#renounce US citizenship

[citizenshipsolutions]

Canadian citizenship: When citizenship in one country affords rights of access to another country

Part I – Citizenship in the 21st century Question on @Quora: Is the only real advantage in being a Canadian in accessing the US market, six months visa free stays & a limited range of professions on the TN visa list which also does not lead do a Green Card? No special concessions or fast track .. https://t.co/c8T61Dw1us — John Richardson – Counsellor for US persons abroad (@ExpatriationLaw)…

[blackberryandpeppermint]

Man have I never been more glad to have dual citizenship

[ohello0]

I myself have cheered on israelis protesting outside Netanyahu's residence but it has to be said that unless those settlers are willing to leave or live in fully actualized Palestine, their actions don't mean much in the long run.

It’s nice to know they draw the line at indiscriminately bombing hospitals and UN schools but they should’ve been against settler colonialism in the first place. It seems like there’s guilt at being constantly confronted with people dying in their name, which is good, but people living under an apartheid regime for your comfort prior to this is also inexcusable. ​

I want them to keep questioning and pushing back against their government, as it’s their silence that enables the violence of the occupation. Their complicity was the first push israel needed to be this unabashedly cruel. However, placing the blame solely on their government, specifically Netanyahu, and not taking accountability for their very existence being the occupation is frustrating to say the least. A military force like the IOF doesn’t appear out of thin air, a racist civilian population is creating the conditions necessary for the fascist ethnostate to survive this long.

Once the bombing stops will their protests stop as well? Like Americans will they pretend a change in leadership undoes everything and cleans the slate? I hope they continue to wake up and find ways to take accountability for their participation in an ongoing genocide.

[alanaisalive]

Trump changed that income threshold from $1000 per year to $5 per year. Grandma gives you $10 "because you're just so cute," guess what, the IRS wants to know about it.

[calkills]

Melting (The Heat's Too Much, Or Is It You?)

shamless argentina!oikawa smut

warnings - swearing , light angst (fluffy ending dw lmao) , lowercase intended !!

"oh fuck.. yeah just like that, rock your hips, baby.."

the air was hot. from the heavy breathing escaping the two of you in sharp pants or the argentina sun, you didn't know.

back pressed into the mattress and thighs pushed up to your sides, you could feel the sweat dripping down your sides and onto the newly tarnished sheets with every thrust of his hips. the feeling of him being so close after being so far away for way too long was overwhelming and you could only buck your hips up to try and meet his halfway.

"fuck... 'kawa, please.." mumbles of his name slide of your lips, half making sense, half just begging him to stay, need you, love you, fuck you. in a sense it was similar to the day he renounced his japanese citizenship, tears pooling under your lashes as you tried to make sense of words as you begged him to stay... need you... love you...

"yeah? feel good? I know, baby, I know.. c'mon tell me how good you feel.." he growled out his words, hands gripping impossibly tighter to the underside of your thighs, pressing them to your chest while simultaneously pulling you closer to him.

it was carnal. his desire to keep you close as if he was showing how sorry he was for leaving you by pounding your cunt into the mattress. letting his hand slip from your thigh after placing your leg over his shoulder, he used the now free hand to hold onto your forearm he had pinned down. not in a domineering way, but in a way that silently conveyed, 'i want to take of you what's mine and give you what's yours of me.'

"tooru... feels so... good, fuck.. i'm so close.." head falling back to the pillow he had placed under your head a while ago you whine for his attention as he fucks into your gummy walls with all of his will. volleyball strength really comes in handy when you're trying to get laid.

"so so pretty, making me wonder why I ever left.." you can say that his words were just the heat of the moment and play it off like any other flirty comment he would drop back in high school, but now that he's is between your legs and practically tearing you open, you cant. all of this is real and happening. tooru oikawa was fucking you senseless in his hotel room in argentina spouting nonsensical things about his love for you and how he wished this would last forever and how he wished to be closer despite already being seven and a half inches inside of you.

suddenly he drops your leg off his shoulder and folds your body practically in half as he leans in to press chaste kisses to your jawline, lips wet from panting. his mouth trails to a spot of your shoulder as a whine escapes him, lightly biting down into the body part as he growled out, "hah... cum for pretty girl, please please please, want you to fall apart for me. all for me, yeah?"

the new position had you seeing stars and you swear you could feel him in your throat as he fucked up into you deeper than he had before, his tip kissing your cervix with every deep thrust. his movements were slower, yet more thoughtful. he tried to reach the deepest part of you, mapping out the way your walls squeezed against him as he fucked languid thrusts into you.

your eyes roll back as he continued to wreck you. mouth falling open to let out shamelessly loud moans, not caring if the other people in the hotel hear. you want them to know that you're with oikawa tooru, the love of your life, even if it is just for the night.

eyes flutter closed as you feel your orgasm approaching, barely being able to get out words of affirmation for how he was doing so good. a yelp left you as you feel his hips give a harsh snap against yours as he spoke, barely recognizing that he was even speaking.

