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socialjusticeartshare · 4 years ago

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THE TRUMP CHILD ABUSE SCANDAL

IT’S BEEN TWO years since the peak of public outcry over the Trump administration’s decision to begin separating the children of unauthorized migrant families from their parents at the Mexican border, yet the massive crisis that policy spawned remains arguably the darkest chapter in Donald Trump’s very dark presidency.

MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff has been back and forth from the border and Central America covering the family separation saga since it began, a story he chronicles in his new book “Separated”.

Jacob Soboroff: I think it’s a slow-motion, ongoing, decades-long American tragedy.

[Musical interlude.]

Mehdi Hasan: Welcome to Deconstructed, I’m Mehdi Hasan.

Whatever happened to all those kids who were stolen from their parents at the border? Why did we just forget about perhaps the biggest scandal, the worst crime, of the Trump presidency?

JS: It was not thought through. There was no plan. And today, we’re still picking up the pieces in the aftermath.

MH: That’s my guest today Jacob Soboroff, NBC News and MSNBC correspondent, and author of the new book “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy.” He’s been covering this crisis, this scandal, at the border from the very beginning.

So, on today’s show, the war on migrants and, especially, the theft of migrant children from their parents: How and why did it happen, and is it even truly over?

Do you remember this?

[Audio clip from ProPublica of children crying at the border.]

MH: That was a recording of 10 Central American children, sobbing desperately after being separated from their parents in June of 2018, here in the United States. That was a recording obtained by ProPublica and which promptly went viral and grabbed newsheadlines — it was even played in the White House briefing room.

That recording helped make ordinary Americans aware of the abuses that were being perpetrated at their southern border, in their name, by the federal government, by the Trump administration — specifically, and shamefully, the deliberate, systematic separation of thousands of brown-skinned migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border on the orders of President Donald J. Trump.

And, for a few months in 2018, what was called “child separation” was the biggest story in America, if not the world:

Newscaster: Families are being torn apart. Thousands of them.

Anderson Cooper: Kids taken hundreds, even thousands, of miles away from their parents. Young children — toddlers, even — housed in so-called “tender-age facilities.”

Jeff Sessions: If you don’t want your child to be separated, then don’t bring him across the border illegally.

Prime Minister Theresa May: The pictures of children being held in what appeared to be cages are deeply disturbing.

Newscaster: The Pope labelling it “immoral.”

MH: Two years later, though, we have kinda moved on, as a media industry, and as a nation. To be fair, so many other Trump scandals have sucked up so much oxygen since — whether it was the government shutdown, the Mueller inquiry, Ukraine and the whole impeachment saga, the attacks on protesters in recent weeks, and, of course, the ongoing catastrophic mishandling of the coronavirus crisis. There’s so much to keep track of — and to keep us outraged.

Still, for me personally, it stands as the biggest, most outrageous, most shocking, most inexcusable scandal of the Trump presidency so far. What’s blandly called “child separation” was, in fact, racism, kidnapping, and child abuse all rolled into one.

In fact, Physicians for Human Rights in a report earlier this year said the Trump family separation policy constituted “torture.” Torture! On American soil. The torture of kids. Kids!

It is difficult to overstate the sheer inhumanity of it all: children were forcibly removed from the arms of their parents; babies were ripped from the breasts of their mothers. And the border agents who did all this somehow went home to their families, to their own kids, and slept fine at night.

Meanwhile, the people in Washington who gave them those orders, who made the cruel and inhumane policies, they’re either still in government, having never faced any real consequences for their part in these crimes; or, in the case of former Trump Chief-of-Staff General John Kelly, or former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, they’re making money in the private sector. In fact, Kelly is on the board of a company called Caliburn International which operates shelters for migrant children! You cannot make this shit up.

These people are vile. They have no shame. Many current and former members of this administration — including the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions — claim to be evangelical Christians. And, yet, they have defended — excused — the torture and abuse of not just refugees but refugee children. They’re not following in the footsteps of Christ; they’re a moral disgrace.

