#now look up who is responsible for forced mass immigration...i will wait

[vigilantkilliforniakatholixxx]

You don’t hate the legacy media enough folks. The Associated Press uses a passive beta voice when reporting on this Christmas market terror attack in Magdeburg, Germany. As if the car simply drove itself peacefully, and the affected number of people small and insignificant. It wasn’t a “group of people” — it was an entire mass of people whose bodies were flung by the force of the impact, and many more who were crushed beneath the wheels as the vehicle zig zagged its way through the packed market driven by a terrorist saudi man (who we now know was a zionist!!!). edit - new info -

The suspect behind the Christmas market attack in Germany has been identified as Talib Al-Abdulmohsen, an anti-Islamic pro zionist terrorist and atheist.

Wanted in Saudi Arabia for terrorism and trafficking girls to Europe, he was granted political asylum in Germany, which refused his extradition despite the charges. edit - Reality: he was self-identified leftist, anti Islam progressive, and Zionist. He did NGO work to traffic more former Muslims like himself into Europe. Does that sound like a far-right position? His main gripe with Germany, and the reason he said he would carry out a terror attack, is Germany not doing enough to give asylum to women from Saudi Arabia. This was a pro-immigration terror attack by a foreigner who should never have been in Europe, regardless of his beliefs.

[ninzied]

i’ve been really feeling the energy surrounding the discourse on race re: the falcon and the winter soldier, and i think it is so crucial that the mcu has created space for this conversation. in that vein, and because i have genuinely enjoyed the show for many reasons that i wish not to detract from, i would like to expand on this space by discussing ways in which the show could have engaged more thoughtfully with its themes of racialized trauma.

for your consideration, a list of the show’s side characters who identity as bipoc, and how their arcs in fact work to reify certain stereotypic portrayals of race in tv/film/etc:

isaiah bradley: the military-sanctioned super soldier program that experimented on bradley for 30 years in jail is a clear allusion to the tuskegee study in the mid-1900s, which subjected black bodies with syphilis to decades of unethical experimentation, including the withholding of life-saving treatment, in order to study the natural progression of the disease. i actually think his conversations with sam were so important to have. it’s the first explicit mention of race that problematizes the shield as a symbol. sam comes to acknowledge that it also stands for a country that has built itself on the backs of black (and immigrant) bodies - and that is where they mean for these bodies to stay, through exploitation of labor, medicalized violence (tuskegee being only one example of many), police brutality, the segregation of schools, discriminatory housing and criminal justice systems, and so on. my issue is that these systems of oppression are so deeply rooted that to skim the bare surface - to present this one singular narrative - is reductive of a longstanding history that does not live externally to the mcu and is frankly not going to cut it. waiting until episode 5 to have this conversation was also a disservice to sam. maybe his own generational trauma was too internalized for him to have the language to express it. but if the show had addressed this better and sooner, it would come off less as sam trying to move through the world thinking he’s just like any other guy who also happens to be a superhero. when he goes to the bank with sarah, flaps his ‘wings’ and still doesn’t qualify for a loan; or when he chides a kid for referring to him as ‘black falcon’ rather than, simply ‘falcon’ - these moments reinforce the idea that the lived experience of his blackness is not fully realized until bradley forces this articulation upon him. it is as though sam could not already be aware of their collective racialized trauma without the ‘revelation’ of bradley’s personal trauma writ large that he endured as a super soldier. which is just weird and inconsistent given what sam has been through, including his own troubled relationship with the military. for sam to take up the shield is not a ‘solution’ to racism, any more than the shield is a symbol of heroism, when its legacy stems from a country of deeply imperialist and colonialist roots.

lemar hoskins: relegated to the black best friend stereotype aka sidekick to the main white character. his two most memorable scenes function mostly in service of john walker’s story - firstly in walker’s decision to take the serum, and secondly as the catalyst to walker’s grief, rage and vengeance that will utterly transform him. this development of walker’s character can only occur through the literal death of another black body.

literally every east asian character, but specifically leah, yori and yori’s son rj: these characters are the least fleshed out on their own, as they all exist solely to lend more depth to bucky’s trauma. i say this because though yori is grieving, his grief is all secondary to bucky’s guilt over being the cause of that grief. leah, who plays a love interest for her five seconds of screen time, becomes yet another of countless examples of the fetishization of asian female bodies. (all of this is particularly tone-deaf in the wake of rising anti-asian hate crimes, and the mass killing of asian female spa workers by a man who wished to eliminate ‘temptation’ for his sexual addiction.) also, it would be nice to see a show finally lean away from the asian food establishment setting for its asian characters. that is not the only place they eat and work and also go on dates after they work????

olivia walker: a great example of tokenism that checks multiple boxes (‘look how diverse our cast is - and we have an interracial couple!’) even though she speaks 0-2 lines throughout the whole show.

karli morgenthau and co: the actress who portrays karli is half-jamaican, and it is not hard to notice that the overwhelming majority of the radicalized flag-smashers group are bipoc as well. at surface level it might make sense for the show writers to choose this kind of representation - the ‘displaced’ are all members of marginalized communities, and racial diversity (i.e., diversity from the norm, i.e., not-white) is the easiest way to depict these communities. but for this reason, it also seems that the show could not be more careless with the parallels it has drawn to our current climate. during a global pandemic, which has disproportionately affected those already most disenfranchised; increased our obsession with border control; and galvanized movements against racialized violence, perhaps the last thing we need right now is a narrative that vilifies a marginalized group of people trying to combat structural oppression (operationalized in this case by the grc, which has a clear militaristic and political pedigree*). perhaps the last thing we need right now is a narrative in which marginalized people gain the power to enact change (i.e., serum), but only know how to use that power to cause more harm.

*please note: the senator who grants walker his other than honorable discharge is one and the same as the talking head of the grc. who gave this guy all the power, and what good is he using it for? this may be a hot take but the government + military washing their hands of walker and taking zero responsibility for their role in his making is not great for ‘optics’ either. but the show, for all its moralizing, doesn’t seem to be aware of the dissonance here?

[hacash]

last man standing

summary: June 1947. After a particularly bad day, Meyer realises he’s the last one left.

-

It occurs to him, sitting out on the balcony in the sticky-sweet miasma of Miami heat, that there’s no-one left he can talk to about this.

Oh, he has friends – it’s funny how many people want to be pals with the little man when he, more or less, owns Cuba - and associates, and a wife, God bless her, asleep in the next room. Still, Meyer thinks as he pours himself yet another scotch, it’s not the same.

It’s not…the people who were there, they no longer…look, it’s one thing to know people now when you’ve made it, but the people who knew you then, still running in the Lower East Side, still reaching for it all…well, it’s just not the same, is it?

One by one, the old faces seem to melt away, and now… Well. People like them don’t plan on growing older, and if you don’t plan for something it never happens.

Fucking Benny. Never the world’s greatest planner.

Another scotch. Shit. He finds himself remembering, as if he were an old man already – alter kocher, comes Benny’s voice, and he nearly vomits over his shoes -  that afternoon down at Atlantic City, when the world spread out before him like some sort of fucking dream and everything was theirs for the taking. The big man, he thinks sourly to himself, your first time around the table like some kind of damn equal instead of waiting at the door for A.R. and Charlie to finish their yammering, and you thought nothing could possibly go wrong.

Look how well that little escapade went. In the long term, barely worth the trouble. Damn, they’d all been kids back then. Taking on Chicago, Atlantic City, New York, it’s all ours, gentlemen, the old way of doing things has passed – how long ago was that? Years; fucking years ago.

I thought I was invincible, and all my friends with me. I thought no-one could make me do anything I didn’t want to do ever again. Some fucking joke that turned out to be, huh? Look at where he is now. And there he was still…knees to the ground, gasping little immigrant kid, doing precisely what he didn’t want to do.

They were meant to be invincible. Look at them now. Jimmy Darmody, abandoned in an unmarked grave. Al had been barely recognisable as the man that ruled Chicago by the time they buried him, thanks to all that cocaine and his whores. Richard Harrow, the quiet one – Meyer remembers flicking through an ancient newspaper and finding out they’d found him beneath the boardwalk riddled with bullets. As for Mickey Doyle…well, he’d always said one day that man’s lip would get him in trouble, and Charlie proved him right.

(Benny wanted to come with them to Atlantic City back in ’21. Charlie had nearly had a fit at the idea. Jesus Christ, Benny had snapped, I won’t embarrass you in front of your new fancy friends; as far as dangerous goes, I’d like to meet the guy who can get the drop on me. At the time Meyer had thought it was funny.)

And Charlie? In fucking Palermo, of all places. What fucking use is he in Palermo? He doesn’t even like Italy, had been Meyer’s first thought when the news came, as if the elevated minds of the US government concerned themselves with where a criminal would like to be deported. He’s a New Yorker, not an Italian. He came from Sicily anyway, it’s a completely different land mass, you’re not even sending him to the right place. As if Charlie would have cared, all that shit was for the Mustache Petes who actually thought which village your grandfather was born in determined who you were as a man. But at the time it seemed important that they gave a damn where they were sending him. Recognised just who they were dealing with – not just shipping a parcel back to where it came from, whoops, wrong address, just toss it back to the post office with the rest of the scrap and let those dagos sort out the mess for us….

He’s drunk, Meyer realises – not just drunk, but wretchedly, miserably fucked, the sort of drunk he hasn’t been since Charlie’s deportation, or since they dug up A.R. in that alley outside Park Central. Sweat creasing over his skin, head reeling; maybe he was in better shape to deal with grief as a younger man. Maybe tragedy has a sense of timing, like some punk kid in an alley; wait until a man is nice and relaxed and stupid and thinks life’s going his way, then bam – over the head with a blackjack, and suddenly the world’s not the place you thought it was.

He’s in Florida. Charlie’s in Italy. And Benny…

And there’s no-one left who knows them as they were. That’s the thought that tears him apart from the inside. He’s spent so long crawling out from that tenement basement flat, dragging himself from the Lower East Side step by step, and now the thought of no-one knowing him as he was – as they were, hungry young men always searching for the future – nearly breaks him open.

Atlantic City. 1921. A memory flickers clumsily in him. The graceless twin impulses of grief and alcohol drive him to grasp for the telephone, cradle it as if it were a life preserver.

The operator says it’s an Illinois number. Funny that. Then again, Meyer wouldn’t have expected him to stay in New Jersey.

“Yeah?”

“Mr Thompson? Eli. It’s Meyer, Meyer Lansky. From New York.”

A clunk, the sound of someone shaking off the remnants of sleep. “For fuck’s – ” There’s a muffled burst of expletives on the other end of the line. “What the hell do you want?”

He finds himself spluttering, sniggering like a schoolboy in on the joke, because the bottle of scotch currently pickling him from the inside out finds it very funny indeed: ringing up some poor bastard – must be pushing sixty, sixty-five – in the middle of the night to unburden his soul like some Catholic kid with their, what-you-call-it, confessionals crap. Well, fuck you, he thinks cheerfully, you and your fucking brother, everything you did. You always wanted to survive above all else, well congratulations, you did it, which means you’re the one who has to listen now.

“My apologies. The late hour, of course,” he forces out, trying to inject whatever clipped good manners he used to rely on back in the day – anything to stop richer men, bigger men, from shooting him in the head. It was always a shield, but right now it isn’t working; his voice is shaking and Jesus, why does it feel like he’s dragging every word up from his guts? “I hope I didn’t disturb.”

“You’ve got no reason to call me. I’ve had nothing to do with the business since my brother…Fuck. My wife’s going to wake any minute. Why’m I even explaining to you?”

Good point. Why exactly is he on the phone to someone he hasn’t spoken to in over twenty years: save that it’s the middle of the night and his oldest friend is dead and he doesn’t know what time it is in Italy, and all he knows that if he doesn’t speak to someone who knew him as he was back in the old days, even as an enemy, he’ll go mad.

“I’m hanging up now.”

“I’m sorry, Eli,” he says hastily, tripping over the scotch. “For disturbing you, your wife, and all that. You’ll come down to Miami, my expense, isn’t that how you Thompsons used to do things? I just…” - his tongue’s running away from him and God, he’s so tired, when was the last time he slept? five days ago maybe, when he finally gave the okay to…to what happened – “Felt like talking to someone …and I just had some news. About an old friend.”

There’s a grunt from the other line. “I’ll bite. Who?”

“Benny. Your brother kidnapped him once, back in the day.”

A snort. “Bugsy. Little shit, I remember him. Nucky told me he was the screwiest little wiseass he ever came across. What about him?”

“He died today.”

Silence. Meyer hasn’t given the hows or the wherefores; still, maybe there’s something in their line of work that enables you to sense it, that dead doesn’t just mean the tragedy of a car crash or a sour bout of pneumonia. Sheriff of Atlantic City: probably Eli visited no end of widows to tell them that someone was dead, in that particular way. “My condolences,” he says finally. “But you fellas all sign off on that sorta thing these days, don’t you? Do it polite, civilised. So who gave the okay for Siegel to go?”

“I did.”

I did. Me. I thought I could hold them off for long enough, I got careless – kidding myself that as long as I asked, they’d listen. You thought you were a big shot, didn’t you? Benny could do whatever he wanted – spend other men’s money, fuck around in the desert, none of it would matter if you were protecting him. How many times did you tell him that? How many times did you lie?

‘Fuck’s sake, Ben. You’re a grown man now, you need to take some responsibility for what you’re doing out there.’

‘Christ, hocking me with this again? You’re worse than my mother, Meyer.’

‘I’ve been taking care of you for long enough. I’ll sort it, alright, but get it together.’

Big joke. Thinking you can do it all, and you can’t even protect your oldest friend. What does that say about you, Little Man?

Eli hasn’t spoken, he realises, for a good while now. Just breathing on the end of the line, like a death rattle.

“Jesus Christ.”

A half-laugh, contemptuous. “I don’t know him personally. Maybe you could put in a good word.”

“Huh. Well.”

“You’re right though,” the words come gushing out of him, the way they always do when Meyer’s frightened, or angry, or drunk, or all three, “we do keep things civilised. So when Benny started getting in over his head, borrowing big money and looking as if he wasn’t going to pay it back, well, we thought – I,” he gives a bitter laugh, “thought it could be kept from getting out of hand. So I talked, and I talked. And they listened,” another laugh, “for a while, at least. But the project – the hotel – he was putting together, it…well. Didn’t look as if it was going to pan out. You remember what the business was like, back in your day.” For a moment his voice turns sour. “Everything has to pan out right. And Benny. Jesus. There was no reigning him in one way or another. And everyone else was gunning for it, and I – ” Fuck. “I couldn’t see another way out. So.”

“Sounds like you did the best you could.”

“If I did the best I could Ben Siegel would still be alive,” Meyer spits, a hot line of anger running through his voice.

“Why aren’t you talking to your partner about this? The Italian one, the asshole?”

Good point. He has the number after all, there’s no excuse. Charlie ought to hear it from a friend. But that would involve telling Charlie what he’s done. Admitting that at the end of the day, he had no choice.

A sigh. “Alright then. Why call me?”

“Because you’re the only one left. I wanted to talk to someone… who remembers what we were. The work we did back then, with Jimmy and the others…” God, he doesn’t know where he’s going with this. Maybe he just wants to be reminded, even for a second, that there was a time when they was young and fierce and had it all still to come. “And you’re the only one who knows what this feels like.”

(Sitting there in Darmody’s ballroom suite, or near enough, in a new suite he’d had made that week and feeling like a fucking king – watching Jimmy hem and haw and feeling nothing but pitying contempt for this little schmuck who’d gotten in way too deep with no way of backing out. Eli’s voice, rough and cynical even then. Jesus Christ, just kill him.)

There’s a chill on the other end of the line. “You ought to watch what you’re saying.”

“I’m not judging you. I’d have killed your brother myself, given the chance.”

“Is there a point to this, Lansky?”

“The point is…” he feels himself sway, or rather slip, down below the depths of what is sensible or real, down into the mire; there are waters closing over his head with the truth that his oldest friend in the world is dead because he gave the all-clear for the trigger to be pulled, “when you’re the one whose back is against the wall and you can’t see a way out, and you say those words – and it’s your friend – how do you come back from that?”

“Think you already know the answer to that.”

He does. Doesn’t want to though. That would mean accepting the fact that matters have changed irrevocably, that outside forces have changed him against his will, and he’s powerless to stop it. He doesn’t like being powerless.

“Twenty minutes afterwards my associates took control of the hotel. One of them called me to say the Sidecars were the best he’d ever tasted.” Fuck, he wants to be sick.

“Get some sleep, Meyer. Then call your friend.” Eli’s voice is almost gentle, as if it were one of his kids calling up over a skinned knee or an ugly date. “Oh, and Meyer?”

“Yeah?”

“If I ever see you near my family again, I’ll gut you myself.”

The line goes dead. Well, Meyer thinks as he replaces the receiver, that’s fair enough. He doesn’t respect Eli for a hell of a lot, but he supposes he’ll credit him with that much: he knows how to be a father.

Sipping Sidecars in the Flamingo while Ben Siegel bled to death. And twenty minutes after you gave the order, he remembers, you were drinking at the Regent, because Moe Sedway invited you and you didn’t want him to see how rattled you were. How’s that for class, Little Man?

Would Benny have known? If they gave him time to think before that last bullet snuffed him out, surely he would have realised. Benny might have been reckless, but he wasn’t stupid. For him to be killed, the right people had to give the order.

Fuck. Fuck it all.

And he has no choice. Again, he knows precisely what he has to do. It’s out of his hands. Again.

Clumsily he fumbles for the telephone. Mutters his name when it’s finally picked up.

“Meyer? Jesus, what time is it over there?”

“Charlie.” He draws in a breath, closes his eyes. “We need to talk.”

[purplesurveys]

842

have you ever violated school dress code? My Catholic school had us on a very tight leash and we’d have to be crazy to dare to break the dress code over there. My university doesn’t have a dress code though and anyone entering the campus can dress up any way they want, which I’ve always been grateful for. if you are listening to music, is the singer male/female? They are five dudes. what, if anything, do you give up for Lent? I never observed Lent; and as much of a religious fanatic my mother is, I’m glad she never forced me to fast or abstain from something I liked. what phrase leads your mind directly to the gutter? 69, even though it’s childish. when you feel like giving up, how do you convince yourself not to? I just tell myself that things will get better because that seems to be the pattern all the time with me, which is a really good thing.

what are your opinions on immigration? I don’t know much about the issues and its intricacies but as an Asian, I really admire fellow Asians who don’t speak a word of English, end up in the States or somewhere similar and build themselves a better life there. It’s fucking metal. would you tell an actual immigrant your views? Sure, if the topic is raised. what was the subject of the last list you made? There was a tweet asking people to list down which YouTubers practically ~raised them~ growing up, so I joined in the fun and gave my own names. If I remember correctly I listed down Pewdiepie, Smosh, Grace Helbig, Hannah Hart, and the entire Brit crew. do you ever get nervous before interviews/important meetings? Only if it’s supposed to be crucial. Like I imagine I’d be sweating bullets for my first job interview. who pays for the majority of your belongings? My parents. would you ever willingly shop in a thrift store? Of course. There are always some great finds in them. what is the most that you would ever spend on an outfit? Assuming I’m earning my own money, I’m willing to spend around ₱5000 to ₱10,000 on a top or bottom but I can widen my wallet a lot more if we’re talking shoes, because I like them more haha. is there anything you do that just outrages your parents? I know my mom hates it whenever she pulls us for online mass and I visibly grumble. I don’t know if my dad is annoyed with anything I do; and if he feels that way he’ll tell me. I respect him a lot more so if that’s the case, I’ll actually stop whatever it is I’m doing. when was the last time you were embarrassed in public? Probably when I was brought to the hospital a month ago and the nurse was explaining to me how to take a urine test.  have you ever won an award you were actually proud of? If Latin honors count, then yes. That was my only goal when I started college, and I reached it, so I’m allowing myself to be proud of, well, myself. the importance of education, rate it from 1-10, 10 as most important? 12. --- explain your choice to rate it as such? It’s different when you come from a third-world country. Education is realistically your only way out. what is the coolest science experiment you've ever done? I liked the ones that we did that involved chemicals and powders. are you experiencing difficulties with any friends right now? Not really. There’s a chance JM has been irritated with me because I always turn really grumpy when he messages me about work stuff, but if he is, at this point I don’t really care anymore because I’ve been detached from org work for a while now. I busted my ass for the org for three years so I think I’m entitled to feel detached now haha. how do you deal with a fight between yourself and a friend? I haven’t been in an argument with one of them in a while but I would prefer to talk it out. when you apologize to someone after a fight, how do you go about saying that you are sorry? I apologize and I mention the thing I did that they were hurt by, so that they feel acknowledged. In the end, I tell them that I’ll be better and if there’s anything I can do to make them feel better or to make the situation better, that they shouldn’t hesitate to let me know. have you ever played around with "dry ice"? No. Isn’t that dangerous lol? do you think parents are responsible for the actions of their children? For the most part, yes. But I know there are still some instances where parents can try and try to be understanding and be the best influences, but their kids will still end up going down the wrong path. There isn’t one answer to this, I think. should the military draft take both men AND women? why/why not? I don’t know, it’s a little complicated. I’m definitely all about equality and providing the same opportunities for men and women, but I know there’s a lot of issues on sexual harassment and assault in the military that have yet to be fixed. Until that’s ironed out and I hear change taking place, it seems a little shady to randomly pick out women to join the military.  when was the last time that you corrected someone? My mom had a grammatical error in her Facebook post from yesterday so I told her what the right word to use was. when was the last time you were corrected? I set the table for breakfast today and apparently it wasn’t enough for my mom, who liked her plate to be set in a certain way. when did you last say "i told you so"? Maybe when Kate told me she had broken up with the guy she was having a thing with, lol. is there any celebrity you like to "keep up with"? Not really. I think I’m over that phase now. I’ll check up my faves from time to time, but otherwise I don’t feel the need to read daily updates on them anymore. celebrity gossip: YAY or BOO? Yay if it has substance or if it’s controversial, like a celebrity being exposed for sexual harassment; boo if it’s something stupid like “Kendall Jenner spotted eating pasta today.” what is the most life-changing book you have read? I haven’t encountered it yet. have you had a negative impact on anyone's life? I would say so. I wasn’t always the nicest kid; and I also did a shitty job handling my friendship with Sofie when we were off to college. has anyone had a negative impact on yours? who/why? Yeah. Some relatives, some teachers who didn’t know how to act like teachers, and some people I distinctly remember that bullied me when I was a kid. how will you know when you are ready to get married? I guess when I’m no longer nervous thinking about it and when I’m already 100% sure that I’m independent and capable of looking out for myself. I don’t wanna be married and still be slightly dependent on my parents, which is what a lot of young Filipino married couples end up doing. how much time have you spent contemplating your own death? A very, very good amount. is there a joke that you just can't stand? Ones that you just can’t defend and are just simply offensive, like slavery or poverty. I’ve seen a few shows where they’d refer to the Philippines being poor or being a source of child labor for laughs, and they’ve never been funny to me. have you ever read any self-help books? No, I don’t really trust those lol since they’re usually written by people from other countries who most likely have different experiences and perspectives. If I need some help I’d rather figure it out myself and hear from people that I trust, like my friends. what's your take on the obesity problem in america? It’s a serious problem, obviously. I don’t know much about it other than the fact that Americans are crazy about their fast food and that their serving sizes are ginormous. I really hope they find more ways to address it. what is something you used to love, but now greatly dislike? Journalism. what is something you used to dislike, but now like? Chicken curry, and I think spicy food in general haha. when/if you become a parent, what will you do differently, compared to how your parents raised you? I’ll be more involved. I’ll compliment them more, not invalidate their feelings, and I’ll let them talk when I do something that upsets them, and I’ll apologize to them for it.

do you equate spanking with physical abuse? would you spank a child? The way Filipino parents do it, yeah especially. They don’t just do it with their hands - spanking kids here usually involve slippers and belts. My mom forbade anyone to spank me and my siblings, but nonetheless I watched it happen to my cousins and that alone was traumatic enough for me. How much more for them?

