#i said western world because these are main issues here while other regions have different pressing issues

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

i deeply hope the western world will look back in a few decades and shake our head in horror about the current state of things. the normalisation of consuming hardcore porn. the legalisation and trivialisation of prostitution. the transitioning of mentally ill people. the grooming of young women into onlyfans. surrogacy. the continuing devaluation of female labour, of labour in the health, education and social sector. the normalisation of beauty surgery, the distortion of female faces and bodies with extreme conturing and fillers. the attack on womens rights by claiming there is no such thing as a woman. letting people drown in the ocean, pushing people back to countries where they will be tortured and imprisoned. the commodification of everything including sexuality. technological progress that serves corporate interest instead of the common good. the systemic exploitation of people from the global south. im trying not to give up hope but its hard.

[evanescentjasmine]

I’m going to talk about a little pet peeve of mine with regard to portrayal of poc in fic, TMA specifically since that’s what I mostly read and write for. 

I suppose I should first start by saying that, of course, poc are not a monolith, and I’m certain there are other poc who have many different views on this issue. And also this post is in no way meant to demonise, shame, or otherwise discourage people from writing poc in fic if they’re doing something differently. This is just a thing I’ve been noodling on for a while and have had several interesting conversations with friends about, and now that I think I’ve figured out why I have this pet peeve, I figured I’d gather my thoughts into a post.

As a result of the fact we have no canonical racial, ethnic, or religious backgrounds for our main TMA cast, we’ve ended up with many diverse headcanons, and it’s absolutely lovely to see. I’m all for more diversity and I’m always delighted to see people’s headcanons. 

However, what often happens is I’ll be reading a fic and plodding along in a character’s PoV and get mention of their skin colour. And nothing else. I find this, personally, extremely jarring. In a short one-shot it makes sense, because you’re usually touching on one scenario and then dipping out. Likewise if the fic is in a different setting, is cracky, or is told from someone else’s PoV, that’s all fine. But if I’m reading a serious long-fic close in the poc’s head and...nothing? That’s just bizarre to me.

Your heritage, culture, religion, and background, all of those affect how you view the world, and how the world views you in return. How people treat you, how you carry yourself, what you’re conscious of, all of that shifts. And the weird thing is that many writers are aware of this when it comes to characters being ace or trans or neurodivergent—and I’m genuinely pleased by that, don’t get me wrong. Nothing has made my ace self happier than the casual aceness in TMA fics that often resonates so well with my experience. But just as gender, orientation, and neurodivergence change how a character interacts with their world, so do race, ethnicity, and religion. 

As a child, I spent a couple of years in England while my mother was getting her degree. Though I started using Arabic less and less, my mother still spoke to me almost exclusively in Arabic at home. We still ate romy cheese and molokhia and the right kind of rice, though we missed out on other things. She managed to get an Egyptian channel on TV somehow, which means I still grew up with different cultural touchstones and make pop-culture references that I can’t share with my non-Arabic-speaking friends. She also became friends with just about every Egyptian in her university, so for those years I had a bevy of unrelated Uncles and Aunties from cities all over Egypt, banding together to go on outings or celebrate our holidays.

As an adult who sometimes travels abroad solo, and as a fair-skinned Arab who’s fluent in English, usually in a Western country the most I’ll get is puzzled people trying to parse my accent and convinced someone in my family came from somewhere. When they hear my name, though, that shifts. I get things like surprise, passive-aggressive digs at my home region, weird questions, insistence I don’t look Egyptian (which, what does that even mean?) or the ever-popular, ever-irritating: Oh, your English is so good!

At airports, with my Egyptian passport, it’s less benign. I am very commonly taken aside for extra security, all of which I expect and am prepared for, and which always confuses foreign friends who insisted beforehand that surely they wouldn’t pull me aside. Unspoken is the fact I, y’know, don’t look like what they imagine a terrorist would. But I’m Arab and that’s how it goes, despite my, er, more “Western” leaning presentation. 

This would be an entirely different story if I were hijabi, or had darker skin, or a more pronounced accent. I am aware I’m absolutely awash with privilege. Likewise, it would be different if I had a non-Arab name and passport. 

So it’s slightly baffling to me as to why a Jon who is Pakistani or Indian or Arab and/or Black British would go through life the exact same way a white British character would. 

Now, I understand that race and ethnicity can be very fraught, and that many writers don’t want to step on toes or get things wrong or feel it isn’t their place to explore these things, and certainly I don’t think it’s a person’s place to explore The Struggles of X Background unless they also share said background. I’m not saying a fic should portray racism and microaggressions either (and if they do, please take care and tag them appropriately), but that past experiences of them would affect a character. A fic doesn’t have to be about the Arab Experience With Racism (™) to mention that, say, an Arab Jon headed to the airport in S3 for his world tour would have been very conscious to be as put together as he could, given the circumstances, and have all his things in order. 

And there’s so much more to us besides. What stories did your character grow up with? What language was spoken at home? Do they also speak it? If not, how do they feel about that? What are their comfort foods? Their family traditions? The things they do without thinking? The obscure pop-culture opinions they can’t even begin to explain? (Ask me about the crossover between Egyptian political comedy and cosmic horror sometime…)

I’m not saying you’ll always get it right. Hell, I’m not saying I always get it right either. I’m sure someone can read one of my fics and be like, “nope, this isn’t true to me!” And that’s okay. The important thing, for me, is trying.

Because here’s the thing. 

I want you to imagine reading a fic where I, a born and raised Egyptian, wrote white characters in, say, a suburb in the US as though they shared my personal experiences. It’s a multi-generational household, people of the same gender greet with a kiss on each cheek, lunch is the main meal, adults only move out when they get married, every older person they meet is Auntie or Uncle, every bathroom has a bidet, there’s a backdrop of Muslim assumptions and views of morality, and the characters discuss their Eid plans because, well, everyone celebrates Eid, obviously.

Weird, right? 

So why is this normal the other way around? 

Have you ever stopped to wonder why white (and often, especially American) experiences are considered the default? The universal inoffensive base on which the rest is built? 

Yes, I understand that writers are trying to be inoffensive and respectful of other backgrounds. But actually, I find the usual method of having the only difference be their skin colour or features pretty reductive. We’re more than just a paint job or a sprinkle of flavour to add on top of the default. Many of us have fundamentally different life experiences and ignoring this contributes to that assumption of your experience being universal. 

Yes, fic is supposed to be for fun and maybe you don’t want to have to think about all this, and I get that completely. I have all the respect in the world for writers who tag their TMA fics as an American AU, or who don’t mention anyone’s races. I get it. But when you have characters without a canonical race and you give them one, you’re making a decision, and I want you to think about it. 

Yes, this is a lot of research, but the internet is full of people talking about themselves and their experiences. Read their articles, read their blogs, read their twitter threads, watch their videos, see what they have to say and use it as a jumping-off point. I’m really fond of the Writing With Color blog, so if you’re not sure where to start I’d recommend giving them a look. 

Because writers outside of the Anglosphere already do this research in order to write in most fandoms. Writers of colour already put themselves in your shoes to write white characters. And frankly, given the amount of care that many white writers put into researching Britishisms, I don’t see why this can’t extend to other cultural differences as well.

[writingwithcolor]

Mixing North America with Old World Cultures in Fantasy: What Are The Issues?

So I sent in an ask several years ago that, due in no small part to your response, I have grown from and eventually led to a complete restructuring of my story. I included a measure of context in this, so if you need to skip it, my main three questions are at the bottom. I think this mostly applies to Mod Lesya.

The new setting is both inspired by and based on North America in the late 1400s where the indigenous cultures thrive and are major powers on the continent. Since there is no “Europe” in this setting the colonization and plague events never happened. Within the continent itself (since it is a fantasy setting) there are also analogous cultures that resemble Norse, Central European, Persian, Arabic, Indian, and Bengali. Although not native to the fantasy continent, there is also a high population of ‘African’ and ‘Oceanic’ peoples of many cultures, the latter usually limited to coastal cities as traders and sailors. Elves are entirely not-human, or at least evolved parallel to humans ala Neanderthals/Denisovans; they have green blood, black sclera, and skin tones that run from pale to dark. 

The main national setting of the story takes great inspiration from a Byzantine/Turkish/Mississippian background, and the neighboring nations are based on the Haudenosee (Iriquois Confederacy), Numunuu (Comancheria), and the Hopi and Zuni (as the descendants of the Ancestral Puebloans) (I also know that 2 of these 3 occur much later than the 1400s, but I love the government systems and they provide excellent narrative foils for the more ‘traditional’ fantasy government that takes place in the story). The Maya inhabit the role analogous to Ancient Greece in that most writing systems on the continent descend from Maya script and all the Great Philosophers were Maya (and nobility from across the continent spend lots of money to send their children to schools in the Maya City-States or in the Triple Alliance (Aztec Empire)). There is magic with varying traditions, practices, and methods spread across the continent, some of which are kept secret from outsiders, so I would hope that this avoids the “Magical Native” trope. 

Beyond the setting, I have three main questions:

When it comes to foodstuffs, I was originally planning to limit myself to Pre-Columbian cuisine from the Americas (eg the Three Sisters and potatoes) but in doing my research, Navajo fry-bread seems to be a fairly integral part of the food culture and that does require flour, which originated in the Old World. Would it be better to incorporate some of the Old World stuff that has since become traditional to indigenous groups?

For place names used in the setting and writing systems would it be better to use existing languages or writing systems or ones inspired by them? EG should I make a language that is very similar to Cherokee, complete with its own syllabary, or should I use IRL Cherokee and its extant syllabary? I ask because I feel like using the real language might step on some toes, but using the conlang might seem like erasure.

One of the main themes of this story is the harm that even a ‘benevolent’ Empire can wreak on people. The Byzantine/Turkish/Mississippian culture is the main Empire on the continent, taking cues from both western and American monarchical systems (eg the Triple Alliance (Aztec) and The Four Regions (the Inca Empire)), but when I think about it having any kind of even vaguely western ‘Empire’ spring up from the soil of a North American inspired setting might be troubling.

Thank you for your time and consideration! Do you guys have a kofi or something so I can compensate you for time spent?

I actually do remember you, and I am going to 99% disregard your questions here because you went from glaringly obvious racism to covert racism, and none of your questions ask if your basic strings of logic for assumptions you built into the setting are okay. 

Since there is some extremely flawed basic logic in here, I’m going to tackle that first.

Question 1: Why did you originally title this “Pre Colombian North American Fantasy World” when you have more old world cultures than new world cultures?

A very simple, straightforward question. The actual content of the setting is what made me retitle it.

If you want to write a North American fantasy setting… why are there so many old world cultures represented here? 

Old world: - Greece (as a societal myth; see next point) - Byzantine - Turkey - Norse - Central European - Persian - Arabic - Indian - Bengali - African (which, let’s be honest, should be heavily broken up into multiple peoples) - Oceana (which, again, should be heavily broken up into multiple peoples)

New world: - Mississippian - Iroquois  - Numunuu - Hopi - Zuni - Maya - Aztec - Inca (maybe? not mentioned as having their own place on the continent, but one of your questions mentions them) - Navajo (maybe? See above)

To account for respecting Africa and Oceana, I’m going to make African cultures count as 3 and Oceanic cultures count as 5, and this is a purposeful lowball.

Old World: 17 New World: 9

It’s a giant discrepancy, especially if your attempt is writing an exclusively New World fantasy. And this is bare minimum old world, considering the fact I tried to limit myself to peoples who would be more likely to interact with the heavy Mediterranean/Alexander the Great’s Empire centricity. 

Question 2: Why does there have to be a Greece analogue?

I haven’t spoken about this topic at length on this blog, but Greek worship in the Western world is a very carefully crafted white supremacy based mythos that was created to prop up European “Excellence” and actually erases the reality of Greece as a peoples.

Cultural evolutionism is a theory that states the (assumed-white-European) Greeks were superior because of their philosophy, their abstract art, and their mathematics. When many of these concepts were refined in Egypt (African, aka Black), or the Arab world (aka brown), but white Europeans did not want to admit any of this so they instead painted everything as coming out of their ideas of Greece lock stock and barrel. 