"nuh uh, eyes on me, pretty girl. don't close your eyes, look at me if you wanna cum.." his words snapped something in you as you practically had to force your eyes open and make eye contact with him, occasionally trailing down his toned form, sweat pouring down his abs. hickeys from other girls mixed with yours and lined up and down his body and you forced the feeling of jealousy it evoked away and looked back up to his eyes, his beautiful eyes.

"there we go... good, pretty girl.." he grinned and as your hips began to twitch and a pool like feeling in your stomach began to heat, as if you were going to burst. your hand reached up to tangle in his brown tresses and scratch at his scalp a whined being pulled from him at the feeling and he bucked his hips up accidentally, mentally you make a note of the reaction. your orgasm washes over you and white prickles your vision. the only thing in the room that you can make out is the sound of oikawa letting out a loud, pornographic moan and the stutter of his hips as the feeling of warmth in your lower belly comes back, but for a new reason.

"oh god, pretty girl.. cumming, cumming, cumming, fuuuuck..."

oikawa has to place his hand down beside you on the bed and hold himself up so he doesn't collapse on top of your still shaking form. loud pants are spread through the air as you both stay quiet, deciding the moment was too nice to break.

instead of pulling out and getting dressed to leave like all of his other one night stands he just collapsed to the side of you, tugging your form closer and resting his chin on your shoulder. pressing a kiss to the bite from earlier he pulled a blanket over the two of your bodies and wrapped his arm back around you.

"i missed us.." are the words he mumbles into your hair, smelling the shampoo that he had recommended for you because of its sweet smell years ago made a smile tug at his lips as he let his eyes close.

finally finding the words to respond, you settle on what your brain tells you to confess, a grin threatening to escape as you speak.

"me too.."

"so why don't you stay..?" his words are barely audible and you thought that you might have imagined them for a moment before his form behind you raised up a bit. realizing he was expecting an answer you struggled to wrap your brain around the fact that he was asking such a thing.

"a-as in like a place here or to mov-" "I want you to move in with me." his tone was serious as you searched his face for any sign of a lie or a joke. yet you found none.

"tooru.. that's... big.. I mean." stuttering to find a response, your eyes card around the near empty hotel room. the only imperfections being the bed and the two bottles of mexican coke on the table beside the television, it was a new room anyways so of course it was near spiffy.

"I know, I know. I just.. don't want to say goodbye to you again. it hurt the first time and I don't know if I could do it a second." he was desperate for you to look at him and recognize that he wanted you so badly. "[name], i'm in love with you."

his words wouldn't have really been a shocker to anyone other than her. everyone around could tell that the setter was completely and utterly smitten for the girl. his brows were furrowed as he took in her unreadable expression, unreadable until tears began to slide down her cheeks.

the next thing he knew he was almost thrown off the bed from the way she threw herself at him, arms wrapped tightly around his form as if he would disappear again if she let go. "tooru.. i've liked you since high school.." she mumbled against his shoulder and he let out a breath he didn't know he was holding in.

"I would love to stay with you. I would hate to have to leave you miserable here then go back home and be miserable myself too." he felt himself tear up at her sentiment and wrapped his arms around her frame, pulling her closer to him.

many things change for oikawa on the daily. being a pro volleyball player in a country he wasn't from had made his life constantly hectic. though through all of the changes he experienced through out his life, that was the moment that oikawa realized there were two absolutes in his life, two things that would stay the same in his day to day til death.

he loved volleyball, and he loved [name] [surname]

[historicity-was-already-taken]

"The end of liberalization in Poland, like its beginning, was accompanied by anti-Semitism. During March of 1968, an organ­ized “anti-Zionist” (a euphemism for anti-Jewish) campaign was launched against those self-defined Poles whom Polish society as a whole tended to regard as nothing but Jews. It turned into one of the most extensive witch hunts in the history of that country. The harassment began with an attack on and purge of a few people in top positions in the party, in the government, in the army, and in public life, but soon it broadened to include individuals of Jewish origin in all walks of life. They were pressured to provide proof of loyalty to the state and party, proof which, when given, failed to exonerate them. Anti-Semitic insults were hurled at individuals of Jewish descent. The students protesting peacefully against the end of liberalization and the tightening of controls in Poland were alleged to be misled into insurrection and counter-revolution by clever, traitorous Zionist plotters. They were mercilessly sup­pressed. When interrogated by the police, arrested students of Jew­ish or mixed parentage were repeatedly asked to state their nation­ality, and their response 'Polish' was rejected as not true. Others who were 'real Poles' were asked, 'why did you tie yourself to these filthy Jews?' or, 'why did you allow yourself to be used by these kikes?' Their 'Zionist' leaders were arrested and put on trial. The parents of these stu­dents—sometimes prominent Communists—were removed from their jobs, as were other individuals of Jewish origin. All of these were urged to leave Poland, but permission to do so was given to them only if they renounced Polish citizenship and applied for exit to Israel."

