#lydia ruling 2022

[llycaons]

:} i read pride & prejudice earlier this year (ADORED it.) and im about 2/3rds through emma. ive been slower to read this one for a bunch of personal & narrative reasons (the prose likes to show you that these ppl are a bit stupid by inserting a full page of diatribe sometimes) but its fascinating. i want to make more people read pride & prejudice

HI CJ :D pride and prejudice is like my number one romance book of all time I just LOVE it and this is coming from someone who doesn't like romances but it just makes me giggle and kick my feet and the ending is so so happy (with. exceptions lord poor lydia 😭) but I'm so excited for you what a wonderful discovery!!! like obviously it's a product of its time - emma is extremely socially conservative in ways I can't really overlook anymore in response to things like the french revolution to the extent where it rly impacts my enjoyment of it - but just as romances they're SO good. emma does have a lot of long tangents haha...it's incredibly well-written tho the language is just beautiful

personally I really love most of the other austen novels and I definitely recommend them too - sense and sensibility's one romance is extremely weird and creepy from a modern perspective, but I love the other one's restraint and tragedy and final burst of a happy ending at the end so much that I can overlook it. the loyalty to the theme was so impressive! northanger abbey is genuinely quite a funny parody of gothic novels with a fun and adventurous young heroine, tho I think the romance, while sweet, is one of the more generic and forgettable of austen's. persuasion is about an older woman whose looks have faded (27!) but the character arc of her and her love interest being reunited as settled and emotionally mature adults after being separated in their youth is SO satisfying...the characters are a little bit dull imo but the story itself is enthralling. (this is why I like persuasion AUs. theoretically. lmao)

meanwhile mansfield park is 800 pages of slogging prudishness and with almost no humor to break it up. she marries her first cousin. one of the women is presented as a scandalous ne'er-do-well because she likes riding horses. the family's wealth comes from a plantation in the caribbean. all of these books have some interaction with the ruling forces of british colonial empire (wentworth from persuasion is a naval officer) and most of the love interests are wealthy landowners, but mansfield park is the only one where the family literally owns slaves. it's a dreadful book and I hate it and I do not recommend it

but as a whole I do love so much of her work and I hope you enjoy it too!! there are a ton of adaptations too - my favorite for pride and prejudice is the bbc one but a lot of ppl like the movie too. I haven't seen many other adaptations but I do think the 2022 persuasion movie is really funny bc it's so utterly at odds with the actual story and characters of the book.

happy reading!!

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lydia O'Connor at HuffPost:

A week after a judge struck down Georgia’s six-week abortion ban, the state’s Supreme Court announced Monday that it’s reinstating the ban while it weighs Georgia officials’ appeal of the lower court’s ruling. Following the high court’s 6-1 vote, the near-total ban on abortions will go back into effect at 5 p.m. local time on Monday, upending a major win for reproductive rights advocates. “It is cruel that our patients’ ability to access the reproductive health care they need has been taken away yet again,” Kwajelyn Jackson, executive director at Atlanta’s Feminist Women’s Health Center, said following the ruling. “Once again, we are being forced to turn away those in need of abortion care beyond six weeks of pregnancy and deny them care that we are fully capable of providing to change their lives.” Justice John Ellington, the ruling’s sole dissenter, wrote in his dissent that the state should “not be in the business of enforcing laws that have been determined to violate fundamental rights guaranteed to millions of individuals under the Georgia Constitution.” Georgia’s six-week ban went into effect in July 2022, a month after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.

When Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney struck down that ban last week, he determined that the law treated women like “some piece of collectively owned community property” and that until a fetus reaches viability at around 22-24 weeks, such a ban was a violation of Georgians’ constitutional rights.

The Georgia Supreme Court saw fit to reinstate the state’s 6-week abortion ban while the appeals process is underway.

[taiturner]

NEW YEARS CLEAN-UP 🎊

rules: unburden yourself from the abandoned WIPS collecting dust in your folder and share 5 gifs, then tag five people. (tagged by @yenvengerberg, thank you i feel like i can do something useful with these things now 💖)

tagging with no pressure of course: @wyllhalsin, @capinejghafa, @cardvngreenbriar, @seance, @ayoedebiris, @ughmerlin, @craintheodora, @lottiemilfews, @natscatorrcio (yeah miles i'm tagging you to be funny i know what you did with those psds)

these are all from projects that i have in a folder titled "on the bench" that i want to pretend i'll come back to, but.... some of these have been benched for so long and they're no longer fresh in my head so i fear they'll be abandoned forever. should also be mentioned that a lot of projects on the bench are literally just me making all the typography first and then losing inspo when i actually wanted to gif things.... usually by the time i do start, i change my mind about the type anyway. i also have so many abandoned gifs from other gifsets i've already posted but i'm not even sure where to begin searching so... here are some things!

one of the many gifs i already created for a prompt from @yellowjacketsoctober to put the show in a different genre. ironically, a prompt that i came up with for the event specifically to make this gifset but didn't even complete. i spent so many hours and so many days trying to gif this entire arc for these three with the intent to make it a heist drama set but after so long i realized i was just giffing exactly what happened in the show and it started to feel pointless. but at least here's a preview of something that i'll never finish. my trio of all time, can they commit more crimes together please! (should also be said that this folder is 44gb because i already saved all the caps + because these psds are so heavy... new years clean up for real)

i don't know what it is about lydia that makes it so hard for me to finish any set for her, but every time i try i seem to always lose the drive eventually (probably because twd in general just feels really uninteresting for me to blend, for some reason). from a 2022 spotify wrapped meme, i'm pretty sure i restarted this specific gifset so many different times, unhappy with the colors and the blends and the text and everything -- which is why there are two very different examples here. my girl of all time though i will finish something for her eventually (and maybe even this one, because this song is still so good for her).

one of the many gifs that were abandoned by my scream vi set for favorite slasher in october. when tumblr first changed the image upload limit to 30, i promised myself to never take advantage of that too much, but i severely underestimated how many moments i would want to include for this movie and i made so many other gifs for this set but ultimately cut them so i could try to tone it down - 18 gifs in this set still feels like a lot but i spent so much time on this set that it was hard to part with many more. anyway here's sam being the hottest final girl in the world and correct about everything.

i don't know how long this has been on the bench but it was definitely a project i started way before season 2 even aired. i think i just got stuck and wasn't sure where to go with it, but anyway her!

extra spoiler for @wyllhalsin but this was supposed to be a pride edit in june for one of my favorite lgbt characters of all time. this show's camera movements nearly makes it impossible to blend anything so i lost the drive, but i will come back for felix someday (and for coty, obviously this set was for him).

[wipbigbang]

WIPBB 2023 - Fic & Art Master List (M - R)

Below is the master list of all the bragging rights/posts that were posted to Tumblr and Dreamwidth, organized alphabetically by fandom from M to R. Please go show these people some love for all the hard work they did!

Marvel Cinematic Universe

Captain America

A Future Golden with Promise: Art On Dreamwidth | Art On Tumblr (Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers)

Contact High, Middle Earth, and Laying Low: Fic | Art On Dreamwidth | Art On Tumblr (Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers)

Letters From Under The Bed: Fic/Art (Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers)

Litter Mates: Fic | Art On Dreamwidth | Art On Tumblr (Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers)

When The Pool Closes: Fic | Art On Dreamwidth | Art On Tumblr (Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers)

Captain America/Iron Man

From A to B: Fic (Rebecca Barnes Proctor/Howard Stark)

Captain America/Iron Man/Spiderman

Peter Parker's Guide to Romance: Fic | Art On Dreamwidth | Art On Tumblr (Bucky Barnes/Tony Stark, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker)

Moon Knight

And You Can Follow Me: Fic | Art (Marc Spector/Layla El-Faouly)

Wandavision

the season of the witch: Fic | Art (Agatha Harkness/Wanda Maximoff)

Mass Effect

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Fic (Original Characters)

MDZS/The Untamed

A Thousand Ways To Say I Love You: Fic/Art (Nie Huaisang/Nie Mingjue)

An Old Cardboard Produce Box for a Cradle: Fic (Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian)

Bright The Hawk's Flight: Fic/Art (Lan Wangji/ Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng & Jiang Yanli & Wei Wuxian)

Bring Me Tomorrow/Stay With Me: Fic | Art (Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji, Jin Guangyao/Lan Xichen, Jin Guangyao/Nie Mingjue, Implied Xicheng)

Consequences: Fic (Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji, Jiang Yanli/Jin Zixuan, Lan Xichen/Jin Guangyao/Nie Mingjue)

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Fic/Art (Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji)

Knit Witted Wei Ying: Art (Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji, Xiao Xingchen/Song Zichen)

Love in Bloom: Fic (Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji, Lan Xichen/Nie Mingjue)

Pas de Deux: Fic (Lan Zhan/Wei Ying, background Mo Xuanyu/Xiao Xingchen/Song Zichen)

Platonic Romances, Emotional Affairs, and Other Remedies: Art (Qin Su/Wen Qing, Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji, Lan Wangji & Qin Su, Lan Jingyi & Lan Sizhui & Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian & Wen Ning & Wen Qing)

Show & Tell: Fic (Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji, Jiang Cheng/Lan Wangji, Lan Wangji/Nie Huaisang)