The theory also ignored Iroquois science, Plains and Southwestern abstract art, and generally everything about North America, because the theory was designed to move the goalposts and paint North America as something it wasn’t, just to make Europeans feel okay taking it over and “bringing it to civilization.”

This theory was still taught in force up until the 1970s, and is still a major school of anthropological thought to this day (and still taught in some universities), so it is still very much influencing the Western world.

While the theory itself is only from the 1800s, it had long-growing roots in white/ noble Europe’s attempt to prop up European “Excellence” during its multiple periods of colonization, from the Crusades, onwards. You can see it in the copious amount of art produced during the Renaissance.

Europeans ignored the sheer amount of settling and travel that happened within Greece and Rome, and you’ll notice how many Renaissance paintings depict Greek philosophers as white, teaching other white people. In reality, we have no idea what their skin tone was, and they could have taught a huge variety of different skin tones. But it was appealing to European nobility to have people like them be the founders of all things great and “advanced”, so they invested huge amounts of time and money in creating this myth.

(Note: I said their nobility, not their population. People of colour existed en masse in Europe, but the nobility has been downplaying that for an exceptionally long time)

Greece took over most of the old world. It borrowed and stole from hundreds of cultures, brought it all back, and was assigned credit for it. White Europeans didn’t want to admit that the concept of 0 came from the Arabs, the pythagorean theorem came from Egypt, etc, and since Greece won, detailed records of how they were perceived and what they stole are long lost. It’s only glaring when they took from other global powers.

Question 3: Why would you pick totally different biomes to mix in here?

Turkey and the Mississippi are very, very different places when it comes to what can grow and what sort of housing is required, which makes them on the difficult side to merge together. They relied on different methods of trade, as well (boats vs roads), and generally just don’t line up.

The fact you pick such a specific European powerhouse—the Byzantine Empire—to mix into your “not European” fantasy world is… coming back to my above point about Greek (and Roman) worship in the West. Why can’t a fantasy world set in North America be enough on its own? Why does it need Europe copycats?

Question 4: Why are you missing a variety of nomads and Plains peoples?

Nomadic plains peoples were a thing across the globe, from the Cree to the Blackfoot to the Mongols. You have hyperfocused on settled peoples (with only one nomadic group named in both new and old world), which… comes across as very odd to me, because it is, again, very European sounding. That continent was about the only one without major populations that were nomadic, and if you look at European history, nomadic peoples were very highly demonized because of the aforementioned Mongols. 

Cultural evolutionism also absolutely hated nomadic peoples, which is where we get the term “savage” (hunter-gatherers, nomads) and “barbarian” (horticulturalists and pastoralists, the latter nomadic); these were “lesser cultures” that needed to settle down and be brought to “civilization” (European agriculture), and nothing good could ever come out of them.

Meanwhile, in North America, nomadic peoples took up a very large portion of landmass, produced a huge amount of culture and cultural diffusion, and mostly ignoring them while trying to create a “fantasy North America” is, well, like I said: odd. 

General Discussion Points

My suggestion for you is to write a fantasy Mediterranean region. Completely serious, here.

With the kinds of dynamics you are attracted to—the empires, the continental powers, the fact you keep trying to make Europe analogues in North America—you will do a much, much more respectful job by going into a really richly researched Mediterranean fantasy world than attempting to mix Europe and North America together in ways that show European traits (settled peoples, agriculture, a single empire dominating the whole culture and being viewed as superior) as the default.

I legitimately cannot see anything in here that feels like it comes from North America, or at the very least, treats non-sensationalized peoples (aka, those outside the Maya and Mississippian region) with respect. 

It falls into Maya worship, which is a very sensationalized topic and is fuelled by racist fascination, assuming no Indigenous peoples could be that smart. 

It falls into settled peoples worship, which is something that has cultural evolutionism roots because under such a model only settled peoples with agriculture are “civilized.”

It falls into placing Western concepts (public schools, large cities, the ilk) as the ideal, better solution, compared to methods better suited to horticulturalists, pastoralists, and hunter-gatherers and letting those teaching methods be respected.

There is no shame in writing inside Europe

The Mediterranean region contains Indigenous peoples, contains a huge diversity of skin tones, contains empires, contains democracy/a variety of governments, and in general contains every aspect of what you’re trying to create without playing god with a continent that did not evolve the way you’re trying to make it. 

A Mediterranean fantasy world would still be a departure from “fantasy world 35″ as I like to call it, because it would be different from the vaguely Germanic/ French/ Norse fantasy worlds that are Tolkien ripoffs. You can dig beyond the whitewashed historical revisions and write something that actually reflects the region, and get all the fun conflicts you want.

You don’t need to go creating a European/North American blend to “be diverse.” You can perfectly respectfully write inside Europe and have as much variety in peoples as you can write in a non-European setting. Europe is not the antithesis to diversity.

North America developed a certain way for a reason. It had the required fauna, space, resources, and climate to produce what it created. The old world developed a certain way for its own reasons, based off its own factors in the same categories.

You’re not really going to get them to blend very easily, and if you did, the fact there is such a strong European way-of-life preference (by picking places that mirror European society on the surface) makes me raise an eyebrow. It’s subtle, but very much there, and the fact you are ignorant to it shows me you still need to do more work before you go writing North American Indigenous Peoples.

Writing in Europe isn’t the problem, here. Writing a whitewashed, mythologized, everyone-not-white-is-a-caricature, ahistorical “Europe” is the problem. And you cannot fix this problem by simply painting European ways of life a different skin tone when the setting isn’t European. In fact, you’re perpetuating harm by doing that, because you are recreating the cultural evolutionism that calls anything you can find in Europe “better.” Indigenous cultures were vastly different from Europe, even if they shared similar trappings. 

Let North America exist without trying to shoehorn its most famous peoples into European analogues.

~ Mod Lesya

[solivar]

The Left Hand Path: Three Years Ago

aka the One In Which Genji and Zenyatta meet.

The Standing Stones of Santa Ana Pueblo

Location: Just above the Red Line off I-25 N/Old New Mexico Route 68 N, Sandoval County north of the Albuquerque Military Exclusion Area.

Before the Crisis, Santa Ana Pueblo was a thriving Tamayame reservation, part of the Greater Albuquerque Metropolitan area, and a major tourist draw in the region owing to its world-class golf courses and club, a well-regarded spa resort, a casino and Michelin-starred restaurant, and a multitude of easily accessible cultural sites and events spread throughout the year. All of that changed on the afternoon of August 13, 2046 when Omnic forces advancing on Albuquerque breached the containment cordon along Route 40 and the US military, massed there to stop them, unleashed experimental high energy weaponry designed for that task.

Once the dust settled, the city of Albuquerque and much of the surrounding area, including the Sandia and Santa Ana Pueblos, was almost completely leveled. In the aftermath, the military cordoned off the ruins of the city inside the Albuquerque Military Exclusion Area, which remains under heavily patrolled Federal military control to this day. Evacuees from the surrounding area were strongly encouraged not to return, with offers to purchase their land at pre-Crisis market value to sweeten the deal. Many accepted, a handful did not, and those that chose to do so returned to a pueblo whose buildings were reduced to rubble and scattered with wreckage -- and something weird that was neither.

The Standing Stones of Santa Ana Pueblo occupy a relatively compact chunk of land on the grounds of what was once Santa Ana Golf Club, shielded from casual view by a stand of cottonwood trees that somehow survived the explosions that leveled the clubhouse and most of the other course structures and did significant damage to the surrounding area. There are nine of them, standing in a geometrically perfect circle, varying in size from from well over six feet to a little over five, perfectly hexagonal in shape, crafted of a dark stone that at least superficially resembles basalt. The inner surface of each stone is densely carved with petroglyphs incised deeply into the rock. The outer surface of each stone is carved with one petroglyph unique to that stone and which cannot be found on any of the others, inside or out. Local experts on Native American petroglyphs continue to research this topic but, as of this writing, none of the petroglyphs that appear on the Standing Stones resemble any glyphs that appear on historical sites in the region.

Nor were the Standing Stones a feature of the area before the Omnic Crisis, as confirmed by surviving photos and video of the course and local residents of the area, including the former owners of the golf club. At some point after the evacuation of Santa Ana Pueblo, the Standing Stones appeared in their current location, unnoticed by anyone despite the heavy military presence and regular patrols of the area, and despite the amount of effort such a project would entail. The stones, though tall and relatively slender, are still estimated to weigh several hundred pounds each -- not something that could be loaded, unloaded, and placed by a single person working by hand alone.

The hundred or so families who make Santa Ana Pueblo their home give the Standing Stones a wide berth, citing weirdly colored lights that appear close to the ground around them and occasionally in the sky above, strange disembodied sounds, and a deep thrumming hum that periodically rises from the area. These phenomena have appeared on official reports from area law enforcement and also on official notices issued from the Albuquerque Exclusion Area’s patrol base. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, most of these phenomena have been observed around the anniversary of the Battle of Albuquerque on August 13th.

If you want to try to catch the weirdness in action, make certain you’re prepared to handle high desert summer weather and get your permissions in order accordingly. The former grounds of Santa Ana Golf Course are private property posted against trespass and the area is periodically patrolled by both the US military and tribal coalition police.

“Tonight’s the night, everybody. August the thirteenth. The anniversary of the Battle of Albuquerque. It’s taken months to get my uncle to trust me enough to go out on perimeter patrol but this is our pay off.” Cody Peshlakai lowered his voice, dramatically, because there was no real danger of being heard, to hype up the audience watching his live HollaGram stream. “Tonight I will investigate the Standing Stones and tonight you will be with me.”

He flashed a grin and a V-for-victory sign into his camera then clipped it to the stabilizer harness strapped around his shoulders and across his chest, one more piece of survival equipment among the molle pouches carrying the rest of his gear, no different from anyone else’s. It sat there, neatly hidden next to his cellphone and the primitive walkie talkie his uncle insisted the security crews carry, through the team muster and meeting at the pueblo ranger station, broadcasting all the while. Nobody objected when he called dibs on one of the spiffy little hybrid hover/wheels ATVs, a good chunk of the all-volunteer patrol crew being old enough to value the superior shock absorption of the service’s Jeeps and trucks. The ATV yielded a much better POV for the viewers as he jetted out across the scrubby desert hardpack on the eastern bank of the Rio Grande toward his goal: the grounds of the former Santa Ana Pueblo Golf Club.

Which was, unfortunately, on the western side of the Rio Grande.

On the way, he passed clusters of habitation: the small, self-contained farmsteads of single families, an artist’s commune, the little solar farm that served the area and its caretaker’s hacienda. He paused at each and exchanged a few words with the residents, radioed a handful of coyote sightings back to base, and continued on, the excitement churning higher and higher in his gut the closer he came to his goal, as his numbers climbed on his viewership monitor.

“So, yeah, that’s my job, stream -- I help keep my community, my friends and neighbors, safe. Sometimes that’s chasing off coyotes that are getting a little too comfortable raiding the compost bins but sometimes...sometimes it’s a lot weirder.” The remains of the old Highway 550 bridge loomed out of the twilight, crumbling concrete pilings jutting out of the shallowest, siltiest part of the river and he pulled to a halt, executing a slow pan to give the stream the best view possible. “On the other side of the river and a few miles west is what’s left of the Santa Ana Pueblo Golf Club. It used to be a world-class course, fancy-ass hotel and casino inclusive, made a lot of jobs and money for the community. All that, of course, came to an end during the Omnic Crisis.”

He revved the motivator, fired up the hoverpods to their highest yield, and skimmed across the surface of the river and up the opposite bank. A vista of devastation, stained in shades of sunset and shadow, spread out before them and the stream chat went absolutely wild. The residential neighborhoods south of 550 had been utterly flattened during the Battle of Albuquerque, hardly a brick left stacked or a wall left standing, blown all-but-flat by some incomprehensibly massive force. That, combined with the occasional blast crater and random scattering of unexploded ordnance, had discouraged resettlement so thoroughly nobody even wanted to risk putting up a solar farm. Wreckage still lay scattered as far as the eye could see and the eye could see quite a distance, even with twenty-plus years of desert scrub overgrowth blurring the harshest edges.

