#public outrage against violence

[townpostin]

Sikh Community Protests Doctor's Rape and Murder in Jamshedpur

Demonstrators demand stricter laws to protect women across India Large-scale protest held outside district headquarters against Kolkata hospital incident. JAMSHEDPUR – The Sikh community in Jamshedpur staged a robust demonstration outside the district headquarters, protesting the recent rape and murder of a female doctor at R.G. Kar Hospital in Kolkata. A significant number of women joined the…

[ozzgin]

Yandere! Yakuza x Reader

I've been plagued by this idea for a while, so let me know what you think! This is just the character introduction. Your new landlord is a Yakuza boss, and his scary looking underling has been tasked to deal with your tenant needs! Although he didn't expect you to be this cute. And you didn't expect him to be this unhinged.

Content: female reader, violence, mentions of stalking

[Part 2] | [Yakuza Masterlist]

This was the last straw.

You're angrily stuffing your suitcase with necessities before the moving company arrives. Each glimpse around the cramped apartment fills you with outrage, as you're still heavily shaken from the events of last night. 

You first begun to suspect you might have a stalker when you found your outer lock with a fresh dent in it. You then picked a small scrap from the ground nearby and assumed it was leftover damage, but upon further inspection you discovered, disgusted, that it was part of your peephole. Someone must've fiddled with your door a fair amount. You tried to approach your immediate neighbors for help, but they either refused to answer your persistent knocks or downright scurried away when faced with your questions. They didn't want to deal with a foreigner. 

You tried to put it behind you. The police advised you to be cautions, as there was nothing else they could do without concrete evidence. And thankfully, you had several peaceful weeks following the incident. Last night you were suddenly awakened by faint scratches coming from your balcony. You groggily got up and wondered if your recently added bird feeder was attracting nocturnal visitors. You got up without turning on the light, hoping to catch a glimpse of the mysterious animal. As you pulled the drape, however, you were met with the large frame of a man plucking your laundry in a hurry. 

A panicked scream erupted from the depths of your chest and you slapped the light switch, erratically searching for your phone. By the time you dialed emergency, the intruder had vanished. You were sobbing against the wall under the fake reassurances of the operator, eyeing the sliding door that had no lock. Had he wished, the masked man could've easily invited himself in. You were at the mercy of a lunatic and no one seemed to be impressed by your situation. 

No more. Ideally you'd go back to your home country and forget about your plans to build yourself a life in Japan. What were you even thinking? A lonely girl, low on funds, signing a contract to be relocated across the ocean for work. You barely scraped the first months of a mandatory year. 

You close your suitcase with a satisfying click and on your way out you wipe the table of all the newspaper clippings. You've been scanning the potential offers on the market. The ones within your budget, of course, which means you don't have to worry about being picky. Until you find a new place, your belongings can wait in storage. Dusty furniture is a better prospect than waking up with a pervert looming over you. 

By the time the clock hits evening hours, you're sipping on your iced coffee with a defeated sigh. Most of the cheap apartments seem to be given to locals. Not outsiders like you. At least they spared you of the false hopes and curtly told you to not expect any call back, so you can swiftly move on to the next circled address. You pull out the crumbled sheet of paper from your pocket. Reading over your list of crossed out lines like this deflates you greatly. At the very bottom lies your final hope: the ad you'd stumbled upon this morning was too good to be true and the realtor was available for viewing at any time, so you're almost certain it's some sort of scam. Yet you can't afford to skip it, can you? You stand up, pat your jeans and take a deep breath in. 

As you check your phone to confirm the location, you begin to doubt your decision. It's hard to believe no other potential renters have showed up. The apartment is in a convenient area, very close to public transport, at a great price, on what looks like a busy street. Isn't it the dream? So why? You glance around, examining the surroundings. The shops are bustling with people. You try to come up with possible explanations, when a deep voice startles you.

"You must be (Y/N), right? You sure are easy to spot."

You turn around to greet the person. Although the second you spot him, you take an unconscious step back. You'd expected a middle aged man dressed in formal attire with a shy bow and clumsy movements. The one standing before you resembles none of that. He's imposingly tall, with a muscular built and slicked back hair. You can discern the tattoos peeking out from under the rolled up sleeves. His face has multiple deep scars and you can only assume that the pale, discolored eye that's transfixed in one direction is a fake made of glass. One might call him handsome, if you're into the kind of appearance you see in documentaries about the mafia. 

"Y-you're the landlord?" You stutter, immediately covering your mouth and regretting your lack of tact. 

"Nuh uh, Boss sent me to deal with it." He flashes you a genuine grin, completely unperturbed by your offhanded implication. "I'm Daitou."

He continues towards the entrance and you follow behind, too awkward to back down now. He describes the living quarters with surprising enthusiasm. If you were to close your eyes and disregard his heavy Kansai accent, you could very well be convinced it's a professional real estate agent hard at work. 

"Excuse me for asking, but..." Once he finishes his marketing presentation, you cannot help the increasing anxiety. "What's the catch?"

"Huh?"

"For something like this to be so cheap...and no one else being interested...may I be frank and ask what's wrong with it? Please understand, I just left my previous apartment because of a stalker. I don't want to be packing again anytime soon."

"Well, isn't it obvious?" He searches your gaze for a moment, before gasping as if remembering something. "Wait, you're a foreigner, so I guess you don't know. Ah, that explains it." 

He lets out a hearty laugh, satisfied with his conclusion. 

"You didn't notice anything strange outside?"

You ponder his question before slowly shaking your head in denial. 

"Really? A bunch of heavily tattooed guys with family pins on their suits...This is a yakuza quarter. Our Family owns most businesses here. But lately we've had a lot of police on our backs, ya know? Bound to happen when the street is swarming with us. So Boss had this great idea - he's smart like that, ya know, I've never been the bright one - anyways, he suggested we rent some of our housing to regular civilians. Less suspicious that way." 

He crosses his arms and nods to himself proudly. 

"I myself think it's a great deal. You won't find anything cheaper for the kind of stuff you're getting. All you have to do is, you know, mind your business. If some weasel questions you, no Sir, you haven't seen or heard anything suspicious. That's all."

You can only stare wide eyed, somewhat taken aback by his honesty.

"Uh...Are you sure you were supposed to tell me all of this? I feel we're skipping some steps before admitting to organized crime."

Now it's his turn to consider your inquiry. 

"Probably not, but I'm not good with words. You look like a smart girl, so I thought I won't sugarcoat it. I'm sure you already know that if you leave and rat us out I'll be throwing your chopped up remains in the nearby river. Or would you want to be shipped home instead? I'm a nice guy like that, hehe."

You return a crooked smile and purse your lips in the process. You'd rather not learn the percentage of truth in his humor anytime soon. 

"You mentioned a stalker? I can guarantee you he won't follow here, miss. And if he's that dumb to wander on our turf, well, me and my guys always hang around the block. Leave him to me and I'll bring you his teeth in a box." 

"I-...Why teeth of all the things?"

"Just easier to pull out, ya know." He winks and reaches for his back pocket, revealing an old pair of pliers with childish delight. "See, I'm a bit of a handyman, so I always have some tools on me."

Strangely enough, you're not as terrified as you would expect from someone in your shoes. Certainly your knees are weaker when compared to your pre-encounter state, but there's something about his demeanor that doesn't feel malicious or threatening. Like conversing with an old friend at a pub. 

"Will I truly not get in trouble? You guys do your thing and I'm 100% not involved?"

"You have my word." And with that, as if closing the sale of his lifetime, he confidently slaps a stack of papers on the nearby counter and hands you a pen. "You already have my number, if anyone pisses you off just hit me up and I'll be at your service. Boss left everything to me."

No perverts and less of your monthly allowance going towards rent. Maybe it's your despair talking, but you've been persuaded nonetheless. You scribble your name in the designated field and shove the documents towards your new acquaintance. 

"Pleasure doing business with you, miss (Y/N)." He cheerfully dangles the keys before dropping them in your hand and heads for the door.

"Oh, is shipping included in the rent?"

He stops and turns to you, mildly confused.

"You said if I mess up you'll ship my remains home. Do I pay for the postage myself, or is that part of the monthly tax?" You ask with a cheeky grin. 

His eyes narrow in delight and you can tell he's greatly amused by your words. 

"Nah, consider it a gift from me. Gotta treat a lady nice, 'specially if it's a pretty one like you."

And with that, you're alone again. You look around the room, trying to visualize your new home. It's already getting dark outside. Now that you've had the situation explained to you, you can definitely see what Daitou meant. There's the occasional police officer patrolling the street, and plenty of men dressed in similar fashion walking in small groups. 

"And?"

Outside the building, a young man is leaning against the wall with a cigarette in his mouth. He seems to have been waiting for Daitou. 

"It's done. Some cute foreigner is moving in." He lifts an arm in a flexing motion, patting his bicep in a congratulatory manner. "Boss will be surprised, eh?"

"You're fucking with me."

"What? You wanna go back upstairs and check?" He responds, appalled. "Might've taken longer than expected, but I told ya I can manage!"

"Are you sure you didn't threaten her or something? I still don't know what Boss was thinking when he asked a nutcase like you to deal with the civvies." 

"Hey hey hey, I may not be all fancy speaking like you or Kazuya, but I'm not dumb. Matter of fact, she already signed the papers."

"I never said you're dumb. Just batshit crazy." The young man sighs and flicks his cigarette butt away, stomping on it.

"Let's go and tell the others."

