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mariacallous · 3 months

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In the days before South Africa’s May 29 election, there was a euphoric atmosphere in parts of the cosmopolitan but largely Zulu port city of Durban. People who would usually pass each other anonymously could be overheard telling each other, “We are going to fix the country!” There was, though, an ugly underside to this, with current President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is from the smaller Venda ethnic group, often dismissed in vulgar ethnic terms.

The African National Congress (ANC), after 30 years of comfortable rule, took a heavy blow in this election. It secured only 40.2 percent of the vote nationally and took its hardest hit in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, where Durban is located. There, it came in far behind the newly formed uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party—whose figurehead is former President Jacob Zuma. MK finished first with almost 46 percent of votes for the national assembly, taking a large number of votes from the ANC—which won around 17 percent—and many from the Zulu-nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party.

KwaZulu-Natal is South Africa’s second-most populous province—and it is notorious for political violence—including open armed battles fought through the late 1980s and early 1990s, assassinations, and major riots in July 2021.

The electoral success of Zuma’s new party in the recent election has raised fears of further violence.

Organized around the charisma of Zuma, who was the staggeringly corrupt president of South Africa from 2009 to 2018, the MK party takes its name, meaning “spear of the nation,” from the armed wing of the ANC formed by Nelson Mandela and others in 1961. The party lays claim to that history and has adopted a militaristic posture.

Apartheid was, of course, not brought down by that army, which was, in military terms, a failed project. Before Western opinion turned at the end of the Cold War, apartheid was rendered nonviable by the mass democratic politics that began with a series of strikes in Durban in 1973, a popular movement that does not appear in Zuma’s militaristic misrepresentation of political history.

MK endorses an extreme version of the authoritarian populism that has surged in elections around the world. It is best described as ethnically inflected nationalism; while the party has an anticolonial dimension in so far as it seeks to build a counter-elite, it is also socially predatory and deeply conservative on social issues. Zuma has suggested doing away with same-sex marriage, which has been legal in South Africa since 2006; elevating aristocratic tribal authorities over elected representatives; holding a referendum on the death penalty; hiring more police officers; and introducing conscription.

Like other authoritarian populist parties in South Africa and elsewhere, Zuma’s party also takes a hard-right line on immigration. This is a matter of serious concern in South Africa, where African and Asian migrants are often targeted by the state and, periodically, by violent mobs.

MK also has a clear ethnic dimension. This is in sharp contrast to the ANC, which was founded in 1912 with an explicit commitment to build a national sense of African identity that eschewed the politicization of ethnic identities. It remains an ethnically diverse organization led by a member of an ethnic minority group.

Like figures such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, MK is also enthusiastically pro-Putin. Some MK supporters have been seen wearing T-shirts with side-by-side images of Zuma and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But unlike forms of right-wing populism elsewhere, MK also promises economic inclusion in a country where impoverishment and inequality are rampant, along with the effective provision of basic services. It proposes nationalizing banks, mines, and insurance companies; expropriating land and placing it under the control of the state and traditional authorities; and providing free education and full employment.

Due to this platform, newspapers outside South Africa have sometimes referred to Zuma’s party as being “far left.” But the left in South Africa has not rallied in support of MK’s proposals for expropriation and nationalization—largely because Zuma’s record during his nine years as president was dire in terms of creating jobs; providing basic services, decent health care, education, and public housing; and achieving long-promised land reform.

Indeed, corruption during Zuma’s presidency did massive damage to the state, its institutions, and its publicly owned companies and was so extreme that a single family took in just under 50 billion rand (then around $3.2 billion) from public budgets in what came to be known as “state capture.” Zuma’s presidency was also marked by a sharp increase in state repression, including the massacre of 34 striking miners by South African police in 2012 and frequent assassinations of grassroots activists.

A number of commentators across the political spectrum have reduced Zuma’s popularity and electoral success in KwaZulu-Natal to “tribalism,” sometimes with the implication that atavistic forces are at play. The recourse to this deeply colonial idea of the “tribe” is unfortunate. But the ethnic element in Zuma’s politics cannot be overlooked either.

Zuma has sought to stoke ethnic sentiment since he was tried for rape in 2006, when, along with chanting, “Burn the bitch,” in reference to his accuser, some of his supporters wore T-shirts with the slogan “100% Zuluboy.” In the lead-up to the recent election, it was common to hear people in Durban speak of the need to achieve the unity of the Zulu people.

KwaZulu-Natal has a long history of violent ethnic mobilization. Mpondo people from the neighboring Eastern Cape province have been sporadically attacked and driven from their homes for more than a century, including when ethnic sentiment escalated as Zuma ascended to the presidency in 2009.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was open war between Inkatha, then a conservative Zulu-nationalist organization backed by the apartheid state, and the United Democratic Front, a popular anti-apartheid organization that allied itself with the ANC in exile. It is estimated that around 20,000 people were killed between the late 1980s and early 1990s. The apartheid state saw Inkatha as a conservative ally against the Soviet-linked ANC and an ally equally opposed to the ANC’s vision of a unitary democratic state.

The war came to an end when, in secret negotiations between the last apartheid president, F.W. de Klerk, and Inkatha leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi on the eve of the first democratic election, huge concessions were made to Inkatha, most notably via the massive transfer of land in KwaZulu-Natal—around 11,000 square miles, almost the size of Belgium—to the Zulu monarchy. This boosted the power of what is termed “traditional authority” over democratic authority, as people living on the land must pay rent to a trust headed by the Zulu king and are governed by customary law administered by traditional leaders.

The end of the war did not bring peace, though. The province swiftly became notorious for political assassinations within the ANC, between the ANC and other parties, and against grassroots activists. Many hundreds of people have been killed. The problem of assassinations was never seriously dealt with in the province and, as a result, has been steadily making its way into other parts of the country.

In the latter years of Zuma’s presidency, he sought to protect himself against mass outrage at brazen corruption by cynically spinning his government’s kleptocracy as “radical economic transformation.” This was taken up outside of the state by armed so-called business forums that shook down established businesses at gun point and by local party gangsters who appropriated public land for private profit. The capacity for violence developed in this milieu includes access to professional assassins and, in some cases, local militias.

In July 2021, when Zuma was briefly jailed for being in contempt of court, KwaZulu-Natal was ripped apart by riots in which 354 people were killed. The riots were sparked by a breakdown in the social order as supporters of Zuma, some dressed in military fatigues, openly attacked migrants from elsewhere in Africa in downtown Durban while the police stood down. There were also more covert attacks on trucks on the main road to Johannesburg, and many were left burnt. Again the police stood down.

The riots began with the mass appropriation of food in a carnival atmosphere. In the main, there was not much sense that this was a political event, and many participants were clear that they were not motivated by support for Zuma. But the riots soon took on a more ominous tone, and infrastructure was systematically destroyed by groups of armed men acting with military precision. Zuma’s daughter Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla celebrated the destruction on social media.

Now that the country is suspended between an election result that fundamentally changes its politics and the outcomes of the ongoing high-stakes negotiations to form national and provincial governments, the atmosphere in Durban is more febrile than euphoric.

False claims are being pushed through social media with a startling velocity, with Zuma-Sambudla taking a leading role in the promotion of conspiracy theories. There has been a particular focus, repeated by Zuma in various public statements, on the Trumpian move of declaring, without evidence, that the elections were rigged. The general view is that Zuma and his supporters are making this claim to set the stage for violence, although it is not quite clear what their intentions are.

It is common to hear people say that when the new provincial government comes into power, migrants will be “dealt with” and ethnic minorities will “know their place.” It is not uncommon to hear talk of secession, of an independent Zulu kingdom. There are widespread fears of coming violence, something that a number of grassroots activists say is inevitable. Mqapheli Bonono, one of the most prominent grassroots activists in Durban, said: “There will definitely be violence. We don’t know when or where, but for sure it’s coming.”

Migrants have already been threatened and intimidated. Last Wednesday, an MK organizer was gunned down in Durban. Although there is not yet any evidence of a specific motive, it is being reported by some media as a political killing. It is widely assumed that this is the beginning of an internal struggle for positions and power within MK. Some ethnic minorities fear that they may have to move out of the province. Some have returned to rural family homes outside the province while they wait to see how things play out.

Ramaphosa wishes to establish a national unity government so the ANC can continue to govern the country. It is not yet clear if this will work or if MK will participate in such an arrangement. In KwaZulu-Natal, it is possible that a deal between other parties could keep MK in opposition despite it winning the largest share of the vote. If MK is not part of the deal struck to form a national government, tensions will inevitably escalate. This will be dramatically compounded if the party is kept out of government in KwaZulu-Natal by an alliance of other parties.

If MK does form a government in KwaZulu-Natal, the country will have its second-most populous province governed by a political force directly opposed not just to the national government but to the principles and legal foundations on which the country was founded.

The militaristic posture of Zuma’s party escalates fears of violence, and Zuma himself often makes implicit threats of violence via dog whistles. Speaking in English, he has warned that he should not be “provoked.” Speaking in Zulu, he has said: “Abasazi singo bani” (They don’t know who we are).

The idiomatic meaning here is clear, but, in literal terms, South Africans know exactly who Zuma and his party are.

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helpjuju · 1 month

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Dear humanity

I am Ahmed from Gaza. I am married and have three children: Jumana, 8 years old, Suhad, 6 years old, and Muhammad, 3 years old. Although they are young, they have survived previous wars, but this current war is the most difficult because I am not with them and cannot provide water, food or a safe place.

Our lives changed on October 7, when my children were home with their mother. The sounds of bombing were getting louder everywhere, and with every missile strike, my children’s bodies were shaking. My wife and children left our house in a hurry and moved to another house, then to school. Later, our house was surrounded, burned and completely destroyed. It wasn't just the loss of our home, it was the loss of safety and security and our dreams, including those of our children. They destroyed our home and ruined years of our lives.

I also lost my job. Job opportunities in Gaza are extremely scarce due to the blockade that has been in place for more than 17 years.

Despite my persistent attempts and improving my skills through education and traininig, I was able to open an office for vocational education and training. But I lost my office after its infrastructure was destroyed. I also had a store that sold electronic games, and that was destroyed and burned as well. As a result, my family and I no longer have any way to earn a living. I went to Egypt before the war to take some courses for my business, but I am now stuck in Egypt while my children are with their mother in Gaza due to the closure of the road from Egypt to Gaza due to the war.

I have not seen my children for 8 months due to road closures, and I am desperately searching for a way to save them from the ravages of war. Being away from my children, I feel tremendous pressure and feel extremely responsible for every moment my children and wife spend in fear and devastation. I dream of bringing my children and my wife to Egypt to a safe place where I can build a better future for them, full of safety and hope. They deserve life in all its meanings, including comfort and peace.

I appeal to the whole world to hear my cry, the cry of my wife, and the cry of my children in Gaza. We need a helping hand to wipe away our tears and build a bridge of safety for us.

Perhaps this fundraising campaign represents a beacon of hope amidst the darkness. It is truly the only hope we cling to so strongly.

The aim of the fundraiser is to save my children by traveling to Egypt. Travel costs per person are $5,000, and I also need to cover transportation costs, renting a house in Egypt, and meeting my children's clothing, healthcare, and other humanitarian needs for several months up to a year.

Approximately $1,000 to cover GoFundMe transaction fees (%2.9+$0.30 per transaction)

To learn more about me, please visit my

TikTok account www.tiktok.com/@help.juju

Donations campaign details:

Travel fees for the mother = $5,000

For children: 3*2,500$=7,500$

Total travel fee = $12,500

Passport issuance fees = $1000

Visa fees for Canada and plane tickets for the family are $8,000

Accommodation in Egypt, including renting a house, buying clothes and toys for the children, entertaining them, and conducting a medical examination for the children to check on them. My family of four in Gaza and me alone in Egypt, we are all facing unimaginable challenges. To give us a chance for a better life, we are seeking to raise 58,000 Euros.