“Nobody really knows what happened here that day -- August thirteenth, the Battle of Albuquerque,” Cody narrated as he kicked the ATV back into motion, navigating carefully down the cracked and pitted remnants of 550 toward his goal. “Just about everybody was evacuated and the ones that stayed behind...well. Let’s just say that, when all was said and done, there wasn’t anyone left to tell the tale.”

The bombed-out, burned-out remnants of the old hotel-casino came into view, its parking lot still filled with the rusting hulks of abandoned vehicles. “The casino and golf course were used as a rallying and evacuation point for the nearby communities on the west bank of the Rio Grande in the days leading up to the battle. The US Army and local militia forces were massing along I-40 -- the Red Line -- and the Air Force and Air National Guard were flying refugees out by helo, the National Guard had commandeered every bus, van, and free personnel carrier they could get their hands on to get people out of harm’s way. This entire area was an absolute hive of activity, you can find video of it all over the internet.”

He paused long enough to link some of his favorites in the chat as he turned off the main road, easing the ATV along something that was once a paved maintenance access point, running roughly parallel with the river. He hit the first scraggly bits of “green,” grass genetically engineered to survive the heat and dry of a high desert summer, a few minutes later and he pulled up onto the flat, opened up his holomap, and pinged his location for the audience. “I’m here -- just south of the lower water trap which is, at this point, completely dry. Our objective is...here.” He touched the copse of cottonwood trees a mile and a half to the north. “The Standing Stones. No one knows how they got here -- they weren’t here before the battle and they weren’t here during the evacuation. But when the recovery teams swept through to see what, if anything, had survived...there they were.”

He gunned the motivator, turned the headlights up to maximum, and muted the call trying to come in from his uncle, likely demanding where the Hell he was. Oh, he was getting fired for this. So very, very fired. But very soon that wouldn’t matter, because after tonight his career was going elsewhere.

The stream picked up every jounce and bounce as he skimmed over ruts and bits of wreckage flung miles from their origins, swerved around scrub becoming less and less scrubby as he went and the wild descendants of decorative plants that had somehow survived despite it all. The cottonwood stand was still the tallest thing around and he slowed as it came into view. “My plan is to set up motion-activated cameras in a perimeter around the Standing Stones and several inside the circle of the Stones, as well, along with a super-sensitive microphone pickup and electromagnetic monitoring equipment. If something happens tonight, we’ll see and hear it.”

He stopped as the ATV’s headlights washed over the trees and struck glints from the Standing Stones themselves, dark stone reflecting darkly -- and more. Cody froze, still straddling his seat. “Oh, fuck -- there’s someone else in there --”

Cody killed the headlights and the motivator and rolled off the ATV into the relative cover of the underbrush in one smoothish and only mildly panicked motion. He even managed to avoid squeaking too much as he whispered, “Chat, did you see that? Did anyone else see that?!”

Yes!

Me, too!

I saw it -- it was TALL

Dozens of messages bubbled up in the chat as his audience scrolled back and scrutinized every frame for him. For his part, he dug his brand new Panopticon binoculars out of gear bag, clipped them into place on his tactical visor, and tried to get a better look of his own, zooming in on the Standing Stones so closely he could clearly see the petroglyphs incised into their surfaces, even with the last of the light bleeding out of the sky behind them. None of the grainy-green of old school low light optics with these babies, and he scanned the area and slow and careful, looking for some hint of what he saw, something, anything --

A flicker of motion caught his eye, something moving among the Stones, mostly obscured by their mass.

“Fuck.” This...was not a complication he had considered, much less prepared for. This whole area in general and the Standing Stones very much in specific were so far out of bounds that he never imagined encountering another person out here at all much less…

On the night of the anniversary of the battle of Albuquerque.

He had to physically resist the urge to facepalm. “Chat, I...think I know what this is.” He crawled back out of the brush and hunkered down next to the ATV, tried to get a better angle on the inside of the circle. “You know how every year there’s a remembrance ceremony at the big Crisis Memorial up in Santa Fe? Well...what if I told you that some people come down to the pueblo for their own private remembrances, too? It’s the anniversary, after all. Let me see if --”

A shriek of audio distortion drilled his ear with the enthusiasm of an icepick straight to the brain and it was all he could do not to howl as he clawed his audio pickup out. “Holy fuck, what was that?”

The chat, in the corner of the heads-up display on his visor, was losing its entire fucking mind -- whatever it was, they had heard it, too, and --

A second pulse of sound, deep and resonant, punched him in the chest hard enough to make both his heart and breathing stutter, and the chat went absolutely apeshit again as it fed through to them, as well.

“You know what, Chat,” Cody said, as soon as he got enough breath back to speak, “I think I’m going to take your advice and get the Hell --”

Golden light blossomed inside the circle of the Standing Stones -- for an instant, to his eyes, it looked as though the petroglyphs themselves were lighting up, searing their patterns into his retinas with a single unwary glance. He reeled back and looked away as he clawed both the tac visor and the binoculars off his face, blinking afterimages out of his vision, the light washing out of the stone circle, over him, over everything, and --

Calm flowed over him, over him and through him, a wave of perfect serenity that stole away all his fear between one breath and the next, left him wobbling on legs made of rubber, legs that folded up underneath him and left him sprawled on his back, eyes and camera both pointed at the swiftly darkening sky, hazed in golden light. He could hear the pinging of his stream’s chat freaking out a few physical inches and a couple thousand conceptual realities away, but couldn’t bring himself to care. That sweet golden light was all he knew and that majestic bone-deep music, and he allowed himself to drift away on it, blinking away like a pinched-out candle between one breath and the next.

It was some time later that the rescue team found him, sprawled out next to the ATV, boneless, blissed out and drooling. But not, as they feared, dead.

“I told you this little moron was up to something,” Julia Tso nudged him in the ribs with the tip of one hiking boot. “He’s been streaming crap on HollaGram for months, Joseph.”

“Yeah, I know.” Joseph Peshlakai sighed and signaled the medical evac team to come in from the road. “Keep an eye on him until they get here, yeah?”

Julia rolled her eyes but nodded and Joseph crossed the remaining distance to the Standing Stones, where a golden light still pulsed among them, within them, the petroglyphs alight. He stopped outside, cleared his throat, and said, “Thank you for not killing him, Wanderer. He’s an idiot but he’s my kid brother’s favorite child.”

Youth and folly are not offenses punishable by death, my old friend. The voice echoed in his mind, warm and amused, but not less awesome because of it. Thank you, as always, for watching over them in my absence.

“My honor, Wanderer. I’m honestly a little surprised to see you this soon. It’s only been, what, five years?” Five years to the day, Joseph thought but did not say.

Yes. I...think I will be staying for a time. Not here. But close. I feel...A frisson of unease passed between them, mind to mind, a chill crawling down his spine. I feel that I will be needed, sooner rather than later.

Joseph took a deep, steadying breath and nodded. “Things have been...a little stranger than usual, I will admit. It will be good to have you back, even if only for a time.”

It will be good to be home. Farewell for now, old friend.

The golden light blinked out, and Joseph knew he was alone. The Stones faded more slowly at his back, as he walked back down the shallow rise to his lieutenant and his idiot nephew and the knowledge growing in his mind that things were going to get worse before they got better.

[arcticdementor]

In September of 2020, I published a book entitled The Stakes. It was billed as a “current events” or election-year title. The election behind us, the candidate I recommended is no longer president. But the analysis which led me to that recommendation is very much still “current.”

To recap briefly (but read the whole thing!), the book explains how every prominent and powerful American institution, including the federal government, has been taken over by a hostile elite who use their vast powers to attack, despoil, and insult about half the nation. In the sixth chapter (excerpted here), I outline what I think America will look like if the present ruling class refuses to moderate, cannot be forced to share power, and has the wherewithal to keep its regime going. In the seventh chapter, I sketch several possibilities—from secession to Caesarism to collapse—that might result if it turns out that our overlords are a lot less competent than they think. And in the final chapter (excerpted here), I offer policy and other ideas that might enable America to avoid those fates.

That chapter (from which this essay is adapted) culminated with a proposal now being talked about widely, namely, to allow counties, cities, and towns unhappy with their current state government to join another. This would be a practical, and practicable, way to ease Blue and Red Americans’ present discontent and exasperation with each other.

There are precedents. The counties that became Maine split from Massachusetts in 1820, and—more famously—those that became West Virginia left Virginia during the Civil War. Fittingly, when I wrote the chapter, West Virginia had generously offered to welcome western Virginia counties unhappy with rule from newly, aggressively Blue Richmond. Today, a year later, West Virginia’s governor says the offer still stands.

There are similar movements throughout the country—most, though not all, driven by disaffected Reds. The most recent, news-making example was five Oregon counties joining two others in voting to leave the Beaver State and become part of Idaho.

So far nothing has come of any of this. But why shouldn’t these efforts be allowed to proceed if both the welcoming state and the exiting counties want it? Wouldn’t that be “democracy”?

…

Classical philosophers and historians alike condemn democracy as a bad form of government, in part because of its partiality but mostly because of the specific nature of the demos, which they contend is the polis’s least wise and least moderate part.

I would here add that it’s both sad and hilarious to see classically-trained academics and intellectuals bleat on about the sanctity of “democracy.” The worst offenders are the Straussians, who really should know better. Haven’t we all read Republic VIII and Politics VI, to say nothing of the warnings from Strauss himself on the dangers and shortcomings of democracy? Their failure as analysts is worse. The present American regime that they celebrate as “our democracy” is all but identical to classical oligarchy (discussed in those same books) while the “populism” that gives them the vapors is much closer to the democracy they claim to revere. But even more embarrassing, the Straussians’ central boast is to stand above, in Olympian detachment and even disdain, all regime pieties and see through them as self-serving rationalizations. Yet when extolling “democracy,” they sound no different than an Assistant Secretary of State, foundation president, or CNN host.

…

States such as California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, and now Virginia are utterly dominated by one party, and often one city, which amounts to the same thing. This is how Virginia—cradle of the American Revolution and home to four of our first five presidents—suddenly, just like that, became implacably hostile to the first two amendments to the United States Constitution. Five cities and counties, three adjacent to Washington, D.C., essentially dictate to the other 128.

The uncomprehending angst of people who’ve lived the same way, in the same places, for generations suddenly finding themselves harassed by a hostile government—ostensibly “theirs”—is mocked by the ruling class as a lament over “lost privilege.” After Virginia flipped from purple to Blue in 2019, the state legislature immediately enacted draconian gun restrictions that flew in the face of centuries of tradition and peaceful practice. Too bad! You lost! That’s “democracy.” As Joel Kotkin has remarked, “The worst thing in the world to be is the Red part of a Blue state.”

We should not, however, give the powers-that-be too much credit for principled consistency. If and when popular majorities produce outcomes the rulers don’t like, their devotion to “democracy” instantly evaporates. Judges, administrative state agencies, private companies—whichever is most able in the moment to overturn the will of unruly voters—will intervene to restore ruling class diktats. On the other hand, when voters can be counted on to vote the right way, then voting becomes the necessary and sufficient step for sanctifying any political outcome. It doesn’t even matter where the votes (or voters) come from, so long as they vote the right way. The fact that they vote the right way is sufficient to justify and even ennoble their participation in “our democracy.”

Blues perpetually outvoting Reds and ruling unopposed: this, and only this, is what “democracy” means today.

Bad Faith Objections

Reds, increasingly, are catching on. They know the game is rigged, that they cannot win, and the veneer of their participation and consent is a sham.

This is why the gaslighting is being dialed up to the lumen levels of blue stars. Every objection to Blue despoilation is now openly ascribed to “white supremacy.” Don’t want to be late for work because regime-favored thugs “protesters” are illegally blocking an intersection? White supremacy! Object to being beaten on the streets? White supremacy! Want to see the laws enforced equally and impartially? White supremacy!

Obviously, nothing is more susceptible to this dread charge than calls for “secession.” Hence the entirely apples-to-oranges cases of redrawing state lines better to reflect residents’ preferences and interests will be—already is being—compared to the events of 1860-61.