[heritageposts]

The Grayzone has obtained slides from a confidential Israel lobby presentation based on data from Republican pollster Frank Luntz. They contain talking points for politicians and public figures seeking to justify Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. Two prominent pro-Israel lobby groups are holding private briefings in New York City to coach elected officials and well-known figures on how to influence public opinion in favor of the Israeli military’s rampage in Gaza, The Grayzone can reveal. These PR sessions, convened by the UJA-Federation and Jewish Community Relations Council, rely on data collected by Frank Luntz, a veteran Republican pollster and pundit. [...] The Luntz-tested presentations on the war in Gaza urge politicians to avoid trumpeting America’s supposedly shared democratic values with Israel, and focus instead on deploying “The Language of War with Hamas.” According to this framing, they must deploy incendiary language painting Hamas as a “brutal and savage…organization of hate” which has “raped women,” while insisting Israel is engaged in “a war for humanity.” [...] Luntz’s Gaza war presentation puts his poll-tested tactics back in the Israel lobby’s hands, urging pro-Israel public figures to stay on the attack with incendiary language and shocking allegations against their enemies. In one focus group, Luntz asked participants to state which alleged act by Hamas on October 7 “bothers you more.” After being presented with a laundry list of alleged atrocities, a majority declared that they were most upset by the claim that Hamas “raped civilians” – 19 percent more than those who expressed outrage that Hamas supposedly “exterminated civilians.” Data like this apparently influenced the Israeli government to launch an obsessive but still unsuccessful campaign to prove that Hamas carried out sexual assault on a systematic basis on October 7. Initiated at Israel’s United Nations mission in December 2023 with speeches by neoliberal tech oligarch Sheryl Sandberg and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a recipient of hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations and speaking fees from Israel lobby organizations, Tel Aviv’s propaganda blitz has yet to produce a single self-identified victim of sexual assault by Hamas. A March 5 report by UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence Pramila Patten did not contain one direct testimony of sexual assault on October 7. What’s more, Patten’s team said they found “no digital evidence specifically depicting acts of sexual violence.”

They also advice to use different language for Democrat and Republican voters, which inadvertently provides one of the most succinct explanation of the difference between the two genocidal parties that I've ever come across:

To make their arguments stick, Luntz recommends pro-Israel forces avoid the exterminationist language favored by Israeli officials who have called, for example, to “erase” the population of Gaza, and to instead advocate for “an efficient, effective approach” to eliminating Hamas. At the same time, veteran pollster acknowledges that Republican voters prefer phrases which imply maximalist violence, like “eradicate” and “obliterate,” while sanitized terms like “neutralize” appeal more to Democrats. Republican presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Donald Trump have showcased similar focus-grouped rhetoric with their calls to “finish them” and “finish the problem” in Gaza.

One of the slides, illustrating what language to use:

There are several more slides in the article. I recommend reading the whole thing, start to finish. One more thing I'd like to highlight though:

Luntz acknowledges Israel’s mounting PR problems in a slide identifying the most powerful tactics employed by Palestine solidarity activists. “Israelis attacking Israel is the second most potent weapon against Israel,” the visual display reads beside a photo of a protest by Jewish Voices for Peace, a US-based Jewish organization dedicated to ending Israel’s occupation of Palestine. “The most potent” tactic in mobilizing opposition to Israel’s assault on Gaza, according to Luntz, “is the visual destruction of Gaza and the human toll.” The slide inadvertently acknowledges the cruelty of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, displaying a bombed out apartment building with clearly anguished women and children fleeing in the foreground. But Luntz assures his audience, “It ‘looks like a genocide’ even though the damage has nothing to do with the definition.” According to this logic, the American public can become more tolerant of copiously documented crimes against humanity if they are simply told not to believe their lying eyes.

. . . full article on GZ (6 Mar 2024)

[mariacallous]

Glad people are finally finding out that these Pro Palestine protestors are ratfuckers-by-design at best (and Republicans at worst) and that's why they support Trump:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/08/dnc-palestinian-gaza-protests/679524/

One month ago, an NBC News headline reported:

Protesters made a tiny footprint at the RNC in Milwaukee. Other than a modest daytime march on Monday afternoon, the first day of the Republican National Convention, there were virtually no protests over the event’s four days and nights.

Obviously, the story from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago is already proving different.

This is part of a pattern. Gather any large number of Democrats together, in almost any city or state, whether at rallies, fundraisers, or presidential appearances, and pro-Palestinian protesters will try to wreck the event. These actions have been building to threats of outright violence. Pro-Trump and Republican events, meanwhile, are almost always left in peace.

Of the two big parties, the Democrats are more emotionally sympathetic to Palestinian suffering. The Biden administration is working to negotiate the cease-fire that the pro-Palestinian camp claims to want. The administration has provided hundreds of millions of dollars of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza. President Joe Biden’s terms for ending the fighting in Gaza envision a rapid movement to full Palestinian statehood.

By contrast, former President Donald Trump uses Palestinian as an insult. His administration moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. In 2016, Trump campaigned on a complete shutdown of travel by Muslims into the United States; Trump now speaks of deporting campus anti-Israel protesters. He has pledged to block Gaza refugees from entering the United States.

Trump wants to tell the story that he and his party will enforce public order. He alleges that Democrats cannot or will not protect Americans against chaos spread by extremist elements. The pro-Palestinian movement works every day to create images that support Trump’s argument. As a visibly annoyed Vice President Kamala Harris asked protesters in Detroit earlier this month: Do they want to elect Donald Trump?

Not all pro-Palestinian demonstrators are thinking about the election. Many seem driven by moral outrage or ideological passion. But for those who are thinking strategically, the answer is obvious: Yes, they want to elect Trump. Of course they want to elect Trump. Electing Trump is their best—and maybe only—hope.

To understand why, cast your mind back a quarter century.

In the election of 2000, Vice President Al Gore faced Texas Governor George W. Bush. Gore probably would have won in a straight two-way contest. But that same year, the progressive advocate Ralph Nader entered the race as a third-party challenger—and he pulled just enough of the vote to tip the Electoral College and the presidency toward Bush.

Nader later professed regret for running as a third-party candidate. But at the time, Nader understood exactly what he was doing. Defeating Gore and electing Bush was the intended and declared purpose of Nader’s candidacy. Nader detailed his logic in many speeches, including this one to the summer-2000 convention of the NAACP:

If you ever wondered why the right wing and the corporate wing of the Democratic Party has so much more power over that party than the progressive wing, it’s because the right wing and the corporate wing have somewhere to go: It’s called the Republican Party. And so they’re catered to and they’re regaled—like the Democratic Leadership Council, they’re catered to and they’re regaled. But if you look at the progressive wing … they have nowhere to go. And you know when you’re told that you have nowhere to go, you get taken for granted. And when you get taken for granted, you get taken.

To paraphrase his argument even more bluntly: If progressives caused the Democrats to lose the presidency in the election of 2000, then Democrats would take progressives more seriously in all the elections that followed.

Nader’s logic was not altogether wrong. In many ways, the post-2000 Democratic Party has shifted well to the left of where the party was in the 1980s and ’90s. But catering to the party’s left has cost Democrats winnable races, and with them, key priorities: The Iraq War and 20 years of inaction on climate change head the list of progressive disappointments since the 2000 election, and the list extends from there. Whether or not the shift was worth the price, Nader was neither ignorant nor deceived. He identified his goal and willingly accepted the risks for himself and his movement.

So it is now with the pro-Palestinian demonstrators of 2024.

They start with a fundamental political problem: Their cause is not popular. Solid majorities of Americans accept Israel’s war in Gaza as valid and fiercely condemn the Hamas terrorist attacks as unacceptable. The exact margin varies from poll to poll depending on how the question is asked, but when presented with a binary choice between Israel and the Palestinians, Americans prefer Israel by a factor of at least two to one.

The brute fact of those numbers makes it very difficult for pro-Palestinian activists to win elections. In this cycle, despite all the emotion stirred by the Gaza war, two of Israel’s fiercest critics in Congress lost their primaries to pro-Israel challengers.

From the point of view of any practical politician: If a cause is so unpopular that it cannot help its friends, why listen to its advocates?

The only answer to that question, again from the practical point of view, is the message of the protesters in Chicago: Maybe we can’t help you if you do listen to us, but we can hurt you if you don’t!

Think of it another way. Since the bloody attack by Hamas on October 7 and the Israeli response, pro-Palestinian protesters have marched and agitated all over the United States. They have occupied college campuses. They have impeded access to Jewish schools, businesses, and places of worship. They have posted impassioned words and images on social media.

Yet all of their militant action has barely budged U.S. policy. Arms, intelligence, and economic assistance continue to flow from the United States to Israel. U.S. military forces cooperate with Israel against Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Yemen. Although the U.S. has imposed restraint on some Israeli operations, Israel has mostly been allowed to fight its own war in its own way.

These were President Biden’s decisions, not Vice President Harris’s. But she was the second-highest-ranking member of the administration. If Biden’s deputy inherits Biden’s office, the message is clear: His administration’s record of support for Israel carried no meaningful political price. All of those street demonstrations and campus occupations will have amounted to so much empty noise. All of those articles arguing that Gaza explained Biden’s troubles with young voters would be exposed as ideological wishcasting.

If Harris wins, the pro-Palestinian movement will have lost.

If Harris loses, however, pro-Palestinian protesters can claim that they were responsible for her defeat. That claim might not be true—in fact it probably would not be true—but try disproving it. The pro-Palestinian movement would have at least some basis to argue: You lost because you alienated us.

If Harris wins, she may want to do something about the pro-Palestinian cause—for humanitarian reasons, for reasons of diplomacy and geopolitics, for reasons of Democratic-constituency management in particular congressional districts. But she won’t have to do it. She’ll know that the protesters tried to beat her, and they failed.

If Harris loses, however, future Democratic candidates will tread more carefully on Israeli-Palestinian terrain. Even if they privately doubt that the party’s position on Gaza explains anything truly important, they will be worried by advisers and donors who will believe it or who will want to believe it.

But what about Trump? Why aren’t the pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Chicago more fearful of Trump’s possible return to the presidency?

Although the pro-Palestine cause attracts support from progressives, it is not exactly a progressive cause. Americans associate progressivism with secularism, feminism, and gay-rights advocacy, among other causes. The Palestinian national movement, especially now that Hamas has effectively replaced the Palestine Liberation Organization as leader of “the resistance,” has become markedly religious, patriarchal, and socially reactionary. But it is also a movement fiercely opposed to American global hegemony—and that is its “anti-imperialist” appeal to Western progressives.

If you oppose American global hegemony, Trump is your candidate (as a long list of anti-American dictators have already figured out). Trump fiercely opposes the alliances and trade agreements that magnify American power and make the U.S. the center of a huge network of democratic, market-oriented countries. Trump’s “America First” bluster is actually a pathway to American isolation and weakness that will further remove American power from the world.

