#demand side economics

[liberalsarecool]

Government stimulus works.

Democratic policies work.

Republican supply side economics, their tax cuts, and their trickle down are all MASASIVE FAILURES. We have the proof.

Never forget, all the Democratic recovery plans and policies had zero Republican support and they all saved America. Not only that, Republicans predicted the recovery plans would not work.

Three strikes! Republicans caused the economic crisis, Republicans predicted the stimulus would not work, then they voted against the stimulus.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 1, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

FEB 2, 2024

One of the biggest stories of 2023 is that the U.S. economy grew faster than any other economy in the Group of 7 nations, made up of democratic countries with the world’s largest advanced economies. By a lot. The International Monetary Fund yesterday reported that the U.S. gross domestic product—the way countries estimate their productivity—grew by 2.5%, significantly higher than the GDP of the next country on the list: Japan, at 1.9%.

IMF economists predict U.S. growth next year of 2.1%, again, higher than all the other G7 countries. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta projects growth of 4.2% in the first quarter of 2024.

Every time I write about the booming economy, people accurately point out that these numbers don’t necessarily reflect the experiences of everyone. But they have enormous political implications. 

President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, and the Democrats embraced the idea that using the government to support ordinary Americans—those on the “demand” side of the economy—would nurture strong economic growth. Republicans have insisted since the 1980s that the way to expand the economy is the opposite: to invest in the “supply side,” investors who use their capital to build businesses. 

In the first two years of the Biden-Harris administration, while the Democrats had control of the House and Senate, they passed a range of laws to boost American manufacturing, rebuild infrastructure, protect consumers, and so on. They did so almost entirely with Democratic votes, as Republicans insisted that such investments would destroy growth, in part through inflation. 

Now that the laws are beginning to take effect, their results have proved that demand-side economic policies like those in place between 1933 and 1981, when President Ronald Reagan ushered in supply-side economics, work. Even inflation, which ran high, appears to have been driven by supply chain issues, as the administration said, and by “greedflation,” in which corporations raised prices far beyond cost increases, padding payouts for their shareholders.

The demonstration that the Democrats’ policies work has put Republicans in an awkward spot. Projects funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, are so popular that Republicans are claiming credit for new projects or, as Representative Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) did on Sunday, claiming they don’t remember how they voted on the infrastructure measure and other popular bills like the CHIPS and Science Act (she voted no). When the infrastructure measure passed in 2021, just 13 House Republicans supported it. 

Today, Medicare sent its initial offers to the drug companies that manufacture the first ten drugs for which the government will negotiate prices under the Inflation Reduction Act, another hugely popular measure that passed without Republican votes. The Republicans have called for repealing this act, but their stance against what they have insisted is “socialized medicine” is showing signs of softening. In Politico yesterday, Megan Messerly noted that in three Republican-dominated states—Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi—House speakers are saying they are now open to the idea of expanding healthcare through Medicaid expansion.

In another sign that some Republicans recognize that the Democrats’ economic policies are popular, the House last night passed bipartisan tax legislation that expanded the Child Tax Credit, which had expired last year after Senate Republicans refused to extend it. Democrats still provided most of the yea votes—188 to 169—and Republicans most of the nays—47 to 23—but, together with a tax cut for businesses in the bill, the measure was a rare bipartisan victory. If it passes the Senate, it is expected to lift at least half a million children out of poverty and help about 5 million more. 

But Republicans have a personnel problem as well as a policy problem. Since the 1980s, party leaders have maintained that the federal government needs to be slashed, and their determination to just say no has elevated lawmakers whose skill set features obstruction rather than the negotiation required to pass bills. Their goal is to stay in power to stop legislation from passing.

Yesterday, for example, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who sits on the Senate Finance Committee and used to chair it, told a reporter not to have too much faith that the child tax credit measure would pass the Senate, where Republicans can kill it with the filibuster. “Passing a tax bill that makes the president look good…means he could be reelected, and then we won’t extend the 2017 tax cuts,” Grassley said.

At the same time, the rise of right-wing media, which rewards extremism, has upended the relationship between lawmakers and voters. In CNN yesterday, Oliver Darcy explained that “the incentive structure in conservative politics has gone awry. The irresponsible and dishonest stars of the right-wing media kingdom are motivated by vastly different goals than those who are actually trying to advance conservative causes, get Republicans elected, and then ultimately govern in office.” 

Right-wing influencers want views and shares, which translate to more money and power, Darcy wrote. So they spread “increasingly outlandish, attention-grabbing junk,” and more established outlets tag along out of fear they will lose their audience. But those influencers and media hosts don’t have to govern, and the anger they generate in the base makes it hard for anyone else to, either. 

This dynamic has shown up dramatically in the House Republicans’ refusal to consider a proposed border measure on which a bipartisan group of senators had worked for four months because Trump and his extremist base turned against the idea—one that Republicans initially demanded. 

Since they took control of the House in 2023, House Republicans have been able to conduct almost no business as the extremists are essentially refusing to govern unless all their demands are met. Rather than lawmaking, they are passing extremist bills to signal to their base, holding hearings to push their talking points, and trying to find excuses to impeach the president and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.

Yesterday the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which is firmly on the right, warned House Republicans that “Impeaching Mayorkas Achieves Nothing” other than “political symbolism,” and urged them to work to get a border bill passed. “Grandstanding is easier than governing, and Republicans have to decide whether to accomplish anything other than impeaching Democrats,” it said. 

Today in the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin called the Republicans’ behavior “nihilism and performative politics.”

On CNN this morning, Representative Dan Goldman (D-NY) identified the increasing isolation of the MAGA Republicans from a democratic government. “Here we are both on immigration and now on this tax bill where President Biden and a bipartisan group of Congress are trying to actually solve problems for the American people,” Goldman said, “and Chuck Grassley, Donald Trump, Mike Johnson—they are trying to kill solutions just for political gain." 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[intelligentchristianlady]

If you have time for one long read this holiday weekend, make it this one.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

All bets are off

When unions are outlawed, only outlaws will have unions. Unions don't owe their existence to labor laws that protect organizing activities. Rather, labor laws exist because once-illegal unions were formed in the teeth of violent suppression, and those unions demanded – and got – labor law.

Bosses have hated unions since the start, and they've really hated laws protecting workers. Dress this up in whatever self-serving rationale you want – "the freedom to contract," or "meritocracy" – it all cashes out to this: when workers bargain collectively, value that would otherwise go to investors and executives goes to the workers.

I'm not just talking about wages here, either. If an employer is forced – by a union, or by a labor law that only exists because of union militancy – to operate a safe workplace, they have to spend money on things like fire suppression, PPE, and paid breaks to avoid repetitive strain injuries. In the absence of some force that corrals bosses into providing these safety measures, they can use that money to pay themselves, and externalize the cost of on-the-job injuries to their workers.

The cost and price of a good or service is the tangible expression of power. It is a matter of politics, not economics. If consumer protection agencies demand that companies provide safe, well-manufactured goods, if there are prohibitions on price-fixing and profiteering, then value shifts from the corporation to its customers.

Now, if labor has few rights and consumers have many rights, then bosses can pass their consumer-side losses on to their workers. This is the Walmart story, the Amazon story: cheap goods paid for with low wages and dangerous working conditions. Likewise, if consumer rights are weak but labor rights are strong, then bosses can pass their costs onto their customers, continuing to take high profits by charging more. This is the story of local gig-work ordinances like NYC's, which guaranteed a minimum wage to delivery drivers – restaurateurs responded by demanding the right to add a surcharge to their bills:

https://table.skift.com/2018/06/22/nyc-surcharge-debate/

But if labor and consumer groups act in solidarity, then they can operate as a bloc and bosses and investors have to eat shit. Back in 2017, the pilots' union for American Airlines forced their bosses into a raise. Wall Street freaked out and tanked AA's stock. Analysts for big banks were outraged. Citi's Kevin Crissey summed up the situation perfectly, in a fuming memo: "This is frustrating. Labor is being paid first again. Shareholders get leftovers":

https://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/4/29/15471634/american-airlines-raise

Limiting the wealth of the investor class also limits their power, because money translates pretty directly into political power. This sets up a virtuous cycle: the less money the investor class has to spend on political projects, the more space there is for consumer- and labor-protection laws to be enacted and enforced. As labor and consumer law gets more stringent, the share of the national income going to people who make things, and people who use the things they make, goes up – and the share going to people who own things goes down.

Seen this way, it's obvious that prices and wages are a political matter, not an "economic" one. Orthodox economists maintain the pretense that they practice a kind of physics of money, discovering the "natural," "empirical" way that prices and wages move. They dress this up with mumbo-jumbo like the "efficient market hypothesis," "price discovery," "public choice," and that old favorite, "trickle-down theory." Strip away the doublespeak and it boils down to this: "Actually, your boss is right. He does deserve more of the value than you do":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/09/low-wage-100/#executive-excess

Even if you've been suckered by the lie that bosses have a legal "fiduciary duty" to maximize shareholder returns (this is a myth, by the way – no such law exists), it doesn't follow that customers or workers share that fiduciary duty. As a customer, you are not legally obliged to arrange your affairs to maximize the dividends paid by to investors in your corporate landlord or by the merchants you patronize. As a worker, you are under no legal obligation to consider shareholders' interests when you bargain for wages, benefits and working conditions.

