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parfaitblogs · 6 months ago

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loml ❀ s. reid x reader

in which even six years apart isn’t too much time for spencer to come see you.

pairing: ex!spencer reid x fem!reader genre: angst/comfort sort of tags: that freaky shit (soul crushing angst). a lot of nothing. approximately the time morgan left the bau (it's mentioned). spoilers for 5x9 (‘100’) if you haven't watched it yet... fade to black. word count: 1.2k a/n: heyyyy… enjoy my the contents of my sad brain lol. this can kinda be a waiting room pt. 2 if you squint. i’m super sick right now so here’s a draft i wasn’t going to post until august (although it’s july 31 so is it technically august?) because i have no energy to write rn. whoops. enjoyy

Your mother once told you she doesn't think you can be just friends with some people.

They're either there to be in your life forever, souls so deeply woven together that you have to be more than friends. Or they're fleeting, and your lives will line up for a short enough period of time that they'll impact you, and then you'll never see them again.

You wished Spencer Reid was the latter.

Not at first. No, at first he was the man you were going to marry. You were certain of it. Discussing your wedding with your friends because it was going to happen, and you were picturing him at the altar. You had fantasised what was supposed to be the happiest day of your life so many times, dedicating so many hours to the concept of it, that when you lost it, you mourned the loss of it as much as you mourned the relationship.

But Spencer Reid was the former. Unfortunately so. Losing so many years to a man you didn't even speak to anymore, because you just can't get over it. Can't get over how you could give someone so much of you, and they will still throw it all away for a narrative they've made up in their mind. Can't get over the narrative he made up of you.

It was justifiable, you supposed. His boss had just lost his (ex) wife because of the job. It was tough for everyone on the team. You didn't think it was so bad he would freak out as much as he did, though.

Because in his mind you were next. He was going to lose you as well. And even that stupidly large brain of his couldn't see how ridiculous that sounded. He refused to listen to you when all he could hear was the screaming in his head of you being next, and the statistics of female abductions. Statistics that were no different between the day before the incident, and the day he broke up with you. They were just louder to him.

An achingly long amount of time had passed from the last time you spoke to him. A pathetic meeting you had requested two months after the breakup, because your life was falling apart and maybe seeing him would make it better.

It didn't.

You wondered if you'd still be shedding tears over him if you hadn't met him that night.

You heard your name, and so your head lifted from your lap. Right, you thought, bitterly. He was here. In your apartment. The same one he used to sleep at, for days on end.

You knew triggers like the back of your hand. They were usually things that made sense. Loud noises, blood, anniversaries. Could you justify your trigger being a whole person?

You hadn't known he was a trigger until that evening, when he had showed up at your apartment door with a bouquet of flowers that you didn't really want, and an insultingly pretty smile. You had broken down, right there in your doorway, crumpling to the floor in a hyperventilating, miserable heap.

He had held you, and frustratingly so, it helped. He didn't speak when he had done it, until you were calmer and were muttering apologies to him, embarrassment replacing the upset.

At which he shushed you. You listened.

"Why are you here?" you broke the silence that followed his calling of your name, voice shaky.

He exhaled audibly. "I wanted to see you."

"No, Spencer," you sniffled. "You don't get to come over with flowers just because you wanted to see me. Why are you here?"

He fell silent, and you wished you could crawl into his brain to see what he was thinking. You presumed a million things.

"Morgan left," he said, quietly, and you felt your mouth go dry.

"Oh."

Then; your eyebrows furrowed. Because did he really have no one to go to? You stared back at him for a few seconds, and for a moment, you let yourself forget about the weight between you two. Staring into his eyes was an easy way to forget that, apparently. It was comforting for you, but perhaps uncomfortable for him.

Because he cleared his throat, and adjusted his position on the couch. "I didn't know where to go. And you said if I needed anything, you would be there and—"

"—People say that as a courtesy, Spencer," you breathed out.

"I know," he said, quickly. "But I really needed someone, and I genuinely didn't know where else to go."

You couldn't slam the door in his face even if you wanted to. Because now you were registering more than just your own emotions. The red rimming his eyes, the dusting of pink on his nose and above his lips.

So, you nodded your head. "Okay. Come here," you said, opening your arms, and took him in between them. Albeit hesitantly. On both ends.

This time he broke down, and you let him. His face pressed into the crook of your neck, your fingers entangled in his curls, scratching at his scalp in the best soothing motion you could.

He cried until he had dehydrated his body, and your arms had begun to cramp from the position they were in. When he pulled back, your heart cracked a little more at the sight, his face wet with tears that stuck his hair to his cheeks, that you cleaned up.

"I miss you."

You froze. He did as well, but for an entirely different reason. At the idea that he had said it. Not you. Him. The words decorated the air and hung there for minutes as you fell silent.

Finally; "You don't mean that."

"Yes I do," his response was quick, as if expecting you to deny him of his own feelings.

"You're upset, and I'm comforting you. You miss Morgan. Not me. Transference," you mumbled, hands dropping from his face.

"This isn't transference."

"Spencer."

You were right. You knew it in the way his shoulders sagged in defeat, and his lips parted as if to say something, only to clamp shut in mental defiance.

"Maybe," he finally said, quietly. "But I do still miss you."

"It's been five years," you answered. He nodded his head in agreement. You exhaled. "I miss you too, Spencer."

He lips twitched, but never reached a smile. "You aren't seeing anyone, then?" he asked.��

"You can deduce that, I'm sure."

You were right, he could, and he nodded his head, lips reaching a smile, albeit sadly. "Yeah. Me neither."

"I also figured," you said. "You would've gone to your girlfriend if you had one."

"I would've," he nodded his head, laughing a breathy, awkward laugh. "Instead I went to my ex-girlfriend."

"You did." More uncomfortable silence, before you let out a sigh. Again. "Movie?"

"What?"

"Do you want to watch a movie?" you say the full sentence, a little slower than what was probably necessary. You knew him well enough to know that he hated talking about his feelings, he was an awful communicator. Had been, your brain screams at you. He could've changed.

It seemed he hadn't, because he nodded his head, a smaller, more genuine smile painted his lips. "Yeah. Okay."

your reblogs and replies are always appreciated dearly ♡

#lia’s fics ♡#spencer reid #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid fic #spencer reid imagine #spencer x reader #spencer x self insert #spencer reid x reader #criminal minds #criminal minds fic #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds imagine #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid angst #spencer reid hurt/comfort

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mariacallous · 2 months ago

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Since Russia started military operations against Ukraine in 2014, it has abducted or detained at least 60 Ukrainian reporters and media workers – some of whom have vanished without trace.

The father of Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, who went missing in the summer of 2023 and was detained in Russia, received a letter last month from the Russian Ministry of Defence.

It informed him that Roshchyna had died in custody and that they intended to repatriate her body as part of an exchange of war dead with Ukraine.

More than a month has passed since then, but despite the assurances, Russia has not yet returned his daughter’s body for burial.

The Ukrainian organisation Media Initiative for Human Rights, MIHR, said Roshchyna had been working as a freelance journalist when she was taken. She had worked for various Ukrainian and international media outlets and disappeared during a field trip to the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhzhia region in August 2023.

Roshchyna had been gathering material for publication about the occupiers holding elections for the Russian parliament, the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station and the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Eherhodar.

Russia kept her incommunicado for more than a year, the MIHR said, officially recognising her detention only in May 2024, but without clarifying the legal processes against her or allowing her to see a lawyer.

“There was an extremely limited amount of information, and no responses to official requests made by the family. For a long time, the family has been in a state of such uncertainty that it can be considered torture, as the uncertainty about the fate of their family member has affected their psycho-emotional state,” said Yevheniia Kapalkina, from the human rights organisation Ukrainian Legal Advisory Group, which is representing the family.

The Ukrainian media rights organisation, the Institute of Mass Information, IMI, says that 30 journalists are currently illegally imprisoned by Russian forces in Ukrainian-occupied territory, including in Crimea.

The chair of the IMI, Oksana Romaniuk, said Russia and its proxies have detained 60 media workers, citizen journalists and bloggers since 2014. Some of them, she added, were arbitrarily detained without any charges or procedural status.