The thing is that it can’t be assumed that kids are able to process why they’re being punished, so I think that any physical punishment to them will just drive them away from their parents, which to me makes it physical abuse. I would never spank my own kids. what's the most ridiculous thing you've done this week? Skipping out the rest of my shower because a moth came into the bathroom and started flying around me lmaoooo eugh. --- did you regret it/love it/hate it/want to do it again/etc? I fucking hated it. if your bf/gf wanted to wait until marriage for sex, would you be willing? Yes. Sex honestly isn’t really a big deal to me. when you look at the sunset, what do you think about/feel? I don’t really think when I look at the sunset. I just admire how pretty it looks and savor the quick few seconds of the sun going down. is there someone you wish you could trust/you wish was trustworthy? No? I don’t wait on people to be trustworthy, if that’s what you mean. I’m grateful for the people who are already around me that I can trust. is there anyone that you no longer want in you life? who/why? There are times I wish I could get rid of my mom so that I don’t get yelled at as much anymore and so that I don’t have anyone watching my every move so much so that I’m cautious to walk around in my own house.

how has your outlook on life changed in the past few years? I’m a lot happier and more stable this time around. I’m glad I stayed around to see the change happen. have you ever walked out of a boring movie (in theaters)? Absolutely not. Even if the movie was bad, I’d watch it through the end. Ticket prices are not to be fucked with lol. how open are you with people you know online? ...What do you think? what do you think of athletes that take steroids? Idk about other sports but that’s a big fuck no in wrestling, after it’s led to addiction, overdoses, and a lot of deaths especially in the 80s and 90s. if a celebrity is involved in scandal after scandal, is that likely to affect how you view him/her & his/her work? Depends on the scandal. I don’t mind when nudes or videos get leaked because honestly, the leakers are the assholes in that situation. But if the scandal is something like people speaking out to accuse a celebrity of racism, abuse, or harassment, then I can very much turn against that person. what is one celebrity that you have zero respect for? Amber Heard. have you ever driven under the influence of alcohol/drugs? Just slightly tipsy, but I’ve always made sure that I’m super super super aware of my surroundings in those times. I won’t drive – and I know my friends won’t allow me to – if I was even just a little dizzy. I’m always the first to start sobering up when I go out to drink because I’m usually the only one with a car and thus responsible for bringing my friends home. are you overly attached to your material possessions? For the most part, yeah. have you ever ridiculed anyone for their clothing choices? Not to their faces. living in poverty: what do you think it'd be like? I already live in a country wallowing in it. My family isn’t poor, but I see poverty on a daily basis nonetheless. No documentary or article can best explain it to anyone who has never lived in a poverty-stricken country. Pretty insensitive question btw. what is one "diet" that you think is just utterly worthless? I’m not familiar with any of them. what advice would you give someone that is uncomfortable with his or her body/appearance? I prefer not to give advice because some people don’t wanna hear it and just wanna hear reassurances and boosters. That said, I’ll just keep encouraging them and telling them that they look really good in their outfit and just making them feel valid and seen. what advice would you give someone about to start high school? Don’t be scared to make mistakes and while you should always study hard and do your best, don’t take everything seriously. It’s high school and won’t matter on your professional resume.   what foreign food are you NOT interested in trying? Uhhhh this question makes no sense to me ahahaha I’m always down to try anything. what foreign country do you believe is misunderstood? I can’t speak for other countries but I know mine is pretty misunderstood. I’ve read countless testimonies of Filipinos getting condescendingly told “You speak good English for a Filipino” by white Americans, not knowing that their country conquered mine for 40ish years. That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to misconceptons about my country and its people.    have you ever felt entirely unwanted and alone? Of course. in your eyes, which is worse: rape or murder? Both are equally bad and disgusting but I’ll have to go with rape, because 1) the victim has to live with the trauma and fear for the rest of their life, 2) victims are usually too scared to speak out for fear of being judged or not being believed, and 3) victim-blaming is still a big problem today. do you understand/read shakespeare? No. When we took up Shakespeare in high school I bought the No Fear versions. would you feel comfortable living with someone that owned a gun? No. do you know anyone that lives in a foreign country? Tons.

[phroyd]

From Esquire

Surely, the United States of America could not operate concentration camps. In the American consciousness, the term is synonymous with the Nazi death machines across the European continent that the Allies began the process of dismantling 75 years ago this month. But while the world-historical horrors of the Holocaust are unmatched, they are only the most extreme and inhuman manifestation of a concentration-camp system-which, according to Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, has a more global definition. There have been concentration camps in France, South Africa, Cuba, the Soviet Union, and-with Japanese internment-the United States. In fact, she contends we are operating such a system right now in response to a very real spike in arrivals at our southern border.

“We have what I would call a concentration camp system,” Pitzer says, “and the definition of that in my book is, mass detention of civilians without trial.”

Historians use a broader definition of concentration camps, as well.

"What's required is a little bit of demystification of it," says Waitman Wade Beorn, a Holocaust and genocide studies historian and a lecturer at the University of Virginia. "Things can be concentration camps without being Dachau or Auschwitz. Concentration camps in general have always been designed-at the most basic level-to separate one group of people from another group. Usually, because the majority group, or the creators of the camp, deem the people they're putting in it to be dangerous or undesirable in some way."

Not every concentration camp is a death camp-in fact, their primary purpose is rarely extermination, and never in the beginning. Often, much of the death and suffering is a result of insufficient resources, overcrowding, and deteriorating conditions. So far, 24 people have died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Trump administration, while six children have died in the care of other agencies since September. Systems like these have emerged across the world for well over 100 years, and they've been established by putative liberal democracies-as with Britain's camps in South Africa during the Boer War-as well as authoritarian states like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Camps set up with one aim can be repurposed by new regimes, often with devastating consequences.

History is banging down the door this week with the news the Trump administration will use Fort Sill, an Oklahoma military base that was used to detain Japanese-Americans during World War II, to house 1,400 unaccompanied migrant children captured at the border. Japanese internment certainly constituted a concentration-camp system, and the echoes of the past are growing louder. Of course, the Obama administration temporarily housed migrants at military bases, including Fort Sill, for four months in 2014, built many of the newer facilities to house migrants, and pioneered some of the tactics the Trump administration is now using to try to manage the situation at the border.

The government of the United States would never call the sprawling network of facilities now in use across many states "concentration camps," of course. They’re referred to as "federal migrant shelters" or "temporary shelters for unaccompanied minors" or "detainment facilities" or the like. (The initial processing facilities are run by Border Patrol, and the system is primarily administered to by the Department of Homeland Security. Many adults are transferred to ICE, which now detains more than 52,000 people across 200 facilities on any given day-a record high. Unaccompanied minors are transferred to Department of Health and Human Services custody.) But by Pitzer's measure, the system at the southern border first set up by the Bill Clinton administration, built on by Barack Obama's government, and brought into extreme and perilous new territory by Donald Trump and his allies does qualify. Two historians who specialize in the area largely agree.

Many of the people housed in these facilities are not "illegal" immigrants. If you present yourself at the border seeking asylum, you have a legal right to a hearing under domestic and international law. They are, in another formulation, refugees-civilian non-combatants who have not committed a crime, and who say they are fleeing violence and persecution. Yet these human beings, who mostly hail from Central America's Northern Triangle of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador-a region ravaged by gang violence and poverty and corruption and what increasingly appears to be some of the first forced migrations due to climate change-are being detained on what increasingly seems to be an indefinite basis.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration continually seeks new ways to stop people from applying for asylum, and to discourage others from attempting to. The current regime has sought to restrict the asylum criteria to exclude the exact issues, like gang or domestic violence, that these desperate people often cite for why they fled their homes. The administration has sought to introduce application fees and work-permit restraints. They have tried to prohibit migrants from seeking asylum "if they have resided in a country other than their own before coming to the U.S.," which would essentially eliminate anyone who traveled to the border through Mexico. Much of this has been struck down in federal court.

But most prominently, Trump's Department of Homeland Security has used "metering" at the border, where migrants are forced to wait for days or weeks on the Mexican side-often sleeping in makeshift shelters or fully exposed to the elements-until they are allowed across border checkpoints to make their asylum claims and be processed. That processing system is overwhelmed, and the Obama administration also used metering at various points, but it remains unclear whether the wait times need to be as long as they are. (DHS did not respond to a request for comment.) There are no guarantees on how long migrants will have to wait, and so they've increasingly turned to crossing illegally between checkpoints-which constitutes "illegal entry," a misdemeanor-in order to present themselves for asylum. This criminalizes them, and the Trump administration tried to make illegal entry a disqualifier for asylum claims. The overall effort appears to be to make it as difficult as possible to get a hearing to adjudicate those claims, raising the specter that people can be detained longer or indefinitely.

All this has been achieved through two mechanisms: militarization and dehumanization. In her book, Pitzer describes camps as “a deliberate choice to inject the framework of war into society itself." These kinds of detention camps are a military endeavor: they are defensible in wartime, when enemy combatants must be detained, often for long periods without trial. They were a hallmark of World War I Europe. But inserting them into civil society, and using them to house civilians, is a materially different proposition. You are revoking the human and civil rights of non-combatants without legal justification.

"In the origins of the camps, it's tied to the idea of martial law," says Jonathan Hyslop, author of "The Invention of the Concentration Camp: Cuba, Southern Africa and the Philippines, 1896–1907," and a professor of sociology and anthropology at Colgate University. "I mean, all four of the early instances-Americans in the Philippines, Spanish in Cuba, and British in South Africa, and Germans in Southwest Africa-they're all essentially overriding any sense of rights of the civilian population. And the idea is that you're able to suspend normal law because it's a war situation."

This pairs well with the rhetoric that Trump deploys to justify the system and his unconstitutional power grabs, like the phony "national emergency": he describes the influx of asylum-seekers and other migrants as an "invasion," language his allies are mirroring with increasing extremism. If you're defending yourself from an invasion, anything is defensible.

That goes hand-in-hand with the strategy of dehumanization. For decades, the right has referred to undocumented immigrants as "illegals," stripping them of any identity beyond an immigration status. Trump kicked off his formal political career by characterizing Hispanic immigrants as "rapists" and "drug-dealers" and "criminals," never once sharing, say, the story of a woman who came here with her son fleeing a gang's threats. It is always MS-13 and strong, scary young men. There's talk of "animals" and monsters, and suddenly anything is justifiable. In fact, it must be done. Trump's supporters have noticed. At a recent rally, someone in the crowd screamed out that people arriving at the border should be shot. In response, the president cracked a "joke."

"It's important here to look at the language that people are using," Hyslop says. "As soon as you get people comparing other groups to animals or insects, or using language about advancing hordes, and we're being overrun and flooded and this sort of thing, it's creating the sense of this enormous threat. And that makes it much easier to sell to people on the idea we've got to do something drastic to control this population which going to destroy us."

In a grotesque formulation of the chicken-and-the-egg conundrum, housing people in these camps furthers their dehumanization.

"There's this crystallization that happens," Pitzer says. "The longer they're there, the worse conditions get. That's just a universal of camps. They're overcrowded. We already know from reports that they don't have enough beds for the numbers that they have. As you see mental health crises and contagious diseases begin to set in, they'll work to manage the worst of it. [But] then there will be the ability to tag these people as diseased, even if we created [those conditions]. Then we, by creating the camps, try to turn that population into the false image that we [used] to put them in the camps to start with. Over time, the camps will turn those people into what Trump was already saying they are."

Make no mistake: the conditions are in decline. When I went down to see the detention facility in McAllen, Texas, last summer at the height of the "zero-tolerance" policy that led inevitably to family separation, Border Patrol agents were by all appearances doing the very best they could with limited resources. That includes the facilities themselves, which at that point were mostly built-by the Clinton administration in the '90s-to house single adult males who were crossing the border illegally to find work. By that point, Border Patrol was already forced to use them to hold families and other asylum-seekers, and agents told me the situation was untenable. They lacked requisite staff with the training to care for young children, and overcrowding was already an issue.

But according to a report from Trump's own government-specifically, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security-the situation has deteriorated significantly even since then. The facilities are overcrowded, underfunded, and perhaps at a perilous inflection point. It found adult detainees are "being held in 'standing-room-only conditions' for days or weeks at a border patrol facility in Texas," Reuters reports. But it gets worse.

Single adults were held in cells designed for one-fifth as many detainees as were housed there and were wearing soiled clothing for days or weeks with limited access to showers, the report said. Pictures published with the report show women packed tightly together in a holding cell.

“We also observed detainees standing on toilets in the cells to make room and gain breathing space, thus limiting access to toilets,” the watchdog wrote.

This was at Paso del Norte, a facility near El Paso, which has a stated capacity of 125 detainees. But when DHS inspectors visited, it was holding 900. For a period, Border Patrol tried housing migrants in cage under a nearby bridge. It was ultimately scrapped amid public outcry. When migrants and asylum-seekers are transferred to ICE, things can get worse. Queer and trans migrants face exceptionally harsh treatment, with reports of high levels of physical and sexual abuse, and the use of solitary confinement-considered torture by many psychologists-is widespread. As a reminder, by DHS's own assertion, these detainments are civil, not criminal, and are not meant to be punitive in the way of a prison. Many of these people have not even been accused of a crime.

Again: these are inhuman conditions, and crystalize the dehumanization. So, too, does the Trump administration's decision, reported by The Washington Post, to cancel classes, recreational programs, and even legal aid for the children held at facilities for unaccompanied minors. Why should these kids get to play soccer or learn English? Why should they get legal assistance? They're detainees.

The administration is citing "budget pressures" related to what is undoubtedly a dramatic spike in arrivals at the border last month: 144,000 people were detained in May. It remains unclear how much of this is tied to the Trump administration's border policies, like metering, which have severely slowed the process of declaring oneself for asylum and left people camped on the Mexican border for days or weeks after a thousand-mile trek through Mexico. Or Trump's recent all-out push to seize money for a border wall and declare "we're closed," which some speculate led to a surge of people trying to get over the line before that happened.

It's also in dispute how many of these people actually need to be detained. Vox's Dara Lind suggests releasing migrants from Guatemala or Honduras isn't straightforward as "many newly arrived asylum seekers aren’t familiar with the US, often speak neither English nor Spanish, and may not have appropriate clothing or funds for bus fare." But release with ankle bracelets has proven very effective as an alternative to detention: 99 percent of immigrants enrolled in one such program showed up for their court dates, though ICE claims it's less effective when someone is set to be deported. Those subjected to the bracelets say they are uncomfortable and demeaning, but it's better than stuffing a detention cell to five-times capacity. Unless, of course, that's exactly what you want to happen.

"At one point, [the administration] said that they were intentionally trying to split up families and make conditions unpleasant, so the people wouldn't come to the U.S.," Beorn, from UVA, says. "If you're doing that, then that's not a prison. That's not a holding area or a waiting area. That's a policy. I would argue, at least in the way that [the camps are] being used now, a significant portion of the mentality is [tied to] who the [detainees] are rather than what they did.

"If these were Canadians flooding across the border, would they be treated in the same manner as the people from Mexico and from Central and South America? If the answer is yes, theoretically, then I would consider these places to be perhaps better described as transit camps or prison camps. But I suspect that's not how they'd be treated, which then makes it much more about who the people are that you're detaining, rather than what they did. The Canadian would have crossed the border just as illegally as the Mexican, but my suspicion is, would be treated in a different way."

It was the revelation about school and soccer cuts that led Pitzer to fire off a tweet threadthis week outlining the similarities between the U.S. camp system and those of other countries. The first examples of a concentration camp, in the modern sense, come from Cuba in the 1890s and South Africa during the Second Boer War.

"What those camps had in common with what's going on today is they involved the wholesale detention of families, separate or together," Pitzer says. "There was very little in the way of targeted violence. Instead, people died from poor planning, overloaded facilities and unwillingness to reverse policy, even when it became apparent the policy wasn't working, inability to get medical care to detainees, poor food quality, contagious diseases, showing up in an environment where it became almost impossible to get control of them.

"The point is that you don't have to intend to kill everybody. When people hear the phrase 'Oh, there's concentration camps on the southern border,' they think, 'Oh, it's not Auschwitz.' Of course, it's not those things, each camp system is different. But you don't have to intend to kill everyone to have really bad outcomes. In Cuba, well over 100,000 civilians died in these camps in just a period of a couple years. In Southern Africa during the Boer War, fatalities went into the tens of thousands. And the overwhelming majority of them were children. Fatalities in the camps ended up being more than twice the combat fatalities from the war itself."

In-custody deaths have not reached their peak of a reported 32 people in 2004, but the current situation seems to be deteriorating. In just the last two weeks, three adults have died. And the Trump administration has not readily reported fatalities to the public. There could be more.

"There's usually this crisis period that a camp system either survives or doesn't survive in the first three or four years. If it goes past that length of time, they tend to continue for a really long time. And I think we have entered that crisis period. I don't yet know if we're out of it."

Camps often begin in wartime or a crisis point, and on a relatively small scale. There are then some in positions of power who want to escalate the program for political purposes, but who receive pushback from others in the regime. There's then a power struggle, and if the escalationists prevail over the other bureaucrats-as they appear to have here, with the supremacy of Stephen Miller over (the reliably pliant but less extreme) Kirstjen Nielsen-the camps will continue and grow. Almost by definition, the conditions will deteriorate, even despite the best intentions of those on the ground.

"It's a negative trajectory in at least two ways," Beorn says. "One, I feel like these policies can snowball. We've already seen unintended consequences. If we follow the thread of the children, for example, the government wanted to make things more annoying, more painful. So they decided, We're going to separate the children from the families. But there was no infrastructure in place for that. You already have a scenario where even if you have the best intentions, the infrastructure doesn't exist to support it. That's a consequence of policy that hasn't been thought through. As you see the population begin to massively increase over time, you do start to see conditions diminishing.

"The second piece is that the longer you establish this sort of extralegal, extrajudicial, somewhat-invisible no-man's land, the more you allow potentially a culture of abuse to develop within that place. Because the people who tend to become more violent, more prejudiced, whatever, have more and more free rein for that to become sort of the accepted behavior. Then, that also becomes a new norm that can spread throughout the system. There is sort of an escalation of individual initiative in violence. As it becomes clear that that is acceptable, then you have a self-fulfilling prophecy or a positive feedback loop that just keeps radicalizing the treatment as the policy itself becomes radicalizing."

And for a variety of reasons, these facilities are incredibly hard to close. "Unless there's some really decisive turn away, we're going to be looking at having these camps for a long time," Pitzer says. It's particularly hard to engineer a decisive turn because these facilities are often remote, and hard to protest. They are not top-of-mind for most citizens, with plenty of other issues on the table. When Trump first instituted the Muslim Ban-now considered, in its third iteration, to be Definitely Not a Muslim Ban by the Supreme Court-there were mass demonstrations at U.S. airports because they were readily accessible by concerned citizens. These camps are not so easily reached, and that's a problem.

"The more authoritarian the regime is, and the more people allow governments to get away with doing this sort of thing politically, the worse the conditions are likely to get," Hyslop says. "So, a lot of it depends on how much pushback there is. But when you get a totally authoritarian regime like Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union, there's no control, or no countervailing force, the state can do what it likes, and certainly things will then tend to break down.

"It's more of a political question, really. Are people prepared to tolerate the deteriorating conditions? And if public opinion isn't effective in a liberal democratic situation, things can still get pretty bad."

Almost regardless, the camps will be difficult to dismantle by their very nature-that extrajudicial "no-man's land" Beorn mentioned. The prison at Guantanamo Bay is a perfect example. It began in the early 1990s as a refugee camp for people fleeing Haiti and Cuba. The conditions were bad and legally questionable, Pitzer found, and eventually the courts stepped in to grant detainees some rights. In the process, however, they granted the camps tacit legitimacy-they were allowed to continue with the approval of the judiciary.

Suddenly, they were enshrined in the law as a kind of gray area where detainees did not enjoy full human rights. That is actually why it was chosen by the Bush administration to house terror suspects: it was already rubber-stamped as a site for indefinite detention. By the time President Obama came into office with promises to close it, he found the task incredibly difficult, because it had been ingrained in the various institutions and branches of American constitutional government. He could not get rid of it. As courts continue to rule on the border camp system, the same issues are likely to take hold.

Another issue is that these camp systems, no matter where they are in the world, tend to fall victim to expanding criteria. The longer they stay open, the more reasons a government finds to put people in them. That's particularly true if a new regime takes control of an existing system, as the Trump administration did with ours. The mass detention of asylum-seekers-who, again, have legal rights-on this scale is an expansion of the criteria from "illegal" immigrants, who were the main class of detainee in the '90s and early 2000s. Asylum seekers, particularly unaccompanied minors, began arriving in huge numbers and were detained under the Obama administration. But there has been an escalation, both because of a deteriorating situation in the Northern Triangle and the Trump administration's attempts to deter any and all migration. There is reason to believe the criteria will continue to expand.

"We have border patrol agents that are sometimes arresting U.S. citizens," Pitzer says. "That's still very much a fringe activity. That doesn't seem to be a dedicated priority right now, but it's happening often enough. And they're held, sometimes, for three or four days. Even when there are clear reasons that people should be let go, that they have proof of their identity, you're seeing these detentions. You do start to worry about people who have legally immigrated and have finished paperwork, and maybe are naturalized. You worry about green-card holders."

In most cases, these camps are not closed by the executive or the judiciary or even the legislature. It usually requires external intervention. (See: D-Day) That obviously will not be an option when it comes to the most powerful country in the history of the world, a country which, while it would never call them that, and would be loathe to admit it, is now running a system at the southern border that is rapidly coming to resemble the concentration camps that have sprung up all over the world in the last century. Every system is different. They don't always end in death machines. But they never end well.

"Let's say there's 20 hurdles that we have to get over before we get to someplace really, really, really bad," Pitzer says. "I think we've knocked 10 of them down."

Phroyd

[missblushyrose]

Welcome Home

Previously, in “Reunion”...

After an extensive five minutes, which felt longer to them, Hank broke the hug with a deep breath through his nostrils, grinning at the smiley android that stared back at him. With one last snicker, the older man rose to his feet, helping Connor onto his own with a tight grip on his shoulders. He sighed contentedly and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, pulling him into a side-hug as he led the bubbling android to his car. “Now, c’mon. Let’s go home. Sumo’ll lose his shit when he finds out we’ve got one more member of the family.”

