#he may or may not have infected half of my current drafts

[cheekinpermission]

idk snake charmer joke or something

[chicgeekgirl89]

Requesting Immediate Backup

Fandom: 911 Lone Star

Characters: T.K. Strand, Carlos Reyes, Andrea Reyes

Summary: Carlos refuses to admit he's sick. So T.K. is forced to call in some backup. Written for the @badthingshappenbingo​ prompt: This is for Your Own Good.

A/N: I have four other multi-chapter fics to work on so I wrote this instead. It may or may not be based on current and past personal experiences. Special thanks to @bluenet13​ for consulting with me!

Read on AO3

T.K. had never seen his boyfriend in quite this state before, and he was torn between amusement and abject pity.

Carlos had come home from work three days ago, brow pinched, eyes tight, clearly in some kind of pain. After a significant amount of questioning he’d finally admitted to having a headache. T.K. had plied him with some OTC pain medication and sent him to bed.

Things had grown steadily worse over the last few days. First Carlos’ sinuses had completely stopped up and then he’d begun to cough and wheeze. Despite significant evidence to the contrary, he remained adamant that he was not sick. It was allergies. Nothing more. 

Now T.K. watched as Carlos sniffed and snorted, shuffling around the kitchen, eyes red and watery as he searched for something in the cupboards and drawers. “Are you sure I can’t help you?” T.K. asked.

Carlos turned to glare at him, rubbing at his nose before speaking in a croaky voice. “I told you, I’m fine.”

Carlos’ breath caught and T.K. winced as he hacked out a cough so hard it sounded like his lungs were trying to leave his body. He shook his head. Enough was enough. “Babe you need to sit down.”

“I’m fi—” Carlos interrupted himself with a massive sneeze.

“You’re not fine. You have an upper respiratory infection. Probably bronchitis. And you need to sit down and let me take care of you.”

“I don’t need to be taken care of,” Carlos griped, finally finding the spoon he was searching for. “I can take care of myself.”

“Yes, I can see what a spectacular job you’re doing of that right now,” T.K. said, glancing at his watch for dramatic effect. “It just took you twenty minutes to get a yogurt.”

“I couldn’t find the one I wanted,” Carlos snapped. “You always put them in the back.”

“Wow, you are cranky when you’re sick.”

“I’m not sick!”

“Babe,” T.K. rolled his eyes. “Come on.”

Carlos pulled the blanket he was wearing like a cloak a little closer. “I’m fine.”

T.K. shook his head. “Okay. You’ve left me no choice.”

He pulled out his phone and drafted a text. “What are you doing?” Carlos asked warily.

“Texting your mom.”

“What?!” Carlos’ head snapped up and he reached for T.K.’s phone, but T.K. backed up out of his reach. “T.K.!”

“Carlos, you’re sick and you won’t let me help you. What else am I supposed to do?” He pulled back as Carlos tried to swipe his phone again and then pointed a finger at his ailing boyfriend. “This is for your own good.”

The menacing look Carlos shot his way would have been chilling if he didn’t look so incredibly pathetic. “You’re sleeping on the couch tonight.”

“Yeah, by choice to stay away from your germs,” T.K. shot back, but he didn’t put any heat in his tone.

His phone chimed with a text message back from Andrea. “Your mom’s coming over. She’s bringing soup.”

Carlos turned away and shuffled over to the couch, yogurt in hand. “I hate you.”

“That’s fine, as long as you live long enough to hate me tomorrow too,” T.K. called after him.

T.K. figured since he’d already pressed his luck he might as well push it a little further, so he scheduled Carlos a tele-health visit with his doctor, while his boyfrriend huddled on the couch in a blanket, sniffling and coughing and wheezing, the absolute picture of misery.

Andrea arrived within the hour, a tureen of soup in her hand. T.K. wondered if she’d somehow managed to whip it up before she drove over or if she just had that sort of thing on standby. Moms were magic like that.

“Hey Andrea,” T.K. said when he opened the door.

“Hola T.K.,” she greeted. “Thank you for texting me.” Her eyes found Carlos’ huddled form on the couch and she immediately frowned. “Ay, my poor Carlitos.”

“Mama I’m fine,” he all but moaned as she handed the soup to T.K. and moved toward him.

She pressed a hand to his forehead. “You are not fine mi amor, you’re all clammy.” She looked up at T.K. “He gets very cranky when he’s sick. Just like his father.”

“So I’ve noticed,” T.K. said, suppressing a smile as he walked the soup to the kitchen.

“I get cranky because everyone treats me like an invalid,” Carlos growled.

“Yes, we all know you are a big, strong police officer who doesn’t need any help,” Andrea said, fussing with his blanket. “I will just take my soup and go home then.”

Carlos mumbled something. “What was that mi corazón?” she asked.

“Don’t take the soup,” he said a little louder.

“I’ll heat it up right now,” T.K. said, reaching for a pot.

Carlos grudgingly attended his doctor’s appointment half an hour later, mostly because Carlos seemed to be unable to even get off the couch so T.K. just plunked the laptop down in front of him with the call already progress. With some added assistance from T.K., who listened to Carlos’ lungs and took his pulse and BP, the doctor determined it was indeed bronchitis and prescribed some extra strength cough medicine and an inhaler. Carlos was even polite to the doctor, although he went back to his cranky self immediately after they rang off the call.

Between Andrea and T.K. they managed to get a decent amount of soup and some tea into him along with some Mucinex before T.K. went out to pick up his prescriptions. By the time he got home Andrea had managed to use her special mom powers to get Carlos upstairs and into bed.

“Thank you for coming by,” T.K. said as she prepared to leave.

“Of course mi amor,” she said, giving him a kiss on the cheek. “You can call me anytime my son is being a nuisance. Or any of his sisters if I’m out of town.” She thought for a second. “Maybe not Francesca,” she said, referring to Carlos’ youngest sister, who was something of a wild child. “You have Elena’s number?”

“Yes, I do,” T.K. said with a smile.

She patted his shoulder. “You take good care of my boy,” she said. “And be careful, we don’t need you getting sick too.”

“I will.”

T.K. saw her out the door and then grabbed the bag of medications and headed upstairs. At the last second he spotted Carlos’ book lying on the arm of the sofa and grabbed that too. 

Carlos was bundled into bed looking slightly less miserable than before now that he’d been fed and hydrated. “Hey,” T.K. said. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay,” Carlos said, sniffing and wiping his nose with a tissue. It was red and irritated from constant nose blowing, only adding to the pathetic-ness of the situation.

“I got your medicine. You should use the inhaler now and take the cough medicine when you’re ready to go to bed.” T.K. set them on the nightstand. “I brought your book up. Do you want anything else?”

Carlos shook his head. 

“All right, I’ll just be downstairs then. Holler if you need anything.”

He turned to go but Carlos’ hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, eyes downcast.

T.K. bit the inside of his cheek to suppress his smile. “It’s okay.”

“I’m bad at being sick,” Carlos said, looking extremely contrite. 

T.K. wondered if Andrea had scolded him and told him to apologize. “Yes, I know.”

“And I don’t really hate you.”

“I know that too.”

“Do you still love me?” He flicked his eyes up nervously.

T.K. laughed and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Of course. I just want to take care of you.” He brushed the curls back from Carlos’ forehead. “Even if you don’t want me to.”

Carlos fiddled with the sheets for a moment. “Are you going to sleep on the couch?”

T.K. raised his eyebrows. “Do you want me to?”

Carlos shook his head.

T.K. leaned over and kissed his forehead. “Then I’ll stay.”

Carlos mumbled something. “Come again?” T.K. asked.

“Could you hold me?” Carlos said grouchily.

T.K. shook his head and bit his lip. “You’re really adorable, you know that?”

“Are you going to do it or not?” Carlos huffed.

T.K. put an arm around his waist and they both shifted until Carlos was cuddled against T.K.’s chest. “Better?” T.K. asked.

Carlos sighed a raspy, sick sounding sigh, and snuggled closer. “Yeah.”

[beauty-grace-outer-space]

I have absolutely no motivation to write (even though I open my WIP docs every single day and stare at them for like an hour) so here, have this beginning of a draft that was supposed to be my NANOWRIMO 2018 project. 

“Inside every black hole that collapses may lie the seeds of a new expanding universe.” 

― Sir Martin Rees

Jim never truly got used to the feeling of still warm blood, clotting and drying against his skin as the vessel grew cold beneath his hands, their chest sunken and still and their eyes open and unseeing. He hoped he never did. 

With a swift tug, he pulled the knife from the flesh, the serrated edge catching on muscle and bone until it finally slid free with a wet, dull sound. The hilt was slick against his palm. The wound gushed fresh blood, dark and acrid, as the cork stoppering it was removed. 

With a tilt of his head, he extended a stained hand and lowered the eyelids of the deceased, closing them to the world forever. He turned his own gaze to the stars above, incanting a silent prayer for the dead as he knelt. 

Rising slowly from his crouch over the corpse, he wiped the blade clean on his trousers before resheathing it against his calf. He would tend to it properly later. 

The blood gathered, dark beneath his fingernails. 

What, will these hands ne'er be clean?

A contemptuous smile crept across his face as he stared at the stains on his skin. At times, he felt they seeped to his very soul.

He seized his communicator, flipping it open and pressing the call button. 

“Kirk to Enterprise.” 

“Captain. Am I to assume that this communication means you were successful?” 

With a glance at the body, he replied, “Affirmative, Mr. Spock.” 

“Locking on to your signal now, sir.” 

Energize.

_______________________________________________________________

Spock stood at attention behind the panel of controls in the transporter room, half-interestedly watching Mr. Scott at his task of attempting to beam the captain back aboard following his negotiations with the Berilian council. They had agreed readily to join the Federation, and Jim’s final task has been a simple one: obtain their signatures on a treaty avowing their claim that they would never again wage war against a nearby Federation settlement. Having not been at war in several earth years, they were entirely willing. The meeting had been brief and the captain had requested beam up a mere hour after descending to the planet’s surface, assuring them of his success in their last transmission. 

“Bloody electrical storm--” Mr. Scott muttered angrily as he adjusted the controls yet again. 

Spock turned to him, critically eyeing the computations on screen and the curiously empty transporter pad. “Difficulties, Mr. Scott?” 

The engineer looked up from his duties, a sheepish expression crossing his face as he realized he had been overheard. “Apologies, Mr. Spock… this storm-- the electrical currents are interfering with the dematerialization. If I cannae lock onto his signal more firmly--” 

“Do you require assistance?” 

Mr. Scott shook his head, “No, I dinnae think so-- I just need to-- there!” With a victorious crow he slammed his hand against the button to energize. The transporter pad whirred to life, particles swirling through the air before reforming to reveal their captain. 

Their captain with blood staining his shirt. 

“Jim!” Scott cried in alarm, as Spock simultaneously moved forward to assist and ascertain any injury. 

“Captain--” he began, already reaching for his communicator to summon the doctor if necessary. 

He was not anticipating for the captain to step swiftly out of his reach and to command, voice steely and eyes hard, “As you were, Commander.” 

Spock was not often taken by surprise, but he found that he had no response to the unexpected words and unusually cold tone with which they were spoken. After several moments of silence, he found his voice and began again, “Captain, I merely wished to establish the source of your injury. Given the blood on your sleeve, I assumed-- perhaps wrongfully-- that--” 

“Exactly, Mr. Spock,” Jim replied, stepping forward dangerously, his forehead nearly touching Spock’s, his eyes narrowed. Then, gritting out each word, he repeated: “As you were, Commander.” 

Mr. Scott, hovering uncomfortably at the control panel as he watched the abnormally hostile interaction between the two, cleared his throat. 

“Em-- ‘scuse me for butting in,” he said, “but Captain, you’re wanted on the bridge.”

The captain’s gaze shifted to the Scotsman, his posture relaxing slightly as he removed himself from Spock’s personal space. “Thank you, Mr. Scott,” he replied flatly before returning his gaze to Spock expectantly. 

Spock stepped aside. 

Jim squared his shoulders and made his way from the room, the doors closing behind him and leaving the remaining officers in stunned silence. 

“I thought you said things went alright down there,” Mr. Scott said incredulously. 

Spock met his eye with concern. “It would appear I was mistaken.” 

________________________________________________________________

When Uhura summoned him to the bridge, quietly and with the distinct tone of someone hoping not to be overheard, Len knew that there were only two options awaiting him when he arrived. 

The fact that she hadn’t come straight out and told him who it was narrowed his options down. So either: 

1. Spock had gone and done something stupid and gotten himself sick or injured somehow, but was being a stubborn ass about it, thus leaving Nyota-- sometimes the only one among them with any sense-- to bring it to his attention at Jim’s request, because she was much better at the batting of eyelashes and feigning of innocence than their captain was on his best day and there was less chance of Spock holding a grudge. 

or

2. Jim had gone and done something stupid and gotten himself sick or injured somehow, but was being a stubborn ass about it, and Spock and Uhura had exchanged enough worried glances across their stations that the communications officer had taken matters into her own hands, because batting of eyelashes aside she could knock Kirk sideways into next week and they all knew it. 

She hadn’t sounded particularly urgent, just concerned, which both sparked his curiosity and set him at ease. Had anyone been in any true danger, he would have been informed. Just the same, he quickly gathered up his medkit and made his way to the turbolift and up the levels to the bridge. 

Stepping out of the lift he scanned the bridge, gaze sweeping across each station. Nothing seemed out of the norm, aside from the fact that Spock wasn’t at his post. Feeling eyes on him, he met Nyota’s concerned stare, tilting his chin towards the science station questioningly. She shook her head minutely in reply, her own chin jutting swiftly toward the captain’s chair to their left. 

Damnit, what had the kid gone and done now? 

Jim’s familiar dirty blond hair and gold adorned collar were visible over the straight edged back of the chair. He didn’t appear to be in any visible distress; the lines of his shoulders were sharp but not rigid-- alert, but not tense. Of course he couldn’t be sure without doing a full examination, but so far nothing was ringing any alarm bells for Len. 

Which of course raised a red flag all on its own. 

He raised a questioning eyebrow back at Uhura, silently asking her to clue him in on why she had secretly called him up here if everything was fine, when Jim spoke. 

“Doctor McCoy,” he called without turning around or in any other way acknowledging Len’s presence, sending Chekov and Sulu turning in their own chairs, startled. “What brings you to the bridge?”

Doctor McCoy? Sure, Jim called him that occasionally-- when professionalism called for them to stumble through introductions without having to awkwardly explain the moniker the kid had adopted for him immediately after meeting in all their booze soaked and blood stained glory-- but rarely; and nothing indicated that the situation called for it. So either Jim was aware of something he wasn’t, or the kid was royally pissed off. 

Neither boded well for them. 

“Thought I’d come make sure you were still in one peace after the negotiations,” he replied with just enough snark to provoke Jim’s usual easy banter with him. 

Jim, however, didn’t rise to the bait. Without any further preamble, he asked, “Who called you up here?” 

Len blinked uneasily. Jim had never been one for placing blame, and that wasn’t a question he had ever asked of Len before, at least not in that tone. Running his tongue over his lower lip he rocked back on his heels and replied, sure to keep his tone neutral, “Can’t see how that’s any of your business.” 

Jim was out of his seat in an instant. Anger plain in his expression, he turned to face Len for the first time since he had arrived, giving Len a clear view of the rusty patches of drying blood on his command tunic-- the obvious reason that Uhura had summoned him, the captain’s odd behavior notwithstanding. 

“Jim,” he began, shocked, “there’s--”

“It seems--” Jim cut him off, “that my crew is determined to undermine me today.” 

Len frowned in confusion. Something was wrong here. Jim was acting strangely, and Len wanted to get to the bottom of it as soon as possible. The sooner he could nip a patented Jim Kirk temper tantrum in the bud the better. With a scoff he replied, “Determined to-- Jim, what the hell are you--” 

“Captain,” Jim interrupted icily. “You will address me properly on the bridge, Lieutenant Commander.” After a pause, he relaxed minutely. “Return to your post, Doctor McCoy. We’ll discuss it later.” 

Len’s mind raced; countless explanations for Jim’s odd behavior flew through his mind at breakneck speeds: alien viruses, blood infections, fever, chemical influence… 

“Sir,” Uhura cut in, “incoming transmission from Starfleet Admiralty. They’d like to get your mission report.”  

Jim tore his gaze from Len’s, waving a hand in her direction as he reseated himself in his chair, effectively putting an end to their conversation. “On screen, Lieutenant.” 

The view of the stars ahead flickered and gave way to a projection of Admiral Pike, a broad smile on his face as he greeted the captain. 

“Jim! Good to see you, son… I hear things went well down there?” 

The resulting silence stretched just a bit too long to be natural, and Len found his gaze drawn back to Jim. He had gone perfectly still where he sat, his eyes wide and focused on the screen with a frightening intensity. 

After far too long, he replied. “Yes, sir… all went according to plan.” 

_______________________________________________________________

Pike’s eyes flew to McCoy’s, a troubled expression crossing his face as he looked to the doctor for reassurance. Jim bit back a harsh laugh; did the two honestly think he didn’t know what they were doing? They were clearly concerned about him, which was wildly amusing considering he and the doctor had discussed specifics that morning and Pike-- well… 

“Would you like specifics on the mission, Admiral Pike?” Jim asked, folding his arms across his chest, watching the older man’s eyes widen at the sight of the staining on his sleeves; he’d taken care to wash his hands before making his way to the bridge, but hadn’t dared change his clothes. Something was off with his crew. They were acting suspiciously, and he had no intention of wasting any time with petty tasks that could allow him to be caught off guard. 

Pike blinked back to attention, stammering a bit as he answered, “Of course, my apologies, Kirk. I got distracted for a moment there--”

“Understandable, Admiral, given the circumstances,” he replied easily, shifting in his chair to lace his fingers together, resting an elbow against the arm while taking care not to activate any of the controls there. 

"Jim," Pike's expression was wary, concerned. Weak. "You’re acting a bit… you feeling alright, son?"

"Well," Jim replied, picking at a nail and smirking. "I suppose that depends on your definition of alright. You see,” his eyes snapped up to meet Pike’s gaze through the screen. “I could have sworn up and down I left you drowning in your own blood, old man."

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Witness State & Coup de Grâce | Feeding Habits Update #3

Hey People of Earth!

Before we get into this update, TRIGGER WARNING that this chapter discusses attempted suicide, mental health issues, animal cruelty, toxic relationships, and some nods to starvation, so if these are topics you’re sensitive about, I would skip out on this update!

This chapter was a slight nightmare to draft as it went through many, many iterations due to a real struggle to attain the desired emotional arc, and also because of a few logistical problems. In total, it’s about two and a half months of work as it combines some scenes from the old chapter two while also patching areas I cut with new content. Despite the difficulties, I am so happy I pushed through because the final product is quite strong. Here’s a scene breakdown:

Scene A:

We start at the “beautiful place” AKA the cove Lonan and Eliza frequently visit. The last time we’ve seen Lonan was at the end of chapter two, when he had his mild “public freakout moment” on the steps of a cathedral. 

On the beach, he rests on the shoreline while reflecting on all the things he’s been tormented by since chapter two (wicked children, fathers, parenthood etc).

He sees an illusion of his father who is obviously not there (he’s very dead!) which propels him to converse about him with Eliza (remembering that Eliza and Lonan’s father were once romantically involved).

This conversation goes south as Lonan is able to unpiece some of Eliza’s mistruths until Lonan finally admits he wants to see his father again, insisting he’s still “alive” through the darkroom abandoned in Oregon him and Harrison failed to destroy in ch. 1 of Moth Work.

Scene B:

Lonan watches a moth through the window (that moth motif tho). Here he recounts what occurred at the hospital in ch. 2--the mother and her three kids taking him there, and then eventually being whisked away by Eliza.