Til Death Do Us Part: Fic | Art (Jin Ling/Jiang Cheng/Jin Guangyao)

Trials and Tribulations: Fic | Art (Lan Zhan/Wei Ying)

Men's Hockey RPF

Sunstruck: Fic | Art (Jamie Drysdale/Trevor Zegras)

try to catch the sun: Fic (Patrick Kane/Jonathan Toews)

Merlin

A Matchmaker of Two Fools: Fic | Art (Merlin Emrys/Arthur Pendragon, Gwen/Morgana Pendragon)

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

Warmth in the Coldest Places: Fic | Art (Elizabeth MacMillan/Rosie Sanderson)

Nope (2022)

The Inter(Viewers): Art (N/A)

Old Nine Gates (TV) | 老九门

Mission Creep: Fic (Art On AO3) (Qi Tie Zui/Zhang Rishan)

One Piece

Caught in the Web: Fic (Monkey D. Luffy & Everyone)

Only Murders In The Building

holding hands & twisting knives: Fic | Art (Daniel Kreps/Poppy White)

Original Works

Horseplay and Roughhousing: Fic On Dreamwidth | Fic On Tumblr (Original Characters)

Rules of Engagement/Teen Wolf

A Tale of Two Timmies: Fic (Russell Dunbar/Timmy Patel, Simran Patel & Timmy Patel, Lydia Martin/Stiles Stilinski)

RWBY

Revealed by Mirrored Eyes: Fic | Art (Ruby Rose, Taiyang Xiao Long, Qrow Branwen, Yang Xiao Long, Blake Belladonna, Weiss Schnee, Penny Polendina, James Ironwood, Ozpin, Salem, Raven Branwen, Summer Rose)

[zinniajones]

Florida’s newest Boards of Medicine appointees wrote an anti-trans letter calling for gender “exploratory” therapy, citing a report of a trans teenager being involuntarily hospitalized for nearly two years

Previously:

Gender Analysis calls for a hearing on the Florida Board of Medicine and Board of Osteopathic Medicine proposed trans youth care bans 64B8–9.019 and 64B15–14.014 F.A.C.

Anti-trans group SEGM’s cofounder Stephen Beck is an executive at Bon Secours Mercy Health, the fifth-largest Catholic healthcare network in the US

Background

On December 2, 2022, Governor Ron DeSantis appointed pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Monica M. Mortensen to the Florida Board of Osteopathic Medicine, followed by the appointment of pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Matthew R. Benson to the Board of Medicine on December 28. Benson previously spoke in favor of the state Medicaid trans care exclusion Rule 59G-1.050(7) at a July 8, 2022 AHCA meeting, and coauthored a September 23 letter to the Boards of Medicine with Mortensen and seven others in support of the trans youth care bans 64B8–9.019 and 64B15–14.014.

Benson and Mortensen’s positions are relevant to an ongoing issue: although the Boards of Medicine voted to advance the trans youth care ban at the November 4 meeting, it has not yet taken effect. Another joint meeting on the ban will now take place on February 10 in response to calls for a rule hearing from Southern Legal Counsel, ACLU of Florida, Gender Analysis and others. Public comment is now open for the upcoming hearing until February 7 at BOMPublicComment@flhealth.gov. Benson and Mortensen’s letter provides important clues to how they will likely approach this rule and other issues involving gender-affirming care as Board members, and this letter warrants extended analysis.

The September 23, 2022 letter to the Boards of Medicine (“Benson letter”)

Benson and Mortensen’s letter was coauthored with seven other pediatric endocrinologists and pediatric endocrine nurse practitioners working at Nemours Children’s Health Jacksonville: Larry A. Fox, Rehem Hasan, Nelly Mauras, Lournaris Torres-Santiago, Lydia Snyder, Joseph W. Permuy, and Kaley Carroll (“An Open Letter to the Florida Board of Medicine: Regarding the Proposed Rules to Limit the Use of Hormonal and Surgical Care for Gender Variant Youth”, pp. 1308–1313 of October 28 meeting public materials). Benson’s background includes research in the use of GnRH analogues to treat central precocious puberty in cisgender children (Benson et al., 2021), while Mortensen was involved in providing medical and psychological records of an adolescent trans boy treated at Nemours Jacksonville in the case Adams v. School Board of St. Johns County in 2017 (Expert report of Diane Ehrensaft, 21 Sep 2017). The Benson letter repeats several common anti-trans talking points that have featured heavily throughout the rulemaking process, including:

Arguing for any gender-affirming medical treatment of trans minors to be restricted to “high-quality research protocols approved by an IRB” (para 9).

Citing Dhejne et al. (2011), a study of transgender adults from 1973 to 2003, to assert that adolescents who transition are at risk of “persistently high rates of suicide, depression and premature death” (para 7).

Asserting that the practices of Sweden, Finland, France, and the UK support adoption of highly restrictive regulations of trans youth care in Florida (paras 3, 9).

Relying on a flawed and widely criticized review of transition treatments commissioned by the state of Florida (para 8), which was conducted far outside the usual standards for the authors’ evidence reviews (see section 9) as well as outside the normal Florida Medicaid processes for making a coverage determination.

Claiming that evidence supporting transition treatments is “mostly low quality and largely expert opinion, which is among the lowest level of medical evidence”, with “limited data from prospective, controlled trials, which are the gold-standard by which we judge any therapeutic intervention” (para 2).

Arguing for “nonjudgmental exploratory psychodynamic therapy in gender-dysphoric youth” as an alternative to transitioning (para 10).

The letter features a number of erroneous claims and misinterpretations of evidence, and Benson et al. rely on mostly low-quality sources to support their arguments.

Exploring “exploratory therapy”

“Gender exploratory therapy” is a recent term for non-affirming prolonged psychotherapy for trans youth and adults (Ashley, 2022), now frequently promoted by the closely connected anti-trans groups Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) and Gender Exploratory Therapy Association (GETA). These groups, emerging in only the last few years, repeatedly assert that “exploratory therapy” is not an anti-gay or anti-trans conversion therapy — while at the same time campaigning against conversion therapy bans (see section 4) and claiming that this psychotherapy may cause gender dysphoria to resolve without a need for gender-affirming treatment.

Benson and Mortensen cite five sources in support of their call for “exploratory psychodynamic therapy”:

We also support the expansion of competent expert psychological support with rapid implementation of nonjudgmental exploratory psychodynamic therapy in gender-dysphoric youth [7–11].

7: Levine, S. B., & Lothstein, L. (1981). Transsexualism or the gender dysphoria syndromes. Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, 7(2), 85–113. https://doi.org/10.1080/00926238108406096

8: Davenport, C. W., & Harrison, S. I. (1977). Gender identity change in a female adolescent transsexual. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 6(4), 327–340. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01541204

9: Churcher Clarke, A., & Spiliadis, A. (2019). ‘Taking the lid off the box’: the value of extended clinical assessment for adolescents presenting with gender identity difficulties. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 24(2), 338–352. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359104518825288

10: D’Angelo, R., Syrulnik, E., Ayad, S., Marchiano, L., Kenny, D. T., & Clarke, P. (2021). One size does not fit all: in support of psychotherapy for gender dysphoria. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 50(1), 7–16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-020-01844-2

11: Lemma, A. (2018). Trans-itory identities: some psychoanalytic reflections on transgender identities. International Journal of Psychiatry, 99(5), 1089–1106. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2018.1489710

Levine & Lothstein (1981) is a case series of transgender adults in the 1970s; uncontrolled case series are considered one of the lowest “levels” of evidence in most evidence hierarchies (Stony Brook University, 2022). Churcher Clarke & Spiliadis (2019) and Lemma (2018) are also small case series of patients (12 and 2 subjects, respectively). Davenport & Harrison (1977) consists of a single case report of an adolescent, and D’Angelo et al. (2021) is a letter to the editor by six members of SEGM; this expert opinion is generally considered even lower in the hierarchy of evidence than case series or case reports.

While Davenport & Harrison (1977) long predates any formalization of “gender exploratory therapy”, the treatment described appears extreme and alarming. The abstract states that this consisted of “two years of individual and milieu therapy” for a 14.5-year-old trans boy, but the authors later explain that this took place at an inpatient psychiatric facility:

In accordance with those treatment goals, the patient was admitted to an inpatient psychiatric hospital for adolescents, where she remained for 20 months. In the hospital she was involved in triweekly, individual psychotherapy with a male therapist and milieu therapy. The milieu therapy included active intervention by psychiatric nurses and aides, therapeutic school, recreational therapy, and occupational therapy geared specifically toward adolescents. The patients admitted to this service manifest a wide variety of adolescent pathology. Approximately two-thirds of the patients are short-term admissions and one-third remain in residential treatment for prolonged periods of time.

It then becomes clear that this confinement was involuntary and distressing:

Her severe social withdrawal was striking, and she spent much of the time in her room avoiding both staff and other patients. … There seemed to be a quality of stubbornness demonstrated in her refusal of hospital activity and withholding of information in interviews. When first admitted, she refused to eat, and seemed to be using this to pressure her parents to sign her out of the hospital. Signs of anxiety, however, were also clear, and weeks later she was able to acknowledge in psychotherapy that she was scared and did not have any appetite.