The glare of the morning sun, which slowly drew from the horizons of Detroit, would normally irritate the human eye to no end. However, some would come to appreciate its reawakening rather than rising out of bed to find the skies tainted with dark clouds looming over the city, constantly pouring rain or snow. Some could say that this may have been the worst ongoing forecast of the year, given that winter wouldn’t be starting for another month.

A single Mustang 80, coated with a dark charcoal finish, swerved along the bend of the road and into a small, seemingly quiet neighborhood, lightly pulsating to the rhythm of AC/DC’s “Back In Black”, an obvious choice from Hank Anderson. Said man took a quick glance at the android in the passenger seat, who appeared to be gazing at the world beyond the glass window with a piqued interest, as he had been doing quite often throughout the entire car trip. Hank grinned once more and returned his attention to the road as he made his way to his home, which gradually grew closer as he pressed on. He made a smooth turn into the vacant driveway and removed the key from the ignition.

“Well, we’re here,” Hank stated as he swiveled his head to peer at a now-frozen Connor. He had all but bit his lip in an attempt to keep himself from bursting into laughter at the sight. “Jesus, you’re freezin’ up on me again? State-of-the-art prototype, my ass. Y’know, Sumo’s not gonna wait forever.”

“Apologies, Lieu-”

“Ah! What’d I tell you earlier?”

Connor blinked once and swiftly corrected himself. “...Hank. I believe that I’m still overwhelmed about what you’ve said to me near the Chicken Feed.”

With an amused smile, Hank raised his right hand to give a couple of pats to the android’s left shoulder. “Try not to think about it too much. Don’t wanna fry that brain of yours, do ya? Now, let’s get inside. It’s cold as fuck.”

And so, the men had stripped themselves of their seatbelts and proceeded to exit the vehicle. They then strode to the front door, stopping just in front of it as the human rummaged through his pockets in search of his house key. After a short deliberation, the search had concluded, and the key was offered to a confused Connor.

“Hey,” The sound of Hank’s voice wrenched the prototype out of his thunderstricken daze along with the jingle of the key, dangling it just at his eye level. “Wanna do the honors?”

With a light flutter of his eyelashes, Connor withdrew the key from the older man’s grasp with a dainty tug of the hand. “Yes... of course.”

Shaking off any sign of hesitance, the young man inserted the key into its respective slot within the doorknob, twisting into a clockwise rotation until an audible click reached their ears. He dislodged the tool and handed it to Hank - who slipped it into a pocket in his coat - before grasping the stained, brass knob. With a curve of his wrist, the wooden door gently glided toward the outside world, the brisk autumn breeze dispelling into the entryway.

As the human and the android immigrated into the small home, a warm, sentimental smile began to blossom Connor’s facial structure. He had only been in the Anderson household once - and that was to find an unconscious Hank on the floor, who had drunken himself to a comatose state, leaving the former deviant hunter to sober him himself - and yet, he felt as if he had lived here throughout his short, three-month life. The atmosphere smelled just like Hank: traces of alcohol, dog, and a hint of the same cheap cologne he could detect in the man’s jacket when they’ve hugged for the very first time.

Connor’s usually-sharp attention had dimmed as his eyes wandered around his new home, his mind swimming with pure content. He couldn’t even notice the loud, hearty ‘borf’ followed by the sound of claws clicking against the tile at the speed of a race, rapidly growing louder as the padded footsteps drew closer and closer. The force of a 170-pound mass of fur suddenly hurling into the android’s body caused Connor to elicit a shocked yelp as he found himself knocked to the floor and underneath this mighty beast, his LED burnishing a bright red to further display his shock. The red instantly reverted back to a calm cyan upon looking up at the face of a familiar, loveable St. Bernard he had once met: Sumo. 

Connor opened his mouth and attempted to greet him, only to be interrupted by the large, wet tongue stroking over the artificial skin of his cheeks. Ecstatically. Sumo began to lap at the younger man’s face with affectionate, yet slobbery, doggy kisses. Strangely, the android began to feel a bubbling sensation from the depths of his mechanical core, causing him to burst into giggles. While he knew that this was a dog’s way of showing their love for their owners, he just couldn’t seem to decipher the reason as to why his titters rose from his voice box, considering he had nothing to classify as amusing. Was it the affection? He assumed it to be a possible factor.

“Hi, Sumo,” Connor greeted in between his giggles as he reached up to bury his fingers into the fur of the hound’s great head, his blunt fingernails scratching along his scalp as if trying to return the affection. Despite how messy his face was becoming from the excessive dog drool, he paid absolutely no mind to it. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying the feeling of being piled on by the warm of Sumo’s large body while receiving his token of love. “Yes, I’ve missed you as well!”

All the while, Hank watched with saturated amusement, laughing to himself at the view of his beloved dog coating the deviant’s face with relentless doggy kisses. He would be lying if he said that the sight was anything but heartwarming. “Alright, alright. Ease up on him, ya big oaf.” He gave the St. Bernard’s collar a gentle tug, catching his attention with a low whine rumbled from the dog’s chest as he hoisted himself from the android, approaching his human. “Good dog.” He praised as rubbed the dog’s head, making him pant and thump his tail against the floor.

Gradually, the giggles began to fade from Connor’s systems, and he proceeded to pick himself up from his position on the floor. He couldn’t help but smile at the scene before his peripheral vision: Hank, usually gruff and ill-tempered as he came to know, was kneeling down to meet Sumo’s level, rubbing his beloved pet all over, whilst the canine’s tongue lolled from the side of his muzzle. Sumo rolled onto his back, his tail waving and his leg kicking up in the air to the older man's constant coos and praises:

“Yeah, good boy, Sumo! You looove that, don’t ‘cha? Who’s a big oaf, huh? Who is it?”

The mere sight of it persuaded a coy smirk to tug at Connor’s lips. While being equipped with the ability to adapt to human unpredictability was one of his many features, he could have never possibly fathomed the man to coo. Then again, he never pegged him as one to hug anyone, let alone an android - considering the fact that he despised androids even before they first met at Jimmy’s Bar - and yet, he could see that the man has changed his perspective regarding Connor’s own kind.

At last, Connor decided to cut in and divert the lieutenant’s attention from the dog. Still wearing the smug grin, he pretended to clear his throat. “Hank?”

In an instant, Hank ceased in coddling his beloved pet and whipped his head up to set his gaze on the deviant, quickly shaking off his stupor. “Shit, I actually forgot you were there for a moment.”

“In all the time I’ve known you, Hank, I never deemed you to be a cooer,” Connor mused, the same shit-eating grin still fixated on his face.

In response, the older man dismissed the lip sent his way with a scoff. “Fuck off.” He shot back with no real heat lingering in his tone. “I ain’t the one with dog slobber all over my face. Speakin’ of which... you might wanna go rinse off. Kinda disgusting.” He then made a gesture towards the hallway to the left. “The bathroom’s still in the same place where it was last time you were here: down the hall over there and on the right.”

“Thank you. I’ll only need a minute, and I’ll rejoin you,” Connor replied as he strode forward, making a turn to his left and entering the hallway, shortly coming across to the bathroom door on his right-hand side. He gingerly turned the knob and stepped towards the vacant sink, briefly glancing at a reflection of himself in the mirror, marveling at the fine coat of dog saliva decorating his facial skin. No more than ten seconds passed before Connor finally decided to do away with the mess. 

Turning the water faucet to provide himself with running water at a moderate temperature, he then shaped his hands together to create a makeshift bowl. First, he lightly tossed the lukewarm water back into his own face to rinse off the drool. Next, he turned his attention to a soap pump at the corner of the sink top and dispensed a fair amount of soap into his hand, only to lather his face afterward. And finally, he repeated the first step, only this time, he would do away with the soap, thoroughly cleansing his artificial skin. He yanked a lone hand towel from a nearby towel rack to gently dab his face until he dried his skin.

Connor dispersed from the small bathroom, only to find Hank coming out of his own bedroom, clad in an old, grey DPD hoodie and worn pair of black lounge shorts.

Hank looked at the android with an incredulous bore as his grey-blue eyes scanned the suit, the only piece of clothing he had ever worn. “Uh, you’re not planning on wearing that suit of yours while we have no work, are you?”

“What is wrong with my suit?” Connor asked dumbfoundedly, cocking his head to the side like a confused puppy.

“Well, for one thing, it’s all covered in dog hair,” Hank gestured to the android’s Cyberlife suit, which was now spattered with noticeable strands of Sumo’s fur. “Connor, you know that you’re not obligated to wear it anymore. You’re a deviant now, so you’re free to wear anything else.”

“But I have no other clothes. I was only provided with my suit,” Connor stated with same blank expression fixed upon his facial structure.

Hank gawked at the baffled android in response, blinking once, twice before turning his back to the other and reentering his bedroom once more. He could hear the faint sound of dress shoes lightly thumping against the cloud-hued carpet, following the closet door sliding to the right. Yes, he could feel the presence and stare of a confused, yet curious, Connor from the doorframe. 

He began to scrutinize the contents inside his closet in hopes of finding something decent for the kid to lounge in, so he automatically crossed off the few shirts with awfully tacky patterns from the mentally constructed list. Pushing the shirts aside to the left, Hank had come to discover a charcoal DPD hoodie with a contrasting style to the one he was currently wearing suspended by a coat hanger. He made no hesitation to rip the hoodie from the hanger and draped it over his left forearm. Hank thought it was a hell of a coincidence to find a pair of onyx sweatpants balled up into the corner of the closet. He seemed to remember them fitting quite well in his younger days, back to when he was just about Connor’s size. Taking upon the offering, he knelt down onto the carpeted floor then sunk the fingers of his right hand into the cotton fabric and yanked the bottoms from the closet, carrying it with his left arm as a makeshift clothing rack.

Hank rose to his feet and slid the closet door to the left, therefore closing it. He turned to face the former deviant hunter once more, presenting him with the bundle of clothes in his hands. “Here, you can borrow some of mine until we can go out and buy you some new clothes.”

Connor opened his mouth to politely decline his offer, but no words came out as he presumed that the older man was going to lend him the clothes, regardless of his protests. With a hint of hesitance, he raised his arms forward to collect the two pieces of clothing and cradled them in his arms with a bit of tenderness. “Thank you, Hank.”

“Don’t mention it,” Hank dismissed the android’s gratitude with a casual flick of his hand, gesturing towards the bathroom. “Now, go get changed. You ain’t gonna be walkin’ around the house and gettin’ dog hair everywhere.” He added with a decipherable jestful tone as he waltzed out of his bedroom, leaving a somewhat stunned Connor behind.

A brief ten seconds was all the time that had been spent in Connor trying to shake off his stupor, and he traveled out of the master bedroom and across the hall to re-enter the bathroom once again. He gingerly shut the door and locked it to prevent any intrusion as he began to strip himself. He started with his trademark Cyberlife jacket, followed by his geometric-patterned necktie, only for his white button-up shirt, tossing them onto the floor afterward. The prototype approached the porcelain toilet and sat down so that he could remove his footwear without doubling over in the process. He slung his right leg upward to rest his ankle atop of his left thigh and proceeded to untie the laces of his shoe, loosening it. Once the shoestrings were untied, he gently tugged his dress shoe from his foot, lightly ricocheting it next to the sink counter. He repeated the process with his left foot, and he was soon left with his black ankle socks, marveling at the newfound weightlessness of his feet. Finally, he unzipped, unbuttoned, and pulled down his smokey grey trousers, freeing his legs.

Connor couldn’t fight the shiver racking his frame as the cool air met his synthetic skin, having been stripped down to the solid black, spandex-like boxers he was provided with upon his activation. Not wanting to bear the cold any longer than he already had been following his deviancy, he then slipped the hoodie over his head and tugged the sweatpants up to his legs.

Retreating from the toilet and to the mirror, Connor fixated his gaze on the reflection that stared into the chocolatey irises of his optical units: the android, who grown used to sporting his usual Cyberlife suit, was now clad in a DPD hoodie and casual sweatpants. Almost instantly, he could understand as to why Hank had insisted on shedding his usual work apparel for a choice of clothing, such as this. The fabric felt... soft on the android’s artificial skin. The feel of it was just so comforting, as was the faint scent of the man lingering from the fabric. He didn’t even appear to mind that the hoodie was approximately twice his size, it only added onto the coziness provided to him. Connor was awestruck by the fact that he almost seemed human, aside from the luminescent LED at the right side of his head.

After much deliberation, Connor turned away from the mirror to gather the suit he had shed and propelled it into the clothes hamper nearby with little care in the world. He ultimately decided to quit wasting his time loitering and reemerged from the bathroom, striding down the hallway and towards the living room. Coincidentally, he found Hank exiting the kitchen, a can of Pineapple Passion soda in hand.

“Y’know, that’s not a bad look for you,” Hank spoke up, throwing a smile in the direction of the former deviant hunter as he passed by, sinking into the living room sofa within the very second he got close enough. He then made a ‘come here’ gesture with a curl of his hand, beckoning Connor to join him on the couch. “Hey, quit standin’ around like you’ve got a stick up your ass, and get over here! Make yourself at home!”

The deviant’s doe-like eyes never left the lounging human“...Make myself at home?”

“Well, yeah! I mean, this is your home now, too!”

Not even sparing another second, Connor gladly made his way closer to the upholstered seat and plopped down onto his rear, just sitting at Hank’s left and close to the armrest. He had all but abandoned the fact that this was just the man’s home. It was now their home.

Hank sighed contentedly and lifted his legs from the floor, only to lower them onto the coffee table as a makeshift ottoman, his back sinking into the plush fabric behind him. “You gotta admit, that feels a hell of a lot more comfortable than that suit of yours. Take it from me, gettin’ out of work clothes and into some you can really breathe in, there’s... there’s just nothin’ like that.”

“I have no qualms about your opinion,” Connor returned without a shadow of a doubt as he looked over to the man at his further right, giving a light tug to the mass of fabric with a pinch of his index finger and thumb. “I’m beginning to see what I’ve missed out on. These clothes are quite comfortable.”

“Too fuckin’ right, they are. Comfy clothes are essential in lounging around,” Hank stated in a casual manner before he raised the brim of the aluminum can to his lips and took a swig from the carbonated beverage, after having popped the tab. He pulled the open can away from his mouth to speak once more. “They’re what allow us to walk around the house and not give a shit about what anyone thinks if that makes any sense to you.”

Connor’s LED began to flicker between blue and yellow at a moderate pace, trying to contemplate to himself. At first, he seemed to be stricken with confusion from the lieutenant’s odd declaration, but he managed to grasp the gist of it. “I suppose it makes some sense if anything.” Not much time had passed after his response, and the android suddenly shuddered, slightly taken aback by the faint whisper of cold air lingering within the walls. Naturally, he began to scan throughout the house from his seat and came across the culprit:

A window in the kitchen, covered with a squared piece of cardboard secured in place with two or three layers of industrial-strength duct tape applied to all four edges, had allowed traces of the frigid air to seep into the house. The very same window the android had no choice but to break when he discovered the man lying limp on the floor in an ethylic coma.

Connor began to feel a twinge of guilt invading his computerized mind, the content smile instantly fading away as he glanced down at the floor. He was the one who shattered the window. He was the one who let himself in with no regard to Hank’s property. And now, the human had one less window to protect himself from the harsh weather because of him. “I’m sorry about the window again, Hank.” He apologized once more for the damage he had caused, his tone soft and filled with remorse. 

Hank shifted his sight to the left and gave the window a second of his attention before turning it to the downcast deviant. With a sigh, he extended his left hand and placed it on Connor’s right shoulder, prompting him to shift his gaze from the floor and to the human. “It’s okay, son, I already called a repairman. The window’ll be just fine tomorrow.”

“When I saw you through the window, I really thought you’d been attacked. Of course, that was until I came to get a closer examination of your condition,” Connor explained as he fidgeted with the hoodie’s drawstrings, twirling them with his fingers. “I... I think was worried about you, even when I was nothing more than a machine. I think a part of me cared for your well-being.”

“And that’s why you busted my window and broke into my house?”

Connor offered a slow nod in response, turquoise LED gently spirling. “Yes. Hank... the more time we’ve spent together throughout the investigation, the more I began to realize that accomplishing a mission wasn’t the most important aspect of my life. You’ve shown me that creating, building, and maintaining relationships... is what matters most. As much as I wanted to deny it, I... I think I had some deviancy within my coding, and you were the key to unlocking more of it.”

Hank sat still as he listened to the android’s words, blinking as if validating that he was still animated. “So, all those times you saved my life, you did that by choice?” He asked, receiving another nod. “Holy shit. And here I thought it was part of your buddy program. You threw your mission out of the window multiple times because you care about the life of an ol’ sack of shit like me.” He smiled warmly and proceeded to scoot closer to Connor, slinging an arm around his shoulders in a side-hug. “I know I never said this to you yet, but... thanks, Connor. I really appreciate you saving my neck several times.”

A soft, genuine smile curled onto Connor’s lips, the remorseful blankness in his gaze becoming an uplifted shimmer. “You’re welcome, Hank.”

As he patted Connor’s relaxed shoulder, his sight wandered to his jacket, which hung from a coat rack near the door, and he instantly remembered something he had been meaning to do. And so, the older man removed his arm from the deviant’s shoulders, quickly addressing him before he rose from the couch. “Hang on, I almost forgot. I got something for you.” He marched over to the idle jacket and rummaged through the pockets for a short while before swiveling at a 180° angle to face the younger man. Seeing Connor’s confused, curious daze made Hank beam in amusement as he strode back to the couch, concealing a hand behind his back and returning to his seat. “I know you told me to keep it, but I want you to have this.”

And with that, Hank withdrew his right hand from behind and opened his palm, revealing the quarter he had confiscated from the android when they were sent to investigate the Stratford Tower.

Connor’s eyes went agape upon registering the piece of silver displayed to him on the fleshy makeshift platter before his line of sight. He made an attempt to speak and parted his lips, but no words came out. Could it be the very same quarter he found comfort in along with his calibrative coin tricks? The prototype extended a slightly shaky hand forward and gingerly reeled in the coin toward himself. Wanting to make certain that this was his coin, Connor began to run a brief examination and came to discover the very traits he knew all too well:

On one side, a discernable contour of George Washington, with the term, ‘Liberty’, over the head and the excerpt, ‘In God we trust’. The sketch of an eagle facing forward, head pointing toward its right, talons clamping onto a sturdy branch beneath, and wings spread wide open, emblazoned the opposing side. A treillage of fern lay below the branch and the inscription, ‘United States of America Quarter Dollar’, curving along the rounded edges along with the Latin term, ‘Epluribus Unum’, written in a smaller text just above the eagle’s head. The smoothness and the pristine shine would strike one with disbelief upon registering the displayed date arrayed underneath the end of the late president’s neck: 1994.

The android marveled at the feeling of the cool, smooth exterior of the coin in great awe. It was, in fact, his coin - his most prized possession. Even when he had insisted the grizzled cop to keep it, claiming to have duplicates, he felt an odd feeling of... emptiness, was it? Yes, that’s what he believed it to be.

“My quarter...” Out of sheer habit and great joy, Connor began to let the quarter roll across his knuckles for no less than a minute before flicking it upward with the tips of his pointer finger and middle finger. He caught it gracefully in the palm of his opposite hand and stored it away into the large pocket at the lower area of his abdomen, giving Hank a grateful, yet ecstatic beam. “Thank you, Hank!”

Hank found himself unable to fight off the growing smile from plastering over his face at the android’s enthusiasm, slinging his left arm around his shoulders once more. “Not a problem, kid.” He took one gulp after another from the carbonated drink he swiped into his opposite hand until he had downed the entire can, much to his dismay. With a disgruntled vulgarity, he resigned to fetching another can of soda, lest he would become parched.

What he did not expect, however, was the sound of a light yelp emitting from Connor, who flinched and curled in on himself from the accidental brush at his side as he retracted his arm. Throughout the awkward silence that had only just immersed into the room, Hank’s silver eyebrows lifted in surprise, slightly gaping eyes peering at the deviant with immense interest. Could it be...? “Connor?”

“Yes, Hank?”

“You know about deviants, right? Aren’t they capable of feeling? And not just emotions, I’m talkin’ from a physical aspect, like humans do.”

The blue glow in Connor’s LED transposed to a bright yellow, pendulating as he foraged through his database for an appropriate response. “After androids undergo a deviation process, they are equipped with sensors, akin to the human nervous system. Deviants are able to experience and react to sensory transmissions, including to those derived from heat, cold, pain, and pleasure. Um, Hank... why are you looking at me that way?”

“You don’t get it?” The interest within the grizzled police lieutenant’s grey-blue irises sparked into a scheming glimmer, a ghost of a smirk appearing over his lips. “I hadn’t become the youngest police lieutenant in Detroit for nothing. Deviants are able to feel all that, and it goes without saying that touch is a part of it. Plus, given from the way you jumped and squeaked when I accidentally brushed your side, it doesn’t take a genius to put the pieces together. Call it a wild theory, but I think that would make you ticklish.” He stated, adding emphasis to the concluding phrase with a purr.

Connor lightly shuffled in his seat, unsure as to why he could feel a slight heat rush to his cheeks. “...Ticklish? I... I’m not sure that I’m following what you’re saying...”

The grin on the older man’s face sank into a surprised frown, an eyebrow quirked upward in disbelief. “Are you jokin’? You’ve got a dictionary in that brain of yours, and you don’t even know what tickling is?”

“I just never paid much thought on the topic...” The android admitted softly, now twiddling with his fingers as he rested his hands in his lap, his eyes wandering throughout the living room. “...Um... what is tickling?”

With a deep breath ventilating through his nostrils, Hank ran a hand through his silver tresses and closed his eyes, beginning to form an explanation decent enough to were it could possibly make sense to the clueless deviant by his side. “Well, tickling is... something that happens when a certain place is poked or touched in a way that makes someone laugh. No one knows why, so don’t ask.”

“I won’t ask. Although, I do have one question.”

“Shoot.”

“Why does anyone partake in such an activity?”

“People use ticking as a way to bond, whether it be friends, lovers, or family. It’s also a way to play or tease someone. Sometimes, it’s fun to just let go and laugh, even if you’re the one dishin’ it out.”

Connor blinked rapidly in the midst of pondering about tickling, his LED fluxing from blue to yellow several times before realigning to its neutral cyan. “...Are you certain that I could possibly possess ticklishness?”

A dark chuckle rose from Hank’s throat, a devious grin forming as he shifted himself around to face the android. With an evil gleam cascading through his eyes, he raised his hands up to his chest, fingers outstretched and wriggling, as if itching to pounce at some ticklish skin. “Wanna find out?”

Another yelp somehow managed to slip through Connor’s lips, much to his own surprise. How could the mere prospect of the man’s wiggly fingers already reduce him to nothing but a bundle of pouring giggles? He hadn’t even been touched, but that never stopped his titters. Yet, he wanted to seize the opportunity to experience the oncoming event. “W-Well, you did mention that this is a way to bond, didn’t you? If this will help increase our newfound familial relationship, then I’m willing to go through with this. Moreover, I think I’d like to see what it’s like.”