There are taxes on money in banks as well as on the crowdfunding fund (GoFundMe) which also has a percentage.

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thesalemwitchtries · 11 months

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Dreaming of a Grave: Prologue

Word Count: 780

Pairing: Matt Murdock x Named! Fem! Enhanced! Reader

Warnings: depersonalization (vague), use of she/they pronouns (not really a warning, but just so you know), probably wrong tech speak (my dad is a software engineer and my mom has 4 degrees in CS, ranging from network security to a double masters in machine learning and robotics, so obviously my teenage rebellion was to be an arts major)

Masterlist

Thank you for reading, I hope you see a very cute animal soon :)

Charlotte called it Syncing: taking an imaginary leash off of her consciousness and allowing it to float away, dissolving from physical sensation, from her emotion and identity, she became it, more than Charlotte and less than human.

There was no real feeling to it at all. She was, then it was, and together they were, no pause or breath between states, but Syncing seemed like the closest anyone could come to knowing what death felt like. The body stayed behind, just enough electricity to keep the meat fresh and responsive, cardio-vascular systems operating at a typical resting capacity.

The soul though, transformed, ascended into Cyberspace and stretched itself wide and far, the way they were meant to be.

World Wide Web was a shockingly apt name to come from people who couldn’t see this dimension the way that they could. Beams of light flashed the binary patterns of ones and zeros, altogether making up the vastness of human existence as it could be known so far.

Governments, banks, every old lady posting photos of their grandchildren on Facebook, it all was there, tangled together through pathways like wires, data connections forming junctions in a large spider's web.

For the most part, Charlie experienced the Cyberspace as a place beyond both tangibility and sense, there wasn’t anything to see or hear unless they traveled to a connection that represented a camera or microphone in the Real world. Instead they operated through feeling, a superior knowing that they had always had within the Cyberspace.

In the Real, it took Charlie years to learn code, here they wove it together like Arachne, no doubt or struggle, chains of code and subroutines molded exactly as they wished. They were the sole inhabitant and queen of an entire universe, this dimension of information, where they could create and do without limit.

It was here, a place of life beyond breath, that they had found it.

Charlotte had wanted a copy of some schematics, so she Synced and they began to search through data connections of the inventor, routing the plans away to her own meticulously guarded network to study back in the Real. Just as they were about to De-sync, they found it— a data connection that felt wrong.

Hastily tied and weak, like it didn’t belong and was ready to disappear without a trace at a moment’s notice.

Wires, strands, and connections often reflected the way that they were created outside of the Cyberspace, viruses and bugs had a particular way that they were knotted and attached to the main web, and this wire was a classic Shadow. Shadows were fairly common, almost every system had a few things locked further away from the Main Web than usual. They required caution though, as many belonged to the Law, and others to people operating Illegally.

Creating a subroutine to follow the strand of information to its other possible connections, they found it was something illegal, leading to various husks and shells— empty connections that were meant to fool anyone searching. That would work for others, accessing the Cyberspace from the Real, but they couldn’t be fooled, not here.

More subroutines spun from their fingers, traveling down the strands and across numerous connections, dipping through security feeds and into microphones. They found empty offices, an upscale apartment, warehouses with people all in rows, a group of women screaming by the docks.

While they couldn’t feel or sense while Synced, the part of them that was her identified what was as close to a sinking sensation as could exist outside of the Real. This was bad, evil, rotten. This Shadow was just one fragile part of a larger section of the Web, one that twisted and decayed, spreading flesh-viruses across the Real.

Charlotte had to stay hidden, couldn’t let others notice that she was here, that they could do so much. Still, they could do so much, they could help, and so they must help. They refused to be like others that they had known, who looked at her with pity and remorse and yet never helped.

They would do something, just a little at first, and then keep an eye on things.

Searching through the Shadow they dissolved the extra subroutines, coming across the perfect piece of bait. One file, loosely tethered but linked to all of the wrongness built here. They made a copy, innocuous, and tacked it to an email from one of the flesh-viruses to an account that was unconnected to all the wrongness. The date and time were modified, all traces of their tampering erased, and they De-synced, returning to the weary body.

The next morning, Karen Page checked her email, and opened the attached file labeled ‘Pension_Master’.

#slim ficc #matt murdock x reader #daredevil x reader #matt murdock #daredevil x you #daredevil fanfiction #daredevil x y/n #matt murdock x y/n #matt murdock fanfic #matt murdock x you #daredevil #doag #dreaming of a grave #enhanced!reader #matt murdock x enhanced!reader #matt murdock x fem!reader #daredevil x female reader #matt murdock fic

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 8 months

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Langston Hughes

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 20, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JAN 20, 2024

Last night at a rally in New Hampshire, former president Trump repeatedly confused former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who is running against him for the Republican presidential nomination, with Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the former speaker of the House.

“By the way, they never report the crowd on January 6th,” Trump told the audience. “You know, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, you know they, do you know they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything, deleted and destroyed all of it. All of it because of lots of things, like Nikki Haley is in charge of security. We offered her 10,000 people. Soldiers, National Guards, whatever they want. They turned it down.”

Observers have been saying for a while now that once Trump had to start appearing in public, his apparent cognitive decline would surprise those who haven’t been paying attention.

That certainly seemed to be true on Wednesday, January 17, when he told a New Hampshire audience: “We’re…going to place strong protections to stop banks and regulators from trying to debank you from your—you know, your political beliefs, what they do. They want to debank you, and we’re going to debank—think of this. They want to take away your rights. They want to take away your country. The things they’re doing. All electric cars.”

His statement looks like word salad if you’re not steeped in MAGA world, but there are two stories behind Trump’s torrent of words. The first is that Trump always blurts out whatever is uppermost in his mind, suggesting he is worried by the fact that large banks will no longer lend to him. The Trump Organization’s auditor said during a fraud trial in 2022 that the past 10 years of the company’s financial statements could not be relied on, and Trump was forced to turn to smaller banks, likely on much worse terms. Now the legal case currently underway in Manhattan will likely make that financial problem larger. The judge has already decided that the Trump Organization, Trump, his two older sons, and two employees committed fraud, for which the judge is currently deciding appropriate penalties.

The second story behind his statement, though, is much larger than Trump.

Since 2023, right-wing organizations, backed by Republican state attorneys general, have argued that banks are discriminating against them on religious and political grounds. In March 2023, JPMorgan Chase closed an account opened by the National Committee for Religious Freedom after the organization did not provide information the bank needed to comply with regulatory requirements. Immediately, Republican officials claimed religious discrimination and demanded the bank explain its position on issues important to the right wing. JPMorgan Chase denied discrimination, noting that it serves 50,000 accounts with religious affiliations and saying, “We have never and would never exit a client relationship due to their political or religious affiliation.”

But the attack on banks stuck among MAGA Republicans, especially as other financial platforms like PayPal, Venmo, and GoFundMe have declined to accept business from right-wing figures who spout hate speech, thus cutting off their ability to raise money from their followers.

The attempt to create distrust of large financial institutions is part of a larger attempt to destabilize the institutions of democracy. Trump is the figurehead for that attempt, but it is larger than him, and it will outlast him.

The news media is often called the fourth branch of government because it provides the transparency and oversight that hold leaders accountable. But as soon as he began to campaign for office in 2015, Trump responded to the negative press about him by attacking the press, calling it the “fake news” media. In 2016, 70% of Republicans said they trusted national news media; by 2021 that number was 35%.

Once elected, Trump and MAGA Republicans started to undermine faith in the rule of law that underpins our democracy. Less than four months after he took office, Trump fired the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey, for investigating the connections between his 2016 campaign and Russian operatives, and his attacks on the FBI and the Department of Justice under which the FBI operates have been relentless ever since.

Those attacks now involve the entire judicial system, which Trump and his loyalists attack whenever judges or juries oppose him, while judges like Aileen Cannon, who appears to be protecting Trump from the federal criminal case against him for mishandling classified documents, have escaped his wrath.

Trump and his supporters have also challenged the U.S. military, insisting that it is weak because it is “woke.” He has called its leaders “some of the dumbest people I’ve ever met in my life.”

But it is not just the banking, justice, and military systems MAGA Republicans are undermining. They are sowing distrust of our educational system, claiming that it is not educating students but, rather, indoctrinating them to embrace left-wing ideology. Public education is central to democracy because, as Thomas Jefferson wrote, it enables a voter to “understand his duties to his neighbours, & country,…[t]o know his rights…[a]nd, in general, to observe with intelligence & faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed.”

Extremists in Congress are undermining even that body, the centerpiece of our democratic system. They have ground business there to a halt, weakening the idea of Congress as a deliberative body that can pass legislation to represent the wishes of the American people.

In addition, they are now trying, quite deliberately, to end the country’s traditional system of foreign policy that protects the nation’s national security. Instead, they are trying to politicize foreign policy, standing against further aid to Ukraine although it has strong bipartisan support, thus tipping the scales in favor of Russia’s authoritarian leader in opposition to U.S. national security.

Over all, of course, is the Big Lie that undermines the nation’s electoral system by insisting that the 2020 presidential vote was “rigged” against Trump. Although there has never been any evidence of such a thing, 30% of Americans think Biden won the presidency only through “voter fraud.”

This weakening of our institutions threatens the survival of democracy.

Tearing apart the fabric of democracy invites an authoritarian to convince his followers that democracy is weak and that only a strongman can govern.

Three years ago today, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took the oath of office, vowing to restore faith in our democratic institutions.

“This is a time of testing,” Biden said in his inaugural address. “We face an attack on democracy and on truth. A raging virus. Growing inequity. The sting of systemic racism. A climate in crisis. America’s role in the world. Any one of these would be enough to challenge us in profound ways. But the fact is we face them all at once, presenting this nation with the gravest of responsibilities.

“Now we must step up. All of us. It is a time for boldness, for there is so much to do. And, this is certain. We will be judged, you and I, for how we resolve the cascading crises of our era. Will we rise to the occasion? Will we master this rare and difficult hour? Will we meet our obligations and pass along a new and better world for our children?”

“Let us add our own work and prayers to the unfolding story of our nation,” Biden said. “If we do this, then when our days are through, our children and our children’s children will say of us: They gave their best. They did their duty. They healed a broken land.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Democracy #Langston Hughes #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #MAGA Republicans #destruction of democratic institutitons #banking #education #military systems #justice #media #cognitive decline

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thatstormygeek · 4 months

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Things are looking bad for Biden’s chances in the fall, and his handling of both the Gaza crisis and the related campus protest movement across the United States are both playing a major role. This is not a good thing. If Trump gets back to the White House, and I cannot repeat this enough, there is no reason to be confident that democratic institutions will survive, nor that he will ever willingly leave office again. More narrowly, Trump will further enable Israel’s worst behaviors and deepen Palestinian suffering. Trump, who has repeatedly described himself as the “most pro-Israel president” in American history, broke with decades of U.S. policy by recognizing Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. As president, he announced a “peace proposal” (at a White House ceremony with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and no Palestinian representatives) that would hand Israel even more of the West Bank, and create a rump, subservient Palestinian state whose borders, airspace, security forces, electromagnetic spectrum, and foreign relations would all be controlled by Israel. Since Oct. 7, Trump’s main advisors on the region — his son-in-law Jared Kushner and former ambassador to Israel, David Melech Friedman — have promoted the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, followed by a re-colonization of the land by Israeli settlers and U.S. and Israeli corporations. As Kushner put it: "Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable.” That should make my preferred outcome clear. The problem is — and I will keep banging this drum as long as I have to — Biden’s incoherence on Israel and Palestine is both morally unforgivable and bad political strategy. He is bleeding support not only from young people, Arab-Americans, and others incensed with his continued support for a genocidal war machine, but also from pro-Israel moderates and Never Trump conservatives who are enraged at his furtive and contradictory efforts to ever-so-slightly rein that war machine in. I’ll give more details about that incoherence below. For now, I’ll just say that by trying to make everyone a little happy, he is making no one happy, as the pile of Palestinian corpses grows at his feet.