Lonan heads to the kitchen to drink an acetaminophen but quickly realizes he’s not alone in the main apartment. His father sits on the couch looking over photo albums, each leaf holding the same photo: the postcard of Eliza that Harrison initially finds in chapter one of Moth Work. This vision obviously does not exist and is prompted by sleep deprivation but he doesn't know that lol.

Seeing this photo and his father prompt him to believe that he can only get away from this feeling of being haunted without Eliza in his life and further bad decisions ensue which I won’t get into!

I explained the meaning of the title HERE.

Excerpts:

Here’s the opening bit which is the most recent addition to the chapter:

The water is never murky, but today it doesn’t sparkle. Like it’s taken a low dose of cyan, it foams pale against the shore, an offering that wets the tips of Lonan’s shoes. He sits under the cove with one hand pressed into the current, each singular wave like a finger tottering over his veins. Today, their beautiful place is only an arched wall of stones and roily ocean.

Eliza is sunbathing. She lies on her back in the centre of the cove, where its mouth opens to a ceiling of sun. On the drive from the hospital, they both remained silent, Eliza’s hands taut like leather around the steering wheel, and Lonan’s head soldered to the cool window. Even when she pulled into the lot of a diner, named after a vague Canadian city or perennial flower, she said nothing, exiting the car to return to it with two crayon-coloured slushies, his red, hers orange. By the time she pulled up to the beach, her drink was half empty, his fully melted, urging against the brim of the cup. He followed her when she exited the car, parked against a row of pebbles, and placed his hand palm-first against the water the moment she lay against the sand and closed her eyes. Now, water puckers over the shoreline and between each of his fingers, a sort of absent massage. The water is a dull, vitamin-like blue. Warmer than he’s expected for the middle of February, pleasantly pruning his fingertips.

This is a direct continuation of that:

The sun has started to set. It flares against the horizon, its orange singeing the water’s blue. Like in front of the church, it fills him, its heat a comfortable grip around his throat. Though it should remind him to keep awake, its warmth lulls him closer to the sand until he rests his head just where the water laps. He knows it says nothing. He knows he has not slept in days. But to him, its rays nurse his skin like the loop of a nursery rhyme, and when he is parallel to the sky, he closes his eyes and welcomes the sun like it’s an infection. As colours pulse underneath his eyelids, water soaks the crown of his head, and it truly is like being buried at sea, just him, the sun, and the water at his perimeter.

The next chapter in this update is chapter four, aka Coup de Grace. This chapter was an absolute joy to write after struggling to get a handle on chapters two and three, and I’d consider writing this chapter to be, by far, the best writing sessions of my life. In this chapter I feel I really figured out the “crux” of Lonan’s character/his darkest secret, and that’s essentially that he believes all children are the wicked stems of adults, a belief he actually doesn't want to have, and actively combats until he sort of becomes absorbed by it. I learned a lot about my boy in this chapter and learning such important details about a character I’ve been writing for five years feels like a gift!

This chapter plays with form/the timeline a bit because we jump around on the timeline, almost like a movie that begins at the end. This was difficult to do in fiction, but I think I pulled it off, and am really happy with the chapter. Bear with me tho as this breakdown may be confusing:

Scene A:

We start with Lonan rapidly making his way to his father’s darkroom which sits in the middle of a forest. He’s brought supplies with him to destroy it.

The first line of this chapter mimics the first line of Moth Work, which you’ll see below.

Scene B:

We jump back in the fictive past to the morning that would’ve occurred right after the end of chapter three. Lonan goes about his morning routine but is disrupted by a loud thud from outside. Anya, the woman he’s befriended from chapter two, has jumped from the roof of the apartment complex. This attempt is unsuccessful.

His first reaction is to run to Anya’s apartment to see if her son, Joey, is okay. 

Scene C:

Less of a scene and more of an internal monologue of Lonan reflecting on Anya’s attempted suicide, and that he feels in some ways, she’s administered her own “death blow”.

Scene D:

Eliza takes Lonan to his father’s cabin to “get him away” from what’s happening at the apartment since he’s really taking the news badly.

Eliza tries to get Lonan to eat something because he hasn’t eaten much since Anya’s news, and they have a conversation about Eliza’s motives in volunteering Lonan to help Anya in the first place.

Scene E:

A flashback where 14-year-old Lonan and his father are at the cabin, about to kill a fish using the ikejime method. His father has informed him the fish is dead, but Lonan knows this is very much a lie.

Scene F:

The fictive present, where Lonan lies on a couch inside the cabin, Eliza tending to a fire. He has a bad feeling (he’s right about that lol)

Scene A2:

We continue the events from scene A as Lonan enters the darkroom, only to find out it’s been cleared out save for three pictures hanging that tell a story and reveals a lot of Eliza’s secrets.

All you need to know about these photos is that it makes their romance feel somewhat like a lie lol.

Eliza finds him at the darkroom despite telling him not to go alone, and Lonan tries to process the new info/secrets revealed.

Scene G:

In the fictive present, Eliza cuts off Lonan’s hair and together they burn each weft. They discuss a few things (his father, the women he’s befriended, future children, mating habits of the praying mantis)

Scene E2:

Back to the flashback where Lonan and his father have killed, cleaned, and eaten the fish. They rinse their hands off in the lake before his father knocks them both into the water.

Excerpts:

This is the opening, ft. the mirroring first line which makes me a lil too giddy:

The darkroom isn’t haunted, but a dead man owns it—and he knows exactly where to find him. Through the woods, Lonan brushes past bushes of gooseberries and wild rhubarb, a gas can sloshing rhythmically in his hands. In his teeth, he holds his flashlight so its beam brightens the pathway. It is not yet dawn.

This is a description of the darkroom that leads to the end of the scene:

He shouldn’t know where he’s going. The forest is so dense and unanimous, a duplication of itself, nothing more than repetitions of the same tree, same flower, same stream. But he doesn’t need to see to know where his feet take him—he doesn’t even need the flashlight. He’s memorized the direction to the darkroom like the pattern of veins on his own arm.

He is not surprised to see it still stands. As if protected from rain, thunderstorms, the fallen trees that crisscross at the walkway; it’s always been a divine place. The air is damp, and particles of mist cling to his throat.

He sets the gas can in front of the steel panelling that makes the door with urgency. He does not need to rush but cannot take his time.

Wildflowers burst from in between the cracks of concrete the shed sits on and he knows each species like they’ve been bred in his blood. Wax flowers, thistles, clusters of asters he’d sometimes gather as a boy and leave as offerings in the heart of the forest’s most prominent clearings, like an offering, or a ransom.

Lonan kneels once the first thread of sunlight leaks between the whisper of trees. He is familiar with this forest, the cabin not too far away, the messages the water speaks to him when he sits at its edge most nights, why the darkroom was his father’s favourite place and why it always will be. So when sunlight hits his eyes, he presses his fingertips against his lips, and looks to the sky for mercy.

Lonan watching his fave TV show that leads into Anya’s jump:

He turned the television onto its usual program while on his last three mandarin segments and looked on as a herd of caribou dotted a waterway. They moved like the current, pattering along the prairie, worriless. He should have heard the part where a wolf caught up to the herd, the same wolf that would later go on to single out a young fawn and silence it with two teeth in its throat like bullet wounds. He should have seen the part where the prey was consumed, its flesh a desperate shade of red. But the thud distracted him. Maybe not even a thud, more like a crash. A sound he felt in his temples, a ringing in his ear, like a chickadee. Lonan set the skin of the mandarin onto the coffee table and stood slowly. It’s his body that moved him, no force of the mind, toward the balcony. In one movement, he unlocked and shoved open the glass sliding door, rucking it forward with his body weight when it stuck. On his lip, he tasted citrus and salt, a mixture of fruit and sweat.

He heard death before he saw it. The way each identical sliding door of the apartment units around him shook open, just like his. What a woman on the sidewalk declared, her tone so shrill, he couldn’t tell if she was delighted or horrified, something like, “I thought she was a bird—I thought she was a gift from heaven.” The garbled sound of an infant, confused by the sound concrete makes when a human batters it.

We get Lonan’s first response and some Joey and *that stunning motif tho*:

Lonan did not deescalate the stairs to the ground floor to join the growing crowd. He did not call an ambulance or rush to perform CPR. He ran upward, scaling flights of stairs as if airborne, with little effort. Once he reached her unit, it was the tin of madeleines he noticed first, sitting unopened, untouched, dare he thought, neglected on her welcome mat. It’s this that lulled him, freezing him in place for a moment. He recollected nothing of bringing the madeleines to her the evening previous, of leaving them neatly tucked against her straw welcome mat. Innocently idle there, his gift unrecognized.

Joey sat on the couch. The television was on, projecting technicolor polygons onto the boy’s face. Lonan did not register what it was he watched, which animated shapes pounced and danced on screen. Joey did not cry at first. He sat, staring wondrously at the screen like it was a trap door to a different dimension. The socks secured around his miniature feet looked freshly ironed, and his hair smelled like his mother did when Lonan first met her—like coconuts.

The buzzing of onlookers and neighbours sounded like the caribou running. A constant drumming of a snare, a guttural kind of ambience. He thought of Anya the day previous, her desperate excitement to paint over the wall, the way she mixed that orange juice drink, incredulous, experienced. He thought of the sourdough he never picked up, and there on the counter they sat, one torn down the middle like it was ripped bare-handed, the other skewered with a chef’s knife. He thought of Anya’s hospitality, her coy excuses to help them both avoid embarrassment, the way each part of her apartment transformed into gold. He thought of their conversation, Anya’s initial instruction when she left him alone with her son. So when Joey cried, Lonan knew exactly to reach for the remote and tick the volume up until his sobbing quieted, like the last few minutes of a rainstorm, passionately loud, then stunningly silent.

Here we briefly reference 2 Kings 21:6: “And he burned his son as an offering and used fortune-telling and omens and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger.”

Anya will never be the mother she once was, in the capacity she longed to be. Joey will grow up without a father and with a mother who cannot mother him in the ways she’d always hoped; he’ll have no one to recreate. That is the real loss—what could have been. Anya burned herself into an offering, administered her own kill shot, provoked her own fate; either life or death, and her fate chose neither.

The following mirrors something Lonan’s sister, Reeve, says in Houses With Teeth about hunger:

The day Anya jumped from her balcony onto the sidewalk below, Eliza took Lonan to his father’s cabin. In a daze, he watched her pack a bag with enough things to tide them over for a month, and in that same daze, they reached the cabin before sunset. That night, Eliza rifled through the cabinets to put together a meal, and her findings assembled as a can of tuna topped with crumbles of saltines—cheap take on a deconstructed pâté.

She served him his dinner on a set of plates he vaguely recognized—terrazzo with a scalloped edge, maybe held a scrambled egg or halved tomato when he was a child. He stared through the French doors, down to the water that padded below. Even when she tried some for herself, putting on her enjoyment in exclamations like “It’s a culinary masterpiece. Refined. Daring. A little spectacular,” she couldn’t convince him to eat. His appetite disappeared when Anya fell from the sky; there would be no hunger as penance.

This is the fish flashback:

Lonan knows the fish is not dead. He is fourteen but not naïve. Sun warms the back of his neck; maggots shimmer over the gummy slick of the water’s surface. Today is what someone would describe as the perfect day. Trees whisper secrets amongst the spines of their leaves. Birds teeter on the neck of birch trees. A butterfly dusts its wings of the shore’s sand and nips at his childish knuckles.

The fish is not dead. This is fact. In his palm, it expands, its gills like the crescent cut of the moon. The fish is not dead. Its mouth kisses the air like it’s a divine thing, each blip of its lips greedy, like the air tastes of gold. The fish is not dead. Its scales grate against Lonan’s palms, shimmering, its prettiness its last defense mechanism. The fish is not dead.

More with this fish memory:

“It’s dead. It does not even know the taste of life. Why save it?”

“I don’t want to save it,” Lonan says. His father’s wedding band digs into his forehead. To an onlooker, it may look like he’s about to dip him forward into the water, not a drowning, but a baptism.

“What do you want to do with it?”

Mourn it, he wants to say. Pity it. Sacrifice it.

The water whistles ahead of them, all the uncaught sunfish gloriously slashing naively in the water. They are unaware of their future demise, and the current demise of their loved ones, bodies all piled into the net as if on display. Lonan’s eyes sting with lake water, a streak of it dripping onto his lip so when his father reaches over him and secures his hand like a marionette around the screwdriver, he tastes salt and doesn’t stop tasting it.

And the end of part A of the fish memory that gets a little gory:

“It dies for us,” his father says, his voice dampened, like the distant blip of the lake. “So we give it mercy in return.”

As the screwdriver’s tip lowers closer to the fish, Lonan licks his top lip and asks, “Why do we need to show it mercy if it’s already dead?”

“Le coup de grâce. A death blow. To end the suffering of the wounded.”

“But it’s already dead.”

“Even the dead still suffer.”

Lonan does not register when the screwdriver impales the fish’s brain. He does not register when his father uses both their hands to slit the fish’s gills with a hunting knife or register the warm spurting of its blood up their knuckles. He stares at the fish’s glasslike eye, and as he and his father gut and scale the fish, puppet and puppeteer, he imagines the way he’ll feel with its head in his mouth.

Here’s a section from the fictive present:

Seven days after Anya jumps off her apartment’s balcony, Lonan lies on a pig’s leather couch his father once towed in from the city, a damp washcloth doused in eucalyptus essential oil pressed to his forehead.

At first, he fears the blinking comes from stars and that the cabin’s roof has been removed. But as he comes to, he smells it, the earthy crack of wood, the wisp of smoke, and he knows the light that pulses is a fire.

Lonan opens his eyes. As he’s thought, he lies on his father’s couch, essenced water dribbling down his temples from the washcloth. Eliza sits hunched on the stone of the fireplace’s ledge, her shoulders ripening under the orange heat. She’s burning something. The scent of scorched film is not unfamiliar to him. Like his mouth, it is dry and acrid, like the lick of a battery.

“You promised,” she says, as if sensing he’s awoken. Lonan does not move, even as the eucalyptus soak drizzles into his eyes.

Eliza no longer wears the parka. She’s stripped to a pearl-coloured camisole, her feet bare and propped flush against the brick. Glossy red lacquer colours her toenails, reflects the light in ovular patterns along its surface.

“A false witness shall be punished, and a liar shall be caught,” she says. “Proverbs.”

Going to leave this tea here casually:

The darkroom was misplaced. This was Lonan’s first thought when he yanked open its steel panel door and entered to reveal its contents. He did not need the glimmer of a flashlight to confirm his instinct. This was not the same darkroom he’d known as a child, or the darkroom he found his sister in, or the darkroom him and Harrison tried to destroy. Everything was slotted away, puzzled back into a configuration so unknown to him, so wrong to him, that the organization felt more like war.

Unlike when he and Harrison had last stepped foot inside of the darkroom, lugging the gas can along with them, not unlike what he did then, the photos that used to string clothespinned in no justifiable order were now taken down. The bricks of photo paper forming a maze around the developing tables, the amber bottles of chemicals—all of it, meticulously put back in places Lonan knew they never had. Under his boots, he did not feel the crunch of glass or slip of forgotten negatives. The darkroom had been swept clean.

Lonan dropped the gas can at the darkroom’s entrance, and removed the flashlight from between his teeth, thumbing it off. He worked his way around the shed like he’d been wounded, staggering, stopping to hold himself upright. Nothing was in its rightful chaos. Expired film lay stacked in a waste bin he’d never seen before. Bad paper cuts had been shredded. The photos he’d been so accustomed to not looking at, all gone, except for three, evenly clipped on the last three lines.

In the distance, an eagle cawed. The stream trilled. Tadpoles cricketed along the embankment.

Lonan approached the remaining photographs like they’d electrocute him. They were displayed one after the other, each on its own line. The first, a picture not unfamiliar to him. Eliza standing in front of a colourful street of vendors. Her loopy signature on the back a jagged indication of where she signed it, most likely wobbling on a train, or in the back of a taxi. He picked it off its clothespin and held it up to a hole in the roof where sun bled through. Nothing had changed from the photo since he’d taken it last year, and he was almost grateful she’d left it fossilized when she took it from his pocket. His gratitude did not last by the time he saw the second photo, so unexpected, he had to glance twice.

His father stood arced slightly behind him, his hands not visible. Lonan knew where they were—one secured around his forehead, the next urging a screwdriver up a stone. Sun scalded the water’s surface, wrinkled it with light. He remembered the song his father whistled as he fried the sunfish on a birch branch, truly less of a song and more of a reminder as he hummed up and down each minor scale, not once stopping to check his work, like he knew better than any instrument.

Lonan plucked the photograph off the line and held it closer. Though he was shaded mostly by his father’s back, he knew they were both in it. He shouldn’t have been surprised when he turned it over to find that same looping signature inked onto the back, smudged, like she’d forgotten to let the ink dry before handling.

It would’ve been easier to think about the second photo’s implications had he not seen the third. He could’ve excused it—a shot taken by a neighbour, though the cabin was remote. A shot that fired itself, the camera discarded on the ground, though it was taken at eye level. A shot signed with familiar initials E.L.K, as if those letters could stand for anything but Eliza Louise Kiang. It would’ve been easier to excuse her presence. To excuse her knowledge of him, to forget she’d ever told him she didn’t know his father had children, that she swore she’d never have been with him had someone informed her. It would’ve been so much easier.

The last photo was not a photo at all, not in the same capacity at least. The ink had gone purplish from the elements but swirled, almost horror-like around the photo’s frame. He could have pretended the white swishes of colour were strands of lace, or the awkward scratch of photo blur. He could’ve pretended to not understand. But there it was. The light funnelling down on the black and white shape so he understood it was not a photograph he looked at, but a child.

I have already shared this line a few times, but it’s my favourite thing I’ve ever written oops!:

When she looked at him, she grinned, and he turned his face to the ceiling where a hole in the roof caved around a branch. The sun’s eye disappeared behind the bullet of the wood, leaving only its outer edges to skirt the sky, a veiling that felt less like an eclipse, and more like evidence of an exit wound. 

Obligatory “I’m the grass” shoutout:

“All people are like grass, and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field,” he says without once reading what’s actually written on the page. “Isaiah.”

“Isaiah was onto something, don’t you think? Poor grass, poor flowers—they all die in the end, but they have their God. They have their saviour. Everything dying except for God and his word.”

Eliza cuts another clump of hair. The fire welcomes its feed with haste.

“What does this have to do with children?”

“Do you feel you’re the God of these women, Lonan? Are you their saviour?”

Lonan shakes his head. “I’m the grass.”

And to finish:

After they eat the fish, Lonan and his father rinse their hands in the lake. This is respect. This is self-ordinance. This is a holy act.

His father stoops farther into the stream than he does, water nipping his knees. The sun has disappeared beyond the horizon, the sky now coloured periwinkle, silvering his hair. The taste of sunfish coddles Lonan’s tongue, oiled and briny with saltwater. They share a bar of orange glycerin soap, its scent cloying, like a rotting fruit basket. His father peels the bar between his palms, scrubbing until his fingers disappear under suds.

That’s it for this update! Hope y’all enjoyed! :) I’ll be back soon to update on chapter 5!

--Rachel

[bountyofbeads]

‘Absolutely No Mercy’: Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html

“Freedom is only possible when this ‘virus’ in their thinking is eradicated and they are in good health."

THE XINJIANG PAPERS

‘Absolutely No Mercy’: Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims

More than 400 pages of internal Chinese documents provide an unprecedented inside look at the crackdown on ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region.

BY AUSTIN RAMZY AND CHRIS Buckley | Published November 16, 2019 | New York Times | Posted Nov. 16, 2019 |

*PART 1/2

HONG KONG — The students booked their tickets home at the end of the semester, hoping for a relaxing break after exams and a summer of happy reunions with family in China’s far west.

Instead, they would soon be told that their parents were gone, relatives had vanished and neighbors were missing — all of them locked up in an expanding network of detention camps built to hold Muslim ethnic minorities.