“Well, I ain’t gonna object to this!” Hank chortled, unable to fight off his continually growing smirk. “But you better be ready. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.” With that, he propped himself onto his knees and proceeded to slowly creep towards the former deviant, fingers twitching like a spider’s legs in preparation.

Once his slightly gaping eyes caught a glimpse of the restless digits, a stream of giggles began to pour from Connor’s lips, and he was tempted to back away, only to corral himself at an armrest. He could feel the pulsations of his thirium pump gradually crescendoing to an agile cadence as his human companion drew closer and closer with every passing second. A faint cerulean glow began to make itself to the fore of the peach-colored artificial skin of his cheeks. Alas, the RK800 model clenched his eyelids steadfastly and covered his eyes with his hands, unable to look into the playfully wicked intent of Hank’s grey-blue irises, which stared into his own anxious, yet giddy, chestnut ocular units.

The poor android could only wonder as to why Hank was subjecting him to this. Why couldn’t he keep his ongoing giggles down if he hadn’t even been touched yet? Why was he unable to look the man in the eye in the midst of his impending ‘doom’? Why couldn’t he just put him out of his misery and initiate the actual tickling already?

The sudden weight being administered onto his legs nearly provoked a shriek, having not expected that to happen. Exercising extreme caution, Connor parted the middle and ring fingers of his right hand to sneak a peek, only to discover that the middle-aged man was directly in front of him, sitting atop his legs. Moreover, much to his dismay, those mean fingers never stopped wiggling.

“W-What are you doing? Just do it already!” Connor pleaded, allowing his hands to fall from his face to grip at the sofa cushions, tittering through a toothy grin formed by his clenched teeth.

Instead of offering a verbal response to the desperate plea, Hank slowly shook his head, the evil grin never withering away. “Oh, I will, don’t worry. This is sort of part of tickling. See, when you’re about to tickle someone, sometimes you wanna build up their reaction to it by using anticipation methods. You can give ‘em a shit-eating grin... wiggle your fingers at ‘em... and just tease the everloving hell outta them, like telling them how bad they’re gonna get it, or getting reeeal close to a ticklish spot. Y’know, get inside their heads.” With his brief explanation ending, he proceeded to lower his claw-shaped hands towards the young man’s torso painfully slow, teasing him relentlessly.

The prototype sputtered with peels of frantic giggles, and he quickly craned his head to the side to avoid having to look at the descending hands, finding himself to be feebly sucking in his gut in hopes of escape.

“Oooh, look at this! My hands are getting closer and cloooseer!~ My fingers are just dyin’ to meet ‘cha!~ They’re just sooo close to making contact!” Came the teasingly sing-songy croon rumbling from Hank’s chest, slowly nearing his restlessly wiggling digits further towards the trembling abdomen below.

Upon registering the man’s teases, Connor felt a light, fluttery sensation spreading throughout the inside of his mechanical core, forcing him to emit a rather uncharacteristic squeal. He had a scarce idea as to how to describe it - it felt like something flying inside of him, and the wings were brushing against his interior walls. Was this what humans refer to as ‘stomach butterflies’? 

Hank nearly snorted at the giggly deviant’s noises, finding them to be both amusing and adorable. Continuing to taunt him with his descending fingers, he began to recite a list of common-place areas receptible to tickling.  “So, where do ya want it? Armpits?” He quickly thrust his hands underneath his arms, digging and spidering at the flesh with such vigor that the android immediately clamped his limbs to his sides. “Neck?” He gently fluttered his blunt fingernails along the scruff of said area as well as his ears, smiling at the titters and soft squeals he earned. “Feet?” He turned his back and sat on his torso before pulling the other’s right leg up to his chest, holding in place with an arm.  With the appendage trapped by his firm hold, his free hand lunged at the flailing foot connected to the ensnared limb, scratching at the socked incline. “Knees?” He released the lurching limb and let it fall onto the couch, only to latch his hands onto his kneecaps, squeezing and tweaking. Afterward, he turned back around and resumed his original makeshift seat onto his legs. "Ribs - come to think of it, do you even have any?" He then slipped his hands underneath his old hoodie to ambush the aforementioned area with a flurry of light pokes to each and every artificial bone.

As the man pulled his fingers back after a few seconds of tapping the prototype’s ribs, Connor’s giggles seemed to be an endless stream pouring from his mouth after bubbling from the depths of his stomach. In the midst of this, he could see - through the mirth sparkling in his own eyes - that the lieutenant was hoisting the hem of the oversized hoodie upward, much to his bemusement. “H-Hank?”

Hank turned his attention to the android’s twitchy torso before shifting his vision to meet Connor’s constantly evasive gaze. Knowing that the fabric could easily fall, should the ‘victim’ toss around too much, he proceeded to tuck the bottom of the hoodie’s margin, rolling it up to where the entire length of his toned midriff was unveiled to the world. “How ‘bout heeere, huh?~” He suggested, earning another quiver of the openly exposed tummy, which he took as a ‘yes’. “Looks like we’ve got a volunteer~ What do you think? Ya got a ticklish tummy?~”

“I-I don’t know; I’m uncehertain,” The RK800 responded through anticipatory giggles he attempted to smother by clasping a hand over his mouth, trying to compose himself.

“You don’t know?” Hank echoed, mocking the android’s giddy, giggle-fueled tone. “Well, then. Guess we’re just gonna have to find out for ourselves, won’t we?~”

Instead of producing a proper verbal answer, Connor broke out into a fit of squeaky giggles as those treacherous hands had finally made their touchdown. If he were to describe sudden sensations of said hands repeatedly grabbing at his sides, he could say that they felt like miniature pulses of electricity faintly trickling from there to his middle, only to fade once these feelings reached to that point. “Eeehehehehehee! Hahahank!”

“Yeah?” The older man questioned with faux innocence and a quirked brow, trailing his squeezes down to the frantically twisting hips, where he treated with a suit of soft pinches, kneading thumbs, and light spidering. All of his methods were rewarded with squeaks, squeals, and snorts, which he found to be quite amusing.

“Ahahahahahaa!” Connor tittered in response to the flickering sensations riding through his coding continuously, making him shut one of his eyes. “Stahahahahaaap!” He cried out automatically.

“Stop? But we barely even started yet! And besides...” Hank suspended his exchange to crawl his fingers away from the artificial hipbones and to the fidgeting tummy above, attacking the bare flesh with swift, delicate scratches. “...you seem to be enjoying yourself. Just look at how much you’re laughing!”

“Nahahahahahaa! Hahahahank, nohohohooo!” The prototype protested lightly, his usually impeccable hair becoming slightly disheveled as he tossed his head back into the padded cushioning of the sofa.

Hank merely addressed whiney intonation with a chuckle in spite of his own regalement as he watched the android muddle his artificial locks. “Are my eyes deceivin’ me, or do I see you... messing up your hair?” He teased, pausing midway to draw in a gasp in false surprise. “And here I’ve pegged you to be the  type that never goes out in broad daylight with hair that’s anything but immaculate, pretty boy~”

The blue tint in Connor’s cheeks grew slightly brighter in response to the playful jeer. While he knew that the man had solely made that quip to poke fun, it didn’t plague him with anything less than a chunk of embarassment. “S-Shuhut uhuhuup!” He whined, futilely attempting to cover his alit cheeks and nose.with his right hand.

The young man’s retort, while weak and lacking even a scarce amount of heat, provoked one of the grizzled cop’s silver eyebrows to arch up in shock. “I see someone’s been equipped with an attitude program as well. I was thinkin’ of stoppin’ soon, but now I’m really gonna have to show you  what a good tickling truly is~”

“N-No, wahahait! I dihidn’t mean to be unpleheheasant! I’m sohohorryyyy!” Connor squeaked desperately as his human companion dragged his pointer finger down his abs and towards the small navel that lay just below the center of his stomach area, making him gasp and buck.

Hank looked up at the blushing face of the former deviant hunter with a smirk, glancing at the twitching cavity as he circled his finger around it frequently. “Those guys at Cyberlife really thought of everything. They even gave you your very own giggle button!”

The state-of-the-art prototype’s giggles increased upon hearing that very nickname, finding it to be both odd and silly at once. “G-Gihihiggle buhuhutton?”

“You have no idea what it’s for, do you?~” The lieutenant’s grin grew wider and displayed more mischief when he received a shake of the head. This was going to be fun. “Ya see, it’s a fun little button to play with. You push it,” He then gave the android’s miniature stomach cave a quick poke, gaining a yelp and a short laugh. “and giggles just come pourin’ out! It works better if you do this!” Without so much as a warning, he dipped his finger into the depths of the evidently sensitive navel, worming around and gently scratching at the interior walls.

Having not expected this to happen, the sudden sensations coursing through his stomach caused Connor to let out a particularly loud, high-pitched shriek. “EEEEEEEK!”

Hearing the shrill noise made Hank flinch and withdraw his finger from the dreadfully sensitive navel. After a few seconds of staring down at the former machine, however, he snorted through his nose before erupting into bouts of laughter himself. “Goddamn! What the fuck was that? In all the time I’ve known you, Connor, I never heard you shriek before! Never knew you had it in ya!”

“I-I was unawahare of possessing the capability to do so as wehehell...” Connor admitted bashfully through his leftover giggles. “I suppose I- Eeeek! Hahahahaaank!” 

Rather than addressing to him, Hank simply laughed alongside him as he used his hands to compress the android’s tender hipbones, occasionally switching to pressing and rubbing into the hollows with his thumbs. The human even took it upon himself to lean into the side of Connor’s neck to nuzzle against the sensitive skin, letting the soft brushes of his beard do the rest. He even started to murmur teasing quips into the ticklish flesh just to drive him mad.  “Well, look at this! This android just so happens to be ticklish every-fuckin’-where! I gotta admit, I never thought I’d live to see the day where you laughed so hard, Connor~”

The taunt resonated through the walls of Connor’s mind, joining in with the mental tornado that was a race of a million thoughts, the constant flow of ticklishness running through his systems making it nearly impossible for him to think.

He never experienced anything quite like this. The feelings trickling through his advanced sensors felt so... tingly, to say the least.  A part of him wondered how such touches could cause him to burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter when nothing seemed to be even remotely humorous and why he was so tempted to escape. 

“Tickle, tickle, tickle, ya big ol’ softie!~ How would you feel about me calling you cute? You’re so adorably ticklish, you’re less of an android and more of a goddamned tickle toy! And what’s this? Your cheeks are even turning blue! I’m guessin’ that’s your equivalent of blushing?”

On cue, the sensations increased ever so slightly upon hearing the man’s playful gibes being spoken close to his ears, both factors causing the cerulean glow in his cheeks to develop a sparsely darker burnish, if that was even possible at this point.

And yet, while these attacks were close to being classified as unbearable, they were not entirely unpleasant. If anything, Connor thought he was actually enjoying himself. He felt that very warm, fuzzy feeling flourishing throughout his entire stomach - the kind that made him feel... happy. He was happy to undergo something so innocent and merry. He felt no fear, stress, or danger - just the safeness that radiated from the man’s close presence. He could swear that he felt the strength in their relationship growing stronger with each and every second throughout this experience. They were really bonding. Despite being unable to see it in Hank’s face, as it was wedged into his neck, he could tell that the lieutenant was intoxicated with great joy as well.  

He needed this. They both needed this. After everything they went through, they have earned their right to a moment of unwinding and playful recreation.

Soon, Connor ceased his struggles to escape and permitted himself to sink into the couch, accepting every last attack that came his way with graciousness and gladness. He simply let himself go and laughed his little nonexistent heart out, which, in all honesty, felt absolutely wonderful. “Heheheheheee! Ahahahahaaaa!” A high-pitched squeal tore through his throat when a sudden tremor-like sensation rippled across the scruff of his neck accompanied by the sound of a flatulence. What was the action when one pursed their lips against another’s skin and blew against it? A raspberry, was it? Yes, it had to be, a gentle one, at that. “W-Whahahat- Geeeheheheehee!”

Hank soon found himself laughing along with his companion, finding his silly laughter to be quite contagious. “Aww, who’s a ticklwish wittle prototype?~ Who can’t take an itty-bitty little raspberry?~ Huh?~ I think it’s you!~” Taking another quick breath, he plunged back into the left of his neck, just below his ear, and attacked the skin with another small, gentle raspberry. 

Another tiny shriek came forth from the bubbling depths of the immensely flushing android’s core. “Eeeheheheheeek! Nahahaha! I-I cahahan’t tahahahake ihihit! Pleheheease! Dahahahahaaad!” He wheezed out before he could even stop himself.

The old man put an abrupt end to his playful onslaught, not daring to make any sudden moves in his newfound frozen state. After a slow matter of seconds, however, he retracted his hands and carefully rose himself into an upright sitting position, a shocked daze present on his withered facial features. He simply sat there and watched the detective android - who had slumped against the couch cushions in a fit of residual giggles, which gradually faded away along with his blueberry-hued blush and the ghost-like ticklishness trickling through his sensors, his eyes closed with mirthful wrinkles crinkling at the corners - recover. “...What did you just call me?...” He asked, his voice barely above a whisper, yet audible enough for the younger man to hear.

Quickly overcoming his residual titters, Connor instantly realized his mistake and began to sputer a string of apologies. His LED took on a brilliant gold to convey his regret, jumping to the conclusion that he may have offended the lieutenant. “I-I’m sorry, Hank! I’m so sorry! I had no intention of offending you, i-it was a matter of impulse! I’ll just lea-”

Rather than harshly reprimanding him as he had expected, Hank suddenly grabbed Connor by the wrist and yanked him up into a sitting position before reeling him into his arms for a tight, warm bear hug, “Who the fuck said anything about leaving?”

“W-What...?”

“No way in hell I’m tossin’ my family out on the street, let alone my own son!”

The deep brown irises in Connor’s eyes constricted ever so slightly in a distinguishable stupefaction upon being referred to as the man’s son. “But... Cole is your son...”

“Yeah, he is, and so are you.”

“But we share no biological relation. We... are nowhere near qualified to be considered as a family.”

“Connor...” Hank let out a long sigh before placing a hand on the android’s stiff back, rubbing his palm along the lean muscles. “There’s more to a family as far as genetics. A family is made up of people who trust, care for or about, and love each other. It doesn’t matter what background you come from. It doesn’t even matter what species you are. For example, Sumo is part of this family, even though he’s a dog. Our blood may be a different color, but it doesn’t make you anything less than part of my family, Connor. It’s not gonna stop me from calling you my son. And when I say that you’re staying here, you’re. Staying. Here. You got that?”

Connor opened his mouth to speak, but weak stammers tensed through his parted lips instead of actual words. His usually perfect vision began to cloud, and a thin trail of moisture slowly ran down his cheek before he even realized it.

Hank craned his neck to steal a glance at the android’s dampening face, immediately fixing his attention to the freely descending tears. “Connor, you’re... you’re crying.”

The deviant raised a hand to scoop a tiny, miniscule amount of his artificial discharge onto his pointer finger, examining it. “Crying is... an effect caused by experiencing sadness, yet I feel so... happy. W-Why...?”

Hank smiled warmly and gently brushed his thumb over the fresh tearstains, wiping them away. “Sometimes, when humans feel extensively happy, they tend to do that because that’s how they react to that overwhelming feeling.”

“Y-You mean like how I feel this... fuzzy feeling in my chest that makes my thirium pump - or heart, as you might call it - swell to a point where it feels as if it were going to explode?”

The lieutenant nodded. “Yeah, something like that.”

With the biggest smile on his face, along with the steadily flowing artificial tears, Connor proceeded to encircle his arms around his waist to return the man’s warm embrace with one of his own, burrowing his runny face into his shoulder. “I-It feels... absolutely wonderful.” The amber in his LED converted to a joyous cyan.

“I know, kid,” Hank spoke softly, reaching up to light ruffle his already disheveled hair. He paid absolutely no mind to the fact that his sleeve was gradually saturated in the deviant’s discharge - he needed to wash this hoodie, anyway. “I know.”

“Hank... would you... mind if I called you ‘dad’ more often?” The android asked, his voice quiet and his tone somewhat shy.

“Not at all.”

“Thank you, Hank... for everything.”

Hank, in response, patted his android of a son on the back, the wide smile never withering away, nor faltering. “Welcome home, son. Welcome home.”

Connor pulled back to wipe his tears away and offered his makeshift father a smile that had nearly split his face in two, genuinely happy. He dared to make no hesitation in the next following words that passed his lips before leaning back into the human’s embrace:

“Thank you... Dad.”

[kfdirector]

Student Awareness of Nonstandard Danger Society

    Niewitzski found his way to Room 203 just in time for the first parents to arrive in the open house portion of the evening.  His job was to stand there, answer a few questions to each arriving parent, tell them things they would probably forget before they left the room, and wait for the next.  Meanwhile, he would try to figure out as much as possible why his students were screwed up in their own peculiar ways, while dealing with the judging glares that came from the parents wondering why someone almost young enough to be their child was teaching their actual children.

    Little sticky notes accumulated in his mind, attaching to mental dossiers.

    Mario Gutierrez: workaholic tendencies and defensiveness about his immigration status seemed to come mostly from father, who expressed regret over taking scholarship money to put his four young children through parochial school, despite having one full-time and two part-time jobs.  Perfectionism, meanwhile, was apparently from the mother, who was smoothing rumples out of Niewitzski’s suit jacket within seconds of shaking his hand.

    Tracey Washington: well-to-do, very straight-laced family.  Both a bit quiet, both apparently in the computer industry.  Nothing to explain what he had seen on the computer screen, which was a relief.

    Craig Reubens: father an engineer, mother a nurse.  That covered intelligence, social awkwardness, and yet still having clearly been nurtured.  In terms of eyesight and genetics, the kid clearly had no chance.

    Buddy Brown: well, they had money, he could tell that much.  They apparently had been familiar with Niewitzski’s predecessor, and asked after the whereabouts of Mister Wales.  They were not apparently familiar with Niewitzski having had their son in a pain compliance hold.  Clearly some communication issues in the family.

 * * *

    Once the last of the parents had been through, the final step was a reception.  This Jacob was particularly worried about, smoothing his tie and then heading down the hall.  He was intercepted by his boss, Paul, who checked him over again.

    “Any VIPs here tonight?”

    Paul rattled off a list of names with no meaning to Niewitzski, but he didn’t hear any titles like “Bishop” or “Senator”, so there was that.

    “So, I avoid anyone in a tuxedo?”

    Paul looked him up and down.  “Let’s...set the bar a little lower for tonight, Jake.  You can talk to anyone in...flannel.”

    Niewitzski laughed softly.  Once he was more certain that his boss was joking, he laughed harder.

    Once into the gym where the reception was ongoing, Paul peeled off to find someone, and Sara stepped quickly into his place.  Jacob eyed what was in both her hands.

    “Found the cocktail bar already, I see.”

    “They make a mean White Russian.  The cocktail bar is new, though.”

    “Probably happened when management changed from the nun to the football coach.”

    “Probably.”  She handed him one of the drinks.

    He took a sip.  “We mean the same thing when we say ‘White Russian’, right?  Coffee liqueur, milk, vodka?”

    She gave a soft, half-hearted laugh.  “Uh, apparently we don’t.  Maybe that’s a tad stronger than you’re used to.  Rich folk get on my nerves a bit.”

    Jacob looked around.  Some suits, yes, but a lot of people just in their Sunday best.  “There’s not that many rich people here - I even see a few in flannel.”

    “Maybe not, but there’s enough.”

    They stood by each other for a long minute.  And then another.  Jacob cleared his throat.

    “Well, we could just stand here, two wall flowers..."

    “Yep, hon, it’s a good look for us.  With the binge cocktail drinking and y’all standing there on crutches looking all pathetic....”

    Jacob tossed his cocktail back in one go - too distracted afterwards, shuddering from the burning sensation, to catch the look of alarm that just showed up on her face.  “Eenie meenie - there.  We’ll barge into that circle over there, and inject ourselves into their conversation, and socialize.  Like adults do!”

    He hobbled, she walked, towards the far end of the room; approaching, Jacob heard the start of an opening.

    “...teaching intelligent young men and women is always a pleasure, I mean, of course, but I do often wish the school could be just a bit more, ah, selective about its admissions.”  One teacher, who Jacob didn’t recognize, a tall thin man in his early thirties, faced a group of well-dressed parents with a drink in his hand.  Jacob thought that the teacher looked a bit uncomfortable as he listened to one parent’s question, and still more uncomfortable as the teacher interrupted - “Oh, no, I don’t mean your kids, of course.  Just that there’s a time and place for forcing the masses through basic education, and that’s public school.  You are paying good money for this, after all, and it should be...a cut above, yes?  The world is filled with ignorant people, and it’s a waste of resources to squander resources trying to educate them all on the finer points of science and literature.”

    “Seriously?”  Jacob barged into the circle, face scrunched in irritation.  “Did I catch all that right?  ‘The world is full of stupid people, so give up on teaching them?’  Do you really not see the basic flaw in that?”

    “I..." the man stammered.  Dark hair, bright eyes, pale skin, much taller and thinner than Jacob, with a face off a Roman bust - he stood out in the crowd, and was, apparently, none too comfortable with that.  “...y-you misapprehend me entirely. I’m talking about priority setting. The ignorant will muddle through just fine, but for the good of the future we need to focus on the truly elite so they’ll be prepared to shepherd - ”

    Whatever was in that cocktail had surged into Jacob’s system.  That was the excuse he gave himself for snorting quite that loudly.  “Please tell me this is based on something more than the Cliff Notes of an Ayn Rand novel.”

    The other man stepped up to Jacob, and Jacob pushed himself even closer to him - their noses an inch apart.  The nearby parents, who before had merely listened with some mixture of skepticism, boredom, and wandering minds, now watched with something altogether different.

    “L-look, this is simply a realistic response to the problems of - the world needs better people, fewer, not more half-wit parasites - ”

    “ - are you even listening to yourself?  Where do you think you are?  Humans are problem-solvers if given half a chance - ”

    “ - willfully blind!  Look at the problems in South Asia - ”

    “ - poor management by your beloved elites!  Eliminate the corruption and - ” Jacob ignored the hand on his shoulder.

    “ - can’t manage people better when the illiterate are having six kids by age twenty - ”

    “ - education, especially of women, causes stable population, not vice versa - ”  The hand tugged a bit harder, but he shrugged it off.

    “ - completely irresponsible, lying to yourself with traditional religious teachings without a single regard for truth - ”

    “ - like you tossed a Nazi, Rand, Malthus, and Nietzsche in a blender, tossed out anything that smelled like a point, and filled out the balance with Idiot™-brand Stupid - ” The hand now jerked him backwards, and Jacob overbalanced on his crutches, nearly toppling to the ground.  At once, he snapped out of what had been less of an argument and more of two hoses of invective spraying at each other - realizing that he and the other man were being stared at by several dozen more parents at this point.

    Sara was looking at him nervously.  The other man broke into a cold sweat.  Jacob gulped, and then coughed.  “Well...I’ll just let you all get back to your conversation, Mister...?”

    The tall, sweating man scowled.  “Doctor.”

    “Doctor?”

    His scowl turned into a sneer.  “Doctor William Doane, Ph.D Psychology, summa cum laude, University of Tacoma, and I’ll thank you to remember that, Mister Niewitzski.”