…

She talked also about being angry about being in the hospital, having to come to psychotherapy and not knowing what to say. The material about cross-dressing again arose. Her cousin was getting married and there was to be a formal party to which she was invited. However, she knew that this would entail wearing a dress. She marked her ambivalence by saying that one way to avoid the problem would be to run away and then be restricted to the ward.

…

She then returned to the hard line: there was no conflict, she just had gotten the wrong body, when was the therapist going to quit bugging her by keeping her in the hospital? She began missing appointments and only returned when her milieu manager said if she did not go to therapy she would lose privileges, including weekend passes.

…

Her favorite female staff member was leaving, which aroused feelings of abandonment. She said that she wanted to leave the hospital when the staff member did, but her father would not permit it until she saw herself as a girl.

Psychiatric hospitalization from ages 14–16 is a drastic intervention, especially in cases where there isn’t actually any mental or behavioral disorder that disrupts normal functioning to the point of requiring treatment under constant supervision and confinement. TASN School Mental Health Initiative (2016) describes some circumstances in which children may be hospitalized for psychiatric reasons:

Severe mental disorders are associated with a variety of symptoms that disrupt life at home and at school. Not all mental disorders require hospitalization. However, when a child or youth manifests such symptoms as hallucinations, threatens to self-harm or harm others, and/or has not eaten or slept for days, psychiatric hospitalization is a common reaction.

Being trans — identifying as a gender different from one’s assigned sex — is not like a hallucination, endangering oneself or others, or otherwise acting in a way that requires continuous monitoring by professionals. Trans youth and adults accept and embrace their identities as trans people all the time and have done so for decades, broadly to the benefit of their own well-being and sense of self, and generally with no need for psychiatric hospitalization in relation to this or any other matter.

Benson et al. assert in their letter that “data are lacking on the long-term safety and efficacy of the prescribed treatments” of puberty blockers and HRT (para 3), and they contend that “These decisions are too critical and important for young children to make as they cannot easily comprehend the long-term ramifications” (para 14). However, they fail to address the long-term developmental and psychosocial impacts of being involuntarily held in a residential psychiatric facility for almost two years in the middle of adolescence. This near-total separation from one’s family, community, and peers from ages 14–16 jeopardizes an adolescent’s well-being in ways that simply do not apply to trans youth who receive gender-affirming medical treatment while being welcomed in their communities. Tougas et al. (2022) describe a variety of adverse impacts on youth hospitalized in a psychiatric facility:

In the United States and Canada, it is estimated that close to one third are rehospitalized in the year following discharge (2- 6). Moreover, in addition to high social costs (7–8), youth hospitalizations may result in serious academic and social difficulties (e.g., absenteeism, social isolation, stigma, bullying, difficulty managing psychiatric symptoms, low academic performance, motivational problems, dropouts; 9–11).

This is a massive tradeoff of quality of life, particularly when hospitalization is not apparently necessary for any reason. A child kept in an inpatient facility during this time will miss out on countless milestones and memories that are irreplaceable, but this study seems to argue that this is preferable over freely enjoying your teenage years as a trans person with your friends, schoolmates, family, and others in a normal community setting.

The case report is also not an instance of “nonjudgmental” therapy as claimed by Benson et al. Although this patient wanted to leave the hospital, their parents would not allow this “until she saw herself as a girl”. The report goes on to describe hospital staff reinforcing “feminine traits” and “feminine behavior”, encouraging the patient to identify with their mother, and providing “therapy for her dread of femininity, which she had needed”:

Near the end of the first year of hospitalization, we had begun gradually to recognize feminine traits and to reinforce them. Her attempts to avoid being involved with the girls’ group were confronted, and she was seemingly merging with that group.

…

She began to experiment with “feminine” behavior, and this was encouraged and supported by staff.

…

In reality, the father was psychologically and physically absent; his appearance of strength was based on degrading the mother and the maternal role. Certainly the patient’s recognition of the true dynamics made identification with her mother more possible. It helped the patient take another look at the role of women and to see her parents’ marital situation as pathological and not like that of most families.

…

Therefore, she could now participate in the therapy for her dread of femininity, which she had needed but could not previously acknowledge.

Finally, note should be made of the role of the milieu staff in the treatment. They were able early in hospitalization to get her involved in the adolescent issues that are current on an adolescent service. They were very supportive of her feminine behavior and tactfully reinforced it during the second year in hospital when this was appropriate.

It’s clear that any “exploratory” therapy here was done with a fixed destination in mind: identifying with one’s assigned sex, and no longer requesting any gender-affirming care. This was a gender identity change effort directed toward establishing a cisgender identity, which is encompassed by the widely understood meaning of conversion therapy. Major medical and professional organizations recognize that conversion therapy is ineffective and dangerous (Forsythe et al., 2022), and a United Nations independent expert has described conversion therapy as “inherently discriminatory” and “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” (UN OHCHR, 2020).

The treatment of a trans adolescent described by Davenport & Harrison may actually constitute a serious human rights violation. Even if an “expansion” and “rapid implementation” of long-term psychiatric hospitalization for thousands of new teenage patients was at all feasible or realistic, its use for this purpose would be completely immoral and ethically unacceptable. Being transgender, and identifying as such, is fundamentally not a treatable “illness”. As a trans woman living in Florida, I fervently hope that this pathologizing perspective will not be represented at the Boards of Medicine by Benson and Mortensen.

Familiar faces: Dr. Stephen B. Levine

The remaining four sources cited by Benson et al. to support “exploratory” therapy at least do not describe involuntarily hospitalizing us in psychiatric wards until we stop saying we’re trans. Regardless, they still fail to provide any high-quality evidence supporting this exploratory psychotherapy in its own right, let alone as any kind of replacement for gender-affirming care. Levine & Lothstein (1981) is a case series of 150 transgender adults — the authors describe a minimum age of 21 for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. This is a distinctly different population from the trans minors in Florida whose access to gender-affirming care is now being jeopardized by the Boards of Medicine. The authors also do not provide any detailed information on the overall outcomes of their patients who were treated with gender-affirming care or alternative psychotherapies. Instead, the study describes the baseline co-occurring mental health conditions of 51 adult trans women and 18 adult trans men, with 7 case vignettes, and only “overall impressions” of the patient population undergoing gender-affirming surgery at Case Western Reserve University. Only one of these vignettes illustrated an apparent disappearance of gender dysphoria following psychotherapy.

Levine & Lothstein acknowledge the shortcomings in the evidence base for psychotherapies to eliminate gender dysphoria:

These clinical impressions have not been documented by systematic studies. There have been numerous published case reports of apparent “cures,” and fewer papers by clinicians who have seen large numbers of patients but do not report on any one case in considerable detail. The latter group contains accounts of patients who improved in many ways but were not cured of their gender problems.

The psychotherapy they’re proposing is also not a “nonjudgmental” therapy. The authors posit “realistic” goals for trans patients:

Some realistic goals for gender patients include: strengthening the patient’s heterosexuality; decreasing the frequency of cross-dressing; enabling a comfortable acceptance of a homosexual life style.

All of these goals — being straight and cisgender, gay and cisgender, or cis without “cross-dressing” — are formulated with the intention of discouraging gender-diverse expression and identifying as transgender. This, too, is a gender identity change effort that can fall within the definition of conversion therapy.

Notably, the authors provide several arguments against prohibition of gender-affirming care or restriction to narrow clinical research settings as proposed by Benson et al.:

Prohibition of SRS in the United States. Some patients would seek a foreign source, but others might be totally dissuaded from the idea of surgery. Many professionals are familiar with patients who have “seen the light” about their gender identities after some media exposure to transsexualism. If SRS receives less publicity, patients may be forced to find nontranssexual solutions. Such an approach may actually be unethical, since SRS appears to help some patients. Should the moral objections of some citizens deprive others of potentially beneficial medical treatment?

…

Restriction of SRS to centers involved in a multiuniversity research project aimed at answering relevant clinical questions. This rational approach might yield significant new knowledge within five years. Given the current economic climate, however, it seems unlikely that the federal government, or any other granting agency, would fund research on a problem that is relatively rare, personally unsavory, and politically controversial.

What Benson and Mortensen are proposing would similarly amount to a de facto ban on any such care by effectively regulating it out of existence. Far from the “judicious pause” that Benson et al. request, this would be utterly disruptive to the status quo, where trans youth are able to receive these treatments as a matter of private clinical decisionmaking between themselves, their healthcare providers, and their parents or guardians.

After 1981, coauthor Stephen B. Levine has continued to contribute to the scientific literature, public discourse, and legal debate on gender-affirming care and non-affirming psychotherapies. In several cases, Levine has testified against allowing incarcerated trans women to receive gender-affirming surgery, and has more recently offered numerous expert declarations stating that reversible social transition causes persistence of gender dysphoria into adolescence. This claim relies on his misinterpretation of the findings of Steensma et al. (2013), a study which only examined associations rather than causation, and found only a minimal association in trans girls and no association at all for trans boys.

Levine has accepted thousands of dollars from SEGM to write and publish articles against informed consent for gender-affirming care (Deposition in Fain v. Crouch, 27 Apr 2022, p. 30):

Q: Okay. And what about to, did you receive any grants to research or publish about the treatment of gender dysphoria?

A: I received a $5,000 grant to publish, to work on, to develop an article on informed consent which of course involves the treatment of people with gender dysphoria.

Q: And what’s the name of that grant?