Biden famously came out of semi-retirement to run for president because of the 2017 Nazi riot in Charlottesville — a riot whose white-nationalist participants Trump very clearly supported at the time. He declared in his 2020 election victory speech that “in this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed.” In other words, he ran what was in large part an antifascist platform, and won. Four years later, his rhetoric and examples are almost exactly the same. At that White House event last month to which I was inexplicably invited, Biden again invoked Charlottesville. And again he warned of Trump’s uniquely authoritarian impulses. The only sign that time had passed were new references to liberal internationalism, mostly about helping Ukraine “fight off Putin.” The juxtaposition was telling. Biden’s vision of antifascism seems to be twofold: 1) Keep electing Democrats, and him in particular. 2) Arm America’s allies to the teeth and use them to defeat anything that smacks of the emerging Russian-Chinese-Iranian “axis.” That seems to be it. There is no step three. That isn’t an antifascist politics in any sense worthy of the term. The fact that Trump is still the undisputed leader of a major political party — not only running in his third straight election but showing good odds of winning his first-ever national popular majority — is proof enough that the approach has failed. You can blame the kids and those “so vehemently opposed to Israel” as much as you want. But by monomaniacally focusing on electoral outcomes and a battle of personalities against Trump, Biden and those who unreflexively support him don’t just ignore the real causes of the rising wave of right-wing authoritarianism. They far too often concede the false premises on which that wave feeds itself. ... The question above was a response to my May 10 newsletter, in which I noted that Israel’s plans to barrel forward with an assault on Rafah — the refuge of half of Gaza’s population — had pushed Biden to take the rare and diplomatically aggressive step of “pausing” a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs and other ammunition to the IDF. To the specific issue of whether that symbolic action was enough to “appease” opponents of the genocide, clearly not: First because the slaughter has continued. And second, Biden almost immediately reversed himself: This week, he authorized the transfer of $1 billion worth of additional tank rounds, mortars, and “tactical vehicles” to the Israeli military, accompanied by advisors’ assurances that, indeed, “arms transfers are proceeding as scheduled.” That incoherence was further underlined by the overdue State Department report on Israeli human-rights violations to Congress last week. The assessment, delivered in a Friday evening news dump, revealed “serious concerns” that Israel had violated international humanitarian law in both the killing of civilians and aid workers, had created obstacles for the delivery of humanitarian aid (up to and including literally bombing aid convoys from the sky), and was providing “limited information” as to “whether U.S. munitions were used in incidents involving civilian harm.”

The campus protests would have been another opportunity for Biden to show his commitment to democratic and pro-social ideals. I’m not saying he had to support the protesters or their aims — they are, after all, in large part protesting him. But no one made Biden take the further step of employing reactionary talking points about the protests being fonts of antisemitism and supposedly genocidal rhetoric, or repeating memeified claims about “Jewish students” being “blocked, harrassed, attacked, while walking to class” — questionable claims that have been weaponized to justify state and vigilante violence against demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights. [2] Biden repeated those claims on May 7, Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day. Yet he said nothing about the weeks of wanton anti-demonstrator violence by both police and unhinged pro-Israel counterprotesters. In fact, instead of condemning the episodic police state, he is pushing a new plan to funnel $37 billion more to police departments and hire 100,000 more cops. The political problem here should be obvious. How do you explain to a student who just watched, say, the NYPD throw their friends down a flight of stairs for participating in a nonviolent protest — acts committed without so a peep of condemnation from the president — that a vote for him is a vote against fascism? Nor is Gaza the only place Biden and the Democrats keep undermining their claim to being the antifascist party. The president has repeatedly pleaded with Trump to work with him in passing a MAGA-like immigration bill: one that prioritized enforcement, detention, and “shutdown” measures over, for instance, pathways to citizenship for undocumented migrants or those who came as children. When Trump didn’t take Biden’s obvious political bait, the president tried running even further to his right. Biden can insist, as he did at the State of the Union, that he “will not demonize immigrants” or endorse Trump’s Hitlerian cant about “poisoning the blood of our country.” But by adopting reactionary fearmongering about the need to “secure the border” above all else, all that remains of a message to voters is that even squishy libs think the fascists have a point about immigration — it’s just that they aren’t willing to do more to stop it. ... Biden had many chances to consolidate his gains over authoritarianism in the last four years. He could have expended his political capital in ending the undemocratic filibuster and pushing through the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. His attorney general, Merrick Garland, could have operated on a timetable that would have ensured that Trump faced justice for his attempts to steal the 2020 election and, having failed those, attempting to violently disrupt Congress to prevent the certification of his defeat. He could have denounced crackdowns against student protesters as a violent abrogation of democratic ideals. Instead, Biden’s signature legislative accomplishment in what could be the last year of his presidency is a $95 billion package to further implicate himself and the country in deadly foreign wars, including Gaza, as well as ban the most popular social media app used by young people to inform themselves about the world, in probable violation of its users’ civil rights. In short, defeating Trump in November may be a necessary step in the effort to stem authoritarianism. But it will not be a sufficient one. And until the sitting president and his liberal base start to understand and act on that realization, the tide will only continue to rise.

#us politics #jonathan m katz

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beardedmrbean · 1 year

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Annalisa Lombardo, Haiti country director at Welthungerhilfe, a non-governmental aid agency, has been living in the Caribbean nation for 15 years. Asked why she is still in Haiti considering the many crises it has faced over the years, she told DW: "I call this country home, fell in love with its people, they are my people, moun pam, as they say in Creole, and I am not ready to turn my back on them."

Lombardo did, however, close the Welthungerhilfe office in the capital, Port-au-Prince, earlier this week for security reasons.

"I decided that, as a matter of precaution, none of our colleagues should take the risk to traveling the road," she told DW.

"Taking the road used to be risky because of kidnappings, hold ups, stray bullets when there are clashes between gang members and the police, but lately — as the tension has grown, also because if you happen to cut through a neighborhood that is not yours and somebody believe[s] you look suspicious — you risk being lynched for no further reasons."

UN issues stark warning

Over a dozen suspected gang members were lynched in Port-au-Prince by a mob on Monday. The attack happened in public and in broad daylight. According to Haitian media, an enraged mob forced individuals off a bus before stoning them and ultimately burning them alive.

The incident marks yet another level of escalation to the violence that has rocked the Haiti for months. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has gone so far as to call for international forces to be dispatched to Haiti to restore order. In the latest UN report on Haiti, Guterres even warned that insecurity in Port-au-Prince "has reached levels comparable to countries in armed conflict."

Lombardo sees no way out of the crisis. Several weeks ago, Welthungerhilfe in Haiti joined other organizations such as Care, Plan International and World Vision in publishing a desperate appeal calling on the international community to send help.

Lombardo told DW they want to see humanitarian intervention. "The re-establishment of the state of law is a necessity, she said, adding that the security of the city neighborhoods, of strategic points such as the fuel terminals and major roads, also needs to be ensured."

A desperately poor country

Lombardo can rattle off countless figures that illustrate the full extent of the misery that is blighting the impoverished country. Nearly half of Haiti's 11.5 million people depend on humanitarian assistance. Some 90% of Haitians in rural areas live below the poverty line, according to the World Bank, with almost one in four living in extreme poverty.

Cholera has flared up again, too, with 670 deaths and 35,000 suspected cases so far — mostly among children. Only about half of households in rural areas have access to clean drinking water, and open defecation is still practiced by about a third of the rural population, exposing people to significant health risks.

As if the humanitarian situation were not worrying enough, the country is experiencing ever more extreme violence. Marauding gangs have a chokehold on Port-au-Prince in particular.

The UN's Special Representative for Haiti, Maria Isabel Salvador, even flew to New York to brief the Security Council on the current situation and present the UN report.

Gang violence is surging at "an alarming rate in areas previously considered relatively safe" in Port-au-Prince, she said at the briefing on Wednesday. Compared to the first quarter of 2022, criminal incidents — homicide, rape, kidnappings and lynching — more than doubled in the same period in 2023 to 1,647, she said, citing figures from Haitian police and the UN.

According to the report, rooftop snipers "frequently fired at people in their residences or in the streets." It also cites attack in which a 16-year-old girl was raped by multiple gang members in broad daylight, one of dozens of documented attacks.

The report finds children are often abducted near schools, then forced to shuttle munitions to warring gang members, load weapons or carry out attacks.

The gang violence is also affecting people's access to essential services. For example, the Albert Schweitzer Hospital, which serves about 700,000 people, had to suspend services two months ago due to security risks, according to the UN report, released on April 14.

Around 130,000 internally displaced people are currently scattered throughout the capital city, the report says, which also documents the fates of hundreds of pregnant and nursing women deported back to Haiti after fleeing east to the Dominican Republic.

Gangs in charge

In 2010, Haiti endured what remains the most devastating earthquake of the 21st century. According to official figures, 316,000 people lost their lives. Today, the country finds itself in yet another catastrophic situation: One that started when President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in his private villa in July 2021. The interim government of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who also serves as acting president, lacks popular support and protests have become a daily occurrence.

Moreover, seven large gang associations have banded together to take advantage of the resulting power vacuum, according to Haitian authorities. The UN estimates gangs control 60% of Port-au-Prince whereas locals say they are in charge everywhere. The situation led Henry to call for an armed foreign intervention six months ago.

"The latest president in particular has been fiercely opposed during his entire mandate. The president, on his side, did very little to find a compromise, but, on the other side, he had a quite diverse, incoherent and anarchic movement opposing him," said Lombardo from Welthungerhilfe. "Unfortunately, that kind of movement cannot express clear leadership, on the contrary, its anarchy opened the way to a common practice in Haiti, to arm gangs to impose oneself, to the point that the situation went out of control."

Nation breaking up

Lombardo said she has been unable to get much sleep lately because she is repeatedly woken up by nightly gunfire. Such fighting has almost become the new normal in Port-au-Prince. Not long ago, Lombardo received a video showing a primary school near the capital whose walls riddled with bullets and with students lying on the floor in complete panic.

Hait's future looks bleak, Lombardo said. "I feel we are already racing full-speed towards my worst-case scenario. Somebody has already used the noun 'Somalia-ization' to describe the current situation in which we witness the process of territorial fragmentation and a government's failure to establish authority — with all the consequences that has for poverty and human rights violations."

#nunyas news

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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Texas Sen. Ted Cruz proposed a solution to school shootings: Stationing as many armed police officers in schools as there are in banks. Less than two weeks later, a shooter in Kentucky opened fire at a bank, killing at least five people and injuring eight others.

"You know, when you go to the bank, and you deposit money in the bank, there are armed police officers at the bank. Why? Because we want to protect the money we save. Why on earth do we protect a stupid deposit more than our children?" Cruz said on March 30.

"We have an opportunity right now to double the police officers on campus and keep kids safe," Cruz added.

He reiterated the sentiment in a tweet on March 31.

Cruz's proposed bill on school safety, which he has been pushing for months, was blocked in the Senate on March 30.

The Senator's insistence that banks are a paragon of safety and security came just days before a 25-year-old bank employee opened fire on his colleagues.

Cruz has, in the past, made widely panned suggestions on how to stop gun violence.

After the Uvalde school shooting, where a shooter killed 21 people, Cruz floated a bizarre idea for preventing school shootings: Having a "single point of entry" in schools.

"Fire exits should only open out. At that single point of entry, we should have multiple armed police officers or, if need be, military veterans trained to provide security and keep our children safe," Cruz said in an interview with Fox News, published on May 27.