Celia Heller, On the Edge of Destruction: Jews of Poland Between the Two World Wars, pg 299.

[ardri-na-bpiteog]

Don't forget, if you're an American citizen living abroad you still have to file US taxes because the United States is a dystopian hellhole! (If you make under like $112,000 you shouldn't have to pay anything to the US but you still have to file your taxes because the US likes to punish you for being a US citizen with the audacity to get the fuck out)

For anyone in the US who has just realized that they are nearly 1 month away from their taxes being due (April 18th) and is panicking because they don’t know what to do,

Calm down.

If you’re new to taxes, and in an early part of your life (just earning wages from a company that does withholdings), they’re actually pretty easy to do and odds are you’re just gonna get some free money (your tax refund).

Collect documents. Specifically, go get your get your W2, a form sent to you by whatever company you work for. Most will send you this online. Some might send you a paper copy.

https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free

Go to the above link, there’s free filing options for federal taxes, and for some state taxes. It took me ~15 minutes to do my taxes in total, and then the government gave me like 1k back.

If your situation is more complicated than just having a W2, then go to the IRS’s help page. They have a ton of super helpful tools that can walk you through different situations and what you need to do, they also have a toll-free help line.

https://www.irs.gov/help/ita

I know everyone talks about how much taxes suck, but legit, if you’re an average wage earner and don’t own a house or anything, odds are your taxes can be done in 15 minutes and then you get some of the taxes you paid back. It’s not that scary, and the IRS has been working really hard to make the process as simple as possible.

Good luck!

[deadpanwalking]

Just letting you know the gfm you were working on met it’s goal and now has a new goal set

Yes! I wanted to wait until I got home so I could write something down about why supporting (and continuing to support) families through vetted fundraisers is so important—a lot of people have written compelling and incisive posts about why, but since many of of you have followed me for a while, I wanted to share a bit about my family’s experience and give some perspective that might encourage everyone to keep up the momentum.  

185,000 Soviet Jews came to the United States between the 1970s and the 1990s.  We were a kind of immigrant that’s known as a transmigrant, because we had to immigrate to several different countries before moving to the US permanently; since nobody could go to the US directly from the Soviet Union, we had to do it through a somewhat convoluted process called the Vienna-Rome pipeline. 

My parents waited over ten years for an exit visa and were rejected several times, but were finally permitted to renounce their citizenship and leave Soviet Ukraine in the 1980s—there were three adults (my parents and grandmother) and two children (me and my older brother), all in good health.  Things were a lot more relaxed in the Soviet Union by then, but my father had spent some time in jail for dissidence, so everyone involved in the process of obtaining the visas had to be bribed, and towards the end we were living in an communal apartment with eight other people to save money—that and because my parents were worried the Soviet authorities would find a pretext to arrest my father again (this had happened to our friends).  When we got to the Odessa railway station (early in the morning, without saying goodbye to anybody, just in case), we were each allowed one suitcase, a very small sum of money, and our exit visa paperwork as identification. 

We bought as little as possible on the train ride to Austria and only ate the cured meat my grandmother brought in her bag, but after two Soviet customs checks on the train, we couldn’t afford the tickets to Vienna, which was the entry point to the West, and where the Jewish relief services center was, and had to buy tickets for a station 40 kilometers outside of the city.  When the train arrived, we stayed on board and were very quiet, and the ticket inspector either forgot us or showed us a small mercy by letting us stay. In Vienna, we lived in a migrant center (which, for us, was a hotel repurposed for migrant families) with other Soviet Jewish families while the JDC helped us put together our initial immigration applications to the United States, then made arrangements to get us to Rome so we could wait there for our various documents to get processed and approved, while applying for relief aid that would help us live from day-to-day in the meantime.