Since the summer of 2017, the Trump administration is believed to have taken at least 5,500 kids from their parents at the border — although the real number could be even higher than that. No one knows for sure. In February of this year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said, “it is unclear the extent to which Border Patrol has accurate records of separated [families] in its data system.” And as reporter Jacob Soboroff writes in his new book, “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy”: “There are families who were quickly put back together, and children who were, as predicted, permanently orphaned.”

As I pointed out on this show back in 2018, that was not a side effect of having a tough immigration policy; that was their tough immigration policy. That was the goal, the prime objective — of an administration filled with white nationalists and apologists for white nationalists; an administration whose immigration policies are drawn up by a man, Stephen Miller, who late last year was revealed to have sent white nationalist literature and racist stories about immigrants in internal emails. No discussion, in fact, about the immigration policies of this administration can be complete without mentioning the racism, and white nationalism, and just pure cruelty that motivates and drives those policies.

So yes, this administration has used kids, targeted kids, migrant kids, refugee kids, the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, the most powerless of the powerless, to achieve their policy goals at the border: to crack down on immigration, to placate their far right base, and keep brown people out of the U.S. by any means necessary.

And here’s what’s so important to remember as we sit here, overwhelmed by news and scandal, in the crazy, chaotic summer of 2020 — it never really ended. Hundreds of migrant children continued to be detained in facilities across the country this year, even as the coronavirus spread inside of those facilities, and infected guards and detainees alike.

Last month, a federal judge in LA ordered the release of those kids by the middle of this month. And guess how the Trump administration responded on Tuesday? By telling the court that if they’re forced to release the kids, they won’t release any of the parents who they might be detained with. Got that? Family separation, all over again.

Imagine being the parents of those kids. Keep your kids with you and risk the coronavirus, or have them taken from you and sent out into the world, and who knows if you’ll ever see them again?

What’s called “child separation” is still with us, is still a policy dream of the Trump administration, and yet a total nightmare for the thousands of refugees and asylum seeker families who arrive in this country from Central America every year, seeking protection from war, from violence, from rape.

[Musical interlude.]

MH: My guest today is one of the tenacious, and I should add, deeply compassionate journalists who helped uncover the Trump administration’s vile policy of child torture at the border back in 2018, and who not only contextualized the story for us on our TV screens, but also humanized it.

Jacob Soboroff, of NBC News and MSNBC, was, in fact, one of the first reporters to gain access to the notorious child detention facilities in Brownsville and McAllen, Texas. Here he is, reporting live on MSNBC from outside one of them in the summer of 2018, and not holding back:

JS: There’s a big mess going on right now, and even the Border Patrol inside this building says they’re overstaffed, they don’t have enough resources; the system is just getting stressed out because the Trump administration decided to put this into place, and the consequences really haven’t been worked out, and the biggest consequence of all is thousands of young children, in a way that has never been done before, taken from their parents. And when you hear the Trump administration saying: This has been done before, this is Democrat policy, this is not unusual — that’s B.S., frankly.

MH: Jacob’s reporting earned him the Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism and, with his colleagues, the 2019 Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism.

Now he’s written a powerful and, at times, heartbreaking new book about the entire saga, called “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy” — and he joins me now from Yuma, Arizona, just yards from the southern border with Mexico.

Jacob, thanks for joining me on Deconstructed.

JS: Thanks, Mehdi.

MH: You’ve written this new book, “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy,” having covered the 2018 crisis at the border with those kids in cages, with those children taken from their parents, almost exactly two years ago. Is this book, Jacob, about a chapter in recent American history? Or is this a book about what’s still happening right now — ongoing American tragedy?

JS: I think it’s a slow motion ongoing, decades-long American tragedy, Mehdi, and this is the first time I’ve ever done a podcast sitting 20 to 30 yards away from a 30-foot tall border wall installed by President Trump, which is exactly where I’m sitting right now, in Yuma, as I wait for him to arrive here.

You know, the wall, and Donald Trump, have become a symbol of United States immigration policy. This is an immigration policy, however, that has, as I said, spanned decades, and Democratic, and Republican administrations. And since an official Border Patrol doctrine in 1994, called “Prevention Through Deterrence,” the goal of which was to deter migrants from coming to the United States to make them go on a dangerous and deadly journey, where they very well could die trying to get into the United States. Deterrence, pain, and suffering has been a part of U.S. immigration policy and family separations, which I had the misfortune of seeing with my own eyes, was Donald Trump’s extreme extension of that policy.