According to Kapalkina, the Russian Ministry of Defence only relays partial information about detainees held by Russia to their families through the International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC.

Information is not provided in all cases, and when it is, often it is not enough for the families to understand the current situation in which their loved ones are being held because they receive the news late and all correspondence is censored.

According to a Facebook post by Tetiana Katrychenko, director of the MIHR, Roshchyna was held in at least two penal colonies, in Russian-occupied Berdiansk and in Taganrog, in the Rostov region of Russia.

“Since the first months of the full-scale invasion, Russians have been using both places to detain Ukrainian military and civilians, including women,” Katrychenko wrote.

“Taganrog (and Berdiansk where torture with electric shocks was documented) is known as one of the most brutal places of detention for Ukrainians in the Russian Federation. Former prisoners call it hell on earth,” she added.

Journalists seen as ‘the enemy’

IMI chairperson Oksana Romaniuk said that Russia has repeatedly sought to portray captive Ukrainian civilians as prisoners of war.

“An example is Dmytro Khyliuk [a correspondent for Ukraine’s UNIAN news agency]. From time to time, we see him mentioned in various Russian Telegram channels and captioned as some kind of military man. But he absolutely had nothing to do with the army. This way the Russians are trying to argue why they are illegally detaining a civilian,” Romaniuk said.

According to the IMI, almost all those who have been released from arbitrary imprisonment report torture, ill-treatment and refusal to provide medical assistance to prisoners in detention.

“Russia considers journalists to be enemies,” Romaniuk said. “We see this not only in the way they take journalists hostage. We also see this when Russian snipers shoot at people marked as the press,” she said.

She cited the case of Bohdan Bitik, a Ukrainian working for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica who was killed in a Russian attack in Kherson in April 2023.

“He was shot by a sniper, although he was wearing this blue ‘Press’ vest and had a camera in his hands,” she explained.

According to the IMI, since the full-scale invasion began, Russia has killed 12 journalists in Ukraine, both local and foreign, while they were carrying out their professional duties.

The head of the criminal legal policy department at the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office, Oleksiy Bonyuk, has stated that by November 2024, the office was investigating 107 war crimes committed against journalists.

According to Bonyuk, there have so far been four indictments charging nine people in cases related to crimes against journalists, three of whom have already been found guilty.

Abductions are ‘systematic’, say activists

Ukrainian human rights activists allege that there is a systematic Russian practice of abducting journalists in the occupied areas, holding them incommunicado and ill-treating them, and that there has been a lack of international pressure to stop such crimes.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 2022, Anastasiia Hlukhovska, a journalist from Melitopol, in the Zaporizhzhia region, worked for local outlet RIA Melitopol, specialising in social issues, said her sister, Diana.

“In the very first days of the invasion, Melitopol was occupied by Russian forces. We all realised that Anastasiia had to stop doing journalism because journalists are at risk. It’s not that they are just risking their careers or anything like that, they are risking their lives,” said Diana Hlukhovska.

“After that, Anastasiia didn’t do any journalistic work, just ran the household. She was at home almost all the time in Melitopol and we talked regularly. Everything was relatively good, but she was constantly afraid that something would happen, even though she had cut off all ties with the profession,” she continued.

On August 20, 2023, Anastasiia Hlukhovska stopped responding to calls. As her sister later found out, the Russian military had abducted her from her home and searched her apartment. “She was supposed to meet our mother that day,” she said.

According to her sister, Anastasiia has not been in touch since. Their mother went to the occupying commander’s headquarters in Melitopol and tried to find out where her daughter was being held. But everywhere she went, she received the response that her daughter was not there.

“We made inquiries. The FSB [Russian intelligence service] said they knew nothing. Well, of course. But the Russian prosecutor’s office confirmed to us that Anastasiia was taken into custody,” Diana Hlukhovska said.

About a year ago, she saw a video on Telegram in which she recognised Anastasiia with several other people being detained.

At dawn on the same day that Anastasiia was seized, Russian forces also seized three administrators of Melitopol-based Telegram channels that distribute local news, Heorgiy Levchenko, Yana Suvorova and Vladyslav Hershon. According to Reporters Without Borders, at the end of September this year, they were possibly being held in the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol in the Donetsk region.

For more than a year, Anastasiia Hlukhovska’s family has had almost no news about her. Her relatives collect any references they see to her in the media or get from released Ukrainian prisoners of war who are often held by Russia together with arbitrarily imprisoned civilians.

“We know she was in Melitopol last August, when she was captured. And recently we found out that she was in Taganrog [in Russia],” Diana Hlukhovska said. “The family is in a state of such uncertainty that it’s like a form of torture.”

Geneva Conventions not observed

Some Ukrainian journalists have been illegally detained in Russia for almost the entire period of Russia’s full-scale invasion, such as UNIAN news agency correspondent Dmytro Khilyuk.

Khyliuk and his father were abducted by the Russian military in March 2022 during their occupation of the Kyiv region, seized from their home village of Kozarovychi. Eight days later, his father was released.

The Russian military first kept Khyliuk in a warehouse in Kozarovychi and in the neighbouring village of Dymer in Kyiv region, and later took him with them as they retreated.

For a long time, there was no information about Khyliuk’s whereabouts. But from interviews with released Ukrainian prisoners of war, his relatives and Ukrainian human rights groups found out that he had been transferred to Pakino, a village in Russia’s Vladimir region, east of Moscow.

Oksana Mykhalevych, a lawyer for his family, said that this spring, Khilyuk’s parents received a message from the Russian Ministry of Defence confirming that their son was being held in Russia. Since then, they have not heard anything.

According to Mykhalevych, the Russian letter refers to international conventions on treatment of prisoners of war and says information about him and his prisoner card have been transferred to the ICRC.

Khilyuk’s family then tried to write to him.

“When some prisoners who had contact with Dmytro while they were in captivity finally got released, they said that Dmytro had not received any letters from his family,” Mykhalevych said.

“So this mechanism provided for by the Geneva Conventions, to which the Russian Ministry of Defence referred in the letter, does not work. They wrote that you can apply through the ICRC and send correspondence and parcels, and they will be handed over. But nothing of the kind happens,” Mykhalevych added.

In July 2024, Reporters Without Borders published the testimony of a Ukrainian prisoner of war who had been released from captivity. He said that he had spent almost a year in the same cell with Khilyuk. According to the freed prisoner, Khilyuk “weighed no more than 45 kilograms” in their time together and did not look much like the photos shown to him for identification.

In a report on Ukrainian civilians arbitrarily detained by Russia, published in spring this year, international experts from the OSCE’s Moscow Mechanism said journalists and human rights defenders have been specifically targeted for enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention in Russia along with local authorities and other public figures who the Russians consider local opinion leaders.

The executive director of the MIHR, Tetiana Katrychenko, said that Russia has been tracing people who have been trying to report on what is happening in the occupation since 2014. She claimed that not only professional journalists are being attacked, but also people who have decided to take over the job of reporting in places where professional Ukrainian journalists have been forced to leave for security reasons.

“It’s not so much [reporting] about the movement of military forces and equipment, but also about trivial things like curfews, the fact that a certain area was actually hit by artillery or drones,” Katrychenko explained.

“We know that a group of people in Russian-occupied Donetsk are being held in penal colonies now, and in pre-trial detention centres before, who were preparing tweets about events in the city. And they were detained for this, and the occupying authorities called them ‘Twitterists’ in their publications. So it’s definitely an attempt by Russia to close down channels that transmit information to the public,” she said.

The Russian Ministry of Defence and penitentiary service did not answer questions about forcibly disappeared Ukrainian journalists by the time of publication.

Kateryna Dyachuk, head of the freedom of speech monitoring department at the Institute of Mass Information, said that since 2014, when Russia began to seize Ukrainian territory, the IMI has recorded 634 alleged crimes against the media, including murders, cyberattacks and attacks on media infrastructure, such as the shelling of Ukrainian TV towers.

“Russia is doing everything it can to wipe out the information that journalists collect and report to the world,” Dyachuk said. “Russia is doing everything to shut them up.”