The "fiduciary duty" lie is another instance of politics masquerading as economics: even if bosses bargain for as big a slice of the pie as they can get, the size of that slice is determined by the relative power of bosses, customers and workers.

This is why bosses hate unions. It's why the scab presidency of Donald Trump has waged all-out war on unions. Trump just effectively shuttered the National Labor Relations Board, unilaterally halting its enforcement actions and investigations. He also illegally fired one of the Democratic NLRB board members, leaving the agency with too few board members to take any new actions, meaning that no unions can be recognized – indeed, the NLRB can't do anything – for the foreseeable future:

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/28/nx-s1-5277103/nlrb-trump-wilcox-abruzzo-democrats-labor

Trump also fired the NLRB's outstanding General Counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, who was one of the stars of the Biden administration, who promulgated rules that decisively tilted the balance in favor of labor:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

Trump is playing Grinch here – he's descended upon Whoville to take all the Christmas decorations, in the belief that these are the source of Christmas. But the Grinch was wrong (and so is Trump): Christmas was in the heart of the Whos, and the tinsel and baubles were the expression of that Christmas spirit. Likewise, labor rights come from labor organizing, not the other way around.

Labor rights were enshrined in federal law in 1935, with the National Labor Relations Act. Bosses hated – and hate – the NLRA. 12 years later, they passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which substantially gutted the NLRA. Most notably, Taft-Hartley bans "sympathy strikes" – when unions walk out in support of one another. Sympathy strikes are a hugely powerful way for workers to claim value away from bosses and investors, which is why bosses got rid of them.

But even then, bosses who were honest with themselves would admit that they preferred life under the NLRA to life before it. Remember: labor militancy created the NLRA, not the other way around. When workers didn't have the legal means to organize, they organized by illegal means. When they didn't have legal ways of striking, they struck illegally. The result was pitched battles, even bloodbaths, as cops beat and even killed labor organizers. Bosses hired thugs who committed mass murder – literally. In 1913, strikebreakers working for the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company started a stampede during a union Christmas party that killed 73 people, including many copper miners' children:

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

Workers didn't take this lying down. Violence was met with violence. Bombs went off outside factories and stately mansions. There was gunfire and arson. Bosses had to hire armed guards to escort them as they scurried between their estates and their fancy parties and their executive offices. The country was in a state of near-perpetual chaos.

The NLRA created a set of rules for labor/boss negotiations – rules that helped workers claim a bigger slice of the pie without blood in the streets. But the NLRA also had benefits for bosses: unions were obliged to play by its rules, if they wanted to reap its benefits. The NLRA didn't just put a ceiling over boss power – it also put a ceiling over worker militancy. Von Clausewitz says that "war is politics by other means," which implies that politics are war by other means. The alternative to politics isn't capitulation, it's war.

Trump has torn up the rules to the labor game, but that doesn't mean the game ends. That just means there are no rules.

The labor movement has many great organizer/writers, but few can match the incredible Jane McAlevey, who died of cancer last summer (rest in power). In her classic A Collective Bargain, McAlevey describes her organizer training, from a tradition that went back to the days before the National Labor Relations Act:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

McAlevey was very clear that labor law owes its existence to union power, not the other way around. She explains very clearly that union organizers invented labor law after they invented unions, and that unions can (and indeed, must) exist separately from government agencies that are charged with protecting labor law. But she goes farther: in Collective Bargain, McAlevey describes how the 2019 LA Teachers' Strike didn't just win all the wage and benefits demands of the teachers, but also got the school district to promise to put a park or playground near every school in the system, and got a ban on ICE agents harassing parents at the school gates.

This wildly successful strike forged bonds among teachers, and between teachers and their communities. These teachers went on to run a political get-out-the-vote campaign in the 2020 elections and elected two Democratic reps to Congress and secured the Dems' majority. McAlevey contrasted the active way good unions involve workers as participants with the thin, anemic way that the Democratic Party engages with supporters – solely by asking them for money in a stream of frothing, clickbait text messages. As McAlevey wrote, "Workplace democracy is a training ground for true national democracy."

Militant labor doesn't just protect labor rights – it protects human rights. Remember: MLK, Jr was assassinated while campaigning for union janitors in Memphis. LA teachers ended ICE sweeps at the school gates. Librarian unions are leading the fight against book bans.

The good news is that public opinion has swung wildly in favor of unions over the past decade. More people want to join unions than at any time in generations. More people support unions that at any time in generations.

The bad news is that union leadership fucking suuuuuuuucks. As Hamilton Nolan writes, union bosses are sitting on vast, heretofore unseen warchests of cash, and they just experienced a four-year period of governmental support for unions unheard of since the Carter administration, and they did fuck all with that opportunity:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/confirmed-unions-squandered-the-biden

Big unions have effectively stopped trying to organize new workers, even when workers beg them for help forming a union. Union organizing budgets are so small as to be indistinguishable from zero. Despite the record number of workers who want to be in a union, the number of workers who are in a union actually fell during the Biden years.

Indeed, some union bosses actually campaigned for Trump, a notorious scab. Teamsters boss Sean O'Brien spoke at the fucking RNC, a political favor that Trump repaid by killing the NLRB and every labor enforcement action and investigation in the country. Nice one, O'Brien. See you in hell:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/08/teamster-union-trump/679513/

Union bosses squandered a historical opportunity to build countervailing power. Now, Trump's stormtroopers are rounding up workers with the goal of illegally deporting them. Fascism is on the rise. Labor and fascism are archenemies. Organized labor has always been the biggest threat to fascism, every time it has reared its head. That's why fascists target unions first. Union bosses cost us an organized force that could effectively defend our friends and neighbors from Trump's deportation stormtroopers:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2025-01-28-trumps-lawbreaking-also-aimed-at-workers/

Not every union boss is a scab like O'Brien. Shawn Fain, head of the UAW, won an historic strike against all three of the Big Three automakers, and made sure that the new contracts all ran out in 2028, and called on other unions to do the same, so that the country could have a general strike in 2028 without violating the Taft-Hartley Act (Fain was operating on the now-dead assumption that unions had to play by the rules):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/11/rip-jane-mcalevey/#organize

A general strike isn't just a strike for workers' rights. Under Trump, a general strike is a strike against Trumpism and all its horrors: kids in cages, forced birth, trans erasure, climate accelerationism – the whole fucking thing.

A general strike would build the worker power to occupy the Democratic Party and force it to stand up for the American people against oligarchy, rather than meekly capitulating to fascism (and fundraising), which is all they know how to do anymore:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/10/smoke-filled-room-where-it-happens/#dinosaurs

But before we can occupy the Dems, we have to occupy the unions. We need union bosses who are committed to signing up every worker who wants workplace democracy, and unionizing every workplace in spite of the NLRB, not with its help. We need to go back to our roots, when there were no rules.

That's the world Trump made. We need to make him regret that decision.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/29/which-side-are-you-on/#strike-three-yer-out

[seat-safety-switch]

Quick: what's your favourite colour? Doesn't matter. Capitalism has conspired to eliminate it. Every car now is silver, grey, white, or black. Choice is the enemy of all free people. This improves resale value. Critically, this reduction in choice also reduces the chance that a dealership will end up with a, say, dark-blue(!) car that is totally unsellable except to the mentally ill. We gotta do our part for the dealerships, they're really hurting.

Cars used to have cool colours. For instance, I'm fairly sure that my '78 Volare was brown when it was new. You could also get it in tan, or what Plymouth audaciously called "Augusta green sunfire metallic." Daring stuff, but we had no idea that we were secretly bankrupting them. Back then, cars were ordered on demand, and you'd wait a few weeks before someone in a historically economically disadvantaged area of the USA finished spraying it with paint and put it on a train. No more of that nonsense.

That's why I joined up with a secret band of rebels. We don't want to put a name on our organization, mostly because none of us can agree on what it should be. Our job is to sneak into car dealership lots, and give the cars waiting there a high-quality paint job in extreme wacko colours like "orange" and "red." This, we believe, will eventually bankrupt the dealerships and hasten the fall of our corrupt order.

If that fails for some reason, and we are tortured to death by the politicians who obey those dealerships without question, there is a side benefit. That benefit is that we'll be able to see other cars in a snowstorm even if they forget to turn their headlights on. Is that grey blob over there a car or just another snow squall?

So when you show up to the dealership in the next couple weeks and notice that it suddenly looks a lot more colourful, you can thank us. Maybe just don't look too closely at the quality of the work. We're in a bit of a hurry, and sometimes Tapemaster Theodore doesn't do a really good job masking off the mirrors, handles, tires, and windows, so the paint gets places that it shouldn't. Hey, it's like the 1970s all over again.