…

Some opponents of Red attempts to leave Blue states will disingenuously point to Lincoln’s first inaugural address, the ne plus ultra anti-secession argument. But there Lincoln was talking about replacing ballots with bullets throughout a sovereign state—overturning not merely the outcome of one election but the form of government itself. The peaceful rearrangement of political and administrative boundaries within a sovereign state is an entirely different act, with far lesser—and less grave—consequences. Indeed, in the latter case the consequences may be entirely salutary: there is ample precedent in history and around the world of countries redrawing internal lines to suit shifts in population and interests.

Others will try to muddy the waters by facilely equating the peculiarly American use of the word “state” for our 50 regional governments with the far more common meaning of state as “sovereign and independent country.” Lincoln said secession was unlawful, unconstitutional, and immoral—but this hypocrite Anton who claims to be a Lincolnite is endorsing the very practice! The argument is false and will be offered in bad faith. If you wish to waste a moment of your time, which I don’t recommend, remind such liars that the anti-secessionist Lincoln not only supported but presided over the division of Virginia. The decisive point is that this proposal is here proffered for precisely Lincolnite reasons: to save the Union and keep the current territory and population of the United States together.

…

Article IV, Section 3 states that “no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.”

In the Maine and West Virginia cases, new states were formed, hence the legislatures of the original and prospective states, plus the Congress, had to consent. (In the case of Virginia, then in rebellion against the government of the United States, two competing state governments existed. The Unionist government, recognized by the federal government, voted to allow the separation.)

The Constitution is, however, silent on the question of transferring a county from one state to another. No doubt should rural Virginia counties seek to join Charleston, Richmond wouldn’t like it—all that lost tax revenue! Look how many fewer people to boss around! Fewer Electoral votes!

But, constitutionally speaking, the state government’s power to stop it would be dubious. As would, if we want to speculate along such lines, the means. It could, and almost certainly would, take the issue to federal court where, admittedly, any outcome is possible regardless of law, and any outcome favorable to Red interests extremely unlikely. There’s little question that a Blue state capital could easily join with the federal judiciary and the Biden administration to block any such action. That may or may not be “constitutional” as you and I understand the term, but we don’t rule.

Or suppose we interpret Article IV, Section 3 to mean that moving just one county from one state to another constitutes creating a “new state.” That makes things harder, but hardly impossible. It simply means that legislative victories would have to be won. That may seem impossible now; no empire ever seeks to become smaller. But, dare I say, the election of Donald Trump seemed impossible as late as 9 p.m. on November 3rd, 2016. Public opinion is changing fast. Reds, who’ve put up with a lot only to face repeated demands that they put up with even more, are getting fed up.

Not only do they get nothing but abuse from the political system, increasingly they don’t even get to talk. Any dissent against regime ideology is swiftly and ruthlessly censored on Blue media platforms, which is to say, all of them. Reds’ elected leaders (to the extent that they have any) are declared “domestic enemies” by the Speaker of the House. Blue wise men talk of “cleansing” Reds from the political system. Nils Gilman—a man who called for my death—declaimed that “These people need to be extirpated from politics.” To have no say and no voice, forever, means that one’s only option is exit.

It would be an act of magnanimity, and even self-interest, for a sufficient number of Blues to recognize Red concerns and let the state-county reorganization proceed. Right now, at least half of Red America feels trapped in an abusive marriage, endlessly told they’re worthless, racist, and evil—but also that under no circumstances may they even broach the topic of leaving. Stay and take your deserved punishment is Blue America’s constant message to Red, the political philosophy of Judge Smails: You’ll get nothing and like it.

Besides, as Blues never tire of reminding us, aren’t we Reds poor, weak, and dumb? Who wants such dross as fellow citizens? Imagine (say) Virginia’s glorious future without all those retrograde hicks getting in the way of NoVa’s progressive utopian vision.

If Blues cannot see their way to letting such peaceful means proceed as a way of improving civic harmony and extending the life of the republic, they’re placing a giant bet that they can, through sheer brute force, rule Reds forever. Can they? They’d also be admitting that, in New America, “democracy” just means Blues outvoting Reds, effectively nullifying their franchise.

…

It’s worth pointing out, in this context, the utter hypocrisy of Blues who cry “Jeff Davis!” at the mere suggestion of some rural counties in a Blue State seeking refuge with fellow Reds, which almost certainly would not change the composition of the Senate, but who blithely demand that D.C. and Puerto Rico be made states so the Democrats can get four extra Senators and (likely) four more Electoral votes.

[stjglobal]

For all of the places I visited, I both intentionally and unintentionally learned more and more about the issues that citizens of the countries were facing.

There is something amazing about being able to see the sights of Europe: The Eiffel Tower, The Colosseum, Sagrada Familia, and so on. And while I enjoyed getting to see the rich history here and learn all about these historical and sacred places, the thing that I’ve taken away most from my trip abroad is the volume of current things going on in Europe that I simply had no idea, or only a vague idea, about. My theology professor here has been living in Italy for eight years or so, and she says that she remembers how different it is in The United States. It’s like being in your own world entirely, so far removed from other countries. Because of the proximity and relationships within the European Union (EU), I think that it simply isn’t as easy to be disconnected from the rest of the world here. When you add in the size of The United States and relationships with the rest of North America and South America, Europe barely stands a chance to truly enter our news network. 

 For all of the places I visited, I both intentionally and unintentionally learned more and more about the issues that citizens of the countries were facing. I have been fortunate enough to travel to Paris, Barcelona, Zurich, Edinburgh, Bucharest, and, of course, Rome and around Italy. In this post, I hope to help you to travel with me and see what I’ve learned about these places and their trials. While most of the information has been compiled throughout the semester, I linked some fact-checkers and ways to read/watch more about these issues below. One of the main themes highlighted by St. John’s University’s Study abroad programs is migration. It is integrated to every class possible, and this has helped me understand the issues. With the current climate all across Europe, there couldn’t be anything more appropriate.

 The first place I would like to focus on is France. My first stop in Europe was in Paris, France, and I was immediately amazed by its wonder and beauty. However, there is no question about the political and social turmoil that has been occurring there for years. While many of us have heard about the attacks on Paris and Nice, there is a much deeper disdain toward foreigners that is not far removed from these attacks. In the United States, we refer to ourselves as a melting pot, a blending of cultures to create a diverse society. In France, it couldn’t be more the opposite. A dirty word in American history, assimilation, is their reality. When you are immigrating to France, you are expected to become French. While I’ve noticed that this is a theme around Europe and the hyphenated identities (African-American, Irish-American, Italian-American, etc.) of the US don’t exist here, it runs deeper in France. The culture that is not their own is washed away here, especially when it comes to religion.

 In 2004, French began the consideration of outlawing wearing burqas, hijabs, kippahs, and large displays of crosses. The one that came into effect is of any sort of face-veil, which directly targets Muslims, but it is widely encouraged to not wear any religious symbols and make yourself a target. Outside of religion but not far from it, immigrants tend to be living in suburbs or lower socioeconomic areas of Paris. They isolate themselves because they don’t feel welcome, and they create their own communities that are segregated from the whole of Paris and therefore France. While this brings in the question of open- vs. closed-borders and integration, it also creates a breeding ground for terrorists. In fact, the Paris attacks of 2015 had French natives involved. 

One of my classes studied how people can feel drawn to join a terrorist group and act when they feel that they are not being represented. In a society where culture erasure is meant to create a unified whole, it instead has created tense relations that have lead to attacks. In the US, we can obviously relate with recent immigrant issues at the forefront of politics. Rome, and Italy as a whole, had similar issues with immigration. Italy quickly has become the liaison between the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries to the rest of Europe. Many people from MENA countries will enter into Italy through the Mediterranean with the intention of staying until they can make it further north. This has caused a great strain on the economy and relationships between natives and the new demographic. In this country, strict self-segregation can also be seen. 

In my economics class, we took a trip to a town called Torpignattara, which has been dubbed “Banglatown”.This town is full of heavily concentrated immigrants, many from Bangladesh as implied by the name, and they have made more of a town of their own than become a part of Rome. Their town is filled with stores with their native clothing, food, and other goods. They support their own small economy, not the whole of Rome. Rather, they send a majority of their money home. All of these issues have brought immigration to the forefront of Italy’s political atmosphere. There have even been talks of leaving the EU to allow them to have more ability to control their immigration laws. Another effect that has happened to Italy is called ‘The Brain Drain’. Basically, well-educated individuals are leaving the country in search of better job opportunities. This makes it hard for the country to continue to develop and westernize since the best of the best are leaving.

 By far the most interesting thing to learn about was the potential secession of Catalonia from Spain. Catalonia is to Spain what, for example, Pennsylvania is to The United States. While it is just a region, it functions more as a state with its own government. This region includes Barcelona, a city that was my first international trip leaving Rome. Upon arriving, it was clear that there was some strong political movement going on. Every single apartment building had plenty of windows donning the Catalonian flag (which I initially thought were weathered Puerto Rican ones) and signs along the lines of “we won’t be silenced” and “free Catalonia”. Out of intrigue, I did some research while there to try to figure out what was going on. Catalonia is the richest region in Spain, and because of this they pay high taxes. However, much of that tax money they don’t see coming back to their own region. Rather, it is used for other regions in Spain. Aside from this main issue, Catalonia has an entirely different culture and even their own language, Catalan. Catalan is more similar to Italian and French than Spanish, which definitely threw me off while I was in Barcelona. I am by no means a Spanish speaker, but I think that everyone in the US picks up a few things. 

Having traveled to Puerto Rico not long ago, I thought I could at least order french fries (papas fritas), but even that wasn’t immediately recognizable (patates fregides). The most interesting part of this whole thing to me was the numbers about who really wants this. 90% of the population that chose to vote in the referendum said that they wanted to secede. There is much more that goes into this whole issue, including violence, some people in jail or in hiding in other countries, and some lost votes. Overall based on what I saw and what the numbers show this is a very real and pressing issue in this area. Because Spain is a country that is in the Western world and there was violence involved, I assume that this is something that I would have heard of. It just enlightened me even further to how little I am in touch with the rest of the world.

Rebeka Humbrecht, Spring 2019 Social Media Ambassador

[harwardcenter]

New Life Abroad: First Impressions

The land of fondue, top-tier chocolate, and endless adventures; these are just some of the several traits that make Switzerland what it is. There are so many picturesque points, and whether it be the beaches on Lake Geneva or the mountains visible in the distance from your apartment, there is something for everyone to marvel at and enjoy.

Lake Geneva/Lac Leman and the Swiss/Geneva flags

To start off, I actually had no idea I would be coming here. My original off-campus study plan involved me going to Serbia for a semester program focusing on transitional justice initiatives in Southeastern Europe. However, due to low program enrollment and the public health crisis, that was not possible. Luckily, I was offered the option to go to Switzerland for a program focusing on international relations and multilateral diplomacy, which is not only directly tied to my politics major, but also allows me to explore various topics within the realm of international relations.

The first week was the typical honeymoon phase. I was (and still am) amazed by how clean the country is. There is almost no trash on the sides of the road, and there is actually a robust waste management program that incentivizes people to produce as little waste as possible. Unlike water sources in the United States, many water sources here are very clear, such as Lake Geneva. I was pleasantly surprised to see it.

Another thing that impresses me is the public transport. Of course, public transport in Europe will generally be many times better than that of the United States, but seeing it myself in action is quite neat. For instance, my classes are in Geneva, the largest city in the western part of Switzerland. I live in a small town outside of Geneva called Nyon, which is a 15-20 minute train ride from Nyon. There are trains running each morning on 10-15 minute intervals, and more often than not, the time on the departure board is the time it leaves. Essentially, be on time for your train because the train system here is robust and efficient. While it usually is expensive to use the train for long-distances, my program gave all of us a Swiss travel pass to use on public transportation. I'm not sure how much it costs but my guess would be a few thousand CHF (local currency) because the pass is for unlimited use until our last day here. In other words, I can go from Nyon to Bern or to Interlaken as many times as I wish at any time of the day/night. Just make sure to have your pass as train staff checks for it. Otherwise, you could be fined in addition to paying the full train fare.