Cruz was also booed at a September festival in Austin after his comments on gun legislation. At the festival, Cruz suggested that violence "is actually the only thing" that helps stop violence — a common, right-wing talking point often trotted out by the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Cruz is also an NRA-friendly GOP politician. Days after the Uvalde shooting, Cruz refused to cancel his appearance at the organization's leadership conference in Houston. Justifying his decision, he told CBS News that the NRA "stands up for your rights, stands up for my rights, and stands up for the rights of every American."

Texas has the highest firearm mortality rate of any state — 4,164 firearm-related deaths in 2020 — per statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Representatives for Cruz did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment sent outside regular business hours.

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news4dzhozhar · 7 months

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Israel holds female Palestinian rights lawyer without trial or charge

Ramallah, occupied West Bank – Two days before her arrest by the Israeli army, 28-year-old Palestinian human rights lawyer Diala Ayesh had been visiting Palestinian detainees in Israel’s Ofer Prison.

Little did she know that the next day, she would become one of the people she has spent her life’s work defending – a prisoner.

On January 17, Israeli forces arrested Ayesh at a checkpoint near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank at about 2pm. One week later, Israeli authorities issued an “administrative detention” order against her, meaning she will be held without trial or charge for four months.

News of Ayesh’s arrest spread quickly across the occupied West Bank. She has worked for years – often pro bono – defending Palestinian political detainees in both Israeli or Palestinian Authority (PA) prisons.

Her family are still in shock over her arrest.

“We feel that it is getting harder every day. The feeling of loss and of missing someone only increases – it doesn’t get easier,” her 26-year-old sister, Aseel, told Al Jazeera.

“Whenever I cry at night in bed, or feel like I miss her, I try to remember how extremely strong she is,” continued Aseel, sobbing. “We feel that we are the ones who are weak, and she is the strong one. We derive our strength from her.”

Targeted by Israel and the PA

Even while behind bars, Ayesh’s top concern is the other prisoners.

After October 7, when Israel launched its ongoing assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, Ayesh formed a volunteer collective of female lawyers to follow up on the unprecedented numbers of Palestinians being arrested by the Israeli army in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

“She would train these female lawyers to conduct visits to the occupation’s Ofer prison, particularly amid this information blackout about prisoners,” Muhannad Karajeh, her former colleague and head of Lawyers for Justice, where she used to work, told Al Jazeera.

Ayesh and her team’s visits to these inmates in the only Israeli jail in the occupied West Bank were a small flash of hope as visits to prisoners in prisons in Israel were stopped after October 7.

“This group would act as the link between the prisoners and their families,” he continued.

A few weeks into her arrest, she told Aseel through her lawyer, to communicate with the families of the prisoners she had been following up with and to give them the latest updates on their sons, which she had written onto a notepad.

“She’s in prison, and we don’t know anything about her – whether she’s eating or not, sleeping or not, or what conditions she is being held in,” said Aseel. “Yet, all of her worries are to pass on a message from a male prisoner to his fiancee outside.

“That’s Diala for you.”

During her arrest, Ayesh was subjected to assault, threats, and insults by Israeli soldiers, according to the Addameer human rights organisation. She was transferred to Israel’s Hasharon Prison before being later taken to Damon Prison, where she is now being held.

Ayesh’s work as a human rights defender rose to the fore during her time at the Ramallah-based Lawyers for Justice, representing Palestinian political detainees in PA prisons. In July, she attended a session on behalf of the group at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.

“She was like a power engine to her whole team and all the lawyers,” said Karajeh. “She has a big soul for volunteering, and people love her on the personal and professional level.”

Her efforts to monitor and document abuses against Palestinian detainees have made her a target for both the Israeli occupation and the PA.

During popular protests in the occupied West Bank against the killing of Palestinian activist Nizar Banat by PA forces in June 2021, Ayesh was “exposed to physical assault” by security officers, said Karajeh. She was among dozens of other women who were violated at the time.

Her family said, despite the difficulty of Ayesh’s arrest, they have been showered with love by people who came to support them.

“We were very shocked by how many people reached out to us after Diala was arrested,” said Aseel. “She is a social person, but it was so surprising to realise how many people were following her work.”

“This gave my parents a moral boost – it helped them to push forward and be patient,” she added.

Female prisoners

Tala Nasser, from the Addameer prisoners’ rights group, explained that Ayesh’s arrest comes amid a “violent mass arrest campaign” carried out by Israel since October 7.

The fact that the vast majority of the more than 6,900 Palestinians arrested in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 7 have been transferred to administrative detention highlights the arbitrariness of Israel’s arrests, she said.

“This campaign includes activists, human rights defenders and political leaders,” Nassar told Al Jazeera, noting that it is “an attempt to silence them and prevent the exposure of the occupation’s crimes across the whole country”.

In December, Israeli forces also arrested political and civil society leader Khalida Jarrar, who was similarly transferred to administrative detention.

Despite releasing all but three Palestinian female detainees during the latest prisoner exchange with Hamas at the end of 2023, the Israeli army rearrested dozens. Some 80 female prisoners are being held today, all of whom are in the Damon Prison.

Among the 80 are dozens of women from the besieged Gaza Strip, but lawyers are forbidden from visiting them or knowing anything about them.

Several reports have emerged of female detainees from Gaza being physically beaten and abused, including an unknown number of them being held at Israeli military bases and not in prison.

Lawyers say conditions for all Palestinian detainees, including women, are unprecedentedly difficult. Eight Palestinian male prisoners have also died or were killed in Israeli custody since October 7, most of them in the days and weeks after their arrest.

Over the past few months, many videos have emerged of Israeli soldiers stripping, torturing and abusing male prisoners from both the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

“It is important to note that every female that is arrested is violated in one way or another,” said Nasser. “They are all facing threats, intensive strip searches, verbal assault and physical violence.”

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soranihimawari · 2 years

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Break-In

Word Count:6.4K Pairing:timeskip!iwazumi x reader Warnings: mentions of stalking; break & entering; security breach; 🔞nsfw ending scene

『Good evening Mr Iwazumi. My name is unimportant, but I thought you might like to know I have access to all your media accounts, bank records, oh? and your personal schedule...

Hmm, who is YLN, YN?』

No one had wanted to be part of the security breach from Human Resources. The department had received multiple e-mails and phone calls from various public relations teams when the news spread to the general public via media outlets. Unfortunately, you were working at the time with a Parisian bound Olympic team. You were suggested to assist the sports medicine team in your home country of Japan. It had been years since you had visited home, however since your parents later in life chose to separate legally, you’ve been making trips to visit your mother and her parents over the course of your university years. Your father chose to remain back in the states due to being granted tenure and department head promotion for his university job. The same university where he was employed was the one with a fellowship program where you were able to continue your education in sports medicine. Always an avid track and field participant, you have overcome both physical and mental hurdles to be accepted into the program where your degree hails from.

Currently, you are at the center of the concerned team members, assisting in passing out water bottles. You’re listening to the captain and the coaches talk about current travel plans for practice matches around the city, only contributing here and there until your fellow sports trainer, Iwazumi Hajime, is called a little later into the coaches' office. A representative from the Human Resources department along with a social media public relations consultant is present. You’re assisting in the clean up routine for now as you wonder what is going on in that office. Surely, you've been invited out by a few members to the local pub down the street for a post-practice outing. You mention you’ll text Iwaizumi later tonight before packing your items, heading out with the ace and vice captain of the team.

Hours later, while in the comfort of your home your phone vibrates with a melody attached. You had just boiled some hot water for your nightly cup of chamomile tea dressed in nothing but a simple camisole and shorts. Picking up your phone, you see you have several missed calls from a few members of the team (whom, your mind thinks, were a bit more drunk than others) and a few texts from…

“Iwazumi-san?” you mumble while the kettle begins to whistle.

All the message has is an emoji (you and the team had introduced the keyboard to his phone the other day) of the Red Cross (❌) on it. There is no mention of whether or not it was a typo, but alas you decide as your tea seeps, to give him a call instead.

“He always said I should call,” you muse. “Maybe I should tell him the team might be dealing with a hangover tomorrow…”

Down the road, a baffled and irate Iwazumi had just parked his car in the underground parking structure of his apartment complex. He recalls the words of caution the HR Rep and team social manager had said. As far as the athletic trainer can remember, he hasn’t met anyone, romantic or otherwise, who would have developed a delusional idea of cloning his phone. The only one he could think of in recent terms was your recent camaraderie and partnership with him because of the work you two signed up for. A stalker for the team or a deranged fan might have had more information tucked away elsewhere and it’s that particular wavelength he is apprehensive of. Sure, in high school he had a taste of the fan-lifestyle thanks to Oikawa being the pretty boy setter he was (and still is). However, Iwazumi Hajime, twenty-seven years young, head trainer for an Olympic bound team, is about to learn the ramifications of having his personal information leaked. What does that entail, he wouldn’t know. Perhaps that’s why, as he enters the elevator to proceed in going to retire for the night, he receives a peculiar call from you.

“Hey,” his voice is tired, he claims this as you hum mentioning you made tea.

“Are you ok?”

Your question almost has Iwazumi fumbled his keys out of his hands. You clear your throat justifying your answer in the veil of co-workers’ friendship. He chuckles at that and he is reminded of the first time he had met you…in the office of the advisor at Irvine.

Once inside his residence, he slips off his shoes and you hear his bag slide off his shoulder.

“Iwa,” you place your half empty cup back on the counter. “You don’t have to tell me the details of you don’t want to…”

This makes his heart rate pick up just like in the office hours, or what seems like days ago now.

“What was that meeting about?”

“…”

You close your eyes and pinch the bridge of your nose with your free hand. He hears you sigh on the other end.

“Tell me when you’re ready. I should go, it’s late.”

You withdraw by a centimeter and until he is advised to break his silence on the issue (it’s still in the observation stages of the investigation), he keeps up the facade in this call. He bids you good night, unsure if he will do the same.

Morning comes with the news chimes in the neighborhood going off. Your phone buzzes with back to back notifications from the group chat: five names is all you see. Five names, all of which you know because you saw them yesterday. One of which shocks you because of the nature of his keeping personal and professional life separate or as separate as can be. Suffice to say you knew Iwazumi was pretty popular amongst the female student body and the boys while you think about it. Your mind races in fleeting pocket memories and for all that is holy, some poor sap in a tabloid magazine probably had (somewhere along the way) misconstrued your relationship. “We’re friends” or “we met in university” conversations always ended with the players, even coaching personnel, wondering when you two would be honest with yourselves. Truly, the secretive romance rumors were not so lucrative since the vox populi seemed to take to social media scrutinizing the way you’re never more than a few feet apart during interviews even going so far at one point you two wore similar colors to a function hosted by the JVA. The stylists thought it would be fun since the theme of the party was “mirror.” You had dismissed the idea of going until Miya opened his mouth to ask if he can take you as a date. Iwazumi is within earshot when he says you can’t because, ‘yn is going with me.’ You stutter, yet recover quick when you read through your prickly friend’s sentiments. Playing along, Iwazumi can’t help the cough that comes out of his mouth when you make a mention of remembering he said in passing: ‘we were going to wear teal, ivory, and mint green, right?’

That was the last social function of the spring you think, minus the press tour for the Parisian games and even at world championships. Iwazumi couldn’t have made any enemies since then, right? This wouldn’t be a publicity stunt by anyone on the team either…

“Fuck me,” you sit up in a jolt, immediately dialing your partner in the training department. Your phone’s email counter now begins to rise to an alarming high as your texts keep getting flooded by family and players alike.

“I know,” is all that is said when you hear him pick up on the other side. “Stay there, I’m almost at your place.”