[mesetacadre]

A brief look at the history of liberal democracy will show that oppression of minorities and the absence of certain rights is not only compatible with but even the norm for liberal democracies. This expansion in broad rights is a relatively very recent development, awarded by the expansion and enrichment of the worker aristocracy originated under the pressure of the socialist USSR and Eastern Europe mostly spearheaded by social-democracy. Denounce the loss of rights, of course, and don't just grow depressedly despondent or delude yourself by getting an aesthetically progressive hobby. But to properly deliver that demand you need to be aware of how it comes to be. It's not "the end of democracy", nor is it fascistic when you lose rights. Liberal democracy started constituting a reactionary force as soon as the proletariat was consolidated as a class within capitalism in the mid-late 19th century, which means that you can't take the mantle of the defense of liberal democracy in the struggle to gain or keep these rights, because liberal democracy simply is not on that side of the struggle.

Neither Trump nor the US Republican party have invented the regression in rights, and they are not doing this because they're all personally evil. In a context of economic stagnation and a beginning of a recession, plus the gearing up of a war economy, social spending is cut, and the precarity the capitalist class demands to achieve a temporary boost in the falling rate of profit creates social discontent. This discontent is distracted and rerouted to reactionary sentiments, useful to the capitalist class, such as the mounting xenophobia, blaming the cheap labor brought by immigrants that the capitalist class simultaneously needs to maintain the rate of profit at an acceptable level. They play into nationalism to insulate each country's working class from the rest of the world and to convince workers their interests and their nation's (their nation's capitalists') interests are the same. They play into homophobia and transphobia to further divide and distract the working class, and to keep those minorities exerting a downwards pressure on wages and conditions as they're forced into desperation. They play into the fairy tale of a democracy to defend as well. They convince millions and millions that the other party, whichever it is, will save you from the evil doing of all the other parties. They tell you to defend the very apparatus that attacks and represses you and your fellow workers, the apparatus that has, since its birth, served the interests of a single class, the capitalist class. The US Democrats, the green parties, the socialdemocrats, the feminists and their mothers all defend the interests of whichever sector of the capitalist class by binding those to the institutions of workers.

Donald Trump is not a fascist. Even if part of his support base is, even if his campaign donors also fund actual fascists abroad and salute Hitler, he isn't one because he doesn't need to be. If liberal democracy can protect the reflux of the capitalist system into a more brutal one, then it has no need to put a fascist gorilla in charge. Do not be convinced that liberal democracy is something to be defended and something antithetical to the most reactionary tendencies in a society, because it isn't. It has never served your class interests and it never will. Only a classist, organized opposition can truly defend you. It doesn't even have to complete an overthrow, all of the rights you enjoy as a worker, especially the most robust ones, have been taken from their claws through an organized class opposition. The only rights a liberal democracy has ever awarded by its own volition are the rights of the capitalists. The right to own the press, the right to employ a workforce, the right to private property, etc, because it originally had to take the reins away from the feudal forms of the economy. And it is only through those partial, organized and classist struggles that we can work towards ridding ourselves of the government of the industrialist and of the corner store owner. Not by having a good time with your 5 friends, not by doing whatever you feel like doing whenever you want. By creating a collective strategy of the working class, in the single party of the working class. This is not a dream, it has a vast historical precedent from which we can only learn from.

[vicholas]

July 26, 2024

(...)With the Paris Games starting on July 26, Israel's killing of athletes and players in Gaza, along with its destruction of the enclave's sports facilities, has triggered mounting demands to disqualify Israel from the tournament as activists and spectators question the legitimacy of its participation.

Palestinian writers and sports commentators contend that Israel's Gaza onslaught, which has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians, also represents an attempt to eliminate sports and athletic achievement.

"It's a genocide ... ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, and the attacks on athletes and sports in particular in the Gaza Strip are all very systematic attacks to obliterate and erase sports in the territory," Abubaker Abed, a Gaza-based sports journalist told Anadolu.

Israel's intentions go further than eliminating Gaza's current athletic capacity, according to writer and lecturer Abdaljawad Omar, who held that it was part of a concerted effort by Tel Aviv to undermine Palestinians' achievements in all areas, with sports being no exception.

"Israel systemically seeks to ensure that Palestinian accomplishments and potential in all realms remain dampened and always dwarfed by its own achievements.

"This applies to political, intellectual, economic, and literary fields, where historically, many talented and highly accomplished Palestinians have been targeted. Sports is no exception in this sense," he explained.  

The situation is "extremely worse" for athletes in Gaza, according to football journalist Abed, adding that many players have been killed in the territory.

According to the Palestinian Olympic Committee and Palestine Football Association, about 400 athletes have been killed since Oct. 7, with the football association noting that the war has claimed 245 players in that sport alone, including 69 children and 176 young men.

Some 33 scouts and 70 members of sports unions have also been killed.

According to the association, Israeli forces have also detained players, including 12 in the occupied West Bank.

Israel's attacks have killed several Olympians as well. Sixty-nine have been killed during Israel's ongoing assault, says the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, launched in 2004.  

Besides athletes, sports facilities also have not been spared. Dozens, including gyms, training halls, fields, and stadiums, have been damaged or destroyed since Oct. 7.

A total of 42 facilities have been leveled in Gaza, while seven were destroyed in the West Bank, says the Palestinian Football Association.

Abed pointed out how Israel has destroyed football schools, including the Al-Wahda Academy and the Champions Academy, which "was one of the most promising football projects" in Gaza.

He pointed out how Israel has eradicated talent in football, the most popular sport among Gaza's residents, leaving only one stadium, the Al-Dorra stadium, intact out of the enclave's 10.

Israeli forces have been seizing stadiums in Gaza and turning them into detention centers.

Human rights monitor Euro-Med highlights that the Israeli army turned the Yarmouk Stadium in Gaza City into a detention center "to hold and humiliate hundreds of Palestinians, including children, shown naked and stripped of their clothes in footage published by the Israeli media in December 2023."

A report by the group published in May indicates that facilities bulldozed and destroyed include "300 five-a-side courts, 22 swimming courts, 12 covered sports halls for basketball, volleyball, and handball, and six tennis stadiums.

"Twenty-eight sports and fitness centers have been targeted, damaged, and destroyed."  

Israel's offensive has also caused the death of prominent players in Gaza.

This includes Palestine's first-ever Olympian and flagbearer, Majed Abu Maraheel, who died due to kidney failure in a refugee camp in June.

The 61-year-old Olympic distance runner died as Israel's ongoing blockade of humanitarian assistance left many, including Maraheel, lacking medical treatment and facilities.

Maraheel had competed in the men's 10,000-meter race at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.

In January, the Palestinian Olympic football team's coach Hani Al-Mossader was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

The same month, Nagham Abu Samra, a karate champion who was set to participate in the Paris Olympics, died in a hospital in Egypt after succumbing to her injuries.

She had been severely wounded by an Israeli attack that left her with head injuries and led to the amputation of one of her legs.

(...)With hours left until the Paris 2024 Games' opening ceremony, experts are still questioning the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) decision to keep Israel in the tournament.

"Athletes, whether footballers ... whatever the sport is, they don't belong to political factions ... they are targeted and are illegitimate targets for Israeli forces, and this is absolutely prohibited by all international laws and all FIFA regulations," says Abed.

He argued that Israel's actions show that it lacks the Olympic values of peace, tolerance, forgiveness, love, and sportsmanship.

"So, how could Israel even participate in the Olympics?" he asked.

Russia, meanwhile, has been banned from Olympic and FIFA tournaments after it launched its war on Ukraine in 2022, noted Abed, who maintained that Moscow's actions in that conflict were mild compared to the devastation Israel has caused in Gaza.

This "disgraceful stance," he asserts, revealed the hypocrisy of the IOC, as well as the world governing body for football.

The organizers of this year's Olympics have said their decision to keep Israel in the Games while upholding the ban on Russia and Belarus is due to Moscow's annexation of Ukrainian territory, while Tel Aviv has not formally seized territory in Gaza.

Fadi Quran, senior director at US-based rights group Avaaz, said the Olympics and the IOC's current leadership will be remembered for "turning a blind eye to a country committing what the ICJ ruled is a plausible genocide, and said is apartheid."

He was referring to a preliminary ruling by the International Court of Justice that recognized genocide as a plausible risk in Gaza. Israel stands accused of genocide at the top UN court, which in its latest ruling has ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its operation in the southern city of Rafah, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.

Quran expects that athletes will protest Israel's presence at the Olympics and fans will boycott events where the Israeli flag is raised.

"Now that the IOC has refused to ban Israel, activists across the world will take action to ensure that the Paris Olympics are branded as the 'Apartheid Olympics,' or 'War Crime Olympics'," he said.

According to Abed, it will take a decade to revive sports in the Gaza Strip.

"The war on Gaza has changed everything. The war on Gaza has killed the dreams of many."

[pricetagged]

Idk how to label this. Wifehunter John?

The idea of possessive/obsessive John manipulating a situation and stealing a wife for himself struck me, so just coughing the idea up while I sneak away for a coffee before I actually have to start work in 20 mins 💖 entirely unedited, abrupt ending

Masterlist l Part Two

________

For someone married to his job, he has put quite a bit of thought into what he is looking for in a wife. Namely, that she's already married.

His reasoning is threefold. He can admit to himself, firstly, that it satisfies his need for control. Competency. He's a busy man with a demanding job. Not quite retired yet, no time to build his own from scratch. With this, he gets a wife boxed up and ready-trained. Broken in.