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randomfoggytiger · 1 year ago

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UPDATED: Scully's Abduction, Emily Sim, and the Lost Scully Baby

SOLVING SCULLY'S ABDUCTION DATES

The answer to the question of when Scully was returned differs here and there. Sometime after 11/2/94 and on or before 11/11/94 seems to be the consensus: themareks posits November 2nd, xfilestimeline.net guesses in-between the 2nd and 11th, and epguides stands by the 11th as both One Breath's airdate and Scully's reappearance.

But how long was Scully gone?

Mulder states in Emily: "She [Scully] was missing for four weeks. That's documented in the file." And to further back up that abduction timeline, Mulder later finds a medical paperwork in the nursing home containing Scully's full name next to a hard-to-miss date: 13/10/94.

**UPDATE**: I have been informed that not only was Scully kidnapped on August 8th (Duane Barry) but also that Chris Carter acknowledged the fault in his timeline. If that be the case, Scully was likely abducted from August 8th to November 2nd - 11th. November 11th as a return date makes the most sense, unless one believes the Consortium would return her the same day Emily was born.

The documented 13/10 on Scully's paperwork, then, takes place two months after her abduction; and would seem to be the date her ova were extracted (unless Scully hadn't been tagged in the Project's system, yet; which is unlikely.)

On a side note: What a monumentally cruel move, to have her ova extracted on Mulder's birthday. (I'll bet it was Carl Spender's doing.)

WAS SCULLY IMPREGNATED DURING HER ABDUCTION?

Mulder's filed report contains another tidbit he never shared with his partner: it states (as read aloud by the official overseeing Emily's custody case) that Scully was "subjected to a series of experiments where... they extracted her ova."

The episode divulges the 'how's a few scenes later: abductees or unwitting volunteers were put into "beauty sleep" by the Syndicate doctors before being injected with a series of enhanced drugs to stimulate ovulation for extraction. Essentially, the women were put through a process similar to the early stages of IVF treatments, for far more nefarious purposes.

**UPDATE**: After the extracted ova were combined with suitable sperm or cloned with alien DNA, they were either grown in tubes or jars or vats of liquid. In Emily's case, she was used as a two-fold vehicle: hybridization, and elderly reproductive research (hence, the eight retiree women in Dr. Calderon's control group.) While her conception-- sometime post 10/13-- and birth-- 11/2-- occurred while Scully was still missing, we are told in Season 5 that it was Anna Fugazzi, one of the control group women, that gave birth to her; and that statement is backed up with proof of how and why. Which would make sense, since Scully was extensively tested after her return (Mulder later states that medical exams can prove she hasn't given birth.)

NURSING HOME MOTHERS

As is the end result of man playing God, the Syndicate pushed the bounds of their "science" by dabbling with the unconscionable: they darkened the doors of nursing homes, developed hosts for their hybrid babies by "stimulating" the reproductive abilities of older women through "beauty sleep." These women were the perfect targets, either too confused or uninformed to fully articulate what was happening to them; and Dr. Calderon and his cohorts banked on repeating their experimental process until death claimed their patients in natural or unnatural ways. (Unfortunately for Dr. Calderon, his aspirations were cut short when Mulder threatened exposure.)

THE ROANOKE SCULLY

What's even worse?

While investigating the nursing home, Mulder not only finds the aforementioned paperwork listing Scully's full name and possible abduction date but also a corresponding fetus, alive and kicking, in its own little container of green fluid.

This, too, was Scully's child; and it, too, was likely killed or discarded as medical waste during the Consortium's coverup.

"NATURAL", CLONE, OR HYBRID?

Though not entirely explained in Emily (or after), the fetuses grew at unimaginably rapid rates from conception to "birth" in a month's time; but the cost of accelerated growth sacrificed their health, causing the babies born to be dependent on consistent injections of their mysterious gestation fluid in order to survive.

What were those babies, then? Clones? Hybrids? Fully human?

**UPDATE**: Emily Sim was explicitly stated to be a clone, created under Dr. Calderon's branch of Syndicate-backed research. Unlike Dr. Parenting, who specialized in studying "purer" alien babies, Calderon was attempting-- like the rest of his overlords-- to combine human genetics with alien physiology to better combat Colonization.

What about the Scully fetus? Well, it, too, was already developed (probably rapidly grown) in a tube of origin; it, too, was about to be implanted in the retiree women; and it, too, subsisted on the same green liquid that kept Emily alive. In short: it was part of the same hybrid program as the Sim girl.

CONCLUSIONS

Not only was Scully never pregnant but she was also never abducted more than once, making her an anomaly even amongst the other MUFON women.

She was abducted only because she was a threat to the Project-- CSM's comment in Sleepless prove that to be the case-- and was returned only to die (i.e. CSM handing her over so she could have an "honorable" end near her loved ones.) Unlike the other MUFON women, who were returned healthy enough to survives and became return abductees, Scully was supposed to be a dead-end one-off. (But, as always, CSM kept changing the Syndicate's plans based on him whims: hence, her abduction; hence, her return; hence his offer to cure her cancer; hence, his power-tripping road trip.) In short, she was considered disposable waste by a cabal who viewed other humans as means to an end.

Emily, too, was ultimately doomed to die after the Consortium or Dr. Calderon tired of his experiments; and if it hadn't been for Melissa Scully's ghostly interference, Emily Sim would have been torn from her parents the minute they stopped towing the line and raised elsewhere as a lab rat-- unloved and, again, tossed aside when deemed no longer necessary.

Finally, there's still one Scully child unaccounted for.

Existence begun and ended in obscurity, it was likely squirreled away or destroyed along with any remaining evidence of Dr. Calderon's work-- a cut loose end from a man no longer needed by his overlords.

However, the thought that Mulder was the only person other than its merciless creators to behold this tiny fetus is one best pondered on a dark, lonely night when in the mood for either melancholy or heart failure.

Thank you for reading~

Enjoy!

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27moremoons · 4 months ago

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Resistance News Network:

The wanted freed prisoner Abdulrahman (Aboud) Shaheen, the commander-in-chief of the resistance in the Old City of Nablus, a founder of the Lions' Den, and a companion of the martyrs Al-Dakhil, Al-Nabulsi, Al-Shishani, and Al-Houh, was abducted by the IOF after being wounded in a heroic armed clash.

Aboud was besieged twice this evening, once by the traitorous Palestinian Authority who attempted to assassinate him, and a few hours later by the IOF, the PA's masters. He was wounded, and his body was kidnapped by the IOF from the ambulance afterwards.

He did not shy from criticizing the "Palestinian" Authority, but his rifle was pointed solely towards the occupation. "This rifle will continue to open fire on the army," he said.

Right before the IOF launched a large-scale invasion of the northern West Bank, the Palestinian Authority Security Forces abducted fighters wanted by the IOF in Nablus. Fighters in Nablus' Old City refused to stand for this.

"Resistance is a right under all laws, agreements, and religions. In conclusion, the reason for the [Palestinian Authority's] Security Forces' arrest of one of the fighters wanted by the occupation without a reason—a young man in his early age, who could not bear the injustices committed against his people, so he picked up the rifle and bullets to resist the occupation with what he could—and we do not have a problem except with the occupation, and because of that we affirm: - Our religion does not allow for us to point our rifles at the sons of our people, and at the same time there are those who come out and point their rifles from the same direction as the occupation. - Tampering with one fighter is the same as tampering with all fighters, and the arrests of brother Azhar Masrouja and before him brother Ismail Okal without any right, is completely prohibited. - We demand the [PA] Security Forces to release them to preserve blood and avoid seditions. Our rifles will not stop against the occupation so long as our souls are in our bodies, no matter how much the conspirators conspire, or the cowardly cower. It is a revolution until victory. Your brothers, The resistance fighters in Nablus."

Before his martyrdom, Aboud Shaheen posted on his page:

"If I am martyred, I am innocent from the [Palestinian] Authority." On the field, he announced: "The resistance is present and will remain in the field. Our rifles are directed towards the occupation, and we hope that no one crosses a fighter, so our relationship remains as is. Now we're going to return to our fighting positions, because tonight we're alive, but in a little while we can be martyred."

Aboud was freed from zionist prisons in August 2023 after 22 months inside.

Glory to the martyrs

Obstructing ambulances is a crime. Cowards, the IOF for stealing a wounded man's body. Cowards, the PA for betraying their people.