If you wish America ill, of course you wish Trump well. The far left and far right of U.S. politics may disagree on much, but they agree on that.

The protesters in the streets of Chicago are not acting aimlessly or randomly. The people on the receiving end of their protests would benefit from equal clarity. The protesters want chaos and even violence in order to defeat Harris and elect Trump. They are not ill-informed or excessively idealistic or sadly misled. They are not overzealous allies. They are purposeful adversaries.

The Chicago-convention delegates should recognize that truth, and act accordingly.

[ivystoryweaver]

3 Times Jake Lockley Tried to Kill You and 1 Time He Saved Your Life

Part 3 of 5 - Hands

previous || Miniseries Masterlist || Main Masterlist || next

Pairing: Jake Lockley x f!reader

Summary: Jake can't waste any more time or he will be the one who ends up dead...but killing you doesn't come as easily to him as he'd hoped

Word Count: 2.8k

Content: nsfw, mdni, more below the cut

Frottage, groping, choking, language, glove kink, dry humping, violence, murder, a surprise guest, not beta'd

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ

He invaded your mind almost every second of the day.

Who was he?

Why was he toying with you?

When would you see him again?

You needed a drink. Several, in fact. So, for the first time since the night before Jake's first "attempt" on your life, you descended upon Chicago's nightlife with your friends. Your so-called friends anyway. You didn't feel incredibly close to anyone, but the girls provided a decent enough distraction for drinking, dancing and gossiping.

Tonight your dress reflected none of your typical classy air. The cut and fit of the outrageously tiny garment scandalously displayed the rage roiling inside you.

"If your father sees a photograph of you like this, he'll kill you," one of your bodyguards warned.

Kissing your teeth, you climbed into the awaiting car. "If I tell him how you just ogled me, he'll kill you."

That shut him up.

Still, he had a point. Your father liked to think he still had some sway over how you conducted yourself in public. Well, fuck him. Because of him, someone wanted you dead.

Someone you desperately craved to see again.

Three drinks and several dances later, the slightest bit of tension began to ease out of you. The flashing lights, thumping bass and strong alcohol blurred the worry and frustration, at least for the moment. Your two so-called friends and their hookups had already vanished.

Then you felt a gloved hand wrap around your bare arm as a warm body crowded in behind you.

"Dance with me," he breathed on your ear, gripping both your arms and pulling your back against the solid wall of his chest.

All the air rushed out of you - a wild, raging kind of relief confusing you. Danger surrounded you - it seemed to roll off him - but your lowered inhibitions had you rubbing yourself up against him before you could even remember to be afraid.

The rhythm of his body instantly matched yours, the two of you moving in delicious synchrony as he gripped your hips, corresponding to the heat and vigor of your grinding.

"I don't know you." Your head fell back onto his shoulder as your lips chased his ear, so he would hear you over the club's thump and roar. "I don't even know who's trying to kill me - not even your name."

Jake's smile teased the shell of your ear - his stubble temptingly tickling your flesh. Maybe he was growing his beard back out.

Pushing his hands down over the tops of your thighs, he spread your legs apart, as you danced up on him. Tracing his gloved fingertips back up your legs, he halted when he felt a gun situated in a thigh holster.

His cock, half hard already, stiffened against the curve of your ass. "You kept it," he rumbled into your ear, leaving the weapon in place. "Good girl." He then dragged his hands up over your hips to wrap securely around your abdomen, holding you almost like a lover would. "Did you have as much fun with the gun as you did the knife?"

Normally, you would have spat back a reply full of snark and cursing, but, the alcohol had smoothed your rough edges for the moment. "I had more fun this time," you admitted freely. "Fucked myself with it. Came so hard."

"Jesus," he whistled, grinding into you with obvious intention, while you gladly rubbed your barely covered ass up and down his length to the music's pulse. His hands crawled up to your breasts as he realized how far beyond his control he'd let you take him.

He'd never behaved so unprofessionally, allowing a mark to slip away twice, even encouraging you to protect yourself, with his own weapon, no less.

And now, probably walking right into a seductive trap, his cock hungry for a good fuck, tense and ready after images of you fucking your sopping cunt down on his gun filling his mind. He wanted you more than anything. No one had made him feel so out of control...well, ever.

There was no hiding what the two of you were doing now - with Jake groping both your breasts and thrusting wildly against you. Despite the debauchery around you - your own vulgar display was beginning to draw some attention.

"Not here," you said forcefully, shifting away from him, feeling the slightest victory that he seemed to really want you - to actually be distracted and overcome with desire.

Shaking himself out of his stupor, Jake gripped your hand and led you to a much more secluded spot, darker, up against a wall. Not entirely private, but better.

Caging you in, the heat of his body trapped you there, sturdy thighs pressed against yours as he adjusted his hips to rut his cock up against your core.

You mewled out a whimper, your legs falling open for him.

All he wanted was to sink his teeth into the meat of your neck, suck his mark there and push into you until he came, just to get some goddamn relief, but he feebly held onto his last shred of self-preservation.

The air between you shifted drastically making you instantly regret pausing your dance out in the middle of the floor.

"No more games," he gruffly warned, gathering your wrists and pushing them over your head, easily holding them in place with one hand.

His free hand slid back down the length of your arm to the top of your breast, which you hoped he would fondle indulgently - instead, he shifted back up to wrap it around your throat.

Cold eyes bore into yours as his jaw twitched with something like apprehension.

"No," you quickly choked out before he squeezed.

Dark eyebrows arched and in his gaze, you saw the storm of conflict. But you were losing him.

"This ends tonight," he huffed, nodding once as if trying to convince himself as much as you.

Gone was the fire of your sensual dance. He wasn't getting off on this. He wasn't playing around. He was here to finish the job.

"P-lease..." you gasped, desperate for air, hating yourself for begging. Although, it actually worked. He eased off, if only a fraction. "I'm s-sorry," you whimpered, tears slipping out of your wild, terrified eyes. "I'm sorry about your brother. Please..."

Jake's jaw clenched as his eyes flashed with something unrecognizable. Maybe hesitation. Or doubt. "He was just a kid," Jake spat. "Your father is a monster."

You could try to struggle against his compact but strong frame. You could hope to signal your bodyguards that beneath the music’s roar and the dim lights, a murder was about to occur.

But you found that you wanted him to decide not to kill you.

"I know," you whimpered, nodding quickly. "I know what my father is. What he's done." Sniffling, you squeezed your eyes shut as fresh tears spilled over your lashes. "Do what you have to do if it will give you peace. But just decide." This life-or-death edging was pure torture. And you only hated yourself for how badly you wanted him. "Please don't do this to me anymore."

Suddenly, Jake's entire demeanor changed. His shoulders stiffened, body tensing as his dark eyes flickered all around you.

"There's someone here," he breathed on your ear, finally, officially removing his hand from your throat.

"It's a club - there are tons of people here - "

He shushed you, releasing your arms from over your head, pushing your shoulders up against the wall instead.

"Shit," he hissed. "They're here for me." His boss was apparently tired of waiting.

His eyes found yours. "I'm Jake." Wetting his lips, his eyes flickered down to your throat and back. "I'm...obviously I'm not going to kill you."

Reaching for your thigh, he patted the gun you had stashed there. "This loaded?"

"Y-yes," you stammered, reeling from...everything.

"Good. I'm going to lead them out of here," he explained. "They're after me because I haven't finished the job." He locked gazes with you again. "So they might be here for you too."

"Nice to meet you, Jake," you huffed with a slight pout, your usual fire extinguished by the emotional whiplash of the evening. "You're just a ray of fucking sunshine. Been a real pleasure."

Before he could fire back a protest, you grabbed his jacket and pulled him close. "My bodyguards are right behind you. You really are off your game."

Then you kissed him, hard. He tried to pry himself free, to assess the danger, but the heat of your tongue and the tangle of your fingers through the curls at the base of his neck made him forget this entire shit storm for a few heavenly moments - the taste of you more delicious than he could ever have imagined. You sucked his tongue so hard he almost lost his balance.

He finally broke the kiss, eyes darting wildly, trying to get his bearings.

"Kiss me again," you commanded. "My bodyguards think we're hooking up. They won't fuck with me, trust me."

Jake's chest heaved with desire and trepidation. His boss had definitely dispatched two men that Jake had spotted so far. "I'm not worried about those idiots. We have a much bigger problem."

"Where?" You gasped, your hands twisting hopelessly in his jacket, holding onto him as if you were afraid he would vanish again, leaving you afraid and weirdly sexually frustrated.

"My nine o'clock and eleven. Don't look."

You chewed on your lip, resisting the urge to do just that.

"Trade places with me," you ordered, "up against the wall. Let me hide you."

"It won't work - "

"Turn the fuck around, Jake," you commanded, your eyes flashing. "I don't think they've spotted you yet or we would be dead already." Jake quickly traded places with you, pushing his back up against the wall and dipping his knees as you practically climbed him.

A rush of air passed his parted lips as you pressed your breasts against his chest, draping yourself over him. "Trust me - they won't be looking at you - not while I'm wearing this dress."

You shifted your hips until you could feel his hard cock press against your core, right where it felt so good. If you were in this world of shit because of Jake, you might as well enjoy it.

"Now make them believe there's nothing to see here but my ass," you breathed on his ear, barely finishing your sentence before his gloved hands gripped your backside, pushing you down over his length as his mouth fused with yours.

Fuck. The seam of his pants caught on your clit, through the flimsy material of your lace thong. The roughness of the lace only added to the sensation, sending sparks of pleasure up and down your spine.

And his mouth, god. His lips were as soft as you imagined - predictably demanding, and the stubble of his chin scraped and tickled you deliciously. His tongue rolled hot in your mouth, luring you into a salacious tangle of breathing and sucking and tasting.

The rhythm your bodies shared on the dance floor quickly returned - two moving as one in a wild, writhing tangle.

Sucking his tongue, you moaned into his mouth, rubbing your clit over the outline of his tip with increasing vigor, fingers tangled hopelessly in his curls.

Jake could feel you chasing your orgasm - he knew he could make you come like this, but you might not understand the reality of how much danger lurked around you both.