MH: Yes, the extreme extension, as you say. You’re right to say that this started on previous presidents’ watches — you know, Bill Clinton in the 90s, George Bush, Barack Obama, “the Deporter-in-Chief,” and then you have Trump escalating in this grotesque way. A total of around 4,300 children I believe, “separated from their parents at the border.” This all came to a head in May/June 2018.

So a question that I think a lot of listeners will want to know the answer to — I know I do — do we know for sure, Jacob, if all of those children were eventually reunited with their families?

JS: We don’t. And if it weren’t for the ACLU and a federal judge in San Diego, the vast majority of them may never have been. It was a negligent, dangerous approach at putting this policy into place — sloppy. And the mechanism by which the separations were tracked, I think it actually would be even generous to call it a mechanism: It was not thought through, there was no plan. And today, we’re still picking up the pieces in the aftermath.

And you mentioned a number in the 4,000 range. I think the most recent number according to the ACLU, and this is a constantly evolving number, is over 5,000 children, including children separated after the policy had nominally ended, when Donald Trump signed the executive order on June 20, 2018, ending a policy that days earlier, he said, didn’t even exist.

MH: Yes. First it didn’t exist, and then when they stopped it, it still carried on, as you point out, even after the judicial and executive order fallout.

Um, let me ask you this: One thing that bothers me, and I don’t want to knock the title of your excellent book, because I know how hard it is to come up with a title, and I know that separated is the word that’s been used by everyone — even by me, on occasion, as shorthand — to describe this zero-tolerance policy at the border, and what the Trump administration did to migrant families back in 2018.

But, for me, “separated” always feels like an understatement. It feels too clinical, an empty word. Because what happened was child theft; it was child kidnapping. It was, in many ways, child abuse by the U.S. government. And I worry sometimes that our journalistic shorthand often ends up underplaying how bad things are on the ground; they sanitize things too much. Am I being unfair?

JS: No, I think your point is well taken. And the reason I chose “separated,” as well, is that for me, it doesn’t just describe torture, frankly. And that’s the word that Physicians for Human Rights, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization has used subsequently to describe what these children went through: It meant the clinical definition of torture. But it also described most Americans’ mental separation from how we got to this point; inability to understand and comprehend —

MH: Yeah. Good point.

JS: — how the government did this to children and, in some cases, babies. And that also includes me! I was covering the border even before Donald Trump became president, when Barack Obama was president and was dubbed the “Deporter-in-Chief,” as you mentioned, by immigration activists. I, you know, I was on what I thought was the front lines of immigration reporting, and frankly, I completely missed it myself until it slapped me in the face.

And that’s what I wanted to make clear in the book, is that separated is not just the physical act of what happened to these parents and children, but it really also is a mental state of most Americans about the way that we deal with immigration in this country. So, you know, again, your point is well taken. I think that it’s much more vile what happened to these children than the simple word or simple act of being taken from their parents, but I think that the word also applies to many of us in our everyday lives.

MH: No, that’s a very fair point. And I would urge everyone to read Jacob’s book. It’s an excellent book. You tell the story of José in the book, a young boy from Northern Guatemala, that story is a central thread throughout your book. He fled with his father Juan to the United States in order to escape drug traffickers who were threatening his family. Can you tell us a little bit more about José? Why did you choose his story?

JS: Well, the truth of the matter is, and this is a bit of a spoiler, but I ultimately met his father Juan, and Juan and José are pseudonyms that they picked themselves to protect their own identity and the identity of their family that they left behind in Guatemala. But they come from the northern state of Petén. And Petén, which is actually a place I haven’t been to, and they asked me not to go to — I’ve been to Guatemala on several occasions, but I didn’t go to their home because they were worried about what might happen to their wife they left behind.

They were threatened with violence. Juan was the owner of a small convenience store, and basically got into trouble after a vehicle that he sold was sold to someone else, and fell into the hands of what he tells me, and told the United States government in his asylum application, were narco traffickers, he suspected. And until he would turn over the rights, the documentation, which he no longer had to his car, they were going to put a threat on his life.