A: It’s from the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine and I, I, I don’t really have a, I don’t know the answer any further than that, that is a grant number or something, I couldn’t tell you.

Levine frequently coauthors commentary against gender-affirming care with SEGM cofounder Julia W. Mason (Levine et al. 2022a; Levine et al. 2022b; Abbruzzese et al. 2023), and recently coauthored GETA’s “clinical guide” to exploratory therapy with SEGM’s Roberto D’Angelo, Sasha Ayad, Lisa Marchiano, and Dianna T. Kenny, as well as Genspect founder Stella O’Malley (Ayad et al., 2022). Levine also disclosed that he is a clinical supervisor of Miriam Grossman (Deposition in Brandt v. Rutledge, 26 May 2022, p. 34), who has worked as an anti-trans expert for the Florida AHCA and has previously endorsed anti-gay conversion therapy.

In contrast to his public-facing work, Levine was remarkably candid about the state of evidence for non-affirming or exploratory psychotherapy during deposition in Kadel v. Folwell (pp. 109–110):

Q: Okay. Understood. And as for your more conservative approach, can you cite to any studies or research that resulted in better outcomes than people who adhere strictly to the WPATH standards of care version 7?

A: No. This is part of the problem in the field for — although there are alternative approaches, there’s no randomized controlled study of any approach, including those which the standards of care seem to endorse. But the alternative approaches are equally deficient scientifically and are just like many people who are advocates are based on anecdotal evidence.

Q: Sorry. I missed the last part of that. You said your approach as well is not — has no controlled studies or support in that way?

Mr. KNEPPER: Objection, form.

A: Not only does it have no controlled studies, it has no systematic follow up based upon prior agreements about how we’re going to evaluate those things.

Benson and Mortensen’s own source attests, in 1981 and again in 2021, that this alternative of exploratory psychotherapy does not have an empirical basis sufficient to meet their high standards for evidence. In his foreword to a book coauthored by SEGM cofounder Marcus Evans (Evans & Evans, 2021), Levine describes the benefits of these psychotherapies as a matter of “faith” rather than “compelling data”:

What is known about the outcome of psychotherapies for trans-identified young people and adolescents? This book’s erudite chapters about highly defensive intrapsychic development provide evidence that some psychotherapies can enable some patients to decide to desist from a trans identity. Those of us who have faith in the benefit of such work regardless of the patients’ ultimate decisions about their gender expressions do not have compelling data to support our faith.

Where does faith sit within the levels of evidence? “Mostly low quality and largely expert opinion” would be too generous for this. As state regulatory agencies, the Boards of Medicine are intended to make policy and decisions based on compelling data, not unconditional faith. Faith-based policymaking at the Boards of Medicine would be unacceptable under any circumstances, but especially when this is used to disrupt access to real medicine in favor of promoting an unproven alternative therapy that runs on confidence instead of evidence.

A core group: D’Angelo, Syrulnik, Ayad, Marchiano, Kenny, & Clarke (2021)

D’Angelo et al. (2021) is a letter to the editor by six members of SEGM:

Roberto D’Angelo. D’Angelo is president of SEGM, an advisor to the closely related anti-trans group Genspect, and coauthor of the 2022 GETA clinical guide. Before his work with SEGM, D’Angelo served as the adversarial expert psychiatrist on behalf of a trans girl’s disapproving mother in the Australian case Re Imogen (para 4). This is notable as an early instance in which a core SEGM member directly attempted to interfere with a trans child’s gender-affirming care, in favor of imposing “psychotherapy and psychodynamic psychiatry” and “‘agenda free’ psychological exploration” (paras 174, 219). During the case, D’Angelo argued to the family court that Imogen, a 16-year-old trans girl, should be taken off her estrogen for at least one year to undergo weekly “intensive psychotherapy” (para 218). Imogen’s mother had a history of being physically violent to her (para 128) and had attempted to file complaints against her medical providers (para 244). D’Angelo sought to diagnose Imogen as having complex post-traumatic stress disorder rather than gender dysphoria (paras 170, 174) on the basis of “two online interviews” (para 182). Imogen’s mother then argued that Imogen was not competent to consent to gender-affirming care because she had not volunteered to D’Angelo that she had ordered estradiol from overseas (para 196). However, the court recognized that “Imogen did not want any medical information shared with her mother and she knew if she told Dr D’Angelo about the overseas drug, that information would be shared with her mother” (para 196). The court ultimately found that Imogen was competent to consent to treatment, setting a crucial precedent in Australia to protect access to gender-affirming care for youth. Elsewhere, D’Angelo has contributed a chapter to the anti-trans book “Inventing Transgender Children and Young People” (D’Angelo, 2019a), published a case report of a trans adult who “no longer believes he is a man” following psychotherapy D’Angelo (2019b), coauthored commentary with four other SEGM members (Clayton et al., 2021) and coauthored a letter to the editor with four SEGM cofounders (Malone et al., 2021).

Ema Syrulnik. Syrulnik is a healthcare data analytics expert who assisted with Clayton et al. (2021) and received an acknowledgment in Evans & Evans (2021). A 13 Jan 2023 privilege log in the Florida Medicaid trans care exclusion case Dekker v. Weida (previously Dekker v. Marstiller) shows that then-assistant deputy secretary Jason C. Weida emailed Ema Syrulnik on June 29, 2022 regarding “RE: Followup thoughts” (Plaintiffs’ motion to compel production, 20 Jan 2023). The privilege note describes Syrulnik as a consultant: “Email between General Counsel, Chief of Staff, and consultant regarding GAPMS Report.” This correspondence followed SEGM member Romina Brignardello-Petersen and SEGM associate Quentin L. Van Meter contributing two anti-trans expert reports for Florida AHCA on May 16–17, 2022, and the appointment of SEGM member Patrick K. Hunter to the Florida Board of Medicine on June 17, 2022.

Sasha Ayad. Ayad is a psychotherapist whose practice, Inspired Teen Therapy, provides “individualized therapy and parent coaching around adolescent gender identity issues” and advertises tiered monthly subscription memberships for parents of trans and gender-questioning youth. She describes herself as a founding board member of GETA, Genspect, and the International Association of Therapists for Desisters and Detransitioners. Ayad also serves on the board of the Institute for Comprehensive Gender Dysphoria Research with Roberto D’Angelo, Lisa Marchiano, and Stella O’Malley, and is lead author of the GETA clinical guide.

Lisa Marchiano. Marchiano assisted Lisa Littman in developing her “rapid onset gender dysphoria” study (Littman, 2018), defended Evans & Evans (2021) with Roberto D’Angelo (D’Angelo, Marchiano & Gorin, 2022), and is a coauthor of the GETA clinical guide. She has described the emergence of trans youth in terms such as “outbreak”, “psychic epidemic” (Marchiano, 2017), and “modern hysteria” (Marchiano, 2022). Health Liberation Now! has identified Marchiano, Ayad, and Stella O’Malley as constituting a “core trio” substantially responsible for the founding or development of nine highly similar anti-trans groups over the past five years (Leveille, 2022).

Dianna T. Kenny. Kenny is an Australian psychologist who contributed a chapter to “Inventing Transgender Children and Young People” (Kenny, 2019), coauthored the GETA clinical guide, and was paid $75,000 by the state of Alabama to provide an anti-trans expert report in Eknes-Tucker v. Ivey (now Boe v. Marshall). Kenny has described trans youth coming out, and even gender-affirming medical care itself, as “social contagions” (Kenny, 2021).

Patrick Clarke. Clarke is an Australian psychiatrist who coauthored Clayton et al. (2021) and submitted an October 2022 letter to the Icelandic parliament arguing against a ban on conversion therapy, claiming to be “greatly concerned that this Bill will result in ethical, neutral psychotherapies being conflated with Conversion Therapy”.

The article is a letter to the editor rather than a study with any original research findings or systematic synthesis of evidence, and this expert opinion would be among the lowest levels of evidence as described by Benson and Mortensen. D’Angelo et al. is mostly an argument against the findings of Turban et al. (2020) that gender identity change efforts are harmful, against that study’s use of the 2015 US Trans Survey, and against using the USTS as a source generally. This is a criticism of one publication’s methodology, not a refutation or even an engagement with the substantial overall body of evidence showing that sexual orientation and gender identity conversion therapies are ineffective and harmful. Were D’Angelo et al. to prevail in their argument that Turban et al. is an unreliable study, this would still do nothing to provide positive evidence that gender identity change efforts are themselves safe or likely to be effective. Elsewhere, SEGM members Stephen Levine, Ema Abbruzzese and Julia Mason briefly described the “evidence that psychotherapy can ameliorate gender distress in youth” as “low quality” (Levine et al., 2022b), but this is only mentioned informally and in passing. It is not the conclusion of any kind of systematic review that would rank this evidence as being even of low quality, rather than very low quality or completely excluded from consideration.

D’Angelo et al. refer to case reports of psychotherapy resolving gender dysphoria, citing the same Churcher Clarke & Spiliadis (2019) and Lemma (2018) sources as Benson and Mortensen:

Further, GD can present as a transient symptom that resolves spontaneously or in the context of developmentally informed psychotherapeutic treatment. Some common examples of transient gender-dysphoric states include adolescents girls, often on the autism spectrum, experiencing distress around the physical and social changes of puberty or gender-non-conforming young women struggling with shame about being seen as “butch.” These individuals, searching for ways to understand and remedy their distress, can incorrectly attribute their discomfort to being transgender. Several case reports (Churcher Clarke & Spiliadis, 2019; Lemma, 2018; Spiliadis, 2019) indicate that the distress of young people with GD can lessen or resolve with appropriate psychotherapeutic interventions that address the central issues.