He couldn't kill you now. He realized, as he tilted his head and flexed his forearms along the curve of your back - he didn't even want to kill you - not even for revenge. Not to hurt your father back or avenge his brother.

And not just to fuck you either. A fire burned in you - something rare and wild and beautiful and he didn't want to be the one to extinguish it. He understood now that he couldn't accept anyone else hurting you either.

You panted his name, tugging hard on his hair, your heated breath temptingly falling on his throat.

"I got you baby," he found himself murmuring. "You gonna come for me like this?"

"Fuck you," you gasped, but he heard no venom in your curse as your mouth sought his again.

His protective and survival instincts clawed through the hazy fog of lust, prompting him to tear his mouth away, touching his forehead to yours as your wild panting tickled his lips.

"They'll kill you," he gasped, pulling you into something of a protective hug. "They're not like me. They won't miss. They won't stop. We have to go. Now."

Shaking yourself out of your near-orgasmic state of bliss, you gripped his jacket once more, trying to think clearly.

"Isn't that what you want, Jake?" You asked him seriously. "For me to die? To hurt my father?"

You pushed hard on his chest, but he trapped your hands.

"Listen to me," he hissed. But he paused, swallowing hard as he regarded you, as if for the final time. "I'm going to lead them out of here - "

"Jake - "

"Use your weapon if you need to." He nodded over your shoulder. "Your closest bodyguard is maybe ten paces on your six. Walk straight to him and get out of here. Call your father."

"Jake, you can't - "

His mouth crashed into yours desperately, tasting your lips one at a time before he licked into your mouth hotly, folding you against his chest with one arm. His free hand gripped your jaw as he kissed you for one more indulgent moment.

Easing back, he stared deeply into your eyes before using his teeth to pull his glove off. He pushed it against your chest.

"Something to remember me by...or maybe play with." He managed a wink before brushing his fingertips over your lips.

You realized then that he'd never really touched you before - not without gloves on.

"I'm sorry I hurt you," he went on caressing your face - your chin, your jawline - raking his fingers over the curve of your cheek. "Now go. Don't get hurt because of me."

He tried to push you away, but you clung to him. "Jake...will I see you again?" You asked with trembling lips, your eyes darting over the handsome contours of his face.

He shook his head. "Not unless you want me to finish the job."

"You asshole," you seethed, gripping his glove in your hand before shrugging one shoulder, trying to pretend you didn't care. "At least I got a new toy out of it. Good luck not getting yourself killed."

With that, you turned on your heel and walked straight to your bodyguard, and away from the inept assassin named Jake.

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ

Jake woke up in a warehouse on the south side of the city.

The night had started out well enough - getting to see you again - to touch you, kiss you...

But had turned bloody. Deadly. Apparently.

Jake hissed, feeling haphazard stitching feebly holding together the gash on his side, attempting to get a good look through his brand new black eye.

"Fuck," he hissed, realizing he'd missed a few hours. He blacked out after he left the club. And woke up here.

An empty beer bottle sat nearby - along with various other bits of trash from whoever partied or slept here last.

Jake noticed his reflection in the glass.

"I would've taken care of it," he offered up a protest to anyone who might be listening.

But he knew why his deadly alter fronted. It was them or him. Or you. They were after you as well, and it was his fault.

His sluggish mind finally registered what might have happened while he was absent from the body.

Jake grabbed the beer bottle, barking an accusation at his dim, distorted reflection. "Did you hurt her?"

Shit. Marc Spector did not fuck around. If you were a mark, he would finish the job if he thought the body was in real danger. He didn't come around often, not nearly as often as Steven, but he was probably the reason Jake was still alive after all these years.

"Answer me, Marc. Is she alive?"

Marc didn't answer. He never answered. He protected.

Jake should have sliced your throat the first time he grabbed you in that park. Saved himself the trouble.

No one was worth all this shit.

But if that were true, why was he panicking? He had to know.

So he would try to see you one more time. Then he would surrender the body to Steven and let him live in London like he wanted.

next

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ

Jake Lockley-Centric stories

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[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

1939 MSG Nazi rally

+

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 27, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 28, 2024

I stand corrected. I thought this year’s October surprise was the reality that Trump’s mental state had slipped so badly he could not campaign in any coherent way. 

It turns out that the 2024 October surprise was the Trump campaign’s fascist rally at Madison Square Garden, a rally so extreme that Republicans running for office have been denouncing it all over social media tonight. 

There was never any question that this rally was going to be anything but an attempt to inflame Trump’s base. The plan for a rally at Madison Square Garden itself deliberately evoked its predecessor: a Nazi rally at the old Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. About 18,000 people showed up for that “true Americanism” event, held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of George Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas. 

Like that earlier event, Trump’s rally was supposed to demonstrate power and inspire his base to violence.  

Apparently in anticipation of the rally, Trump on Friday night replaced his signature blue suit and red tie with the black and gold of the neofascist Proud Boys. That extremist group was central to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and has been rebuilding to support Trump again in 2024. 

On Saturday the Trump campaign released a list of 29 people set to be on the stage at the rally. Notably, the list was all MAGA Republicans, including vice presidential nominee Ohio senator J.D. Vance, House speaker Mike Johnson (LA), Representative Elise Stefanik (NY), Representative Byron Donalds (FL), Trump backer Elon Musk, Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right-wing host Tucker Carlson, Trump sons Don Jr. and Eric, and Eric’s wife, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump. 

Libbey Dean of NewsNation noted that none of the seven Republicans running in New York’s competitive House races were on the list. When asked why not, according to Dean, Trump senior advisor Jason Miller said: “The demand, the request for people to speak, is quite extensive.” Asked if the campaign had turned down anyone who asked to speak, Miller said no.  

Meanwhile, the decision of the owners of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post not to endorse Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris seems to have sparked a backlash. As Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer noted, “in a strange way the papers did perform a public service: showing American voters what life under a dictator would feel like.”

Early on October 26, the Washington Post itself went after Trump backer billionaire Elon Musk with a major story highlighting the information that Musk, an immigrant from South Africa, had worked illegally when he started his career in the U.S. Musk “did not have the legal right to work” in the U.S. when he started his first successful company. As part of the Trump campaign, Musk has emphasized his opposition to undocumented immigrants.

The New York Times has tended to downplay Trump’s outrageous statements, but on Saturday it ran a round-up of Trump’s threats in the center of the front page, above the fold. It noted that Trump has vowed to expand presidential power, prosecute his political opponents, and crack down on immigration with mass deportations and detention camps. It went on to list his determination to undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), use the U.S. military against Mexican drug cartels “in potential violation of international law,” and use federal troops against U.S. citizens. It added that he plans to “upend trade” with sweeping new tariffs that will raise consumer prices, and to rein in regulatory agencies. 

“To help achieve these and other goals,” the paper concluded, “his advisers are vetting lawyers seen as more likely to embrace aggressive legal theories about the scope of his power.” 

On Sunday the front page of the New York Times opinion section read, in giant capital letters: “DONALD TRUMP/ SAYS HE WILL PROSECUTE HIS ENEMIES/ ORDER MASS DEPORTATIONS/ USE SOLDIERS AGAINST CITIZENS/ ABANDON ALLIES/ PLAY POLITICS WITH DISASTERS/ BELIEVE HIM.” And then, inside the section, the paper provided the receipts: Trump’s own words outlining his fascist plans. “BELIEVE HIM,” the paper said. 

On CNN’s State of the Union this morning, host Jake Tapper refused to permit Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, to gaslight viewers. Vance angrily denied that Trump has repeatedly called for using the U.S. military against Americans, but Tapper came with receipts that proved the very things Vance denied. 

Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden began in the early afternoon. The hateful performances of the early participants set the tone for the rally. Early on, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who goes by Kill Tony, delivered a steamingly racist set. He said, for example: “There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” He went on: “And these Latinos, they love making babies too. Just know that. They do. They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside. Just like they did to our country.” Hinchcliffe also talked about Black people carving watermelons instead of pumpkins. 

The speakers who followed Hinchcliffe called Vice President Kamala Harris “the Antichrist” and “the devil.” They called former secretary of state Hillary Clinton “a sick son of a b*tch,” and they railed against “f*cking illegals.” They insulted Latinos generally, Black Americans, Palestinians and Jews. Trump advisor Stephen Miller’s claim that “America is for Americans and Americans only” directly echoed the statement of Adolf Hitler that "Germany is for Germans and Germans only.” 

Trump took the stage about two hours late, prompting people to stream toward the exits before he finished speaking. He hit his usual highlights, notably undermining Vance’s argument from earlier in the day by saying that, indeed, he believes fellow Americans are “the enemy within.”  

But Trump perhaps gave away the game with his inflammatory language and with an aside, seemingly aimed at House speaker Johnson. “I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House, right? Our little secret is having a big impact, he and I have a secret, we will tell you what it is when the race is over,” Trump said. 

It seems possible—probable, even—that Trump was alluding to putting in play the plan his people tried in 2020. That plan was to create enough chaos over the certification of electoral votes in the states to throw the election into the House of Representatives. There, each state delegation gets a single vote, so if the Republicans have control of more states than the Democrats, Trump could pull out a victory even if he had dramatically lost the popular vote.

Since he has made virtually no effort to win votes in 2024, this seems his likely plan. 

But to do that, he needs at least a plausibly close election, or at least to convince his supporters that the election has been stolen from him. Tonight’s rally badly hurt that plan. 

As Hinchcliffe was talking about Puerto Rico as a floating island of garbage, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris was at a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia talking about her plan to spread her opportunity economy to Puerto Rico. She has called for strengthening Puerto Rico’s energy grid and making it easier to get permits to build there. 

After the “floating island of garbage” comment, Puerto Rican superstar musician Bad Bunny, who has more than 45 million followers on Instagram, posted Harris’s plan for Puerto Rico, and his spokesperson said he is endorsing Harris. 

Puerto Rican singer and actor Ricky Martin shared a clip from Hinchcliffe’s set with his 16 million followers. His caption read: “This is what they think of us.” Singer and actress Jennifer Lopez, who has 250 million Instagram followers, posted Harris’s plan. Later, singer-songwriter and actress Ariana Grande posted that she had voted for Harris. Grande has 376 million followers on Instagram. Singer Luis Fonsi, who has 16 million followers, also called out the “constant hate.”