#palestine #west bank #Aboud Shaheen #grief...

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polivias · 7 months ago

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A few years ago (*cough* at least a decade ago at this point), I made a proper "tags" page for this blog so people could look for specific Peter x Olivia things to their heart's content. But that was back when people mainly used their computers to go on tumblr, so I'm aware no one has seen the actual look/structure of this blog in a long time. So I created this pinned post with the tags to help you navigate this page :)

Peter x Olivia Tags

Touch and Comfort

Hugs

Kisses

Hands

Looks

With Etta

♥ (love)

Pain (literally, only painful stuff in this tag)

Past P/O events organized by this page

25 days of P/O

One Year Anniversary - The Little Show That Could

Wish Me Luck - A Story About Love

Back to the Start

Tags for each episode under the read-more!

SEASON 1

1.01 - Pilot

1.02 - The Same Old Story

1.03 - The Ghost Network

1.04 - The Arrival

1.05 - Power Hungry

1.06 - The Cure

1.07 - In Which We Meet Mr. Jones

1.08 - The Equation

1.09 - The Dreamscape

1.10 - Safe

1.11 - Bound

1.12 - The No-Brainer

1.13 - The Transformation

1.14 - Ability

1.15 - Inner Child

1.16 - Unleashed

1.17 - Bad Dreams

1.18 - Midnight

1.19 - The Road Not Taken

1.20 - There’s More Than One of Everything

BONUS EPISODE - Unearthed

SEASON 2

2.01 - A New Day in the Old Town

2.02 - Night of Desirable Objects

2.03 - Fracture

2.04 - Momentum Deferred

2.05 - Dream Logic

2.06 - Earthling

2.07 - Of Human Action

2.08 - August

2.09 - Snakehead

2.10 - Grey Matters

2.11 - Johari Window

2.12 - What Lies Below

2.13 - The Bishop Revival

2.14 - Jacksonville

2.15 - Peter

2.16 - Olivia. In the Lab. With the Revolver

2.17 - White Tulip

2.18 - The Man from the Other Side

2.19 - Brown Betty

2.20 - Northwest Passage

2.21 - Over There (Part 1)

2.22 - Over There (Part 2)

SEASON 3

3.01 - Olivia

3.02 - The Box

3.03 - The Plateau

3.04 - Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?

3.05 - Amber 31422

3.06 - 6955 kHz

3.07 - The Abducted

3.08 - Entrada

3.09 - Marionette

3.10 - The Firefly

3.11 - Reciprocity

3.12 - Concentrate and Ask Again

3.13 - Immortality

3.14 - 6B

3.15 - Subject 13

3.16 - Os

3.17 - Stowaway

3.18 - Bloodline

3.19 - Lysergic Acid Diethylamide

3.20 - 6:02 AM EST

3.21 - The Last Sam Weiss

3.22 - The Day We Died

SEASON 4

4.01 - Neither Here Nor There

4.02 - One Night in October

4.03 - Alone in the World

4.04 - Subject 9

4.05 - Novation

4.06 - And Those We’ve Left Behind

4.07 - Wallflower

4.08 - Back to Where You’ve Never Been

4.09 - Enemy of My Enemy

4.10 - Forced Perspective

4.11 - Making Angels

4.12 - Welcome to Westfield

4.13 - A Better Human Being

4.14 - The End of All Things

4.15 - A Short Story About Love

4.16 - Nothing As It Seems

4.17 - Everything in It’s Right Place

4.18 - The Consultant

4.19 - Letters of Transit

4.20 - Worlds Apart

4.21 - Brave New World (Part 1)

4.22 - Brave New World (Part 2)

SEASON 5

5.01 - Transilience Thought Unifier Model-11

5.02 - In Absentia

5.03 - The Recordist

5.04 - The Bullet That Saved The World

5.05 - An Origin Story

5.06 - Through the Looking Glass and What Walter Found There

5.07 - Five-Twenty-Ten

5.08 - The Human Kind

5.09 - Black Blotter

5.10 - Anomaly XB-6783746

5.11 - The Boy Must Live

5.12 - Liberty

5.13 - An Enemy of Fate

#Peter x Olivia #polivia #Olivia Dunham #Peter Bishop #fringe #pinned post #tags

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fatehbaz · 2 years ago

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“Dutch King apologizes for Netherlands’ role in slavery.”

The Dutch/Netherlands abducted slaves from West Africa; hosted the Dutch West India Company; operated an extensive profitable sugar plantation industry built on slave labor; and established colonies in the greater Caribbean region including sites at Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten, Bonaire, and the adjacent “Wild Coast” (land between the Orinoco and Amazon rivers, including Guyana and Suriname). Many of these places remained official colonies until between the 1950s and 1990s.

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Scholarship on resistance to Dutch practices of slavery, colonialism, and imperialism in the Caribbean:

“Decolonization, Otherness, and the Neglect of the Dutch Caribbean in Caribbean Studies.” Margo Groenewoud. Small Axe. 2021.

“Women’s mobilizations in the Dutch Antilles (Curaçao and Aruba, 1946-1993).” Margo Groenewoud. Clio. Women, Gender, History No. 50. 2019.

“Black Power, Popular Revolt, and Decolonization in the Dutch Caribbean.” Gert Oostindie. In: Black Power in the Caribbean. Edited by Kate Quinn. 2014.

“History Brought Home: Postcolonial Migrations and the Dutch Rediscovery of Slavery.” Gert Oostindie. In: Post-Colonial Immigrants and Identity Formations in the Netherlands. Edited by Ulbe Bosma. 2012.

“Other Radicals: Anton de Kom and the Caribbean Intellectual Tradition.” Wayne Modest and Susan Legene. Small Axe. 2023.

Di ki manera? A Social History of Afro-Curaçaoans, 1863-1917. Rosemary Allen. 2007.

Creolization and Contraband: Curaçao in the Early Modern Atlantic World. Linda Rupert. 2012.

“The Empire Writes Back: David Nassy and Jewish Creole Historiography in Colonial Suriname.” Sina Rauschenbach. The Sephardic Atlantic: Colonial Histories and Postcolonial Perspectives. 2018.

“The Scholarly Atlantic: Circuits of Knowledge Between Britain, the Dutch Republic and the Americas in the Eighteenth Century.” Karel Davids. 2014. And: “Paramaribo as Dutch and Atlantic Nodal Point, 1640-1795.” Karwan Fatah-Black. 2014. And: Dutch Atlantic Connections, 1680-1800: Linking Empires, Bridging Borders. Edited by Gert Oostindie and Jessica V. Roitman. 2014.

Decolonising the Caribbean: Dutch Policies in a Comparative Perspective. Gert Oostindie and Inge Klinkers. 2003. And: “Head versus heart: The ambiguities of non-sovereignties in the Dutch Caribbean.” Wouter Veenendaal and Gert Oostindie. Regional & Federal Studies 28(4). August 2017.

Tambú: Curaçao’s African-Caribbean Ritual and the Politics of Memory. Nanette de Jong. 2012.

“More Relevant Than Ever: We Slaves of Suriname Today.” Mitchell Esajas. Small Axe. 2023.

“The Forgotten Colonies of Essequibo and Demerara, 1700-1814.” Eric Willem van der Oest. In: Riches from Atlantic Commerce: Dutch Transatlantic Trade and Shipping, 1585-1817. 2003.

“Conjuring Futures: Culture and Decolonization in the Dutch Caribbean, 1948-1975.” Chelsea Shields. Historical Reflections / Reflexions Historiques Vol. 45 No. 2. Summer 2019.

“’A Mass of Mestiezen, Castiezen, and Mulatten’: Fear, Freedom, and People of Color in the Dutch Antilles, 1750-1850.” Jessica Vance Roitman. Atlantic Studies 14, no. 3. 2017.

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This list only covers the Caribbean.