The authorities in the Xinjiang region worried the situation was a powder keg. And so they prepared.

The leadership distributed a classified directive advising local officials to corner returning students as soon as they arrived and keep them quiet. It included a chillingly bureaucratic guide for how to handle their anguished questions, beginning with the most obvious: Where is my family?

“They’re in a training school set up by the government,” the prescribed answer began. If pressed, officials were to tell students that their relatives were not criminals — yet could not leave these “schools.”

The question-and-answer script also included a barely concealed threat: Students were to be told that their behavior could either shorten or extend the detention of their relatives.

“I’m sure that you will support them, because this is for their own good,” officials were advised to say, “and also for your own good.”

The directive was among 403 pages of internal documents that have been shared with The New York Times in one of the most significant leaks of government papers from inside China’s ruling Communist Party in decades. They provide an unprecedented inside view of the continuing clampdown in Xinjiang, in which the authorities have corralled as many as a million ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs and others into internment camps and prisons over the past three years.

Read the Full Document: What Chinese Officials Told Children Whose Families Were Put in Camps

The party has rejected international criticism of the camps and described them as job-training centers that use mild methods to fight Islamic extremism. But the documents confirm the coercive nature of the crackdown in the words and orders of the very officials who conceived and orchestrated it.

Even as the government presented its efforts in Xinjiang to the public as benevolent and unexceptional, it discussed and organized a ruthless and extraordinary campaign in these internal communications. Senior party leaders are recorded ordering drastic and urgent action against extremist violence, including the mass detentions, and discussing the consequences with cool detachment.

Children saw their parents taken away, students wondered who would pay their tuition and crops could not be planted or harvested for lack of manpower, the reports noted. Yet officials were directed to tell people who complained to be grateful for the Communist Party’s help and stay quiet.

The leaked papers offer a striking picture of how the hidden machinery of the Chinese state carried out the country’s most far-reaching internment campaign since the Mao era. The key disclosures in the documents include:

• President Xi Jinping, the party chief, laid the groundwork for the crackdown in a series of speeches delivered in private to officials during and after a visit to Xinjiang in April 2014, just weeks after Uighur militants stabbed more than 150 people at a train station, killing 31. Mr. Xi called for an all-out “struggle against terrorism, infiltration and separatism” using the “organs of dictatorship,” and showing “absolutely no mercy.”

• Terrorist attacks abroad and the drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan heightened the leadership’s fears and helped shape the crackdown. Officials argued that attacks in Britain resulted from policies that put “human rights above security,” and Mr. Xi urged the party to emulate aspects of America’s “war on terror” after the Sept. 11 attacks.

• The internment camps in Xinjiang expanded rapidly after the appointment in August 2016 of Chen Quanguo, a zealous new party boss for the region. He distributed Mr. Xi’s speeches to justify the campaign and exhorted officials to “round up everyone who should be rounded up.”

• The crackdown encountered doubts and resistance from local officials who feared it would exacerbate ethnic tensions and stifle economic growth. Mr. Chen responded by purging officials suspected of standing in his way, including one county leader who was jailed after quietly releasing thousands of inmates from the camps.

The leaked papers consist of 24 documents, some of which contain duplicated material. They include nearly 200 pages of internal speeches by Mr. Xi and other leaders, and more than 150 pages of directives and reports on the surveillance and control of the Uighur population in Xinjiang. There are also references to plans to extend restrictions on Islam to other parts of China.

Though it is unclear how the documents were gathered and selected, the leak suggests greater discontent inside the party apparatus over the crackdown than previously known. The papers were brought to light by a member of the Chinese political establishment who requested anonymity and expressed hope that their disclosure would prevent party leaders, including Mr. Xi, from escaping culpability for the mass detentions.

The Chinese leadership wraps policymaking in secrecy, especially when it comes to Xinjiang, a resource-rich territory located on the sensitive frontier with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. Predominantly Muslim ethnic minority groups make up more than half the region’s population of 25 million. The largest of these groups are the Uighurs, who speak a Turkic language and have long faced discrimination and restrictions on cultural and religious activities.

Beijing has sought for decades to suppress Uighur resistance to Chinese rule in Xinjiang. The current crackdown began after a surge of antigovernment and anti-Chinese violence, including ethnic riots in 2009 in Urumqi, the regional capital, and a May 2014 attack on an outdoor market that killed 39 people just days before Mr. Xi convened a leadership conference in Beijing to set a new policy course for Xinjiang.

Since 2017, the authorities in Xinjiang have detained many hundreds of thousands of Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Muslims in internment camps. Inmates undergo months or years of indoctrination and interrogation aimed at transforming them into secular and loyal supporters of the party.

Of the 24 documents, the directive on how to handle minority students returning home to Xinjiang in the summer of 2017 offers the most detailed discussion of the indoctrination camps — and the clearest illustration of the regimented way the party told the public one story while mobilizing around a much harsher narrative internally.

Even as the document advises officials to inform students that their relatives are receiving “treatment” for exposure to radical Islam, its title refers to family members who are being “dealt with,” or chuzhi, a euphemism used in party documents to mean punishment.

Officials in Turpan, a city in eastern Xinjiang, drafted the question-and-answer script after the regional government warned local officials to prepare for the returning students. The agency coordinating efforts to “maintain stability” across Xinjiang then distributed the guide across the region and urged officials to use it as a model.

The government sends Xinjiang’s brightest young Uighurs to universities across China, with the goal of training a new generation of Uighur civil servants and teachers loyal to the party.

The crackdown has been so extensive that it affected even these elite students, the directive shows. And that made the authorities nervous.

“Returning students from other parts of China have widespread social ties across the entire country,” the directive noted. “The moment they issue incorrect opinions on WeChat, Weibo and other social media platforms, the impact is widespread and difficult to eradicate.”

The document warned that there was a “serious possibility” students might sink into “turmoil” after learning what had happened to their relatives. It recommended that police officers in plain clothes and experienced local officials meet them as soon as they returned “to show humane concern and stress the rules.”

The directive’s question-and-answer guide begins gently, with officials advised to tell the students that they have “absolutely no need to worry” about relatives who have disappeared.

“Tuition for their period of study is free and so are food and living costs, and the standards are quite high,” officials were told to say, before adding that the authorities were spending more than $3 per day on meals for each detainee, “even better than the living standards that some students have back home.”

“If you want to see them,” the answer concluded, “we can arrange for you to have a video meeting.”

The authorities anticipated, however, that this was unlikely to mollify students and provided replies to a series of other questions: When will my relatives be released? If this is for training, why can’t they come home? Can they request a leave? How will I afford school if my parents are studying and there is no one to work on the farm?

The guide recommended increasingly firm replies telling the students that their relatives had been “infected” by the “virus” of Islamic radicalism and must be quarantined and cured. Even grandparents and family members who seemed too old to carry out violence could not be spared, officials were directed to say.

“If they don’t undergo study and training, they’ll never thoroughly and fully understand the dangers of religious extremism,” one answer said, citing the civil war in Syria and the rise of the Islamic State. “No matter what age, anyone who has been infected by religious extremism must undergo study.”

Students should be grateful that the authorities had taken their relatives away, the document said.

“Treasure this chance for free education that the party and government has provided to thoroughly eradicate erroneous thinking, and also learn Chinese and job skills,” one answer said. “This offers a great foundation for a happy life for your family.”

The authorities appear to be using a scoring system to determine who can be released from the camps: The document instructed officials to tell the students that their behavior could hurt their relatives’ scores, and to assess the daily behavior of the students and record their attendance at training sessions, meetings and other activities.

“Family members, including you, must abide by the state’s laws and rules, and not believe or spread rumors,” officials were told to say. “Only then can you add points for your family member, and after a period of assessment they can leave the school if they meet course completion standards.”

If asked about the impact of the detentions on family finances, officials were advised to assure students that “the party and the government will do everything possible to ease your hardships.”

The line that stands out most in the script, however, may be the model answer for how to respond to students who ask of their detained relatives, “Did they commit a crime?”

The document instructed officials to acknowledge that they had not. “It is just that their thinking has been infected by unhealthy thoughts,” the script said.

“Freedom is only possible when this ‘virus’ in their thinking is eradicated and they are in good health.

SECRET SPEECHES

The ideas driving the mass detentions can be traced back to Xi Jinping’s first and only visit to Xinjiang as China’s leader, a tour shadowed by violence.

In 2014, little more than a year after becoming president, he spent four days in the region, and on the last day of the trip, two Uighur militants staged a suicide bombing outside a train station in Urumqi that injured nearly 80 people, one fatally.

Weeks earlier, militants with knives had gone on a rampage at another railway station, in southwest China, killing 31 people and injuring more than 140. And less than a month after Mr. Xi’s visit, assailants tossed explosives into a vegetable market in Urumqi, wounding 94 people and killing at least 39.

Against this backdrop of bloodshed, Mr. Xi delivered a series of secret speeches setting the hard-line course that culminated in the security offensive now underway in Xinjiang. While state media have alluded to these speeches, none were made public.

The text of four of them, though, were among the leaked documents — and they provide a rare, unfiltered look at the origins of the crackdown and the beliefs of the man who set it in motion.

“The methods that our comrades have at hand are too primitive,” Mr. Xi said in one talk, after inspecting a counterterrorism police squad in Urumqi. “None of these weapons is any answer for their big machete blades, ax heads and cold steel weapons.”

“We must be as harsh as them,” he added, “and show absolutely no mercy.”

In free-flowing monologues in Xinjiang and at a subsequent leadership conference on Xinjiang policy in Beijing, Mr. Xi is recorded thinking through what he called a crucial national security issue and laying out his ideas for a “people’s war” in the region.

Although he did not order mass detentions in these speeches, he called on the party to unleash the tools of “dictatorship” to eradicate radical Islam in Xinjiang.

Mr. Xi displayed a fixation with the issue that seemed to go well beyond his public remarks on the subject. He likened Islamic extremism alternately to a virus-like contagion and a dangerously addictive drug, and declared that addressing it would require “a period of painful, interventionary treatment.”

“The psychological impact of extremist religious thought on people must never be underestimated,” Mr. Xi told officials in Urumqi on April 30, 2014, the final day of his trip to Xinjiang. “People who are captured by religious extremism — male or female, old or young — have their consciences destroyed, lose their humanity and murder without blinking an eye.”

In another speech, at the leadership conclave in Beijing a month later, he warned of “the toxicity of religious extremism.”

“As soon as you believe in it,” he said, “it’s like taking a drug, and you lose your sense, go crazy and will do anything.”

In several surprising passages, given the crackdown that followed, Mr. Xi also told officials to not discriminate against Uighurs and to respect their right to worship. He warned against overreacting to natural friction between Uighurs and Han Chinese, the nation’s dominant ethnic group, and rejected proposals to try to eliminate Islam entirely in China.

“In light of separatist and terrorist forces under the banner of Islam, some people have argued that Islam should be restricted or even eradicated,” he said during the Beijing conference. He called that view “biased, even wrong.”

But Mr. Xi’s main point was unmistakable: He was leading the party in a sharp turn toward greater repression in Xinjiang.

Before Mr. Xi, the party had often described attacks in Xinjiang as the work of a few fanatics inspired and orchestrated by shadowy separatist groups abroad. But Mr. Xi argued that Islamic extremism had taken root across swaths of Uighur society.

In fact, the vast majority of Uighurs adhere to moderate traditions, though some began embracing more conservative and more public religious practices in the 1990s, despite state controls on Islam. Mr. Xi’s remarks suggest he was alarmed by the revival of public piety. He blamed lax controls on religion, suggesting that his predecessors had let down their guard.

While previous Chinese leaders emphasized economic development to stifle unrest in Xinjiang, Mr. Xi said that was not enough. He demanded an ideological cure, an effort to rewire the thinking of the region’s Muslim minorities.

“The weapons of the people’s democratic dictatorship must be wielded without any hesitation or wavering,” Mr. Xi told the leadership conference on Xinjiang policy, which convened six days after the deadly attack on the vegetable market.

THE SOVIET PRISM

Mr. Xi is the son of an early Communist Party leader who in the 1980s supported more relaxed policies toward ethnic minority groups, and some analysts had expected he might follow his father’s milder ways when he assumed leadership of the party in November 2012.

But the speeches underscore how Mr. Xi sees risks to China through the prism of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he blamed on ideological laxity and spineless leadership.

Across China, he set about eliminating challenges to party rule; dissidents and human rights lawyers disappeared in waves of arrests. In Xinjiang, he pointed to examples from the former Soviet bloc to argue that economic growth would not immunize a society against ethnic separatism.

The Baltic republics were among the most developed in the Soviet Union but also the first to leave when the country broke up, he told the leadership conference. Yugoslavia’s relative prosperity did not prevent its disintegration either, he added.

“We say that development is the top priority and the basis for achieving lasting security, and that’s right,” Mr. Xi said. “But it would be wrong to believe that with development every problem solves itself.”

In the speeches, Mr. Xi showed a deep familiarity with the history of Uighur resistance to Chinese rule, or at least Beijing’s official version of it, and discussed episodes rarely if ever mentioned by Chinese leaders in public, including brief periods of Uighur self-rule in the first half of the 20th century.

Violence by Uighur militants has never threatened Communist control of the region. Though attacks grew deadlier after 2009, when nearly 200 people died in ethnic riots in Urumqi, they remained relatively small, scattered and unsophisticated.

Even so, Mr. Xi warned that the violence was spilling from Xinjiang into other parts of China and could taint the party’s image of strength. Unless the threat was extinguished, Mr. Xi told the leadership conference, “social stability will suffer shocks, the general unity of people of every ethnicity will be damaged, and the broad outlook for reform, development and stability will be affected.”

Setting aside diplomatic niceties, he traced the origins of Islamic extremism in Xinjiang to the Middle East, and warned that turmoil in Syria and Afghanistan would magnify the risks for China. Uighurs had traveled to both countries, he said, and could return to China as seasoned fighters seeking an independent homeland, which they called East Turkestan.

“After the United States pulls troops out of Afghanistan, terrorist organizations positioned on the frontiers of Afghanistan and Pakistan may quickly infiltrate into Central Asia,” Mr. Xi said. “East Turkestan’s terrorists who have received real-war training in Syria and Afghanistan could at any time launch terrorist attacks in Xinjiang.”

Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, responded to the 2009 riots in Urumqi with a clampdown but he also stressed economic development as a cure for ethnic discontent — longstanding party policy. But Mr. Xi signaled a break with Mr. Hu’s approach in the speeches.

“In recent years, Xinjiang has grown very quickly and the standard of living has consistently risen, but even so ethnic separatism and terrorist violence have still been on the rise,” he said. “This goes to show that economic development does not automatically bring lasting order and security.”

Ensuring stability in Xinjiang would require a sweeping campaign of surveillance and intelligence gathering to root out resistance in Uighur society, Mr. Xi argued.

He said new technology must be part of the solution, foreshadowing the party’s deployment of facial recognition, genetic testing and big data in Xinjiang. But he also emphasized old-fashioned methods, such as neighborhood informants, and urged officials to study how Americans responded to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Like the United States, he said, China “must make the public an important resource in protecting national security.”

“We Communists should be naturals at fighting a people’s war,” he said. “We’re the best at organizing for a task.”

The only suggestion in these speeches that Mr. Xi envisioned the internment camps now at the heart of the crackdown was an endorsement of more intense indoctrination programs in Xinjiang’s prisons.

“There must be effective educational remolding and transformation of criminals,” he told officials in southern Xinjiang on the second day of his trip. “And even after these people are released, their education and transformation must continue.”

Within months, indoctrination sites began opening across Xinjiang — mostly small facilities at first, which held dozens or hundreds of Uighurs at a time for sessions intended to pressure them into disavowing devotion to Islam and professing gratitude for the party.

Then in August 2016, a hard-liner named Chen Quanguo was transferred from Tibet to govern Xinjiang. Within weeks, he called on local officials to “remobilize” around Mr. Xi’s goals and declared that Mr. Xi’s speeches “set the direction for making a success of Xinjiang.”

New security controls and a drastic expansion of the indoctrination camps followed.

“The struggle against terror and to safeguard stability is a protracted war, and also a war of offense,” Mr. Chen said in a speech to the regional leadership in October 2017 that was among the leaked papers.

In another document, a record of his remarks in a video conference in August 2017, he cited “vocational skills, education training and transformation centers” as an example of “good practices” for achieving Mr. Xi’s goals for Xinjiang.

The crackdown appears to have smothered violent unrest in Xinjiang, but many experts have warned that the extreme security measures and mass detentions are likely to breed resentment that could eventually inspire worse ethnic clashes.

The camps have been condemned in Washington and other foreign capitals. As early as the May 2014 leadership conference, though, Mr. Xi anticipated international criticism and urged officials behind closed doors to ignore it.

“Don’t be afraid if hostile forces whine, or if hostile forces malign the image of Xinjiang,” he said.

‘ROUND UP EVERYONE’

The documents show there was more resistance to the crackdown inside the party than previously known — and highlight the key role that the new party boss in Xinjiang played in overcoming it.

Mr. Chen led a campaign akin to one of Mao’s turbulent political crusades, in which top-down pressure on local officials encouraged overreach and any expression of doubt was treated as a crime.

In February 2017, he told thousands of police officers and troops standing at attention in a vast square in Urumqi to prepare for a “smashing, obliterating offensive.” In the following weeks, the documents indicate, the leadership settled on plans to detain Uighurs in large numbers.

Mr. Chen issued a sweeping order: “Round up everyone who should be rounded up.” The vague phrase appears repeatedly in internal documents from 2017.

The party had previously used the phrase — “ying shou jin shou” in Chinese — when demanding that officials be vigilant and comprehensive in collecting taxes or measuring harvests. Now it was being applied to humans in directives that ordered, with no mention of judicial procedures, the detention of anyone who displayed “symptoms” of religious radicalism or anti-government views.

The authorities laid out dozens of such signs, including common behavior among devout Uighurs such as wearing long beards, giving up smoking or drinking, studying Arabic and praying outside mosques.

Party leaders reinforced the orders with warnings about terrorism abroad and potential copycat attacks in China.

For example, a 10-page directive in June 2017 signed by Zhu Hailun, then Xinjiang’s top security official, called recent terrorist attacks in Britain “a warning and a lesson for us.” It blamed the British government’s “excessive emphasis on ‘human rights above security,’ and inadequate controls on the propagation of extremism on the internet and in society.”

It also complained of security lapses in Xinjiang, including sloppy investigations, malfunctions in surveillance equipment and the failure to hold people accused of suspicious behavior.

Keep up the detentions, it ordered. “Stick to rounding up everyone who should be rounded up,” it said. “If they’re there, round them up.”

The number of people swept into the camps remains a closely guarded secret. But one of the leaked documents offers a hint of the scale of the campaign: It instructed officials to prevent the spread of infectious diseases in crowded facilities.

‘I BROKE THE RULES’

The orders were especially urgent and contentious in Yarkand County, a collection of rural towns and villages in southern Xinjiang where nearly all of the 900,000 residents are Uighur.

In the 2014 speeches, Mr. Xi had singled out southern Xinjiang as the front line in his fight against religious extremism. Uighurs make up close to 90 percent of the population in the south, compared to just under half in Xinjiang over all, and Mr. Xi set a long-term goal of attracting more Han Chinese settlers.

He and other party leaders ordered a quasi-military organization, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, to accelerate efforts to settle the area with more Han Chinese, the documents show.

A few months later, more than 100 Uighur militants armed with axes and knives attacked a government office and police station in Yarkand, killing 37 people, according to government reports. In the battle, the security forces shot dead 59 assailants, the reports said.

An official named Wang Yongzhi was appointed to run Yarkand soon afterward. With his glasses and crew cut, he looked the picture of a party technocrat. He had grown up and spent his career in southern Xinjiang and was seen as a deft, seasoned official who could deliver on the party’s top priorities in the area: economic development and firm control of the Uighurs.

