuana (2018) presents statistics in Trinidad and Tobago on possession of small amounts of marijuana, for example, in 2012, 3128 males and 265 females were arrested for cannabis/ marijuana; in 2015, 3220 males and 270 females were arrested and in 2017, 3022 males and 201 females were arrested (p.40). This is why some people rather decriminalization of ganja first, then legalization.

The Media

Recently, the media have been reporting on the benefits of ganja and the countries that have legalized it which has an impact on peoples’ attitude towards the drug. It was only when the media reported that some states in the US legalized marijuana, that the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago pushed for its legalization here. This is because whatever happens in the US has an impact on the Caribbean countries and also because ganja is acquainted with the Caribbean and citizens felt that Trinidad and Tobago were stuck in the past by not legalizing ganja as every other country was planning to/already did.

History

Historically, Trinidad and Tobago were former British colonies. With the introduction of Indian indentured labourers in the nineteenth century, and having received the most, Trinidad and Tobago were introduced to ganja by the Indian indentured labourers. It wasn’t in widespread use and in the 1930s ganja was criminalized with the introduction of the Dangerous Drugs Ordinances in the former British territories in the 1930’s pursuant to the 1937 Dangerous Drug Ordinance in the UK (Caribbean Community Secretariat, 2018, p.17).

How and why these attitudes have changed over time.

Recently, attitudes towards ganja have changed because people are now informed of what ganja is and its benefits which has encouraged many persons in Trinidad and Tobago to push for its legalization. It is mostly the younger generation who has a positive attitude towards ganja as they grew up in a time where more research is put into it whereas the older generation is stuck with a mentality that is negative towards ganja because this is what they have been taught in the past when the research was limited. 

Another reason why attitudes have changed is that of globalization. People all over the world are advocating for its legalization with some countries being successful like Canada and some states in the US. This encourages people in Trinidad and Tobago to do the same with social media playing a major role in sending this message of ganja positivity around. The huge amount of articles on its benefits are readily available online which has an impact on peoples’ attitude.

Also, people are seeing how ganja can help improve the economy as they can benefit from it economically. This factor plays a major role in changing peoples’ attitudes towards ganja from looking at it negatively to positively since the need to diversify Trinidad and Tobago’s economy is a growing issue since the closure of Petrotrin. With the growing acceptance of the drug, the country can implement research facilities, creating job opportunities and start exporting finished products.

However, until the government in Trinidad and Tobago show that they are ready to move forward in legalizing ganja, despite the many positives of the plant, marijuana will still be seen by the masses as a drug no different from other chemically synthesized drugs such as cocaine and LSD. 

[takebackthedream]

Why We Need to Confront the Billionaires' Paradise by Richard Eskow

The concentrated wealth of the global plutocracy is the dark matter of the world economy: it is rarely glimpsed, difficult to measure, and it reshapes everything around it.

Two recent reports – the UBS/PwC report on the “new Gilded Age” of the international billionaire class, and the “Paradise Papers”  released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) reveal ways corporations and the ultra-wealthy avoid taxes – that offer a glimpse into this darkness.

Together, these releases tell us a lot about the wealthy few who run the world. We now know that the British royal family has been less than open with the people they rule, who preserve their dubious privilege to monarchy.

And we have learned that, by investing in a Lithuanian shopping center as an end run around taxes, U2’s Bono may have finally found what he’s looking for.

But these reports also help us see how much we still don’t know. In an era when, according to the Institute for Policy Studies, only three Americans  – Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett – own more than half of our entire population, we need to do more to understand  – and confront – the super-concentration of wealth.

Billionaire Boom

The Swiss bank UBS and the American accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers weren’t looking to write an exposé when they prepared their annual “Billionaires Insights” report for 2017.  On the contrary. So-called “very high net worth individuals” are the financial industry’s most sought-after clients.  The report is entitled, without any apparent irony, “New value creators gain momentum.”

And gain momentum these billionaires did.  As the report notes, “Globally, the total wealth of billionaires rose by +17% in 2016, up from USD $5.1 trillion to USD6.0 trillion.”

Did your net worth grow by 17 percent last year?  Unless you’re one of the world’s 1,542 billionaires, chances are it didn’t.

The U.S. Wealth Gap

In the United States, wealth for most households grew at a much slower rate, while racial disparities in wealth persist in middle-class households.

Analyses from economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman show a dramatic gain in income for the very wealthy – and no one else – in recent decades. In a useful explainer, David Leonhardt of the New York Times concluded:

Yes, the upper-middle class has done better than the middle class or the poor, but the huge gaps are between the super-rich and everyone else. The basic problem is that most families used to receive something approaching their fair share of economic growth, and they don’t anymore.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve reports that millions of Americans continue to struggle.  30 percent of adults, roughly 73 million people, are finding it difficult to make ends meet or are barely getting by. Just under one fourth of all adults said they could not pay all their bills for the current month. 44 percent said they could not cover an emergency expense of $400, and one fourth of all adults reported that they had to forgo medical treatment during the past year because of the cost.

A Second Gilded Age

As of last report, America’s ten wealthiest men – they are all men – are collectively worth more than $633 billion. The combined wealth of these 10 men has risen by nearly $116 billion since the start of this year alone.

The explosive growth of billionaire wealth, at a time when the middle class is dying and millions of Americans are struggling, has implications for democracy as well as the economy.

The work of political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page has shown that the preferences of the majority have very little effect on government policy, while the political wishes of the wealthy few are far more likely to become reality.