But outside of the region, there is also the legacy of the Dutch East India Company; over 250 years of Dutch slavers and merchants in Gold Coast and wider West Africa; about 200 years of Dutch control in Bengal (the same region which would later become an engine of the British Empire’s colonial wealth extraction); over a century of Dutch control in Sri Lanka/Ceylon; Dutch operation of the so-called “Cultivation System” (”Cultuurstelsei”) in the nineteenth century; Dutch enforcement of brutal forced labor regimes at sugar plantations in Java, which relied on de facto indentured laborers who were forced to sign contracts or obligated to pay off debt and were “shipped in” from other islands and elsewhere in Southeast Asia (a system existing into the twentieth century); the “Coolie Ordinance” (”Koelieordonnanties”) laws of 1880 which allowed plantation owners to administer punishments against disobedient workers, resulting in whippings, electrocutions, and other cruel tortures (and this penal code was in effect until 1931); and colonization of Indonesian islands including Sumatra and Borneo, which remained official colonies of the Netherlands until the 1940s.

#abolition #dutch slavery #java plantations #tidalectics #global indies #intimacies of four continents

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theculturedmarxist · 5 months ago

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How the Neocons Subverted Russia’s Financial Stabilization in the Early 1990s

by Jeffrey Sachs

In 1989 I served as an advisor to the first post-communist government of Poland, and helped to devise a strategy of financial stabilization and economic transformation. My recommendations in 1989 called for large-scale Western financial support for Poland’s economy in order to prevent a runaway inflation, enable a convertible Polish currency at a stable exchange rate, and an opening of trade and investment with the countries of the European Community (now the European Union). These recommendations were heeded by the US Government, the G7, and the International Monetary Fund.

Based on my advice, a $1 billion Zloty stabilization fund was established that served as the backing of Poland’s newly convertible currency. Poland was granted a standstill on debt servicing on the Soviet-era debt, and then a partial cancellation of that debt. Poland was granted significant development assistance in the form of grants and loans by the official international community.

Poland’s subsequent economic and social performance speaks for itself. Despite Poland’s economy having experienced a decade of collapse in the 1980s, Poland began a period of rapid economic growth in the early 1990s. The currency remained stable and inflation low. In 1990, Poland’s GDP per capita (measured in purchasing-power terms) was 33% of neighboring Germany. By 2024, it had reached 68% of Germany’s GDP per capita, following decades of rapid economic growth.

On the basis of Poland’s economic success, I was contacted in 1990 by Mr. Grigory Yavlinsky, economic advisor to President Mikhail Gorbachev, to offer similar advice to the Soviet Union, and in particular to help mobilize financial support for the economic stabilization and transformation of the Soviet Union. One outcome of that work was a 1991 project undertaken at the Harvard Kennedy School with Professors Graham Allison, Stanley Fisher, and Robert Blackwill. We jointly proposed a “Grand Bargain” to the US, G7, and Soviet Union, in which we advocated large-scale financial support by the US and G7 countries for Gorbachev’s ongoing economic and political reforms. The report was published as Window of Opportunity: The Grand Bargain for Democracy in the Soviet Union (1 October 1991).

The proposal for large-scale Western support for the Soviet Union was flatly rejected by the Cold Warriors in the White House. Gorbachev came to the G7 Summit in London in July 1991 asking for financial assistance, but left empty-handed. Upon his return to Moscow, he was abducted in the coup attempt of August 1991. At that point, Boris Yeltsin, President of the Russian Federation, assumed effective leadership of the crisis-ridden Soviet Union. By December, under the weight of decisions by Russia and other Soviet republics, the Soviet Union was dissolved with the emergence of 15 newly independent nations.

In September 1991, I was contacted by Yegor Gaidar, economic advisor to Yeltsin, and soon to be acting Prime Minister of newly independent Russian Federation as of December 1991. He requested that I come to Moscow to discuss the economic crisis and ways to stabilize the Russian economy. At that stage, Russia was on the verge of hyperinflation, financial default to the West, the collapse of international trade with the other republics and with the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe, and intense shortages of food in Russian cities resulting from the collapse of food deliveries from the farmlands and the pervasive black marketing of foodstuffs and other essential commodities.

I recommended that Russia reiterate the call for large-scale Western financial assistance, including an immediate standstill on debt servicing, longer-term debt relief, a currency stabilization fund for the ruble (as for the Zloty in Poland), large-scale grants of dollars and European currencies to support urgently needed food and medical imports and other essential commodity flows, and immediate financing by the IMF, World Bank, and other institutions to protect Russia’s social services (healthcare, education, and others).

In November 1991, Gaidar met with the G7 Deputies (the deputy finance ministers of the G7 countries) and requested a standstill on debt servicing. This request was flatly denied. To the contrary, Gaidar was told that unless Russia continued to service every last dollar as it came due, emergency food aid on the high seas heading to Russia would be immediately turned around and sent back to the home ports. I met with an ashen-faced Gaidar immediately after the G7 Deputies meeting.

In December 1991, I met with Yeltsin in the Kremlin to brief him on Russia’s financial crisis and on my continued hope and advocacy for emergency Western assistance, especially as Russia was now emerging as an independent, democratic nation after the end of the Soviet Union. He requested that I serve as an advisor to his economic team, with a focus on attempting to mobilize the needed large-scale financial support. I accepted that challenge and the advisory position on a strictly unpaid basis.

Upon returning from Moscow, I went to Washington to reiterate my call for a debt standstill, a currency stabilization fund, and emergency financial support. In my meeting with Mr. Richard Erb, Deputy Managing Director of the IMF in charge of overall relations with Russia, I learned that the US did not support this kind of financial package. I once again pleaded the economic and financial case, and was determined to change US policy. It had been my experience in other advisory contexts that it might require several months to sway Washington on its policy approach.

Indeed, during 1991-94 I would advocate non-stop but without success for large-scale Western support for Russia’s crisis-ridden economy, and support for the other 14 newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. I made these appeals in countless speeches, meetings, conferences, op-eds, and academic articles. Mine was a lonely voice in the US in calling for such support. I had learned from economic history — most importantly the crucial writings of John Maynard Keynes (especially Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1919) — and from my own advisory experiences in Latin America and Eastern Europe, that external financial support for Russia could well be the make or break of Russia’s urgently needed stabilization effort.

It is worth quoting at length here from my article in the Washington Post in November 1991 to present the gist of my argument at the time:

This is the third time in this century in which the West must address the vanquished. When the German and Hapsburg Empires collapsed after World War I, the result was financial chaos and social dislocation. Keynes predicted in 1919 that this utter collapse in Germany and Austria, combined with a lack of vision from the victors, would conspire to produce a furious backlash towards military dictatorship in Central Europe. Even as brilliant a finance minister as Joseph Schumpeter in Austria could not stanch the torrent towards hyperinflation and hyper-nationalism, and the United States descended into the isolationism of the 1920s under the "leadership" of Warren G. Harding and Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge. After World War II, the victors were smarter. Harry Truman called for U.S. financial support to Germany and Japan, as well as the rest of Western Europe. The sums involved in the Marshall Plan, equal to a few percent of the recipient countries' GNPs, was not enough to actually rebuild Europe. It was, though, a political lifeline to the visionary builders of democratic capitalism in postwar Europe. Now the Cold War and the collapse of communism have left Russia as prostrate, frightened and unstable as was Germany after World War I and World War II. Inside Russia, Western aid would have the galvanizing psychological and political effect that the Marshall Plan had for Western Europe. Russia's psyche has been tormented by 1,000 years of brutal invasions, stretching from Genghis Khan to Napoleon and Hitler. Churchill judged that the Marshall Plan was history's "most unsordid act," and his view was shared by millions of Europeans for whom the aid was the first glimpse of hope in a collapsed world. In a collapsed Soviet Union, we have a remarkable opportunity to raise the hopes of the Russian people through an act of international understanding. The West can now inspire the Russian people with another unsordid act.

This advice went unheeded, but that did not deter me from continuing my advocacy. In early 1992, I was invited to make the case on the PBS news show The McNeil-Lehrer Report. I was on air with acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger. After the show, he asked me to ride with him from the PBS studio in Arlington, Virginia back to Washington, D.C. Our conversation was the following. “Jeffrey, please let me explain to you that your request for large-scale aid is not going to happen. Even assuming that I agree with your arguments — and Poland’s finance minister [Leszek Balcerowicz] made the same points to me just last week — it’s not going to happen. Do you want to know why? Do you know what this year is?” “1992,” I answered. “Do you know that this means?” “An election year?” I replied. “Yes, this is an election year. It’s not going to happen.”