But among the most revealing documents in the leaked papers are two that describe Mr. Wang’s downfall — an 11-page report summarizing the party’s internal investigation into his actions, and the text of a 15-page confession that he may have given under duress. Both were distributed inside the party as a warning to officials to fall in line behind the crackdown.

Han officials like Mr. Wang serve as the party’s anchors in southern Xinjiang, watching over Uighur officials in more junior positions, and he seemed to enjoy the blessing of top leaders, including Yu Zhengsheng, then China’s most senior official for ethnic issues, who visited the county in 2015.

Mr. Wang set about beefing up security in Yarkand but he also pushed economic development to address ethnic discontent. And he sought to soften the party’s religious policies, declaring that there was nothing wrong with having a Quran at home and encouraging party officials to read it to better understand Uighur traditions.

When the mass detentions began, Mr. Wang did as he was told at first and appeared to embrace the task with zeal.

He built two sprawling new detention facilities, including one as big as 50 basketball courts, and herded 20,000 people into them.

He sharply increased funding for the security forces in 2017, more than doubling spending on outlays such as checkpoints and surveillance to 1.37 billion renminbi, or about $180 million.

And he lined up party members for a rally in a public square and urged them to press the fight against terrorists. “Wipe them out completely,” he said. “Destroy them root and branch.”

But privately, Mr. Wang had misgivings, according to the confession that he later signed, which would have been carefully vetted by the party.

He was under intense pressure to prevent an outburst of violence in Yarkand, and worried the crackdown would provoke a backlash.

The authorities set numeric targets for Uighur detentions in parts of Xinjiang, and while it is unclear if they did so in Yarkand, Mr. Wang felt the orders left no room for moderation and would poison ethnic relations in the county.

He also worried that the mass detentions would make it impossible to record the economic progress he needed to earn a promotion.

The leadership had set goals to reduce poverty in Xinjiang. But with so many working-age residents being sent to the camps, Mr. Wang was afraid the targets would be out of reach, along with his hopes for a better job.

His superiors, he wrote, were “overly ambitious and unrealistic.”

“The policies and measures taken by higher levels were at gaping odds with realities on the ground and could not be implemented in full,” he added.

To help enforce the crackdown in southern Xinjiang, Mr. Chen transferred in hundreds of officials from the north. Publicly, Mr. Wang welcomed the 62 assigned to Yarkand. Privately, he seethed that they did not understand how to work with local officials and residents.

The pressure on officials in Xinjiang to detain Uighurs and prevent fresh violence was relentless, and Mr. Wang said in the confession — presumably signed under pressure — that he drank on the job. He described one episode in which he collapsed drunk during a meeting on security.

“While reporting on my work in the afternoon meeting, I rambled incoherently,” he said. “I’d just spoken a few sentences and my head collapsed on the table. It became the biggest joke across the whole prefecture.”

Thousands of officials in Xinjiang were punished for resisting or failing to carry out the crackdown with sufficient zeal. Uighur officials were accused of protecting fellow Uighurs, and Gu Wensheng, the Han leader of another southern county, was jailed for trying to slow the detentions and shield Uighur officials, according to the documents.

Secret teams of investigators traveled across the region identifying those who were not doing enough. In 2017, the party opened more than 12,000 investigations into party members in Xinjiang for infractions in the “fight against separatism,” more than 20 times the figure in the previous year, according to official statistics.

Mr. Wang may have gone further than any other official.

Quietly, he ordered the release of more than 7,000 camp inmates — an act of defiance for which he would be detained, stripped of power and prosecuted.

“I undercut, acted selectively and made my own adjustments, believing that rounding up so many people would knowingly fan conflict and deepen resentment,” Mr. Wang wrote.

“Without approval and on my own initiative,” he added, “I broke the rules.”

BRAZEN DEFIANCE

Mr. Wang quietly disappeared from public view after September 2017.

About six months later, the party made an example of him, announcing that he was being investigated for “gravely disobeying the party central leadership’s strategy for governing Xinjiang.”

The internal report on the investigation was more direct. “He should have given his all to serving the party,” it said. “Instead, he ignored the party central leadership’s strategy for Xinjiang, and he went as far as brazen defiance.”

Both the report and Mr. Wang’s confession were read aloud to officials across Xinjiang. The message was plain: The party would not tolerate any hesitation in carrying out the mass detentions.

Propaganda outlets described Mr. Wang as irredeemably corrupt, and the internal report accused him of taking bribes on construction and mining deals and paying off superiors to win promotions.

The authorities also emphasized he was no friend of Uighurs. To hit poverty-reduction targets, he was said to have forced 1,500 families to move into unheated apartments in the middle of the winter. Some villagers burned wood indoors to keep warm, leading to injuries and deaths, his confession said.

But Mr. Wang’s greatest political sin was not revealed to the public. Instead, the authorities hid it in the internal report.

“He refused,” it said, “to round up everyone who should be rounded up.”

______

Design and development by Rebecca Lieberman. Additional production by Jessica White.

______

To omit identifying markings, these documents have been retyped to resemble the originals.

[randomfandomz]

Sanders Sides Zombie Apocalypse AU

This is currently a project/storyline I am very passionate about, but due to my ever-changing modivation, I wont be making a seperate blog for this just yet. Eventually I may make a seperate blog for this, but as of now this is all the info i have for this. I may make a fanfic for this. Feel free to send me asks or ideas for it. And if you wanna be tagged in posts related to this au, I'd be glad to do so, just send me a message or ask. Thanks for reading.^^

*Thomas doesn't exist in this au and the sides were all just regular people before the apocalypse began*

Patton: [Adult/older teen 19-21ish] that takes care of the other sides, who are all younger than him and almost all kiddos. He used to work at an afterschool program at an elementary&Jr. Highschool as a Rec. Leader, but once the apocalypse started everything went to chaos and most of the kids at the school either became infected or died. He found a few of them, orphaned and/or alone. He tried to take care of them, but the group of kids was too big for him to handle alone and most of them ended up dying or being infected on his watch. He still blames himseld for their deaths. The only one that was able to survive was Virgil. Patton likes to sew and made Virgil a purple and black hoodie out of some fabric he had been saving up, but he wasnt sure Virgil would like the purple, since he usually only likes all-black clothing. He was beyond excited when Virgil ended up loving the jacket so much that he now wears it on a faily basis and rarely takes it off.

Roman: [a older than Dee but younger than Virgil] Salvages any art supplies he can find. So far he has 12 pencils that all are pretty dull by now, 3 sharpeners 2 of which dont work very well and 1 of which that is broken, but he still insists he has to carry it around. He holds any kind if paper or writing surface he can find absolutely precious to him and he rations out his supplies sparingly. Especially after he once found half a box of used crayons that was used up and gone by the end of the month. Seemingly has an endless ammount of energy. Takes any criticism he gets rather harshly and absolutely cannot be proud of something that even one member of the gorup dislikes in the slightest. The others call him "Rolo". He gives the others nicknames too, some they like and some they dont.

Logan: [around 14, hes one of the older kiddos] Former rich prodigy son of one of the main scientists working on the project that caused the apocalypse; knows a lot about how to survive the apocalypse, compared to the rest, and is the main reason that the group has survived as long as they have. Hes extremely guilty about what his father helped make happen. He has trouble communicating to the rest of the group, can be a little cold, and is rather reserved. The others are the only ones he fully trust. A bit spoiled and doesnt understand how his words affect others, such as making unkind comments about Deceit's scar, Roman's passionate attitude, Patton's undying trust and optimism, and/or Virgil's decision to wear his hoodie no matter the weather; he is more hurtful to some than others. He likes Virgil the most, since the two can match eachother in wit and Lo has an overall respect for him.

Virgil: [around 12; a bit older than the others in the group but definitely not the oldest] Has a close relationship with Patton and Logan. Calls Patton "Dad", and sees him as a father figure, but sometimes Patton has to remind Virgil that it's okay to call him "Dad". He doesnt like Deceit much and is suspicious of his lying nature. The two fight sometimes, and it occasionay puts the group in danger. Virgil and Deceit act like siblings, and dispite fighting, they do somewhat care about eachother as such. After an arguement, Virgil sometimes seeks out a yellow flower or special item of said color, as yellow seems to calm him down. Virge is pretty sarcastic and pessimistic, which contrasts Patton, who practically radiates optimism.

Deceit: [looks to be around 5-7 years old, never tells the group exactly how old he is; his answer varies everytime they ask] he lost his eye and now has a huge scar on the upper left half of his face, but he refuses to tell the others anything about how he got it. A bit reserved, seems to have a rather dark past and wont talk about it under any circumstances. The others assume he has a history with abuse or something of the like. Lies constantly by force of habit but usually corrects himself. Since he's one of the younger kiddos, he tends to wander off easily and gets hurt a lot. Would probably never forgive/hold a grudge against Patton if he were to raise his voice at him, but its notnlike Patton would do that anyways. Logan does this however, as he has a bit of a temper, but he has to be extra careful around Deceit; getting yelled at terrifies Deceit and he hates loud noises. Something that comforts him a lot is the color yellow and things such as yellow flowers, especially sunflowers.

Dr Picani: The scientist that started the first drafts of Project H(for Health), now deceased. Was well known for his work on Project H, and once it failed he was to blame and many people wanted him dead.

Remy: Probaby a zombie that just chills at starbucks somewhere/a human that's almost like Tallahassee from Zombieland, excpet instead of twinkies its starbucks coffee. Hasnt met the main 5, but he might appear in the story once or twice.

Remus: [adult; exact age unknown] A weird zombie with a mustache that likes to follow the main 5 around for no apparent reason but rarely does any harm. A bit of a prankster. Finds paint cans and such things to draw inappropriate things on buildings and such, but other than risking the innocence of the younger kiddos in the group who stumble upon the artworks, he is rather harmless.

PROJECT H[ealth]- A project started by Dr. Emilie Picani to increase health benefits of the human race to 100%. It is revealed in his final notes that the project began experimenting on humans rather than insects or animals. The last few pages are ripped out and Picani was dropped from the project for reasons his coworkers were told to be his unwillingness to participate in the growing danger and questional morality of the project, and the fact that he was attempting to shutdown the project for such reasons.

[covid19updater]

COVID19 Updates: 01/03/2021

California:  43 staffers infected at Kaiser emergency room in San Jose, and inflatable Christmas costume could be to blame LINK

World:  The new coronavirus variant that emerged in the U.K. is more transmissible and appears to affect a higher proportion of people under 20, according to a report from Imperial College London and other science groups. LINK

UK:  "I honestly don't think there's an answer to this" Tony Blair says "it's going to be extremely difficult to keep schools open" and calls for the rollout of vaccines to be "radically accelerated"

World:  US NSA claims to have 'growing body of evidence' that #COVID19 originated in #Wuhan lab, report says LINK

World:  Disease X warning as doctor who helped discover Ebola fears new deadly viruses LINK

RUMINT (US):  Just got to the airport in Charlotte. Absolutely packed. People lined up by the dozens at every eatery. Several others sitting on the floor, mask off, stuffing their faces. Others mask off talking on the phone. I plan on starving myself for the next 12 hours until I get where I'm going...this n95 is staying glued to my face. Half the people are just wearing bandannas tied to their head. No wonder we had nearly 300,000 new cases yesterday. It's like people are oblivious. The only responsible people I've seen so far was a military family traveling on orders sitting next to me. Surgical mask over their n95 and safety glasses with side eye protection for all members of the family. Looks like they got the memo.

UK:  UK reports more than 50,000 coronavirus cases for 6th day in a row. UK: +54,990

Virginia: reports more than 5,000 new cases for the third day in the last 4 days this week. Statewide average positivity rate is now above 15%, above 20% in some regions. The 20 to 29 years of age range is the most affected in the recent days.

UK:  The military will be drafted in to help run London’s Nightingale hospital which is due to open within days to help relieve pressure on the capital’s struggling wards. Emails seen by The Independent reveal the military is preparing to call up dozens of army reservists to help run the hospital alongside NHS staff. LINK

World:  The prevalence of long COVID symptoms and COVID-19 complications LINK

RUMINT (UK):  I live in the South East of the UK , where the new variant is said to have originated.Today I have found out that a friends husband has Covid and was taken to hospital , he is home now but still poorly ,(he is early 30's) she is taking him food/drinks wearing a mask and he is in a separate part of the house to her as they have kids and one of them has an underlying health condition Also a girl that my son went to school with has fallen ill and has tested positive , she is 18 - so its hitting the younger generations. Where I live has been Tier 4 since before Xmas , luckily my Mum is in my 'bubble' so I was able to have her at mine for Xmas Day - she has severe osteo-arthritis and is housebound , can barely walk. But health-wise she is OK , no underlying conditions. I am a carer for my son so I am home pretty much al the time apart from walking the dog and the weekly shop , I drive to Mum's to drop off shopping/check her. People definitely steering clear of each other around here , shops quite empty and roads quiet. Its semi-rural here - seaside town - non-essential shops all closed , barbers , dog groomers etc.....its like a ghost town, New Year's Eve I walked the dog just as it was starting to get dark , around 5 ish and was quite surreal as all the pubs were shut , streets empty and the whole place was quiet.......That's a little update from my corner of the world

Australia:  Australia's COVID-19 cases on the rise as masks made compulsory LINK

UK:  Sunday update of UK Covid data. I’ll keep it short, but it’s not good. Test positivity in London has now hit 27%. The climb from 17% to 27% has taken 5 days. In March it took 6.

US:  A top official of Operation Warp Speed on Sunday floated the idea of halving the dose of each shot of Moderna's vaccine to potentially double the number of people who could receive it and gain some immunity.

UK:  Today’s hospital data for England could not be more stark: 25k patients now hospitalised with Covid That’s a 6% increase in 24hrs And a 41% increase since Christmas Day

California:  A worrying trend: an increasing percentage of people dying from COVID in LA County don't have underlying conditions. Earlier in the pandemic, about 92% of people who died had preexisting health conditions; that number has now dropped to about 86%, officials say.

US: COVID update: - New cases: 204,805 - Positivity rate: 14.4% (+1) - In hospital: 125,544 (+1,905) - In ICU: 23,231 (+79) - New deaths: 1,431 - Vaccinated: 4.3M (+44,171)

US:  CDC hopes to double the number of coronavirus samples checked for new mutations LINK

World:  South African coronavirus mutation may BEAT current vaccines, expert on team behind the Oxford jab warns - but insists: 'Stay calm, everything is going to be fine' LINK (Wait, what?)

[wineanddinosaur]

As America’s Small Breweries Brace for Winter, ‘Scraping By’ Is Business as Usual

As Covid-19 cases surge nationwide, U.S. state officials continue to face a complex problem: Keep residents safe, while mitigating the drastic economic impact of pandemic life. Among the countless industries navigating the seismic shift from pre-pandemic life, craft beer businesses are among the most affected — and the most complicated.

In May, as many as 3,600 of roughly 8,000 U.S. breweries were at risk of closure, according to the Brewers Association. This estimation has since improved, but the outlook is still bleak. Small breweries in particular are struggling against the fast currents of lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, and changing restrictions in their cities and states — even as parts of their businesses reopen. As a result, beer businesses long at a standstill are in a constant state of flux.

How small breweries and bars respond to each crisis and its accompanying, often contradictory orders could well determine which will make it through winter. Consequently, the health of the beer industry hangs in the balance.

Credit: No Anchor Bar / Instagram.com

It is, of course, difficult to look at the beer industry as one homogenous mass when the responses to health crises, infection and death rates, and economic impacts have differed so wildly from state to state. There is no “one size fits all,” due to the lack of coordinated federal response. Instead, it’s up to each business to navigate its next moves according to the changing whims of state officials and the safety of its staff and community.

In Texas, Austin Beerworks has been hit hard. According to the CDC, the state has one of the highest Covid-19 case and death rates in the country, at least partially due to population size; and a statewide stay-at-home order issued on March 31 meant approximately half the brewery’s roughly 1,000 retail accounts remained closed, with only 25 percent tentatively reopening in August, Austin Beerworks co-founder Michael Graham estimates. The brewery’s taproom has remained closed since March 17, with only some outdoor service taking place.

Credit: Austin Beerworks / Facebook.com

At Austin Beerworks, requirements such as outdoor service greatly impacted the brewery’s sole on-premise sales opportunity. “Our inside taproom has been closed since March 17,” Graham says. “We have an outdoor patio that has opened and closed several times now, based on back-and-forth executive orders and rule interpretations by the governor’s office and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC). Per the latest rule interpretations, we’re currently able to operate our patio, as long as more than 50 percent of our sales come from non-alcohol-related items.”

“The loss of nearly all of our on-premise accounts [such as bars and restaurants] has been partially compensated by increased sales through our off-premise accounts [such as grocery and convenience stores],” Graham says. “We’re doing better than almost any other brewery I’ve spoken with.” Despite this, he adds, “volume sales are currently down about 20 percent for the year.”

Although some states have relaxed notoriously strict distribution laws, allowing breweries to explore previously closed direct-to-consumer sales avenues, including beer delivery and bottles to go, this has not been the case in the Lone Star State. “The Texas Craft Brewers’ Guild has been lobbying to allow breweries to ship and deliver beer directly to consumers, but the Texas governor has so far been unwilling to allow new avenues of sales for Texas breweries during the pandemic,” Graham says.

Not Just a Phase

If anything is consistent across the country, it is rapidly changing and inconsistent guidance and policy.

North Carolina is currently in Phase 3 of its three-phase lockdown plan. “Phase 2 gently lifted the stay-at-home order and opened some in-person businesses,” says Erik Myers, director of brewing operations at Durham’s Fullsteam Brewery. “Restaurants are allowed to operate at half capacity, and bars are not allowed to be open — though, curiously, brewery taprooms are.”

Fullsteam’s brewing operations, considered an essential service, have continued since the lockdown order was issued in March. As an essential service, the brewery was able to offer food and beer to go during Phase 1 — thanks to a kitchen renovation completed only the week before lockdown — and now is open at half capacity as a restaurant, with appropriate distancing measures.

Credit: Fullsteam Brewery / Facebook.com

“When the lockdown hit in March, we sort of got our bearings and then laid off a significant portion of staff while we got a handle on what the market was going to look like,” Myers says. A rise in home drinking saw a sharp spike in grocery store sales, which, along with a government-issued Paycheck Protection Program loan, “allowed us to bring our staff back into work about six weeks after the initial layoff, and we’ve been brewing at full capacity ever since.”

The biggest challenge for Fullsteam, as at Austin Beerworks, has been other bars and restaurants remaining closed. “We’ve been having a really hard time projecting demand for draft product because the market has been incredibly inconsistent,” says Myers. “My biggest fear is that we’ll begin to see supply chain issues because of this, and aside from a little slowdown in incoming orders, we haven’t had to deal with ‘out-of-stocks’ on our supplies yet.”

Meanwhile, in Washington State, where the first coronavirus case in the country was recorded on Jan. 21, Seattle remains in Phase 2 of the state’s four-phase reopening plan.

“Recently, any indoor bar service has been shuttered, and inside dining at restaurants [is] limited to members of the same household,” Dave Riddile, general manager at No Anchor Bar, says. The Seattle bar and restaurant closed for two months from the time of lockdown. After reopening for just one day a week for to-go service, and then three days a week, Riddile and his team cautiously opened the patio at the beginning of July, and have been open all week since.

“The closure of inside bar service, unless you’re a restaurant license holder, has felt a little Prohibition-y and arbitrary,” Riddile says. “It puts this undue responsibility on restaurant workers to have to determine if guests live together, which shouldn’t really be their job. Also, I don’t completely agree that this is somehow safer than friends meeting and having a meal together indoors — both scenarios present inherent dangers at the moment, which is part of the reason we have yet to open our dining room to guests.”