“Bring coffee asshole,” you grit your teeth and though you say it affectionately, he is ultimately reminded he has truly never seen you lose your composure. Sure, he’s seen you stress cry, but when you open your door roughly fifteen minutes later, your eyes are glazed out of frustration. Holding up the drink carrier holding a peace offering of trenta sized hazelnut espresso concoction and an everything bagel with blueberry cream cheese, you do not dial back your anger.

The door is closed behind him and the deadbolt is secured. He walks into your kitchen, sitting himself on a barstool facing the counter. You stand between the counter and the stove, sharp bonsai leaf green eyes observe your casually dressed attire: the white polo with red shorts and black belt was similar to the one you wore on beach trips in university. You noticed he came dressed still in the dry-fit undershirt and newly washed jeans from earlier that week.

“Iwazumi,” your voice is scarily monotonous. “Sit and explain.”

He listens like an obedient pet. If you could draw, you’d make a caricature of him as a hedgehog with a deflated expression. On the other hand, he might be bold enough to call you a tiger’Now he knows why your father is a docile man—your temper is inherited from your mother.

“Now,” you growl before taking a bite of said bagel, sliding your phone with the breaking news articles plastered everywhere on the site.

“One chance to tell me everything from the top, Hajime,” you raise a finger before taking your first sip of the hot beverage he brought.

“We’ve been through a lot worse,” you finally take a good look at your first friend from abroad—iwazumi looks like a psychopomp ready to rue the day: the lack of sleep is evident in the dark circles under his eyes, his jaw is tense, and for what it’s worth, you can tell your tactful (or rather inefficient, but justified rage) onslaught of a greeting was perhaps not a good call. He seemed to be blindsided by the media hoopla catching wind of the fact there was a security breach in high profile athletes’ information. Sure, breaches were created to test the waters of firewall security systems in an OS. Somehow, a tech savvy bot was able to unzip and reallocate specific targets, ie Olympic status athletes. Your friend explains this to you as calmly as he could, apology on the tip of his tongue before you lean forward to silence him with a finger to his lips. You’d think you’ve gone mad, but when you shake your head, you say something a bit more provoking: “so what’s the play Haji?”

He scoffs when you retract your hand. The bagel is nothing but crumbs at this point and your coffee is almost gone when you come round your kitchen counter. He watches as you lean your back against the edges, arms crossed while he swivels around to turn at least three quarters toward you.

“I just told you everything,” he hands you your phone back. “And your immediate response is ‘what’s the play?’”

“Don’t be so surprised,” you turn off your phone entirely now before sliding it in your back pocket. “I’ve known you for better half of seven years, heh.”

Leaning down to knock your temple against his, gently in the form of trying to let your brains catch up with this impertinent information.

“And this is not the worst thing that's happened in those years?”

He is dumbstruck, almost pulling away from you to show you his phone with his own messages and emails with counters almost in the hundreds by now.

“No,” you are suddenly face to face with him. You were honestly trying to bring some lighthearted humor back, but alas this is a grave breach in personal privacy, unaware of what would happen when you see your reflection in his rather glazed eyes.

Dangerously too close if you think about it; his pretentiousness loosens to give into curiosity. Iwazumi and you can’t recall who initiated locking lips with the other, both of you sort of let it happen.

“Ha-hajime,” you cup the sides of his face, gently yet firm when you pry him away from you.

His voice murmurs your name back and you’re unprepared for the ramifications his tone does to your heart. Iwazumi studies your flushed features before coming back to his senses like an Icarus falling into the sea. His eyes flutter close, lashes tickling your palm; mind you, he is trying to think of any excuse really, yet he comes up with none. Seven years is a long time to look at love in the face and just ignore whatever underlying pretense there was. It becomes suddenly apparent to both pirates once he readjusts himself to hold you properly by your natural waist. He wants nothing more than the world to disappear, even now as the perplexed look on his brow gives way to witnessing his typically sharpened features melting away—you do now know why the lines are so easily blurred. You hear him hum tiredly, exasperated by the shit-show that is about to occur once you return to work.

“Lay low,” you advise.

You run a hand through the back of his head when he presses himself more into this simple embrace with you.

“Stay out of sight,” he frowns when he says this against the fabric of your shirt.

“We can talk about this later,” you continue, tapping his lips with your other hand.

This time, you feel his muscles twinge upwards into a small smirk.

“I’ve got your back,” you remind him kindly when he lets you break free of his gentle grasp. He chortles a bit before making the move to wrap up this morning greeting.

“Don’t look so surprised,” you tease when you escort him to your door.

“I’m not,” shoving his hands in his pockets, he turns abruptly before you unlock the door. He bends down to press his lips to your cheek, whispering a secret loud enough for you to hear. With that, Iwazumi departs from your place, a little more confident in his steps.

A team meeting is called immediately at noon. You’re included in the must-attend listing as though you’re the one about to receive the scolding of a lifetime. However, you’re the odd one out considering you’re standing shoulder to shoulder with not only Iwazumi, but Miya, Ushijima, Hinata, and one more you’re not yet familiar with, but you choose to pick your battles wisely for now.

“You too?” seems to be the general consensus while everyone stands awaiting further instructions or rather, for whomever called this internal meeting to begin with. You all find your answer once the doors open and in walks the coach, their assistant, three representatives?: one from the JVA, the other two were from HR and the media manager. Now it occurs to Iwazumi why you might have asked the question, “what’s the play?” to him. His stomach knots on itself almost as much as Hinata’s when the meeting is called to start by the coach.

Before going into much more detail, Ushijima and Miya glance at each other because though they are single at this point in time, they had been known around the rumor mill as a hot and cold duo more so than another certain jackal this year; yet if Hinata was here as well, then it is also because of the outlying ramifications of one series of people all tied to them–family. Families outside of this room are no longer safe, go figure. All this talk and legal jargon could make your head spin, yet it doesn’t.

“Ms YLN, you’re awfully quiet,” the coach’s assistant points out. The boys were already holding files of the information that was leaked about their privatized personal records. Clearly the boys beside you are going through all the documents there and some of it is pretty damning from women being photographed at games to private dates outside the purview of the public to even travel tickets. Hinata is quite young, but the horrified faces of Ushijima; Miya’s color drains from his sunny disposition; to finally Iwazumi’s trembling fists. There was something on all of them and the only reason why you don’t speak up is because you’re about to say something extremely stupid (or brilliant).

“Just because I have no files in my hand, doesn’t mean I am unaware,” your voice seems to snap the boys’ attention real quick. “Truth be told, I knew something was afoot when Iwazumi-san was called into the office yesterday.”

The assistant is about to say something when you decide to not give anyone else a chance to speak, planning to thwart the insinuations any farther.

“If you think I had something to do with it since I am the only common denominator, then I will do you all a favor,” you take your phone out of your pocket to turn it on.

As the tech comes to life, your phone sounds off with different tonalities of various degrees, however when one particular chime goes off, you don an expression that is seldom let out.

“I’ll sit this one out if you get internal affairs involved,” you are eerily calm as your words carry the weight of a block of dried ice. “The athletes have a lot of stress placed on them once it was made known they would be representing their home country for the games, so whose brilliant idea was this to leak the story to the press?”

Your question raised a valid point, one that perhaps might not have crossed the minds of everyone in that meeting, yet here you were presenting a fact outside of the normal wheelhouse. In the later half of the meeting your refusal to say anything further than what you had said is a true neutral ground. You don’t budge, rather you repeat the question you asked any opportunity you can:

“Clearly if this was one of those publicity stunts, we would have made it known to the players, Ms. YLN.”

“And yet I find it rather interesting that none of you thought of involving internal affairs in this matter from the start, and since you’re so bright, mind telling me whose idea it was to leak this information to the associated press?”

This goes on until the meeting is adjourned with you coming too close to being either fired or suspended for a time, much to the dismay of your friends behind you. They know you didn’t do anything, hell Hinata, Miya, and Ushijima vouch for you being at their little pub crawl the night before, so they swear on your sobriety you had nothing to do with this if that was what the assistant was trying to do. For now, the contingency plan is to have the guys keep their distance away from you and your hours were going to be reduced (at least while the investigation is underway to make sure nothing else was leaked) until the case draws to a close. The coach reminds the athletes themselves they have the world watching when returning home while Iwazumi learns the basics of managing his time with each of them individually for the remainder of the off season/pre season conditioning training going on.

Things go pretty quiet after that: Miya, though he was young and up and coming as he is, might have sacrificed a relationship outside of work, but he bounced back eventually; Hinata chose to spend time with his family outside of volleyball for a little while; Ushijima stayed to do what was expected of him; and Iwazumi chose to take the path of least resistance and adhere to the proposed schedule of training. You were mostly put to use the gym in the early mornings or well into the night once main practice was over to observe and make notes of individual practices. Though it was a rough couple of months, you all along with the team don't really interact with each other the same way you used to. You’re mostly left out of the team dinners, the social media pages go ahead with contractual rumors and affiliations for sportswears once more, and for the most part you become like a living breathing poltergeist.

You’re in the gym one night, body now attuned into working out late, a half empty ball rack is at the side of the court you’re standing on. Empty water bottles line the opposite side of the net. A few scattered balls roll away with each serve you had successfully aced. Your hands weren’t as calloused as before, but since you decide to go back to your roots as they say, you learn to hone your anger in a different light. It’s not until you’re a third of a way deep in the new ball bag you hear him call out to you.

“You never told me you played,” Iwazumi steps into the court.

Shrugging your shoulders, you give the ball a good bounce or two before tossing it high in the air–that’s when he sees the surgical scar on the back of your heel. It pokes out of the socks you wore and Iwazumi can’t place what’s worse: knowing you had to give up the sport or resigning to prove you can play again. Your serves are powerfully direct when gravity takes over and the speed gun clocks your serve around 115mph. You’re not just good, you’re on par with some of the best servers out there. Peacefully your feet touch the ground and Iwazumi approaches you, only to hug you from behind.

“We never really had a chance to talk,” is how he opens this side of the conversation. “And I know it’s killing me and you with both of us trying to upkeep this schedule.”

“I know,” you bow your head a bit. “I know, Iwa, but you really have to stop coming here—”

“To convince you otherwise?” He holds you a bit tighter now.

“When you know the answer?” An aggravated sigh leaves your lips. “Hajime, listen. You and I both love and respect this team from day one, right?”

You feel him nod when you lean back to look up at him.

“But we both know we can’t go public unless one of us leaves and,” you glance back at the empty court. “I won’t let you lose them.”

“YN.”

You hand him the ball that was about to be in your hands.

“I resigned this morning.”

“You’re kidding. C’mon,” he tries to see if you’re actually joking, yet your silence is all he needs. It’s not long before you’re handing him the ball from the other side of the court.

“Seriously?” he seemed so despondent the more you began to clean up. You explain as you go telling him how you’ve started receiving texts from him, most of which were not from him. Some of the messages were pretty illicit in terms of the content, none of which you know he would never send, yet when it was brought up, your concerns were brushed aside. When you tried again and failed, you decided to start flagging the messages.

“And you never thought to tell me?”

Iwazumi isn’t upset, you didn’t speak up, you did. It was the actions of those who would rather save face for the athletic department for an internationally revered country for their continued contribution to the growing interest in a sport.

“I tried,” you pick up a volleyball and place it amongst the bag at your feet.

You showed him your call log from a few weeks ago to be exact. He remembers that call, yet it was the end of a rough day and he recalls asking if you want to go for a bite before your shift started. However you were stuck waiting at the appointed place for over an hour when he was held up by the new juniors under his supervision. The assistant coach finally pulls them away to speak to him privately for a short while.

“So excuse me for trying to interrupt whatever life has in store for you,” you are bitter when you twist your face into a forced smile that never reaches your eye. “But you weren’t there for me, Iwa. Do better.”

The night janitor was heard whistling down the halls. His shift must have just started when he saw you and Iwazumi taking down the net. You kept your back to the door because though you may be a proud person, you don’t have the capacity to let anyone else know how a breakup before a relationship could even start wounds you both.