That was the most difficult part.  We lived in migrant housing just outside Rome for 11 months. The Jewish relief aid services helped us out with almost everything—housing, groceries, social services, medical expenses—but it still wasn’t enough.  When you have no steady income (and, as a sovereign citizen of nowhere at all, aren’t allowed to work), every expense is prohibitive, every setback is financially devastating. We got by because local churches gave us clothing, local students volunteered to teach us a little Italian—but when I got pneumonia (twice), when my mom needed another pair of dentures, when a translator who said he'd help streamline some paperwork took our money and disappeared, our case worker reached out to help us get sponsor families in America so they could help organize financial assistance (my dad would write to thank them in Russian because his English wasn’t very good, and their Russian friend would translate—we even got to meet one of the families when we moved here, and they’re still our close friends).

It was very fucking rough. By the time we were on the plane to America, I was pulling out my hair from stress, my grandma had developed a heart murmur, and we had almost nothing we brought from Odessa left in those suitcases. 

Now read Bisan’s story.  Or Mohammed’s. Or the stories of countless others. Tell me my family’s journey isn’t a fucking pleasure cruise compared to what they're facing.  We fled political and religious persecution—but we weren’t sick, we weren’t starving, we weren’t being bombed, shot at, tortured, exterminated.  The Jewish orgs helped us so much, but people—those American families and their friends—kept us going when we were waiting for faceless bureaucrats to approve our application to exist.  And it didn’t stop when we got here, either.  So many people kept on helping. They gave us money, time, referrals, opportunities, coached us through the process of getting naturalized.

As a matter of course, I donate to and platform fundraisers that are provided by a local mosque, and I probably won't be doing too many fundraising things like this on Tumblr because I don't (despite appearances) invest as much time and energy here as I do to my offline activism—but I want everyone to understand how important it is to support these families in addition to international relief organizations.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

June 2, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 03, 2024

Today is the one-hundredth anniversary of the Indian Citizenship Act, which declared that “all non-citizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States be, and they are hereby, declared to be citizens of the United States: Provided, That the granting of such citizenship shall not in any manner impair or otherwise affect the right of any Indian to tribal or other property.”

That declaration had been a long time coming. The Constitution, ratified in 1789, excluded “Indians not taxed” from the population on which officials would calculate representation in the House of Representatives. In the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, the Supreme Court reiterated that Indigenous tribes were independent nations. It called Indigenous peoples equivalent to “the subjects of any other foreign Government.” They could be naturalized, thereby becoming citizens of a state and of the United States. And at that point, they “would be entitled to all the rights and privileges which would belong to an emigrant from any other foreign people.”

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, established that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” But it continued to exclude “Indians not taxed” from the population used to calculate representation in the House of Representatives.

In 1880, John Elk, a member of the Winnebago tribe, tried to register to vote, saying he had been living off the reservation and had renounced the tribal affiliation under which he was born. In 1884, in Elk v. Wilkins, the Supreme Court affirmed that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution did not cover Indigenous Americans who were living under the jurisdiction of a tribe when they were born. In 1887 the Dawes Act provided that any Indigenous American who accepted an individual land grant could become a citizen, but those who did not remained noncitizens. 

As Interior Secretary Deb Haaland pointed out today in an article in Native News Online, Elk v. Wilkins meant that when Olympians Louis Tewanima and Jim Thorpe represented the United States in the 1912 Olympic games in Stockholm, Sweden, they were not legally American citizens. A member of the Hopi Tribe, Tewanima won the silver medal for the 10,000 meter run. 

Thorpe was a member of the Sac and Fox Nation, and in 1912 he won two Olympic gold medals, in Classic pentathlon—sprint hurdles, long jump, high jump, shot put, and middle distance run—and in decathlon, which added five more track and field events to the Classic pentathlon. The Associated Press later voted Thorpe “The Greatest Athlete of the First Half of the Century” as he played both professional football and professional baseball, but it was his wins at the 1912 Olympics that made him a legend. Congratulating him on his win, Sweden’s King Gustav V allegedly said, “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.”  

Still, it was World War I that forced lawmakers to confront the contradiction of noncitizen Indigenous Americans. According to the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History, more than 11,000 American Indians served in World War I: nearly 5,000 enlisted and about 6,500 were drafted, making up a total of about 25% of Indigenous men despite the fact that most Indigenous men were not citizens. 

It was during World War I that members of the Choctaw and Cherokee Nations began to transmit messages for the American forces in a code based in their own languages, the inspiration for the Code Talkers of World War II. In 1919, in recognition of “the American Indian as a soldier of our army, fighting on foreign fields for liberty and justice,” as General John Pershing put it, Congress passed a law to grant citizenship to Indigenous American veterans of World War I. 