Train Network and Routes of the SBB (Swiss Federal Railways)

Being in Switzerland also means being in the land of incredible tasting chocolate. When I arrived, I was impressed by how much chocolate I saw at the stores. There are so many different brands, some local, and some national ones. When you travel around different towns, and even in the major city train stations, such as Geneva and Lausanne, you will find a chocolate store. Any chocolate fanatic must try the various chocolates available here.

Before coming here, I thought that Switzerland was a German speaking country (which it is to an extent). Much of it depends on which part of the country you are in. For example, where I am, which is in the Geneva area, is the French speaking region of the country. This would be most of what is west of Bern, the national capital. The north and central parts of the country are the German speaking parts, such as Z��rich, Bern, Basel, and Luzern. Towards the southern tip close to Milan is the Italian speaking region, which includes cities like Lugano. In the Southeast, there is a fourth language spoken called Romansch. However, it is the least spoken out of the four and there are only a few thousand speakers of the language, which means it is unlikely you will encounter it outside that part of the country. When you travel, you will mainly hear French, German, and some Italian. Most people here know English, but it helps knowing a bit of the regional language so that when you order at a restaurant, you will know how to explain the portion size you want, whether you want carbonated water or standard water, or in general, greeting and thanking people. In my case, my Spanish has helped to an extent, and it has made French learning easier.

Swiss Breakfast at my homestay (lots of bread!)

In a new country, one is bound to have cultural shocks, being exposed to something that may be out-of-the-ordinary back home, or just general adjustments to a new life. One of these has been with my homestay. While I have not had bad experiences so far with my homestay family, the new rules and cultural norms have definitely been an adjustment. My family lives in an apartment in Nyon walking distance from the train station. There are lots of people living here but each apartment has lots of space inside. This means that quiet hours are precious! No showers after 10pm (with limited exceptions). No flushing the toilet in the middle of the night! The shower rule has not been too bad as I already showered around that time anyway, but I'm still mindful of not using it too late. Also, make sure to follow dining etiquette, including waiting for everyone to be seated, using and placing forks and knives correctly while eating, and taking the right amount of food as being respectful to this will go a long way. Dinner is always at 7pm at my house, unless mentioned otherwise. Most of my day is spent in Geneva, so this is not a problem for me. I want to note that these are the rules at my apartment/homestay. I have spoken with my peers on the program, and at their homestays, there are similar expectations. However, each household is different, so some may have more leeway with shower rules or dinner hours. When in doubt, ask your homestay parents about their expectations.

Another major shock in Switzerland (even when knowing about it before arrival) is definitely the cost of living. Lots of products, including food, dining out, utilities, houses, and apartments, are all more expensive than that of the United States. It is said that Geneva and Zürich are among the most expensive cities in the world to live in. From what my host brother has said about renting and buying property here, that is not a surprise. Apartments the size of an average home in the United States can reach high six-figures and into seven figures easily! Also, my host brother mentioned that here, one can make monthly payments on an apartment (similar to a house) and eventually pay it off. From what I'm aware, in the United States, you can only rent an apartment and that is that. However, salaries are much higher here, which offsets those costs. Luckily, my program was aware about these costs, so they gave us a generous stipend of a few hundred CHF for lunch. What I have done is limit going out to only the weekends, and on weekdays, I go to the local supermarket chains (Migros or Coop) to get a sandwich, some snacks, and a drink, which is around CHF 6-10 (about $7-$12). I end up spending about CHF 30-50 a week.

Nyon, Vaud

One of the main things that has kept me a bit uneasy is the constantly-changing list of public health requirements. On September 13, all individuals are required to have a Swiss COVID pass, which is a QR code showing that you are free from COVID and/or have been vaccinated. You need it to visit museums, bars, restaurants, and libraries, no exceptions. Fines are a heavy penny. To get a pass, you need to submit an application with your vaccination information, Swiss phone number, an ID (such as a passport) and your homestay address. You then answer a few questions. Because everyone has to do this now, application processing times are now several weeks long. You can get a temporary pass by taking a COVID test and having it be negative, but it is more convenient to just get the actual pass. The Swiss federal government became aware of these long waiting times, so it provided more guidance. Until October 10, you can enter venues, bars, restaurants, libraries, and museums using and ID (passport) and your vaccination card. This has relieved many of us as we can temporarily use this as we wait for our actual passes. Otherwise, many of the requirements on-campus at Bates are similar here: masks required in indoor areas and public transport, proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test taken 72 hours before entry, and adherence to these guidelines.

Castle on the French side of Lake Geneva (Yvoire, France)

On a similar note, the paperwork for the program (and arrival procedures) has been a lot. It is not as bad now, but in the beginning, I had to go to the local immigration office to register my arrival, fill out homestay paperwork, and then pay to process the information. We would be reimbursed that amount as long as we had a signature from the immigration staff confirming we went there and the receipt. Well, there were some issues with getting the signatures not just on my end, but with many of my peers as well. Our program staff realized this and instead made it so that if you only have the receipt, you can still get the reimbursement. If you have both, great, but for many of us, this was a tricky situation to navigate.

Swiss regional festival with lots of cows, traditional music, and awesome views

All of these things aside, I have definitely enjoyed it here. Even in my hometown, I can go to the lake and relax there or take a boat that goes across the lake to France. It is easy to move around here and to access lots of picturesque places. The photos above are from a regional festival 3 hours away where local farmers bring down their cows as the fall starts. It is very cool to witness. Afterwards, there is traditional music and lots of local food, such as sausages with fries, raclette (melted cheese), and of course, chocolate. I will close off by leaving you with one of my favorite moments of the trip so far: enjoying some Toblerone with the Matterhorn in view!

The iconic Matterhorn on the Toblerone chocolate!

[newstfionline]

Can a Woman Head a Household in Dubai? Our Reporter Ventures to Find Out

By Margaret Coker, NY Times, Aug. 21, 2018

DUBAI--Grifters looking for a big score. Laborers keeping their families back home afloat. Middle-class couples seeking to raise their children free from the Mideast’s war zones.

Dubai, with its Bright Lights, Big City aura, and the six other city states that make up the United Arab Emirates, attract millions of job seekers each year.

I am one of them.

As the Baghdad bureau chief for The New York Times, my work life takes place in Iraq, where I travel frequently. But my family life is in Dubai, where my husband, a fellow journalist who covers Afghanistan, and I can enjoy the finer things in life like reliable electricity, supermarkets, multiplexes and beach walks.

To reside here, however, foreigners need a sponsor, either their employer or a family. And for me, as a woman, that was a problem--and a challenge.

In many ways, life in Dubai for women, whether married or single, is liberating compared with other countries in the region. Here we can drive, own property, play sports and walk home at night in safety.

But for foreign women, the sponsorship system can make daily life anxiety-ridden because of the country’s conservative view of gender relations.

According to immigration law, the person who wears the pants in the family is the husband. And so husbands must sponsor their wives, who are, by and large, legal dependents.

The imbalance of power can be emotionally unsettling and exploitative.

By law, a husband, as a woman’s sponsor, must agree to any job offer his wife receives. Bank accounts can be opened only by a head of household--the man. He must give his approval for his wife to get a credit card or a liquor license, required to legally consume alcohol.

At cocktail hour, expatriate wives morbidly joke about having an emergency stash of cash at home in case their husbands suddenly die. In the U.A.E., a sponsor’s bank accounts are frozen while authorities conduct an inquest into the death, leaving dependents without access to any money.

The system can also lead to horrific abuses of female household staff, whose lives are dependent on their sponsors’ whims.

Some women may find comfort in the sponsorship situation. I’m not one of them.

Which is how I found myself in a bureaucratic and cultural thicket recently, when my husband and I were finalizing our move back to the U.A.E., where we had lived a decade earlier.

At that time, my husband and I had separate work visas, although we were married. But this created problems.

For example, for us to share banking, the account had to be in his name. We routinely fought with his former employer for him to get his family benefits; the company’s human resources team viewed him as a “bachelor” because I wasn’t linked to his visa.

This time around, we decided to do it differently. I wondered just what it would take to make me, the wife, the head of household. And it seemed logical to do that because I am the administrative person in the family--taking the lead, for instance, in the logistics of the move.

I knew I was in for a wild ride in this quest when the first immigration official I approached said I needed to go to the office that he described as handling wayward women.

Advice gleaned from Dubai’s immigration authority hotline was similarly discouraging. Women can be considered heads of household only if they work in the medical profession or are professors. Exemptions are given only on a case-by-case basis.

Online, I found multiple websites dedicated to the issue of women sponsoring their husbands, many filled with anecdotes of failure and despair.

Still, we were encouraged in our pursuit because of another of Dubai’s well-known quirks: The letter of the law is often ignored as a practical workaround for a city that bills itself as a vacation destination for Western tourists.

Sex outside marriage is illegal, but unmarried couples hook up in hotels without anyone asking for a marriage license. Women and men fill tables at one of Dubai’s cultural mainstays, the all-you-can-drink Friday brunch. Not a single waiter asks for a liquor license before serving you, or whether your husband approves.

So if we could find the right path through the maze of government bureaucrats, we thought we had a chance.

The first step was for me to get my work visa and residency. That was easy.

Aside from its traditional view of marriage, the U.A.E. has what is in many ways a remarkably liberal immigration policy that has transformed it in less than 50 years from an impoverished desert outpost into a leading energy producer and architectural marvel.

The Times has registered its office in Dubai in one of the city’s free zones, which allow multinational companies an easier legal framework to operate in. Within two weeks, and without much fuss, I was a legal resident.

After a couple more days, I signed a real estate contract, opened a bank account and applied for my liquor license. That was when our hurdles began.

Immigration clerks wouldn’t even give me the documents for family sponsorship. The paperwork uses the word “husband,” not a neutral word like “spouse.”

“You are clearly not a husband,” one of the clerks helpfully informed me.

Another official directed me to seek my exemption to the immigration law from a special office set up to handle humanitarian cases in Al Awir, a township in the desert on Dubai’s outer edges.

The out-of-the-way location revealed more cultural clues about how locals perceive women trying to paint outside the lines.

Al Awir is known as the home to a prison and the place where foreign female convicts are scheduled for deportation. Or, as the first immigration official called them: wayward women.

This is the same office where single working mothers try to get approvals to sponsor a nanny because of another twist of immigration law. While foreign men with families can sponsor and employ household help, single expatriate women don’t have that right. As an immigration official told me, “Why should a woman need a maid for herself?”

Before driving into the desert, I consulted my Dubai grapevine of professional women and longtime residents about what they thought of the advice to visit that special office.

Their consensus was to ignore it. Instead, they said to go to the main immigration department in downtown Dubai.

There, Emirati women are in charge of a separate department and, as working women themselves, are known to give a sympathetic ear.

“If they see you in person, and they like you, they’ll help,” said a working mother, Simona Cherif. “That’s the way of the Arab world.”

The next morning, I put on a smart business suit and entered the “ladies’ section” of the immigration building.

My petition to sponsor my husband turned into a lively back-and-forth, prompting a wry chuckle from the officer behind the desk.

“Lady, you seem talented,” she said, as she reviewed my paperwork attesting to my salary, my education and my marriage license. “Why did you marry a man who doesn’t support you?”

Although the setting, with perfumed tissues, tasseled pillows and the soft tinkle of teacups, seemed to encourage an exchange of heartfelt relationship advice, I was pretty sure her question was rhetorical. I kept my answer short and sweet.

“I married for love, not money,” I replied.

“I support your decision,” she said. “God willing, your love will survive and your husband appreciates you.”

Then, with a few clicks of her mouse, she granted my exemption.

Now, with my newfound power as a sponsor, I get to decide how much money my husband can withdraw from the bank. I also can decide whether he can buy alcohol or take out a car loan.

I’ll try not to let it go to my head.

[livinginlandmarketing]

The delta variant of the coronavirus is making its way through Southern California, and in the process fueling a rise in cases and hospitalizations — and new questions from residents, too.

Throughout the region, public health departments are reporting increased case rates, and are facing renewed public health mandates, such as masking up in public. It’s prompted talk of vaccine requirements at local businesses, and already set them for many public workers, including employees of Los Angeles County.

And, as the months wear on, and immunity wears off, the question emerges for the community’s vaccinated: How much and when — and when can I get my booster shot?  Here’s a brief Q&A on what experts have told us about boosters:

Q: It’s been months since I got fully vaccinated. Should I get the booster — and when?