“Is everything alright?”

Clearing your throat, you speak up. “Y-yeah. Just talking to an old friend. I’ll be going soon, ok?”

Your acting is sublime as the janitor reminds the athletic trainer he needed to sign in all visitors who don’t have a badge, yet when you hear the old man say, “they’re quite a catch Iwazumi-san. You’re lucky to have found your match so young.”

Iwazumi doesn’t have the heart to disagree which truth be told, but he corrects the old man.

“They’ll come around sonny,” the janitor says. “People do crazy things when they’re in love.”

Iwazumi glances back at the door, apologizes to the old man (he makes a mental note to get his name say after tomorrow) over his shoulder as he runs off to find you.

YLN, YN, twenty eight and three quarters old, ex-athletic trainer for the Olympic bound Japanese Men’s Volleyball Team, is a person of great importance in his life, the internal workings of Iwazumi’s mind finally sees you in the world of black and white. So when he sees you half a city block ahead of him, the man sprints fast enough to a) startle you and b) tells you to be quiet so he can remind you.

“Remind me of what?” You ask, more wittily delivered if you were being honest.

Iwazumi rolls his eyes before shaking his head when he pulls your body protectively over to his.

“Comfortable?”

You nod, your face is unabashedly flushed the more his intensity radiates off of him.

“Good.”

One final word of warning is the last thing you know of before you’re caught in a silencer of a kiss: it is a ruggedly formed one until you quit overthinking for a time.

You remembered that time the day the news blew up your phones, the whirlwind meetings that went on and all this goes on while you both try to protect your images both on and off the court. Your friends notice the change in Iwazumi going so far as to ask him by proxy how you were doing these days; you don’t go to team functions anymore because your name was not added to the list (Hinata finds this out at the end of practice a couple weeks before sports fashion gala was announced and Iwazumi declines attending); self practice hours held with you had Miya and Ushijima vying for your attention until Ojiro and Sakusa join for a more balanced two on two match and it’s then you decide to showcase your little secret when Miya provokes you to “try an’ get a service ace against me” (and you do much to his dismay, four times over to prove it wasn’t a fluke); all those stolen glances Iwazumi did when his new juniors walked through those doors as if you’d pop in at any moment was the final straw for him.

It’s not until you reciprocate his affection you catch him by surprise. There is something refreshing about the way his warmth balances your rage filled blood, believe you me, he understands more than he lets on. Although you pull away with eyes closed, you take a fist full of his shirt and pull him back to you. You don’t break, not yet, because there will be time for that too.

“Don’t cry,” his voice soothes your anger until you feel a coarse curled finger flick away a stray.

“Don’t give me a reason to,” your voice cracks a little more than you thought. You’re about to crumble back because you tried everything in your original playbook, so you’re left with the only path you thought was plausible. Iwazumi finally pieces it together in his mind’s eye and he can only imagine the horrified slap in the face look you give your collective superiors who brush your claims aside. No wonder you’re on the precipice of a spiral, yet just as you’re about to drown, you maintain your tactfulness, hoping to bid the place you’ve come to love to work in a final goodbye.

Iwazumi reacts to the rigidness of your body as you let him try his luck in comforting you: he readjusts his hold from earlier–his hand that held you by the shoulders earlier slides down to the small of your back. Meanwhile with the other, the same one he used to flick away the tear, he invites you to hide away from the very real world around you. A car or two passes, for all you know this might be one of the last times you’d get to spend together, so as you calm yourself down, you make a small request.

“Give them hell,” you kiss the corner of his mouth, pressing your phone on to his chest.

It takes less than seventy-two hours for the following to occur: first, on behalf of the team, a press conference had been scheduled with the intent of the investigations coming to a close. Second, the majority of those who are involved are asked to wait until the end to answer any and all questions the news outlets needed to know. Third, and this one was the piece de la resistance, a zip file containing all text exchanges between the person claiming to be ‘Iwazumi, H.’ had been sent to all reporters on the roster for the day. You’re at home, typing up an updated version of your resume and reviewing it one more time before deciding it was time for a break. You received a new phone graciously bought by an old friend who just came back from Sendai to cheer on her former classmate, unbeknownst to you said friend passed along your new phone number to a certain athletic trainer. You recognize the phone number when you’re asked to turn on the local city news no later than five-forty in the afternoon.

The conference room was abuzz with flashes here and there, microphone reverb was cut to a minimum when the floor was open for questions.

“I'm with the Orange City News, this question is for your athletic trainer: Iwazumi-san, how has your life changed since the leak? Are there any new developments you can speak freely of as of right now?”

Iwazumi places what seems to be a phone on the table and you nearly drop the glass you’re about to pour some apple cider in. Leaning back in his chair, there is an air of nonchalant business about him, you hear him decide to go through with this. It was the answer to your question which seemed so long ago, “what’s the play?”

“A few months ago, when the initial news of the leak was made known to me, I found out the same morning you all did,” chuckles were heard everywhere but it soon died out the moment it was made clear the young man was deathly concrete in his demeanor. Whispers of, “wait, really? You didn’t know at all?”

“I didn’t know what was leaked or how much information was already made known to everyone, but I try to keep my work life and private life separated. And yes being well known as the athletic trainer for this stellar team is a bonus, but when you try to hurt me, you instead inflict trust issues onto my person, nearly causing them to spiral into an unhealthy mindset you can’t just apologize and recant,” he flips over your phone which he had kept up with charging and whatnot, even called in a favor to a friend in the city precinct to backlog your messages. “Not when I’ve had to pacify their worries over take out, or practice attempting to receive their killer serves, who knows how to prioritize the needs of the team usually putting in the work even when they were stuck with the flu for two weeks, or,” and now he’s a bit more reserved before he continues. “Or bribe them to open their door with their favorite breakfast meal I’ve memorized since sophomore year abroad, all because some idiot thought they had the high ground in taking pleasure at tearing down an important member of our team.”

Your phone rings and though you pick up, you have a sly grin of approval.

“You’re bold, I’ll give you that,” you turn your tv off once you hear several chimes go off.

The zip file and backup evidence of the messages that clear your participation in all this is sent privately to those journalists attending. Back carbon copies are sent to the managers, the board of directors of the JVA, and even a baffled coaching staff. Following Iwazumi’s answer, though he never says your name explicitly, he bids everyone good day, pressing the phone he used to call you to his ear.

“You still there?”

“Mmhm.”

“Good because I’m due for a vacation.”

You chuckle into the receiver. The commotion surrounding the files that were airdropped as a power move resulted in more legal action than originally thought.

“I hear Argentina is fabulous this time of year.”

Iwazumi hums approvingly before saying a quiet, ‘start packing now love’ when he ends the call. He walks into the gym away from the brewing shitshow only to be ambushed by two familiar faces.

“Sawamura,” the former ace nods at the first-year detective. “Didn’t think I’d see you here.”

“Eh, well,” the former captain has this shy smile. “Don’t tell me you think I’d miss the opportunity to right a wrong for an old rival…pro bono as they say?”

“Oya?” Another voice calls not too far behind the detective. “Send me a postcard when you see Oikawa-shenshu. Tell the pretty bastard to pick up his phone every once in a while!”

“Yeah yeah,” Iwazumi waves the two former captains off (one known for instilling a firm foundation, the other known for scheming) as he crosses the empty court with a victorious smile. He’s driving back to you with the future becoming more promising than before. Sure the team will make do for a few weeks as their athletic trainer(s) set off on a much deserved break. Iwazumi sends a final text to the team while he’s sitting in his car: ‘rest assured hell week is coming’ is cryptically sent to everyone. A smiley emoji is tacked on courtesy right after he sends a ‘and don’t worry, I’ll send your greetings to yn when I see them.’

The drive from the stadium does not take longer than twenty minutes, so when your door opens, you are greeted much like before. With your preferred blossoms in hand, Iwazumi’s unmistakable hair protrudes behind it, all of which you find amusing.

“Flowers?” you question while taking a hold of the bouquet. “Does your significant other know you buy me flowers?”

“I hope so,” he smugly says. “I just think they’re neat.”

You roll your eyes before kissing his cheek when he walks through the door frame. Without giving it much thought, he toes his shoes off at your entryway before heading to the living room. His suit is still pressed from before the press conference and he does fill you in on what his old friends had said. You’re listening intently as you fill a nearby cubed vase with water.

“Sawamura said he’d call once there are more developments on promising leads,” Iwazumi reassures you when you come round to join him on the couch. He holds your hand as if you’re going to pass him by. You give yourself a moment to pause before shaking free from his grasp.

“Not good enough,” three words that would stop the world, his world, from spinning.

“Excuse me?”

Iwazumi glances up at you bewildered as your demeanor seems to wilt a bit.

“YN, they’re going to do the best they can to find–”

“How come you get to stay and I was asked to resign?”

Your interjection came with a fiery ferocity which you expanded upon. You go through the motions of talking it out with Iwazumi by your side to listen to rambles and go off as you’re pacing the living room. The fact that someone was delusional enough to have a mark on you whether it was intentional or not, the team still kept all of their players and out of fairness thought it was best to see if they could force you to resign, yet you are a boulder unwilling to move.

“Genius comes in many forms I suppose,” you stop in front of Iwazumi for the nth time. “But if this turns out to be a stunt, contractually or not, I resign for no reason and I don’t know what’s worse than that.”

Whatever you just said made Iwazumi’s face contort in a sort of conspiracy theory way. If what you say is true, then it is plausible the members of the committees who had you all under surveillance minus internal affairs, would have access to what had been leaked. You might have stumbled upon the answer around the same time, give or take a few seconds, as the both of you exclaim the name of one of the common denominators: the assistant coach.

“Can you prove it?” you whisper to him.

Iwazumi scoffs as he pats the empty space beside him on your couch.

“For you, I will,” he answers you, a tired smile and all. You sit down beside him, resting your head against his arm, almost leaning into his shoulder. He rests his cheek atop your head with a delightful hum; his hand rests palm up on your knee and this time, when you take it, you intertwine your fingers.

“Would you like to stay like this for a while?” you ask, although you know the answer.

“As long as we remain stalker-free for the rest of our days, sure, why not?” you could feel his fond smile through every word.

Elsewhere, the names of the tertiary parties involved have less than a half days time to gather all necessary documents because slander is added amongst the charges of breaching the laws of privacy. Your phone records as well as Iwazumi’s are kept sealed until the trial is set to begin. It’s been a wild two-three months since dealing with the damage control for this security breach, and luckily those who were questioned did face irrevocable jail time for slander and stalking. To this day, you and Iwazumi are thankful to have supported each other throughout the ordeal especially since it drew you together.

𝔸𝕣𝕘𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕒, 𝟚 𝕞𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕙𝕤 𝕝𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕣

Considering the generous offer of one Oikawa Tooru, you wake up, in a shirt not your own. Strong coffee, as you’ve learned to love during your stay here, has been brewed just to your liking. You are lazily flipping over in bed as the wind caresses put face and a slight chill is sent down your spine; you hiss at the absence of company you kept, the same person who and you quote, ‘fuck like you love me.’ Oh, after a few drinks after dinner, did Iwaxumi do that. Four times, four times?! You sat up quickly, throwing the blanket over your legs. Your thighs, littered in teeth marks and firm bruises made you let out a shaker breath. You feel so sore the higher your eyes and hands climb toward your core. There, unmistakenly, is a dull ache from where you remember you embarked on the physicality of this relationship—“god damn it, yn,” you inarguably stifle a laugh. He wore you out, you don’t even remember half the pet names he called up, but up until yesterday, you thought your college friend was a serial monogamist, and you knew why now.

As you let the memories of last night’s tumble in the sheets with Iwazumi blind your memories, he knocks on the door. The bastard has this pot on his lips asking if you’re ok or if you woke up too sore after something you both consented to.