That citizenship law raised the question of citizenship for those Indigenous Americans who had neither assimilated nor served in the military. The non-Native community was divided on the question; so was the Native community. Some thought citizenship would protect their rights, while others worried that it would strip them of the rights they held under treaties negotiated with them as separate and sovereign nations and was a way to force them to assimilate. 

On June 2, 1924, Congress passed the measure, its supporters largely hoping that Indigenous citizenship would help to clean up the corruption in the Department of Indian Affairs. The new law applied to about 125,000 people out of an Indigenous population of about 300,000.

But in that era, citizenship did not confer civil rights. In 1941, shortly after Elizabeth Peratrovich and her husband, Roy, both members of the Tlingit Nation, moved from Klawok, Alaska, to the city of Juneau, they found a sign on a nearby inn saying, “No Natives Allowed.” This, they felt, contrasted dramatically with the American uniforms Indigenous Americans were wearing overseas, and they said as much in a letter to Alaska’s governor, Ernest H. Gruening. The sign was “an outrage,” they wrote. “The proprietor of Douglas Inn does not seem to realize that our Native boys are just as willing as the white boys to lay down their lives to protect the freedom that he enjoys." 

With the support of the governor, Elizabeth started a campaign to get an antidiscrimination bill through the legislature. It failed in 1943, but passed the House in 1945 as a packed gallery looked on. The measure had the votes to pass in the Senate, but one opponent demanded: "Who are these people, barely out of savagery, who want to associate with us whites with 5,000 years of recorded civilization behind us?"

Elizabeth Peratrovich had been quietly knitting in the gallery, but during the public comment period, she said she would like to be heard. She crossed the chamber to stand by the Senate president. “I would not have expected,” she said, “that I, who am barely out of savagery, would have to remind gentlemen with five thousand years of recorded civilization behind them of our Bill of Rights.” She detailed the ways in which discrimination daily hampered the lives of herself, her husband, and her children. She finished to wild applause, and the Senate passed the nation’s first antidiscrimination act by a vote of 11 to 5. 

Indigenous veterans came home from World War II to discover they still could not vote. In Arizona, Maricopa county recorder Roger G. Laveen refused to register returning veterans of the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, including Frank Harrison, to vote. He cited an earlier court decision saying Indigenous Americans were “persons under guardianship.” They sued, and the Arizona Supreme Court agreed that the phrase only applied to judicial guardianship.  

In New Mexico, Miguel Trujillo, a schoolteacher from Isleta Pueblo who had served as a Marine in World War II, sued the county registrar who refused to enroll him as a voter. In 1948, in Trujillo v. Garley, a state court agreed that the clause in the New Mexico constitution prohibiting “Indians not taxed” from voting violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments by placing a unique requirement on Indigenous Americans. It was not until 1957 that Utah removed its restrictions on Indigenous voting, the last of the states to do so.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act protected Native American voting rights along with the voting rights of all Americans, and they, like all Americans, are affected by the Supreme Court’s hollowing out of the law and the wave of voter suppression laws state legislators who have bought into Trump’s Big Lie have passed since 2021. Voter ID laws that require street addresses cut out many people who live on reservations, and lack of access to polling places cuts out others. 

Katie Friel and Emil Mella Pablo of the Brennan Center noted in 2022 that, for example, people who live on Nevada’s Duckwater reservation have to travel 140 miles each way to get to the closest elections office. “As the first and original peoples of this land, we have had only a century of recognized citizenship, and we continue to face systematic barriers when exercising the fundamental and hard-fought-for right to vote,” Democratic National Committee Native Caucus chair Clara Pratte said in a press release from the Democratic Party.

As part of the commemoration of the Indian Citizenship Act, the Democratic National Committee is distributing voter engagement and protection information in Apache, Ho-Chunk, Hopi, Navajo, Paiute, Shoshone, and Zuni.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[deleteddewewted]

König Headcanons

A/n: These are just personal hc I have and have been talking to friends about for a while. If you have any of your own please share them!

MDNI

W: Angst, Scars, Mental Health Issues, Bullying, Religoun is mentioned in passing, Trauma, injuries

Commissions: Open! (You can commission/support me on Ko-fi!)

He grew up in a household with only his mother and grandmother. His father left before he was born.

He grew up poor and it led to a lot of issues when he went to school. He would get bullied for both being too tall for his age and for having less than others.

This led to a lot of insecurities, especially about his looks. His nose was broken in middle school by a bully as he was trying to defend himself and it just never healed correctly.

He's always anxious. His heart feels like his heart is going to burst out of his chest. He feels like he's going to die at any time.

He's a brunette. Doesn't care too much about his hair. He kinda just does whatever feels right for the time being. There have been times when he forgets to cut his hair and it gets all the way past his shoulders. (This is not regulation in the military but his mother likes it so he tries to keep it long.)