As history teaches us, centralized wealth often leads to political oligarchy. Our country is no exception. Expand this oligarchical effect across the globe, and you get a sense of the global reach of the billionaire class. As Oxfam international reported earlier this year, just eight men possesses as much of the world’s wealth as half the global population.

The author of the UBS/PwC report commented that “We are now two years into the peak of the second Gilded Age,” with levels of inequality not seen since 1905. He also says that “this is something billionaires are concerned about,” leading to fears that the world’s population could “strike back.”

It’s a rational fear.

How They Hide

The report lists some of the ways the billionaire class spends its money. Art collections, sports clubs, and philanthropy all rate a mention. Recent political events in the U.S. demonstrate that they’re also using their power to further enrich themselves and keep the majority from “striking back.”

One thing the wealthy are apparently not doing with their money is paying much in taxes. The ICIJ’s Panama Papers revealed that many people are using illegal means to avoiding taxation.

The Paradise Papers reveal something equally important: how billionaires and corporations can evade taxation – and public scrutiny of their wealth – through legal means. These documents were obtained from Appleby, one of the world’s leading law firms specializing in offshore accounts.

The New York Times recently profiled two billionaire political donors, one Democratic and one Republican, in an article about the papers that also cited an Appleby publication on the ultra-wealthy’s problem of “motivating children with means.”

The Appleby brochure includes the picture of a small boy in a three-piece suit; apparently that counts as cute to the super-rich. Another handout shows “a handsome couple” rushing to board a private jet, while another is captioned “wealth seeks out safe harbours.”

Appleby’s Clients

Appleby clients include prominent Democrats like Penny Pritzker, Commerce Secretary under President Obama, George Soros, and the aforementioned donor, James Simons. They also include prominent Republicans like Sheldon Adelson, Carl Icahn, and billionaire Robert Mercer, who used some of the money he saved avoiding taxes to set Steve Bannon up with a media empire.

When it comes to disseminating their ideas, it’s striking how many hard-core conservatives don’t trust the “free market” to get the job done.

Sen. Bernie Sanders has called for an investigation into the papers, noting that corporations such as Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Apple, and Nike are implicated in the documents.

Offshore havens do more than just help clients evade taxes. They also help them avoid responsibility. As the Times reports, “another offshore firm … advertises that it helps clients ‘preserve wealth from the ravages of litigation,’ political tumult and divorce.”

The Frontman

Pop stars also availed themselves of Appleby’s services, including the aforementioned Bono, who took advantage of Malta’s generous tax rates for foreign investors when he funneled money into that Lithuanian shopping center.

But then, the self-satisfied singer has a long history of giving high-minded speeches while failing to deliver for the poor, either personally or politically.

In his book The Frontman, author Harry Browne writes that Bono’s politics are “broadly … conservative” and can be seen as “fundamentally non-threatening to the elites that have wreaked havoc on the world.” To Browne, Bono is “a slick mix of traditional missionary and commercial colonialism, in which the poor world exists as a task for the rich world to complete.”

A Veneer of Conscience

In an oligarchical world, figures like Bono matter. They provide the singer’s “friends,” who range from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to Jesse Helms, with a veneer of conscience. They inoculate members of the global elite from the guilt that is rightfully theirs.

Speaking of “frontmen”: the papers also show that Britain’s Prince Charles invested millions of pounds offshore. His estate insisted that the investment, which may have indirectly benefited from the prince’s environmental campaigns, be kept secret. The Queen also invested heavily in offshore companies, including one that has been criticized for exploiting poor families.

The Royals insisted that they obtain no tax advantage from these investments, which suggests that the public face of Britain’s government may well have been trying to hide its wealth from Britain’s people.

The Network

The authors of the UBS report probably didn’t intend these words to sound as ominous as they do:

Billionaires are leveraging their networks. They have always worked with groups of peers for business, investment and philanthropic ends. But they are using them more, for example to access significant funding outside the capital markets. Better connectivity is helping them to work together more effectively.

They are undoubtedly correct.  Americans need look no further then Donald Trump’s cabinet and circle of advisers, where billionaires gather to plot everyone else’s future while the rest of the Republican Party dutifully falls in line. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and Chief Economic Advisor Gary Cohn were among those implicated by the Paradise Papers.

The effect of billionaire “networks” may also be found in the Democratic Party’s struggle to develop a platform that reflects the needs of working Americans without alienating very many high-net-worth donors. Hint: It can’t be done.

The Response

Concentrated wealth tends to be amoral, and the ultra-wealthy are growing more powerful all the time.  And since small businesses usually can’t afford the services of firms like Appleby, legalized tax evasion increases inequality among both individuals and businesses.

How can the United States and the world respond before it’s too late? Economists like Piketty and Zucman have called for a global wealth tax, although that would be difficult to enforce.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) argued that taxes on the western world’s 1 percent should be “significantly higher.” The Paradise Papers illustrate the importance of ending legalized tax evasion, and Zucman wrote an op-ed on the topic for the New York Times.

But it is hard to pass such measures in today’s political world. Here in the United States, there’s a strong chance Trump and Congress will cut taxes on billionaires and corporations instead. That’s what that happens when wealth becomes too concentrated and political power follows suit.

What We’re Looking For

The undemocratic and unequal state of our own country can no longer be hidden. These reports are informative, but so far we’ve only glimpsed the oligarchy’s reach and power.

This concentration of power must be investigated, and then it must be confronted – by a majority determined to take back the economy and democracy from the powerful few who have made it their plaything, before it’s too late.

It’s time to “strike back” – not against wealthy individuals, but against oligarchy itself.