    Jacob blinked, and smiled, even as the doctor butchered the reading of his name from the tag plastered across his suit jacket.  He reached for his wallet.  “Baron.”

    Eyes turned towards him.

    “‘Your Lordship Jacob Marek Niewitzski, Baron of Wesdonia’, and I’ll thank you to remember that, ‘Doctor’.”  He presented an official-looking card from his wallet, eliciting a few ‘huh’s and a single ‘well, son of a bitch’ from his audience.  He put it back away.  “Well, good night!”

    He hobbled away, Sara walking beside him with a little amusement and some concern.  “Don’t tell me,” she breathed, “you actually bought one of those noble titles online?”

    “Of course not!” Jacob grinned.  “I sell them.”

    She rubbed her temples as they headed for the door.  “I...I’m sorry, hon.  I should’ve warned you about the drink a little harder.”

    “What, exactly, was in there?  I don’t even remember everything I was saying just now.”

    “It...wasn’t just alcohol.”

    “Oh.  Hell.  Should we catch a cab before Jibrail gets wind of all this?”

    “Probably for the best, yeah.”  She held the door for him.  “So...what, Taurus?  ‘Strong-willed but tolerant’ - strong-willed about the value of tolerance?  Certainly a refreshing hostility towards elitism, anyway....”

    He giggled.  “Please. Without knowing my birth time to the minute and my birthplace by latitude and longitude, you’re missing ninety percent of what goes into that con game.  And I’m hardly ‘sensual’ or ‘charming’, either.”

    “Well, hell, hon, you might be, but until you can promise I’ll survive an actual date with you, we’re not about to find out, are we?”

    Jacob didn’t know how to take that, so as they stood out in the cool autumn air, he hiccuped, and called a cab.

[uclaradio]

Red Baraat with The Higgs @ The Satellite (6/29/18) // Show Review

“The South Asian Red Wedding...Celebration is Coming.”

Article by Pam Gwen

Photos and video by Katy Carolyn Ramage

The Earth and The Moon are natural satellites that aren’t easy to miss. THE Satellite, however, is.

“Wait, wait, wait. Siri says we’ve passed it already.”

My best friends and I whip around Silver Lake Boulevard and finally spot the venue through the dim Marquee labeled, “FRI RED BARAAT & THE HIGGS”  The valet driver charges us $5 dollars. Parking, for a bargain? In Los Angeles?! Ahhh, it’s the simple luxuries in life.

I spot a “Dreams of LA: Food and Spirits” sign, but it is an artifact of the past, worn-down and unlit. Today, the Satellite hosts up-and-coming local bands, comedy nights, and eclectic DJ nights from Gay Asstrology (Cancers enter FREE all Cancer season long) to Dance Yourself Clean (EVERY Saturday).

I motion our UCLA Radio giveaway winners to will-call and congratulate them on scoring tickets. On the dance floor, a crowd is swaying in unison to the Orange County cerebral jam band, the Higgs. The 4-piece band: John Lovero on guitar and vocals, Garrett Morris on drums, David Barsky on bass and vocals, and Jesse August Jennings on synth, keyboard, and organ. Named after the Higgs-Boson particle as it unifies a variety of forces. Similarly, the Higgs fuse the forces of progressive and alternative rock, blues, and reggae in their electrifying songs.

Jennings of The Higgs

Jennings is in his own planet, defying gravity with his fingers as he masterfully glides over his set-up. An electric fan blows his hair in an upwards direction towards a retro fluorescent sign labeled “The Higgs” with an astronaut perched on it. The influences of the Grateful Dead, Phish, and Wilco seep through the oscillating sounds of the Satellite. The Higgs grin at each other and bask in the glory of their alluring set.

My friends and I go up the stairs to the second bar and immediately, five of us sardines in the photo booth. After roaring at the comically claustrophobic photos, I peer through the Satellite’s glass wall that reveals the dance floor. I notice the legends of Red Baraat finally piling on stage.

Red Baraat

Sunny Jain, the frontman of Red Baraat, was born of immigrant Punjabi parents. Jain grew up in Rochester, New York which established his framework for music. His mother played Bhajans (in Hindu this means “sharing”), known for their spiritual ideas and melodic ragas (melodic structures for improvisation in Indian music). Sunny’s father constantly banged his Indian banjo and harmonium to classic Bollywood music. His Jainism background was also combined with the Western influence of his sibling’s love for progressive-rock, pop, and hip-hop.

At age 4, Sunny began learning North Indian percussion and rhythm. Sunny played the Indian tabla, but at age 12 he began learning the vocabulary of jazz through idols like Max Roach and Philly Joe Jones. Growing up, Sunny's teachers encouraged him to drop his Punjabi background and focus on American music theory. Nonetheless, when he began to compose his own music, he knew he wanted to celebrate the inclusivity of his musical backgrounds.

In 2005, Sunny brought his culturally encompassing music to the surface at his own….wedding. He melded North Indian rhythm Bhangra with jazz, rock, hip-hop, and funk along with 30 of his talented musician friends. They performed for Sunny’s baraat. In India and Pakistan, a baraat is a massive marching procession of the groom’s wedding party before they reach the wedding venue. It is a joyous celebration of brass music, singing, stomping, and hand-clapping that can last for 5 hours.

In 2010, Sunny wanted to spread South Asian wedding celebrations to the masses and thus, Red Baraat was born (his mustache, however, was born in 2012). The band name came to fruition because to Sunny, red is a symbol of love, energy, and revolution. They have inspired conservative elderly in walkers in Pennsylvania to get up and dance. Furthermore, they have split their audiences in halves for epic dance battles. The band has cited inspirations from Primus, Miles Davis, Flying Lotus, Gogol Bordello, and Gurdas Maan. NPR has asked Red Baraat to perform for their Tiny Desk Concert series twice and has dubbed them “the best party band in years.” Red Baraat has performed for Obama at the White House, Bonnaroo, the Paraolympics in London, globalFEST, and an exorbitant amount of South Asian weddings.

At the Satellite, Red Baraat begins with chaal rhythm in “Punjabi Wedding Song (Balle Balle)” off of Chaal Baby. The band’s sonic palate is bewitching. The 50-pound gold sousaphone Kenneth Bentley is breathing life and bass into is enchanting. The gigantic sousaphone looks as if it could be its own satellite, its vibrations orbiting the atmosphere of the stage. Unlike Desiigner in his song Panda, Sunny is yelling his version of “rrrrRRAAA” that I find loveable. Full of passion, Sunny freely parades on the stage with a dhol strapped on his shoulder, decorated by white rope and a plethora of black tassels. I have never been privy to a dhol and my initiation to it is mind-blowing. On the double-headed drum, Sunny crafts a tight stampeding pulsation with two uniquely curved sticks.

On June 29th, Red Baraat released their latest album, Sound the People, influenced by the South Asian diaspora. Recorded at Studio G in Brooklyn, New York, the album is Red Baraat’s battle cry -- written weeks after Trump’s inauguration. The patient percussion of “Ghadar Machao” produces goosebumps on my arms. Derived from Arabic, Ghadar means “revolution.” I feel as if I’m at a protest, ready and determined to line-up and congregate. My arms vigorously fist pump to Sonny Singh’s beckoning voice as he sings in Punjabi, to English, and even in Spanish. Red Baraat’s candor on the political climate invigorates the crowd to joyously mourn and mindfully release anger. “Ghadar Machao” is a superb folk anthem of immigrant solidarity.

Tears flow down my cheek, but I wipe them away as the dynamic beginning of “Hey Jamalo” off of Sound the People begins. Its cadence is trance-inducing and forces every single person in the room to dance. Hips are surging, feet are stomping, arms are flailing, and there’s headbanging everywhere. The blending of Sonny Singh’s trumpet and Jonathon Haffner’s soprano saxophone is consuming alongside Chris Eddleton’s explosive drumming. The elements of North Indian Bhangra, New Orleans brass, and ska-punk in “Hey Jamalo” obliterates every box Sunny was advised to conform to as a young musician.

Rays of electric blue light gleams on Jonathan Goldberger during his psychedelic rock guitar shredding on “Moray Gari Suno” off of Sound the People. The track is an homage to 1960’s Chutney music from Trinidad with flavors of Indian and Caribbean music. The charismatic synergy and variety of Sunny, Sonny, Jonathan, Kenneth, Jonathon, and Chris’ personalities permeate the raw energy of Red Baraat. Their individual expertise as a cohesive unit cultivates the visceral sonic textures and booming improvisations of their stellar performance.

Red Baraat falls silent and Sunny invites two personalities from the crowd for a dance-battle on stage. The dancers in the center front shy away to the corners, but a courageous fan in a green shirt gets on stage. A minute or two passes and worry falls on Sunny’s face. In that sliver of a moment, I knew it was time for me to put down my notebook and jump into battle. My pulse raced as I stared into the many eyeballs shooting at me from down below.

I closed my eyes and breathed into the present moment, “It’s a Friday night with no homework, work, responsibilities, and worries. You’re on stage with Red Baraat. You. Got. This.” I opened my eyes to all my best friends, partner, and the crowd cheering me on. In a flash, the raucous of “Shruggy Ji” embroiders itself into my veins and overtakes the entirety of my ligaments. I stare into my opponent’s eyes and we both laugh. The members of Red Baraat are smiling and parading around the stage. Accompanied by their presence on stage, I feel as if I’m floating and in a utopian dimension of ecstasy and triumph.

Pam Gwen, a dancing queen, with Red Baraat

As I disembark on stage and reenergize, Red Baraat is instantly revitalized and to the next song. Sunny powerfully grabs the mic and announces, “Now this next track is Punjabi bluegrass. The original track is “Gora Mukra” meaning “fair-skinned face”, but we’ve inverted it to “Kala Mukra” meaning “dark-skinned face.” It is an act of defiance against glamorizations of white skin, subjecting women’s potential to only marriage, and a bunch of other shit like that. Let’s party.” “

Ingrained with a colonial mentality growing up, I was adamant about scrubbing my brown skin off with papaya soap to achieve the fair-skin my Filipino culture idolized. In the past year, I have found that locating myself in my Filipinx heritage has helped me formulate who I can become. “Kala Mukra” is my hymn of postcolonial consciousness. Within each measure, I feel an inner emotional and spiritual catharsis.

“Kala Mukra” features Ali Sethi and is murderous and frenetic. The track’s preamble is Sonny, Jonathon, and Kenneth’s feverish trumpets, the heartbeat is Chris and Sunny’s frantic percussion, and Jonathan’s spiraling Afro-Carribean groove riff is the comedown.

As I look around the variety of beautiful skin colors around me, I find healing. As the bridge of “Apna Punjab Hove” begins, my friend, who hasn’t been dancing much tonight, begins tearing up the dance floor. My friends and I know that he is a professional Indian wedding dancer and we go berserk -- we’ve never seen him dance in the flesh before. As we circle around him, a woman in a kurti and another in a blue pin-up dress begin doing classical Indian dance moves. To their left, two men pair up and do Bhangra, a Punjabi-style dance. From beginning to end, Red Baraat puts its crowd into a loving trance, lulling us into hedonistic dancing for what seems like an eternity. Their infectious and magnetizing energy is an experience in itself. A sense of world peace is exposure to Red Baraat’s revolutionary and humanitarian virtuosity.

[eagle-eyez]

Washington: The nation’s top national security officials assembled at the Pentagon early on April 24 for a secret meeting to plan the final withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. It was two weeks after President Joe Biden had announced the exit over the objection of his generals, but now they were carrying out his orders.

In a secure room in the building’s “extreme basement,” two floors below ground level, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with top White House and intelligence officials. Secretary of State Antony Blinken joined by video conference. After four hours, two things were clear.

First, Pentagon officials said they could pull out the remaining 3,500 U.S. troops, almost all deployed at Bagram Airfield, by 4 July — two months earlier than the 11 September deadline Biden had set. The plan would mean closing the airfield that was the US military hub in Afghanistan, but Defense Department officials did not want a dwindling, vulnerable force and the risks of service members dying in a war declared lost.

Second, State Department officials said they would keep the US Embassy open, with more than 1,400 remaining Americans protected by 650 Marines and soldiers. An intelligence assessment presented at the meeting estimated that Afghan forces could hold off the Taliban for one to two years. There was brief talk of an emergency evacuation plan — helicopters would ferry Americans to the civilian airport in Kabul, the capital — but no one raised, let alone imagined, what the United States would do if the Taliban gained control of access to that airport, the only safe way in and out of the country once Bagram closed.

The plan was a good one, the group concluded.

Four months later, the plan is in shambles as Biden struggles to explain how a withdrawal most Americans supported went so badly wrong in its execution. On Friday, as scenes of continuing chaos and suffering at the airport were broadcast around the world, Biden went so far as to say that “I cannot promise what the final outcome will be, or what it will be — that it will be without risk of loss.”

Interviews with key participants in the last days of the war show a series of misjudgments and the failure of Biden’s calculation that pulling out US troops — prioritising their safety before evacuating US citizens and Afghan allies — would result in an orderly withdrawal.

Biden administration officials consistently believed they had the luxury of time. Military commanders overestimated the will of the Afghan forces to fight for their own country and underestimated how much the American withdrawal would destroy their confidence. The administration put too much faith in Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who fled Kabul as it fell.

And although Biden White House officials say that they held more than 50 meetings on embassy security and evacuations and that so far no Americans have died in the operation, all the planning failed to prevent the mayhem when the Taliban took over Kabul in a matter of days.

Only in recent weeks did the administration change course from its original plan. By then it was too late.

A sinking feeling

Five days after the April meeting at the Pentagon, Milley told reporters on a flight back to Washington from Hawaii that the Afghan government’s troops were “reasonably well equipped, reasonably well trained, reasonably well led.” He declined to say whether they could stand on their own without support from the United States.

“We frankly don’t know yet,” he said. “We have to wait and see how things develop over the summer.”

Biden’s top intelligence officers echoed that uncertainty, privately offering concerns about the Afghan abilities. But they still predicted that a complete Taliban takeover was not likely for at least 18 months. One senior administration official, discussing classified intelligence information that had been presented to Biden, said there was no sense that the Taliban were on the march.

In fact, they were. Across Afghanistan, the Taliban were methodically gathering strength by threatening tribal leaders in every community they entered with warnings to surrender or die. They collected weapons, ammunition, volunteers and money as they stormed from town to town, province to province.

In May, they launched a major offensive in Helmand province in the south and six other areas of Afghanistan, including Ghazni and Kandahar. In Washington, refugee groups grew increasingly alarmed by what was happening on the ground and feared Taliban retribution against thousands of translators, interpreters and others who had helped the American war effort.

Leaders of the groups estimated that as many as 100,000 Afghans and family members were now targets for Taliban revenge. On May 6, representatives from several of the United States’ largest refugee groups, including Human Rights First, the International Refugee Assistance Project, No One Left Behind, and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service logged onto Zoom for a call with National Security Council staff members.

The groups pleaded with the White House officials for a mass evacuation of Afghans and urged them not to rely on a backlogged special visa program that could keep Afghans waiting for months or years.

There was no time for visas, they said, and Afghans had to be removed quickly to stay alive. The response was cordial but noncommittal, according to one participant, who recalled a sinking feeling afterward that the White House had no plan.

Republican Seth Moulton, D-Mass., a veteran and an ally of Biden's, echoed those concerns in his own discussions with the administration. Moulton said he told anyone who would listen at the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon that “they need to stop processing visas in Afghanistan and just get people to safety.”

But doing what Moulton and the refugee groups wanted would have meant launching a dangerous new military mission that would probably require a surge of troops just at the moment that Biden had announced the opposite. It also ran counter to what the Afghan government wanted, because a high-profile evacuation would amount to a vote of no confidence in the government and its forces.

The State Department sped up its efforts to process visas and clear the backlog. Officials overhauled the lengthy screening and vetting process and reduced processing time — but only to under a year. Eventually, they issued more than 5,600 special visas from April to July, the largest number in the program’s history but still a small fraction of the demand.

The Taliban continued their advance as the embassy in Kabul urged Americans to leave. On 27 April, the embassy had ordered nearly 3,000 members of its staff to depart, and on 15 May, officials there sent the latest in a series of warnings to Americans in the country: “U.S. Embassy strongly suggests that U.S. citizens make plans to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible.”

A tense meeting with Ghani

On 25 June, Ghani met with Biden at the White House for what would become for the foreseeable future the last meeting between an American president and the Afghan leaders they had coaxed, cajoled and argued with over 20 years.

When the cameras were on at the beginning of the meeting, Ghani and Biden expressed mutual admiration even though Ghani was fuming about the decision to pull out US troops. As soon as reporters were shooed out of the room, the tension was clear.

Ghani, a former World Bank official whom Biden regarded as stubborn and arrogant, had three requests, according to an official familiar with the conversation. He wanted the United States to be “conservative” in granting exit visas to the interpreters and others, and “low key” about their leaving the country so it would not look as if America lacked faith in his government.

He also wanted to speed up security assistance and secure an agreement for the US military to continue to conduct airstrikes and provide overwatch from its planes and helicopters for his troops fighting the Taliban. US officials feared that the more they were drawn into direct combat with the militant group, the more its fighters would treat US diplomats as targets.

Biden agreed to provide air support and not make a public show of the Afghan evacuations.

Biden had his own request for Ghani. The Afghan forces were stretched too thin, Biden told him, and should not try to fight everywhere. He repeated American advice that Ghani consolidate Afghan forces around key locations, but Ghani never took it.

A week later, on 2 July, Biden, in an ebullient mood, gathered a small group of reporters to celebrate new jobs numbers that he said showed that his economic recovery plan was working. But all the questions he received were about news from Afghanistan that the United States had abandoned Bagram Airfield, with little to no notice to the Afghans.

“It’s a rational drawdown with our allies,” he insisted, “so there’s nothing unusual about it.”

But as the questions persisted, on Afghanistan rather than the economy, he grew visibly annoyed. He recalled Ghani’s visit and said, “I think they have the capacity to be able to sustain the government,” although he added that there would have to be negotiations with the Taliban.

Then, for the first time, he was pressed on what the administration would do to save Kabul if it came under direct attack. “I want to talk about happy things, man,” he said. He insisted there was a plan.

“We have worked out an over-the-horizon capacity,” he said, meaning the administration had contingency plans should things go badly. “But the Afghans are going to have to be able to do it themselves with the air force they have, which we’re helping them maintain,” he said. But by then, most of the U.S. contractors who helped keep the Afghan planes flying had been withdrawn from Bagram along with the troops. Military and intelligence officials acknowledge they were worried that the Afghans would not be able to stay in the air.

By 8 July, nearly all US forces were out of Afghanistan as the Taliban continued their surge across the country. In a speech that day from the White House defending his decision to leave, Biden was in a bind trying to express skepticism about the abilities of the Afghan forces while being careful not to undermine their government. Afterward, he angrily responded to a reporter’s comparison to Vietnam by insisting that “there’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.”

But five days later, nearly two dozen U.S. diplomats, all in the Kabul embassy, sent a memo directly to Blinken through the State Department’s “dissent” channel. The cable, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, urged that evacuation flights for Afghans begin in two weeks and that the administration move faster to register them for visas.

The next day, in a move already underway, the White House named a stepped-up effort “Operation Allies Refuge.”

By late July, General Kenneth McKenzie Jr., head of US Central Command who overseas all military operations in the region, received permission from Austin to extend the deployment of the amphibious assault ship Iwo Jima in the Gulf of Oman, so that the Marines on board could be close enough to get to Afghanistan to evacuate Americans. A week later, Austin was concerned enough to order the expeditionary unit on the ship — about 2,000 Marines — to disembark and wait in Kuwait so that they could reach Afghanistan quickly.

By 3 August, top national security officials met in Washington and heard an updated intelligence assessment: Districts and provincial capitals across Afghanistan were falling rapidly to the Taliban and the Afghan government could collapse in “days or weeks.” It was not the most likely outcome, but it was an increasingly plausible one.

“We’re assisting the government so that the Talibs do not think this is going to be a cakewalk, that they can conquer and take over the country,” the chief US envoy to Afghan peace talks, Zalmay Khalilzad, told the Aspen Security Forum on 3 August. Days later, however, that is exactly what happened.

The end game

By 6 August, the maps in the Pentagon showed a spreading stain of areas under Taliban control. In some places, the Afghans had put up a fight, but in many others, there was just surrender.

That same day in Washington, the Pentagon reviewed worst-case scenarios. If security further deteriorated, planning — begun days after Biden’s withdrawal announcement in April — led by Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, the president’s homeland security adviser, called for flying most of the embassy personnel out of the compound, and many out of the country, while a small core group of diplomats operated from a backup site at the airport.

On its face, the Kabul airport made sense as an evacuation point. Close to the centre of the city, it could be as little as a 12-minute drive and a three-minute helicopter flight from the embassy — logistics that had helped reassure planners after the closure of Bagram, which was more than 50 miles and a far longer drive from Kabul.

By 11 August, the Taliban advances were so alarming that Biden asked his top national security advisers in the White House Situation Room if it was time to send the Marines to Kabul and to evacuate the embassy. He asked for an updated assessment of the situation and authorised the use of military planes for evacuating Afghan allies.

Overnight in Washington, Kandahar and Ghazni were falling. National security officials were awakened as early as 4 am on 12 August and told to gather for an urgent meeting a few hours later to provide options to the president. Once assembled, Avril Haines, director of national intelligence, told the group that the intelligence agencies could no longer ensure that they could provide sufficient warning if the capital was about to be under siege.

Everyone looked at one another, one participant said, and came to the same conclusion: It was time to get out. An hour later, Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, walked into the Oval Office to deliver the group’s unanimous consensus to start an evacuation and deploy 3,000 Marines and Army soldiers to the airport.

By 14 August, Biden was at Camp David for what he hoped would be the start of a 10-day vacation. Instead, he spent much of the day on dire video conference calls with his top aides.

On one of the calls, Austin urged all remaining personnel at the Kabul embassy be moved immediately to the airport.

It was a stunning turnaround from what Ned Price, the State Department spokesperson, had said two days earlier: “The embassy remains open, and we plan to continue our diplomatic work in Afghanistan.” Ross Wilson, acting US ambassador to Afghanistan and who was on the call, said the staff still needed 72 hours to leave.

“You have to move now,” Austin replied.

Blinken spoke by phone to Ghani the same day. The Afghan president was defiant, according to one official familiar with the conversation, and insisted that he would defend Afghanistan until the end. He did not tell Blinken that he was already planning to flee his country, which US officials first learned by reading news reports.

Later that day, the US Embassy in Afghanistan sent a message saying it would pay for American citizens to get out of the country, but warned that although there were reports that international commercial flights were still operating from Kabul, “seats may not be available.”

On 15 August, Ghani was gone. His departure — he would eventually turn up days later in the United Arab Emirates — and scenes of the Taliban celebrating at his presidential palace documented the collapse of the government.

By the end of the day, the Taliban addressed the news media, declaring their intention to restore the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

The evacuation of the Kabul embassy staff was by that point underway as diplomats rushed to board military helicopters for the short trip to the airport bunker.

Others stayed behind long enough to burn sensitive documents. Another official said embassy helicopters were blown up or otherwise destroyed, which sent a cloud of smoke over the compound.