Lemma (2018) is a case series of two patients: an adult trans man who stated he did not regret transitioning, and a trans boy who did not want to be in therapy (“She said she was seeing me only because her parents would not let her take hormones unless she saw me”). Churcher Clarke & Spiliadis (2019) is a case series of 12 patients, with crucial limitations; the authors state “the majority had not received a formal diagnosis of GD”, and 7 had not socially transitioned. By the conclusion of this study, 5 still identified as transgender. Worryingly, one of the study’s success stories appears to be a 14-year-old publicly performing masculinity for reasons of safety, while continuing to experience unresolved distress:

He spoke openly about continuing to feel confused about his identity and was still struggling with low mood, although his suicidal thoughts had decreased. However, in relation to gender, Alfie was reflective in talking about the ways he understood himself to be a vulnerable and sensitive young person, alongside the need to embody and perform masculinity differently across different contexts; to be read as a ‘guy’ in particular ways in public (Butler, 2004; Kimmel, 2004). He connected this to preserving his own safety as a non-stereotypically masculine young man. Clinicians understood these changes as signifying Alfie developing a more integrated sense of self.

Coauthor Anastassis Spiliadis serves on the board of the Institute for Comprehensive Gender Dysphoria Research with D’Angelo, Ayad, and Marchiano, and has repeatedly referred to “Gender Exploratory Therapy” or “Gender Exploratory Model” as though these were trademarked terms. In the UK, Spiliadis’ application in 2021 to trademark “Gender Exploratory Therapy” and “Gender Exploratory Approach” was refused. The services intended to be associated with the trademark were listed as training courses, workshops, and seminars, as well as psychotherapy:

Class 41

Training consultancy;Postgraduate training courses;Conducting training seminars;Provision of training;Educational and training services;Training;Training and further training consultancy;Training services;Continuous training;Practical training;Training courses;Providing training;Conducting workshops [training];Organisation of training;Education and training;Providing of training;Organisation of training seminars.

Class 44

Psychotherapy;Psychotherapy services.

Spiliadis and coauthor Anna Churcher Clarke also work at “Explore Consultation”, a group now conducting training seminars on gender exploratory therapy for the South London and Maudsley NHS Mental Health Trust in England. D’Angelo et al. similarly endorse an “exploratory psychotherapy that is neither ‘affirmation’ nor ‘conversion’”, repeatedly positioning this “non-affirmation-non-conversion” as “agenda-free evaluation”, “agenda-free psychotherapy”, or “agenda-free, neutral therapy”. It is nonsensical and unwarranted for anyone to position themselves as being “agenda-free” here, as though they are uniquely outside of a system of influences, assumptions, and attitudes that inform how all of us approach questions of transgender identities and gender-affirming care. In particular, there is nothing agenda-free about “non-affirmation”, because there is nothing agenda-free about refusing to recognize or address a trans person as their name and gender. Certainly it was not “agenda-free” for Roberto D’Angelo to argue before a family court that a 16-year-old trans girl should be deprived of her HRT for a year or more. Remarkably, D’Angelo et al. argue that trans people cannot be trusted when we say we were subjected to conversion therapy, because we may be mistaken or unreliable due to mental illness:

Further, patients with psychiatric diagnoses, highly prevalent in transgender-identifying populations (Gijs, van der Putten-Bierman, & De Cuypere, 2013; Goodman & Nash, 2018; Wanta, Niforatos, Durbak, Viguera, & Altinay, 2019), can potentially experience or misinterpret neutral interpersonal interactions as invalidating or rejecting (Barnow et al., 2009; Beck & Bredemeier, 2016; Gotlib, 1983). Not only does the survey question provide no detail to help discriminate between these essential therapy encounters and unethical conversion therapy, but it arguably biases the recall of neutral encounters toward recall of conversion by using emotionally charged language (e.g., “stop you being trans”) and by conflating recall of religiously motivated encounters with clinical ones. … As we have demonstrated, it is not uncommon for agenda-free, neutral therapy interventions to be experienced by the subjects as non-affirmative. However, non-affirmative is not the same as “conversion,” as the latter implies a therapist agenda and an aim for a fixed outcome (American Psychological Association, 2015).

It is hardly “agenda-free” to argue that cisgender healthcare professionals should be believed over vulnerable trans patients when we say that we experienced conversion therapy. In their conclusion, D’Angelo et al. openly acknowledge their specific agenda for treatment:

We call on the scientific community to resist the stigmatization of psychotherapy for GD and to support rigorous outcome research investigating the effectiveness of various psychological treatments aimed at ameliorating or resolving GD.

In depositions in B.P.J. v. West Virginia State Board of Education and Brandt v. Rutledge, Stephen Levine describes presenting an American Psychiatric Association symposium on May 24, 2022 with Sasha Ayad, Lisa Marchiano, and Ken Zucker (Deposition in BPJ v. WV, p. 89):

A: I forgot to tell you. I also sometimes am invited to give continuing education lectures. And, for example, at the — I’ve given courses, for seven years in a row, at the American Psychiatric Association on sex and love, mostly love I use as — as the title, and we talk about sexual problems and the barriers to loving. And this year’s APA meeting, I — I am presenting a symposium with three colleagues on whether or not this is time to reexamine the best practices for transgender youth. So all those things are — in my review, are —��are my teaching.

Q: I was going to ask you about the May presentation. Who are your copresenters for that?

A: Sasha Ayad, Lisa Marciano and Ken Zucker.

Levine later explained the agenda of this psychotherapy — “helping people to desist” (Deposition in Brandt v. Rutledge, p. 238):

A: Yes. I just came from a symposium two days ago where two people talked about their psychotherapy helping people to desist, what we call desist or detransition through psychotherapy. So these are, again, anecdotal reports. Basically psychiatry has a lot of those anecdotal reports.

Q: Who were those clinicians or those that spoke about their experience?

A: You want their names?

Q: Yes, please.

A: One was Sasha Ayad and the other was Lisa Marchiano.

In B.P.J. v. West Virginia, Levine agreed he was trying to dissuade people from being transgender (pp. 237–238):

Q: No, no, I — I — I just want to know the basis for these — these paragraphs, so I appreciate you telling me that. My question is — you know, I read 202 and 203, and you say — you list various perceived harms and challenges from being transgender; is that fair?

A: Yes.

Q: What I’m confused about is, is this premised on the notion that there’s a way to dissuade someone from being transgender so that they don’t have these outcomes?

A: Exactly. I — this is what I’m trying to do.

Additionally, during deposition in Kadel v. Folwell, Levine explained that “people in SEGM are biased in the direction of being conservative and providing psychotherapeutic evaluations of the child, of the teenager and of their parents” (p. 112); in B.P.J. v. West Virginia, he stated “Parents would very much like me to be able to return their child efficiently and quickly … to a cis state” (p. 221). AHCA expert report contributor Quentin Van Meter described his work with SEGM at the God’s Voice conference in June 2022, claiming that SEGM members “all agree” that even social transition is an “abomination” for trans and gender-diverse youth:

[53:23] QUENTIN L. VAN METER: So there are little chinks in the armor that are starting to form. There’s a group called the Society of Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, SEGM. You should look them up because they are a reference, a beautiful scientifically-based reference group, that has a broad clinical spectrum of politics in terms of the backgrounds of these individuals. But what we all agree on is that the affirmation, from social to medical to surgical, is an abomination for these children, it is the wrong thing to do.

Exploratory psychotherapy is not “nonjudgmental”, “agenda-free”, or “neutral” if it considers the outcome of living openly as a trans person to be an “abomination”. Are trans people merely “patients with psychiatric diagnoses” who “misinterpret” this “neutral” stance by psychotherapists as “invalidating or rejecting”? This is the contention of D’Angelo et al., who ask readers to ignore SEGM members’ own documented activities and statements demonstrating an intended therapeutic outcome of desistance or detransition, and instead attribute any appearance of conversion therapy to the alleged mental incapacity of the trans community generally. This insulting dismissal of the trans population and thousands of respondents to the 2015 USTS, as though we are unable to recognize conversion therapy when we are subjected to it, is not agenda-free. It is an agenda of gaslighting a community whose medically necessary healthcare has been directly targeted and disrupted by members of SEGM in several states and countries. Such an agenda should not have any place on the Florida Boards of Medicine, and if Matthew Benson and Monica Mortensen continue to promote this “non-affirming” psychotherapy, every effort must be made to reveal this practice for what it is: anti-trans conversion therapy.

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[just0nemorepage]

On the Subject of Unmentionable Things || Julia Walton || 320 pages Top 3 Genres: Young Adult / Contemporary / Romance

Synopsis: Phoebe Townsend is a rule follower . . . or so everyone thinks. She’s an A student who writes for her small-town school newspaper. But what no one knows is that Phoebe is also Pom—the anonymous teen who’s rewriting sex education on her blog and social media.