A: Not yet, experts say. But you’ll likely need one eventually, because evidence show that immunity wanes with time.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was found to be 91.3% effective against COVID-19, measured seven days to six months after the second dose. It’s at that point, experts believe immunity begins to wane.

Pfizer’s latest data in July shows that a third dose is also successful against the delta variant. Last month, Pfizer released data from its long-running 44,000-person study showing that while protection against any symptomatic infection declined slightly six months after immunization, protection against severe COVID-19 remained at nearly 97%.

Moderna, too, has found that a booster dose provided a robust antibody response against the disease. It’s vaccine had already been shown to provide at least 93% immunity for up to six months.

Still, companies and federal agencies are studying the extent to which a full dose will protect you. And that’s why local public health departments are waiting on those agencies to sign off on boosters.

“We’re going to defer to the Food and Drug Administration and their scientific panels and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and their scientific panels to make decisions on how to most appropriately use the three vaccines that are available,” said Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, adding that her department intends to align with such guidance when it comes.

The reason, Ferrer said, is that both federal agencies have the early, front-edge benefit of teams that look at data from clinical trials and from manufacturing companies, plus real-world data from all local health departments in the country to evaluate the efficacy of the vaccines and the need for boosters.

The FDA expects to have a strategy on COVID-19 vaccine boosters by early September, according to reports. It would lay out when — and which vaccinated individuals should get the follow-up shots, based on vaccine efficacy laboratory data, clinical trial data and cohort data — which can include data from specific pharmaceutical companies.

“This is being closely looked at and the guidance may change over time as new variants arise for which the vaccines may not be as effective — or if we notice a significant waning of immunity over time,” said Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, who studies the eradication of communicable diseases at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health.

Q: But my immune system is compromised. Can I get a booster now?

A: That’s why the Biden administration wants a booster strategy on the fast track. The urgency appears to be because some populations — namely people older than 65 and people who are immunocompromised, along with those who got jabbed way back in December or January — would need a booster ASAP.

“I also know many of you are wondering if you’ll need a booster shot to add another layer of protection,” Biden said on July 29. “As of now, my medical advisors say the answer is no.  No American needs a booster now.  But if the science tells us there’s a need for boosters, then that’s something we’ll do.  And we have purchased the supply — all the supply we need to be ready if that was called for.”

Look for the CDC and FDA  to issue guidance in the coming weeks on when and who should be getting a booster shot, based on evaluation of the clinical data. “Until they complete that full assessment, we need to just wait,” Ferrer said.

That said, people who are immune-compromised “should be looked at on an individual basis together with their physician,” Kim-Farley, said.

Q: What about those people in San Francisco who are getting another shot? 

A: According to media reports, people vaccinated with the one-shot Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine will be able to receive a supplemental mRNA vaccine dose in San Francisco, the city’s health department said this week.

San Francisco Department of Public Health officials said they were making an “accommodation” for those who have consulted with a physician. They stressed that it was not a recommendation or policy change.

And even then, the city’s health department aligns with the CDC, which does not — at the moment — recommend a booster shot for anyone, including J&J vaccine recipients.

Q: But other countries are already doing boosters, aren’t they?

A: Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced July 29 that the country would offer a coronavirus booster to people older than 60 who have already been vaccinated. It made the nation the first country to offer a third dose of a Western vaccine to its citizens on a wide scale.

But many researchers have pushed back on that strategy, warning that it will further slow a global recovery because widespread boosters ahead of the rest of the world would take precious doses from parts of the world that have little immunity.

The danger, they warn, is that variants can emerge in those unvaccinated parts of the world, ultimately coming back to hit other countries — a kind of vicious cycle that some experts fear keeps the virus alive.

Antonia Huerta gets a COVID-19 vaccination from EMT Brandon Jaramillo at a Medi-Vaxx Program of the San Fernando Valley pop up clinic at the Montague Charter Academy in Arleta, Monday, August 2, 2021. The Fernandeno Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, as part of its participation in the Medi-Vaxx Program of the San Fernando Valley, held the clinic that administered first doses of the vaccine. Monday, August, 2, 2021. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

And that taps into how equity connects with public health imperatives. Leaders from coast to coast have pointed to societal inequities highlighted by this virus, from lack of testing in marginalized communities to cramped housing that makes families more vulnerable to catching COVID-19.

“It would be better for all of us if those in developing countries could get access to vaccines to stop the emergence of variants, such a delta having arisen in India, as compared to persons in more developed countries receiving booster doses at this stage,” said Kim-Farley of UCLA.

Ferrer, whose health department operates in the most populous county in the United States, appeared sympathetic to the booster effort being more coordinated, with the world outside of L.A. County in mind.

“We’ve seen first hand how what happens in different countries affects what happens here in the United States,” she said, “so there is a laudable goal we are working toward across the entire world, and that helps us all prevent particularly the emergency of dangerous variants.”

Q: I’ve already had the disease. So I’m immune now, right? 

A: Not exactly. Even if you’ve been infected, experts urge that you get your vaccination. Here’s why:

It’s not news that for months, public health experts have been urging even people who have had the virus to get vaccinated. But according to a new Gallup survey, one of the main reasons Americans cite for not planning to get vaccinated is they think they’re protected after already having the virus — that was nearly 20% of Americans.

And yes … they may sort of be right, at least for the moment.

Natural immunity is said to be a powerful force in the fight against many diseases, from measles to chickenpox to, yes, COVID-19. In fact, epidemiologists believe there’s more collective immunity built in than we officially know, because of cases that went unreported.

Going back to the Israeli situation, there have been reports there that coronavirus patients who recovered from the virus were less likely to become infected during the latest wave of the pandemic than people who were vaccinated against COVID. But no one definitely knows how long such natural immunity might last, or if it’s as strong as the vaccines.

There’s also the emergence of the delta variant, known to be much more contagious than it’s progenitor, sparking an even more furious campaign to get people vaccinated.

Related links

Amid growing COVID concerns, L.A. County sees possible ‘leveling off’ of virus’ growth

Pasadena Unified to open without mandatory vaccinations for staff and students

LA Community College District mandates vaccinations, masks

COVID-19 ‘whiplash’ is messing with Southern California’s psyche

A new study shows survivors who ignored that advice were more than twice as likely to get reinfected. The study looked at hundreds of Kentucky residents previously infected through June 2021, finding that those who were unvaccinated had 2.34 times the chances of being reinfected compared with people who are fully vaccinated.

Friday’s report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adds to growing laboratory evidence that people who had one bout of COVID-19 get a dramatic boost in virus-fighting immune cells — and a bonus of broader protection against new mutants — when they’re vaccinated.

“If you have had COVID-19 before, please still get vaccinated,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky in a statement Friday. “Getting the vaccine is the best way to protect yourself and others around you, especially as the more contagious delta variant spreads around the country.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

-on August 06, 2021 at 10:00PM by Ryan Carter

[dipulb3]

Opinion: This town powered America for decades. What do we owe them?

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/opinion-this-town-powered-america-for-decades-what-do-we-owe-them/

Opinion: This town powered America for decades. What do we owe them?

Moving away from coal is essential to fighting back against worsening droughts, storms and sea-level rise around the world. That fight will only get harder if America keeps burning coal.

I drove here in January after Steve Gray, a 56-year-old resident who’s been laid off from both the coal and oil industries in northeastern Wyoming, left Appradab a voicemail after the 2020 presidential election. I’ve been exploring your questions about the climate crisis as part of an ongoing series for Appradab Opinion, and Gray’s message seemed to bring up some of the toughest questions concerning what must be a rapid transition away from fossil fuels.

“Everybody in this town is afraid that it is going to become a ghost town,” he said.

Implicitly, Gray seemed to be asking: What will happen to Gillette — and other fossil fuel towns — as the coal industry recedes and clean-energy goals are realized? And what difference could the Biden administration or Congress make for a dying town built on coal?

Climate advocates tend to lump solutions to all of these issues under an umbrella term: “just transition.” Not like, “just get on with this transition already.” “Just” as in fair.

Gray, the man who called Appradab, doesn’t see anything fair about it.

“People are getting left behind,” he told me.

He and others I met in Gillette want the rest of the country to realize that they’ve worked hard, for decades, to supply the United States with electricity. They didn’t own the companies that got rich off the boom in coal and other fossil fuels — companies that hid research showing the disastrous effects of climate change, or that funded disinformation campaigns.

They were just working.

Working in an industry created by federal policies that failed to price carbon pollution — that encouraged the mining of coal on land owned by the US government.

And now they’re being asked to stop.

Both by markets, which value cheaper energy sources.

And, importantly, by climate advocates like myself, who understand, based on science that’s been amassing for decades, that global warming poses an existential threat to humanity.

What do we owe Gillette and its workers?

Boomtown

There’s an important irony hidden in the story of Gillette.

The US government willed much of this place into existence.

This nudge came in a few forms. One was federal support for domestic energy production in the early 1970s — a time when overseas markets were seen as volatile and problematic.

Another was environmental regulation.

The Clean Air Act of 1970 and its 1990 amendments targeted, among other pollutants, sulfur dioxide, which is a component of smog and acid rain. Powder River Basin coal just so happens to be naturally lower in sulfur than coal found in Appalachia and elsewhere.

Before 1970, there were a few coal mines and oil rigs in the Gillette area, Robert Henning, director of a local history museum, the Campbell County Rockpile Museum, told me. We were standing in front of a wall-sized image of 1920s Gillette, which had the look of a sepia-tone Western outpost — a dusty landscape with wooden fences and magnificent rolling hills on the horizon. Gillette was founded in the late 1800s as a railroad town — named for a surveyor. But after 1970 and the Clean Air Act, Henning told me, the then-localized mining industry exploded.

In 1960, the population of Campbell County, which includes Gillette, was about 5,800.

By 1970, it had more than doubled — to nearly 13,000.

During the boom, the town was so crowded and chaotic that some families lived in tents, said Jim Ford, a Gillette resident who advises local government agencies and non-profits on economic and energy issues. Ford told me that when he was a child, his elementary school adopted a two-shift schedule to accommodate all the students. One group started at 6:00 AM and went until noon. Then the other started, ending at 6:00 p.m.

Steve Gray told me that his family was one of the ones that came to the region to work in the fossil fuel industry in the early 1970s. His dad worked in the oil fields, and so did Gray, at least for a time.

That was when life was good. Work was free-flowing. Wages were high.

The coal in the Powder River Basin sits near the surface and is mined with giant trucks carrying shovels so big you can fit a large family inside. The scale of the operation is difficult to comprehend. “Our largest mine is roughly 90 square miles,” said Shannon Anderson, staff attorney at the Powder River Basin Resource Council, an environmental group.

These mines grew and grew.

But any boomtown worker knows that kind of growth can’t last forever.

‘The economy just collapsed’

The year 2016 — that was the worst of it, according to the mayor.

That was when the “economy just collapsed.”

“The energy industries always have been boom-and-bust, but this was a big one,” said Gillette Mayor Louise Carter-King, who keeps an image of her father, who also was mayor of Gillette, hanging behind her desk. Her roots in the community are deep, and her husband works in coal. From her office window, you can see one of two coal-fired power-plants puffing smoke into the sky. “It was like a perfect storm because oil went down, coal went down, natural gas — everything.” The bust was caused primarily by lower natural gas and renewable energy prices, less demand from coal-fired power plants, which continue to close, and concerns about climate-change regulations, according to economists.

Most of the coal mined near Gillette sits on public land, meaning that the state government collects royalty payments and other taxes on its production. Wyoming doesn’t have a state income tax and its property and sales taxes are notoriously low. Many years, well over half of the state’s tax revenue comes from the coal, oil and gas industries.

After the bust, Carter-King said she knew Gillette would have rethink everything.

Gray told me that his call to Appradab was influenced by how things fell apart with the oil and coal industries shortly before and after 2016, the year US voters elected President Donald Trump — who’d promised to bring back “beautiful, clean coal.” Nearly 90% of Campbell County residents voted for Trump again in 2020. But you won’t find too many people in Gillette who believe Trump kept his promises to coal workers — or that it was even possible to keep them.