Secondly, the need for control bleeds into his saviour complex. She'll need a shoulder to cry on, someone strong and capable to get her back on her feet. She'll be feeling a little fragile. Needy. Perfect.

And thirdly, it does something wild to his jealous, possessive streak. The idea of taking something precious, of breaking her bond to another man and tying it to him? Delicious. The idea that she used to be someone else's, that he has to imprint himself onto her knowing that in doing so he is erasing the imprint of another man? It has his teeth aching, grinding even as heat rises in his belly. Stirs at him.

The idea swirls lazily in the back of his mind, never quite finding the right time or right partner. He bats at it a few times, lazy cat playing with the notion, seeing how far it can stretch before it snaps. Eyes up pretty things everywhere he goes, glancing down at their left hands just to check, but nothing quite tugs on that string. Until one day it does when he's outfitting the security system at your house.

It's side work. Cash in hand, word of mouth. Something to keep him busy when on mandated leave. Something to keep in mind as his retirement from active duty creeps closer. And your husband is a real piece of work, all blustering braggadocio energy. Young buck, not knowing his place in the herd. Not knowing that he'd be better scratching his antlers off on a tree than going head-to-head with a gristled thing like John.

It's like John's energy, his presence in the house, sends alarm bells ringing in your husband's mind (Be the man. Don't back down. Puff up your chest and strut). And it plays so perfectly into John's hands because your young buck doesn't realise that what he's really doing is fawning. To John. (Look at me, be impressed by me!) He makes his biggest mistake in putting you down in front of him, trying to sidle up to John and create some kind of desperate camaraderie. Ordering you to bring tea to the men at work. Rolling his eyes at your attempts to talk, to ask questions about the work being done. Waving you off so he can stand and watch the proceedings. Like he could supervise. Like he has any clue what he's doing.

Only the promise of the long game keeps John from levelling him with a hard look, from calling him outblike he'd love to.

He hears you both in the in the other room, having swatted the young buck off like a particularly virulent pest. Noisy and bothersome. Not needed - or wanted- in this home. And entirely too stupid to realise that John wasn't being jocular in his dismissal.

You've been scribbling away for the past few days, something occupying your time, keeping you happy and hidden away in the kitchen.

"You're not serious, are you?"

"Well, yes," he hears the slight quaver in your voice before you find your footing. You've got at least a bit of spine. Good. "You said that I should find an occupation. Not just 'laze around the house playing housewife'. This is what I-"

"Oh come on, I didn't mean- You don't think that this is viable, do you?"

"Well... I love gardening. And I'm good at it. And there's no reason that it can't be more accessible for people, especially with the current economic-"

He cuts you off with a scoff. "Dear, just- I don't want you to be disappointed. I think you don't quite understand the time and effort this will take. And you know nothing of marketing, publishing. Why don't you put that away and start on dinner?"

And oh, isn't that delicious. He can taste it now, that idea that has been swirling. It's thick, almost tangible on his tongue. The tension in the house, the bitter lacryma of stifled tears. The slight acidity of words you left unsaid. It has his mouth watering, pupils dilating.

And when he's packing up that evening, tools and materials tucked in to the heavy workman's case, he swings by the kitchen on his way out. Catches the way something is jutting out slightly from the bin, lid slightly askew. When he pulls it out he realises it's some kind of notebook, carefully (lovingly) bound. Pictures pasted, mindmaps and notes and plans scribbled in the margins. Your gardening tips. Kitchen scraps, window boxes, rooftop plots. Urban gardening. It's deeply thoughtful, well researched.

A labour of love, lying in the rubbish.

Sweet, clever little thing. That just won't do.

He leaves your house with a little piece of you tucked away in his toolkit and a nice plan forming. He'll be back, of course, not quite finished with his work. He'd planted a few little links into the system he'd almost installed, projecting not just to the monitor in your home but also in his. Got to keep his eyes on you, keep you safe and cared for in ways that your useless husband can't.

Finding that book was a boon. He'd say it was divinely ordained if he believed in all that. It weighs heavy in his toolbox as he whistles out the door.

Now, how to get you alone and return it to you..

________________

This idea may have been done before? I'm not sure, sorry! I've seen a lot of possessive John floating around. Tagging @stellewriites because I said I would last time, and you've been so encouraging of my nonsense.

Anyway I've got like 4 long-form WIPs that I'm working on, so I may never actually write this one but thought I'd share since that image set I just reblogged made me feral 💖

[milkteabinniechan]

♡Lessons Learned - Hyunjin

MINORS DNI 18+ONLY MEMBERSHIP//M.LIST

pairing: tutor! Hyunjin x fem! reader

summary: if you fail this midterm, you're screwed. Thankfully, your counselor set you up with a tutor who's willing to help you out and he has a very interesting way of rewarding you whenever you answer a question right.

warnings: public sex, fingering, dom/sub dynamic, oral sex (f.rec)

Come on, Ace. You can do it.

You signed up for an introduction to economics class thinking it would be simple. It wasn't what you wanted to do, but you still needed the credit to graduate. You found the number of a tutor on the bulletin board in your common room and decided to give it a call.

“Yeah?” The voice on the other end sounded groggy and irritated.

“Hi! I saw your number and thought that maybe you could tut-”

“What time?” His voice spat at your ear.

“Oh! Uh, I'm free tomorrow afternoon. Does that work? Or we could-”

You were cut off again. He told you to meet him at the University library late afternoon tomorrow. Hwang Hyunjin. What a tool.

The next day you arrived at the library early. You wanted a table by the window and knew how coveted the seating could get. You placed your books around the table and tapped your pencil impatiently against your thigh. Hyunjin showed up exactly when he said he would. He wore glasses and a loose-fitting sweater vest over a short sleeved polo. His hair was messy and unkempt but you couldn't help but notice how incredible he smelled. Like vanilla and fresh cut cedarwood

The two of you met like that for days; with you showing up early and Hyunjin trying to explain the basics of economics. But you couldn't seem to grasp the concept. It was difficult to concentrate when he would lean in close to you, his breath tickling your ear as he spoke.

Come on, Ace. You can do it.

You would bite the eraser of your pencil anxiously. He has to know how gorgeous he was. He has to have girls chasing him all over campus. Sometimes when he would explain a formula or application, you could just stare at his mouth. You would watch his touch flick and bounce as he enunciated his words. Your thighs would squeeze together involuntarily at the thought of his touch moving and twisting around your mouth or your hardened sensitive nipples.

Come on, Ace. You can do it.

Every once and a while you would catch him staring at your breasts. Or he would catch you staring at his hands. More and more tension was building between the two of you without you getting any closer to understanding the assignments.

One day, Hyunjin leaned back in his seat, crossing one leg over the other.

"Well, let's do something a bit... different, shall we? How about we use a more practical application?”

You perked up in your chair and tilted your head curiously.

“What did you have in mind?”

Hyunjin grinned mischievously.

“How about we focus on the concept of supply and demand?” Hyunjin leaned in closer, lowering his voice.

"For instance, if I were to... touch you in places you wouldn't expect, how would you react? Would you push me away, or…?”

Your heart clenched in your chest and your hands gripped the edge of the table.

“I…I guess I don't know what I'd do.” You lied.

“Exactly, you don't know. And that's what makes it so interesting." Hyunjin reached out, gently brushing a strand of hair behind your ear.

"Let's conduct a little experiment. I'll demonstrate the concept of supply and demand, and you can observe and react accordingly.”

Before you could answer him, Hyunjin stood up and walked over to your side of the table, kneeling down in front of you.

"Alright, let's start with the supply side of things.” He placed his hands on your knees and slowly started to push them apart.

"As the supply increases, the demand often increases as well.

You held your breath; quickly looking around the library to see if anyone else had noticed Hyunjin's new position in front of you. Hyunjin grinned wickedly as he continued to push your legs apart, moving his body between them.

"You're blushing. Your breathing is getting faster. See how the demand is rising?” He leaned in closer, his face just inches from yours.

You nod your head slowly, your entire body completely entranced with the feeling of his hands on your thighs. Hyunjin's grin grew wider, his hands continuing their exploration.

"Mmm, the demand is high, isn't it?" His hand slid up further, tracing the edge of your underwear.

"And what if I were to... slip my hand inside? Would you push me away or pull me closer?”

“Closer…” you whispered meekly.

Hyunjin’s hand slipped inside your underwear and his fingers made quick work of gently caressing your most intimate area. He let out a low, satisfied groan as he felt the slick excitement that was already leaking out of you. Hyunjin looked up at you, his grin wicked.

"Look at you... taking it so well. You're a natural, Ace." His fingers continued their rhythm, his pace quickening slightly.

"And now, what if I were to... curve my fingers just…”

He slowly slid his fingers in and out, his thumb gently rubbing that sensitive bundle of nerves as his middle finger curved and curled. Your walls clenched around his slender finger, your hand now clasped like a vice over your mouth.

Hyunjin smirked at your reaction.

"Found your sweet spot, haven't I?" His fingers continued to stroke that spot, his thumb still rubbing your swollen clit.

"And now, if I were to... lean down and lick you while my fingers are inside you…”

Your head shot up and you glared down at him, your face turning redder by the second.