The headlines were brutal. “MAGA speakers unleash ugly rhetoric at Trump's MSG rally,” read Axios. Politico wrote: “Trump’s New York homecoming sparks backlash over racist and vulgar remarks.” “Racist Remarks and Insults Mark Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally,” the New York Times announced. “Speakers at Trump rally make racist comments, hurl insults,” read CNN.

But the biggest sign of the damage the rally did was the frantic backpedaling from Republicans in tight elections, who distanced themselves as fast as they could from the insults against Puerto Ricans, especially. The Trump campaign itself tried to distance itself from the “floating island of garbage” quotation, only to be met with comments pointing out that Hinchcliffe’s set had been vetted and uploaded to the teleprompters. 

As the clips spread like wildfire, political writer Charlotte Clymer pointed out that almost 6 million Puerto Ricans live in the states—about a million in Florida, half a million in Pennsylvania, 100,000 in Georgia, 100,000 in Michigan, 100,000 in North Carolina, 45,000 in Arizona, and 40,000 in Nevada—and that over half of them voted in 2020. 

In 1939, as about 18,000 American Nazis rallied inside Madison Square Garden, newspapers reported that a crowd of about 100,000 anti-Nazis gathered outside to protest. It took 1,700 police officers, the largest number of officers ever before detailed for a single event, to hold them back from storming the venue.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[phantoms-planet]

Barred Protection Chapter 8

Tw: depression and inmate violence (not graphic)

Masterlist

Batman knew it had to have been Daelus to leak the story. The man had asked to send a letter and then the very next morning Vicki Vale had a story out about the scandal? There wasn’t a chance of it being anyone else at that point. Part of him was mad about it, given that they weren’t ready to handle the aftermath, but the other part of him understood the desperation. Men in bad situations did stupid things trying to fix them.

News outlets had leapt onto the story like savage wolves. It was only hours before the world knew of Dealus’s actions and the true nature of his medicines.

Just as Bruce thought, there was a savage fight over ethics and human rights. The two loudest sides were the people claiming that using the medicine was complacent in torture and child endangerment, and the people claiming it was ableist and classist of anyone who agreed with the former group.

Bruce couldn’t fully agree with either of the points. He could never condone the treatment Danny had gone through, but he wasn’t blind to the suffering Ameliorate had abated. Just like most things in life, there was no black and white answer.

He really wished there was.

“B?” Dick’s voice pulled him from his thoughts. “How bad is it?”

“Hmm…”

“That bad?”

Bruce grunted again. It was worse than ‘that bad’. The Justice League was now being accused of not acting fast enough on a shady company, as if something like this was usually part of their duties.

Granted in hindsight they should have acted much sooner.

He let out a grumbling sigh before paging the League for an emergency meeting. They couldn’t go back and fix what happened but now they were going to mitigate the damage as much as possible. Though that ship might have sailed already.

With a swish of his cape, Batman went over to the zeta tube and in seconds he was up in the Watchtower.

Several of the others were right behind him. He led the way to one of the meeting rooms to wait for everyone. Thankfully, and promptly, everyone filed in and took their seats.

Batman pursed his lips before starting. “As you all are aware, the news of what happened regarding Danny has been leaked to the public. There has been great backlash against the League for how slow we were to respond to this, as the news had put it, dangerous precedent for business affairs.”

There was a wave of complaints that filled the room. Batman held his hand up, having to wait several minutes before everyone got their outrage under control. “I am aware that this may be unfair, but it may also not be. We need to have our best public speakers at the press conference. Superman? I want you front and center. I will have a list of topics that are confidential at the moment as well as a few pre-written answers if a question stumps you. Diana, I want you to help him.”

“The two of you are the favorites of the public, they will be easier on you. As for everyone else: Danny is fully confidential. If anyone tries to get you to speak about him, you will answer with ‘The league has already made their statements on the matter’, is this understood?”

A chorus of yesses followed. Flash held up his hand. “What are we going to do with Ameliorate? We can’t let them keep selling medicine, can we?”

“Not as freely.” Bruce stated. “For the time being they are going to be put under suspension. No medicine can be sold unless it is necessary for survival, no patients can be seen under the same conditions. In the wake of things, I think it best if we employ teams on site of dispensaries and clinics to protect the people who need the medication to live. I don’t want protests to get violent with those people as the targets.”

“I agree,” Diana was sitting up straight as a rod, anger barely hidden. “But I also believe there shouldn’t be any more collecting from Danny.”

Another chorus of agreement and Batman held his hand up again. “No, we will not collect more from the boy.”

“Then what of the people who rely on the medicine to live?” J’onn asked, brows furrowed.

Batman didn’t answer as fast this time. He’d been thinking about it and frankly, the only solution he could come up with was synthesizing something that resembled Danny’s tears. He could have his kids help with it to make it go faster.

He let out a sigh. “I will attempt to synthesize the tears. We can’t just let people die without at least attempting this.”

---

Danny floated in the expanse of space lazily. He didn’t need to breathe and the cold didn’t bother him so he could spend as much time as he wanted up here. With earth so tiny below him all that happened felt so far away-

Not-not that anything had happened to him. Everything was fine. He was just…relaxing after a hard day at school, yeah.

“Danny?” He whipped around at the voice. The green skinned man was back and this time he was holding his hands up placatingly. “My name is J’onn, but you may know me as Martian Manhunter.”

Martian Manhunter? The man who’d been harassing him was Martian Freaking Manhunter?! Of course one of the people he dreamed of meeting was being a massive jerk, that was just Fenton luck. Danny turned to fly away but was stopped by a hand to his shoulder.

“Would you like to see my home?” And just like that he was reeled in like a fish.

J’onn changed the dreamscape to an alien world with strange architecture and beautiful views. When Danny started asking questions about anything and everything, J’onn patiently answered them.

He learned about how the society ran, J’onn’s former job, his family (a clearly sore topic), how his planet was destroyed. J’onn needed a moment after that one, Danny let him compose himself as he explored a little more. This was a dream come true!

Danny asked even more questions until he wore himself out and he changed the surroundings back to empty space.

J’onn floated in silence with him for a while. It was nice. Maybe…maybe J’onn was nice too.

“Can I ask about your family?” J’onn gently nudged.

Danny stiffened. Was this a trap of some kind? He watched the alien in front of him for a moment before snorting. No, this was genuine. So…Dany told him. About his parents hunting ghosts, his sister who wanted to be a brain surgeon and wanted to grow up too fast, and when he was out of things to say about them he started talking about Sam and Tucker.

It was like a weight was lifting from his chest. Their surroundings changed with memories that he brought up; showing the Nastyburger, his home, school, and before he knew it Danny was starting to cry.

He didn’t want to cry, he’d done so much of it, but he couldn’t help it. J’onn held him as he broke down with body-wracking sobs.

---

Diana had noticed how relaxed their ward had become. It seemed J’onn’s new approach was working at first, until tears started slipping from Danny’s eyes again.

She quickly grabbed a tissue and began wiping them away. The poor boy had been through so much and he wasn’t even close to being done, the least she could do was wipe his tears for him.

Minutes after Danny started crying J’onn was taking his hand from the boy’s forehead. He met Diana’s eyes. “He wanted time alone. I believe I have reached him on some level though. He showed me his family and friends.” Diana nodded in relief.

After what had happened three tries ago, none of them were sure Danny would let them help. Showing his family was a huge improvement. A second chance.

“I’ll go tell Batman.” She swept to her feet and made her way to the monitors, where Batman was watching closely. “Batman?”

“Hnn?”

“J’onn says Danny showed him his loved ones.”

“Good progress. Have him come debrief with me when he can.”

Diana offered him a small smile. “I will. Do we have progress on the G.I.W?”

Batman let out a much more frustrated grunt. It took him a moment to compile his thoughts but Diana didn’t mind. She liked that he thought before speaking. “There’s…not good news. Researching them I found a set of acts, the Anti-Ecto acts, that make what they’ve done, what they’re doing, completely legal as long as they can prove their specimens are ghosts.”

“How have we not heard of these before?”

“I don’t know.” Bruce was clearly very frustrated. She understood, he liked having everything under control and no unknowns. This was a very important unknown.

Diana set a hand to his shoulder. They both seemed to be thinking the same thing; the public was going to be just as upset hearing about laws that allowed the torture of a young child.

---

Despite what people thought, Daelus was not the one to spill about his operations. He had wanted that to go quietly. As if he would sacrifice his whole company in an attempt to get the bat to listen to him. It was laughable.

No, the letter he had sent was to his assistant. He wanted Carter to re-start the synthesizing of P’s tears.

They had tried for years with no success, but if they could manage it now maybe the company, and the people who needed their medication to live, could be saved.

Unfortunately he had received a letter back saying that everyone who was working on that project had been put under various forms of arrest, and that his methods had been leaked. Who had leaked it? He wasn’t sure. Everyone was under iron tight NDAs.

Either way Daelus’s company was as good as dead.

Grief didn’t even begin to explain how he felt. His whole life’s ambition was gone, his good intentions marred, his reputation so sullied it might as well have been dragged lower than hell.

To say he was reacting poorly was an understatement. Most days he couldn’t get up to brush his teeth, let alone go to the cafeteria to eat.

Not that it would be safe for him anyway.

He had been moved to an isolation ward since the last time he’d been around the other inmates they had…very violent reactions to seeing him. Daelus shuddered at the memory.

Did he think he deserved it? Well…maybe? He hurt a child, sure, but he had also helped so many people. Surely that mitigated some of the harm. And really, how else would he have gotten tears from P, especially at the volume they needed to produce to keep up?

Surely the result had pardoned at least part of the means.

Though Daelus was put out about the fact that he had done those things to a child. Maybe he should have found a better method. Maybe he should have had his scientists work harder on the synthetic version of his tears.

Maybe he shouldn’t have bought a person in the first place.

Maybe his company shouldn’t have been the only thing he cared about for so long.