Riddile, who describes No Anchor as “somewhere between barely scraping by and business as usual,” is confident the industry will continue to lose fantastic restaurants and bars as winter approaches. “The good thought: I also think that our industry is resilient and will continue to work our asses off to ensure safe employment for our people,” he counters.

Kicked to the Curb(side)

Almost all on-premise beer venues are in a similarly see-sawing situation. Chicago’s Beermiscuous, a beer-focused cafe, was ordered to close, before being considered essential and allowed to reopen only for off-premise sales. Shortly thereafter, the cafe was allowed to return to on-premise consumption, before then being later reduced to off-premise once more. At press time, Beermiscuous remains open for to-go sales and on-site consumption in its sidewalk “cafe,” with distancing measures in force, and online ordering and contactless pickup also in place.

“We’re scraping by,” says Beermiscuous co-owner Virginia Thomas. “It forced us into being packaged beer only for most of the pandemic, and that has smaller margins. Usually, (by order of our license type: Tavern), we can only have 49 percent or less of our business be to-go sales. Our hours have also been forcibly reduced: Chicago makes all to-go alcohol sales end at 9 p.m. now.”

Like Riddile, Thomas has felt little support from the local government. “The only laws that have been changed that favored bars are allowing cocktails mixed to go — we don’t do cocktails — and allowing bars without a food license to apply for a sidewalk cafe permit, which we’re in process of.” But, she says, “it costs $300 just for permits, ours isn’t approved yet, and summer is quickly disappearing.”

Thomas’s feelings are indicative of the attitudes of many: “We’re in for a long, hard winter,” she says. “A lot of places won’t make it. It’s grim, but true.” Reopening indoors will come with its own added stressors: With a growing backlash against masks, symptomatic of general tension and the conspiracy theories surrounding the pandemic, Thomas is feeling the public’s anxiety, adding, “Everyone is more on edge, selfish, and threatening, it seems.”

Bracing for What’s Next

Throughout the beer industry, many tell a similar tale of the last several months: a mix of inconsistent official communication, loss of sales, a reliance on to-go service, reduced on-premise capacity, fear for employee and personal health, and innumerable other stressors. This, coupled with a burgeoning recession and ever-looming threat of depression, means many businesses won’t survive.

Credit: Beermiscuous Highwood / Facebook.com

In the face of all of this, some remain hopeful. At Fullsteam Brewery, Myers is focusing on keeping company culture upbeat, aware of the havoc this pandemic is wreaking on mental health.

“It’s mostly a matter of trying to anticipate ways that we can provide some social relief for our employees and make them feel supported. We’ve done a handful of online beer tastings and social hours, and we try to do in-person safe and socially distant tastings and other educational opportunities,” says Myers. “To be honest, it’s difficult. Not everybody is an extrovert and social gatherings don’t feel safe to people — or they don’t want to hang out with work people (especially their boss) outside of work. For us, it’s been important to listen and really hear when people say they need something and do whatever we can within the auspices of the business to help out.”

Graham’s approach for Austin Beerworks is more pragmatic: “Think long-term,” he says. “Don’t take unnecessary risks to chase money. Don’t cut corners to save money. These are very difficult times, but they will pass.”

At No Anchor, Riddile and his team are gearing up for the rainy season and prepping the space for inside dining. Like so many bars, breweries, taprooms, and restaurants relying on the outdoors, safety and viability are equal, inseparable concerns. “No business is worth the lives of the people that make it run,” Riddile says. “We may have a few more long months ahead of us, but if we keep doing our best in these incredible circumstances, we’ll make it through to the other side.”

Things are looking up for Beermiscuous, if only a little: “Our sidewalk cafe was approved on Sept. 21. We got it up and running, and did a soft open on the 23rd, and fully opened on the 24th,” Thomas says. “And the mayor just announced we can reopen indoors.”

The article As America’s Small Breweries Brace for Winter, ‘Scraping By’ Is Business as Usual appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/america-small-breweries-winter-covid-19/

[sinrau]

European Union officials are racing to agree on who can visit the bloc as of July 1 based on how countries of origin are faring with new coronavirus cases. Americans, so far, are excluded, according to draft lists seen by The New York Times.

Arrivals at the Adolfo Suarez-Barajas airport in Madrid, Spain, on Sunday. European officials are devising a list of ‘safe’ countries to accept visitors from this summer.Credit…Bernat Armangue/Associated Press

By Matina Stevis-Gridneff

June 23, 2020Updated 5:17 p.m. ET * * *

BRUSSELS — European Union countries rushing to revive their economies and reopen their borders after months of coronavirus restrictions are prepared to block Americans from entering because the United States has failed to control the scourge, according to draft lists of acceptable travelers reviewed by The New York Times.

That prospect, which would lump American visitors in with Russians and Brazilians as unwelcome, is a stinging blow to American prestige in the world and a repudiation of President Trump’s handling of the virus in the United States, which has more than 2.3 million cases and upward of 120,000 deaths, more than any other country.

European nations are currently haggling over two potential lists of acceptable visitors based on how countries are faring with the coronavirus pandemic. Both lists include China, as well as developing nations like Uganda, Cuba and Vietnam. Both also exclude the United States and other countries that were deemed too risky because of the spread of the virus.

Travelers from the United States and the rest of the world already had been excluded from visiting the European Union — with few exceptions mostly for repatriations or “essential travel” — since mid-March. But a final decision on reopening the borders is expected early next week, before the bloc reopens on July 1.

A prohibition of Americans by Brussels partly reflects the shifting pattern of the pandemic. In March, when Europe was the epicenter, Mr. Trump infuriated European leaders when he banned citizens from most European Union countries from traveling to America. Mr. Trump justified the move as necessary to protect the United States, which at the time had roughly 1,100 coronavirus cases and 38 deaths.

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Domino Park in Brooklyn, New York, last month. Europe seems set to continue keeping out visitors from the United States after July 1 when the European Union reopens its borders.Credit…Sarah Blesener for The New York Times

In late May and early June, Mr. Trump said Europe was “making progress” and hinted that some restrictions would be lifted soon, but nothing has happened since then. Today, Europe has largely curbed the outbreak, even as the United States, the worst-afflicted, has seen more infection surges just in the past week.

Prohibiting American travelers from entering the European Union would have significant economic, cultural and geopolitical ramifications. Millions of American tourists visit Europe every summer. Business travel is common, given the huge economic ties between the United States and the E.U.

Despite the disruptions caused by such a ban, European officials involved in the talks said it was highly unlikely an exception would be made for the United States. They said that the criteria for creating the list of acceptable countries had been deliberately kept as scientific and nonpolitical as possible.

Including the United States now, the officials said, would represent a complete flouting of the bloc’s reasoning. But they said the United States could be added later to the list, which will be revised every two weeks based on updated infection rates.

It was unclear if American officials were aware in advance of the exclusion of the United States from the draft lists, which have not been made public.

The draft lists were shared with the Times by an official involved in the talks and confirmed by another official involved in the talks. Two additional European Union officials confirmed the content of the lists as well the details of the negotiations to shape and finalize them. All of the officials gave the information on condition of anonymity because the issue is politically delicate.

The forging of a common list of outsiders who can enter the bloc is part of an effort by the European Union to fully reopen internal borders among its 27 member states. Free travel and trade among members is a core principle of the bloc — one that has been badly disrupted during the pandemic.

Since the outbreak, the bloc has succumbed to piecemeal national policies that have resulted in an incoherent patchwork of open and closed borders.

Some internal borders have practically remained closed while others have opened. Some member states that desperately need tourists have rushed ahead to accept non-E.U. visitors and pledged to test them on arrival. Others have tried to create closed travel zones between certain countries, called “bubbles” or “corridors.”

Putting these safe lists together highlights the fraught, messy task of removing pandemic-related measures and unifying the bloc’s approach. But the imperatives of restoring the internal harmony of the E.U. and slowly opening up to the world are paramount, even if it threatens rifts with close allies including the United States, which appears bound to be excluded, at least initially.

Image

Both potential lists, one more conservative than the other, include China as well as developing nations like Uganda, Cuba and Vietnam.Credit…Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

President Trump, as well as his Russian and Brazilian counterparts, Vladimir V. Putin and Jair Bolsonaro, has followed what critics call a comparable path in their pandemic response that leaves all three countries in a similarly bad spot: they were dismissive at the outset of the crisis, slow to respond to scientific advice and saw a boom of domestic cases as other parts of the world, notably in Europe and Asia, were slowly managing to get their outbreaks under control.

Countries on the E.U. draft lists have been selected as safe based on a combination of epidemiological criteria. The benchmark is the E.U. average number of new infections — over the past 14 days — per 100,000 people, which is currently 16 for the bloc. The comparable number for the United States is 107, while Brazil’s is 190 and Russia’s is 80, according to a Times database.

Once diplomats agree on a final list, it will be presented as a recommendation early next week before July 1. The E.U. can’t force members to adopt it, but European officials warn that failure of any of the 27 members to stick to it could lead to the reintroduction of borders within the bloc.

The reason this exercise is additionally complex for Europe is that, if internal borders are open but member states don’t honor the same rules, visitors from nonapproved nations could land in one European country, and then jump onward to other E.U. nations undetected.

European officials said the list would be revised every two weeks to reflect new realities around the world as nations see the virus ebb and flow.

The process of agreeing on it has been challenging, with diplomats from all European member states hunkering down for multiple hourslong meetings for the past few weeks.

Image

Commuters in São Paulo, Brazil, on Monday. Travelers from Brazil and Russia, which are dealing with large outbreaks of the virus, are also not included on the draft lists of acceptable countries.Credit…Victor Moriyama for The New York Times

As of Tuesday, the officials and diplomats were poring over the two versions of the safe list under debate, and were scheduled to meet again on Wednesday to continue sparring over the details.

The Coronavirus Outbreak

Frequently Asked Questions and Advice

Updated June 22, 2020

Is it harder to exercise while wearing a mask?

A commentary published this month on the website of the British Journal of Sports Medicine points out that covering your face during exercise “comes with issues of potential breathing restriction and discomfort” and requires “balancing benefits versus possible adverse events.” Masks do alter exercise, says Cedric X. Bryant, the president and chief science officer of the American Council on Exercise, a nonprofit organization that funds exercise research and certifies fitness professionals. “In my personal experience,” he says, “heart rates are higher at the same relative intensity when you wear a mask.” Some people also could experience lightheadedness during familiar workouts while masked, says Len Kravitz, a professor of exercise science at the University of New Mexico.

I’ve heard about a treatment called dexamethasone. Does it work?

The steroid, dexamethasone, is the first treatment shown to reduce mortality in severely ill patients, according to scientists in Britain. The drug appears to reduce inflammation caused by the immune system, protecting the tissues. In the study, dexamethasone reduced deaths of patients on ventilators by one-third, and deaths of patients on oxygen by one-fifth.

What is pandemic paid leave?

The coronavirus emergency relief package gives many American workers paid leave if they need to take time off because of the virus. It gives qualified workers two weeks of paid sick leave if they are ill, quarantined or seeking diagnosis or preventive care for coronavirus, or if they are caring for sick family members. It gives 12 weeks of paid leave to people caring for children whose schools are closed or whose child care provider is unavailable because of the coronavirus. It is the first time the United States has had widespread federally mandated paid leave, and includes people who don’t typically get such benefits, like part-time and gig economy workers. But the measure excludes at least half of private-sector workers, including those at the country’s largest employers, and gives small employers significant leeway to deny leave.

Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?

So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was “very rare,” but she later walked back that statement.

What’s the risk of catching coronavirus from a surface?

Touching contaminated objects and then infecting ourselves with the germs is not typically how the virus spreads. But it can happen. A number of studies of flu, rhinovirus, coronavirus and other microbes have shown that respiratory illnesses, including the new coronavirus, can spread by touching contaminated surfaces, particularly in places like day care centers, offices and hospitals. But a long chain of events has to happen for the disease to spread that way. The best way to protect yourself from coronavirus — whether it’s surface transmission or close human contact — is still social distancing, washing your hands, not touching your face and wearing masks.

How does blood type influence coronavirus?

A study by European scientists is the first to document a strong statistical link between genetic variations and Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Having Type A blood was linked to a 50 percent increase in the likelihood that a patient would need to get oxygen or to go on a ventilator, according to the new study.

How many people have lost their jobs due to coronavirus in the U.S.?

The unemployment rate fell to 13.3 percent in May, the Labor Department said on June 5, an unexpected improvement in the nation’s job market as hiring rebounded faster than economists expected. Economists had forecast the unemployment rate to increase to as much as 20 percent, after it hit 14.7 percent in April, which was the highest since the government began keeping official statistics after World War II. But the unemployment rate dipped instead, with employers adding 2.5 million jobs, after more than 20 million jobs were lost in April.

My state is reopening. Is it safe to go out?

States are reopening bit by bit. This means that more public spaces are available for use and more and more businesses are being allowed to open again. The federal government is largely leaving the decision up to states, and some state leaders are leaving the decision up to local authorities. Even if you aren’t being told to stay at home, it’s still a good idea to limit trips outside and your interaction with other people.

What are the symptoms of coronavirus?

Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.

How can I protect myself while flying?

If air travel is unavoidable,there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. Most important: Wash your hands often, and stop touching your face. If possible, choose a window seat. A study from Emory University found that during flu season, the safest place to sit on a plane is by a window, as people sitting in window seats had less contact with potentially sick people. Disinfect hard surfaces. When you get to your seat and your hands are clean, use disinfecting wipes to clean the hard surfaces at your seat like the head and arm rest, the seatbelt buckle, the remote, screen, seat back pocket and the tray table. If the seat is hard and nonporous or leather or pleather, you can wipe that down, too. (Using wipes on upholstered seats could lead to a wet seat and spreading of germs rather than killing them.)

What should I do if I feel sick?

If you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested, how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially infecting or exposing others.

How do I get tested?

If you’re sick and you think you’ve been exposed to the new coronavirus, the C.D.C. recommends that you call your healthcare provider and explain your symptoms and fears. They will decide if you need to be tested. Keep in mind that there’s a chance — because of a lack of testing kits or because you’re asymptomatic, for instance — you won’t be able to get tested.

One list contains 47 countries and includes only those nations with an infection rate lower than the E.U. average. The other longer list has 54 countries and also includes those nations with slightly worse case rates than the E.U. average, going up to 20 new cases per 100,000 people.

The existing restrictions on nonessential travel to all 27 member states plus Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein were introduced on March 16 and extended twice until July 1, in a bid to contain the virus as the continent entered a three-month long confinement.

“Discussions are happening very intensively,” to reach consensus in time for July 1, said Adalbert Jahnz, a spokesman for the European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch. He called the process “frankly, a full-time job.”

The E.U. agency for infectious diseases, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, warned negotiators that the case numbers were so dependent on the level of truthfulness and testing in each country, that it was hard to vouch for them, officials taking part in the talks said.

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Coronavirus testing at the Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport in Athens, Greece, this month. The E.U.’s final safe list of acceptable visitors will be revised every two weeks.Credit…Milos Bicanski/Getty Images

China, for example, has been accused of withholding information and manipulating the numbers of infections released to the public. In parts of the developing world, case numbers are very low, but it’s hard to determine whether they paint an accurate picture given limited testing.

And in the United States, comments made by President Trump at a rally in Tulsa over the weekend highlighted how easy it is to manipulate a country’s case numbers, as he suggested that domestic testing was too broad.

“When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases,” Mr. Trump told supporters. “So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.’ They test and they test.”

European embassies around the world could be enlisted to help verify or opine on the data provided that would inform the final list, negotiators said, another indication that the list could end up being quite short if European diplomats at embassies said reported numbers were unreliable.

Many European Union countries are desperate to reopen their borders to visitors from outside the region to salvage tourism and boost airlines’ revenue while keeping their own borders open to each other. Some have already started accepting visitors from outside the bloc.

At the other extreme, a few European nations including Denmark are not prepared to allow any external visitors from non-E.U. countries, and are likely to continue with this policy after July 1.

Germany, France and many other E.U. nations want non-European travelers to be allowed, but are also worried about individual countries tweaking the safe list or admitting travelers from excluded countries, officials said.

Monika Pronczuk contributed reporting from Brussels, and Albert Sun from New York.

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[antoine-roquentin]

In the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks, Washington pursued its elusive enemies across the landscapes of Asia and Africa, thanks in part to a massive expansion of its intelligence infrastructure, particularly of the emerging technologies for digital surveillance, agile drones, and biometric identification. In 2010, almost a decade into this secret war with its voracious appetite for information, the Washington Post reported that the national security state had swelled into a “fourth branch” of the federal government -- with 854,000 vetted officials, 263 security organizations, and over 3,000 intelligence units, issuing 50,000 special reports every year.

Though stunning, these statistics only skimmed the visible surface of what had become history’s largest and most lethal clandestine apparatus. According to classified documents that Edward Snowden leaked in 2013, the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies alone had 107,035 employees and a combined “black budget” of $52.6 billion, the equivalent of 10% percent of the vast defense budget.

By sweeping the skies and probing the worldwide web’s undersea cables, the National Security Agency (NSA) could surgically penetrate the confidential communications of just about any leader on the planet, while simultaneously sweeping up billions of ordinary messages. For its classified missions, the CIA had access to the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command, with 69,000 elite troops (Rangers, SEALs, Air Commandos) and their agile arsenal. In addition to this formidable paramilitary capacity, the CIA operated 30 Predator and Reaper drones responsible for more than 3,000 deaths in Pakistan and Yemen.

While Americans practiced a collective form of duck and cover as the Department of Homeland Security’s colored alerts pulsed nervously from yellow to red, few paused to ask the hard question: Was all this security really directed solely at enemies beyond our borders? After half a century of domestic security abuses -- from the “red scare” of the 1920s through the FBI’s illegal harassment of antiwar protesters in the 1960s and 1970s -- could we really be confident that there wasn’t a hidden cost to all these secret measures right here at home? Maybe, just maybe, all this security wasn’t really so benign when it came to us.

From my own personal experience over the past half-century, and my family’s history over three generations, I’ve found out in the most personal way possible that there’s a real cost to entrusting our civil liberties to the discretion of secret agencies. Let me share just a few of my own “war” stories to explain how I’ve been forced to keep learning and relearning this uncomfortable lesson the hard way.

On the Heroin Trail

After finishing college in the late 1960s, I decided to pursue a Ph.D. in Japanese history and was pleasantly surprised when Yale Graduate School admitted me with a full fellowship. But the Ivy League in those days was no ivory tower. During my first year at Yale, the Justice Department indicted Black Panther leader Bobby Seale for a local murder and the May Day protests that filled the New Haven green also shut the campus for a week. Almost simultaneously, President Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia and student protests closed hundreds of campuses across America for the rest of the semester.

In the midst of all this tumult, the focus of my studies shifted from Japan to Southeast Asia, and from the past to the war in Vietnam. Yes, that war. So what did I do about the draft? During my first semester at Yale, on December 1, 1969, to be precise, the Selective Service cut up the calendar for a lottery. The first 100 birthdays picked were certain to be drafted, but any dates above 200 were likely exempt. My birthday, June 8th, was the very last date drawn, not number 365 but 366 (don’t forget leap year) -- the only lottery I have ever won, except for a Sunbeam electric frying pan in a high school raffle. Through a convoluted moral calculus typical of the 1960s, I decided that my draft exemption, although acquired by sheer luck, demanded that I devote myself, above all else, to thinking about, writing about, and working to end the Vietnam War.

During those campus protests over Cambodia in the spring of 1970, our small group of graduate students in Southeast Asian history at Yale realized that the U.S. strategic predicament in Indochina would soon require an invasion of Laos to cut the flow of enemy supplies into South Vietnam. So, while protests over Cambodia swept campuses nationwide, we were huddled inside the library, preparing for the next invasion by editing a book of essays on Laos for the publisher Harper & Row. A few months after that book appeared, one of the company’s junior editors, Elizabeth Jakab, intrigued by an account we had included about that country’s opium crop, telephoned from New York to ask if I could research and write a “quickie” paperback about the history behind the heroin epidemic then infecting the U.S. Army in Vietnam.