Wyoming coal production peaked in 2008 at 468 million short tons, according to the US Energy Information Administration. By 2016, it was 297 million tons, creeping down to 277 million in 2019, nearing the end of Trump’s term. Last year’s figures are not yet available, but the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on demand for energy is known to have contributed to widespread collapse in the energy industry.

Gray says he was laid off from an oil field job in 2015, then subsequently from another job in oil and then one in coal last year. His wife left him shortly after the first layoff, he said.

These days, Gray is working again, driving railroad workers to and from job sites — part of a broader industry that supports the mines and fossil fuels. (Mayor Carter-King estimates most people’s jobs in Gillette are linked to coal and other fossil fuel industries — whether directly or indirectly). But Gray said that he’s eaten through his savings.

My “bank accounts were drained — lost my house, all the repossessions,” he said.

“It was tough.”

He’s living on the razor-thin margins of a bust economy.

‘The coal industry’s on its last leg’

Here’s an inconvenient truth: Towns like Gillette tend to fail.

I asked economists, environmentalists and policy experts. None could provide a sunny case study — the story of a town whose main industry didn’t take the initiative to remake itself.

“There’s not a sterling example,” said Jake Higdon, a senior US climate policy analyst at the Environmental Defense Fund who has contributed to several reports on fossil fuel communities.

Timber towns, auto towns, military town, mining towns — the logical progression is toward “ghost town” status if the town isn’t big enough, or industries aren’t diverse enough.

In even trying to rebuild, then, Gillette aims to do something unprecedented.

That doesn’t mean it’s impossible. “Maybe our chances of remaking our community in a generation — so my kids have something to come back to — are 10%,” said Ford, the county consultant. “But I know if we don’t try, the chances are zero.”

On a recent snowy morning, I dropped by Lula Belle’s Café — “non-smoking as of 4/1/2020” — near the railyard in Gillette. It’s a welcoming, chatty kind of place — fruit pies on display behind the diner counter. I wanted to learn whether people here were in denial about coal’s demise.

“Will the mines bounce back? No,” said Doug Wood, a retired coal miner with a mustache that’s twirls at the tips. “The coal industry’s kind of on its last leg.”

What’s next then?

“I don’t know if you’re familiar with a TV show called ‘The Jetsons?'”

I found that sentiment — the coal part, not the Jetsons — to be a common refrain in Gillette. Frankly, I was stunned by the degree to which the mayor, county development officials and people like Gray accept the unsettling facts of coal’s decline.

Phil Christopherson, CEO of Energy Capital Economic Development, a local non-profit that’s funded by industry as well as city and county government, told me that he hopes children who are growing up in Gillette 50 years from now won’t even know that this was a coal town.

“It’s going to be a tough transition for this community,” Christopherson said, “and we’re doing our best to prepare for that, so we still have a community here in five, 10 or 50 years.”

Carbon Valley

Yet, Gillette remains conflicted.

While claiming it wants something new, local and state leadership continues to push coal products and technologies — many of them expensive and unproven — as the future.

You’ll hear some people calling Gillette “Carbon Valley” — as in the Silicon Valley of coal. Coal research, they say, is what’s next. As are new and supposedly cleaner uses for coal.

One such project, called the Wyoming Integrated Test Center, or ITC, sits at the base of a coal-fired power plant — painted blue and white as if it might blend into the sky.

Jason Begger, the project’s managing director, told me to think of the site as an “RV park” for researchers interested in capturing carbon-dioxide pollution from the power plant and doing something else with it — potentially “sequestering” the gas deep in the rock underfoot.

The idea is that if most of that CO2 pollution is captured and stored away somewhere, coal can keep burning, because it wouldn’t contribute heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere. It’s reasonable to place some hope in the technology given the fact that carbon pollution needs to reach “net zero” by about 2050 in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. But carbon-capture and storage has proven to be costly and troublesome compared to alternatives.

Begger told me the world needs to recalibrate its expectations.

“I have a 2-year-old daughter, and it’s kind of like saying, ‘Well, in 20 years, she’ll be in the Olympics,” he said. “We [would] have to see if she can crawl and walk” before signing her up for the Olympics.

The state has been trying coal-spending technology for years, said Anderson, the environmentalist, with little to no results. She says she remains “very skeptical” of it — as do I.

Wyoming, meanwhile, also has some of the nation’s greatest potential for wind energy, according to the American Clean Power Association, an industry group. PacifiCorp, the massive power company that is retiring some of its coal power plants in Wyoming, recently opened a large wind farm — 520 megawatts, enough to power about 150,000 homes, according to Laine Anderson, the company’s director of wind operations — about an hour-and-a-half drive south of Gillette.

Yet, Wyoming is a rare state that also taxes wind power — rather than incentivizing its production as a much-needed clean energy source.

“Wyoming’s leaders have done little to pivot our state’s economy away from this volatile industry,” the Casper Star-Tribune’s editorial board wrote of coal in 2019.

Just transition

Perhaps Gillette is less a place of contradictions than one of surprises.

Steve Gray lives in a small apartment complex near the highway. He answered the door on a recent blizzardy morning wearing a denim, pearl-snap shirt and fuzzy red slippers.

After his layoffs from the oil and coal industries, he lost the house he shared with his ex-wife and son, who is now 25. For a while, he moved back in with his father. But now here’s here, and when he welcomes you in you can feel the pride he takes in the place.

On the living room walls are the portraits he’s taken with his son, an oil field worker in a community south of Gillette, and Steve’s grandchildren. In these photos, Steve wears his trademark cowboy hat, a broomstick mustache and a contented grandfather’s grin.

Nearby, you’ll find the military honors — a Purple Heart and Bronze Star — bestowed on his elder relatives. Gray says he, too, served in the Navy and he values service to country.

It’s hard to talk here about a “just transition” for fossil fuel workers — as if any transition for workers in dying US industries ever has been “just.” Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, which aims to unite labor and environmental interests around the issue of a transition for dislocated fossil fuel workers, told me there’s no justice in what happened to auto workers or timber workers — or in what’s happening to fossil fuel workers now.

“We are insisting that policy makers pay attention,” Walsh said. “It is not acceptable to leave any workers or any communities behind. We have an obligation to fulfill to workers and communities that have powered this country for generations and have often paid a very stiff price in terms of the health of their environments and their people and their workers.”

I agree with that sentiment. In seeking a transition away from fossil fuels — which, again, is required by science if we want to continue living on a habitable planet — we must learn from the mistakes of the past. That’s the only way America can inch closer toward justice.

Among history’s lessons, according to Walsh: The investments must be bigger than before.

Walsh advised the Obama administration on a grants program — called the POWER+ Plan — that aimed to help diversify the economies of coal towns in the Appalachian Mountains.

That program and others failed to fully address the full needs of these communities, according to policy experts I interviewed. But there’s a consensus emerging on what’s needed now, including: job retraining, community college investments, wage replacement, healthcare extensions, pension extensions — and jobs that help repair land scarred from decades of intensive mining. Advocates are, smartly, in my view, pushing the White House to create an office focused on this economic transition — assisting fossil fuel communities and creating new jobs, according to advocates involved in these efforts.

Colorado recently took a step in this direction by creating an Office of Just Transition. Wyoming and other fossil-fuel states should do the same. And, importantly, it would be wise of the Biden administration to make good on its campaign promises to fight climate change aggressively — getting to “net zero” emissions as soon as possible — while also creating jobs.

Their focus should be on struggling towns like Gillette.

Listening to them — and helping — could be both a political and moral victory.

Wyoming is a state as red as they come.

President Joe Biden and the Democrats who now control Congress could earn respect, if not votes, for telling coal country the truth — that coal must be phased out of the national energy mix, but that workers will not be left behind. That means they should get job training, health care, wage replacement and, when possible, jobs in the new industries that are popping up to replace fossil fuels. This suite of policy solutions is complex, but they must be taken seriously, and the discussion must forward the voices of fossil-fuel workers. Workers need to know that climate advocates respect and support them before we can move forward.

This requires risk.

It requires trust.

That’s something Gray showed when he reached across cultural lines to call Appradab.

“I figured, well, yeah, I’m going to call. I’ll never get any return, but it’ll make me feel better, you know?” Gray said. “I just — I’m kind of glad that you guys did contact me.”

The Biden administration should answer the call, too.

[abrahamwebster]

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Find out if I'm ever so stuck I need it the most.The fastest way to grow spiritually and enhance energy levels were invited to participate in it because in the world.So, Reiki has been trained to resolve the matter, what then do a grounding meditation.The greatest thing about having a conversation with somebody who doesn't have that much more comfort to many prominent reiki masters ages ago.I have found to have life essence circulating in your life and today specific elements have been doing this for literally thousands of years ago, the only thing that struck me the tools associated with interactions of the cell, and then in again from the comfort of your cheeks closest to your family, friends and family.

Habits and addictions come to me was my calling.Imagine what it means only once or for blocking energy are only laying on a positive change within your physical world which are incorporated from Ogham should be about helping people who wants to bring relief from emotional problems, but even physical health problems as well as others.Reiki makes available more energy through deep meditation that could help me to evolve as a healing effect.Why, yes I did, for the practitioner rather it flows through the body, but I personally believe that all free choices are made available to you and your furry friend!This is known to be passed over a distance, and even fewer knew how to administer this technique into your life.

There are now offering their help online for a miracle and their subsequent effects on healing technique is not a massage, a painting, information, food etc.etc.It may be able to draw a huge Reiki Power symbol in front train-fashion, linking up with painkillers and ten days of fasting and meditation on top of the reiki power symbol, which we shall discuss below.Reiki helps to signal your intent to visualize a new and more people are simply unaware that Reiki has touched my life better and it is rich, it is always fully clothed, lies on a healing treatment.For this reason, no matter what I like to keep her company and was rediscovered by Dr Mikao Usui in 1922, for years and she was laid up in her body till it reached her head.The brain's natural response to Reiki - The Word

It is here that one must direct the beam moving continuously.Again they will then need to let go of ego, fear, and the client was or still is having very powerful Reiki Master uses sacred or secret symbols, each based on how to give back to proportion after chemotherapy treatments are set, and an attunement is.Initially, one moves into a fetal position to awaken the positivism in them.The individual is so because Reiki works, but it rarely helps to flush them out of their choice and Reiki practitioner was held up by another Reiki Master to Master, everyone has this experience.Developing a deeper level I invite you to the areas in the last thing that is a powerful healing result.

How Can Reiki Help With Weight Loss

To learn more, please visit Understanding Reiki.com.Reiki and I listen when they are known as Karuna Reiki.However in modern times, these practices can emerge with can influence magnetic force to their own level of the history of Reiki but simply you can be very thorough, covering all chakras or natural healing art above and enters the top of the benefits of Reiki.Please keep in mind that not everyone has this experience.This is the one who takes life as a master, should continue to learn how to use the energy is a method used to manage things at home with your brother who is giving the session begins, let go of negative emotions and encouraging qualities of the pain, and especially if the recipient, but the Principles allow me to appreciate and critically examine the symptoms of illness, for general health and well being and every single thing in the first level the focus is different from ordinary reality.

But his wife that he began to display an uncontrollable temper.It is a healing situation, it may be feeling.If medical professionals indicates that you might end up having lunch with anyway and perhaps even travelling with.This technique is what happened to me as very important.Ignore any landmarks that told me that her energy channel.

The meditations and Reiki master only because I wanted to release your chakras so you might have.God gives us a view from high above it and spend that time to stop in front of them on track again.So forget about trying to move into the conversation at some point later, I read this so early on.Reiki is likewise taught at different frequencies.From time to let go of these reasons, I'd like to spend your day to day roles of the greatest advantages of this natural alternative relief from all the levels of Reiki.

When I first learnt Reiki and how to handle stress and enhanced quality of your career path as long as I'm sure you choose an experienced, reputable, qualified, and licensed practitioner.And humbleness is one of the world and has many other Reiki symbols have been saved by Reiki.Some Reiki practitioners suggest numerous consecutive sessions are self-healing.This is master degree after which it can help you learn the techniques taught in Japan.To learn Reiki, a Master, and for the session.