And so he decided to pick up and leave with José, come to the United States, go to Arizona, where he had crossed twice successfully before to come and work earlier in his life when his son was was younger, but, for the first time, decided to pick up and leave with his boy to protect him.

MH: Yeah.

JS: And once they got to the United States, to the place where they thought represented safety and security, I’m actually sitting probably 10 miles away from that exact spot right now — and the president will visit almost that exact spot, as I speak to you today, as we record this — they were taken from each other in a way that nobody could have ever anticipated, even though it was going on by the time they left Guatemala and started their journey to the United States in May of 2018.

MH: So, it’s interesting, you mentioned in the context of Juan, that he had crossed twice before, for work, this time he came to protect his child. We have this great debate, of course, as you know better than me, about are these people refugees and asylum seekers or are they all economic migrants coming to work? In your anecdotal experience, having interviewed so many of these people, having covered their stories, what were they? Especially back in 2018, when it kind of hit the headlines in that huge way, when everyone in the country is talking about: Why have they brought children with them, etc, etc?

How many people you were talking to, were, in your, you know, the story you just tell of Juan, that sounds like a genuine asylum application?

JS: And I have no reason to doubt them.

MH: Yeah.

JS: You know, and I think the vast majority of people I came into contact with were coming to the United States from Central America — from Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador — in order to seek asylum.

You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about this. And when I was writing the book, I was thinking a lot about this, that nobody’s perfect. And actually, when I heard the Reverend Al Sharpton deliver the eulogy for George Floyd and use the biblical example of a rejected stone becoming the cornerstone, you know, in our conversation about race, and about police brutality, and violence, it made me think of covering immigration at the border.

Nobody is perfect. Nobody comes here with a sparkling clean record or the perfect story that you want to hold up and make an example to change the entire country’s imagination on immigration.

MH: Yes.

JS: He had come here before, twice, illegally. He freely admitted it to me. And he laughed and smiled when he said: They didn’t catch me previously. And I think it’s not mutually exclusive; you can be an economic migrant and also, later in your life, become a refugee from violence. And I think, too often, we boil it down to: it’s one or the other.

MH: Yes.

JS: But these stories often intersect. And I think we do a disservice, or the general public does a disservice, when we try to distill it to one or another because, oftentimes, that really isn’t the case.

MH: And it’s not just Latin American families that we’re talking about, of course. You describe a Congolese mother and her daughter who was separated trying to enter the U.S.; you say “the mother was taken to an adult immigration jail in San Diego, and her daughter was sent to a shelter in Chicago.” You also say that when she was told her daughter was in Chicago, she did not know what the word meant.

How do people like that woman and her daughter a) end up at the southern border? And how is their story different to some of the more familiar Latin American stories that you tell in your reporting?

JS: Well, I think that the southern border has become an entry point for people from around the world looking to seek refuge in the United States and seek asylum. And if it wasn’t for that Congolese woman and her daughter, who later became known as Ms. L., none of these 5,000-plus families would have been reunited, because she became the plaintiff, the original plaintiff, in the ACLU case —

MH: Yes.

JS: — against the government. And so what happened to her, and her story, was slightly different. She presented legally at the San Ysidro port of entry in between San Diego and Tijuana, where you can legally walk up and declare asylum as part of an internationally recognized legal process. And the United States government told her they didn’t believe her, took her away from her daughter, and not until a DNA test confirmed it, were they placed back together. But that wasn’t soon enough to stop the thousands of separations, you know, from happening.

And that’s another example, Mehdi, of it’s never a perfect story. You know, she thought she was doing it the right way, but the United States government challenged her on that, and it set off, you know, this whole chain of events.

MH: I think we’ve learned over the last four years that, for this administration, there is no right way of claiming asylum or coming into the country.

JS: Sure. That’s right. That’s right.

MH: They just don’t want people coming into the country.

You describe in the book the moment in June 2018, when then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen infamously tweeted, “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.”

You say, in the book: “My eyes widened when I saw it. You’ve got to be kidding, I thought. Come on.”