I promptly started the research at my student carrel in the Gothic tower that is Yale’s Sterling Library, tracking old colonial reports about the Southeast Asian opium trade that ended suddenly in the 1950s, just as the story got interesting. So, quite tentatively at first, I stepped outside the library to do a few interviews and soon found myself following an investigative trail that circled the globe. First, I traveled across America for meetings with retired CIA operatives. Then I crossed the Pacific to Hong Kong to study drug syndicates, courtesy of that colony’s police drug squad. Next, I went south to Saigon, then the capital of South Vietnam, to investigate the heroin traffic that was targeting the GIs, and on into the mountains of Laos to observe CIA alliances with opium warlords and the hill-tribe militias that grew the opium poppy. Finally, I flew from Singapore to Paris for interviews with retired French intelligence officers about their opium trafficking during the first Indochina War of the 1950s.

The drug traffic that supplied heroin for the U.S. troops fighting in South Vietnam was not, I discovered, exclusively the work of criminals. Once the opium left tribal poppy fields in Laos, the traffic required official complicity at every level. The helicopters of Air America, the airline the CIA then ran, carried raw opium out of the villages of its hill-tribe allies. The commander of the Royal Lao Army, a close American collaborator, operated the world’s largest heroin lab and was so oblivious to the implications of the traffic that he opened his opium ledgers for my inspection. Several of Saigon’s top generals were complicit in the drug’s distribution to U.S. soldiers. By 1971, this web of collusion ensured that heroin, according to a later White House survey of a thousand veterans, would be “commonly used” by 34% of American troops in South Vietnam.

None of this had been covered in my college history seminars. I had no models for researching an uncharted netherworld of crime and covert operations. After stepping off the plane in Saigon, body slammed by the tropical heat, I found myself in a sprawling foreign city of four million, lost in a swarm of snarling motorcycles and a maze of nameless streets, without contacts or a clue about how to probe these secrets. Every day on the heroin trail confronted me with new challenges -- where to look, what to look for, and, above all, how to ask hard questions.

Reading all that history had, however, taught me something I didn’t know I knew. Instead of confronting my sources with questions about sensitive current events, I started with the French colonial past when the opium trade was still legal, gradually uncovering the underlying, unchanging logistics of drug production. As I followed this historical trail into the present, when the traffic became illegal and dangerously controversial, I began to use pieces from this past to assemble the present puzzle, until the names of contemporary dealers fell into place. In short, I had crafted a historical method that would prove, over the next 40 years of my career, surprisingly useful in analyzing a diverse array of foreign policy controversies -- CIA alliances with drug lords, the agency’s propagation of psychological torture, and our spreading state surveillance.

The CIA Makes Its Entrance in My Life

Those months on the road, meeting gangsters and warlords in isolated places, offered only one bit of real danger. While hiking in the mountains of Laos, interviewing Hmong farmers about their opium shipments on CIA helicopters, I was descending a steep slope when a burst of bullets ripped the ground at my feet. I had walked into an ambush by agency mercenaries.

While the five Hmong militia escorts whom the local village headman had prudently provided laid down a covering fire, my Australian photographer John Everingham and I flattened ourselves in the elephant grass and crawled through the mud to safety. Without those armed escorts, my research would have been at an end and so would I. After that ambush failed, a CIA paramilitary officer summoned me to a mountaintop meeting where he threatened to murder my Lao interpreter unless I ended my research. After winning assurances from the U.S. embassy that my interpreter would not be harmed, I decided to ignore that warning and keep going.

Six months and 30,000 miles later, I returned to New Haven. My investigation of CIA alliances with drug lords had taught me more than I could have imagined about the covert aspects of U.S. global power. Settling into my attic apartment for an academic year of writing, I was confident that I knew more than enough for a book on this unconventional topic. But my education, it turned out, was just beginning.

Within weeks, a massive, middle-aged guy in a suit interrupted my scholarly isolation.  He appeared at my front door and identified himself as Tom Tripodi, senior agent for the Bureau of Narcotics, which later became the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). His agency, he confessed during a second visit, was worried about my writing and he had been sent to investigate. He needed something to tell his superiors. Tom was a guy you could trust. So I showed him a few draft pages of my book. He disappeared into the living room for a while and came back saying, “Pretty good stuff. You got your ducks in a row.” But there were some things, he added, that weren’t quite right, some things he could help me fix.

Tom was my first reader. Later, I would hand him whole chapters and he would sit in a rocking chair, shirt sleeves rolled up, revolver in his shoulder holster, sipping coffee, scribbling corrections in the margins, and telling fabulous stories -- like the time Jersey Mafia boss “Bayonne Joe” Zicarelli tried to buy a thousand rifles from a local gun store to overthrow Fidel Castro. Or when some CIA covert warrior came home for a vacation and had to be escorted everywhere so he didn’t kill somebody in a supermarket aisle.

Best of all, there was the one about how the Bureau of Narcotics caught French intelligence protecting the Corsican syndicates smuggling heroin into New York City. Some of his stories, usually unacknowledged, would appear in my book, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. These conversations with an undercover operative, who had trained Cuban exiles for the CIA in Florida and later investigated Mafia heroin syndicates for the DEA in Sicily, were akin to an advanced seminar, a master class in covert operations.

In the summer of 1972, with the book at press, I went to Washington to testify before Congress. As I was making the rounds of congressional offices on Capitol Hill, my editor rang unexpectedly and summoned me to New York for a meeting with the president and vice president of Harper & Row, my book’s publisher. Ushered into a plush suite of offices overlooking the spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, I listened to those executives tell me that Cord Meyer, Jr., the CIA’s deputy director for covert operations, had called on their company’s president emeritus, Cass Canfield, Sr. The visit was no accident, for Canfield, according to an authoritative history, “enjoyed prolific links to the world of intelligence, both as a former psychological warfare officer and as a close personal friend of Allen Dulles,” the ex-head of the CIA. Meyer denounced my book as a threat to national security. He asked Canfield, also an old friend, to quietly suppress it.

I was in serious trouble. Not only was Meyer a senior CIA official but he also had impeccable social connections and covert assets in every corner of American intellectual life. After graduating from Yale in 1942, he served with the marines in the Pacific, writing eloquent war dispatches published in the Atlantic Monthly. He later worked with the U.S. delegation drafting the U.N. charter. Personally recruited by spymaster Allen Dulles, Meyer joined the CIA in 1951 and was soon running its International Organizations Division, which, in the words of that same history, “constituted the greatest single concentration of covert political and propaganda activities of the by now octopus-like CIA,” including “Operation Mockingbird” that planted disinformation in major U.S. newspapers meant to aid agency operations. Informed sources told me that the CIA still had assets inside every major New York publisher and it already had every page of my manuscript.

As the child of a wealthy New York family, Cord Meyer moved in elite social circles, meeting and marrying Mary Pinchot, the niece of Gifford Pinchot, founder of the U.S. Forestry Service and a former governor of Pennsylvania. Pinchot was a breathtaking beauty who later became President Kennedy’s mistress, making dozens of secret visits to the White House. When she was found shot dead along the banks of a canal in Washington in 1964, the head of CIA counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton, another Yale alumnus, broke into her home in an unsuccessful attempt to secure her diary. Mary’s sister Toni and her husband, Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, later found the diary and gave it to Angleton for destruction by the agency. To this day, her unsolved murder remains a subject of mystery and controversy.

Cord Meyer was also in the Social Register of New York’s fine families along with my publisher, Cass Canfield, which added a dash of social cachet to the pressure to suppress my book. By the time he walked into Harper & Row’s office in that summer of 1972, two decades of CIA service had changed Meyer (according to that same authoritative history) from a liberal idealist into “a relentless, implacable advocate for his own ideas,” driven by “a paranoiac distrust of everyone who didn’t agree with him” and a manner that was “histrionic and even bellicose.” An unpublished 26-year-old graduate student versus the master of CIA media manipulation. It was hardly a fair fight. I began to fear my book would never appear.

To his credit, Canfield refused Meyer’s request to suppress the book. But he did allow the agency a chance to review the manuscript prior to publication. Instead of waiting quietly for the CIA’s critique, I contacted Seymour Hersh, then an investigative reporter for the New York Times. The same day the CIA courier arrived from Langley to collect my manuscript, Hersh swept through Harper & Row’s offices like a tropical storm, pelting hapless executives with incessant, unsettling questions. The next day, his exposé of the CIA’s attempt at censorship appeared on the paper’s front page. Other national media organizations followed his lead. Faced with a barrage of negative coverage, the CIA gave Harper & Row a critique full of unconvincing denials. The book was published unaltered.

My Life as an Open Book for the Agency

I had learned another important lesson: the Constitution’s protection of press freedom could check even the world’s most powerful espionage agency. Cord Meyer reportedly learned the same lesson. According to his obituary in the Washington Post, “It was assumed that Mr. Meyer would eventually advance” to head CIA covert operations, “but the public disclosure about the book deal... apparently dampened his prospects.” He was instead exiled to London and eased into early retirement.

Meyer and his colleagues were not, however, used to losing. Defeated in the public arena, the CIA retreated to the shadows and retaliated by tugging at every thread in the threadbare life of a graduate student. Over the next few months, federal officials from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare turned up at Yale to investigate my graduate fellowship. The Internal Revenue Service audited my poverty-level income. The FBI tapped my New Haven telephone (something I learned years later from a class-action lawsuit).

In August 1972, at the height of the controversy over the book, FBI agents told the bureau’s director that they had “conducted [an] investigation concerning McCoy,” searching the files they had compiled on me for the past two years and interviewing numerous “sources whose identities are concealed [who] have furnished reliable information in the past” -- thereby producing an 11-page report detailing my birth, education, and campus antiwar activities.

A college classmate I hadn’t seen in four years, who served in military intelligence, magically appeared at my side in the book section of the Yale Co-op, seemingly eager to resume our relationship. The same week that a laudatory review of my book appeared on the front page of the New York Times Book Review, an extraordinary achievement for any historian, Yale’s History Department placed me on academic probation. Unless I could somehow do a year’s worth of overdue work in a single semester, I faced dismissal.

In those days, the ties between the CIA and Yale were wide and deep. The campus residential colleges screened students, including future CIA Director Porter Goss, for possible careers in espionage. Alumni like Cord Meyer and James Angleton held senior slots at the agency. Had I not had a faculty adviser visiting from Germany, the distinguished scholar Bernhard Dahm who was a stranger to this covert nexus, that probation would likely have become expulsion, ending my academic career and destroying my credibility.

During those difficult days, New York Congressman Ogden Reid, a ranking member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, telephoned to say that he was sending staff investigators to Laos to look into the opium situation. Amid this controversy, a CIA helicopter landed near the village where I had escaped that ambush and flew the Hmong headman who had helped my research to an agency airstrip. There, a CIA interrogator made it clear that he had better deny what he had said to me about the opium. Fearing, as he later told my photographer, that “they will send a helicopter to arrest me, or... soldiers to shoot me,” the Hmong headman did just that.

At a personal level, I was discovering just how deep the country’s intelligence agencies could reach, even in a democracy, leaving no part of my life untouched: my publisher, my university, my sources, my taxes, my phone, and even my friends.

Although I had won the first battle of this war with a media blitz, the CIA was winning the longer bureaucratic struggle. By silencing my sources and denying any culpability, its officials convinced Congress that it was innocent of any direct complicity in the Indochina drug trade. During Senate hearings into CIA assassinations by the famed Church Committee three years later, Congress accepted the agency’s assurance that none of its operatives had been directly involved in heroin trafficking (an allegation I had never actually made). The committee’s report did confirm the core of my critique, however, finding that “the CIA is particularly vulnerable to criticism” over indigenous assets in Laos “of considerable importance to the Agency,” including “people who either were known to be, or were suspected of being, involved in narcotics trafficking.” But the senators did not press the CIA for any resolution or reform of what its own inspector general had called the “particular dilemma” posed by those alliances with drug lords -- the key aspect, in my view, of its complicity in the traffic.

During the mid-1970s, as the flow of drugs into the United States slowed and the number of addicts declined, the heroin problem receded into the inner cities and the media moved on to new sensations. Unfortunately, Congress had forfeited an opportunity to check the CIA and correct its way of waging covert wars. In less than 10 years, the problem of the CIA’s tactical alliances with drug traffickers to support its far-flung covert wars was back with a vengeance.

During the 1980s, as the crack-cocaine epidemic swept America’s cities, the agency, as its own Inspector General later reported, allied itself with the largest drug smuggler in the Caribbean, using his port facilities to ship arms to the Contra guerrillas fighting in Nicaragua and protecting him from any prosecution for five years. Simultaneously on the other side of the planet in Afghanistan, mujahedeen guerrillas imposed an opium tax on farmers to fund their fight against the Soviet occupation and, with the CIA’s tacit consent, operated heroin labs along the Pakistani border to supply international markets. By the mid-1980s, Afghanistan’s opium harvest had grown 10-fold and was providing 60% of the heroin for America’s addicts and as much as 90% in New York City.

Almost by accident, I had launched my academic career by doing something a bit different. Embedded within that study of drug trafficking was an analytical approach that would take me, almost unwittingly, on a lifelong exploration of U.S. global hegemony in its many manifestations, including diplomatic alliances, CIA interventions, developing military technology, recourse to torture, and global surveillance. Step by step, topic by topic, decade after decade, I would slowly accumulate sufficient understanding of the parts to try to assemble the whole. In writing my new book, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, I drew on this research to assess the overall character of U.S. global power and the forces that might contribute to its perpetuation or decline.

In the process, I slowly came to see a striking continuity and coherence in Washington’s century-long rise to global dominion. CIA torture techniques emerged at the start of the Cold War in the 1950s; much of its futuristic robotic aerospace technology had its first trial in the Vietnam War of the 1960s; and, above all, Washington’s reliance on surveillance first appeared in the colonial Philippines around 1900 and soon became an essential though essentially illegal tool for the FBI’s repression of domestic dissent that continued through the 1970s.    

Surveillance Today

In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, I dusted off that historical method, and used it to explore the origins and character of domestic surveillance inside the United States.

After occupying the Philippines in 1898, the U.S. Army, facing a difficult pacification campaign in a restive land, discovered the power of systematic surveillance to crush the resistance of the country’s political elite. Then, during World War I, the Army’s “father of military intelligence,” the dour General Ralph Van Deman, who had learned his trade in the Philippines, drew upon his years pacifying those islands to mobilize a legion of 1,700 soldiers and 350,000 citizen-vigilantes for an intense surveillance program against suspected enemy spies among German-Americans, including my own grandfather. In studying Military Intelligence files at the National Archives, I found “suspicious” letters purloined from my grandfather’s army locker.  In fact, his mother had been writing him in her native German about such subversive subjects as knitting him socks for guard duty.

In the 1950s, Hoover’s FBI agents tapped thousands of phones without warrants and kept suspected subversives under close surveillance, including my mother’s cousin Gerard Piel, an anti-nuclear activist and the publisher of Scientific American magazine. During the Vietnam War, the bureau expanded its activities with an amazing array of spiteful, often illegal, intrigues in a bid to cripple the antiwar movement with pervasive surveillance of the sort seen in my own FBI file.

Memory of the FBI’s illegal surveillance programs was largely washed away after the Vietnam War thanks to Congressional reforms that required judicial warrants for all government wiretaps. The terror attacks of September 2001, however, gave the National Security Agency the leeway to launch renewed surveillance on a previously unimaginable scale. Writing for TomDispatch in 2009, I observed that coercive methods first tested in the Middle East were being repatriated and might lay the groundwork for “a domestic surveillance state.”  Sophisticated biometric and cyber techniques forged in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq had made a “digital surveillance state a reality” and so were fundamentally changing the character of American democracy.

Four years later, Edward Snowden’s leak of secret NSA documents revealed that, after a century-long gestation period, a U.S. digital surveillance state had finally arrived. In the age of the Internet, the NSA could monitor tens of millions of private lives worldwide, including American ones, via a few hundred computerized probes into the global grid of fiber-optic cables.

And then, as if to remind me in the most personal way possible of our new reality, four years ago, I found myself the target yet again of an IRS audit, of TSA body searches at national airports, and -- as I discovered when the line went dead -- a tap on my office telephone at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Why? Maybe it was my current writing on sensitive topics like CIA torture and NSA surveillance, or maybe my name popped up from some old database of suspected subversives left over from the 1970s. Whatever the explanation, it was a reasonable reminder that, if my own family’s experience across three generations is in any way representative, state surveillance has been an integral part of American political life far longer than we might imagine.

At the cost of personal privacy, Washington’s worldwide web of surveillance has now become a weapon of exceptional power in a bid to extend U.S. global hegemony deeper into the twenty-first century. Yet it’s worth remembering that sooner or later what we do overseas always seems to come home to haunt us, just as the CIA and crew have haunted me this last half-century.  When we learn to love Big Brother, the world becomes a more, not less, dangerous place.