Russia’s economic crisis worsened rapidly in 1992. Gaidar lifted price controls at the start of 1992, not as some purported miracle cure but because the Soviet-era official fixed prices were irrelevant under the pressures of the black markets, the repressed inflation (that is, rapid inflation in the black-market prices and therefore the rising the gap with the official prices), the complete breakdown of the Soviet-era planning mechanism, and the massive corruption engendered by the few goods still being exchanged at the official prices far below the black-market prices.

Russia urgently needed a stabilization plan of the kind that Poland had undertaken, but such a plan was out of reach financially (because of the lack of external support) and politically (because the lack of external support also meant the lack of any internal consensus on what to do). The crisis was compounded by the collapse of trade among the newly independent post-Soviet nations and the collapse of trade between the former Soviet Union and its former satellite nations in Central and Eastern Europe, which were now receiving Western aid and were reorienting trade towards Western Europe and away from the former Soviet Union.

During 1992 I continued without any success to try to mobilize the large-scale Western financing that I believed to be ever-more urgent. I pinned my hopes on the newly elected Presidency of Bill Clinton. These hopes too were quickly dashed. Clinton’s key advisor on Russia, Johns Hopkins Professor Michael Mandelbaum, told me privately in November 1992 that the incoming Clinton team had rejected the concept of large-scale assistance for Russia. Mandelbaum soon announced publicly that he would not serve in the new administration. I met with Clinton’s new Russia advisor, Strobe Talbott, but discovered that he was largely unaware of the pressing economic realities. He asked me to send him some materials about hyperinflations, which I duly did.

At the end of 1992, after one year of trying to help Russia, I told Gaidar that I would step aside as my recommendations were not heeded in Washington or the European capitals. Yet around Christmas Day I received a phone call from Russia’s incoming financing minister, Mr. Boris Fyodorov. He asked me to meet him in Washington in the very first days of 1993. We met at the World Bank. Fyodorov, a gentleman and highly intelligent expert who tragically died young a few years later, implored me to remain as an advisor to him during 1993. I agreed to do so, and spent one more year attempting to help Russia implement a stabilization plan. I resigned in December 1993, and publicly announced my departure as advisor in the first days of 1994.

My continued advocacy in Washington once again fell on deaf ears in the first year of the Clinton Administration, and my own forebodings became greater. I repeatedly invoked the warnings of history in my public speaking and writing, as in this piece in the New Republic in January 1994, soon after I had stepped aside from the advisory role.

Above all, Clinton should not console himself with the thought that nothing too serious can happen in Russia. Many Western policymakers have confidently predicted that if the reformers leave now, they will be back in a year, after the Communists once again prove themselves unable to govern. This might happen, but chances are it will not. History has probably given the Clinton administration one chance for bringing Russia back from the brink; and it reveals an alarmingly simple pattern. The moderate Girondists did not follow Robespierre back into power. With rampant inflation, social disarray and falling living standards, revolutionary France opted for Napoleon instead. In revolutionary Russia, Aleksandr Kerensky did not return to power after Lenin's policies and civil war had led to hyperinflation. The disarray of the early 1920s opened the way for Stalin's rise to power. Nor was Bruning'sgovernment given another chance in Germany once Hitler came to power in 1933.

It is worth clarifying that my advisory role in Russia was limited to macroeconomic stabilization and international financing. I was not involved in Russia’s privatization program which took shape during 1993-4, nor in the various measures and programs (such as the notorious “shares-for-loans” scheme in 1996) that gave rise to the new Russian oligarchs. On the contrary, I opposed the various kinds of measures that Russia was undertaking, believing them to be rife with unfairness and corruption. I said as much in both the public and in private to Clinton officials, but they were not listening to me on that account either. Colleagues of mine at Harvard were involved in the privatization work, but they assiduously kept me far away from their work. Two were later charged by the US government with insider dealing in activities in Russia which I had absolutely no foreknowledge or involvement of any kind. My only role in that matter was to dismiss them from the Harvard Institute for International Development for violating the internal HIID rules against conflicts of interest in countries that HIID advised.

The failure of the West to provide large-scale and timely financial support to Russia and the other newly independent nations of the former Soviet Union definitely exacerbated the serious economic and financial crisis that faced those countries in the early 1990s. Inflation remained very high for several years. Trade and hence economic recovery were seriously impeded. Corruption flourished under the policies of parceling out valuable state assets to private hands.

All of these dislocations gravely weakened the public trust in the new governments of the region and the West. This collapse in social trust brought to my mind at the time the adage of Keynes in 1919, following the disaster Versailles settlement and the hyperinflations that followed: “There is no subtler, no surer means of over- turning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and it does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

During the tumultuous decade of the 1990s, Russia’s social services fell into decline. When this decline was coupled with the greatly increased stresses on society, the result was a sharp rise in Russia’s alcohol-related deaths. Whereas in Poland, the economic reforms were accompanied by a rise in life expectancy and public health, the very opposite occurred in crisis-riven Russia.

Even with all of these economic debacles, and with Russia’s default in 1998, the grave economic crisis and lack of Western support were not the definitive breaking points of US-Russian relations. In 1999, when Vladimir Putin became Prime Minister and in 2000 when he became President, Putin sought friendly and mutually supportive international relations between Russia and the West. Many European leaders, for example, Italy’s Romano Prodi, have spoken extensively about Putin’s goodwill and positive intentions towards strong Russia-EU relations in the first years of his presidency.

It was in military affairs rather than in economics that the Russian – Western relations ended up falling apart in the 2000s. As with finance, the West was militarily dominant in the 1990s, and certainly had the means to promote strong and positive relations with Russia. Yet the US was far more interested in Russia’s subservience to NATO that it was in stable relations with Russia.

At the time of German reunification, both the US and Germany repeatedly promised Gorbachev and then Yeltsin that the West would not take advantage of German reunification and the end of the Warsaw Pact by expanding the NATO military alliance eastward. Both Gorbachev and Yeltsin reiterated the importance of this US-NATO pledge. Yet within just a few years, Clinton completely reneged on the Western commitment, and began the process of NATO enlargement. Leading US diplomats, led by the great statesman-scholar George Kennan, warned at the time that the NATO enlargement would lead to disaster: “The view, bluntly stated, is that expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.” So, it has proved.

Here is not the place to revisit all of the foreign policy disasters that have resulted from US arrogance towards Russia, but it suffices here to mention a brief and partial chronology of key events. In 1999, NATO bombed Belgrade for 78 days with the goal of breaking Serbia apart and giving rise to an independent Kosovo, now home to a major NATO base in the Balkans. In 2002, the US unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty over Russia’s strenuous objections. In 2003, the US and NATO allies repudiated the UN Security Council by going to war in Iraq on false pretenses. In 2004, the US continued with NATO enlargement, this time to the Baltic States and countries in the Black Sea region (Bulgaria and Romania) and the Balkans. In 2008, over Russia’s urgent and strenuous objections, the US pledged to expand NATO to Georgia and Ukraine.

In 2011, the US tasked the CIA to overthrow Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Russia. In 2011, NATO bombed Libya in order to overthrow Moammar Qaddafi. In 2014, the US conspired with Ukrainian nationalist forces to overthrow Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych. In 2015, the US began to place Aegis anti-ballistic missiles in Eastern Europe(Romania), a short distance from Russia. In 2016-2020, the US supported Ukraine in undermining the Minsk II agreement, despite its unanimous backing by the UN Security Council. In 2021, the new Biden Administration refused to negotiate with Russia over the question of NATO enlargement to Ukraine. In April 2022, the US called on Ukraine to withdraw from peace negotiations with Russia.

Looking back on the events around 1991-93, and to the events that followed, it is clear that the US was determined to say no to Russia’s aspirations for peaceful and mutually respectful integration of Russia and the West. The end of the Soviet period and the beginning of the Yeltsin Presidency occasioned the rise of the neoconservatives (neocons) to power in the United States. The neocons did not and do not want a mutually respectful relationship with Russia. They sought and until today seek a unipolar world led by a hegemonic US, in which Russia and other nations will be subservient.