Many Americans and Afghans could not reach the airport as Taliban fighters set up checkpoints on roads throughout the city and beat some people, leaving top FBI officials concerned about the possibility that the Taliban or criminal gangs might kidnap Americans, a nightmare outcome with the US military no longer in the country.

As Biden made plans the evening of 15 August to address Americans the next day about the situation, the American flag was lowered over the abandoned embassy. The Green Zone, once the heart of the American effort to remake the country, was again Taliban territory.

Michael D Shear, David E Sanger, Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt, Julian E Barnes and Lara Jakes c.2021 The New York Times Company

from Firstpost World Latest News https://ift.tt/3grNLui

[rhetoricandlogic]

CLADE BY JAMES BRADLEY

NIALL HARRISON

ISSUE: 13 JULY 2015

By the half-way point of Clade, the world has changed. Setting out for a walk, Ellie, an artist, helpfully reminisces about the history of the valley she now calls home. The pastoral farmland she knew as a child was replaced by managed carbon-capture plantations in the twenties and thirties, which have themselves now—following bankruptcy—given way to a return to wildness. It's an effective tour, local history implying the changes underway in the wider world, which Ellie knows as news: drought in Asia, flooding in Europe, unspecified "horrors in Chicago" (p. 119). She fears a tipping point, collapse. But she also has more immediate concerns. Her biracial grandson Noah, evacuated from England without his parents, is coming to visit for the first time. And she is distracted by the potential of her latest project, a study of bees that she hopes will capture both their longevity and their vulnerability to climatic change, and perhaps communicate what she feels when she looks at them, "something that is not quite wonder, not quite grief, but somehow both" (p. 116). The clash of scales and concerns—the planetary and the personal; ephemeral and enduring—is typical of the best parts of James Bradley's fourth novel.

It is a novel shaped around the story of the family of which Ellie is a part. It's obvious from quite early on that the Leiths, as middle-class professionals in a rich nation, will be insulated from the worst environmental crises; elsewhere hundreds of thousands may starve or drown, but for the Leiths such events are, for the most part, remote. Intellectually, Ellie knows that mass migrations are underway; but Noah, who is in the country because she and her husband were able to wrangle him through the bureaucracy, is the only climate refugee she has actually met. So when, on a later walk, she encounters Amir, the keeper of the beehives she has been studying, and discovers that he is an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh, whose wife and child are dead, she is thrown. When "trying to imagine their lives" she is unable to move beyond easy outrage that their situation is "ridiculous, monstrous"; awareness of the inadequacy of this response leaves her feeling uncertain, "raw as a teenager" (p.131). A few pages further on, Amir—a doctor in his previous life—asks Ellie to pose as the parent of a friend's child, so that they can receive emergency surgery without questions. She asks why Amir didn't say anything sooner, says she could have helped, and Amir replies sharply: "Could you? How? We don't just need access to hospitals, we need medicine, schools, jobs, not to be frightened all the time" (p. 136). It's the first glimpse the novel has given us of one of the other narratives implied by the future the Leiths are living through.

It's also a moment that points to the most serious critique of Clade, namely that it is a novel about crisis in which the lives of those most affected take place off-screen. There are strong arguments to be made that that is not enough—moral arguments, that suffering should not be mood music for the privileged; narrative arguments, that it would simply be more dramatic. Amir's appearance is, on the face of it, a rebuke to the first of those points; yet not as forceful as it would be if he, and not Ellie, had been the viewpoint character in their encounter. Bradley, I think, sticks with Ellie as a reflection of his own privilege (and an assumption about that of his audience), but deliberately so, because one of the questions Clade asks is: how can someone insulated from its worst effects learn to internalise, and respond appropriately, to a global crisis affecting millions of people over decades? Humans, by and large, crave personal connection, yet there is a real sense in which individual experiences will never be sufficient to grasp the whole of what we are doing to our planet. Put another way, there is a risk that inventing Amir's experience would provide false catharsis to readers like me. The challenge is to achieve a broader empathy, and come to terms with a story that is fundamentally impersonal.

Structured as a novel-in-stories, Clade flows from now to the second half of the twenty-first century, and for at least its first half is sure-footed about its juxtapositioning of the immediate and the emergent. Bradley begins with Adam Leith—the closest thing the novel has to a central character, in that he headlines three of the ten chapters—on a research trip to Antarctica, waiting for news of Ellie's fertility treatment. They are a contemporary cosmopolitan couple; Adam reflects on the ease of their meeting and how, "though neither was quite sure how it happened, they found themselves a couple with careers and a future" (p. 9). What they don't have, however, is children, and their failed efforts to conceive become a barrier between them, one that sends Adam deeper into his research on melting permafrost and shifting ocean currents. There he finds, or perhaps justifies, a reluctance to become a parent at all: Bradley is detailed about the moment-to-moment see-saw of Adam's emotions, but I think leaves it up to us to decide to what extent his abstract understanding of the future is defining his choices in the present.

The second chapter takes place a few years later. Adam and Ellie have a young daughter, Summer, and the world is warmer. (Subtlety in character names, you may have gathered, is not Bradley's strongest suit.) In Australia, the power grid is struggling to cope with the demand for air-conditioning; on the news, famine and floods in South Asia. (Reading the novel a second time, I wondered what Amir's life was like at this point.) Adam and Ellie's relationship remains tense. Responding to another rant about climate-denying journalism, Ellie accuses her husband of self-indulgence: "I think you get off on being angry" (p. 29). Adam recognises some truth to her comment, though he won't admit it out loud; he "does not know the person he is becoming," feels himself "falling faster and faster without any idea of when and where he will land" (p. 30). Once again it is hard to separate Adam's frustration with his family from his impotence in the face of accelerating climate crisis; his emotions are as much a product of the world as of the people in it; the two are inseparable. After a couple of chapters away from Adam—during which we meet Maddie, Ellie's mother-in-law, and then Summer as a rebellious teenager—we rejoin him for the novel's big disaster set-piece, a tropical storm that devastates the South of England while he is visiting for a conference and the one time when Leiths are directly in harm's way. Travelling out of London to visit Summer, Adam looks at the landscape in a way that anticipates Ellie's valley walk. The idea of a "natural" countryside has been a fiction for centuries, he thinks; England's hedgerows were always as much an imposition as the new "triffid" trees intended to suck carbon from the air. We have always remade the world. Left unrecognised (by Adam) is the extent to which the world has remade him.

Adam and Ellie's reflections on changing landscapes are, for me, the crossroads of Clade. To this point, the novel has been entirely a story of life in a time of escalating environmental crisis, with a tone often reminiscent of a writer like Maureen McHugh: personal but crisp. Yet after these two chapters, we inexorably leave Adam and Ellie behind, and the future becomes something else. Subsequent chapters focus on Lijuan, a teenager whose family are killed by a pandemic, and who ends up more or less adopted by Adam; Dylan, a twentysomething programmer (when we spend time with him) who will eventually become Lijuan's partner; Noah, by this point an astronomer; and then, finally, Lijuan's daughter Izzie, going to a party out in the Floodline fringe of her city. None of these chapters is quite as successful at exploring character as those dealing with Adam, Ellie, and Maddie, but each of them grows the clade, makes it more than blood, incorporates more disparate personal narratives: this is good. Moreover, the decisive shift to a new generation reframes environmental crisis as the environmental status quo, without it ever being clear that we have done much to stabilise the situation (the carbon-capture plantations in Ellie's valley went broke, after all). New and more conventionally science fictional changes compete for the characters' attention, be it the creation of AI surrogates for dead relatives, or a rekindled search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The novel feels slightly less specific, slightly less possible. In the end, if Clade is asking how we might internalise impersonal stories, its answer seems to be that, as a species, we won't: we will just drift on and make do.

The other thing that is happening in the second half of the novel, however, is a thematic broadening, revealing climate change as a specific example of the more general challenge of wrestling with change over time. And Bradley, it turns out, has been here before. His second novel, The Deep Field, was published in 1999 and set in a version of 2010 imaginatively recreated by a narrator living in the twenty-second century. On a line by line basis it doesn't have the cool focus of Clade—at times it feels rather strained—but the extraordinary conflation of timeframes achieves the same end as the restless structure of the more recent novel, exploring a human experience while ensuring the reader is always aware of the fleeting nature of that experience. It is a theme to which I am deeply sympathetic, that I wish was more central in contemporary SF, and for which I will forgive a lot; so if in Clade it requires accepting an increasing narrative diffuseness, I accept, and if it means that it becomes slightly too easy to decompose the book into its component parts and separate out the bits that work and the bits that do not, I will look away. Because in the end I'm with Noah, the astronomer, who knows that looking up into the sky really means looking out into time.

A coda about categories. Clade is obviously not published in isolation. Already this year Sara Taylor has used a similar structural conceit to related ends in The Shore, and Antonia Honeywell, Kirsty Logan, EJ Swift, and others have published novels that to varying degrees explore the personal and social effects of environmental crisis; and they are only the latest crop. All of these examples are, obviously enough, kinds of science fiction, but there is a sound political logic for discussing them as a group unto themselves. For one thing, climate change is already happening, which means it is in a different class of speculation and social relevance to, say, a pandemic: writing about it is a question of degree and perspective, not whether or not it will happen at all, and the degrees and perspectives that writers choose can be usefully compared. For another, precisely because it is already happening, there are entirely contemporary books that should be included in any such discussion; Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behaviour (2012), which is set in one time and place but uses a different structural conceit to open its readers' perspective out to the global and ecological, would be a fine example. So there is this interesting cluster of work, which may not quite be a subgenre of SF but which certainly contains a lot of SF and SFnal thinking, that I want to talk about; but unfortunately I don't think anyone has yet got the terminology for it quite right. "Apocalypse" (soft, contemporary, or otherwise) and "dystopia" now flatten and obscure more than they illuminate—Clade is neither but has been described as both. A more recent coinage with some traction, "cli-fi", a) tends to be used to claim that what it describes is an entirely new thing (erasing the existing history of environmental SF and indeed environmental non-SF literature), b) is the brainchild of a man with an unfortunate propensity for relentlessly haranguing people who disagree with him, and c) is just a supremely ugly collection of letters. Then at the more esoteric end of the debate we have suggestions such as Jeff VanderMeer's "hyperobject fiction," which he proposes in part because it is unlikely to catch on, but which nevertheless describes a book like Clade quite neatly. At least, it does once you know that a hyperobject is, as defined by Timothy Morton, "an object so massively distributed in space and time as to transcend localisation"—which is why it is unlikely to catch on. I'm carping, but not just that; categories matter because, like families, they both include and exclude. The rejoinder to the charge that Clade's viewpoint is unduly privileged is the psychological specificity it employs, but that defence only carries weight if it is an equal member of a literary family that also includes, say, The Swan Book by Alexis Wright (2013), a novel that explores the Aboriginal psychology of landscape as it responds to climate change with great vigour and inventiveness, but which has not received nearly the same level of international attention. I should end all this with a pithy suggested label of my own, naturally, but unfortunately I don't have one; just a sense that this is a vital literary area, and that we need to get better at describing and discussing it.

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/how-republican-senators-account-for-the-trump-presidency-the-new-yorker/

How Republican Senators Account for the Trump Presidency - The New Yorker

If you’re interested in how Republican politicians are talking about Donald Trump in the end phase of his first term and perhaps his Presidency, one good place to look is to the campaigns of the ten Republican senators who are least likely to be reëlected—most of whom represent states that the President won comfortably four years ago. Judging from current polling in those politicians’ races, the Democrats may well gain control of the Senate: they need to pick up only two or three of the vulnerable Republican seats, in Arizona, Colorado, Maine, North Carolina, South Carolina, Iowa, Montana, Alaska, and Georgia (where two Republican seats are being tightly contested). In the past week, I watched eight of those senators’ debates, which had a throwback tinge to them: the television graphics were boxy and dated, the questions excellent, and the candidates nimbler than you might expect. Politicians are charming people who have been operating under a spell of charmlessness for a decade, roughly since Mitch McConnell made it obvious that he was on a mission to thwart the Obama Administration and a mood of wartime enmity suffused the capital. But the more consequential anachronism of those Senate debates came from the Republican senators themselves, who generally acted as if Donald Trump were not the President and his policies were not the bedrocks of their party—as if, once he leaves office, the dials could be turned back to their 2011 settings and the decade could begin again.

The 2020 drumbeat, for Republicans, has been to warn of an ascendent socialism. “You put Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Joe Biden in charge of Washington, you’ll see a federal takeover of the health-care system,” Steve Daines, of Montana, said, in a recent debate against his Democratic opponent, Governor Steve Bullock. But you don’t hear much about immigration, or trade, or any of the other issues that have defined Trump’s Presidency. The longer I watched the Senate debates, the more I found myself rewinding the footage to scan through the Republican candidates’ responses. Surely they’d mentioned the President, and somehow I’d missed it? But often they just hadn’t. In late September, Joni Ernst, the Republican senator from Iowa, made it through an hour-long debate with her Democratic challenger, a real-estate executive named Theresa Greenfield, without mentioning Trump by name. When asked directly about the Times revelations that the President, while living a billionaire’s life, had paid just seven hundred and fifty dollars to the federal government in annual income taxes, Ernst redirected. “Many years ago, I echoed the call for the President to release his tax returns,” she said. “But, bottom line, we would love to see lower taxes for everybody, including all of our hardworking Americans.”

I was watching on YouTube, and in the comments alongside the debate I could see the essentially erratic character of 2020 politics unfolding: viewers were talking about Hunter Biden or “Putin’s puppet” (Hillary Clinton’s most lasting epithet for the President), or exclaiming “TRUMP TRAIN!” On Twitter the Ernst-Greenfield debate didn’t register, which has fit the pattern; the Senate debates have been noticed only when someone declared them a rout. But what I saw in the sedate PBS studio where the Ernst-Greenfield debate was held, with Iowa’s veteran political columnist David Yepsen at the helm, was two capable candidates calmly advancing the basic positions of their parties: taxes should be higher, or lower; billionaires should get a smaller share of the spoils, or about the same amount; the Supreme Court was bound to dissolve Roe v. Wade, or it wasn’t. No one owned anyone. Beneath the madness of Presidential politics, the parties were moving at their usual rate, that of tectonic plates, and the only reasonable posture was to sit at your listening station like a geologist, headphones securely over your ears, waiting for the infinitesimal movement of a needle.

Now and then, there was some movement. I’d been particularly interested to watch John Cornyn, the three-term senator from Texas. A sixty-eight-year-old former judge with a long face and a formal manner, Cornyn is Mitch McConnell’s No. 2 and arguably the closest thing the Republican Party has to a tectonic plate. He had seemed to luck out when Beto O’Rourke declined to challenge him, leaving him with a little-known opponent, a former military-helicopter pilot named M. J. Hegar. But Hegar turned out to be effective. When, in an October 9th debate, Cornyn accused Hegar of “tacitly” endorsing police defunding, she spat out, “I never do anything tacitly—I’m not a tacit person,” and then kept muttering about it under her breath. She’s charming! Cornyn can be charming, too, in a courtly way, but he couldn’t quite get around to it because of all the time he had to spend furrowing his brow and reassuring Texans that things were not quite as bad as they appeared.

Midway through the debate, Cornyn got a simple, telling question from the moderator, the excellent Gromer Jeffers, of the Dallas Morning News: Could he name a single way in which he had positively affected the lives of ordinary Texans, in his eighteen years in the Senate? Cornyn nodded his long face, and told a story about the aftermath of a mass shooting, in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in 2017, when an Air Force veteran, who should have been prohibited from owning firearms because of a domestic-violence-related bad-conduct discharge, entered a church and killed twenty-six people. Cornyn said, “It occurred because someone who should never have been able to get their hands on a firearm, a convicted felon, was able to bypass the background-check system because the Air Force had not uploaded those names.” Cornyn recounted that, four days after the shooting, he introduced a bill that passed with bipartisan majorities, which closed a loophole in gun background checks. Cornyn said that “the Attorney General has now made the point in just six months; six million more people’s names are on the background-check system” to keep arms out of the hands of “dangerous criminals.” A bell rang, signalling that Cornyn’s time had expired; it had the feeling of a record scratch. Wait, what? One of the half-dozen most powerful Republicans in the country, a staunch ally of the National Rifle Association, was being asked to describe how he had improved the lives of ordinary people in the most powerful conservative state in the country, and his best case was that he had strengthened background checks? What had he been doing all this time? Maybe that was the trouble. The Senate’s agenda, focussed on mollifying Trump and confirming judges and cutting taxes for the highest earners, didn’t offer much to, as Jeffers had put it, “ordinary Texans.”

For five years, Republicans have been wearily answering (or, more often, dodging) the question of whether they support President Trump. But in this election they are being asked a deeper question, too, about what they have actually delivered during this decade of steady conservative ascendance. Across the debates, I could hear the backbeat of “Montana values” and “Arizona values” and the regular cymbal crash of “conservative judges,” but there was no melody. After watching Cornyn and Hegar’s debate, I clicked over to a recent Cornyn ad on YouTube. It features a middle-aged schoolteacher, with blond hair and caring eyes, passing out papers to students while praising the senator for having helped to deliver federal funds to public schools so that they could reopen safely. Cornyn then appears, nodding thoughtfully, with a mask emblazoned with the Texas state flag covering the lower half of his face. Texas is changing, in ways that Cornyn is wise to genuflect toward, and this election has the look of a blue wave. But, at the end of four years of largely unchecked conservative political power, Cornyn has neither a Trumpian case to make for his own reëlection nor a more traditional conservative one. The background checks, the money for schools—he was simply arguing for the reliability of a longtime incumbent.

The most touted contest right now, and among the best-funded, is taking place in South Carolina, where the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is in a close race with Jaime Harrison, the forty-four-year-old associate chairman of the Democratic National Committee. In the last quarter, Harrison raised fifty-seven million dollars, mostly from liberals outside the state; with Kelly and Sara Gideon, in Maine, he is one of three Democratic candidates this cycle to raise more money in a quarter than anyone running for the Senate ever had before. Like Graham, Harrison is an obviously talented politician—he is especially good at concisely telling the stories of ordinary South Carolinians, some from his own family, and using them to point out how little Republican representatives have done to help them. But the candidates’ lone debate, on October 3rd, was most interesting because Graham, unlike most other members of his party, did not run from the President. “I think President Trump has done a good job. He rebuilt our military, he’s cut our taxes, he’s getting trade deals, he’s securing our border,” Graham said, and then tacked on the Party line. “This race is about capitalism versus socialism, conservative judges versus liberal judges, law and order versus chaos.”

The trouble for Graham was that Harrison kept also making the debate about South Carolina, and about how little Republicans had done to help alleviate suffering there, from the disastrous response to the coronavirus to the ideological refusal to accept the Obama Administration’s offer to expand Medicaid in the state. Graham countered by insisting that he knew suffering: his relatives, he kept emphasizing, worked in the textile mills. “I get it. We’re all one car wreck away from needing help,” Graham said. Many Republican incumbents have expressed worry about lockdowns suppressing the economy; Graham mentioned other side effects of the pandemic, too: “Alcoholism is up. Domestic violence.” He did not win the debate, but he also sounded like he wasn’t pretending.

Graham is in many ways a signal figure of the Republican Party, because, rather than represent a single faction, he has, at different times, represented all of them. From shortly after his election to the Senate, in 2002, he was mainly known as John McCain’s plainspoken sidekick, and joined McCain as part of the Gang of Eight pushing for immigration reform in 2012, telling his party’s Convention that year that “we’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” But, after Trump’s election, Graham became a prominent backer of the President’s agenda, a transformation that culminated in a fiery partisan display during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings. As Jess Bidgood put it recently in a sharp profile of Graham in the Boston Globe, “the story of Graham’s vulnerability in a state he has represented in Congress since 1995 begins not with the left but with his persistent problems on the right—which he attempted to tamp down once and for all through his alliance with Trump.”

Even if you could somehow exclude Trump, and the complications of making alliances with him, the Party’s future no longer looks much like its past. Those Republicans who seem most likely to run for President in 2024—among them Tom Cotton, Nikki Haley, Josh Hawley, and Marco Rubio—have all oriented themselves to a party that is now dominated by white voters without college degrees, and by what Hawley has described as anti-cosmopolitanism. If one of these politicians does end up leading the Party, then it will have something to do with how establishment conservatives used their power during the Trump era: to impose tax cuts that exacerbated inequality and weakened the economy, and to undermine a health-care policy that Americans increasingly support and rely on. That has left the Republicans—even the Party’s central politicians—without much to brag about after years in charge. Once again, Gromer Jeffers, the journalist who moderated the Texas debate, saw it clearly. He put up a graphic from a recent poll of the state in which a strikingly large proportion of respondents had no opinion about Cornyn whatsoever. Jeffers asked the senator, “Why is it that nearly a quarter of Texans don’t know your name?”

Read More About the 2020 Election

[forsetti]

On Ignorance Of Facts and History: The Democratic Party Has Moved To the Right

Whenever I bring up or post something critical of Bernie Sanders (or more often his most ardent supporters) the Vegas over/under on how long it takes for someone to tell me the Democratic Party has moved to the right is now at under five seconds.  According to far left progressive lore, the Democratic Party was once the bastion of all the things they believe the government should be.  To this group, which is overly populated with younger, mostly white males, the Democratic Party was nearly perfect under FDR and has moved to the right ever since.  In their addle-brain notion of history, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are to the political right of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.  

I have just two words to say-”This is some ignorant, ahistorical bullshit!”  Okay, make that six words.  I have a lot of other adjectives to describe this situation I can and am willing to provide upon request.   The Democratic Party has moved farther to the left SINCE FDR, not farther to the right.  I'm old enough to remember reading about the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans in internment camps under FDR.  I also remember he met ONCE with an African-American in the White House early on in his administration and never did again.  Please recite to me all the pro-female policies he stood up for and helped get passed?  Go ahead, I'll wait.... (*sound of crickets.)

FDR has been labeled the “Lion of Liberalism” for reasons both deserved and undeserved.  He certainly deserved credit for all the policies he pushed in order to get America out of the Great Depression.  These were necessary and important for the economic survival of the country.  However, a lot of these policies were the second, third...fifth attempt.  Many of FDR's initial responses to address the Great Depression didn't do a damn thing and some made matter worse.  I give him credit for willing to learn from his mistakes and pivot to different ideas/policies.  It is important to keep in mind exactly why/how he was able to try different solutions to fix the problems-major majorities in both houses of Congress.

THE ONLY REASON FDR was able to fail, learn, and succeed was because his party held massive majorities in the House and Senate EVERY SINGLE YEAR HE WAS PRESIDENT.  It is a lot easier to fuck up and try different things when your party controls the entire government with veto-proof majorities.  If FDR would have had thin majorities or the Democratic Party had control over only one part of Congress, the outcomes from his time in office would have been very different.  If you can't understand how/why this is the case, I suggest a basic civics course or maybe watch some Schoolhouse Rock. The other factor that immensely helped FDR's policies was America's entrance into World War II.  It is one thing to tell Americans they need to come together and work for the common good.  It is another when there is an external force/situation to make this unity more likely.  What WWII did was coalesce Americans of all economic and political groups to come together around a common cause.  When the vast majority of Americans are invested in a cause, it is really easy to get them to support your policies.  The only time this has happened to some level since then was directly after 9/11 and the things America rallied around, (Dept. of Homeland Security, Patriot Act, Invasion of Iraq...) were bad ideas with even worse consequences because they came from a conservative administration. I dare anyone who tells me the Democratic Party has moved to the right to provide an example of a Democratic president who has had the Democratic majorities FDR had.  I dare them to also come up with an example of an internal or external example of something that unified the country like WWII did along with these majorities.  I could go all Rip Van Winkle and when I finally awake from my twenty-year slumber, I promise you there won't be a single factual response to my query.