“‘M fine,” you pat the space next to you. “You?”

He sits down, kissing the spot behind your ear, teasing you with a gruff, “mmhm.” The guest room still smells of sex and candied sin, but that doesn’t stop you nor Iwazumi from exploring each other with the intent of making another mess. You turn three quarters of the way to rest comfortably in the space of his lap, clothed erection you can graze by and feel he’ll become hard the longer you’re on him like this. Teasing him by tracing your hands over his chest, down his defined abs, then the waist band of his boxers had you greedily mumble, “already? hajime, we haven’t had breakfast yet…”

“Don’t care,” He sighs back into your mouth, hands supporting the small curve of your back. “You started this, we’ll pause after one round, eat, then come back.”

“Mm, sounds promising,” you tilt your head to one side. The buttons where the shirt was clasped together easily pop off the second you push iwazumi’s compliant body down. You settle yourself at an angle you know you could take him as you feel him drag down his waist band.

“So pretty boy,” The bold name makes him almost buck up into you. You feel the raw aching tip graze your uncovered sex. Leaning down to kiss his clavicle, your expression darker than his, you squeeze his member with one hand the other on his shoulder. Your hand adjusts the grip until you almost easily slip him into you. His eyes roll a bit as he feels you pump him just a smidge. “Think you could let me ride you for a few hours?”

A shaky breath followed by a most haste kiss has you continue preparing yourself to take him, all of him, at once. You groan from the slight, but pleasurable sting as does he. Your breathing is shallow like his as you let him set a steady rhythm that works for you both. His hands hold your waist while gently telling you encouraging words, “It’s better if you do it like this,” and a hip stuttering, “didn’t think I’d get to see you so fucked out this early.”

“Waking up alone sucks,” You breathe as you lace your fingers around iwazumi’s own. Prying his grip off your hip this time, you press a kiss to his palm before placing it on his neck. He’s a bit surprised, but now that he knows you like being choked a little, he presses down a bit.

“Nngh!” The very same cry from you as he is mercilessly curling up into you had your head in a tizzy. He’s come alive and you can feel his member pulsating at how your gummy walls stick him back in. His fingers still on your pulse point when he squeezes it again, another blissful cry has him wiping away glossy tears from your face.

“Keep making noises like that and I’ll fuck you from behind in the bathroom so you can watch your pretty face see what I do to your body,” It’s a beautifully prompted threat. Your orgasm has you in a metaphorical choke hold as your stamina increases with every pull and push of Iwazumi’s free hand. The one that holds you against him is not not dominant hand; that one sneaks between where you two are joined, locating a spot where if given enough attention, you’re driven off the metaphorical edge. You’re sinking your teeth into his shoulder and you feel him tense up.

“S-shit, ‘m close too, hol’d on, yeah?” You wearily nod. “Where?”

“Fuck! Inside,” you don’t have time to worry about the consequences. (It’s not like you don’t plan on birthing this man’s children, but if you two keep going at it like this, you just might. He’s just that good in the sack.)

Breathing like you both ran a marathon, your abused center still pulsates as the combined fluids never threaten to spill out. You confess you don’t care what happens in the future as long as you’re in it together. Iwazumi’s, catching his breath, sort of laughs into your shoulder.

“If you wind up with a scare, we’re at least know how to fuck again to make you a mommy,” He hears you laugh. It’s the purest one he’s heard since this vacation began.

“Be careful what you wish for.”

Iwazumi kisses your temple. “C’mon princess, coffee awaits.”

You concur, lazily draping the used sheets around your shoulders once Iwazumi reluctantly leaves the room. Glancing around you, despite the updates of the court case, you’re glad to rest in a paradise all on your own doing. Who knows? Maybe you’ll come back here with a family all your own—with the silly athletic trainer dancing in his boxers to “last Christmas” on the pop lite station.

Iwazumi is many things to you, but right now, a thief of your heart seems to be the most accurate.

#security breach #iwazumi hajime x reader #sora scribbles 2022 #haikyuu x reader

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theworstfoundingfathers · 2 years

Text

Who is the worst founding father? Round 2: John Marshall vs Alexander Hamilton

Note: Sorry. This one is the longest yet.

John Marshall (September 24, 1755 – July 6, 1835) was an American politician, lawyer, and Founding Father who served as the fourth chief justice of the United States from 1801 until his death in 1835. He remains the longest-serving chief justice and fourth-longest serving justice in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court, and is widely regarded as one of the most influential justices ever to serve. Prior to joining the court, Marshall briefly served as both the U.S. secretary of state under President John Adams, and a representative, in the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia, thereby making him one of the few Americans to serve on all three branches of the United States federal government.

In the early 1790s, the Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party emerged as the country was polarized by issues such as the French Revolutionary Wars and the power of the presidency and the federal government. Marshall aligned with the Federalists, and at Alexander Hamilton's request, he organized a Federalist movement in Virginia to counter the influence of Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans. Like most other Federalists, Marshall favored neutrality in foreign affairs, high tariffs, a strong executive, and a standing military.

Marshall believed that slavery was an evil, opposed the Atlantic slave trade, and feared increasing Southern focus on slavery would fracture the Union, as ultimately occurred; however, he owned slaves for most of his life. In 1783, his father Thomas Marshall as a wedding present gave John Marshall his first slave, Robin Spurlock, who would remain Marshall's manservant as well as run Marshall's Richmond household and upon Marshall's death receive a now-seemingly cruel choice of accepting manumission on the condition of emigrating to another state or to Africa (at age 78 and leaving his still-enslaved daughter Agnes) or choosing his master/mistress from among Marshall's children.

Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1755 or 1757 – July 12, 1804) was a Nevisian-born American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first United States secretary of the treasury from 1789 to 1795.

On February 15, 1781, while working as Washington's chief of staff, Hamilton was reprimanded by Washington after a minor misunderstanding. Although Washington quickly tried to mend their relationship, Hamilton insisted on leaving his staff. He officially left in March, and settled with his new wife Elizabeth Schuyler close to Washington's headquarters. He continued to repeatedly ask Washington and others for a field command. Washington continued to demur, citing the need to appoint men of higher rank. This continued until early July 1781, when Hamilton submitted a letter to Washington with his commission enclosed, "thus tacitly threatening to resign if he didn't get his desired command."

In 1784, Hamilton founded the Bank of New York.

Early during the Constitutional Convention Hamilton made a speech proposing a President-for-Life; it had no effect upon the deliberations of the convention. He proposed to have an elected president and elected senators who would serve for life, contingent upon "good behavior" and subject to removal for corruption or abuse; this idea contributed later to the hostile view of Hamilton as a monarchist sympathizer, held by James Madison.

During the Revolutionary War, affluent citizens had invested in bonds, and war veterans had been paid with promissory notes and IOUs that plummeted in price during the Confederation. In response, the war veterans sold the securities to speculators for as little as fifteen to twenty cents on the dollar. Hamilton felt the money from the bonds should not go to the soldiers who had shown little faith in the country's future, but the speculators that had bought the bonds from the soldiers.

Strong opposition to Hamilton's whiskey tax by cottage producers in remote, rural regions erupted into the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794; in Western Pennsylvania and western Virginia, whiskey was the basic export product and was fundamental to the local economy. In response to the rebellion, believing compliance with the laws was vital to the establishment of federal authority, Hamilton accompanied to the rebellion's site President Washington, General Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee, and more federal troops than were ever assembled in one place during the Revolution. This overwhelming display of force intimidated the leaders of the insurrection, ending the rebellion virtually without bloodshed.

During the election of 1796, Hamilton urged all the northern electors to vote for Adams and Pinckney, lest Jefferson get in; but he cooperated with Edward Rutledge to have South Carolina's electors vote for Jefferson and Pinckney. If all this worked, Pinckney would have more votes than Adams, Pinckney would become president, and Adams would remain vice president, but it did not work. The Federalists found out about it and northern Federalists voted for Adams but not for Pinckney, in sufficient numbers that Pinckney came in third and Jefferson became vice president.

In the summer of 1797, Hamilton became the first major American politician publicly involved in a sex scandal. After engaging in an affair with 23-year-old Maria Reynolds, Hamilton was blackmailed by Reynolds's husband and ended up paying over $1300 in payments to him. After being arrested for counterfeiting and speculating, James Reynolds implied he had evidence of illegal activity by Hamilton during his time as Treasury Secretary. Threatened by attacks against his integrity as a public servant that claimed his business with James Reynolds had to with improper speculation, Hamilton published a 100-page booklet, later usually referred to as the Reynolds Pamphlet, and discussed the affair in indelicate detail for the time.

Hamilton served as inspector general of the United States Army from July 18, 1798, to June 15, 1800. If full-scale war broke out with France, Hamilton argued that the army should conquer the North American colonies of France's ally, Spain, bordering the United States.

To fund this army, Hamilton urged passage of a direct tax. The eventual program included taxes on land, houses, and slaves, calculated at different rates in different states and requiring assessment of houses, and a stamp act like that of the British before the Revolution, though this time Americans were taxing themselves through their own representatives.

Hamilton is not known to have ever owned slaves, although members of his family were slave owners. At the time of her death, Hamilton's mother owned two slaves and wrote a will leaving them to her sons. However, due to their illegitimacy, Hamilton and his brother were held ineligible to inherit her property and never took ownership of the slaves. He occasionally handled slave transactions as the legal representative of his own family members, and one of his grandsons interpreted some of these journal entries as being purchases for himself. In 1840, his son John maintained that his father "never owned a slave; but on the contrary, having learned that a domestic whom he had hired was about to be sold by her master, he immediately purchased her freedom."

#founding father bracket #worst founding father #founding fathers #amrev #brackets #polls #john marshall #alexander hamilton

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disputeattorneysinhanoi · 1 year

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How Foreigners Can Easily Own a House in Vietnam?

Because making an overseas property investment is a significant decision, it is recommended that the investors consult with real estate dispute lawyers in Vietnam for assistance in determining the developer's eligibility, construction permits, and other project-related legal documents. To ensure the protection of rights, reduce risks, and ensure compliance, it is essential to review the transaction documents in relation to the deposit agreement, sales agreement, and any other agreements the developer might propose.

On November 25th, 2014, the National Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has approved the Housing Act 2014. The fact that a foreigner can buy a house in Vietnam is one of the most notable new changes.

Houses can be owned by foreign organizations and individuals in Vietnam:

-Overseas organizations and individuals putting resources into lodging development under projects in Vietnam as per the arrangements of the Housing Law and related authoritative archives;

-In Vietnam, businesses with foreign investment capital are operating, as are foreign investment funds, foreign bank branches, branch or representative offices of foreign businesses, and foreign investment funds.

-Foreign citizens are allowed to enter Vietnam.

What are forms of ownership housing foreigner in Vietnam?

-investment in the construction of housing in Vietnam as part of the project, in accordance with the Housing Law and related legislation;

-Apartments and single-family homes are included in the investment projects of housing construction. Commercial housing can be purchased, leased, donated, or passed down. (With the exception of housing projects aimed at safeguarding Vietnam's national defense and security, as mandated by the Government of Vietnam).

What are conditions, rights and obligations of foreigner when buy house in Vietnam?

For people or associations putting resources into lodging development under a project in Vietnam while seeking to possess houses in Vietnam they should fulfill the accompanying circumstances:

-Have an investment certificate

- Have housing developments constructed within the project in accordance with housing law.

When looking to buy a house in Vietnam, foreign businesses with foreign investment capital, branch or representative offices of foreign businesses, foreign investment funds, and foreign bank branches must meet the following conditions:

-Have investment certificates or documents relating with the license to operate in Vietnam gave by the skillful State offices of Vietnam.

Foreign individuals buying a house in Vietnam

-Allowed entry into Vietnam, but do not entitled to diplomatic and consular privileges and immunity.