“Here?! Now?!” You growled. You loved how he was making you feel but you had never done anything so public before.

"Yes, here." Hyunjin said firmly, his eyes locked onto yours.

"I'm going to lick your perfect pussy while I finger you, and you're going to let me, aren't you?"

Hyunjin leaned down, his mouth hovering over your clothed folds before pulling your underwear to the side and licking you in one long, sweeping motion.

You moaned softly into your hand. Your body was feeling like it was on fire. Every nerve ending has been activated and needed stimulation. You tried your best to stay still, to make it look like nothing was happening. To convey the facade that this gorgeous man wasn't absolutely devouring you inside a library. The silence around you was glaringly apparent as Hyunjin gently coaxed your clit into his mouth and gently sucked on it. His fingers continued to curl and stroke your needy insides, his other hand still holding your leg in place. He looked up at you, his eyes shining with desire as sucked and pulled hungrily at your slick folds.

"Look at you... so pretty…”

taglist: @simply-trash5 @sugawhaaa @trixiekaulitz @chrizzztopherbang @cassidymb121 @roanns-posts @staysinbloom @yaorzu-blog @bubblebisk @cotton-candycloudz @beautyinhypnosis @domicaru @strawberry31 @slxtmeri @newhope8 @tinyelfperson @dandelions-143 @stayyyyyyyyyyyy21 @msauthor @fun-fanfics @ell0thebell @stephanieeeyang @juskz @kimahreummm @readr1221 @kayleefriedchicken @ovulatingrn @hwnglixho @darthmaddie25 @queen-in-the-shadows @itgirlalisaa @miinhoo @greyaia @chanchansgirly @skzleeknowcore @skz-smut-reader @thatisrankharry @hearts4yawnzzn @jchotch726 @cherricola-star

[collapsedsquid]

Still, the most difficult aspect of the crisis is not the need to prepare for an unspecified economic threat from a close ally, but the need to cope with a sudden sense of almost Kafkaesque absurdity. In truth, Trump’s demands are illogical. Anything that the U.S. theoretically might want to do in Greenland is already possible, right now. Denmark has never stopped the U.S. military from building bases, searching for minerals, or stationing troops in Greenland, or from patrolling sea lanes nearby. In the past, the Danes have even let Americans defy Danish policy in Greenland. Over lunch, one former Danish diplomat told me a Cold War story, which unfolded not long after Denmark had formally declared itself to be a nuclear-free country. In 1957, the U.S. ambassador nevertheless approached Denmark’s then–prime minister, H. C. Hansen, with a request. The United States was interested in storing some nuclear weapons at an American base in Greenland. Would Denmark like to be notified? Hansen responded with a cryptic note, which he characterized, according to diplomatic records, as “informal, personal, highly secret and limited to one copy each on the Danish and American side.” In the note, which was not shared with the Danish Parliament or the Danish press, and indeed was not made public at all until the 1990s, Hansen said that since the U.S. ambassador had not mentioned specific plans or made a concrete request, “I do not think your remarks give rise to any comment from my side.” In other words, If you don’t tell us that you are keeping nuclear weapons in Greenland, then we won’t have to object.

[tanadrin]

I know there are only so many ways to phrase the insight "Tsar Nicholas II has no idea what he was doing" in a way that makes it interesting, but I do wonder what the endgame of Nicholas and the reactionaries really was in Russia in the 1900s and 1910s. Let's say he's right about everything: let's say orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality can work as an ideology, that the Tsarist state isn't a creaking old half-rotted machine that has embarrassingly poor capacity (and stops abruptly above the local level relevant to 75% of the population), let's say all your loyal-but-reformist-ministers like Witte and Stolypin are wrong, conditions are fine, this agitation really is the pernicious influence of foreigners and Jews, and "true Russians" (whatever that means) really do love you.

You still got your ass kicked by the Japanese, you still rule a country which is embarrassingly poor given its size and population, your tiny middle class still has very little capital to invest in industry because all the surplus is getting hoovered up by your nobles and you, personally. Russia, as a military and economic engine to which your family's fortunes are irrevocably yoked (unless you abdicate and go into exile, which we all know you won't), is still well behind other European great powers, and the next big war you fight against a peer nation is going to go even worse than the one with Japan, if it happens in your backyard--which is inevitable, because you are playing great power politics like you are the German Kaiser, and not the Russian Tsar.

So what is your endgame? Stagnate forever? I guess this is demanding too much from a man who genuinely thought God was on his side, who was totally out of touch with the events of the day, and whose interest in the affairs of state far outstripped his understanding of those affairs. But there were a lot of reactionaries in Russia in those days, who seemed to share Nicholas's passion for stasis and autocracy. And no matter how many anti-semitic conspiracies you fund in occupied Poland, it's not gonna keep the Prussians at bay come 1914! And it's not like he didn't have a ton of loyal ministers who were 1000% on board with a strong monarchy and who also had clever ideas on how to improve state capacity and expand industry.

[natsaffection]

I’m sorry if this is too much to ask

I recently went through a breakup with my girlfriend (recently as in last night) and I need some Natty fluff and comfort. For an idea reader and nat are bestfriends and have been through S.H.I.E.L.D for many years before Nat was promoted to an Avenger and reader was left behind as an agent.

Reader broke up with their relationship a day before Nat got home from a mission(clarification that nat n reader share apartments) injured and its just the two worrying about eachother to mindlessly cuddle and comfort eachother.

could add in soft sex for plot but ill let you decide the rest 😞✊

Held Together. | N.R

Warnings: friends brake up, injury

Word count: 2,3k

A/n: Hey you. I know this isn't going to help you much, and I definitely want to lend you my ear if you ever want to talk about things like this. I know how it feels, and I also know that saying it will get better doesn't exactly help. So please don't hesitate to write to me. 🩵

The first time you saw Natasha, you were both in the S.H.I.E.L.D. training facility, hidden deep within the confines of a classified location. The facility was stark, all concrete walls and fluorescent lighting, with the faint scent of sweat and determination lingering in the air. You were new, just another recruit with a mysterious past, handpicked for reasons that weren't fully explained to you. But then again, secrecy was the foundation of S.H.I.E.L.D., and you had learned quickly that questions were often better left unasked.

Natasha stood out immediately. Not just because of her striking red hair, which seemed to catch the light even in the dullest corners of the room, but because of the aura of quiet confidence she exuded. She moved with a precision that spoke of years of experience, each step deliberate, each movement economical. It was clear that she was in a league of her own. But it wasn’t her skill that drew you to her, it was the look in her eyes. Beneath the stoic mask, there was a flicker of something familiar, something you recognized in yourself. The guarded pain of someone who had seen too much, too soon. The training sessions were brutal. S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t coddle its recruits, and you were pushed to your limits, physically and mentally. But every time you faltered, Natasha was there, a silent presence at your side, pushing you to keep going. She wasn’t the type to offer comforting words or a reassuring pat on the back, but her actions spoke louder than any words could. She trained with you, sparred with you, and when you were both covered in bruises and gasping for breath, she would sit with you in the quiet moments, a rare smile tugging at her lips.

Over time, what began as mutual respect grew into something deeper. You found yourself seeking her out, not just in training but outside of it. Late nights in the common room, nursing cups of coffee and talking about everything and nothing at all. You learned that Natasha wasn’t just a hardened spy. She was fiercely intelligent, with a dry wit that could cut through any tension. She had a past that she kept close to the vest, but in those quiet moments, she would let slip little pieces of herself, and you would do the same. It was during one of those late-night conversations that you both discovered just how much you had in common. You shared a dark sense of humor, born from lives that had demanded you grow up too fast. You both knew what it was like to be used as a tool, to have your choices stripped away, and to fight tooth and nail to reclaim some semblance of control.

The turning point in your friendship came during a mission in Prague. You had been sent in as backup for Natasha, who was deep undercover, trying to extract a high-value target from an enemy compound. The mission had gone south, bad intel, compromised routes, everything that could go wrong did. Natasha was pinned down, outgunned and outnumbered, and for a brief, heart-stopping moment, you thought you might lose her. But you didn’t hesitate. You stormed the compound, using every skill you had learned, every lesson drilled into you during those grueling training sessions. You fought your way to her, the two of you battling side by side, back to back, until you managed to extract the target and make your escape.

When you were safely back at the extraction point, covered in dust and blood, Natasha had turned to you, her eyes fierce with a mix of adrenaline and gratitude. She didn’t say anything, but the look she gave you was all you needed. From that moment on, you were partners in every sense of the word. There was an unspoken understanding between you..a bond forged in the heat of battle, one that neither of you questioned. Over the years, that bond only grew stronger. You became the team that everyone wanted on their mission, the pair that could get the job done no matter the odds. You were the calm to her storm, the steady hand that balanced her fierce determination. And she was your anchor, the one person you knew you could rely on, no matter what.

But it wasn’t all about the missions. There were moments of light in the darkness inside jokes that no one else understood, late-night movies when you both should have been sleeping, and the kind of trust that only came from knowing someone inside and out. You knew her favorite coffee order, the songs she hummed when she thought no one was listening, and the way she always checked her weapons twice before a mission, even when she didn’t need to. And she knew you, knew the nightmares that woke you in the middle of the night, the reason you kept your distance from most people, and the way you always carried that one memento from your past, a small token of a life you barely remembered. She never pushed, never pried, but her presence was a constant reassurance, a reminder that you weren’t alone in this world.