[lawattorney1-blog]

Why You Need a Divorce Lawyer

   I recently overheard someone in a bookstore telling a group of people why they should not have their own attorneys, how they could not trust lawyers, how lawyers would cheat them and how they should rely upon the company the speaker belonged to instead. That conversation got me thinking about why people facing separation and divorce need not just any lawyer, but a good divorce lawyer. Reason #1-What You need to know You need to know your rights, duties and responsibilities under the law. Only a lawyer who has been retained to represent your interests can advise you. How can you realistically discuss financial arrangements in separating and divorcing, if you don't know what your rights, duties and responsibilities are? Not knowing what your rights are can result in not getting your fair share of assets, your fair share of support or your fair share of time with your children. Not knowing what your duties and responsibilities are can result in your paying more than your fair share of assets or your fair share of support. Most attorneys offer a special reduced rate for consulting services to encourage people to get advice early and often. There is no reason to rely on backyard fence advice, when you can get real advice from a qualified experienced divorce lawyer for a reasonable fee. Furthermore, in my experience, the backyard fence advice is usually wrong. Remember that if what you hear is half true, it is still wrong. Reason #2-Backyard Advice My friend is divorced. Why can't I rely on my friend's experience and knowledge. Well, you could do that but what you need to realize is that unless your friend is a licensed attorney, he/she is not authorized to practice law. Your friend's knowledge will be limited to his/her particular experience. His/her experience with the law is limited to the facts of his/her case and the law as it was at the time. Things change. The law changes. Any change in the facts will change the outcome or advice. Furthermore, changes in the law will change the advice. Your friend simply lacks the knowledge and experience to give sound practical legal advice. Reason #3-Identifying Issues The sooner you get a lawyer, the sooner you will learn what you need to know to protect yourself (and your children and property interests). Sometimes people have no idea how to go about identifying the issues they need to discuss, even if the separation is an amicable one and the parties anticipate a "friendly divorce." A good, experienced divorce lawyer can assist you in identifying the issues you need to discuss with your spouse to achieve a comprehensive agreement and global settlement. Over the years there have been numerous times when we were able to point out to clients areas they had initially overlooked and issues which should be included in their settlement discussions, such as life insurance, health insurance, and children's educational needs. Reason #4-To Share or Not to Share? My spouse already has an attorney. Do I really need to get one too? Can't the same lawyer represent us both? The answer is no, not really. 30 years ago when I first began practicing law, it was strictly forbidden for a lawyer to represent both sides to a divorce, no matter how "friendly" it was. There are some limited circumstances in which dual representation might be allowed, provided there is full disclosure of potential conflicts of interest and a waiver of conflicts with informed consent by both parties. These situations are limited and in the event that unhappy differences or disputes should arise, the attorney must end the representation and both parties must seek new counsel. Frankly, we rarely if ever agree to dual representation. We represent our clients zealously within the bounds of the law and the conflicts in representing opposing sides are too apparent for us to agree to do so. Not only that, but if your spouse has a lawyer, that means that he/she has already sought legal advice and has some rudimentary knowledge of his/her rights, duties and responsibilities under the law. Someone once said knowledge is power. Would you rather be the one with the knowledge (and the power) or the one without knowledge? How trusting can you be of your spouse or his/her attorney in the circumstances? Remember that your spouse's attorney already represents your spouse. In our experience, spouses, especially those who tend to be controlling will think nothing of misrepresenting the law to gain advantage in the negotiation. Recently a client told me that her husband who remains in the marital home told her that she was now his "landlord" and therefore she could not re-enter the home without his consent and presence and that his lawyer said so. Needless to say, everything he told her was wrong. Her husband also told our client that they did not need to use lawyers and could reach an agreement on their own without lawyers. He also said that if she insisted on having her attorney review paperwork before she signed it that he would find something to disagree with on each draft to drive up her costs. Clearly he was trying to manipulate, intimidate and control his wife, who was wise to seek her own independent counsel from a knowledgeable, experienced divorce attorney. Reason #5-Do You Feel Lucky? Going to a court hearing in a pending divorce without a lawyer is like playing Russian Roulette. How lucky do you think you are? Would you perform surgery on yourself or would you seek out a qualified surgeon? Why do you think that you know enough to represent yourself in court? Do you know what your rights, duties and responsibilities are? The judge won't help you out if you don't know what you are doing. There are rules of evidence and rules of procedure that govern hearings. You need someone on your team that knows the rules of the game. You will need someone to prepare you for your testimony in court so that you don't put your feet in your mouth up to your hip bone. You will be bound by the things that come out of your mouth in court. Recently we spoke to a man who incurred spousal and child support obligations of $4000 per month. The court issued an order based on erroneous exhibits filed by his wife's attorney and based upon things he said in open court as to his income which were not accurate. A skilled trial attorney can get you to say things that you don't mean to say, especially if you have not been prepared for your testimony. Reason #6-Too Little, Too Late Going to see a lawyer after you have already signed papers or participated in depositions or hearings pro se (representing yourself) is like closing the barn door, after the cow got out. Just because you were not represented does not mean that you can get out of a bad decision or bad deal you may have made or get out of rulings the court made when you were unrepresented. The time to get advice is before you sign. The time to get advice is before you go to court. In fact, you should get advice as soon as you receive legal notice of a pending lawsuit against you. If you are reading this and you have already signed papers, you should still consult with a good experienced divorce attorney to have the papers explained to you and to review t he papers to see if there are any loopholes that may be used to renegotiate terms move favorably to you or to insist upon "clarification" of the agreement. The attorney can also explain the consequences of having signed the paperwork. If you have any queries about exactly where and how to use Free divorce consultation San Diego, you can call us at the web site. If you are reading this and you are in the midst of a divorce action and have been to depositions on your own, you should seek an immediate consultation with a good experienced divorce attorney to see if there is any legal basis to suppress the depositions. Be sure to take all of your documents with you to the consultation. We have seen situations where it was possible to reopen a case for a client because the depositions were taken too early. In such situations, the depositions were quashed by filing the appropriate papers under the rules of court. In your case it may be too late to do anything, but you should at least talk to a divorce attorney right away to be sure. Reason #7-Isn't a Lawyer a Lawyer? (A Rose by Any Other Name...) I know a lawyer who did the closing on our house. Can't I go to him/her for advice about separation and divorce? Yes, you could but there is a saying that if the blind lead the blind, they both fall in a ditch. Would you go to a podiatrist (foot doctor) if you had an eye infection? You could; after all, the podiatrist went to medical school and learned about the body, including the eyes. The questions are how much, if anything does he/she remember, is he/she current on the medical literature pertaining to the eye and infection, including the diagnosis and treatment of the eye? I have seen horrendous separation agreements prepared by lawyers who do not devote at least a significant portion of their practice to family law but were trying to accommodate a friend or relation in their time of need. Actually a lawyer should decline a case, if he/she does not believe that he/she has the knowledge and experience to handle it or that he/she is not willing to acquire the knowledge necessary to handle it. It takes a significant amount of time to keep up with all of the changes in the law that affect separation and divorce. Think about it. Every week somewhere there is a court, either federal or state making a decision that could affect your situation. Every week that the legislature is in session, whether Congress or the General Assembly, they make decisions that could affect your situation. An experienced divorce attorney should make it a point to review new cases and statutes looking for those that affect family law practice; all of the best family lawyers do. Reason #8-Prepaid Legal? If you have paid for this service, then certainly you can talk to one of the participating attorneys. But unless the attorney is an experienced divorce lawyer with a significant portion of his/her practice devoted to separation and divorce and related issues, you should give serious consideration to looking outside of your prepaid plan. Has the lawyer written any books or articles on separation, divorce or related issues that are published? I am not a participating attorney in a pre paid legal plan. The best divorce lawyers are not participants in "prepaid" legal. To my knowledge there are no fellows (members) of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers who participate in pre paid legal services plans. If you are reading this report and have personal knowledge of an attorney who belongs to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers and also belongs to a pre paid legal plan, please email us at valawtalk@justice.com to report the name of the attorney so that we can verify the information and update this report. Think about what is at stake; the custody and support of your children, and the division of assets you may have worked your entire married life to accumulate, including your home, pension, savings, military retirement and/or 401K. Do you really want to cut corners when it comes to your kids? Your home? Your pension? Your retirement? Reason #9-A Ship Needs a Navigator If you think of your legal case as a ship, the client is the captain of the ship and the client's attorney is the navigator. The navigator doesn't decide where to go, but he/she does map out the best course to arrive at the destination. Divorce is difficult, even "friendly" divorce is not easy. It can be an emotional rollercoaster. You need emotional, psychological and legal support. In choosing to separate and divorce, you will be faced with important decisions that will affect you, your spouse and your children not only now but in the foreseeable future. Passions can run hot during this difficult time and you need a clear head. You need a team of individuals including someone knowledgeable in separation and divorce law to help you see clearly and navigate the difficult and sometimes angry waters of separation and divorce. Not having a good divorce lawyer at the planning and separation stage leaves you without the sound advice and rational third party perspective you need to make decisions which can bind you for life. Not having a good divorce lawyer at the divorce stage leaves you without the knowledge, experience and advocacy of a good experienced divorce attorney. It leaves you at the mercy of your spouse and your spouse's attorney. Neither your spouse nor his/her attorney is there to show you mercy. You need someone to fight for you when you cannot fight for yourself. You need someone to help you understand what is gong on and how to act in the storm. You need someone who can help you to be pro-active and not simply re-active to steps that your spouse takes. You want a team to support you, a team which can and should include your pastor, rabbi or spiritual advisor, your CPA or tax advisor, extended family, friends and a good experienced divorce attorney. Reason #10-You Need an Advocate You are going through a traumatic experience. Divorce is one of the most difficult experiences in life, second only to the death of a spouse. You need someone who understands what is at stake and will advocate for your interests with not only knowledge and experience but passion and feeling. When you interview attorneys, find out why they practice family law and what motivates them in advocating for clients. What is it that makes them passionate advocates? I recently spoke with another trial attorney who does not generally handle divorce work. He usually handles criminal and traffic defense and civil suits for money damages; he told me that he was forced by the poor economy to take a contested divorce case. Divorce and family law are not his first choice of trial work. He is doing it now solely for the money. Is that the motivation you would want in your attorney? Or would you rather have a lawyer who has made a conscious decsion to focus on family law and uses his/her life experience such as knowing what it is like to be a child of divorce to relate to the circumstances of your case and to advocate for you with passion and conviction?  

[brokehorrorfan]

Best New Horror Movies on Netflix: Spring 2017

I know there's an overwhelming amount of horror movies to sift through on Netflix, so I've decided to take out some of the legwork by compiling a list of the season's best new genre titles on Netflix's instant streaming service.

Please feel free to leave a comment with any I may have missed and share your thoughts on any of the films you watch. You can also peruse past installments of Best New Horror Moves on Netflix for more suggestions.

1. It Follows

I assume most horror fans have already seen It Follows, as it was one of the most-talked-about genre films of 2015, but if you somehow missed it, stop reading this and watch it right now. A horror classic for a new generation, the plot revolves around a curse passed on through sex in which the recipient is followed by... something. Not only does it draw influence from Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street, the film also evokes everything I love about those classics: a strong female lead in Maika Monroe (The Guest), a dreamlike atmosphere, precise direction, stunning cinematography, a memorable synth score, a familiar suburban setting, and an unsettling, mysterious antagonist. Read my full review of the film here.

2. Under the Shadow

The first half of Under the Shadow works well as a compelling war drama, while the last act turns into an edge-of-your-seat supernatural chiller. The Persian-language film takes place in 1980s Iran while the Iraq war rages on. When her husband is drafted, Shideh (Narges Rashidi) is left to raise their young daughter on her own, living in a war zone under the constant threat of an attack. The daughter becomes convinced that evil djinn have taken her beloved doll and soon develops a fever that won't break. The stressed mother dismisses her stories until she experiences the hauntings herself. The film explores similar themes to The Babadook, in addition to sharing an appeal to both genre and arthouse/film festival audiences.

3. The Invitation

As raw as it is calculated, The Invitation is an understated thriller that brings to mind such films as Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining, and Let the Right One In. The captivating plot revolves around a group of friends reuniting at a lavish dinner party, but one man (Logan Marshall-Green, Prometheus) becomes increasingly paranoid of ulterior motives. Director Karyn Kusama (Jennifer's Body, Aeon Flux) strings viewers along with just enough information to maintain engagement without sacrificing ambiguity, anchored by brilliant performances from the ensemble cast. The deliberate, slow pace creates a pervading sense of dread, which culminates in a chilling finale worthy of the build up. Read my full review of the film here.

4. Train to Busan

Think you’re done with zombie movies? Think again. In addition to smashing records in its home country of South Korea, Train to Busian is easily accessible to a global audience. Like Snowpiercer meets 28 Days Later, the plot involves a ferocious zombie outbreak aboard a train. It's on par with a Hollywood blockbuster movie in terms of spectacle, performance, and entertainment value. It's also surprisingly heartfelt, thanks to characters for whom the viewer cares - including a sweet father-daughter relationship and one of the best supporting characters in recent memory. Read my full review of the film here.

5. Cheap Thrills

Cheap Thrills is a few years old now, but if it went under your radar, you need to check it out. A quick glance at the trailer or synopsis may leave you questioning how the plot - in which two desperate men perform increasingly twisted dares for money - could sustain itself for 88 minutes. Against all odds, you'll watch in suspense, wondering what they'll do next and questioning if you'd do the same with money being waved in front of you. Ethan Embry (Can't Hardly Wait) completely reinvents himself in the role of the scumbag, while Pat Healy (Starry Eyes) earns the audience's sympathy despite being just as guilty. David Koechner (Anchorman) plays the wealthy man handing over the money, with Sara Paxton (The Last House on the Left) as his arm candy.

6. Trash Fire

Trash Fire certainly isn't for everyone, but if you've enjoyed writer-director Richard Bates Jr.'s previous output - Excision and Suburban Gothic - you should have a pretty good grasp on what to expect from his latest. In an attempt to mend their toxic relationship, arrogant pick Owen (Adrian Grenier, Entourage) and his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Isabel (Angela Trimbur, The Final Girls), visit his estranged sister (AnnaLynne McCord, 90210), who was horribly burned in a fire that killed his parents. The cast also includes Fionnula Flanagan (The Others), Matthew Gray Gubler (Criminal Minds), Ezra Buzzington (The Hills Have Eyes), and Ray Santiago (Ash vs Evil Dead). The genre bender begins as a quirky, black comedy, then transforms into a dark and disturbing drama with horror undertones. Both halves are uncomfortable in their own way.

7. Evolution

Evolution is definitely tailored for the foreign/arthouse crowd, as French director Lucile Hadzihalilovic explores the horrors of puberty in an esoteric manner. It's immediately striking, from the breathtaking, Planet Earth-esque underwater photography that opens the film, and remains visually interesting even when the plot goes off the deep end. The story centers on a young boy who discovers a dead body in the ocean, after which he's sent to a mysterious hospital where he and other boys are subjected to bizarre experiments. The finale is a memorable one.

8. The Similars

The Similars (known in its native Spanish as Los Parecidos) is an unabashed love letter to The Twilight Zone and similar science fiction thrillers from the 1960s, right down to the Rod Serling-style voiceovers that bookend the story. The film takes place in 1968 Mexico, adopting a period-appropriate aesthetic with desaturated color, nearly to the point of being black and white, stark film noir-esque lighting, and fake film grain. The events occur in a bus station during a heavy rainstorm, where the handful of stranded patrons face a bizarre phenomenon that I won't give away here. It goes a little off the rails toward the end, but the premise is so riveting you won't be able to take your eyes off the screen.

9. Tales of Halloween

Tales of Halloween is a horror anthology made up of 10 segments from directors such as Neil Marshall (The Descent), Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II-IV), Lucky McKee (May), Paul Solet (Grace), and Mike Mendez (Big Ass Spider), among others. The cast is equally impressive; you'll recognize nearly every face as a genre veteran, indie favorite, or master of horror filmmaker, including Barry Bostwick (The Rocky Horror Picture Show), Lin Shaye (Insidious), Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator), and Adrienne Barbeau (The Fog), to name a few. There's really only so much you can do with a Halloween-night setting in 10 minutes, so the film becomes monotonous at times, but there's still a lot of fun to be had. It won't replace Trick 'r Treat as the go-to Halloween anthology, but Tales of Halloween makes for a great addition to your seasonal viewing.

10. Antibirth

Antibirth is further proof (as if we needed it) that Canadians love David Cronenberg's body horror fare. The first half of the film is, frankly, a chore to slog through, but once the prolonged set-up is out of the way, we're rewarded with nightmarish visions of blood, pus, and hideous deformities. It's worth the time commitment for the insane final 10 minutes, which make this movie a fun one to watch with a group of friends. Natasha Lyonne (Orange Is the New Black) stars as an unfortunate girl who shows signs of being pregnant - including a bulbous belly - without having had sex. Whatever is inside her infects both her body and mind. It's a wholly unglamorous role, but Lyonne owns it. Chloë Sevigny (American Horror Story), Meg Tilly (Body Snatchers), and Mark Webber (Green Room) make up the supporting cast.

11. Death Race 2050

It's hard to warrant a purchase for Death Race 2050, when the original Death Race 2000 does the same thing far more successfully, but a Netflix viewing is the perfect way to spend a mindless weekend afternoon. Roger Corman returns to produce a new reboot of the 1975 cult classic. Like many of his productions, it's not a particularly good movie, but it’s an amusing one. It serves as a timely satire under our current administration, with Malcolm McDowell (Halloween) as the Chairman of the United Corporations of America. He hosts a three-day, cross-country race that plays out like NASCAR meets The Hunger Games with a hint of Looney Tunes. Manu Bennett (The Hobbit) assumes the role of half-man/half-machine reigning champion Frankenstein. Read my full review of the film here.

BONUS: American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson

I think Ryan Murphy is brilliant with casting and marketing, but I've always found his storytelling on American Horror Story to be heavily flawed. By basing his latest anthology effort, American Crime Story, on true events, he's able to focus on his strengths without as much concern for sticking the landing. The People v. O.J. Simpson is well worth the 8+ hour commitment; it's engaging even if you lived through the infamous case, doubly so if you don't know all the details. The cast is populated by notable names like John Travolta, Cuba Gooding Jr., David Schwimmer, and Nathan Lane, but it's Sarah Paulson and Sterling K. Brown who steal the show as the defense attorneys.

[marioswart-blog]

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[ladystylestores]

EU May Ban Travel from US as it Reopens Borders, Citing Coronavirus Failures

BRUSSELS — European Union countries rushing to revive their economies and reopen their borders after months of coronavirus restrictions are prepared to block Americans from entering because the United States has failed to control the scourge, according to draft lists of acceptable travelers seen by The New York Times.

That prospect, which would lump American visitors in with Russians and Brazilians as unwelcome, is a stinging blow to American prestige in the world and a repudiation of President Trump’s handling of the virus in the United States, which has more than 2.3 million cases and upward of 120,000 deaths, more than any other country.

European nations are currently haggling over two potential lists of acceptable visitors based on how countries are faring with the coronavirus pandemic. Both include China, as well as developing nations like Uganda, Cuba and Vietnam.

Travelers from the United States and the rest of the world have been excluded from visiting the European Union — with few exceptions mostly for repatriations or “essential travel” —- since mid-March. But a final decision on reopening the borders is expected early next week, before the bloc reopens on July 1.

A prohibition of Americans by Brussels partly reflects the shifting pattern of the pandemic. In March, when Europe was the epicenter, Mr. Trump infuriated European leaders when he banned citizens from most European Union countries from traveling to America. Mr. Trump justified the move as necessary to protect the United States, which at the time had roughly 1,100 coronavirus cases and 38 deaths.

In late May and early June, Mr. Trump said Europe was “making progress” and hinted that some restrictions would be lifted soon, but nothing has happened since then. Today, Europe has largely curbed the outbreak, even as the United States, the worst-afflicted, has seen more infection surges just in the past week.

Prohibiting American travelers from entering the European Union would have significant economic, cultural and geopolitical ramifications. Millions of American tourists visit Europe every summer. Business travel is common, given the huge economic ties between the United States and the E.U.

The draft lists were shared with the Times by an official involved in the talks and confirmed by another official involved in the talks. Two additional European Union officials confirmed the content of the lists as well the details of the negotiations to shape and finalize them. All of the officials gave the information on condition of anonymity because the issue is politically delicate.

The forging of a common list of outsiders who can enter the bloc is part of an effort by the European Union to fully reopen internal borders among its 27 member states. Free travel and trade among members is a core principle of the bloc — one that has been badly disrupted during the pandemic.

Since the outbreak, the bloc has succumbed to piecemeal national policies that have resulted in an incoherent patchwork of open and closed borders.

Some internal borders have practically remained closed while others have opened. Some member states that desperately need tourists have rushed ahead to accept non-E.U. visitors and pledged to test them on arrival. Others have tried to create closed travel zones between certain countries, called “bubbles” or “corridors.”

Putting these safe lists together highlights the fraught, messy task of removing pandemic-related measures and unifying the bloc’s approach. But the imperatives of restoring the internal harmony of the E.U. and slowly opening up to the world are paramount, even if it threatens rifts with close allies including the United States, which appears bound to be excluded, at least initially.

President Trump, as well as his Russian and Brazilian counterparts, Vladimir V. Putin and Jair Bolsonaro, has followed what critics call a comparable path in their pandemic response that leaves all three countries in a similarly bad spot: they were dismissive at the outset of the crisis, slow to respond to scientific advice and saw a boom of domestic cases as other parts of the world, notably in Europe and Asia, were slowly managing to get their outbreaks under control.

Countries on the E.U. draft lists have been selected as safe based on a combination of epidemiological criteria. The benchmark is the E.U. average number of new infections — over the past 14 days — per 100,000 people, which is currently 16 for the bloc. The comparable number for the United States is 107, while Brazil’s is 190 and Russia’s is 80, according to a Times database.

Once diplomats agree on a final list, it will be presented as a recommendation early next week before July 1. The E.U. can’t force members to adopt it, but European officials warn that failure of any of the 27 members to stick to it could lead to the reintroduction of borders within the bloc.

The reason this exercise is additionally complex for Europe is that, if internal borders are open but member states don’t honor the same rules, visitors from nonapproved nations could land in one European country, and then jump onward to other E.U. nations undetected.

European officials said the list would be revised every two weeks to reflect new realities around the world as nations see the virus ebb and flow.

The process of agreeing on it has been challenging, with diplomats from all European member states hunkering down for multiple hourslong meetings for the past few weeks.