In this US-led world order, the neocons envisioned that the US and the US alone will determine the utilization of the dollar-based banking system, the placement of overseas US military bases, the extent of NATO membership, and the deployment of US missile systems, without any veto or say by other countries, certainly including Russia. That arrogant foreign policy has led to several wars and to a widening rupture of relations between the US-led bloc of nations and the rest of the world. As an advisor to Russia during two years, late-1991 to late-93, I experienced first-hand the early days of neoconservatism applied to Russia, though it would take many years of events afterwards to recognize the full extent of the new and dangerous turn in US foreign policy that began in the early 1990s.

#AES #soviet union #eastern bloc #cold war #us imperialism #russia #nato #bill clinton #ukraine #history #jeffrey sachs

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beardedmrbean · 3 months ago

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Three illegal migrants with the vicious Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua abducted a man and two kids in Texas — then executed the older victim and dumped his body on the side of the road, authorities say.

Carl Luis Zambrano-Bolivar, 26, Jhonata Nahin Toro Gonzalez, 22, and Ehiker Morales Mendoza, 38, were recently arrested for the murder of Nilzuly Enrique Arneaud-Petit, 33, who was found dead Aug. 24 with a single gunshot wound to the head in Farmers Branch just outside Dallas, DHS officials said.

While police were responding to a report of a body, they learned of two juveniles possibly related to the victim walking on a service road about 10 miles away, according to the Farmers Branch Police Department.

Investigators caught up with the minors and were told the kids and Arneaud-Petit had been “forcibly taken by several unknown suspects from an apartment complex” in Dallas earlier that night, police said.

The suspects drove Andreau-Petit and the juveniles to the location in Farmers Branch, where they fatally shot the 33-year-old man, police said. The kids told investigators the suspects then fled with them in a sedan before releasing them on the service road in nearby Lewisville.

Andreau-Petit was an associate of the violent gangsters “and allegedly involved in a complex ATM theft operation targeting several locations nationwide,” police said.

He was accused of withholding money from other group members, which led to his kidnapping and execution, police said.

TdA members Zambrano-Bolivar and Toro Gonzalez were arrested in Aurora, Colo., in September by Denver’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Enforcement and Removal Operations team, DHS officials said.

A third member of the feared prison gang, Mendoza, was busted Oct. 11 in Las Cruces, NM.

All three were in the country illegally, authorities said.

A fourth man also wanted in the murder, 29-year-old Jhonny Jesus Martinez Serrano, remains at large.

The three men in custody are expected to be extradited to Texas to be prosecuted on charges of capital murder and aggravated kidnapping, according to Homeland Security Investigations.

“Violent criminal organizations and transnational gangs like Tren de Aragua are a plague upon our communities that rely on fear and violence to [rain] terror on hardworking and law-abiding residents,” said HSI Dallas acting Special Agent in Charge Travis Pickard.

“We have sent a resounding message that we are united in our efforts to dismantle these violent criminal networks and put an end to the lawlessness that they spread,” he added.

The violent gang has been terrorizing cities across the US.

In August, the ruthless group made national headlines when frightening video capturing some of its gun-wielding members storming through an Aurora apartment complex went viral.

The Post was the first to report on TdA’s infiltration of Aurora, its takeover of several poorly maintained apartment complexes and its top leader, nicknamed “Cookie,” who was involved in at least two violent crimes.

TdA also has been blamed for a surge in violent crime in such tourist meccas as Times Square in Manhattan.

#nunyas news #their home countries are cracking down on them #so they're coming here #where people are defunding the police

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tickle-peachy · 1 month ago

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Introductions

Hi! I'm Brooklyn! Or Peachy, whichever you prefer. I use she/they pronouns and consider myself a 'non-binary woman', which I've been told is an oxy moron, but I say it's my gender and I can call it what I want.

I'm a 28 year old sub-leaning switch from Canada who has been active in the kink community since August 2022. I have a lot of kinks that I indulge in pretty regularly, but this blog will primarily be devoted to tickling and impact play as those are currently my two favourites. I'm also a big fan of and may post about other kinks such as:

☆ミ wax play

☆ミ sensation play

☆ミ orgasm denial/edging

☆ミ bondage ranging anywhere from light stuff to mummification

☆ミ CG/L (non-sexual)

☆ミ power exchange

☆ミ abduction

My kinkposting will also be interspersed with creepy/goth aesthetic posts, weird off-beat humour, and random cute and/or relatable shit I find on this website.

This is an NSFW blog 🔞, if you are under 18 DO NOT interact with this blog. Don't follow, don't like, don't reblog, just go find people your own age to follow!

I am open to asks and messages. If you're not a creep about it, I'm typically pretty nice and enjoying talking about sex and kink, especially regarding education, safety, and how to interact with your local community. I'm open to making friendly connections online but am not looking for play partners or a relationship and wouldn't want to cultivate that online anyway.

I'm in a LTR with my lovely partner @skeller-impact and we are mostly monogamous. We are open to playing with people we get to know well in person, and prefer to play together. Once again though, neither him or myself are looking for online connections for play.

As far as vanilla life goes:

I'm a Master's student with a deep interest in innovative, mixed (qual and quant) social science research methods, Indigenous-Settler relations, and the impacts of mentorship for students who identify with equity-seeking groups.

I'm an ex-rat mom of 25 different lil bebs over the last 12 years, and I still adore rats more than any other creature on the planet despite no longer having any.

I also love nature; hiking, camping, swimming, canoeing, it's all great. I've road tripped and camped across the Yukon and parts of Alaska and have a deep love of anywhere north of 60°.

I am a bit of a pop culture nerd with a rolodex of trivia ready to go at any given time, with a particular penchant for horror movies, 90s music and cult media.

#mine #me #introduction #tickle-peachy

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tomorrowusa · 5 months ago

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The pet eating disinformation being spread by Trump, Vance, and other loony Republicans had its roots with folks which Weird Donald once described as "very fine people".

The issue in Springfield, about 45 miles from Columbus in southwest Ohio, involves thousands of Haitian immigrants who have settled in the city in recent years, many of them there legally under federal programs after having fled violence and political turmoil. Residents and political leaders, including Vance, have for months raised economic and public safety concerns, asserting that an influx of as many as 20,000 immigrants to a city that in 2020 counted a population of 59,000 has strained resources. Claims about pets being abducted, slaughtered and eaten are more recent. Blood Tribe, a national neo-Nazi group, was among the early purveyors of the rumor in August, posting about it on Gab and Telegram, social networks popular with extremists. While the group’s leader has taken credit for Trump’s indulgence of the claims, Blood Tribe’s reach is unknown; its accounts on those sites have fewer than 1,000 followers. Some Blood Tribe members also planned a couple of events in the real world, like a small Aug. 10 march in Springfield protesting Haitian immigration and an appearance at a city commission meeting later that month. The rumor soon crossed over to mainstream social media, like Facebook and X. NewsGuard, a firm that monitors misinformation, traced the origins to an undated post from a private Facebook group that was shared in a screenshot posted to X on Sept. 5. “Remember when my hometown of Springfield Ohio was all over National news for the Haitians?” the user wrote. “I said all the ducks were disappearing from our parks? Well, now it’s your pets.”

A "savvy genius" is not somebody easily taken in by racist internet spam. The United States is not well served by a POTUS whose decisions are easily influenced by obvious bullshit.

Around that time, other social media posts about the rumor sprouted and went viral, some of them based in part on residents’ comments at public hearings. On Sept. 6, there were 1,100 posts on X mentioning Haitians, migrants or immigrants eating pets, cats, dogs and geese, according to PeakMetrics, a research company. The next day there were 9,100 — a 720% increase. The number of posts spiked again Monday, to 47,000, when Vance advanced the rumor on X.

#pet-eating migrants #springfield #ohio #internet bullshit #disinformation #donald trump #weird donald #maga #j.d. vance #republicans #haitians #racism #anti-haitian hate #nazis #blood tribe #very fine people #election 2024 #vote blue no matter who

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chicgeekgirl89 · 1 year ago

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2023 Writing Roundup

Thanks to @liminalmemories21 and @ladytessa74 for the tags!