His favorite season of the year is winter because he got to do things like celebrate the holidays that happened around that time.

His grandmother is Jewish but his mother stopped practicing around her adult years. They still did things like celebrate Hanukkah and light the menorah since his grandmother didn't have anyone other than him and his mother to celebrate with.

He found the flames captivating every time they would light the menorah. Something about the movement of the flames and the brightness of the light kept him entertained. Burned himself by accident because he once tried touching it as a child.

It fascinated him as did the lights his neighbors would hang on their homes to celebrate Christmas.

He never celebrated Christmas, this was mainly because his mother never had enough money to get him gifts like other parents.

He never believed in Santa Claus but he did wish he would have had that innocence to do so. Maybe it would have broken his heart as a child if he did since he wouldn't have gotten any of the things he would have asked for.

As he rented his teen years, his anxiety got worse and so did his depression. He was sick all the time. He's constantly trying to get better but he can't. The bullying got worse as he grew and he started resenting his long hair. (He forgets to take care of himself and his hair.)

Once he was old enough to enlist, he did so without any hesitation. His mother and grandmother tried convincing him to not do it but he wanted to help them get out of the poverty they were in. He wanted his family to have more in life even if it meant sacrificing his body, mind, and soul.

Enlisting was both a saving grace and a downturn in his life.

He finally had money to give to his family and he finally got to have a warm place to go back to but it wasn't home and the friendships he made felt superficial.

His mental health took a greater hit once he started taking on operations. He tried ignoring it and when it didn’t help he started to suffer from sudden panic attacks through the day. It felt like he was trapped in his own skin.

He had to go to therapy or he would be discharged from his position. He was out on medication and given weekly therapy sessions to ensure that he was making progress.

He finally got to celebrate Christmas with others but he still knew that under the communal Christmas tree was no present for him.

The more he worked and the older he got, the more he realized he wasn't sure he knew if this was it for him. He couldn't become a sniper and his only friend was an American he didn't really know all that well.

When he got offered a position at Kortac he was elated. He would gain more money and his talents would be out to use.

It meant he would have to renounce his Austrian citizenship. (He didn't need to though. Kortac took care of everything and he could freely enter the country with no issue.)

He made sure to fully repair the house his family lived in and buy the plot of land that was next to their own in order to expand the house and give his grandmother the garden she had once talked about fondly.

Kortac was an opportunity that he would forever be grateful for.

It gave him friends and allowed relationships to blossom he never thought he would have.

He and Horangi became friends and shared so much of their lives together. He finally had someone he could confide in when it came to his struggles with relationships or his feelings of not being enough.

He grew to look at himself as a victor and less as a wounded dog licking his own wounds.

He no longer winced when he looked at himself in the mirror.

The scar running over his cheek, the crookedness of his nose, the scruff on his cheeks, the grey in his hair, the crow's feet at the corner of his eyes.

Everything about him was now something he embraced.

And now when he gets to celebrate the holidays either at home or on the base, he takes his time to set up the tree and its lights, taking a moment to admire as the multicolored lights glow and shower the space with its joy.

He knows he has a gift under the tree for him and more once he gets home for his scheduled leave.

Once he starts dating he felt like he had to take care of himself more. He didn’t want to burden his partner so he tried developing healthier habits such as washing his face and trimming his hair.

It isn’t until he truly settled down with someone that he starts to let go of some do his insecurities.

He’s still on edge about his partner touching his scars but he’s more conflicted about his anxiety ruining things for him. He didn’t want to come off as possessive or insecure but his anxiety got the best do him at times.

Dreads getting into arguments with his partner. He doesn’t want to fight or argue since he knows that it might lead to something more serious happening.

Enjoys cuddling and holding his partner close. Will either sleep on top of his partner or use his partner as a weighted blanket.

He likes being reassured that he’s enough or that he’s handsome. It makes him blush but he likes hearing it.

[citizenshipsolutions]

Americans Abroad Aren't Denouncing Because They Want To. They Are Renouncing Because They Feel They Have To

Introduction/background: Denunciation of U.S. Citizenship – From the perspective from a U.S. Senator .@SenGillibrand thinks Americans "Denounce" US citizenship in order to "escape taxes". As JFK once said the great enemy of the truth is NOT the lie but the "myth". #FATCA is #Americansabroad don't "Renounce" bc they want to, but bc they feel they have to! https://t.co/2NbVTUfTbh…

[one-time-i-dreamt]

Weird Al renounced his US citizenship in protest of gun violence. England agreed to take him.