A puff of air escaped his lips. Daelus couldn’t change what he had done. He wanted to, yes, but he couldn’t.

He wished he could see P again.

He wished he could apologize.

[attheexactlyrighttimeandplace]

For the people who still think the colony of Israel has a right to defend itself:

They're not defending anything, they're just having fun killing:

Update 1 (17/10/2023) for the confused and sceptics :

Update 2 (10/22/2023): To add some context to this post following Reuters (direct link to article) attempt to verify the reality of the IDF Facebook post.

In fact, Reuters failed to verify anything: as the agency admitted in its article, its journalist "could not find the impostor's Facebook account or the publication on the platform social network".

They then contacted "a spokesperson for the IDF", who told them that " the Facebook post was not shared by one of its official accounts. He added there was only one official IDF Facebook page in Arabic that carries a verification tick "

A Reuters reporter also contacted"a representative for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, told Reuters the page was removed".

In this total absence of material evidence, and relying solely on the statements of these two sources which are the least reliable when it comes to commenting and sharing information and facts about the war against the Palestinians (the Israeli army is party to the conflict therefore It is biased and will protect its agents and soldiers- and Facebook has a history of censoring Palestinian content that could be used to document violence and help legally qualify zionist crimes).

Reuters came to this hasty conclusion:

Their main arguments are that

The Israeli occupation army never admitted to bombing the hospital and blamed Islamic Jihad, so it had no reason to celebrate.

Reuters journalists conveniently ignore the timeline. The IDF message welcoming the bombing of the Baptist hospital in Gaza was published immediately after the attack, while the controversy over the perpetrators of the attack began a few hours after its deletion.

Until the controversy, no one wondered who was behind the attack. The zionist army has always publicly assumed its crimes: it even ordered (according to the clerics who were in charge of the administration of the hospital) on several occasions the hospital to evacuate, knowing perfectly well that it was impossible. It was only when outrage became widespread that western media, including Reuters, began to question the origins of the strike. There's a post on Tumblr that pulls together the subtle changes in headlines to make it seem like Israel never took credit for the attack (even though it destroyed different 2 floors of the hospital a few days before the biggest attack).

There are other videos on Mohammed El Kurd's Twitter account showing the zionist army celebrating its strikes. There are videos on social media of zionist soldiers humiliating prisoners in their custody, so gloating on social media is not a new practice for them.

There is no reason why they should not celebrate what they consider a victory: their ministers have already publicly and clearly stated that civilians who do not leave northern Gaza, whatever their reasons, will be assimilated to Hamas fighters. So everything is consistent; in their minds, hitting innocent and defenseless civilians is legitimate and they are happy about it.

On its Twitter account, the Israeli military removed a video that purported to prove that Islamic Jihad carried out the attack, but ultimately did not prove its claims. So they also have a habit of deleting their own content when they realize that it exposes them more than it helps them.

Other journalists (Al Jazeera uses its own images: it is the only media that remained in Gaza and they filmed all the attacks, information from Channel 4) and independent experts on weapons of war and geolocation worked on the question of identifying the perpetrators of the bombing of the hospital. So far, their preliminary conclusion is that the Israeli military's claims do not match the facts and material evidence on the ground.

Full details of this debate are on the X/Twitter accounts of Lowkey and Mohammed El-Kurd (look for posts made on October 17).

2. I don't really know how Facebook/Meta works: I never had an account on it (I mean I never used it properly: I opened an account years ago, exclusively to follow the activity of a group that I was part of in life but closed it after a few weeks without interacting beyond a few likes), but on Twitter you can hide the checkmark.

Even if the checkmark cannot be hidden, there is nothing in the Reuters "report" to indicate that the Zionist army does not maintain multiple accounts - some with checkmarks and some without - and does not delete accounts that are not officials when it does not suit their interests.

They have a history of spreading fake news: from rumors about 40 beheaded babies, to accusing Palestinians of bombing themselves, to creating fake documents to accuse Hamas of planning attacks on primary schools while manipulating parents by buying YT ads shown during videos aimed at children to improve their image damaged by their violence with families, and to justify the harm they do to the children of Gaza.

I'm only making this long argument because Lowkey and Mohammed El-Kurd deleted the tweets I reposted and I think they shouldn't have done so. I understand why: it actually seems like an insignificant speck in an ocean of real crimes, but I personally consider it symbolic and indicative of the true and greater zionist project: genocide.

Genocide in international law is based on proof of intent to destroy a group, and the zionist army's mocking Facebook post establishes beyond doubt that nothing is accidental on the zionist side, everything is premeditated and based on their superiority complex over the Palestinian people.

[genderqueerpositivity]

A Southern California business owner was shot and killed Friday by a man who objected to an LGBTQ+ Pride flag displayed at her clothing store, officials said.

America, 2023.

Frankly, I'm shocked to read that the cops gave the killer a bullet and not a trophy. Fuck the police but good shot.

(Yes, I am absolutely furious.)

It's not a popular statement to make, but I am grateful for all of the people who call themselves our allies and show up when it matters. I am grateful for the life that Laura Ann Carleton lived, for her commitment to being a visible ally in her community, and I am outraged that her life was cut short.

But I do have to say this:

I am also angry that the death of a cishet ally is already receiving more public outrage than the wave of transphobia that has been taking place in this country this year. I am angry because the death of an ally is already getting more media attention than the innumerable acts of violence committed against queer and trans people every day in this country ever will.

We are in a critical and dangerous time for queer and trans rights, for the safety of queer and trans people, and for freedom of expression in general.

Allies? Speak up.

And, conservatives? Anti-queer Christians? Trans-exclusionary feminists? I don't want to hear your pointless platitudes. I'm not interested in your "thoughts and prayers" or your preaching about how "violence is never the answer". You're complicit in these acts of violence against the LGBTQIA community and against our allies. Own your shit and be fucking silent.

[whencyclopedia]

XYZ Affair

The XYZ Affair was a diplomatic incident that occurred in 1797-98, involving diplomats from the United States and Revolutionary France. Amidst rising tensions between the two nations, President John Adams sent envoys to Paris to negotiate a treaty, only to find that the French would not open negotiations unless the US paid a bribe. This helped to incite the Quasi-War.

The affair came at a time when the concurrent French Revolution (1789-1799) was already creating divisions within American politics. The nationalist Federalist Party – of which President Adams was a member – was horrified by the violence of the French Revolution and wanted to move the United States away from France's sphere of influence. To do this, they sought to foster closer political and economic ties with Great Britain, which they viewed as the natural ally of the US. This caused outrage amongst the rival political faction, the Democratic-Republican Party (Jeffersonian Democrats), who believed that closer ties with Britain would only undermine republicanism in the United States. At the same time, the French Republic viewed the budding relationship between the US and Britain as an act of aggression and authorized attacks on American merchant vessels in late 1796.

In 1797, President Adams sought to resolve the issue diplomatically and sent three envoys to France. These envoys had expected to be received by the French foreign minister, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord; instead, they were met by three French intermediaries (referred to in coded dispatches as agents 'X', 'Y', and 'Z') who insisted that the United States pay a large bribe in order to meet with Talleyrand and begin negotiations. When this became public knowledge in the US, it inflamed public opinion against the French, leading to increased support for Adams and the anti-French Federalists. Rising Franco-American tensions led to a brief, undeclared naval conflict called the Quasi-War (1798-1800), as well as the passage of the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts (1798).

Background

In 1778, the Kingdom of France signed a Treaty of Alliance with the fledgling United States. The American Revolutionary War had been ongoing for three years, and the Americans had time and again proven their resilience and determination in battle against the British; however, it was clear to all that the American rebellion would falter if they did not receive support from a European power. France was happy to oblige, seeing that a victory in America would humiliate and weaken its rival, Great Britain. France provided the Americans with arms, ammunition, uniforms, troops, and ships, and it turned the war into a global conflict by threatening the valuable British colonies in India and the West Indies, forcing Britain to spread its military resources thin. French soldiers and ships proved vital to the decisive American victory at the Siege of Yorktown, the engagement that solidified American independence. Certainly, the French contributed greatly to the ultimate American victory and succeeded in striking a blow to British prestige in the process.

But such a war came with a monstrous cost, and France soon found itself drowning in debt. Attempts to tackle the problem failed, and France's economic misfortunes blossomed into a revolution. News of the Storming of the Bastille in July 1789 was sweet to American ears, as was the proclamation of the First French Republic three years later. Americans were jubilant that their French brothers-in-arms were following their lead and casting off the shackles of monarchism, with Thomas Jefferson and his supporters even welcoming the new French Republic as "our younger sister" (Wood, 182). But then came the violence: the September Massacres, the trial and execution of Louis XVI, and the start of the Reign of Terror made the streets of Paris slick with blood and plunged the young French Republic deeper into chaos. Under the new Jacobin regime, hundreds of thousands of French citizen-soldiers swept into Europe, vowing to deliver liberty and equality at the point of a bayonet. The French Revolutionary Wars were soon underway as the great powers of Europe – Austria, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, and Great Britain among them – took up arms against the French.

Even now, the French Revolution had support in the United States, with men like Jefferson believing that a little violence was the price to pay for liberty. They believed that the 1778 Treaty of Alliance was still in effect and urged the Washington Administration to offer support to their sister republic. However, President George Washington was reluctant to offer any such support. He knew that doing so would risk antagonizing Great Britain, with whom relations were already low, at a time when the United States was completely unprepared for war. Instead, Washington issued a Proclamation of Neutrality on 22 April 1793, in which he promised to keep the United States out of the French Revolutionary Wars. The following year, his administration negotiated a deal with Britain – the controversial Jay Treaty, ratified by Congress in 1795, created stronger economic and political ties between Britain and the United States. While this achieved the goal of the Washington Administration and the Federalist Party of avoiding another war with England, it outraged the Jeffersonian faction of Americans (Democratic-Republicans), who still wanted to support France and feared that the treaty placed the US too closely within Britain's sphere of influence.