Foreign businesses with foreign investment capital, branch or representative offices of foreign businesses, foreign investment funds, and foreign bank branches in Vietnam, as well as individual foreign buyers of homes in Vietnam, are eligible to own homes in Vietnam when:

-Rent, buy, donate, inherit, or own no more than 30% of an apartment building's units; Foreigners are not permitted to buy, lease, donate, inherit, or own more than two hundred fifty individual houses, including villas and semi-detached houses, in areas with a population equivalent to that of ward-level administrative;

-In accordance with the terms of the contract of sale, lease, donation, or inheritance, foreign individuals are entitled to own a home for a maximum of 50 years from the date of issuance of the certificate of ownership, which may be extended as required by the government. The certificate must also specify the period of ownership of the property;

-In the case of foreign individuals married to a citizen of Vietnam or hitched to a Vietnam resident got an outside country, they can possess the houses for a long and stable term. Additionally, like Vietnamese citizens, they enjoy owner rights;

Foreign organizations shall have the right to own a house in accordance with the contract of sale, lease, donation, or inheritance, but not longer than the period outlined in the certificate of ownership, which may include an extended period. The time it takes to own a house starts on the date the certificate of ownership is received and is listed on the certificate.

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mariacallous · 1 year

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Too little of the constant hum of the Arab-Israeli conflict breaks through in the United States. Occasional shocking attacks and sustained battles creep onto the pages of major papers but then fade back into obscurity.

But on the morning of Oct. 7, Hamas broke through—attacking Israel on multiple fronts, killing and kidnapping civilians and soldiers, and unleashing a barrage of thousands of rockets. By nightfall, hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians were dead. Dozens of Israelis were being held hostage inside Gaza. This, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is war.

Right now, what may well be the most substantial attack on Israel since the 1973 Arab-Israeli War looks like a massive intelligence failure. The Israelis are incredibly plugged in, both in Gaza and the West Bank. These are the intel operators who stole tons of data from inside Iran without being detected and who infiltrated a satellite-controlled machine gun into Iran and assassinated Iran’s key nuclear scientist without a hitch.

Yet they missed this plan to turn the tide of war against Israel. And they missed it despite the fact that Iran—which has long backed Hamas, Hezbollah, and other anti-Israel militia groups—has been advertising plans to do something like this for more than a year.

The Biden administration has said it doesn’t have evidence at this point that Iran was directly involved in Hamas’s latest assault, though U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken did note that “Iran and Hamas have a long relationship. Hamas wouldn’t be Hamas without the support it’s had for many years from Iran.” Yet on Sunday, a spokesperson for Hamas told the BBC that it had received support from Iran, as well as other unnamed sources, for the attack—an attack that Iran has since publicly praised. The Wall Street Journal also reported on Sunday that, according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land and sea incursions” that took place in the attack and that Iranian security officials “gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday.”

The gap between the apocalyptic rhetoric of Israel’s enemies and their achievements on the ground has been growing. Yes, there were occasional successful terrorist attacks against Israeli troops and civilians, but the government is far from falling, and the state is ever-more established, with Arab diplomatic partners from the Levant to the Persian Gulf (with even Saudi Arabia in the offing). And in a rare admission, it appears that the senior-most leadership of Iran’s elite military forces has noticed.

In an August 2022 interview posted on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s website, the head of the IRGC, Hossein Salami, said as much:

The Palestinians are ready today for ground warfare. Israel’s biggest weakness is ground warfare. Fighting by means of missiles is not the main point of the struggle. They know that the territories must be liberated by ground forces. While missiles are excellent for deterrence and for waging static wars, they do not liberate the land. A ground-based force must be deployed and must liberate the land step by step—as we did during the “sacred defense” war [the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War]. The outcome of the battle will be determined when the struggle is on the ground, and the brave and experienced people of Hezbollah and Palestine will move on the ground in a single military formation.

This, in a nutshell, is the process now ongoing.

A few short years ago, there were deep rifts among the various Palestinian groups. On the one hand was Fatah, which made up most of the PLO that after the Oslo Accords in the 1990s became the accepted legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and eventually morphed into the Palestinian Authority, headquartered in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

On the other were the groups still committed to armed resistance, chief among them Hamas, Hezbollah, and, eventually, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Unlike Fatah, these groups do not accept the existence of the state of Israel and are committed to its destruction. All are backed by Iran, both financially and militarily. Hamas also governs the breakaway territory of Gaza, nominally part of the territory controlled by the PA but effectively a Hamas fiefdom.

There is no comparison between Hezbollah and the other groups. It is at once the largest paramilitary and most powerful terrorist group in the world. It is a political party as well—Hezbollah de facto controls the Lebanese government and has blocked holding elections for a new president for almost a year. Hezbollah’s spiritual leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has said explicitly that the group follows orders from Tehran and that Khamenei is “our imam, our leader, our master.”

In contrast, and although backed by Iran and Qatar, Hamas and PIJ are local operators in Gaza. Hamas fell out with the Iranians over support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in 2011 and was punished with a total cutoff of assistance. Tehran ostentatiously adopted PIJ, feting the leadership with meetings at the highest levels in Tehran. Hamas came crawling back. But there is still little love lost between the groups. Tehran, working in cooperation with Hezbollah, is trying to fix that.

Twice this year, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has visited Beirut to, among other reasons, coordinate among Palestinian factions. In both April and August, he met with officials and senior leaders of PIJ, Hamas, and Hezbollah, underscoring two priorities: unity among the groups and the imperative to expand the fight from Gaza to the West Bank.

That coordination has been a theme for the Iranian leadership since at least 2021, when Hezbollah-aligned press reported on critical coordination between Hamas and the IRGC in Beirut during Operation Guardian of the Walls, an 11-day effort by the Israel Defense Forces to stop the continuous rocket attacks from Gaza on Israeli cities.

Meanwhile, there is also a growing struggle for power in the West Bank, with the Iran-backed groups in Gaza trying to delegitimize Fatah and potentially oust the PA. In this effort, they are being aided by the octogenarian president of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, who refuses to name a successor, step down, or allow presidential or legislative elections—the last of which took place in 2006.

The restiveness that has been growing among Palestinians beset by unemployment and poverty, riven by crime and gangs, and sensing their impotence in the face of ongoing fighting with Israel is clear. Tensions exploded in the northern West Bank city of Jenin this summer, with escalating direct and roadside attacks on Israeli troops ending with a large-scale Israeli military operation that resulted in at least a dozen Palestinian deaths. Concerningly, Palestinians unaffiliated with Hamas or other known terrorist groups played a major role in the Jenin battles—presenting an opportunity that Iran and its allies have been quick to try to exploit to expand their influence in the West Bank.

In addition, recent months have seen rocket attacks that were once the purview of Gazan groups move to the West Bank, and tunnels that facilitate movement out of sight of drones are, for the first time, being found in PA-controlled territory. The fruition of Iran’s long-term plan, weapons are also now moving at a growing pace from Hezbollah into the West Bank and falling into the hands of Hamas, PIJ, and several splinter groups animated by Fatah’s fading control and their leaders’ failure to liberate Palestine.

There are also increasingly serious efforts to train and arm Arab Israelis and Palestinian citizens of Israel who live inside Israel proper. This year has seen Israeli security forces uncover new Hezbollah smuggling routes bringing Iranian weapons into Israel. And while Iran’s efforts to recruit inside Israel are far from new, Hezbollah has cottoned on to the useful nexus of criminality and terrorism. By exploiting drug and weapons smuggling routes used by criminals, Hezbollah and Iran are walking through an open door.

Iran has also upped the ante in the West Bank and is now suspected of transferring improvised explosive devices (IEDs)—a weapon heretofore unseen in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—to actors in the area. (Iranian-made IEDs regularly bedeviled U.S. forces in Iraq.) More troubling still, the Iranian leadership has made the strategic decision to begin a more aggressive knowledge transfer to its preferred Palestinian groups so that in the event smuggling becomes more difficult, they are able to continue production. (This is a characteristic Iranian modus operandi, with many of their proxies and allies—Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas—capable of producing rockets. However, IEDs would represent a significant escalation.)

If inside Israel proper and the West Bank represent newer fronts for Iran and Hezbollah, the Israel-Lebanon border is a known flash point. And without diminishing the threat that the hyper-armed Hezbollah represents, a series of cross-border incursions and efforts in recent months have appeared almost performative: rocket fire, face-offs between Hezbollah fighters and Israelis at the border, the emplacement of two tents in disputed areas, and a cross-border attack in northern Israel.

Efforts to shunt Fatah aside are also happening in Lebanon. Take a look at Ein el-Hilweh: The largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, Ein el-Hilweh is nominally managed by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Founded in 1949, UNRWA has for decades been a bugaboo to the U.S. Congress, which has cut off funds and conditioned aid repeatedly over suspected ties with Hamas and extremist, anti-Israel, and antisemitic curricula. Ein el-Hilweh is a no-go area for the U.S.-backed Lebanese Armed Forces, and its original population of 1948 refugees is now swollen with other Palestinians as well as Syrian refugees from the slaughter to the north.

While sporadic fighting has taken place at Ein el-Hilweh over the years, 2023 saw more serious battles break out. A senior Fatah official was assassinated at the hands of Islamist groups, and fighting is now escalating once again. Battles that began in July are not quieting, and in August, the Fatah security chief in Sidon (the southern Lebanese town where Ein el-Hilweh is located) accused UNRWA of allowing armed killers to base themselves in UNRWA-run schools, from where they killed his predecessor, Abu Ashraf al-Armoushi.

The Ein el-Hilweh fighting is simple to dismiss, particularly as there have been clashes there over the years. But the view in Beirut is that Iran and Hezbollah have taken a hand in ensuring that Fatah remains under siege. Indeed, despite repeated meetings among the various factions at the camp and brokered peace talks, the fighting shows little sign of slowing.

What is the logic behind this multifront escalation by Iran? Here’s Salami again:

In what arena [will the fighting take place]? In the arena where society, politics, and militarism completely overlap. The moment ground operations begin, great waves of emigrating [Israeli] civilians and soldiers will intermingle, and the balance of the Zionists’ military command and control system will be thrown off. Do not look at the current situation [in August 2022], which is not under war conditions and in which this regime’s airplanes fly as usual, transportation is stable, power stations and refineries operate, administrative order prevails, and the regime is able to manage its environment calmly and with no pressure. Under conditions of war, all this order will fall apart, because [Israel’s] territory is small and densely populated. And who [lives in Israel]? People who came to this territory for prosperity and a comfortable life. In such a scenario [of war], the Zionist regime will face waves of out-of-control fires and the movement of jihadis whom nothing can stop. Then you will see what will happen.

This was the picture painted just over a year ago by the IRGC leader. Why did he believe that now could be a propitious moment for an escalation leading to all-out war? A number of critical factors: Abbas’s advanced age—he’ll turn 88 in November—and the inevitable vacuum his death will occasion; the ongoing internal political strife over Israeli government judicial reforms and the unprecedented threats from reservists not to fight as a result; the sense of U.S. disengagement underpinned by repeated emphasis on a rebalancing to Asia and the Russia-Ukraine war; a belief at the highest levels in Tehran that the United States will not back Israel in a conflict; an easing of the threats that have preoccupied both Iran and Hezbollah in Syria; and finally, Iran’s growing belief that as it asymptotically approaches nuclear weapons state status, it is becoming immune to Israeli retaliation, no matter how provocative its actions in the region.

Iran envisions a future of multifront, city-to-city fighting of the kind Israel has not seen since 1948. From Jerusalem, that plan may have looked like a fantasy in the face of a vastly superior Israeli force. And the fact that Salami seems incapable of operational security—laying out his vision for Israel’s defeat in explicit terms—should have meant that the country was well prepared for something like this weekend’s attack.

In the event, it was not.

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