I woke up thinking this was absolutely true.

[ihatepissvortex]

Please tell me you hate pissvortex because they were advocating death/violence omg

pissvortex literally renounced his US citizenship and defected to North Korea after a failed attack on Tumblr Headquarters but go off…

[mdhwrites]

The Point of Asking How Bad a Parent Odalia is

My last blog was asking this question. However, with many of the responses I got, I feel like I failed to articulate the why for that question. The importance of it and I answered and then deleted an ask that gave me a chance to answer that because it ended up muddying the point by being a response. So, here it is:

If you cannot understand cultural perspective in fiction, how do you ever write a convincing world that is anything other than our own?

Most of Odalia's actions are deplorable... By our standards and sensibilities. When taken out of context. The problem is that unless a work is ENTIRELY allegorical, and incredibly smart with those allegories, that approach never works. In fact, the most effective speculative fiction takes the context of the world they've made and uses it to AMPLIFY the point they're making. To further reinforce the concepts they're going for. As such, questioning if someone who is framed as evil within a text whether they would be actually evil by the merits of their society is kind of important because that contrast can say a lot.

In TOH's case, this never coalesces into anything. Odalia being a good parent from the perspective of not wanting her child to be a criminal and so not wanting her to interact with rulebreakers or literal criminals... It doesn't say anything. After all, it's not like the rules dictate you must let someone else die or must be cruel. No, the rules they're breaking are things like "You need to be registered with the state," and "Don't skip class." I'm sorry but that isn't extreme in any way? Not unless we're supposed to just coddle people who don't want to participate in society and ignore them ignoring their social obligations? Like the coven system is the Isle's ONE real law and the covens aren't even jobs. You are beholden to no one getting a coven sigil because you still have to go get a job. It's like saying requiring citizenship in ANY country is bad because it holds you accountable to anyone. Because someone is placing any sort of restriction on you. That... That's a pretty shitty theme.

And it IS a theme. It's why the show essentially claims Camila to be a bad parent until For the Future. She renounces her ONE time that she ever held Luz back from being full force her and the audience, and Luz, are meant to cheer for this. That this is taking away some cardinal sin when, and this is in our context because it's supposedly Earth, the reason Luz was sent to Summer Camp, to make friends, was:

She brought a BOMB to school in the form of fireworks, which is against the rules, if not law, in any school, especially without advance permission.

She assaulted people with wild animals she could not control which is a crime literally anywhere.

She brought live, WILD. ANIMALS. into a school without permission, nor without a way to control them and keep others safe which is again, in most circumstances, a crime. And she does this one TWICE. Explicitly.

She is not sent to Juvy, or military camp or ANY sort of real correctional facility. She is sent to a life skills camp instead. Not a conversion camp of any sort, just one meant to teach her basic necessities of being an adult someday, something a lot of people actually argue should be a regular part of school curriculum for good reason. And this, THIS, was her going too far as a parent.

All Odalia being the worst parent ever is further reinforcement of a theme that claims being a parent is a bad thing. Flatly. If you are doing more than strictly keeping your child alive, you are a bad parent. I'm sorry but that feels really bad and like a pretty shitty theme if you ask me. It honest to god, more so proponents that neglect is good. Give them a room, give them access to food, then fuck off. That's... That's not what 99% of kids want from a parent. They want an actual parent. I mean, it even understands this with Reaching Out but even then, the final agreement is "I won't tell you what to do ever and when you want me, I will be available." Parents are more than just toys for their kids. I'm sorry to anyone who's finding this out now somehow. They are meant to teach you morals, how to interact with society, to prepare you for your future, etc. like that. They are also there to take care of you but they are not strictly your friends because they're there to help you improve to be a better person, much like how a therapist isn't your friend. This is a LARGE part of why parenting is so difficult.

To simplify it in the way so many lazy analysts do by going "X person was mean so they're abusive," is... Dumb. And bad. And helps no one. It also breaks your fantasy worlds so maybe try a little harder? Or just keep using buzzwords. It is the easier way to do it.

See you next tale.

======+++++======

The ask that brought this about mentioned Mother Gothel like Odalia and Gothel are even comparable in their writing which... No. Mother Gothel is praised for good reason because she 1000%, in universe and out, is abusive. Period. In every possible way, including Rapunzel's reactions about her.

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[tacosaysroar]

5

Did you know U.S. expats have to renounce citizenship to stop paying taxes? So if I moved out of the country on a work visa, I’d still pay taxes to the U.S.* for as long as I lived. That’s bonkers to me — and we should have WAY better public resources if all of our expats are still funding us. (Willfully ignoring you, enormous military force! I mean other resources, like education and social programs.)