Then came the day when everything shifted. Natasha was summoned to Nick office a meeting that would change the course of both your lives. When she emerged, she looked different, as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders, but there was something else too a distance, a sense of something slipping away. She told you about the Avengers, about the offer Fury had made. You could see the excitement in her eyes, the way her posture straightened as she spoke about it. And why wouldn’t she be excited? It was a chance to be part of something bigger, something that could change the world. You listened, nodded in all the right places, and when she asked what you thought, you plastered on a smile and told her how proud you were.

But inside, your heart ached. You knew that things would never be the same. You didn’t want to hold her back, didn’t want to be the reason she missed out on something extraordinary, but the thought of losing the connection you shared filled you with a dread you couldn’t shake. And slowly, that fear began to materialize.

As Natasha got more involved with the Avengers, the calls became less frequent, the visits even more so. You found yourself spending more time alone, throwing yourself into missions to drown out the loneliness. The once unbreakable bond you shared felt like it was fraying, the threads pulling apart one by one. The more you tried to reach out, the more distant she seemed, until one day, you realized that the Natasha you knew was almost a stranger to you now. She had new friends, new responsibilities, a new life. And where you once stood side by side, you were now watching from the sidelines, unsure of where you fit in her world anymore.

But the memories remained. Every time you walked past the training room, you could almost hear the echoes of your past conversations, the laughter that once filled the empty spaces. The ghost of what you had once had lingered, haunting you in the quiet moments. You didn’t know what the future held for you and Natasha, but one thing was certain: the bond you had shared was changing, evolving into something you couldn’t yet understand. And as much as it hurt, you knew that you had to find your place in this new reality, even if it meant doing it without her by your side.

The apartment felt too quiet, the silence oppressive as you sat on the edge of the bed, staring blankly at the empty walls. Your things were mostly packed, boxes lining the hallway, and the last remnants of your life here waiting to be sealed up and carried away. You had made your decision the day before, the weight of it still sitting heavily in your chest.

You had ended it. Ended the friendship, the partnership, the life you had built with Natasha. The pain of watching her drift further away into her new life as an Avenger had become too much to bear. Every day had been a reminder of how much you were losing her, and it had finally reached a breaking point. You couldn’t stand being the one left behind anymore, always wondering when or if things would go back to the way they were. So, you had left a note on the kitchen table, explaining as best you could, trying to make her understand why you needed to leave, why you couldn’t keep living in the shadow of her new world. You couldn’t bring yourself to say it to her face, not after everything you’d been through together, so you had written the words, packed your things, and left the apartment.

But now, sitting in the empty space you once called home, the reality of what you’d done settled in, and it hurt more than you could have imagined. You didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to give up on what you had with Natasha, but you didn’t see any other way to protect your heart from breaking further. It was supposed to be simple. You would leave, and Natasha would come back to an empty apartment, read the note, and understand. She’d move on, and so would you. That was the plan.

Except plans never go the way you expect them to.

The sound of the front door creaking open jolted you from your thoughts. Your heart stopped as you heard footsteps heavy, uneven. Natasha was back. You weren’t supposed to be here. You were supposed to be gone, far away, already beginning the process of moving on. But you couldn’t bring yourself to leave. Not yet. You stood up, feeling your heart race as you heard Natasha’s familiar footsteps drawing closer. When she finally appeared in the doorway, your breath caught in your throat. She looked exhausted, her skin pale, and there was a grimace on her face that she couldn’t quite hide.

But what really terrified you was the blood on her jacket and the way she was cradling her side as if trying to hold herself together. “Natasha..” you whispered, the word barely audible as the shock of seeing her like this hit you. Her eyes flicked up to meet yours, and for a moment, she just stared, as if trying to process that you were really there. “Y/n..?”

“You’re hurt.” you said, your voice trembling as you took a closer look. "It’s not as bad as it looks..” she replied, trying to offer a reassuring smile, but it faltered as she winced in pain. “Stop pretending.” you snapped, though your voice was laced more with worry than anger. “Why didn’t you go to the medbay?”

Natasha shook her head, letting out a strained sigh “I just..needed to come home.” she said softly, her eyes flickering around the room, taking in the packed boxes, the half-empty closet. “I thought you would be gone..?” The words hung in the air between you, heavy and filled with the tension of everything that had happened, everything that hadn’t been said.

“I was supposed to be..” you admitted. “Come here, let me help you with that.” She didn’t resist as you guided her to the bed, her breaths coming in shallow gasps as she tried to stay composed. You carefully unzipped her jacket, wincing at the sight of the blood-soaked bandages underneath. It wasn’t the worst injury you’d seen her with, but it was bad enough to make your hands shake as you reached for the first aid kit. She winced as you peeled the blood-soaked fabric away, revealing a nasty gash along her side. It wasn’t life-threatening, but it was deep enough to require stitches.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?” you asked, your voice thick with emotion as you began to clean the wound, trying to keep your hands steady. “I didn’t want you to worry..” Natasha replied, her voice barely above a whisper. “But I guess that plan didn’t work out too well.”

“Damn it, Natasha..” you muttered, blinking back tears as you worked. “You can’t just..you can’t just keep doing this. Keeping things from me. Pushing me away.”

“I wasn’t trying to push you away.” she said, her voice breaking slightly. “I just..I didn’t know how to handle all of this. You, the Avengers, everything. I thought I could balance it all, but I was wrong.” You paused, your breath hitching as the weight of her words settled over you. “Nat-” you started, but she cut you off.

“I read your note.” she said, her eyes glistening as she looked down at you. “I know why you left, and I can’t blame you. I’ve been so caught up in everything else that I forgot about the one person who’s always been there for me. And now I’m scared I’ve lost you.” Tears slipped down your cheeks as you finished dressing her wound, your hands lingering on her skin for a moment longer than necessary. “You haven’t lost me.” you whispered, your voice shaking. “But I can’t keep living like this, Natasha. It’s tearing me apart..”

She reached out, her hand trembling as she cupped your cheek, her thumb brushing away your tears. “I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice breaking. “I never wanted to hurt you.” You leaned into her touch, closing your eyes as the warmth of her hand seeped into your skin. “I know.” you whispered. “But things have to change. We can’t keep going like this.”

Natasha nodded, her own tears spilling over as she pulled you into a gentle embrace, her arms wrapping around you as if she was afraid to let go. You buried your face in her shoulder, the scent of her familiar, comforting even through the layers of blood and sweat. You both held on to each other as if it was the only thing keeping you grounded, the only thing keeping you from falling apart. For a long time, neither of you spoke. The silence was filled with the sound of your combined breaths, the rise and fall of your chests in sync, the steady beat of her heart against your ear. “I don’t want to lose you..” you whispered, your voice trembling with the weight of everything you hadn’t said.

“You won’t.” she promised, her voice filled with quiet determination. “I won’t let you.” There was a moment of silence, thick with unspoken emotions, and then, before you could second-guess yourself, you leaned in, pressing your lips softly to hers. The kiss was tender, hesitant, as if you were both afraid to break the fragile connection between you. But the moment your lips met, it was like something inside you both clicked into place, the distance and the pain melting away, replaced by the familiar warmth of being with each other. Natasha kissed you back, her lips moving slowly, carefully, as if savoring the moment. When you finally pulled away, you rested your forehead against hers, your breaths mingling in the small space between you.

“I’m sorry..” you whispered, your voice barely audible. “Shh..” Natasha murmured, her hand moving to the back of your neck, pulling you closer. “We’ll figure it out.” You nodded, unable to speak as you felt the tears slipping down your cheeks. Natasha gently wiped them away, her touch so soft it made your heart ache. You didn’t know what the future held for you both, but in this moment, with her arms around you and her lips still tingling from the kiss, you felt a glimmer of hope.

Carefully, you helped her lie down on the bed, her head resting on the pillow as you pulled the blanket over her. But before you could move away, Natasha caught your hand, her grip surprisingly strong despite her exhaustion. “Stay with me.” she whispered, her eyes pleading. You nodded, your heart swelling with emotion as you crawled into bed beside her. Natasha immediately curled into you, her head resting on your chest, her arm draped over your waist. You wrapped your arms around her, holding her close, as if you were afraid she might slip away if you let go.

The two of you lay there in silence, the only sound the soft rhythm of your breathing and the steady beat of your hearts. The tension, the hurt, the fear..it all seemed to fade away as you held each other, the warmth of her body against yours a balm to the wounds that had been festering between you for so long. You pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head, your fingers gently stroking her hair as she sighed contentedly against you. “I love you, Nat..” you whispered, the words slipping out before you could stop them. “I love you too.” she murmured, her voice filled with so much tenderness it made your heart ache. You tightened your hold on her, burying your face in her hair as you let the weight of the day finally slip away. For the first time in a long time, you felt a sense of peace, a sense of hope that maybe, just maybe, you could find your way back to each other. And as you both drifted off to sleep, wrapped up in each other’s arms, you knew that whatever challenges lay ahead, you would face them together.