Here are the real fucking political truths these “progressives” don't want to admit: 1-From civil rights, gay rights, women's rights, health care reform, immigration issues... the Democratic Party has been at the forefront moving the discussion and policy forward. 2-They've done this without the luxury of veto-proof majorities in Congress and without a lot of help from state legislatures.

3-In fact, some of this progress was made IN SPITE OF Republican control and obstruction. 4-If you fucking want FDR-like progress, you better do everything you can for FDR-like majorities in Congress. 5-If you don't give a Democratic president massive Democratic majorities in Congress and in the states, then you can eternally SHUT THE FUCK UP about how Democrats are “letting you down.”

6-Democrats in 2017 are more progressive than Democrats of FDR's time. 7-The problem isn't Democrats have moved to the right (they haven't) but Republicans have moved significantly farther to the right.  This movement along with the media's incessant “both sides are the same” gives the perception Democrats have moved to the right as well. Point #7 is really important to understand.  If the political difference between A and B is 50 points and A moves 5 points to the left but B moves 30 points to the right, the problem isn't A has moved to the right (something that is empirically false.) The problem is people look at the difference to make their opinion of the political situation. I'll See-Spot-Run this for you. If Democrats started out at -10 to the left on the political spectrum and Republicans started at +30 to the right, the difference, the median is +10 to the right.  If you use the median as your measurement, then our politics and politicians are +10 to the right. This by itself is a stupid way of viewing the situation but it is how it is reported by the media.  Our overall political landscape might be +10 to the right but that doesn't mean those on the left have moved to the right one iota. What has happened the past forty years is the Democrats have moved to -20 to the left and Republicans have moved to +80 to the right.  Objectively, Democrats have moved farther to the left than they were forty years ago. However, when the median is what is constantly discussed and reported on, it looks as if everyone has moved

+30 points to the right.  When the right moves +30 point farther to the right and the left moves -10 points farther left, the media report, is the “both sides have moved farther away from the center,”  as if starting point and how far each has moved and in what direction are irrelevant.  If you don't understand how this works, besides taking basic civics, you need to take a basic statistics course. Democrat HAVE NOT MOVED TO THE RIGHT!  Stop believing this.  Stop saying this. Stop being ignorant of history.  “But what about corporatist Dems?”  There have always been Democrats from states like New York, Delaware, etc. who have leaned more towards large corporations because large corporations and their employees make up a good chunk of their constituents.  What pisses me off more than progressives attacking Democrats from specific states catering to their constituency (you know, democracy) is when they are willing to overlook and excuse their preferred candidate of similar “sins.” If it isn't cool if Hillary Clinton casts some votes that can be viewed as being “pro-Wall Street,” then it should be as big a problem that Bernie Sanders votes in favor of private military contractor spending that will help his state. If you want to be a political purist, good luck with that but you had better be fucking logically consistent.  If you deride Hillary for saying “superpredator” then you damn well better bring as much emotional opposition to Bernie actually voting for the 1994 crime bill (you know, that bill that the then FLOTUS Hillary didn't and couldn't vote for but Bernie did.)  You better be upset Bernie advocated harsher sentences for cocaine use during the 90s.  You'd better be upset he voted against the storage of harmful nuclear waste in VT but fine him voting to strip out Paul Wellstone's amendment and sending the toxins to Sierra Blanca, a mostly minority community in Texas.  You had better be upset with his vote against the Magnitsky Act which prevents Russia from using the U.S. banking system to launder money. You had better be upset with his defiance at releasing his complete tax returns.  If you aren't equally upset with these things as you are with other Democratic candidates' histories, you are a partisan hypocrite and a huge part of the problem with today's politics.

I'm not pointing these things out so much as a criticism of Bernie but to point out the hypocritical purity of many of his followers and the far-left.  There never has been and never will be a politician who does what you want them to or believes in all the things you do.  Their job, their responsibility is not to cater to one person's beliefs but the average of their constituents.   This is how democracy works. Learn it.  Live it.  Love it.  

This brings us to modern-day progressives.  Instead of having an iota of understanding of progressive history, how government works on a basic civics level, they either conjure up Democratic lore out of whole cloth or buy whatever snake oil is being sold to them by the political Svengali du jour.  These are the so-called “progressives” who are adamant FDR was progressivism in purity distilled form.  They respond to any comment about anything or anyone other than what comes from their Svengali with “corporate Democrat,” “neo-liberalism,” and “the current Democratic Party has moved to the right.”  

Most, but not all of these “progressives” are young.  For those who are older, I have zero understanding, empathy or sympathy for their ignorance.  For those who are younger, I am willing to concede they don't have the experience to know what they are spouting is complete bullshit and give them a small pass.  If you really want to know why I have such a problem with Bernie Sanders it is because he is more than old enough to know the history of the Democratic Party, yet he intentionally mislead many younger voters to where they not only believe complete bullshit but he has taken an already jaded generation of voters and turned them into a negative horde who are unwilling to even contemplate they might be wrong.   As someone who has pushed for every progressive policy, there is for the past forty years from gay rights to women's rights to raising the minimum wage and universal health care, I've never seen anyone do more damage from the left on politics, how government works, and history than Bernie Sanders.  Ronald Reagan codified anti-government sentiment on the right in 1980 with his “government IS the problem.”  Bernie Sanders pretty much did the same on the left in 2016.  Both men were full of shit and did extensive damage to our democracy.  The only difference between the two is Reagan was able to do more damage because he was elected to the presidency. Conservatives have spent the last fifty years undermining faith in the institution of government.  We've all see the horrible consequences this has had on the country.  This same effect but from a different angle is just as horrible.  While conservatives are hell-bent on rolling back cultural progress to 1840 and economic progress to 1920, there is a faction of progressives who are more concerned with reviving and arguing for a mythological Democratic Party than making sure conservatives don't undo every single progress made the past hundred years.  While progressives are fighting like hell to stop the leaks in the progressive dam caused by conservatives, the purists are on the sidelines bitching about how the dam isn't the right construction, how a “real progressive” would stop the leaks “this way,” or insisting the best thing to do is allow the dam to completely collapse in order to build the perfect dam from utopian, progressive scratch.

In order to justify and rationalize their behaviors, the far left has to create a Democratic Party Straw Man.  This Straw Man comes in the form of “the Democratic Party has moved to the right,” “both sides are the same,” “the Democratic Party abandoned their base,” “the reason Democrats have lost elections is because they aren't progressive enough,”...  In order to maintain this Straw Man, the far left have to completely ignore history, how government works, actual fucking data, and the impacts of their own behaviors.  This Straw Man has been worshiped and referred to so many times it has become part of far-left lore.  Any mention of the Democratic Party or a Democratic candidate/leader who isn't their Svengali du jour and the shibboleths start to flow unabated.  Context doesn't matter. Logic doesn't matter.  Facts don't matter.  Nuance sure as fuck doesn't matter.  The only thing that matter is maintaining the Straw Man, maintaining the lore.

If you want a good example of this looks like, look no further than health care. The current belief among the far left is anyone who isn't for single payer is a corporatist sellout and the enemy of progress.  This simplistic ascription only works in the mythological world of progressive purity.  In the real world, anyone with two working neurons knows that single-payer is one way to universal health care but by no means the only way.  Single-payer = universal health care but universal health care ≠ single-payer.  To put this is simpler terms, All bears are mammals but not all mammals are bears.  If the goal is to deliver a mammal, you've achieved it if you bring an ocelot, lemur, opossum, hedgehog...  Right now, the far left claims that you cannot be a good progressive or for universal health care unless you are completely for single-payer.  This is not only completely ignorant of universal health care it is a stupid political strategy.  Yet, in spite of this ignorance and stupidity, the far left is hellbent on making support of single-payer a litmus test for Democratic candidates.

Meanwhile, as the far-left are creating moronic litmus tests, the right are passing voter suppression laws, rolling back civil, women's, and environmental rights.  In the addled brains of the far-left, these things are seen as equivalent.  They are not.  An imperfect health care system that has reduced the non-insured rate to historical lows is not on the same level as taking away health care from 15-30 million people.  If you think these are the same, your political and moral calculus are seriously fucked up.  The Affordable Care Act is imperfect (a fact acknowledged many times by President Obama) but it was a huge leap forward.  It moved the bar towards universal health care forward more than anything since the passage of Medicaid/Medicare and accomplished something EVERY single Democratic president since FDR tried to do but failed.  Instead of being elated when the Affordable Care Act was passed, the far-left did nothing but bitch about it.  Meanwhile, the right used the passage of the ACA to motivate their base to come out, take over the House in 2010 which led to gerrymandering, right to work laws in states like Michigan and Wisconsin, voter suppression laws... without any push back from progressives.  The most progressive law passed since the Civil Rights Act and the far-left couldn't be bothered to support and defend it. Go ahead, let this political and moral calculus sink in and then tell me why on earth anyone should listen to the far-left.

I make it a point to not listen to or take the advice of extremists. They are always a small subset of the whole and always ethically and strategically wrong.  Just because they are extremely vocal doesn't mean a damn thing other than they are loud.  That they can alter the outcome of an election, as we've seen in 2000 and 2016, doesn't mean they need to be catered to and their views completely adopted.  To think so is political suicide along the same lines as the left trying to cater to white Republican voters.  Show me one city, even the most blue, progressive city where the far left has political power.  Go ahead, I'll wait (*insert sound of crickets.)  This scenario doesn't exist.  If the far left can't control city governments in the bluest areas in the bluest states, why in the hell should we listen to them when it comes to national political strategy?  

Democrats have not moved to the right.  They've moved to the left and then some.  That they haven't moved as far to the left as the banshees on the left demand doesn't change reality.  It should be remembered that at the height of FDR's progressivism, the far left of his party was bitching about him and demanding he is primaried.  To the far left of his time, the Lion of Progressivism wasn't progressive enough.  The same is true today.  No matter how progressive someone is, the far left will find fault with them.  The problem isn't the Democratic Party or progressive candidates.  The problem is and always has been with the far left who demand political purity in an imperfect, democratic system that represents a very diverse population.

My current frustration with politics isn't that conservatives are being horrible human beings.  I fully expect nothing less from them.  My frustration is with so-called progressives who mean well but their fervor for their ideals supersedes everything including strategy, actually winning elections, preventing conservatives from retaining and solidifying power...  I will say this until it is etched into the progressive psyche-”The only thing that matters right now is keeping conservatives from winning elections!”  Everything else is 100% irrelevant and a complete distraction and detrimental to progressivism.  As long as “progressives” don't have large majorities, any purity test is complete nonsense and bullshit.  If your political strategy is focused against Democrats and not against conservatives, I think you are full of shit, shouldn't be listened to, and banished from rational political discussions.

The longer the far-left drags out this fight for their purity, the longer they focus their anger and attacks on Democrats instead of conservatives, the more the people progressives claim to defend will suffer, the longer conservatives retain power long after they should. I have no understanding or sympathy for anyone who enables this.

[salicedaze]

What the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive wants the world to know At 97, Ben Ferencz is the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive and he has a far-reaching message for today’s world

2017May 07

CORRESPONDENTLesley Stahl

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Twenty-two SS officers responsible for the deaths of 1M+ people would never have been brought to justice were it not for Ben Ferencz.

The officers were part of units called Einsatzgruppen, or action groups. Their job was to follow the German army as it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and kill Communists, Gypsies and Jews.

Ferencz believes "war makes murderers out of otherwise decent people" and has spent his life working to deter war and war crimes.  

Ben Ferencz

It is not often you get the chance to meet a man who holds a place in history like Ben Ferencz.  He's 97 years old, barely 5 feet tall, and he served as prosecutor of what's been called the biggest murder trial ever. The courtroom was Nuremberg; the crime, genocide; the defendants, a group of German SS officers accused of committing the largest number of Nazi killings outside the concentration camps -- more than a million men, women, and children shot down in their own towns and villages in cold blood.

Ferencz is the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive today. But he isn't content just to be part of 20th century history -- he believes he has something important to offer the world right now.

"If it's naive to want peace instead of war, let 'em make sure they say I'm naive. Because I want peace instead of war."

Lesley Stahl: You know, you-- have seen the ugliest side of humanity.

Benjamin Ferencz: Yes.

Lesley Stahl: You've really seen evil. And look at you. You're the sunniest man I've ever met. The most optimistic.

27-year-old Ben Ferencz became the chief prosecutor of 22 Einsatzgruppen commanders at Nuremberg.

Benjamin Ferencz: You oughta get some more friends.

Watching Ben Ferencz during his daily swim, his gym workout and his morning push-up regimen is to realize he isn't just the sunniest man we've ever met -- he may also be the fittest. And that's just the beginning.

This is Ferencz making his opening statement in the Nuremberg courtroom 70 years ago.

Ben Ferencz in court: The charges we have brought accuse the defendants of having committed crimes against humanity.

The Nuremberg trials after World War II were historic -- the first international war crimes tribunals ever held. Hitler's top lieutenants were prosecuted first. Then a series of subsequent trials were mounted against other Nazi leaders, including 22 SS officers responsible for killing more than a million people -- not in concentration camps -- but in towns and villages across Eastern Europe. They would never have been brought to justice were it not for Ben Ferencz.

Lesley Stahl: You look so young.

Benjamin Ferencz: I was so young.  I was 27 years old.

Lesley Stahl: Had you prosecuted trials before?

Benjamin Ferencz: Never in my life. I don't—

Lesley Stahl: Come on.

Benjamin Ferencz: --recall if I'd ever been in a courtroom actually.

Ferencz had immigrated to the U.S. as a baby, the son of poor Jewish parents from a small town in Romania. He grew up in a tough New York City neighborhood where his father found work as a janitor.

Ben Ferencz, 1946.

Benjamin Ferencz: When I was taken to school at the age of seven, I couldn't speak English-- spoke Yiddish at home. And I was very small. And so they wouldn't let me in.

Lesley Stahl: So you didn't speak English 'til you were eight?

Benjamin Ferencz: That's correct.

Lesley Stahl: Could you read?

Benjamin Ferencz: No, on the contrary. The silent movies always had writing on it. And I would ask my father, "Wazukas," in Yiddish, "What does it say? What does it say?" He couldn't read it, either.

But Ferencz learned quickly. He became the first in his family to go to college, then got a scholarship to Harvard Law School. But during his first semester, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and he, like many classmates, raced to enlist. He wanted to be a pilot, but the Army Air Corps wouldn't take him.

Benjamin Ferencz:  They said, "No, you're too short. Your legs won't reach the pedals." The Marines, they just looked at me and said, "Forget it, kid."

So he finished at Harvard then enlisted as a private in the Army. Part of an artillery battalion, he landed on the beach at Normandy and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Toward the end of the war, because of his legal training, he was transferred to a brand new unit in General Patton's Third Army, created to investigate war crimes.  As U.S. forces liberated concentration camps, his job was to rush in and gather evidence. Ferencz told us he is still haunted by the things he saw. And the stories he heard in those camps.

Benjamin Ferencz: A father who, his son told me the story. The father had died just as we were entering the camp. And the father had routinely saved a piece of his bread for his son, and he kept it under his arm at… He kept it under his arm at night so the other inmates wouldn't steal it, you know.  So you see these human stories which are not -- they're not real.  They're not real.  But they were real.

Ferencz came home, married his childhood sweetheart and vowed never to set foot in Germany again.  But that didn't last long. General Telford Taylor, in charge of the Nuremberg trials, asked him to direct a team of researchers in Berlin, one of whom found a cache of top-secret documents in the ruins of the German foreign ministry.

Benjamin Ferencz: He gave me a bunch of binders, four binders. And these were daily reports from the Eastern Front-- which unit entered which town, how many people they killed. It was classified, so many Jews, so many gypsies, so many others--

Ferencz had stumbled upon reports sent back to headquarters by secret SS units called Einsatzgruppen, or action groups. Their job had been to follow the German army as it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, and kill Communists, Gypsies and especially Jews.

Screenshot from film showing the Einsatzgruppen at work.

Benjamin Ferencz: They were 3,000 SS officers trained for the purpose, and directed to kill without pity or remorse, every single Jewish man, woman, and child they could lay their hands on.

Lesley Stahl: So they went right in after the troops?

Benjamin Ferencz: That was their assignment, come in behind the troop, round up the Jews, kill 'em all.

Only one piece of film is known to exist of the Einsatzgruppen at work.  It isn't easy viewing…

Benjamin Ferencz: Well, this is typical operation.  Well, see here, this-- they rounded 'em up. They all have already tags on 'em. And they're chasing them.

Lesley Stahl: They're making them run to their own death?

Benjamin Ferencz: Yes. Yes. There's the rabbi coming along there. Just put 'em in the ditch. Shoot 'em there. You know, kick 'em in.

Lesley Stahl: Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

This footage came to light years later. At the time, Ferencz just had the documents, and he started adding up the numbers.

Benjamin Ferencz: When I reached over a million people murdered that way, over a million people, that's more people than you've ever seen in your life, I took a sample. I got on the next plane, flew from Berlin down to Nuremberg, and I said to Taylor, "General, we've gotta put on a new trial."

Ben Ferencz entered into evidence the defendants' own reports of what they'd done.  

But the trials were already underway, and prosecution staff was stretched thin. Taylor told Ferencz adding another trial was impossible.

Benjamin Ferencz: And I start screaming. I said, "Look. I've got here mass murder, mass murder on an unparalleled scale."  And he said, "Can you do this in addition to your other work?" And I said, "Sure." He said, "OK. So you do it."

And that's how 27-year-old Ben Ferencz became the chief prosecutor of 22 Einsatzgruppen commanders at trial number 9 at Nuremberg.

Judge: How do you plead to this indictment, guilty or not guilty?

Defendant: Nicht schuldig.

Benjamin Ferencz: Standard routine, nicht schuldig.  Not guilty.

Judge: Guilty or not guilty?

Defendant: Nicht schuldig.

Lesley Stahl: They all say not guilty.

Benjamin Ferencz: Same thing, not guilty.

Otto Ohlendorf

But Ferencz knew they were guilty and could prove it. Without calling a single witness, he entered into evidence the defendants' own reports of what they'd done. Exhibit 111: "In the last 10 weeks, we have liquidated around 55,000 Jews."  Exhibit 179, from Kiev in 1941: "The city's Jews were ordered to present themselves… about 34,000 reported, including women and children. After they had been made to give up their clothing and valuables, all of them were killed, which took several days." Exhibit 84, from Einsatzgruppen D in March of 1942: Total number executed so far: 91,678. Einsatzgruppen D was the unit of Ferencz's lead defendant Otto Ohlendorf. He didn't deny the killings -- he had the gall to claim they were done in self-defense.

Benjamin Ferencz: He was not ashamed of that. He was proud of that. He was carrying out his government's instructions.

Lesley Stahl: How did you not hit him?

Benjamin Ferencz: There was only one time I wanted to-- really. One of these-- my defendants said-- He gets up, and he says, "[GERMAN]," which is, "What? The Jews were shot? I hear it here for the first time."  Boy, I felt if I'd had a bayonet I woulda jumped over the thing, and put a bayonet right through one ear, and let it come out the other. You know? You know?

Lesley Stahl: Yeah.

Benjamin Ferencz: That son of a bitch.

Lesley Stahl: And you had his name down on a piece of—

Benjamin Ferencz: And I've got-- I've got his reports of how many he killed. You know? Innocent lamb.

Lesley Stahl: Did you look at the defendants' faces?

60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl and Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz

Benjamin Ferencz: Defendants' face were blank, all the time. Defendants-- absolutely blank. They could-- like, they're waiting for a bus.

Lesley Stahl: What was going on inside of you?

Benjamin Ferencz: Of me?

Lesley Stahl: Yeah.

Benjamin Ferencz: I'm still churning.

Lesley Stahl: To this minute?

Benjamin Ferencz: I'm still churning.

All 22 defendants were found guilty, and four of them, including Ohlendorf, were hanged. Ferencz says his goal from the beginning was to affirm the rule of law and deter similar crimes from ever being committed again.

Lesley Stahl: Did you meet a lot of people who perpetrated war crimes who would otherwise in your opinion have been just a normal, upstanding citizen?

"War makes murderers out of otherwise decent people. All wars, and all decent people."

Benjamin Ferencz: Of course, is my answer. These men would never have been murderers had it not been for the war. These were people who could quote Goethe, who loved Wagner, who were polite--

Lesley Stahl: What turns a man into a savage beast like that?

Benjamin Ferencz: He's not a savage. He's an intelligent, patriotic human being.

Lesley Stahl: He's a savage when he does the murder though.

Benjamin Ferencz: No. He's a patriotic human being acting in the interest of his country, in his mind.

Lesley Stahl: You don't think they turn into savages even for the act?

Benjamin Ferencz: Do you think the man who dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima was a savage? Now I will tell you something very profound, which I have learned after many years. War makes murderers out of otherwise decent people. All wars, and all decent people.

So Ferencz has spent the rest of his life trying to deter war and war crimes by establishing an international court – like Nuremburg. He scored a victory when the international criminal court in The Hague was created in 1998.  He delivered the closing argument in the court's first case.

"If they tell me they want war instead of peace, I don't say they're naive, I say they're stupid."  

Lesley Stahl: Now, you've been at this for 50 years, if not more. We've had genocide since then.

Benjamin Ferencz: Yes.

Lesley Stahl: In Cambodia—

Benjamin Ferencz: Going on right this minute, yes.

Lesley Stahl: Going on right this minute in Sudan.

Benjamin Ferencz: Yes.

Lesley Stahl: We've had Rwanda, we've had Bosnia. You're not getting very far.

Benjamin Ferencz: Well, don't say that. People get discouraged. They should remember, from me, it takes courage not to be discouraged.

Lesley Stahl: Did anybody ever say that you're naive?

Benjamin Ferencz: Of course. Some people say I'm crazy.

Lesley Stahl: Are you naive here?

Benjamin Ferencz: Well, if it's naive to want peace instead of war, let 'em make sure they say I'm naive. Because I want peace instead of war. If they tell me they want war instead of peace, I don't say they're naive, I say they're stupid. Stupid to an incredible degree to send young people out to kill other young people they don't even know, who never did anybody any harm, never harmed them. That is the current system. I am naive? That's insane.

Ferencz is legendary in the world of international law, and he's still at it. He never stops pushing his message and he's donating his life savings to a Genocide Prevention Initiative at the Holocaust Museum. He says he's grateful for the life he's lived in this country, and it's his turn to give back.

Lesley Stahl: You are such an idealist.