I listened to a podcast recently all about feijoas and now I’m desperate to try one.

Work drama continues. HR has officially recommended my manager change my rating and several big wigs are now involved. I can’t believe how long it’s taking to resolve this.

My first content piece went to the PR agency yesterday. They always have edits, that’s part of the process — they went two rounds with the writer my nightmare manager loves (which he took like a cat being forced into a full bathtub) — but they loved my piece. ZERO edits. My work partner made sure to point that out to both the nightmare manager and the beloved writer (who treats me like this is my first job).

It would be nice to win them over, but at this point I’m just collecting a paper trail of accomplishments to present as evidence if the nightmare manager tries to give me another shitty review or get me fired. I’d love to leave and wash my hands of the whole thing, but I need to stay long enough for [redacted] to happen. So I have to make the best of it — while continuing to search for internal job openings.

Having plans in my calendar over the next several months to see NFA and my family — mostly in warm, sunny places — is doing wonders for my sanity.

*Eritrea and Myanmar also have this policy, and THAT’S IT. Every other country is like, “Bye! Enjoy not paying taxes on services you don’t use! Have a good life!”

[dizzymoods]

[Link to original article]

I do not disagree with the sentiment expressed by Malm in this article nor in the excerpted quote. However, how it is expressed and celebrated is bothersome.

i was in middle school when the war on terror started. The use of "civilian" is not a neutral descriptor. "Civilian" has a connotation denoting whiteness, ascribed with a degree of innocence. Civilians killed by the US in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, [pick a country] are "collateral damage" not "civilians". We've seen israelis call Palestinian babies born in the months after October 2023, Hamas ie enemy combatants.

Almost all israelis are ex-colonial soldiers. How do we describe them as "civilians" when they partook in violent military action against Palestinians? Those that are not ex-idf still maintain the colonial society. Religious, pacifist objectors to service rarely renounce their citizenship. The idf, even if they brutalize these objectors, nevertheless protect their spot on the land — ironically the very reason for the punishment, "you're only here bc of us dummy". And then you have civilians, who may not be active military but become avatars of the colonial army when they call upon the idf to help them kick Palestinians out of their homes in the West Bank.

I met someone who is descended from the family who enslaved my maternal family. We are related and to borrow a phrase from James Baldwin, "my grandmother is not a rapist." Even though slave owners or settler/colonizers may not be official government employees, they authorize the state. We see this expressed in 1776 and 1948, for example.

Calling israelis settlers is not an indictment of their morality or an indication of the level of violence they've personally conducted. It is a descriptor of the violence inherent to their class position in the way bourgeois is. Calling them "civillians" is invoking a moral sentiment that the people they are colonizing, the Palestinians, are not afforded. Zionist rag The Atlantic literally said it is okay to kill babies the day before the firebombing of Rafah where we actually saw people burned alive and decapitated babies. That's one.

Two: Why are we re-litigating 7 October over half a year into a genocide?

"Critically" supporting Palestinian armed resistance 184 days and 75 years after Al-Aqsa Flood is a bit late, no? (Malm's original article was published on 8 April 24) So how is this statement exactly brave when people were supporting Palestinian armed resistance for decades? I mean Wu Tang Clan was rapping about PLO style 31 years ago. Chavez, Mao, Malcolm, the Panthers, Castro, Mandela, Shakur, Jordan etc etc etc have all supported not just the Palestinian cause but the righteousness of their armed struggle. Unequivocally, mind you. It's only been settler-supporters of Palestine that equivocate on this matter.

Liberal supporters of Palestine still wince at the celebrations of Al-Aqsa Flood. And of the Haitian Revolution and of the FLN, ANC, etc etc. They think it is a celebration of killing settler-"civilians". It's not. It's a celebration of the advancement of or the success of the liberation movement.

It sounds callous but everyone has a matter of fact relationship to violence. It's not cause for celebration. it's actually a tragedy. Violence is a sign non-violent means we're ineffective. It means the endurance people have of death without concessions has been exhausted.

The zionist Jabotinsky understood this in 1923. It doesn't matter if the jewish settlers are benevolent or malicious: there is a contradiction between the zionists who want to settle the land and the Palestinians who refuse to cede the land, which can only be reconciled through violence. And if the zionists were to be successful, he said they will need to ceaselessly employ offensively defensive violence to maintain their settlements. Hence the mowing of the lawn in Gaza every two years, the ever expanding settlements in the West Bank. Jabotinsky's analysis is 40 years older than Wretched of the Earth btw. Straight from the colonizer's mouth. So again, what is brave about this statement?

[edited for spelling]