Phoebe is not a pervert. No, really. Her unconventional hobby is just a research obsession. And sex should not be a secret. As long as Phoebe stays undercover, she’s sure she’ll fly through junior year unnoticed. . . .

That is, until Pom goes viral, courtesy of mayoral candidate Lydia Brookhurst. The former beauty queen labels Phoebe’s work an “assault on morality,” riling up her supporters and calling on Pom to reveal her identity. But Phoebe is not backing down. With her anonymity on the line, is it all worth the fight?

Publication Date: August 2022. / Average Rating: 4.07. / Number of Ratings: ~850.

[theculturedmarxist]

Yves here. One asset America has that most anti-globalists overlook is our legal and court system. The value of foreign exchange transactions due to investment flows was estimated by the Bank of International Settlements at 60 times that of transactions related to trade, although cross border capital flows collapse during financial crises.

Investors greatly prefer transacting though US institutions due to our well-settled precedents. Recall that multinationals investing in Russia as well as some Russian corporations, were often loath to invest directly. They would would go through Cyprus to be subject to English law and a court system run on UK lines. I’ve belatedly come to the view that the reason Cyprus banks blew up in 2013 and were not rescued was the power that be wanted to impede foreign investment in Russia.

That is not to say that US hegemony isn’t past its sell-by date, but that the idea that a new system will come into being soon is way way overdone. I’m of the Gramsci view:

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is The Destiny of Civilization.

Herodotus (History, Book 1.53) tells the story of Croesus, king of Lydia c. 585-546 BC in what is now Western Turkey and the Ionian shore of the Mediterranean. Croesus conquered Ephesus, Miletus and neighboring Greek-speaking realms, obtaining tribute and booty that made him one of the richest rulers of his time. But these victories and wealth led to arrogance and hubris. Croesus turned his eyes eastward, ambitious to conquer Persia, ruled by Cyrus the Great.

            Having endowed the region’s cosmopolitan Temple of Delphi with substantial silver and gold, Croesus asked its Oracle whether he would be successful in the conquest that he had planned. The Pythia priestess answered: “If you go to war against Persia, you will destroy a great empire.”

            Croesus therefore set out to attack Persia c. 547 BC. Marching eastward, he attacked Persia’s vassal-state Phrygia. Cyrus mounted a Special Military Operation to drive Croesus back, defeating Croesus’s army, capturing him and taking the opportunity to seize Lydia’s gold to introduce his own Persian gold coinage. So Croesus did indeed destroy a great empire, but it was his own.

            Fast-forward to today’s drive by the Biden administration to extend American military power against Russia and, behind it, China. The president asked for advice from today’s analogue to antiquity’s Delphi oracle: the CIA and its allied think tanks. Instead of warning against hubris, they encouraged the neocon dream that attacking Russia and China would consolidate its control of the world economy, achieving the End of History.

            Having organized a coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014, the United States sent its NATO proxy army eastward, giving weapons to Ukraine to fight an ethnic war against its Russian-speaking population and turn Russia’s Crimean naval base into a NATO fortress. This Croesus-level ambition aimed at drawing Russia into combat and depleting its ability to defend itself, wrecking its economy in the process and destroying its ability to provide military support to China and other countries targeted as rivals by U.S. hegemony.

            After eight years of provocation, a new military attack on Russian-speaking Ukrainians was conspicuously prepared to drive toward the Russian border in February 2022. Russia protected its fellow Russian-speakers from further ethnic violence by mounting its own Special Military Operation. The United States and its NATO allies immediately seized Russia’s foreign-exchange reserves held in Europe and North America, and demanded that all countries impose sanctions against importing Russian energy and grain, hoping that this would crash the ruble’s exchange rate. The Delphic State Department expected that this would cause Russian consumers to revolt and overthrow Vladimir Putin’s government, enabling U.S. maneuvering to install a client oligarchy like the one it had nurtured in the 1990s under President Yeltsin.

            A byproduct of this confrontation with Russia was to lock in control over America’s Western European satellites. The aim of this intra-NATO jockeying was to foreclose Europe’s dream of profiting from closer trade and investment relations with Russia by exchanging its industrial manufactures for Russian raw materials. The United States derailed that prospect by blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipeline, cutting off Germany and other countries from access to low-priced Russian gas. That left Europe’s leading economy dependent on higher-cost U.S. Liquified Natural Gas (LNG).

            In addition to having to subsidize domestic European gas to prevent widespread insolvency, a large proportion of German Leopard tanks, U.S. Patriot missiles and other NATO “wonder weapons” were destroyed in combat against the Russian army. It became clear that the U.S. strategy was not simply to “fight to the last Ukrainian,” but to fight to the last tank, missile and other weapon being deleted from NATO stocks.

            This depletion of NATO’s arms was expected to create a vast replacement market to enrich America’s military-industrial complex. Its NATO customers are being told to increase their military spending to 3 or even 4 percent of GDP. But the weak performance of U.S. and German arms may have crashed this dream, along with Europe’s economies sinking into depression. And with German ‘s industrial economy deranged by the severing of its trade with Russia, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner told the Die Welt newspaper on June 16, 2023 that his country cannot afford to pay more money into the European Union budget, to which it has long been the largest contributor.

            Without German exports supporting the euro’s exchange rate, the currency will come under pressure against the dollar as Europe buys LNG and NATO replenishes its depleted weaponry stocks by buying new arms from America. A lower exchange rate will squeeze the purchasing power of European labor, while lower social spending to pay for rearmament and provide gas subsidies threatens to plunge the continent into a depression.

            A nationalist reaction against U.S. dominance is rising throughout European politics, and instead of America locking in its control over European policy, the United States may end up losing – not only in Europe but throughout the Global South. Instead of turning Russia’s “ruble to rubble” as President Biden promised, Russia’s balance of trade has soared and its gold supply has increased. So have the gold holdings of other countries whose governments are now aiming to de-dollarize their economies.

            It is American diplomacy that is driving Eurasia and the Global South out of the U.S. orbit. America’s hubristic drive for unipolar world dominance could only have been dismantled so rapidly from within. The Biden-Blinken-Nuland administration has done what neither Vladimir Putin nor Chinese President Xi could have hoped to achieve in so short a period. Neither was prepared to throw down the gauntlet and create an alternative to the U.S.-centered world order. But U.S. sanctions against Russia, Iran, Venezuela and China have had the effect of protective tariff barriers to force self-sufficiency in what EU diplomat Josep Borrell calls the world “jungle” outside of the US/NATO “garden.”

            Although the Global South and other countries have been complaining ever since the Bandung Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in 1955, they have lacked a critical mass to create a viable alternative. But their attention has now been focused by the U.S. confiscation of Russia’s official dollar reserves in NATO countries. That dispelled the thought of the dollar as a safe vehicle in which to hold international savings. The Bank of England’s earlier seizure of Venezuela’s gold reserves kept in London – promising to donate it to whatever unelected opponents of its socialist regime U.S. diplomats designate – shows how the euro as well as the dollar have been weaponized. And by the way, what ever happened to Libya’s gold reserves?

            American diplomats avoid thinking about this scenario. They rely to the one unique advantage the United States has to offer. It may refrain from bombing them, from staging a color revolution to “Pinochet” them by the National Endowment for Democracy, or install a new “Yeltsin” giving the economy away to a client oligarchy.

            But refraining from such behavior is all that America can offer. It has de-industrialized its own economy, and its idea of foreign investment is to carve out monopoly-rent seeking opportunities by concentrating technological monopolies and control of oil and grain trade in U.S. hands, as if this is economic efficiency, not rent-seeking.

            What has occurred is a change in consciousness. We are seeing the Global Majority trying to create an independent and peacefully negotiated choice as to just what kind of an international order they want. Their aim is not merely to create alternatives to the use of dollars, but an entire new set of institutional alternatives to the IMF and World Bank, the SWIFT bank clearing system, the International Criminal Court and the entire array of institutions that U.S. diplomats have hijacked from the United Nations.

            The upshot will be civilizational in scope. We are seeing not the End of History but a fresh alternative to neoliberal finance capitalism and its junk economics of privatization, class war against labor, and the idea that money and credit should be privatized in the hands of a narrow financial class instead of being a public utility to finance economic needs and rising living standards..

[grandhotelabyss]

—Anton Jäger, "Plenipotentiary"

Good comparison: Der Todd in Venedig, as it were, my emphasis. See also my essay from last year on Mann's great and troubling novella. I didn't care for Visctonti's film; exteriorized as cinema, rather than playing in Aschenbach's interior, the action loses plausibility, becomes something happening to someone else, easy to dismiss. Film adaptations of Lolita and Disgrace suffer similarly; Field handles similar subject matter onscreen more persuasively by not dramatizing the whole of her transgression as such, leaving the relationship with Krista largely in dream space. This passage from Jäger, immediately preceding the one I've screenshotted, is also important, if not the story of my life (for the adolescent literatus, replace Bernstein with Bloom):

When she was a child, it was Bernstein who inspired her to embark on the musical career that lifted her out of her modest circumstances. At that time, the subaltern classes could still look up to the most ennobling elements in Western culture. Highbrow composers were writing popular musicals and introducing TV-viewers to Wagner. Harold Rosenberg famously derided Bernstein as an embodiment of the kitsch implicit in all pop culture – yet, in a typically contemporary reversal, the kitsch of 1958 has morphed into the haute culture of 2022. Today’s bourgeoisie has not only shut its gates but dynamited the fortress itself. The students in Lydia’s Julliard class represent a ruling caste that grew up watching Marvel movies and Disney Plus: a cohort that can no longer honour the supposed ideals of their social stratum. To them, Beethoven is a dead white man; Bach a misogynist. In this new conjuncture, Bernstein represents a lost world – a fusion of high and low that was fleetingly possible in the post-war period and has now vanished forever.