Jay Treaty

John Jay (Public Domain)

The French Republic itself was also incensed by the Jay Treaty, which it interpreted as a British-American alliance. The French felt especially double-crossed because they believed the 1778 Treaty of Alliance was still in effect and had been expecting American support. They retaliated in 1796 when French privateers began attacking American shipping in the British West Indies. Within the next year, nearly 300 American merchant ships were captured, their crews often subjected to maltreatment; in one instance, the French tortured the American captain of the Cincinnatus with thumb screws to get him to confess that he was carrying British goods. Amidst these rising tensions, Washington, who was preparing to leave office, recalled James Monroe as ambassador to France, feeling that Monroe was too pro-French. In his place, Washington sent Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a hardline Federalist from South Carolina; but when Pinckney arrived in Paris, the French refused to even receive him. This was how matters stood when John Adams was inaugurated as the second US president on 4 March 1797 – a discontented pro-French faction on American soil, and an aggressive French Republic looking to assert its will.

Continue reading...

[renatoferreiradasilva]

Fascism, Economic Elites, Big Tech, and the Massacre of Children in Palestine

The relationship between fascism, economic elites, and indifference to human suffering has deep roots in global political and economic history. This essay aims to explore how these forces interact in contemporary contexts, using the massacre of children in Palestine as a central point of analysis. Over the past decades, the expansion of Big Tech’s influence has significantly contributed to controlling information and reinforcing the power of economic elites at the expense of truth and human dignity. In this context, the systematic disregard for the suffering of Palestinian children goes hand-in-hand with close monitoring of financial and technological markets.

Fascism and Economic Elites: A Brief Historical Overview

Fascism, both as an ideology and as a system of government, is notorious for its brutality and disregard for human life, especially when that life is seen as an obstacle to economic progress or national and racial dominance. However, the close relationship between fascism and economic elites has often gone under-examined. Fascist regimes such as Benito Mussolini's Italy and Adolf Hitler's Germany relied on the support of large corporations and the industrial class, who saw these governments as a means to ensure social stability and protect their financial interests. The fear of communism and labor strikes drove industrialists to support authoritarian governments that promised to suppress internal opposition and preserve the economic order.

In this context, economic elites often turned a blind eye to the atrocities committed by fascist regimes, from political repression to genocide, such as the Holocaust. This same kind of indifference, driven by the logic of capital preservation, can be observed today regarding the massacre of children in Palestine. Large corporations and investors prefer to focus their attention on stock market performance, ignoring the human cost of wars and occupations that ensure their economic benefits.

The Economic Dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The massacre of children in Palestine occurs within a global economic and political context, where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict takes on multiple dimensions. Israel, with its advanced and modern economy, heavily relies on the defense and security sector to maintain its geopolitical and military dominance in the Middle East. Major foreign investments and collaboration with Western powers ensure the continued prosperity of its economy, even during times of conflict.

On the other hand, Palestinians, especially in Gaza and the West Bank, live under extreme economic hardship due to the Israeli military occupation. Economic blockades, restrictions on movement, and the absence of basic infrastructure leave the Palestinian people in a constant state of vulnerability. In this oppressive environment, massacres of children and other forms of violence against civilians are seen by some as inevitable or even acceptable as long as they maintain geopolitical stability and protect global economic interests.

The Role of Big Tech: Controlling Information and Strategic Indifference

In the 21st century, Big Tech companies such as Google, Facebook (Meta), Amazon, and Microsoft play a central role in controlling information and shaping public discourse around global conflicts. These companies, through sophisticated algorithms, determine what people see, read, and talk about. In the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, content showing the realities of violence, particularly the suffering of Palestinians, including the massacre of children, is often suppressed or censored.

This control of the narrative is crucial to protecting the interests of economic elites who benefit from the status quo. By restricting access to information that could spark popular outrage or global movements, Big Tech ensures continued economic and political stability, even in the face of crimes against humanity. Moreover, Big Tech companies have direct interests in the defense and security economy, signing lucrative contracts with governments, including the Israeli government, to provide surveillance, intelligence, and weaponry technologies.

Economic Elites: Profit Over Human Life

Global economic elites, comprising investors, multinational corporations, and financial conglomerates, exert a decisive influence on international policies and conflicts. Capital is often directed toward regions and sectors that promise the highest financial returns, regardless of the political or social conditions. These elites profit from the perpetuation of conflict and instability while remaining largely indifferent to the human suffering that ensues.

The massacre of Palestinian children is a tragic consequence of a system in which financial markets and economic interests are prioritized over human life and dignity. Economic elites, backed by Big Tech’s control over information and fascism’s historical precedent of collusion with industry, enable a world where profits trump the moral obligation to protect innocent lives. In this context, the indifference to the suffering of Palestinian children reflects a broader failure of global economic structures to prioritize humanity over capital.

[burningtheroots]

[mariacallous]

Recently, Planned Parenthood released a statement on the Oct. 7th attacks and the broader conflict between Israel and Palestine. Their statement condemned Hamas’s attacks on civilians, and specifically condemned sexual assaults committed against Israeli women during the violence. They also noted how thousands of Palestinian women and children had been killed in Israel’s counteroffensive, stated the need for Palestinian women to maintain access to reproductive and maternal healthcare, and condemned both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

The social media reaction to such a balanced and empathetic statement? Furious, unrelenting anger.

The statement was quote-tweeted thousands of times by social media users outraged by the statement. Planned Parenthood was accused of spreading Israeli propaganda, ignoring Palestinian deaths and fabricating rape claims, and enabling genocide. These outraged users aren’t conservatives who always oppose Planned Parenthood—they’re progressives furious that an organization they normally support put out a statement they hated. Now there are calls to end donations and Planned Parenthood staffers are fighting with donors. Their own employees, affiliates and organizers are making public statements against them.

This outcome was predictable to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of social media dynamics. And it raises an obvious question—why release a statement at all?

Metastatic social justice

It’s actually quite common for organizations and activists to get into hot water these days by addressing areas outside their expertise. Trans activists in Vancouver loudly insisted there can be no Trans Liberation without Palestinian Liberation, which caused pushback all over Canada. Two years ago, New York City’s Pride organizations courted controversy by excluding LGBT police officers from the city’s Pride parade in the name of racial justice. There are YIMBY housing organizations taking a stand on abortion rights and climate organizations demanding a Federal Job Guarantee.

There’s a common theme here. Organizations that appear to be single-issue advocacy groups are increasingly commenting and taking stances on issues outside of their narrow focus. Activism is becoming more global in nature—if you are an activist for one cause, you’re expected to speak up about all causes now. It’s not enough to ‘stay in your lane’, you need to be protesting and advocating for all forms of social justice. Pro-choice advocacy is now part of your racial justice non-profit. Jobs packages are in your environmental bills. Your LGBT organization has a stance on ‘Defund The Police’ and your housing group has a stance on Israel/Palestine. Social justice is metastasizing.

This phenomenon has happened on the right as well—see the NRA transitioning from being a somewhat non-partisan group to essentially being an arm of the GOP—but it’s especially striking in the current progressive movement. There’s a real sense in which NYC Pride is no longer an LGBT advocacy organization, but rather an overall progressive social justice organization. That may sound like an exaggeration, but they kicked out a gay organization (the Gay Officers Action League) to accommodate another form of social justice. It’s the internal logic behind a LGBT Pride march excluding LGBT people.

This also explains the online fury at Planned Parenthood. Their statement was thoughtful and balanced, but deviated from the dominant and overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian progressive narrative. Their donors expect them to advocate not just for progressive goals in women’s health, but progressive goals everywhere.

This type of activist mission creep risks stunting the progress on the core issues that social justice advocates care about.

The downsides of missions creep

The urge towards mission creep comes from a reasonable place. If you care so deeply that you spend your free time (or your career!) as an activist for a particular issue, the odds are that you also have strong feelings on many other issues. You’re also likely to live in a bubble of activists and people who think like you, and so your conversations professionally and socially may often center around all sorts of political issues. But as an activist it’s important to remember that most people you’re trying to reach are not like you and don’t think like you.

The typical voter is over 50 and does not have a college degree. They also don’t think about politics all that much. They are far, far away from the mindset of a typical activist. And when they do have political opinions, those opinions are far more varied and haphazard than a committed political partisan would guess. I think a few minutes scrolling the twitter feed of the American Voter Bot is invaluable to understand how voters think. This bot takes real voters and profiles them in brief tweets. While some look as expected—a Democrat who supports gun control, for instance—many look like this:

Most people are a confusing mix of demographic signals, issue positions and partisan identification, and they rarely fit squarely within one political tribe. That’s the danger of turning a single-issue advocacy group into a generalized progressive messaging group—you’ll end up alienating a far wider group of potential allies than you realize.

If Issue Group X declares loud progressive positions not just on Issue X but also on gun control, abortion, Palestine, Medicare For All, trans rights, free trade and school prayer, they won’t attract a large diverse group of people who care about Issue X. They’ll end up attracting a narrow slice of progressive activists who are ideologically pristine enough to agree with them on every issue.

The ultimate result of activist mission creep is that your issue ceases to be something that people across the ideological spectrum can work together on. It becomes coded as a red tribe vs blue tribe issue, gets swallowed by the general culture war, and progress grinds to a halt as partisan warfare starts.

The most likely outcome of Planned Parenthood voicing an opinion on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is not that they make any difference at all towards that conflict. It’s that they alienate their own supporters with differing views on Israel/Palestine. They’ve undercut their own ability to make progress on reproductive care and reproductive rights for no gain.

One thing at a time

None of this is to say that individuals shouldn’t care about many issues at once—they obviously should. And general purpose ideological organizations can and should tackle many policy areas. But it’s a poor strategy for single-issue groups to try to become general purpose organizations. There are real benefits to staying in your lane.

One example of a movement that has done a reasonable job at this is the pro-housing YIMBY movement. While there are some instances of YIMBY groups straying from their purpose, for the most part they’ve done a good job staying narrowly focused, and that that focus has allowed them great success.

YIMBYism is a far more ideologically diverse movement than many people realize. There are conservative YIMBYs, neoliberal YIMBYs, Democratic YIMBYs, libertarian YIMBYs, and many left or socialist YIMBYs (although in true socialist tradition, some want to break away from the YIMBY label and create a sub-label PHIMBY). This isn’t just a feel good story about how conservatives and liberals can be friends—this has a real impact on YIMBYs getting things done. It’s part of why you see both Republican and Democratic officials at the local level working towards YIMBY solutions in different cities, and why those solutions can often pass without bitter partisan warfare. It’s why the YIMBY Act in Congress had Republican and Democratic co-sponsors. It’s why YIMBYs are scoring victories in blue states like California and red states like Montana.