[jozor-johai]

Sometimes I think it's underrated how much of Westeros we see during wartime. Amidst all of the discourse back and forth over whether the brutality of ASOIAF has a "realistic" basis in real-life feudal history, I think the fact that we're seeing Westeros in a very atypical and specific circumstance should not go overlooked, and I think in that regard there are parts that are "realistic" to modern history, let alone feudal.

For instance, in regards to the complaints about how many women are sex workers in ASOIAF—I think that has more to say about the nature of the wartime economy.

War breaks out; as a result, the regular economy halts. This is the result of various blockades, as well as from the workforce being redirected away from production and towards standing armies—fewer farms are being maintained, and fewer still are making it across wartime boundaries. Another side effect, then, is the trouble when this economic situation interacts with the practical existence of a standing army: massive amounts of young men, either single or separated from their families, drawing disproportionately on the limited resources of the farmland around them (which is being worked at a less-efficient rate than usual to begin with).

The army—comprised of young men—creates a demand for sex that interacts with the overflowing supply of young women without stable income (since this is an incredibly patriarchal society and the men in their lives have been taken away from work for military service). Without better jobs available, and with the market right there, these women turn to sex work, which syrockets. But of course they would, and of course it seems like every smallfolk woman we meet in ASOIAF is doing it: because people have to eat and feed their families, and the fields to plow have been burned by war, and the people who would work them have either been taken for military service or killed by war. It's exceedingly likely that sex work wasn't as widespread before the war so the increase in the need for sex workers represents the failing economy—consider the overabundance of sex workers in ACOK King's Landing, which was under a trade blockade from almost all fronts.

Then, the pendulum swings back the other direction: this is an unsustainable economy and an unsustainable way to live, so there is a reactionary religious response demanding a return to the way things were before (pre-war, in effect, but never separating this from the "social ills" that war results in). The women are blamed for their behavior, despite being demanded by the men around them and made necessary by the economy, and so this reactionary response leads to a religious condemnation of the "wanton" behavior of women.

The religious response in particular gains traction because organized religion offers several very meaningful things that otherwise solve these problems. We see from Septon Meribald toting his goods that the Faith offers charity to the starving. We see with the Sparrows, and personally with Lancel how the Faith offers a sense of meaning to those disenchanted by this strife. We see from the Sparrows and the rise of the High Sparrow how the organized religion of the Faith also offers a means of returning power to the disenfranchised.

So GRRM is achieving something unnervingly realistic here, showing what happens to local economies under wartime and the lingering horror that is left behind��a scenario that is still true of modern war, even if Americans don't have to see it personally. GRRM lived through Vietnam, and the influence is obvious in how the invading American military practiced rape and forced dubiously-consensual sex work onto the local economy.

It's also realistic how organized religion gains traction in scenarios where disenfranchised peoples need sources of hope and methods of organizing to regain what little power is available to them, and how organized religion can leverage a desire for better times into moral condemnation that fuels its rise to increasing levels of de jure power. It will be interesting to see in TWOW and beyond where the trajectory of the High Sparrow leads these people (and what that says about GRRM's observations and interpretations about modern historical parallels).

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Canada shouldn’t retaliate with its US tariffs

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

Five years ago, Trump touted his "big, beautiful" replacement for NAFTA, the "free trade agreement" between the US, Mexico and Canada. Trump's NAFTA-2 was called the USMCA (US-Mexico-Canada Agreement) and it was pretty similar to NAFTA, to be honest.

That tells you a couple things: first, NAFTA was, broadly speaking a good thing for Trump and the ultra-wealthy donors who backed him (and got far richer as a result). That's why he kept it intact. NAFTA and USMCA are, at root, a way to make rich people richer by making poorer people poorer. Trump's base hated NAFTA because they (correctly) believed that it was being used to erode wages by chasing cheaper labor and more lax environmental controls in other countries. Neither NAFTA nor USMCA have any stipulations requiring exported goods to be manufactured by unionized workers, or in factories with robust environmental and workplace safety rules.

The point of NAFTA/USMCA is to goose profits by despoiling the environment, maiming workers, stealing their wages, paying them less, all while poisoning the Earth. Trump's "new" NAFTA was just the old NAFTA with some largely cosmetic changes so that Trump's base could be (temporarily) fooled into thinking Trump was righting the historic wrong of NAFTA.

However, there was one part of USMCA that marked a huge departure from NAFTA: the "IP" chapter. USCMA bound Canada and Mexico to implementing brutal new IP laws. For example, Mexico was forced to pass an anti-circumvention law that makes it a crime to tamper with "digital locks." This means that Mexican mechanics can't bypass the locks US car companies use to lock-out third party repair. Mexican farmers can't fix their own tractors. And, of course, Mexican software developers can't make alternative app stores for games consoles and mobile devices – they must sell their software through US Big Tech companies that take 30% of every sale:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/09/free-sample/#que-viva

Shamefully, Canada had already capitulated to most of these demands. Two Canadian Conservative Party politicians, Tony Clement and James Moore, had sold the country out in 2012, throwing away 6,138 negative responses to a consultation on a new DRM law (on the grounds that they were "babyish" views of "radical extremists"), siding instead with the 54 cranks and industry shills who supported their proposal:

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

When Canadian politicians are pressed on why these anti-interoperability policies are good for Canada, they'll say that it's a condition of free trade, and the benefits of being able to export Canadian goods to the US without tariffs outweigh the costs of having to pay rents to American companies for consumables (like car parts or printer ink), repair, and software sales.

Sure, when Canadian software authors sell iPhone apps to Canadian customers, the payments take a round trip through Cupertino, California and return 30% short. But Canadian consumers get to buy iPhones without paying tariffs on them, and the oil, timber, and minerals we rip out of the ground can be sent to America without tariffs, either (oh, also, a few things that are still manufactured in Canada can do this, too).

Enter Trump, carrying a 25% tariff on all Canadian goods, which he has vowed to impose on his first day in office. Obviously, this demands a policy response. What should Canada do when Trump tears up his "big, beautiful" trade deal and whacks Canadian exporters? One obvious response is to impose a 25% retaliatory tariff on American exporters:

https://mishtalk.com/economics/canada-says-it-will-match-us-tariffs-if-trump-launches-trade-war/

After all, Canada and the US are one another's mutual largest trading partners. American businesses rely on selling things to Canadians, so a massive tariff on US goods will certainly make some of Trump's business-lobby backers feel pain, and maybe they'll talk some sense into him.

I think this would be a huge mistake. The most potent political lesson of the past four years is that politicians who preside over rising prices – regardless of their role in causing them – will swiftly feel the wrath of their voters. The public is furious about inflation, whether it comes from transient covid supply chain shocks, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, or cartels using "inflation" as cover for illegal, collusive price-gouging.

Canadians are very reliant on American imports of finished goods. That's another legacy of NAFTA: it crashed Canada's manufacturing sector. Canadian manufacturing companies treated the US as a "nearshore" source of non-union labor and weak environmental and safety rules, and shipped Canadian union jobs to American scabs. Canada's economy is supposedly now all about "services" but what we really export is stuff we tear out of the Earth.

Countries that are organized around resource extraction don't need fancy social safety nets or an educational system capable of producing a high-tech workforce. All you need to extract resources is a hole in the ground surrounded by guns, which explains a lot about shifts to the Canadian political climate since the Mulroney years.

Since Canada is now substantially reorganized as an open-pit mine for American manufacturers, cutting off American imports would drive the prices of everyday good sky-high, and would be political suicide.

But there's another way.

Because, of course, Canada – like any other country – has the capacity to make all kinds of things, including high-tech things. Sure, it's unlikely that Canada will launch another Research in Motion with a Blackberry smart-phone that will put the iPhone and Android in the shade. The mobile duopoly has the market sewn up, and can use predatory pricing, refusal to deal, and other anticompetitive tactics to strangle any competitor in its cradle.

But you know what Canada could make? A Canadian App Store. That's a store that Canadian software authors could use to sell Canadian apps to Canadian customers, charging, say, the standard payment processing fee of 5% rather than Apple's 30%. Canada could make app stores for the Android, Playstation and Xbox, too.

There's no reason that a Canadian app store would have to confine itself to Canadian software authors, either. Canadian app stores could offer 5% commissions on sales to US and global software authors, and provide jailbreaking kits that allows device owners all around the world to install the Canadian app stores where software authors don't get ripped off by American Big Tech companies.

Canadian companies like Honeybee already make "front-ends" for John Deere tractors – these are the components that turn a tractor into a plow, or a thresher, or another piece of heavy agricultural equipment. Honeybee struggles constantly to get its products to interface with Deere tractors, because Deere uses digital locks to block its products:

https://honeybee.ca/

Canada could produce jailbreaking kits for John Deere tractors, too – not just for Honeybee. Every ag-tech company in the world would benefit from commercially available, professionally supported John Deere jailbreaking kits. So would farmers, because these kits would restore farmers' Right to Repair their own tractors:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

Speaking of repair: Canadian companies could jailbreak every make and model of every US automobile, and make independent, constantly updated diagnostic tools that every mechanic in the world could buy for hundreds of dollars, rather than paying the five-figure ransom that car makers charge for their own underpowered, junk versions of these tools.