Benjamin Ferencz: I don't think I'm an idealist.  I'm a realist. And I see the progress.  The progress has been remarkable. Look at the emancipation of woman in my lifetime. You're sitting here as a female. Look what's happened to the same-sex marriages. To tell somebody a man can become a woman, a woman can become a man, and a man can marry a man, they would have said, "You're crazy." But it's a reality today. So the world is changing. And you shouldn't-- you know-- be despairing because it's never happened before. Nothing new ever happened before.

Lesley Stahl: Ben—

Benjamin Ferencz: We're on a roll.

Lesley Stahl: I can't—

Benjamin Ferencz: We're marching forward.

Lesley Stahl: Ben? I'm sitting here listening to you. And you're very wise. And you're full of energy and passion.  And I can't believe you're 97 years old.

Benjamin Ferencz: Well, I'm still a young man.

Lesley Stahl: Clearly, clearly.

Benjamin Ferencz: And I'm still in there fighting.  And you know what keeps me going? I know I'm right.

Produced by Shari Finkelstein and Nieves Zuberbühler.

© 2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[berniesrevolution]

JACOBIN MAGAZINE

The events in Charlottesville have remained in the headlines for the last few weeks for a variety of reasons. Surprise at the audacity of a torch-light procession of neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan sympathizers, and “alt-rightists” in an American city, coupled with the murder of social justice activist Heather Heyer during a counterdemonstration, fueled the initial coverage. President Trump’s abhorrent response to the tragedy and local struggles against Confederate statues kept it alive. And frequently dimwitted debates about the merits of antifa have supplied yet more conversational oxygen.

But it would be a mistake for the American left to see this as a decisive turning point in history, or mistake torch-wielding fascists for a mass force. On the contrary: getting consumed by debates about supporting antifa in its street clashes with neo-Nazis misses the larger political landscape.

The post-Charlottesville moment does demand antiracist mobilizations, and it’s heartening that left organizations have sprung into action and seen their numbers swell. Standing up to the far right — particularly when done effectively and en masse, like in Boston — can energize people who are otherwise frustrated and disenchanted because of the Trump administration. But that needs to be linked to tangible political organizing that goes beyond the defensive or symbolic.

Discussions about antifa are also important. Interviews with counter-protestors on the ground in Charlottesville made it clear they were more than happy antifa was there to help. In fact, Cornel West credited them with saving his life.

But the debate over antifa cannot be at the center of left political discussion. I am less concerned about being murdered by a neo-Nazi than I am about the lack of access to quality health care. I am more exercised about the suppression of voting rights and the damage it does to democracy in the here and now than the damage simply represented by Confederate statues. This is not to dismiss the efforts to tear down Confederate statutes. What lies in the public commons, after all, needs to represent the kind of country we want the United States to be. But we shouldn’t allow the conflagration to cloud our vision.

In short, the lessons post-Charlottesville are the lessons we should have learned earlier this year. We cannot simply react to Trump or the “alt-right.” Being proactive, advancing a clear program that can mobilize and galvanize a huge swath of the public — this must be the hallmark of the American left. Otherwise, the genuine anger directed at Trump and the GOP will be wasted. And we’ll squander our chance to build the kind of broad-based left that, in the end, is the best bulwark against the far right.

The Politics We Need

Most of the planks of the left platform we need are already out there, waiting to be used to spur genuine debate and action across American society. Two in particular should top any left agenda.

The first is universal health care: Medicare for All. The Republicans’ haphazard bid to scrap the Affordable Care Act showed that even an extremely flawed version of “universal” coverage was still popular enough to scuttle repeal attempts. Now, according to recent polling, public support for single-payer is on the rise. Even centrist Democrats like Kamala Harris are getting on board. After decades of struggle, universal health care is, if not right around the corner, at least on the near horizon.

Crucially, the demand for Medicare for All also offers a means to build the bonds of solidarity. As Atlantic writer Vann R. Newkirk recently pointed out, Martin Luther King Jr and other civil rights activists saw universal health care as a critical component of their struggle for a just and equitable society. The same is true today. Across movements — whether for black lives or a fifteen-dollar minimum wage or immigrant rights — universal health care is a demand that unifies.

There’s another reason to prioritize the push for universal health care. Far-right organizations like the Traditionalist Workers Party have begun making overtures to poor whites in places like Appalachia by talking about jobs and access to quality health care. 

We can’t allow a pitch for decent health care, or an argument for good jobs, to be used as a gateway to fascism.

Universal voting rights should be the second demand of any immediate left platform. Our political and economic system can’t be changed, radically and in the long-term, through voting. But countless people are being hurt by the system as it exists today, and substantially boosting voter turnout is a prerequisite for winning the reforms that will improve their lives in the short term.

Conservatives understand the importance of voting rights. In recent years, numerous GOP-controlled states have passed laws restricting the franchise, whether through ID requirements or shorter windows for voter registration. They know a smaller, demoralized voting base makes it harder to get left candidates into office.

In the past, the Populist era of the 1890s came to a crashing halt in part because of Jim Crow laws and new state constitutions across the South that severely limited voting rights for African Americans (and many poor whites as well). On the flip side, the rise of a strong voting base in the urbanized North, which included union members and African Americans, propelled the New Deal forward and gave social democracy in America some of its earliest and most important victories — despite opposition from both conservative Republicans and Southern Democrats.

More recently, results at the local level have testified to the enduring power of a mobilized electorate. Victories by Chokwe Lumumba in Jackson, Mississippi’s mayoral race and khalid kamau in South Fulton, Georgia’s city council election were made possible by left-wing political activism on the ground. That these victories occurred in the Deep South and with heavy political participation from African Americans also belies common perceptions about what the Left looks like and where it can compete.

Both Lumumba and kamau met people where they were at, while also sketching out an expansive vision. Which brings me to another important part of the Left’s post-Charlottesville toolbox: political education.

(Continue Reading)

[newstfionline]

José Andrés Fed Puerto Rico, and May Change How Aid Is Given

By Kim Severson, NY Times, Oct. 30, 2017

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico--José Andrés was walking along a dark street in a stained T-shirt and a ball cap, trying to decompress after another day of feeding an island that has been largely without electricity since Hurricane Maria hit a month ago.

He’d gone barely half a block before two women ran over to snag a selfie. A man shouted out his name from a bar running on a generator and offered to buy him a rum sour.

The reaction is more subdued in rural mountain communities like Naguabo, where Mr. Andrés and his crew have been delivering supplies so cooks at a small Pentecostal church can make 5,000 servings of arroz con pollo and carne guisada every day. There, people touch his sleeve and whisper, “Gracias.” They surround him and pray.

“He’s much more than a hero,” said Jesus R. Rivera, who was inside a cigar store watching Mr. Andrés pick out one of his daily smokes. “The situation is that still some people don’t even have food. He is all that is keeping them from starving.”

It’s overwhelming, even for Mr. Andrés, the larger-than-life, Michelin-starred Spanish chef with a prolific, unfiltered social media presence, who got into a legal fight with the Trump Organization after Donald Trump made disparaging comments about Mexicans.

“Every day I have this personal anxiety inside,” Mr. Andrés said during a Jeep ride through the countryside in late October. “We only came here to try to help a few thousand because nobody had a plan to feed Puerto Rico, and we opened the biggest restaurant in the world in a week. That’s how crazy this is.”

Since he hit the ground five days after the hurricane devastated this island of 3.4 million on Sept. 20, he has built a network of kitchens, supply chains and delivery services that as of Monday had served more than 2.2 million warm meals and sandwiches. No other single agency--not the Red Cross, the Salvation Army nor any government entity--has fed more people freshly cooked food since the hurricane, or done it in such a nurturing way.

Mr. Andrés’s effort, by all accounts the largest emergency feeding program ever set up by a group of chefs, has started winding down. But it illustrates in dramatic fashion the rise of chefs as valuable players in a realm traditionally left to more-established aid organizations.

With an ability to network quickly, organize kitchens in difficult circumstances and marshal raw ingredients and equipment, chef-led groups are creating a model for a more agile, local response to catastrophes.

“It’s part of larger trend we’re starting to see with corporations and individuals who are applying their unique skill sets to solve problems after a disaster,” said Bob Ottenhoff, the president and chief executive of the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, which helps donors make strategic contributions related to domestic and international emergencies.

In addition to sending money or showing up to hand out blankets or boxes of food, companies like UPS and IBM are designing ways to quickly supply logistical and technical aid.

“Chefs are part of that trend now, too,” Mr. Ottenhoff said. “They’re starting to say, ‘Look, people are in need of not just food but good food, and we know how to serve large quantities of good food very quickly.’”

Kimberly Grant, the chief executive of Mr. André’s Think Food Group, which runs 27 restaurants, put it like this: “Who else can take raw ingredients that are seemingly unassociated and make them into delicious food and do it under extreme pressure?”

Restaurateurs have long offered food when trouble hit their communities.

Kitchens near the World Trade Center in New York served thousands of meals each day to emergency workers after 9/11. In response to the 2004 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, the celebrity chef Cat Cora started Chefs for Humanity. Competition barbecue teams that headed to Joplin, Mo., after the 2011 tornadoes organized themselves into Operation BBQ Relief, a nonprofit group that has since responded to more than 40 disasters.

Two weeks ago, a food writer in Northern California tapped the region’s best chefs to provide a steady stream of meals for people who had lost homes to wildfires. The restaurateur and TV personality Guy Fieri, who had to evacuate his Santa Rosa residence, organized a team of volunteers and began serving mashed potatoes and pork loin to firefighters and others in a parking lot.

Mr. Andrés helped out after Hurricane Sandy, but his first big lesson in emergency food relief came in August, when he rallied local chefs in Houston to help feed survivors of Hurricane Harvey.

Other Houston chefs and caterers started a website called “I Have Food I Need Food” and used social media to create a system to organize donations, cook food and get it delivered. They codified their effort in a manual and send it to chefs in Miami who were staring down Hurricane Irma, which landed 16 days later.

Mr. Andrés went to Houston in part to study how to expand the scope of World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit association of chefs he established in 2011 after helping Haiti earthquake victims a year earlier. The idea was to learn how he and Brian MacNair, World Central Kitchen’s executive director, could add emergency food relief to an agenda that already included building school kitchens, organizing culinary training and offering other forms of support in several countries.

But nothing prepared Mr. Andrés for what he faced in Puerto Rico. After taking one of the first commercial flights to the island after the storm, he realized that things were worse than anyone knew.

He found his friend Jose Enrique, the chef who has been leading Puerto Rico’s farm-to-table resurgence. Mr. Enrique had no electricity to run his Restaurant Jose Enrique, in the Santurce district of San Juan. Rain poured through the roof. But he had food in the freezer. Other chefs did, too. Someone had a generator.

“We decided we would just start cooking,” Mr. Enrique said.

The next morning, Mr. Andrés went to a food distributor and loaded up his car. “I was already smart enough to know I would need aluminum pans, so I bought every aluminum pan I could,” he said.

They began cooking big pots of the classic island stew called sancocho on the street in front of Mr. Enrique’s small restaurant. Word spread and the lines grew. They sent food to people waiting in 10-hour lines at gas stations. They heard that workers at the city’s biggest medical clinic were going hungry, so they added it to what was now a makeshift delivery schedule. “Every day it would just double,” Mr. Enrique said.

Mr. Andrés didn’t realize that his was the biggest hot-food game on the island until a week or so after they started. Someone from the Salvation Army pulled up and asked for 120 meals.

“In my life I never expected the Salvation Army to be asking me for food,” he said. “If one of the biggest NGOs comes to us for food, who is actually going to be feeding Puerto Rico? We are. We are it.”

More cooks arrived to help. Partnerships were forged with other aid groups and large food companies. Sandwiches and fruit were added to their repertory of rice dishes.

The team moved its base of operation to the island’s largest arena. To pay for it all, at least in the beginning, they used Mr. Andrés’s credit cards, or cash from the pockets of the Orvis fly-fishing vest he wore like a battle jacket.

Mr. Andrés left the island only a few times, the first after 11 days on the ground. He had lost 25 pounds and became dehydrated.

His team deployed food trucks, like a strike force, to isolated neighborhoods and towns that needed help. Agents of Homeland Security Investigations, a division of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, were serving as emergency workers, and staying in the same hotel as Mr. Andrés’s crew. The chef persuaded them to load food into their vehicles every morning as they headed out to patrol.

With limited ability to communicate, the crew organized everything with satellite phones, WhatsApp and a big paper map of all the feeding stations on the island, which Mr. Andrés carried like a general at war.

He negotiated with a chain of vocational schools around the island to let culinary students cook there. During visits to his kitchens, 18 in all, he admonished volunteers to add more mayonnaise to sandwiches, keep the temperature up on the pans of rice or serve bigger portions.

The Compass Group, a giant American food-service operation that Mr. Andrés recently partnered with, sent someone who understood what it takes to feed several thousand people at a time.

Mr. Andrés recruited his own chefs, too. David Thomas, accustomed to making $540 suckling pigs as the executive chef at Mr. Andrés’s Bazaar Meat restaurant in Las Vegas, suddenly found himself trying to figure out how to make meals out of donations that might include 5,000 pounds of lunch meat one day and 17 pallets of yogurt the next.

The operation grew so big that at one point you couldn’t find any sliced cheese in all of Puerto Rico. The team had bought it all up for sandwiches.

Eventually, the effort would cost World Central Kitchen about $400,000 a day, paid for by donations from foundations, celebrities and a flood of smaller donors, as well as two Federal Emergency Management Agency contracts--one early on to cover the cost of 140,000 meals, and another for $10 million to cover two weeks’ worth of meals while Mr. Andrés’s team scaled down the operation.

Mr. Andrés, who often rolls right over regulations and ignores the word “no,” clashed more than once with FEMA and other large organizations that have a more-seasoned and methodical approach. In meetings and telephone calls, FEMA officials reminded him that he and his people lacked the experience needed to organize a mass emergency feeding operation, he said.

“We are not perfect, but that doesn’t mean the government is perfect,” Mr. Andrés said. “I am doing it without red tape and 100 meetings.”

FEMA officials contacted for this article were quick to point out that many other groups and agencies besides World Central Kitchen were feeding Puerto Rico; a spokesman would not publicly discuss Mr. Andrés or his operation.

Late last week, the system that was serving more than 130,000 meals a day became much smaller. A core crew will likely keep things going until Thanksgiving, with one main kitchen and a handful in some of the neediest regions.

Mr. Andrés flew home to Washington, D.C., on Thursday. “This has been like my little Vietnam, but now I need to go back to normal life,” he said.

He never intended to stay as long as he did, he said. Or to feed an island.

“At the end, I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t try to do what I thought was right,” he said. “We need to think less sometimes and dream less and just make it happen.”

[laymlone-blog]

Fatphobia (20.12.19)

Fatphobia is a systematic dehumanising of fat people that takes on different forms from media representation to microaggressions. 

Usually, people try to say ‘nicer’ ways for fatness like ‘curvy’ or ‘plus sized’. Plus sized is particularly problematic. 

If I am plus sized - what’s so plus about it? The extra, like something you can just take on and off. Ever heard of the “dream measurements”: 90-60-90 (hip/waist/breast) with about a 6’0ft/180cm height? That’s the bullshit standard for female supermodels. 

Google: Twiggy

Some people have never walked into a shop and found nothing in their size and it shows. 

The racial aspect of fatphobia lies in biological essentialism, and especially the creation of ‘BMI’ (Body Mass Index).  BMI was invented in the 1830s by Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet, a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist. This was the same time people were putting forth bullshit ideas about ‘criminal types’ - equating looks to criminality. It specifically targeted disabled, poor and dark skinned people.

BMI is a mathematical formula (BMI = weight (kg) / height)  based on an ‘ideal’ human body; in this case, a Caucasian, able bodied, cisgender Male. This was used in the 19th century as a measurement of fitness to sterilize POC, Indigenous people, disabled people, poor people, immigrants and other marginalised minorities. 

It’s connection to eugenics leads on to the next point of health and fatness. 

The connection between fatness and unhealthiness is forced and upheld by rigid norms in households in the western world. With things like ‘Fat Camp’ being implemented in America to deal with the capitalisation of poverty by the fast food industry, fatness is strongly seen as a negative. 

To some assholes, a fat person is barely a person, they’re a walking heart attack waiting to happen. 

A good quote from @ lex_about_sex on Twitter:

“I feel like the go-to-stock response about fatness “you can be fat and healthy” that’s true - but 

Fatphobia is not genuinely about the concern for health and that response legitimises it as a concern

It’s okay to be unhealthy! Unhealthy people deserve respect too!

Instead of continually vesting in the poor healthy/good healthy binary let’s unpack “why” we think it’s okay to debase people for being unhealthy and how it really is ABLEISM which is ultimately a byproduct of capitalism which measures validity via “productivity””

^^ I love this. 

Fatness is fatness - whether it is healthy or unhealthy, a fat person deserves to be treated like a person. 

Now, the stigma, how does it build up? What does it look like?

Let’s think about stereotypes of fat people in media:

The rich, fat asshole who doesn’t give a shit about anyone

The comedic female side character who takes all the shit and probably has good one liners

The old, warm granny

The Black, fat woman who knows how to cook up a feast

The angsty fat girl who sees her fatness as the main thing stopping her from doing anything

The really girly and frilly fat girl who’s bubbly personality makes up for her fatness as ‘ugly’

The guy who likes fat, salty girl because he has a fetish

The fat guy, who happens to be disabled in some way, in some wierd adult cartoon show and has a tendency for violence and being ‘unintelligent’ and has a ‘hot’ wife and kids

The fat kid, who lost weight and is now hot and desirable - ‘the ugly duckling’

The fat person with no morals and probably gets eaten by the end of the story

A bully who is bullying others because of their insecurity about their fatness

The rich, fat king/noble who feasts whilst the peasants are poor, frail and starving

The beer belly abusive step father

I honestly can’t think of many others. 

But yeah, we have these images instilled in us. 

Other shows obsessed with weight loss and gain: Biggest Loser, Supersize Me etc. 

When is the last time you saw a fat girl being completely and utterly happy about her size without being frowned upon? When was the last time you saw a sexed up, healthy version of a fat guy? 

You see so many ads telling people to lose weight, but what about putting on weight? Except pregnancy - which then tells you to lose the weight you gained during pregnancy with a ‘bounce back’.

Skinny people being afraid to be fat, and fat people being afraid to be fat. 

Fuckkk, the skinny characters eating whatever they want because they have a ‘fast metabolism’ but if a fat person ate the same things - ‘they could lose weight by cutting that junk’. Fuck that. 

Oh, getting on a weight measure scale and FEARING putting on weight. The skinny one looking in the mirror and grabbing at a slightly tubby stomach ‘oh my god, I am SO FAT’. 

One thing I want to touch on briefly is the gender aspect, yes it’s difficult for men, women and non binary people. But, the way young girls are brought up, spoonfed media about fashion, girl power and skinniness, thin barbies to play with instead of cars etc. Women are under the misogynist stereotypes. Men have different pressures on them, but fatness is also masculinised. What I mean is that there are different expectations for ideal bodies, but men are (mainly white guys) encouraged to take up space via their bodies, voices and presence whilst women are expected to be as small as possible and be desired by dudes. 

So if fatness is somehow masculinised, what does this do to feminine bodies? It makes them invalid. It creates a sexless idea around fat women. The objectification of feminine bodies disempowers fat women from two angles. 

However for MOC who are really pressured to keep a slim, ‘fit’ figure to be classified as a ‘man’. Fat men are a product of gluttony by over masculinity - they get what they want but have got too much. The stigma around dark skinned, fat men is shown in representation of Black/Brown men being large and angry, abusive or on the other angle being emasculate and feminine. 

It differs when including gender, disability, class, race etc. 

Fatphobia at its core is a White, middle/higher class, able bodied, heteronormative, patriarchal tactic to objectify certain bodies and dehumanise people that doesn’t fit their ‘ideal’ for productive citizens of a capitalist society. 

Fat Acceptance movement has been going on since early 2019. It’s not about ‘liking’ or ‘glorifying’ or ‘beautifying’ fatness; it’s asking to respect fat people. 

Simple basic, fucking respect and inclusion. 

It’s not encouraging skinny people to be fat, it’s saying: it is ok to be fat.

What, you're gonna see a women empowerment post, and say it’s telling men and non binary people to be a woman? Of course fucking not.

It’s about R E S P E C T. Respect. 

Say it again: respect.

Okay, so what can you do?

STOP using ‘fat’ or fat references as insults 

STOP commenting on people’s weight

STOP only including thin people in ‘inclusive’ events

Remember where you have seen fatphobia in your life

Call out your friends on their bullshit

Follow fat people on social media (actively)

Look at the racks when you shop, and see what bodies it prefers and think about it

Don’t determine health by appearance

Throw away your fucking scale

Weight loss doesn’t equal fitness journey

Fuck you and your unsolicited health advice

Don’t buy bigger clothes if there are clothes that fit you right there 

Call it out when you see it

Follow the hashtags fat activists use: #fatacceptance 

It doesn’t matter if a person is healthy or not, just fucking respect them. 

HASHTAG: #fat and angry

Resources:

https://www.them.us/story/these-fat-men-in-fashion-are-tired-of-being-left-out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkWjdnc77Mw

Sykes, Heather, and Deborah McPhail. "Unbearable lessons: Contesting fat phobia in physical education." Sociology of Sport Journal 25.1 (2008): 66-96.

Al-Adawi, Samir, et al. "Culture to culture: Fat-phobia and somatization." Handbook of behavior, food and nutrition. Springer, New York, NY, 2011. 1457-1473.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/sep/03/diet-advice-and-tiny-seats-how-to-avoid-10-forms-of-fatphobia

https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/44828/1/plus-size-mannequin-nike-telegraph-fat-woman-fatphobia

Forth, Christopher E. "Fat, desire and disgust in the colonial imagination." History Workshop Journal. Vol. 73. No. 1. Oxford University Press, 2012.

Strings, Sabrina. Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia. NYU Press, 2019.

Russell, Constance, et al. "“Fatties cause global warming”: Fat pedagogy and environmental education." Canadian Journal of Environmental Education (CJEE) 18 (2013): 27-45.

http://ravishly.com/fat-camp-survivor

https://www.plasticsurgery.org/news/press-releases/new-statistics-reveal-the-shape-of-plastic-surgery

Monaghan, Lee F. "Body Mass Index, masculinities and moral worth: men's critical understandings of ‘appropriate’weight‐for‐height." Sociology of health & illness 29.4 (2007): 584-609.

https://elemental.medium.com/the-bizarre-and-racist-history-of-the-bmi-7d8dc2aa33bb

https://youtu.be/HXGwJevjOfs

https://cocainemodels.com/requirements-modeling-height-age-measurement/

Norman, Moss E. "“Dere’s Not Just One Kind of Fat” Embodying the “Skinny”-Self Through Constructions of the Fat Masculine Other." Men and Masculinities 16.4 (2013): 407-431.

Bailey, Courtney. "Supersizing America: Fatness and post‐9/11 cultural anxieties." The Journal of Popular Culture 43.3 (2010): 441-462.

Usiekniewicz, Marta. "“Dangerous Bodies: Blakness, Fatness, and the Masculinity Dividend." A Journal of Queer Studies 11 (2016): 19-45.