This sort of thing matters. YIMBYs are a big tent and they’re getting things done. It’s hard enough to make real change happen on a single policy or a single issue. Whole movements try for years and still sometimes fail. Single-issue groups trying to address every issue at once aren’t going to succeed. The urge towards mission creep is strong, and too many groups are weakening their core strengths to address problems they can’t solve. Single-issue organizations shouldn’t burden themselves with having the answer to every question, with having a stance on every issue, and with having to be all things to all people. It’s ok not to comment. It’s ok to stay in your lane and just work on one problem. It’s ok to try to change the world just one issue at a time.

[useless-catalanfacts]

2nd February 2024. Photos from Vilaweb.

Demonstration in front of the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (the highest court of the Spanish judiciary system in Catalonia) in Barcelona in support of Dani Gallardo, a young Spanish anarchist who is sentenced to prison because the took part in a peaceful demonstration held in Madrid (Spain's capital city) in favour of Catalan people's right to self-determination and against the Spanish police's violence against Catalan people.

We have explained Dani's case before, you can read it in this post:

Dani has been sentenced guilty to send a message. Until his case, more than 4,200 Catalan people had been sentenced guilty for their involvement in the 2017 Catalan independence referendum or the protests that followed it. The Spanish judiciary system has proven that they won't stop at punishing Catalan people, they also sent the police to beat up the protestors who demonstrated for Catalonia in Madrid (Spain) and they're also jailing a Spanish man for his solidarity.

Dani was sentenced guilty of public disorder and attempt against authority with made-up claims that had been fabricated hours before he even got arrested. The Spanish police already planned to arrest people and blame them for this even before the event happened. Dani spent 13 months in pre-trial jail, then he was released for some time, and now has received the order to go to prison for 2 years and 11 months more.

Cases like this is why there is a demand for an amnesty. After the last elections to the Spanish government, the PSOE party needed the support of other parties to get enough votes to form government. One of the must-have demands of the Catalan political parties was an amnesty law (amnesty laws are not uncommon in Spain) that would cancel the punishments of people who have been found guilty of political crimes related to the independence movement since 2017, because none of these thousands of people committed real harmful crimes. This law is currently being negotiated, but the Spanish parties are trying to write it in a way that will leave as many people out of the amnesty as possible. At the same time, the Spanish judiciary system continues accusing new people of terrorism for attending peaceful political demonstrations.

For example, two democratically-elected pro-independence politicians (Puigdemont and Wagensberg) are being accused of terrorism for supposedly calling for people to protest in the Barcelona airport, a protest that was completely peaceful and which was called by a civil society organization and not by these politicians. But they're influential, so Spain looks for any way to punish them. How are the Spanish judiciaries claiming that Puigdemont and Wagensberg should be sentenced guilty of terrorism for an action where there was no terrorism? The Spanish judges' imagination has no limits when it comes to sentencing Catalans and Basques. They are saying that it's terrorism because some of the protestors had weapons. What weapons? Fire extinguishers, bottles, and the metal carts that people use to carry their luggage:

Because there were fire extinguishers and luggage carts in the airport and people brought their own water, a completely peaceful protest that happened there is terrorism. The worst part is that it doesn't outrage or surprise us anymore, because we're so used to this nonsense.

[siriustaylorsversion]

This is a cry for help. (from all of India, all women and all victims)

This is not like anything I have ever written before but this is something I just had to talk about. If you have an audience, no matter how big or small, please reblog or talk about this issue. I want this to be talked about internationally as well because I know my country, no matter how hard people try, the government will only be able to sweep this under the rug and there won't be a safer work environment. It is a cry of justice from all of India because of the rape and brutal murder of a medical student.

tw: the next part includes talk about SA and violent descriptions of the crime (i have marked where the descriptions end but please please please spread this news.)

why i need you to reach out- The last case that sparked this big of an online and community outrage was the Nirbhaya case in 2012. Out of the 6 guilty, 4 were hanged, 1 died in jail and 1 who was underage... spent time in juvenile and was let go with all traces of his identity unknown. His name was changed, his face never disclosed, for all I know, he could be roaming around anywhere in India or even outside. That story died down after a few months and now no one in our media talks about it, but an average of 90 rapes a day were reported to CBI (Central Beuro of Investigation) in 2022. I won't go into detail about it but that is a similar horror true story but I will link the resources if you want to read about it. Again, tw: it contains details about SA and violence. The link is there at the end of this post.

what happened- It was around 2 am. After a long, hard 36 hour shift, a 31 year old doctor went to a seminar room to lay down and take a short break after telling her mother that she was fine. In those hours of the night when almost the entire country was sleeping, that girl was brutally beat up, raped and murdered. I will be talking about what happened to her in the next paragraph because what happened to her was truly inhuman and the bastards who did this should be hanged publically so everyone can see the punishment for something as cruel and i lack the words to describe how disgusting this is. The hospital informed the parents that it was a suicide. The parents were made to wait 3 hours before finally being able to see the body of their daughter. And the worst part is, just to make the protests die down, within 24 hours the police announced that they had arrested a man who admitted to being guilty when it was evident that this was not a one-man job. the airpods found on the scene were found in the bluetooth settings of that mans phone and that is it. That is all the "investigation" has told us. I will be updating with any updates on this case but so far, only candle marches and protests have happened and that too by the students.

tw: talks in detail about the injuries.

details of the crime- the girl's legs were at 90 degree angles, her pelvic girdle fractured. her eyes were bleeding due to the glass from her glasses being smashed inside her eye. She was bleeding from every part of her body that was littered with scars, her vagina and her mouth. Her head sustaining head injuries as if it was bashed against a wall. The police suspect she was murdered before she was raped.

Here is why I said it was evident that it was not a one-man job. The amount of semen found inside her vagina was 150 grams. One ejaculation releases 15 grams keep that in mind.

the injury description ends here

how they have tried to cover it up- The hospital began renovating a room very close to the crime scene and gangs were made to trash the crime scene as well to compromise the evidence. The principal of the collage where this happened resigned but got a job just within 12 hours at another prestigious university. THE SAME PRINCIPAL WHO BLAMED THIS HORRIFIC INCIDENT ON THE VICTIM.

resources to help victims of violence and rape- Please reblog, please talk about this story so that it becomes an incident not repeated ever again. So that our mothers, our sisters, our daughters don't have to go through this ever again.

This is a cry for help.

As a medical aspirant myself, I'm scared for my future and the future of all other passionate girls who are trying their level best to work for their career.

the nirbhaya case- What is Nirbhaya case? | What is Nirbhaya case full story? | India News - Times of India (indiatimes.com) details about this case- What happened in the Kolkata rape case that triggered doctors’ protests? | Sexual Assault News | Al Jazeera rainn website and helpline- (for rape, abuse and incest)- RAINN | The nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization helpline- 800.656.HOPE (4673) other helpline numbers- Sexual abuse helplines in India (findahelpline.com)

[coochiequeens]

"We want justice,” doctors chanted in Kolkata, waving handwritten signs that read, “No safety, no service!”

16 Aug 2024

Indian doctors have called for a nationwide shutdown of hospital services as public fury over the rape and murder of a trainee medic in the eastern city of Kolkata last week mounts.

The Indian Medical Association (IMA), the country’s largest grouping of medics with 400,000 members, said the 24-hour shutdown would be implemented on Saturday, affecting most hospital departments except for essential services.

The shutdown comes after thousands of people took to the streets in several cities to express their outrage at the rape and murder of a 31-year-old trainee doctor, whose brutalised body was found on August 9 at Kolkata’s state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.

On Friday, large protests were held in various cities – including Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal state, Mumbai in the west and Hyderabad in southern India – demanding justice and better security at medical campuses and hospitals.

“We want justice,” doctors chanted in Kolkata, waving handwritten signs that read, “No safety, no service!”

Demonstrators held banners calling for accountability as they gathered near parliament in New Delhi.

“Doctors, especially women are vulnerable to violence because of the nature of the profession. It is for the authorities to provide for the safety of doctors inside hospitals and campuses,” the IMA said in a statement issued on Thursday on X.

Doctors hold posters and shout slogans during a protest condemning the rape and murder of the trainee doctor, at a medical college in Ahmedabad, western India, on August 16 [Amit Dave/Reuters]

Multiple medical unions in both government and private systems have backed the strike.

Doctors in government hospitals across several states on Monday had halted elective services “indefinitely” in protest.

Indian media have reported that the murdered doctor was found in the teaching hospital’s seminar hall, suggesting she had gone there for a brief rest during a long shift.

An autopsy confirmed sexual assault. Doctors say the circumstances of the rape point to the vulnerability of medics left without proper protection and facilities.

Though police have detained a man who worked at the hospital helping people navigate busy queues, state government officers have been accused of mishandling the case.

On Wednesday night, the hospital where the trainee doctor was killed was attacked. Police did not identify who was behind the rampage, but said they have arrested 19 people so far.

Little has changed

There were more than 31,000 reported rapes in India in 2022, the latest year for which data is available, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

The gang rape and murder in 2012 of a young woman on a bus in Delhi, northern India, led to nationwide protests and outrage over the country’s failure to tackle sexual violence against women.

Since 2012, the government has brought in sweeping changes to the criminal justice system, including tougher sentences and the death penalty for repeat offenders.

Conviction rates for rape ranged between 27-28 percent from 2018-2022, according to NCRB data.

The definition of rape has also been widened to include non-penetrative acts and the age threshold for rape trials lowered so 16-year-olds can be tried as adults.

But campaigners say little has changed despite the tougher laws.

Criminal lawyer Rebecca M John, who has represented many rape victims, said some rapists still believe they can get away with their crimes.

“One of the factors would be the absence of fear of the law,” she said.

Many cases of crimes against women also go unreported because of the stigma surrounding sexual violence and a lack of faith in the police.