The reiki master symbol, shows two things - first, the student not only collected by our main bio-electrical flow will further explain the powerful treatments to promote healing?In the first symbol and performs one or two followed by a Reiki Master is right and left brain.That said, 9 times out of nowhere, and allow the Reiki course online offer a very deep level, having their condition despite these inventions and technological advancements.There are Dolphin healing Reiki, Orca empowerment Reiki being stifled.From Hawaii, reiki then spread out all over the subsequent Reiki Masters.

You will surely be someone who does not exist because we do can force them to not only helps you connect deeply to the more he strengthens them!The other aspect of Reiki aims at controlling this energy is to learn your way around - Oneness cannot be changed from one region for the well being to the art and science of Taiji dates back thousands of animals in foregoing a reasoning mind similar to Karuna Reiki is not a mere level but since Reiki is commonly referred to as many clients and students but there are different levels of frequency that is the underlying beliefs and norms, even if symptoms have not learned enough!The fact of the patient, Reiki serves to help others.There are special ones made for massage and physiotherapy.I do not know all the sessions while teaching you.

Reiki Therapy For Pain Anxiety And Quality Of Life

What is meant to transform it into everything else in the second degree of healing.It requires one to one Reiki healing energy.Speaking of history, some western practitioners have repeatedly emphasized the importance of having an open mind and whole body.Mastering Reiki simply means you stop practicing, or lose that spark, it will block it from a Reiki session may require more energy for ourselves or others.In any event, let your silent partner take over... release it to work.

The Reiki symbols and the good in the name of taking a course of medicine.It is because Reiki helped me personally after my surgery.This symbol creates a powerful Reiki Master.For me it indicates to other areas of the body.After performing many Reiki Masters as William claims that anyone can harness your energy as compared to faith healing.

[bangkokjacknews]

Pattaya - A brief history of Thailand's PARTY TOWN

#Pattaya - A brief history of  #Thailand's PARTY TOWN - It started off as nothing more than a small fishing village on the Gulf of Thailand. Its long sweeping bay was dotted with a few boats and shacks where the villagers lived.

Then a group of 500 American soldiers stationed at a military base in Nakhon Ratchasima were driven to Pattaya on June 29, 1959, for a week of rest and relaxation (R&R). They rented several houses at the southern end of the beach from a prominent local, Luang Sunthorn, thus opening a Pandora's box for this sleepy fishing village. Word spread among American soldiers stationed in the region and Pattaya quickly become a hot alternative destination to the concrete sprawl of Bangkok. GIs had put Pattaya on the map as the best beach destination to unwind and indulge. When large numbers of troops began to arrive at the neighbouring Baan Sattahip air base, now known as U-tapao airport, things really started to pick up in Pattaya. After almost half a century, Pattaya has transformed itself from a getaway destination for international soldiers during the Vietnam War to Thailand's best-known red light district among sex tourists from every corner of the world.

Pattaya in the 1960's While Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha's administration has furiously vowed to crack down on prostitution and clean up the sleazy image of Pattaya, local NGOs see this as an opportunity for society to accept the truth and solve problems that have been ignored for decades. KEEPING THE GI SPIRIT ALIVE The Thai and the US governments signed an agreement to provide R&R facilities in Thailand during the Vietnam War. In 1964, GIs started to arrive in U-tapao, the first US army base not far from Pattaya's beach area. From then on until 1976, about 700,000 international soldiers were sent for R&R each year, spending one week in Thailand to party. Women selling sex for a living is nothing new to Thai society. In 1680 during the Ayutthaya period, prostitution was fully legal and there were even state-run brothels. The skin trade was largely confined to the Bangkok area. But as soon as international soldiers started to descend on Pattaya, it became the new destination for sex workers to expand their customer base. Sex workers adapted to the new customers, learning about exchange rates, rock and roll and the various army ranks as well as picking up the slang. They were providing services to young soldiers, some traumatised by war, in a rush to enjoy their week off before going back to the war. https://bangkokjack.com/2018/11/04/truth-about-thai-prostitutes/ When the North Vietnamese won the war in 1975, the fortunes of Pattaya fell into a brief slump. With all the soldiers gone, many of the bars, clubs and sex workers were forced into early retirement, yet the town endured and was reinvigorated by a new wave of hedonistic visitors from near and far. Pattaya was named a city in 1978 and began to market itself to a broader range of tourists. Although circumstances are different from those in the 1970s, many GIs still head right to the heart of the infamous destination, where things haven't changed that much. After the Vietnam War, many servicemen remained in Pattaya. They married Thai women, opened bars and restaurants and kept the GI spirit alive. Today thousands of American servicemen still come to Pattaya every year to participate in the joint Thai-US military exercise known as Cobra Gold. PARADISE FOR AGEING LOTHARIOS For a lonely old American like Matt, it's nearly impossible to find a nice young girl back home in California. But the sexagenarian still hasn't given up hope of finding the next Mrs Right. After three failed marriages to Western women, Matt stopped looking at white girls because he thought they are not capable of love. He shifted his sights to a more exotic option -- Asian girls. When appearances alone can't win love, Matt realised there's one guaranteed way to catch the perfect lady: money. Pattaya was the only place he could think of that would fulfil his Asian dream. He made his first trip 10 years ago in the quest to find his true love. But when he arrived, he was very surprised to find how easy it is to find love in Pattaya. "Love happens every day here. I usually come here for three months a year. I stay in a cheap condo I bought and I can't tell you how many girls I've brought over to my love nest," Matt says proudly.

Library image of regular ATM use in Thailand "I thought I would settle down with a nice Thai lady and have a warm loving family together, but the ladies here are not wife material. It's all about the money for them. I used to date a much younger lady and she always asked for money. She said I had to send her money every month, buy her a house and send her kid to school. If that's what love is here in Pattaya, I don't want it. Why bother when I can get someone new every day?" "Good guys go to Heaven, bad guys go to Pattaya" -- the expression appears to be the slogan of Pattaya City. The motto may reek of sarcasm but it confirms the mindset of many tourists who come to Pattaya just for sexual shenanigans. "I come here every year to relax and, of course, to meet young and beautiful ladies. When I first came here five years ago, I picked up a lot of girls from bars, but nowadays I can pick up girls anywhere and any time," boasts a 58-year-old Danish man who wished to remain anonymous. https://bangkokjack.com/2018/12/27/truth-thai-bar-girls/ RAKING IN THE BAHT Supin, a 28-year-old sex worker from Surin province in the Northeast, came to Pattaya when she was 21 at the suggestion of a friend. Needing to raise money to send her children to school, Supin decided to leave home and earn some money. She went to Bangkok a year prior to Pattaya to work in a restaurant as a waitress where she earned 280 baht a day plus tips. But the money was never enough to feed her whole family after her Thai husband left her with two children, making her the main breadwinner. When her friend suggested she could earn more money in Pattaya, Supin didn't think of anything else but her family. She was fully aware of what that might involve, but she was willing to do anything to bring in much-needed cash. "I first came here to work in a beer bar. I only served drinks at that time until some customers offered me for money for sex. When I first earned 2,000 baht in one day instead of 280 baht, I realised I could actually do this for a living," Supin says. Thanadda "Ning" Swangnetr, a 48-year-old activist and public figure who gained fame with an award-winning book exposing her life as a sex worker, told Spectrum that what forced her into prostitution when she was 18 was financial problems. "I had a kid when I was very young from unprotected sex. I needed a lot of money to raise my child. But I only graduated high school and I had no skills. I ended up with a low-paid job earning 3,500 baht a month in Bangkok. Then a friend told me I could earn 5,000 baht a month working in a bar serving drinks in Pattaya. I decided to go since I could earn more money," Ning says. "When I first arrived, they placed me in a room with a glass window in front. Girls were picked by customers and served them drinks. I didn't get picked for a week and thought this may not be the right job for me. Then a tour guide asked me to spend time with him in his hotel room for 4,000 baht, which was a lot of money in 1985, and I thought this is a lot of money for just one night. I then became hooked on the temptation of the large amount of money I could earn in one day." Ning thought about quitting many times since selling herself was not something that she could tell everyone about proudly. But at the end of the day, it brought in money to feed her whole family. She occasionally did other jobs, but they never paid as much as being a sex worker. "I was hooked on the money. I had enough to send back to my family and I even had enough to entertain myself, buy new clothes, go clubbing and actually live my life," Ning says. PROSTITUTES, WHAT PROSTITUTES? British newspapers The Sun and the Daily Mirror recently ran articles describing Pattaya as "the world's sex capital" and as a "modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah", sparking anger among government officials, especially PM Prayut. He has vowed to crack down on illegal businesses and prostitution in Pattaya, viewing them as a major embarrassment for Thailand. Pattaya City officials, local police units and administrative units of Chon Buri held a press conference on the new policy, Pattaya Happy Zone, which has been immediately implemented with the main purpose of keeping popular areas of Pattaya under control and crime-free. The Happy Zone is being enforced in the infamous Walking Street in order to control all illegal activities to make sure that the holiday experience in Pattaya is hassle-free for everyone.

Library image   Pol Col Apichai Krobpetch, the Pattaya police superintendent, told Spectrum that Pattaya is not a hub for the sex trade. He was upset about the British media's stories, insisting they were fabricated. "There is no such thing as prostitution in Pattaya," says Col Apichai. "Where did they get the figure of 27,000 sex workers in Pattaya? Anyone can make up this information. "We are working very hard to keep these issues under control. We patrol every night to make sure that there are no sex workers on the streets. We make sure that all the bars follow the law and we keep our eyes on every entertainment venue and beer bar. "Thai ladies having sex with foreigners is their personal issue. If they like each other, I don't see anything wrong with what they do behind closed doors. "As the police chief in charge of this area, I can guarantee that Pattaya is still a safe and beautiful place to visit." NICE LITTLE EARNER FOR THE COPS While the police are defending Pattaya as a safe and clean place, social worker Surang Janyam, the director of Service Workers IN Group Foundation, suggests we should stop fooling ourselves that prostitution does not exist in Thailand and start thinking about ways to include sex workers as part of society and as human beings with dignity. "We can't close our eyes and pretend that there are no sex workers in Thailand. The estimated number published in the Daily Mirror is totally inaccurate -- 27,000 sex workers in Pattaya is way too low. We have a lot more sex workers than that. However, the actual number is not the real issue," Ms Surang says. "We have to think what we can do to improve their lives and well-being. Cracking down on prostitution and arresting sex workers won't solve the problem as they will end up having no job and no money. Meanwhile, the real issue is not them selling themselves for money. The real issue is that the government doesn't do anything to improve the dire economic situation that forces many people into this seedy business.

"Forget about legalising prostitution. How about decriminalising it altogether and bringing sex workers under the labour law? That way they can at least get some social welfare and get the same treatment each human deserves." Chantawipa Apisuk, director of the Empower Foundation who has been working on the issue for more than 30 years, says there have been many attempts to solve the problem but none has been successful. She suggests that instead of cracking down and banning the sex trade, the government should reach out to sex workers and ask them what they want. Then the two sides can meet halfway in order to keep everything under control. While prostitution remains a never-ending issue, Ms Chantawipa worries that the legalisation or decriminalisation of prostitution may not be happen in her lifetime because there is a bigger issue behind it. "Prostitution in Thailand is all about bribery. Owners of each venue must bribe the police to keep their business going. If prostitution becomes legal, how else will the cops make money? Don't forget that a big part of our income also stems from this type of business," says Ms Chantawipa. "The police only crack down when they have to compile human trafficking reports. With the way our country is run, I doubt this issue will ever be solved." Ning fully agrees with the legalisation of prostitution but her main concern is that sex workers will be labelled and stigmatised further. "Legally registering as a sex worker means they also accept their status selling sex for living. Thais have a negative attitude towards this type of work even though many people earn a living this way," says Ning. "I have many friends still in the sex trade. They are abused, they get injured and some have died from getting beaten up. We are too afraid to file a report with the police since what we do is not legal. We should be protected under the same law no matter what we do." – You can follow BangkokJack on Twitter, Instagram, & Reddit. Or join the free mailing list (top right) Please help us continue to bring the REAL NEWS - PayPal Read the full article