[frillability]

I am Cuban American, the first generation of my family to be born in the US. My mother and her side of the family immigrated at great cost. We are so fortunate to be here. My family wasn't wealthy. Many Americans who travel to Cuba are only shown specific areas of Cuba; they are reserved for tourists and only tourists. My mother and I cannot go to Cuba right now because there is a chance she would not be admitted back into the US as her birth certificate is Cuban, (despite being a US citizen,) at the will of the Cuban government.

"Cuba does not recognize the U.S. citizenship of Cuban-born U.S. citizens who maintain residency status in Cuba. The Cuban government requires Cuban dual nationals to enter and depart Cuba using Cuban passports. Cuban-born U.S. citizens who maintain their residency status in Cuba will be treated as Cuban citizens and may be subject to Cuban restrictions and legal obligations. "

So, if the government wasn't feeling particularly honest and decided it could prove she had been maintaining residence in Cuba all this time, even though that is not true, it could be within its power to not recognise my mother's US citizenship.

Same sex marriage was not legalised until 2022. Fidel does not deserve any of the credit. This article from 2008 cites the beginning of the decline of his health. He wrote a letter 18 February 2008 stating his intentions to step down from leadership, his brother, Raúl, to officially take his place.

Lydia Smith of The Independent writes in 2018, "In a country which incarcerated LGBT people for most of Fidel Castro’s rule, the island’s capital now has gay clubs and bars and celebrates Pride every year."

"Cuba has changed drastically. In 1959, Castro came to power after leading a revolution that toppled the corrupt government of Fulgencio Batista.

Soon afterwards, police began to round up gay men. In the 1960s and 1970s, many LGBT people were imprisoned or forced into 're-education camps'.

Homosexuality was viewed as going against the ideal of the hypermasculine revolutionary – and was therefore deemed incompatible with the regime.

Homosexuality was viewed as going against the ideal of the hypermasculine revolutionary – and was therefore deemed incompatible with the regime.

'We would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant,' Fidel Castro told an interviewer in 1965."

Many articles I skimmed through boasted Cuba's free trans surgical healthcare introduced in 2008. Mariela Castro, Raúl's daughter, was the director of The National Center for Sex Education and was the individual who advocated for it. If anyone, she should be credited, if my reading is correct. It only became possible after Raúl took office.

However, there is a very important note in a Wikipedia article that I would like to confirm. (If anyone has more information on it, please DM me, it has no citation, and I couldn't find further research.) In the article on LGBT rights in Cuba, contained the main table, and under the Gender identity heading reads:

"Gender change allowed since 2008; Surgery not required since 2013."

Surgery seems to have been required for gender change in Cuba until 2008. Being gay was a crime until 1979. He seems to blame his imprisonment of gay people on "Keeping one step ahead of the CIA."

Cuba also still deals with a significant amount of racism and classism. You don't hear about it because powers that be don't want you to. They want you to think that the revolution worked. They'll make you believe it when you visit. But unless you are Cuban and you weren't given an early pass out, you don't know our families' nightmares. Want to see the real Cuba? Ask a Cuban who wants to show you.

Imma get called a tankie for this even tho it's not really a tankie opinion but I always find the bizarre vitriol for Castro weird cuz yeah the dude had problems but he's also like the only politician to be like "Hey I fucked up homophobia fucking sucks I'm so sorry for that I'm going to fix that" and proceeded to make such great changes to lgbt rights in Cuba that they have some of the most progressive LGBT laws in the world and possible some of the best trans care in the world. Like, what USA politician has been like "yeah I fucked up that was wrong of me and I'm gonna change that" and tangibly changed shit for the better. You just don't get that here.

[mysongs]

Hi

A small writer here

This is a story of Ava and her group of six friends decide to take on an escape room challenge. However, they soon realize that the events they are experiencing are not just part of the game. Their survival becomes their top priority as they are faced with a life-threatening situation. As the members of the group become more and more suspicious of each other, they start pointing fingers at Lydia, the one who brought them to this place. They must uncover the true culprit before it is too late, as one of them is dying stage by stage. Who will be the last one standing to tell the tale?

Hope you like it

"you wore your mask , a master of disguise “

screams echoed through the dark, abandoned warehouse, her voice growing hoarse as the icy water rose higher around her. Panic gripped her as she thrashed, desperately trying to stay afloat. Shadows loomed over the monitors, where a twisted reality show played out before their eyes.

"Those dumb human beings, how happy they look not knowing what is about to happen to them," murmured someone, narrating the scene.

Summer, 2022

In a dimly lit room filled with glowing screens, shadows lurked over monitors, observing the group of unsuspecting friends. The scene unfolded on the screens like a twisted reality show.

Those dumb human beings , how happy they look not knowing what is about to happen to them ," murmured Draven, narrating the scene. They watched as a group of friends sat on a bench—two girls and a boy. The camera zoomed in on the boy, Jack, with his dazzling eyes, blond hair, and pale skin, sporting an emerald green jacket over a white undershirt and beige cargo pants. He had an arm around one of the girls' waists.

"Sarah, the girl in his arms, looks like a goddess," another watcher, Malachi, commented, observing her jet-black hair, honey-brown eyes, and high cheekbones. She wore a matching outfit with Jack, making them look like the power couple everyone adored.

"Such a perfect couple," Draven sneered, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "I wonder how perfect they'll be when the real fun starts."

"Yes," Malachi added, his tone darkening. "Such a shame to ruin that pretty little face. Imagine the look on Jack's face when he can't recognize his precious goddess."

The camera panned to the girl sitting across from them, Lydia, with her curly black hair and matching eyes framed by eyeglasses. She wore a pencil skirt and a pink blouse—an unusual combination that suited her perfectly. Lydia waved at someone off-screen, causing the lovey-dovey couple to turn their heads, small smiles forming on their faces.

"Ava! Over here!" Lydia's cheerful squeak was amplified through the speakers.

The watchers leaned in as a girl walked confidently towards the group, as if she ruled the world. Ava, with her midnight-black hair reaching her waist, full pink lips, and soul-piercing blue eyes, captured the watchers' attention. A boy with a lean figure shadowed her, holding a flower. He swept his dark auburn hair from his ocean-blue eyes, came from behind her, covered her eyes, and placed the rose on her ear.

"Guess who I am?" said the boy, stopping her from reaching the trio.

"You better be Adam, or you are losing a limb tonight," Ava said seriously, her voice echoing in the dark room.

"Oh, we can arrange that," Malachi chuckled darkly. "How about we play a little game of our own?"

Adam's playful expression changed as if he was scared. "Damn, baby, that's harsh," he said.

The watchers chuckled as they saw Ava remove Adam's hand, turning around to hug him with a smile from ear to ear. "Adam! I missed you, love," she said.

"A flower for the prettiest lady who stole my heart without my consent," Adam said, his eyes filled with love, rivaling Romeo's.

"Stole his heart? How quaint. Let's see her reaction when we steal his heart, cut his rib cage open. Hmm, the perfect way," Draven hissed.

"Thank you, lover boy," Ava said, her heart eyes reflecting on the screen. "Let's go to our friends before they start shouting at us," she added, laughing.

"Well, shit, right. Let's not keep the audience waiting. That's very rude," Adam replied with a smirk. As they turned around, the first thing they saw was Lydia clapping and the power couple rolling their eyes—though one was done playfully.

"Lydia, you won't believe what happened," Ava greeted.

"Lemme guess. No more room for the flowers you get every day?" Sarah grumbled, rolling her eyes, but it wasn't entirely friendly.

"Jealousy isn't a good color on you, Sarah," Ava replied sassily, with a smirk.

Sensing the tension, Jack, who had his arms around Sarah, interrupted the staring contest. "Okay, ladies, time out. Now, without further ado, the main reason for this meetup—what will we do this weekend? I am bored."

"I have an idea. What about an escape room?" Lydia suggested. "Like the one in the movies?"

"Heck yeah, let's do that," Adam remarked.

"What about no? Those things are really scary," Ava interjected hurriedly.

"Aww, is the cat scared of a little game? Don't worry, you can just not come and be a good little stay-at-home boring-ass," Sarah barely finished speaking before Ava glared at her with killer eyes and lunged forward.

"You little bitch—" she collided with Adam's chest as he tried to prevent her from pulling Sarah off her makeshift seat.

"Oooh, look Draven, hot and feisty just how I like it," said Malachi.

"Excuse us for a second," Adam said, taking Ava's hand and moving away from the table.

"Look, I know you both hate each other, so why not prove her wrong and come with us? It will be fun. Plus, think of it as a date of some sort. For me? Please?" Adam pleaded with puppy eyes that could put a real puppy to shame.

"Okay, only for you," Ava said, kissing Adam on the cheek. Intertwining their hands, they walked back to their friends.