Jailbreaking cars doesn't stop with repair, either. Cars like the Tesla are basically giant rent-extraction machines. If you want to use all the "features" your Tesla ships with – like access to the full charge on your battery – you have to pay tens of thousands of dollars in subscription fees over the life of the car, and when you sell your car, all that "downloadable content" is clawed back. No one will pay extra to buy your used Tesla just because you spent thousands on manufacturer upgrades, because they're all downgraded when you sign over the pink slip.

But Canadian companies could make jailbreaking kits for Teslas that unlock all the features in the car for a single low price – and again, they could sell these to every Tesla owner in the world.

Elon Musk doesn't invent anything, he just takes credit for other people's ideas, and that's as true of bad ideas as it is for good ones. Musk didn't invent the extractive Tesla rip-off: he stole it from inkjet printer companies like HP, who have used the fact that jailbreaking is illegal to turn printer ink into the most expensive fluid in the world, selling for more than $10,000/gallon.

Canadian companies could sell jailbreaking kits for inkjet printers that disconnect them from "subscription" services and disable the anti-features that check for and reject third party ink. People all over the world would buy these.

What's standing in the way of a Canadian industrial policy that focuses on raiding the sky-high margins of American monopolists with third-party add-ons, mods and jailbreaks?

Only the IP laws that Canada has agreed to in order to get tariff-free access to American markets. You know, the access that Trump has promised to end in less than a week's time?

Canada should tear up these laws – and not impose tariffs on American goods. That way, Canadians can still buy cheap American goods, and then they can save billions of dollars every year on the consumables, parts, software, and service for those goods.

This is hurting American big business where it hurts – in the ongoing rents it extracts from Canadians through IP laws like Bill C-11 (the law that bans jailbreaking). Canada could become a global high-tech export powerhouse, selling "complementary" goods that disenshittify all the worst practices of US tech monopolists, from car parts to insulin pumps.

It's the only kind of trade war that Canadian politicians can win against Americans: the kind where prices for Canadians don't go up because of tariffs; where the price of apps, repair, parts, and upgrades goes way down; and where a new, high-tech manufacturing sector pulls in vast sums from customers all over the world.

Canada can win this kind of war, even against a country as big and powerful as the USA. After all, we did it once before:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CK3EDncjGI

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/15/beauty-eh/#its-the-only-war-the-yankees-lost-except-for-vietnam-and-also-the-alamo-and-the-bay-of-ham

[leviathan-supersystem]

how do you get good at debating? how do you put on a cruel stage show? how do you get practice identifying the buckling points in someone’s argument as it happens?

the first and most important part is to read some currently occurring debates on the topic so you know what current talking points are in circulation. this is the absolute most important part, if you don't do this nothing else matters, even if you're smart and well-read in general if you don't know what people are saying in the discourse about that specific topic Right Now then you're going to be playing catch-up and being caught off guard.

at any given time The Discourse on any given topic is mostly composed of like, 12 talking points just getting churned around and repeated back and forth. learn what the best arguments are for the side you agree with, learn what the rebuttals are to the arguments from the opposing side, and if any arguments from the opposing side don't already have ready-made rebuttals, try to see if you can craft a rebuttal of your own to that point from scratch. that way you'll go into every debate basically already knowing what they're going to say and having a ready-to go rebuttal for every point. you can even just copy-paste your rebuttals if you highlight that you're doing that, i do that with my rebuttal against the ancap "achktually, the REAL definition of capitalism is-" argument, and the fact that i'm copy-pasting the same block of text and it works flawlessly every single time just makes their argument look even worse.

If an opponent makes any given claim, don't just assume it's true. look it up. especially if they don't have a source, but even if they do have a source, look up other sources on that topic and see if their source has already be debunked. so often i see someone just outright lie in a debate, and the other person just continues the debate assuming their lie was true.

i'm not immune to this myself, i was arguing with that guy who said "ahaha well palestinians are majority shia and yemenis are majority sunnis and sunnis HATE shi'ites, so yemenis don't even actually care about palestinians, they just hate jews!" and i wrote a whole rebuttal assuming the claim about sunni/shia demographics in those regions was true and then i looked up the statistics on shia/sunni demographics in palestine and yemen, not even trying to debunk or fact-check him, only to find that palestine and yemen are both majority sunni! palestine has a *larger* sunni majority even! so i had to go back and delete my whole response and replace it with "palestine is majority sunni you cretin." just assuming an opponent's factual claims are true without checking them is one of the most rookie mistakes out there, but no matter how much experience you have you can still fall into it if you don't check yourself.

since no ideology can ever perfectly capture reality, every single ideology has certain facts that they can't address adequately. figure out which facts these are for your opponent's ideology and repeat them as often as possible, demand your opponent address them and don't let them try to change the subject when they can't.

for example, there is no way for the conventional anti-communist narrative of "marxism-leninism was bad for everybody, it's fundamentally a failure as an economic system" to account for the fact that the majority of russians consistently say in polls that socialism was better than capitalism and that the soviet union was the greatest time in the history of russia. if you just keep coming back to this fact they'll just keep getting more stressed out and trying to dodge that topic in more desperate ways.

ideologies will also oftentimes have internal inconsistencies, you can also just keep bringing the conversation back to these and watch your opponent squirm. also, conversely, if there are any inconsistencies in your own views, correct these so your opponent can't do this to you. there are plenty of right-wingers who get a lot of mileage by pointing to the dissonance between gun control and other popular progressive positions ("how are you going to condemn the police and then say only cops should have guns?" etc) and by simply being adamantly pro-gun and against gun-control i can basically become impervious to those arguments. they keep using those arguments and i just say "well i'm against gun control" and it shuts them down completely.

similarly a lot of these arguments that hinge on pointing out hypocrisy/incongruity on the other side are directly mirrored by an inverted hypocrisy/incongruity on their own. while the right-wingers are correct to point to an incongruity in the popular progressive "anti-cop, pro-gun control" position, this incongruity is mirrored by an equal incongruity in the "pro-cop, anti-gun control" position which is popular among right-wingers ("if you think we need guns to overthrow the government, why do you want the agents of that government better armed and equipped? who do you think enforces the gun control laws you decry?" etc)- if you jump into the fray of this discourse with an "anti-cop, anti-gun control" position, you can hammer the right-winger on their inconsistency while remaining invulnerable to attempts to do the same to you. similarly if any more mainstream liberals want to try to start shit with you you can also point to the incongruity/hypocrisy of their position while remaining impervious to retaliation.

i'm using gun control as an example, but you can apply this sort of tactic to basically any discourse where two sides are mutually accusing each other of hypocrisy/incongruity. they're probably both right to a degree, and you can get a lot of mileage by crafting a position more internally consistent than either side of the debate.

also, anyone who tries to convince you you should only argue in a vacuum is dumb as hell, your opponents previously stated opinions are completely relevant to the conversation, especially if they suggest that their currently stated positions in the debate are insincere or hypocritical. if someone is debating israel/palestine with you, and they say "the hamasniks don't represent the interests of the palestinian people- it is israel, ultimately, who does, and the hamas extremists are just disrupting this peace and making things worse for everyone." it's absolutely relevant if a week ago they were posting "all arabs are subhuman dogs who must be exterminated, islam is an inherently violent religion which no society should tolerate" and so on and so forth.

if you're arguing about a topic with someone, search that topic on their blog and see what else they've had to say about it. people will whine about "poisoning the well fallacy" but that's obviously just a fake "fallacy" attempting to ban an entirely legitimate debate tactic. yes, if someone is insincere in making an argument, that absolutely reflects badly on their argument, and their previous track record absolutely can demonstrate if they're insincere, it's stupid for them to go "uh uh uh poisoning the well fallacy, you can't point out that i'm a lying little shit, you have to pretend i'm not" and everyone who sees the debate will know it's stupid for them to do this. if you've effectively revealed someone as a liar, they won't be able to redeem their reputation in anyone's eyes by saying "well you're not allowed to prove i'm a liar" no matter how hard they try.

idk thats the stuff i can think of off the top of my head, i'll try to add more if i can think of anything.

[metamatar]

ok. so. baby's first moral philosophy in war. moral consequentialism apparently demands not fighting any war where you don’t have as many weapons as the other side. but first of all that denies like? actual history especially because we have a history of so called unwinnable wars where under resourced sides beat more powerful ones, specifically in anti colonial contexts vietnam, algeria etc. there is a whole philosophy and history of tactics for the underdog which even dilettantes like me know. like you can do a careful analysis of palestinian firepower and conclude that now was not the right time, but you certainly cannot conclude that the time for palestine is never. if you choose to only fight when you can match in conventional firepower, you also lose the opportunity to economically weaken the powerful state. holding fire till you believe you can win every objective is a very short termist view. war is a long theater.

not all people who recognise the value of anti colonial liberation movements do it bc they're idealists who valorise the power of doing the right thing. conceding the possibility of winning before trying to win is conceding that the powerful only get more powerful and we should just leave them to it. sadly for you nietschzean freaks, history proved you false. why don't you advocate for the rights of kings?