As of Tuesday, the officials and diplomats were poring over two versions of the safe list under debate, and were scheduled to meet again on Wednesday to continue sparring over the details.

One list contains 47 countries and includes only those nations with an infection rate lower than the E.U. average. The other longer list has 54 countries and also includes those nations with slightly worse case rates than the E.U. average, going up to 20 new cases per 100,000 people.

The existing restrictions on nonessential travel to all 27 member states plus Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein were introduced on March 16 and extended twice until July 1, in a bid to contain the virus as the continent entered a three-month long confinement.

“Discussions are happening very intensively,” to reach consensus in time for July 1, said Adalbert Jahnz, a spokesman for the European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch. He called the process “frankly, a full-time job.”

Updated June 22, 2020

Is it harder to exercise while wearing a mask?

A commentary published this month on the website of the British Journal of Sports Medicine points out that covering your face during exercise “comes with issues of potential breathing restriction and discomfort” and requires “balancing benefits versus possible adverse events.” Masks do alter exercise, says Cedric X. Bryant, the president and chief science officer of the American Council on Exercise, a nonprofit organization that funds exercise research and certifies fitness professionals. “In my personal experience,” he says, “heart rates are higher at the same relative intensity when you wear a mask.” Some people also could experience lightheadedness during familiar workouts while masked, says Len Kravitz, a professor of exercise science at the University of New Mexico.

I’ve heard about a treatment called dexamethasone. Does it work?

The steroid, dexamethasone, is the first treatment shown to reduce mortality in severely ill patients, according to scientists in Britain. The drug appears to reduce inflammation caused by the immune system, protecting the tissues. In the study, dexamethasone reduced deaths of patients on ventilators by one-third, and deaths of patients on oxygen by one-fifth.

What is pandemic paid leave?

The coronavirus emergency relief package gives many American workers paid leave if they need to take time off because of the virus. It gives qualified workers two weeks of paid sick leave if they are ill, quarantined or seeking diagnosis or preventive care for coronavirus, or if they are caring for sick family members. It gives 12 weeks of paid leave to people caring for children whose schools are closed or whose child care provider is unavailable because of the coronavirus. It is the first time the United States has had widespread federally mandated paid leave, and includes people who don’t typically get such benefits, like part-time and gig economy workers. But the measure excludes at least half of private-sector workers, including those at the country’s largest employers, and gives small employers significant leeway to deny leave.

Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?

So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was “very rare,” but she later walked back that statement.

What’s the risk of catching coronavirus from a surface?

Touching contaminated objects and then infecting ourselves with the germs is not typically how the virus spreads. But it can happen. A number of studies of flu, rhinovirus, coronavirus and other microbes have shown that respiratory illnesses, including the new coronavirus, can spread by touching contaminated surfaces, particularly in places like day care centers, offices and hospitals. But a long chain of events has to happen for the disease to spread that way. The best way to protect yourself from coronavirus — whether it’s surface transmission or close human contact — is still social distancing, washing your hands, not touching your face and wearing masks.

How does blood type influence coronavirus?

A study by European scientists is the first to document a strong statistical link between genetic variations and Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Having Type A blood was linked to a 50 percent increase in the likelihood that a patient would need to get oxygen or to go on a ventilator, according to the new study.

How many people have lost their jobs due to coronavirus in the U.S.?

The unemployment rate fell to 13.3 percent in May, the Labor Department said on June 5, an unexpected improvement in the nation’s job market as hiring rebounded faster than economists expected. Economists had forecast the unemployment rate to increase to as much as 20 percent, after it hit 14.7 percent in April, which was the highest since the government began keeping official statistics after World War II. But the unemployment rate dipped instead, with employers adding 2.5 million jobs, after more than 20 million jobs were lost in April.

My state is reopening. Is it safe to go out?

States are reopening bit by bit. This means that more public spaces are available for use and more and more businesses are being allowed to open again. The federal government is largely leaving the decision up to states, and some state leaders are leaving the decision up to local authorities. Even if you aren’t being told to stay at home, it’s still a good idea to limit trips outside and your interaction with other people.

What are the symptoms of coronavirus?

Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.

How can I protect myself while flying?

If air travel is unavoidable, there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. Most important: Wash your hands often, and stop touching your face. If possible, choose a window seat. A study from Emory University found that during flu season, the safest place to sit on a plane is by a window, as people sitting in window seats had less contact with potentially sick people. Disinfect hard surfaces. When you get to your seat and your hands are clean, use disinfecting wipes to clean the hard surfaces at your seat like the head and arm rest, the seatbelt buckle, the remote, screen, seat back pocket and the tray table. If the seat is hard and nonporous or leather or pleather, you can wipe that down, too. (Using wipes on upholstered seats could lead to a wet seat and spreading of germs rather than killing them.)

What should I do if I feel sick?

If you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested, how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially infecting or exposing others.

The E.U. agency for infectious diseases, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, warned negotiators that the case numbers were so dependent on the level of truthfulness and testing in each country, that it was hard to vouch for them, officials taking part in the talks said.

China, for example, has been accused of withholding information and manipulating the numbers of infections released to the public. In parts of the developing world, case numbers are very low, but it’s hard to determine whether they paint an accurate picture given limited testing.

And in the United States, comments made by President Trump at a rally in Tulsa over the weekend highlighted how easy it is to manipulate a country’s case numbers, as he suggested that domestic testing was too broad.

“When you do testing to that extent, you’re gonna find more people you’re gonna find more cases. So I said to my people slow the testing down, please,” Mr. Trump told supporters.

European embassies around the world could be enlisted to help verify or opine on the data provided that would inform the final list, negotiators said, another indication that the list could end up being quite short if European diplomats at embassies said reported numbers were unreliable.

Many European Union countries are desperate to reopen their borders to visitors from outside the region to salvage tourism and boost airlines’ revenue while keeping their own borders open to each other. Some have already started accepting visitors from outside the bloc.

At the other extreme, a few European nations including Denmark are not prepared to allow any external visitors from non-E.U. countries, and are likely to continue with this policy after July 1.

Germany, France and many other E.U. nations want non-European travelers to be allowed, but are also worried about individual countries tweaking the safe list or admitting travelers from excluded countries, officials said.

Monika Pronczuk contributed reporting from Brussels, and Albert Sun from New York.

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The mystery of a 1918 veteran and the flu pandemic

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Beds with patients in an emergency hospital in Camp Funston, Kansas, during the influenza epidemic around 1918. National Museum of Health and Medicine., CC BY

Vaccination is underway for the 2017-2018 seasonal flu, and next year will mark the 100-year anniversary of the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed roughly 40 million people. It is an opportune time to consider the possibility of pandemics – infections that go global and affect many people – and the importance of measures aimed at curbing them.

The 1918 pandemic was unusual in that it killed many healthy 20- to 40-year-olds, including millions of World War I soldiers. In contrast, people who die of the flu are usually under five years old or over 75.

The factors underlying the virulence of the 1918 flu are still unclear. Modern-day scientists sequenced the DNA of the 1918 virus from lung samples preserved from victims. However, this did not solve the mystery of why so many healthy young adults were killed.

I started investigating what happened to a young man who immigrated to the U.S. and was lost during World War I. Uncovering his story also brought me up to speed on hypotheses about why the immune systems of young adults in 1918 did not protect them from the flu.

The 1918 flu and World War I

Certificates picturing the goddess Columbia as a personification of the U.S. were awarded to men and women who died in service during World War I. One such certificate surfaced many decades later. This one honored Adolfo Sartini and was found by grandnephews who had never known him: Thomas, Richard and Robert Sartini.

The certificate was a message from the past. It called out to me, as I had just received the credential of certified genealogist and had spent most of my career as a scientist tracing a gene that regulates immune cells. What had happened to Adolfo?

A bit of sleuthing identified Adolfo’s ship listing, which showed that he was born in 1889 in Italy and immigrated to Boston in 1913. His draft card revealed that he worked at a country club in the Boston suburb of Newton. To learn more, Robert Sartini bought a 1930 book entitled “Newton War Memorial” on eBay. The book provided clues: Adolfo was drafted and ordered to report to Camp Devens, 35 miles from Boston, in March of 1918. He was later transferred to an engineer training regiment.

To follow up, I posted a query on the “U.S. Militaria Forum.” Here, military history enthusiasts explained that the Army Corps of Engineers had trained men at Camp A. A. Humphreys in Virginia. Perhaps Adolfo had gone to this camp?

While a mild flu circulated during the spring of 1918, the deadly strain appeared on U.S. soil on Tuesday, Aug. 27, when three Navy dockworkers at Commonwealth Pier in Boston fell ill. Within 48 hours, dozens more men were infected. Ten days later, the flu was decimating Camp Devens. A renowned pathologist from Johns Hopkins, William Welch, was brought in. He realized that “this must be some new kind of infection or plague.” Viruses, minuscule agents that can pass through fine filters, were poorly understood.

With men mobilizing for World War I, the flu spread to military installations throughout the U.S. and to the general population. It hit Camp Humphreys in mid-September and killed more than 400 men there over the next month. This included Adolfo Sartini, age 29½. Adolfo’s body was brought back to Boston.

His grave is marked by a sculpture of the lower half of a toppled column, epitomizing his premature death.

The legacy of victims of the 1918 flu

The quest to understand the 1918 flu fueled many scientific advances, including the discovery of the influenza virus. However, the virus itself did not cause most of the deaths. Instead, a fraction of individuals infected by the virus were susceptible to pneumonia due to secondary infection by bacteria. In an era before antibiotics, pneumonia could be fatal.

Recent analyses revealed that deaths in 1918 were highest among individuals born in the years around 1889, like Adolfo. An earlier flu pandemic emerged then, and involved a virus that was likely of a different subtype than the 1918 strain. These analyses engendered a novel hypothesis, discussed below, about the susceptibility of healthy young adults in 1918.

Exposure to an influenza virus at a young age increases resistance to a subsequent infection with the same or a similar virus. On the flip side, a person who is a child around the time of a pandemic may not be resistant to other, dissimilar viruses. Flu viruses fall into groups that are related evolutionarily. The virus that circulated when Adolfo was a baby was likely in what is called “Group 2,” whereas the 1918 virus was in “Group 1.” Adolfo would therefore not be expected to have a good ability to respond to this “Group 1” virus. In fact, exposure to the “Group 2” virus as a young child may have resulted in a dysfunctional response to the “Group 1” virus in 1918, exacerbating his condition.

Support for this hypothesis was seen with the emergence of the Hong Kong flu virus in 1968. It was in “Group 2” and had severe effects on people who had been children around the time of the 1918 “Group 1” flu.

To 2018 and beyond

What causes a common recurring illness to convert to a pandemic that is massively lethal to healthy individuals? Could it happen again? Until the reason for the death of young adults in 1918 is better understood, a similar scenario could reoccur. Experts fear that a new pandemic, of influenza or another infectious agent, could kill millions. Bill Gates is leading the funding effort to prevent this.

Flu vaccines are generated each year by monitoring the strains circulating months before flu season. A time lag of months allows for vaccine production. Unfortunately, because the influenza virus mutates rapidly, the lag also allows for the appearance of virus variants that are poorly targeted by the vaccine. In addition, flu pandemics often arise upon virus gene reassortment. This involves the joining together of genetic material from different viruses, which can occur suddenly and unpredictably.

An influenza virus is currently killing chickens in Asia, and has recently killed humans who had contact with chickens. This virus is of a subtype that has not been known to cause pandemics. It has not yet demonstrated the ability to be transmitted from person to person. However, whether this ability will arise during ongoing virus evolution cannot be predicted.

The chicken virus is in “Group 2.” Therefore, if it went pandemic, people who were children around the time of the 1968 “Group 2” Hong Kong flu might have some protection. I was born much earlier, and “Group 1” viruses were circulating when I was a child. If the next pandemic virus is in “Group 2,” I would probably not be resistant.

It’s early days for understanding how prior exposure affects flu susceptibility, especially for people born in the last three to four decades. Since 1977, viruses of both “Group 1” and “Group 2” have been in circulation. People born since then probably developed resistance to one or the other based on their initial virus exposures. This is good news for the near future since, if either a “Group 1” or a “Group 2” virus develops pandemic potential, some people should be protected. At the same time, if you are under 40 and another pandemic is identified, more information would be needed to hazard a guess as to whether you might be susceptible or resistant.

Ruth Craig does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Why You Need a Divorce Lawyer

Why You Need a Divorce Lawyer

Not long ago i overheard someone inside a bookstore telling someone why they ought to not have access to their own attorneys, that they couldn't trust lawyers, how lawyers would cheat them and how they should rely upon the organization the speaker belonged to instead. the law office of nicholas s. Hamm  That conversation got me thinking about why people facing breakup do not need to just any lawyer, but a good lawyer.

Reason #1-What You should know

You need to know your rights, duties and responsibilities under the law. Only a lawyer that has been retained to represent your interests will tell you. How can you realistically discuss financial arrangements in separating and divorcing, if you don't know very well what your rights, duties and responsibilities are? Not understanding what your rights are can result in not getting your great number of assets, your fair share of support or perhaps your fair share of energy together with your children. Not understanding what your duties and responsibilities are can result in your paying a lot more than your great number of assets or perhaps your great number of support. Most attorneys give you a special low cost for consulting services to inspire people to get advice early and often. There is no reason to rely on backyard fence advice, available to get real advice from a qualified experienced lawyer for a reasonable fee. Furthermore, in my experience, the backyard fence advice is normally wrong. Keep in mind that if that which you hear is half true, it's still wrong.

Reason #2-Backyard Advice

My pal is divorced. Why can't I count on my friend's experience and knowledge. Well, you can do that but what you have to realize is that unless your friend is really a licensed attorney, he/she is not authorized to practice law. Your friend's knowledge will probably be limited by his/her particular experience. His/her exposure to regulations is restricted for the facts of his/her case and also the law because it what food was in time. Things change. The law changes. Any alteration of the reality can change the result or advice. Furthermore, modifications in what the law states will change the advice. Your friend simply lacks the knowledge and experience to offer sound practical legal advice.

Reason #3-Identifying Issues

The sooner you have a lawyer, the earlier you will learn what you need to know to guard yourself (as well as your children and property interests). Sometimes individuals have no clue how to pull off identifying the issues they should discuss, whether or not the separation is definitely an amicable one as well as the parties anticipate a "friendly divorce." A great, experienced divorce attorney can help you in identifying the difficulties you have to check with your spouse to achieve an extensive agreement and global settlement. Over the years there were numerous occasions when i was able to advise clients areas they had initially overlooked and issues which should be contained in their settlement discussions, including life insurance coverage, health insurance, and children's educational needs.

Reason #4-To Share or Not to talk about?

My partner already comes with an attorney. Should i really need to get one too? Can't the identical lawyer represent us both? The reply is no, not necessarily. 30 years ago initially when i first began practicing law, it absolutely was strictly forbidden to get a lawyer to represent either side with a divorce, no matter how "friendly" it was. There are some limited circumstances in which dual representation may be allowed, provided there is certainly full disclosure of potential conflicts of curiosity along with a waiver of conflicts with informed consent by both parties. These situations are limited as well as in the big event that unhappy differences or disputes should arise, the attorney must end the representation and each party must seek new counsel. Frankly, we rarely when accept dual representation. We represent our clients zealously inside bounds with the law and also the conflicts in representing opposing sides are far too apparent for people to accept do this. Not only this, but if your spouse includes a lawyer, that means that he/she has recently sought legal counsel and has some elementary knowledge of his/her rights, duties and responsibilities beneath the law.

Someone once said knowledge is power. Can you prefer the one using the knowledge (and also the power) or perhaps the one without knowledge? How trusting can you constitute your spouse or his/her attorney in the circumstances? Understand that your spouse's attorney already represents your husband or wife. Within our experience, spouses, specially those who are usually controlling will think nothing of misrepresenting regulations to get advantage within the negotiation. Recently a client explained that her husband who remains inside the marital home shared with her she was now his "landlord" and for that reason she couldn't re-enter the home without his consent and presence understanding that his lawyer said so. Naturally, everything he told her was wrong. Her husband also told our client which they failed to want to use lawyers and could reach a contract by themselves without lawyers. Next he said when she insisted on having her attorney review paperwork before she signed it which he would find something to disagree with on every draft to drive up her costs. Clearly he was trying to manipulate, intimidate and control his wife, who had been a good idea to seek her own independent counsel from a knowledgeable, experienced lawyer.

Reason #5-Do You are feeling Lucky?

Visiting a court hearing in the pending divorce with out a lawyer is similar to playing Russian Roulette. How lucky do you think you're? Could you perform surgery on yourself or can you seek out a professional surgeon? Why do you believe you understand enough to represent yourself in court? Do you know what your rights, duties and responsibilities are? The judge can't help you out of trouble if you do not know very well what you are doing. You can find rules of evidence and rules of procedure that govern hearings. You will need someone on your own team that knows the rules from the game. You will need a person to get you prepared for your testimony in the court so you don't put your feet inside your mouth as much as your hip bone. You will be bound by the things that emerge from orally in the courtroom. Recently we spoke with a man who incurred spousal and your kids obligations of $4000 each month. The court issued an order based on erroneous exhibits filed by his wife's attorney and based upon things he said in open court regarding his income which are not accurate. An experienced trial attorney provide to express items that you don't mean to express, specifically if you have not been ready for your testimony.

Reason #6-Too Little, Past too far

Likely to see a lawyer after you have already signed papers or took part in depositions or hearings pro se (representing yourself) is like closing the barn door, following the cow got out. Because you weren't represented does not mean that exist out of a bad decision or bad deal you may have made or get out of rulings legal court made whenever you were unrepresented. The time to acquire advice is before signing. The time to obtain advice is before you go to court. In reality, you should get advice once you receive legal notice of the pending lawsuit against you.

In case you are reading this and you have already signed papers, you should still consult with a good experienced divorce attorney to achieve the papers told you and also to analyze t he papers to see if there are any loopholes which may be used to renegotiate terms move favorably to you or insist upon "clarification" from the agreement. The attorney also can explain the effects of experiencing signed the paperwork.

In case you are scanning this and you're simply in the midst of a divorce action and possess visited depositions on your own, you need to seek an instantaneous consultation with a decent experienced divorce attorney to ascertain if there's any legal basis to suppress the depositions. Be sure to take all of your documents with you for the consultation. We percieve situations where it had been easy to reopen an incident for a client as the depositions were taken too soon. In such situations, the depositions were quashed by filing the appropriate papers under the rules of court. In your case it may be far too late to accomplish anything, however you should no less than speak with a divorce attorney immediately to be sure.

Reason #7-Isn't a Lawyer an attorney? (A Rose by Any Other Name...)

I understand a lawyer who did the closing on the house. Can't I am going to him/her for advice about separation and divorce? Yes, you might there is however a saying that when the blind lead the blind, both of them fall in the ditch. Would you visit a podiatrist (foot doctor) if you have an eye fixed infection? You could; all things considered, the podiatrist went to med school and learned about the body, including the eyes. The questions are simply how much, contrary does he/she remember, is he/she current on the medical literature related to the eye and infection, like the treatment and diagnosis of the eye? I've come across horrendous separation agreements made by lawyers who don't devote no less than a good portion of the practice to family law but were wanting to accommodate a pal or relation within their time of need. Really a lawyer should decline an incident, if he/she does not feel that he/she gets the experience and knowledge to take care of it or that he/she isn't willing to acquire the knowledge necessary to handle it.

It requires lots of time for you to keep up with every one of the modifications in the law affecting breakup. the law office of nicholas s. Hamm  Think about it. Each week somewhere there's a court, either federal or state making a choice that may affect your position. Each week that the legislature is within session, whether Congress or perhaps the General Assembly, they've created decisions that could affect your circumstances. An experienced divorce attorney should make it a place to analyze new cases and statutes searching for the ones that affect family law practice; all of the best family lawyers do.