I guess the next time I'm mad at myself for not writing more I'll just...tell myself to shut up lol. Holy heck this is a lot of fic.

January

Paper Rings- A 5+1 of Tarlos wedding planning. I adore this one.

Packing a Piece- Early days Tarlos, T.K. taking care of Carlos as his feelings grow stronger.

My Pain Fits in the Palm of Your Freezing Hand- What a labor of love, Carlos' POV during the Ice Storm arc.

February

I Get it From You- 5+1 of habits the boys have picked up from each other. So fun to write!

Will You Take What's Left of Me?- Me trying to figure out the mess of Carlos having a secret wife 🙄

Like I'm Gonna Lose You- T.K. saving Carlos' life after his abduction and the aftermath.

Glitter and Be Gay- This one is so freaking funny lol. Carlos hates glitter and he suffers because of it. T.K. is amused.

How to Say Goodbye- My last NCIS LA Densi fic. That fandom has meant the world to me and I'm sad the show is over.

March

Love is Sitting on the Bathroom Floor- T.K. has food poisoning, Carlos takes care of him, it's so sweet!

The Luck O' the Irish- I truly love how this one turned out, my little fic about Tarlos doing a class project with their child in the future and Carlos being a neurotic dad lol.

April

I Won't Say I'm in Love- Carlos falling in love with T.K., Adriana and Francesca being their best/worst selves. This one has some of the best dialogue, god they're fun.

Mothers and Sons- Andrea caring for T.K. as they wedding plan. Made myself cry with this one.

May

Shiner- Coda for 4x15, Carlos finding out about T.K.'s black eye and taking care of him.

A Helping Hand- Lololol a fic based on my real life experience with rain and smoke detectors.

June

Happy Campers- Boys camping trip with whumped Carlos is just what the summer ordered!

July

We Have Suffered Enough- 4x16 post-ep. God did they really need the Huntington's scare?!

Day Zero- T.K. struggles after being drugged by Sadie.

August

Saturday Night's All Right for Fighting- This might be the best fic of the year. Mama and Papa Reyes getting into trouble at a bar with T.K. and poor Carlos having to sort it all out is the stuff my dreams are made of.

September

Rugby King- My sweet, sweet Heartstopper boys. I was so nervous writing this fic and I'm so glad I did. Whumpy Nick and worried Charlie are such perfection and it was so fun to jump into this fandom!

October

Come Sail Away- My magnum opus for this year lol. The longest thing I've written to date and a love letter to the drama and antics of Below Deck. Also my first AU! (Technically...)

November

Tío T.K.- T.K. being a freaking badass and helping Carlos' nephew. Adriana and Francesca return. A joy from start to finish.

Phew! What a year! Thanks to everyone who has read my work this year!

Tagging @lemonlyman-dotcom, @bonheur-cafe, @carlos-in-glasses, and @thisbuildinghasfeelings!

#2023 Writing Roundup #Tarlos #Heartstopper #Nick and Charlie #911 Lone Star #NCIS LA #Densi

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mariacallous · 1 year ago

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Russian troops entered Melitopol at the very start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since then, report journalists at iStories, the city has become a center of partisan resistance and simultaneously “the largest prison in Europe,” where Russian soldiers kidnap and torture residents with impunity. Meduza summarizes this latest report on Ukrainians’ lives under Russian occupation.

According to a new report by iStories, abductions by Russian occupation forces in Melitopol became widespread as early as March 2022. This is when Ukrainian activists launched the “Kidnapped Melitopolians” hotline to collect information about disappeared locals.

A woman named Natalia who works at the hotline told iStories that Russian abductions initially targeted people who worked in local government bodies. By the fall of 2022, soldiers moved on to school administrators and teachers who stuck to the Ukrainian curriculum. “Then came the farmers. There was a period when they kidnapped a lot of veterans of the [2014–2018 Donbas War]. And a lot of businessmen — they kidnapped them for ransoms,” explained Natalia.

Staff at the “Kidnapped Melitopolians” hotline have documented 311 abductions. More than 100 of these people are still in the Russian military’s custody, and 56 have gone missing entirely. Volunteers suspect the true number of kidnappings could be 3–4 times higher.

Landscape designer Maxim Ivanov and his girlfriend Tatiana Bekh were abducted in April 2022, near the outset of the invasion.

“We left the house, and I had a [Ukrainian] flag on my car. An armored personnel carrier was driving nearby, and I grabbed the flag and waved it around, shouting, ‘Get off our land!’ They stopped, about 10 guys surrounded me, and they threw the flag to the ground and stomped on it. They said, ’Now we’ll take you to reeducate you,” recalls Maxim Ivanov. He says he and Tatiana were taken to the local military police, where they joined other people arrested for pro-Ukrainian agitation or curfew violations. Soldiers beat Ivanov with rubber batons, forcing him to scream, “Glory to Russia!” The couple was released two days later after being pressured to sign a document stating they had no complaints about their detention.

Maxim and Tatiana were arrested again in August when they were caught posting leaflets for Ukraine’s Independence Day. Soldiers confiscated the flyers and searched Maxim’s mobile phone, finding messages he’d posted in a chatbot where he reported information about the movements of Russian troops and military equipment. Later that day, Ivanov was beaten at the police station and suffered multiple broken ribs. The next day, Russian soldiers moved him to a garage under a bridge, where they brutally assaulted him again.

“I realized that they might kill me right there and then. I asked for my phone so I could call my parents and say goodbye. And they told me: You’ll make due. You’ll croak, and nobody will know. Then they brought me to the garage and left me. I opened my eyes, and blood was gushing out everywhere. Everything around me was covered in blood,” Ivanov told iStories.

After five days, Ivanov and several other prisoners were taken to bathe. “There was just a hose with running water, but we were thrilled because it had been so long since we’d washed. I undressed, and [the guards] watching whispered to each other and said, “This one’s ready. Let’s take him away.” They probably saw that my back and ribs were all black and blue and decided I’d had enough,” recalled Ivanov.

All this time, Tatiana Bekh was confined to a tiny shipping container (smaller than seven feet by seven feet) parked on the military police compound. The couple was eventually transferred to a city police department, where officials continued to torture Ivanov, even using electric shocks.

Russian troops later released Tatiana but held Maxim for another month, continuing to beat him regularly. In late October 2022, they sent him away to Ukrainian-controlled territory, but he had to walk the 25 miles himself from Vasylivka to Kamianske, navigating a “gray zone” where artillery fire was ongoing:

I thought about asking someone for a bed for the night, but the village was dead. There was nobody there, and all the homes were destroyed. I went into an abandoned gas station and spent the whole night there. It was late October and cold. I found a piece of fiberglass and threw it over my legs. And the artillery fire was constant. It hit nearby, and I heard the earth crumble from the explosion. I thought that gas station would become my tomb.

Russian occupation forces also kidnapped a 23-year-old schizophrenic man named Leonid Popov, whose condition was in remission thanks to medical care, though doctors warned his mother that stress could jeopardize that progress. The first time occupation troops arrested Leonid was in May 2022. They held him at a military police center for three days. Leonid’s mother told iStories that “drunk Kaydrovites” (Chechen soldiers) tortured him, tying him to a wall, mocking him, throwing knives at him, and subjecting him to electric shocks. She says her son never understood why they even detained him.

Around the same time, Russian soldiers also abducted Leonid’s brother, Yaroslav, who said he was forced into a cramped jail cell with another 30 detainees. The guards later added a “drunk or mentally ill person” who didn’t stop screaming, and the men were told that they’d all be shot if they didn’t “shut his mouth,” Yaroslav told his mother:

And then this crowd of frightened prisoners started to beat the man. And when he started shouting, they just began strangling him, just to stop him from yelling. And the man died.

Yaroslav’s mother says she asked him what he did as this happened, and he told her that he turned to the wall and prayed to God for the first time in his life.

In April 2023, Russian soldiers abducted Leonid Popov again. Three months later, they dumped him at a hospital where he was treated for extreme emaciation. Nearly six feet, five inches tall, Leonid now weighed less than 90 pounds. His father was later granted permission to bring his son home, but troops again took him away that same day. Leonid Popov’s whereabouts are currently unknown. iStories doesn’t say what became of his brother Yaroslav.

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