"Okay, I am only going to prove you wrong," Ava announced.

"Finally. So, where did you find out about this escape room, buttercup?" Jack asked Lydia with a kind look in his eyes, like a big brother talking to his little sister. "I saw lots of ads about that place on the internet," Lydia replied with a gentle smile that melted away the group's tension. She retrieved a poster from her backpack. "Now we know where we’re going to spend our weekend. Who votes for this Saturday?" Jack asked. A chorus of 'Count me in's echoed around the table.

In the dark room:

"They fell into the trap. Be ready with Room 1 for our special guests, and let's take it easy on them," Draven said, his eyes gleaming with anticipation.

"Let's see how long their loyalty lasts. My bets are on them turning on each other after the first room," Malachi chimed in, his tone sickeningly cheerful.

"And when they do, we'll be here, watching every delicious moment," Draven added, a twisted smile evident in his tone.

[whatsonmedia]

Wednesday Wisdom: Authors Share Compelling Life Narratives

“Explore captivating life tales in this week’s Wednesday Wisdom! Lydia Millet’s ‘We Loved It All’ delves into human-animal detachment, critiquing corporate greed. Salman Rushdie’s ‘Knife’ recounts his harrowing stabbing incident, while Lauren Roberts’ ‘Powerful’ and Shilpi Somaya Gowda’s ‘A Great Country’ offer gripping narratives. Annie Jacobsen’s ‘Nuclear War: A Scenario’ presents a chillingly realistic account, urging reflection on global peace.”

We Loved It All by Lydia Millet

Lydia Millet’s debut into nonfiction, “We Loved It All: A Memory of Life,” probes the consequences of human detachment from the animal realm. Through fervor and outrage, the celebrated author of 2022’s “Dinosaurs” targets corporate greed imperiling global wildlife. She critiques the 1970s “Crying Indian” campaign for shifting responsibility onto consumers for environmental damage caused mainly by big business.

Millet intertwines personal anecdotes from her upbringing and parenthood to illustrate how compassion for all creatures correlates with global economic justice. Her poignant yet optimistic reflection on our present condition underscores our interconnections in the world.

Knife by Salman Rushdie

In August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie endured nearly ten stabbings during a speaking event in western New York. In his latest memoir, “Knife,” Rushdie recounts the brutal assault, detailing its aftermath: PTSD, diminished left-hand mobility, and right-eye blindness. The narrative delves intimately into the event’s horrors and its enduring impact on his life. Notably, the book’s release has delayed the trial of Rushdie’s alleged assailant, charged with attempted murder, as it holds potential evidential value.

Rushdie views “Knife” as a vital component of his healing journey, stating, “This book was imperative—a means to reclaim agency amidst violence, answering it with art.”

Powerful by Lauren Roberts

Powerful, a novella by Lauren Roberts, dives into the world of her New York Times bestseller, Powerless. This companion story centers on Adena, a fan favorite from the original novel, and her struggles in the harsh city of Loot.

The narrative follows Adena as she fights to survive on the streets. A stark contrast to the lives of the privileged Elites who rule the land. As the story unfolds, Adena encounters a mysterious and dangerous Elite. It raising questions about loyalty, survival, and the complexities of love in a stratified society.

A Great Country by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

In “A Great Country,” Shilpi Somaya Gowda navigates the intricate tapestry of the immigrant journey in America. The Shah family, emblematic of the American dream in their affluent California enclave, faces upheaval when their son’s arrest exposes underlying tensions. Gowda skillfully intertwines diverse perspectives, from immigrant parents grappling with sacrifice to their American-born children navigating cultural dualities.

Through the lens of a detective and lawyer, the novel delves into racial biases in the justice system. Themes of generational conflict and the immigrant experience prompt profound reflection, lingering beyond the final page. Gowda’s evocative storytelling prompts introspection on identity and belonging in modern America.

Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen

Annie Jacobsen’s “Nuclear War: A Scenario” diverges from typical war narratives, eschewing heroism for chilling realism. With meticulous research, Jacobsen crafts a harrowing tale of a nuclear first strike, drawing on interviews and expertise to paint a hauntingly believable picture. The narrative unfolds with urgency, capturing the chaos and desperation of imminent destruction. While not for the faint-hearted, the book serves as a stark reminder of the horrors of nuclear conflict. It urging readers towards disarmament and sanity in a perilous world.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lydia O'Connor at HuffPost:

The Republican vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, falsely and brazenly claimed that Donald Trump won the 2020 election in a newly resurfaced exchange from two years ago. Trump’s running mate, who has repeatedly propped up the GOP presidential nominee’s election conspiracy theories, was asked by Jason Selvig of The Good Liars, a political comedy duo, if he believed Trump’s repeatedly disproved claims that President Joe Biden stole the election from him. The clip was posted online by Selvig on Thursday. “Did Donald Trump win the 2020 election?” Selvig asked Vance. “Yes,” Vance replied. When Selvig repeated the question, Vance gave an affirmative “yep.”

Selvig then asked Vance whether he’d concede if his opponent won more votes. Vance then refused to answer. “I really feel bad for you, man,” Vance said to Selvig after he repeated the question. Vance has been facing pressure to address where he stands on Trump’s election conspiracy theories since his debate Tuesday against Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz. On stage, Walz asked Vance if he believes Trump won the 2020 election, alluding to comments Vance made earlier this year questioning the election’s results and saying Trump should ignore “illegitimate” U.S. Supreme Court rulings on the matter.

JD Vance, who cowardly dodged the question about who rightfully won the 2020 Presidential election on the debate stage Tuesday, revealed his true self to Jason Selvig of The Good Liars in a 2022 clip while running for Senate by stating that Donald Trump “won” the election when responding to Selvig’s questioning.

See Also:

The Daily Beast: Video Shows JD Vance Saying Trump Won the 2020 Election

[annarellix]

Murder in the Scottish Hills by Lydia Travers (The Scottish Ladies' Detective Agency #2)

When Maud McIntyre and her lady’s maid Daisy travel into the Scottish Highlands, the last thing they expect to find is a body on the train… Will these keen amateur sleuths stop a murderer in his tracks?

Edinburgh, 1911: When Maud McIntyre receives a letter from a maid called Rose, sharing her suspicions that something strange is happening in the house where she works, she and her assistant Daisy immediately travel to the Highlands to investigate. But as they are changing trains, the body of a man falls from the carriage right in front of them, a bullet in his head. Maud and Daisy can’t believe it – they’ve waited ages for a new case, and now one has literally landed in front of them! And when the local police rule the death as a tragic accident, the pair have no choice but to investigate what they believe is a murder… Arriving in the Scottish village, Maud and Daisy go undercover to begin their hunt for the murderer, while also investigating the strange behaviour of Rose’s employer, a local art dealer. As they begin to piece together the chain of events, Maud and Daisy wonder whether the cases might be linked. Is it possible the man on the train was killed to cover up something in the village? And, if so, who would do such a thing? When a local artist is found murdered, Maud and Daisy become convinced the two cases are connected. Searching for the link between the deaths, will Maud and Daisy solve the case before another mysterious murder takes place?

My Review: Maud and Daisy are back with a new investigation and another compelling story that kept me reading and have a lot of fun. They started collaborating to a newspaper as an agony aunt and a maid wrote a letter to the column talking about some mysterious situation. They are intrigued and decide to learn more. This is the start of a new adventure full of twists, turns and surprises. I think this is going to be one of those series that improves with each new story as this one is faster and more complex than the first. Maud and Daisy are getting more skilled in investigating and the banters are as fun as they were in the first story. The historical background is well researched and vivid, You can visualize the social manners, the clothes and the food. It's fascinating but sometimes the mystery and the plot takes the backseat to descriptions and historical facts. The mystery is a bit slow at the beginning but when it takes speed is tightly knitted and kept me guessing. I didn’t guess the solution and liked it. I can’t wait to read the next story as I’m wondering what will happen in Maud and Daisy life. I would advise to read the book in this series in order as there’s some references to the previous story and it would help to understand how the investigation agency started. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Bookouture for this arc, all opinions are mine

The Author: Lydia Travers was born in London.  She moved progressively north until settling with her husband in a village on the edge of the Scottish Highlands. She has raised children, bred dogs and kept chickens; and for as long as she can remember has written for pleasure. A former legal academic and practitioner with a PhD in criminology, she now runs self-catering holiday accommodation, sings in a local choir and is walked daily by the family dog. Lydia also writes as Linda Tyler and her first novel under that name, Revenge of the Spanish Princess, won a 2018 Romance Writers of America competition for the beginning of an historical romance. Her second novel The Laird's Secret was Commended in the 2021 Scottish Association of Writers' Pitlochry Quaich competition for the beginning of a romantic novel. Mischief in Midlothian won the 2022 Scottish Association of Writers' Constable Silver Stag trophy. She has had a number of short stories published in magazines, journals and anthologies in the UK, the USA and Australia.

https://www.facebook.com/LindaTylerAuthorScotland https://twitter.com/LindaTyler100

Sign up to be the first to hear about new releases from Lydia Travers here: https://www.bookouture.com/subscribe/lydia-travers

Buy Link: Amazon: https://geni.us/B0BWNHR79Nsocial

You can sign up for all the best Bookouture deals you'll love at: http://ow.ly/Fkiz30lnzdo

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