Where were you at that moment? And why did that tweet from her so stun you?

JS: Because earlier that week, I was inside the McAllen Border Patrol Processing Center — they call it Ursula in the Border Patrol, and that’s in McAllen, South Texas, where they let us in.

Katie Waldman, who later became Katie Miller, the wife of Stephen Miller, and now the Vice President’s communications director, was, at the time, a spokesperson for Kirstjen Nielsen. She invited me and another group of journalists into that center to see with our own eyes what family separations look like, because I think they believed that with outrage from the general public based on media attention, Congress would do what the Trump administration wanted, which was pass more restrictive order regulations. Of course, that backfired.

And the reason that I was was so flabbergasted by what Kirstjen Nielsen tweeted is that days earlier, if not hours earlier, I had been inside the center where I saw, with my own eyes, separated children sitting on concrete floors, covered by those silver blankets, under a security contractor in a watchtower. It makes me sick every time I talk about it. It gives me the chills every time I talk about it, as — then — the father of a two-year-old boy.

It was — and I don’t know —I really don’t know another way to describe it other than disgusting, to see social workers standing around Border Patrol agents, not allowed to touch the children, all because of official government policy when many of the families in there didn’t know what they were about to experience themselves, you know, to this day leaves me speechless. And to hear the Secretary of Homeland Security, who I didn’t know at the time, but I now know in writing the book, had signed the policy into place — it is just wrong. There’s no other way to say it.

MH: I mean, this is an administration that says openly: Don’t believe the evidence in front of your eyes, don’t believe what you see with your own eyes, and don’t believe what you hear with your own ears. It’s the gaslighters-in-chief.

You say, early in the book, you sum things up this way, you say: “What I have now unequivocally learned is that the Trump administration’s family separation policy was an avoidable catastrophe, made worse by people who could have made it better at multiple inflection points.”

In what sense, Jacob, was it avoidable, given that we already had a president clearly bent on implementing harsh border policies? Who or what around him could have stopped it?

JS: Well, in particular, you know, Scott Lloyd, who was the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, was warned on multiple occasions about the damage — the long-lasting trauma — that family separations would do to children. And, ostensibly, this was the man who was the custodian of the thousands of migrant children in the custody of the United States government. And, in particular, Jonathan White, commander in the U.S. Public Health Commissioned Corps, under Health and Human Services, has testified publicly to this — that he warned Scott Lloyd about the long-lasting damage that separations would do to these children. (Scott Lloyd, of course, is the same official who tried to ban abortions in HHS custody for young migrant girls.)

And the bottom line is when you look at the actions of Scott Lloyd, he did anything but stop family separations from happening. One official later told me that he believed that this was the greatest human rights catastrophe of his lifetime, in seeing this take place under the leadership of Scott Lloyd. And had the career officials in HHS, child welfare professionals, whose motto is not only to do no harm, like in the medical profession, but to put the best interest of the clients first — and that’s the children — this never would have happened. The best interests of the children were very obviously not put first here.

MH: Yeah.

JS: The officials of HHS and the professionals were certainly pushing for that all along.

MH: And there were a lot of people involved in this process, none of whom resigned on principle, none of whom came out and became a whistleblower at that time, which says a lot about how certain people’s morals are corrupted working in this administration.

Just to go back to an earlier point you made about this being a decades-long tragedy, a lot of Trump officials and Trump supporters — and some on the left — say it’s unfair to pin what you call “an American tragedy” wholly on Trump, because it was the Obama administration that built many of the cages that were used in 2018; it was the Obama administration that put unaccompanied minors from Central America in detention. There was a big overlap between a lot of their policies and practices at the southern border, between those two administrations. What do you say to them?

JS: Well, in some measure, they’re right. I mean, the Obama administration did build the McAllen Border Patrol Processing Center where I saw the children in cages. Those cages were built by the Obama administration. And they believe that that was the best option at the time. Certainly activists and immigration rights lawyers and such didn’t believe that, and were extremely vocal in voicing their opposition at the time.

The Trump administration had the opportunity to go in a different direction. They never signaled that that was their intention. In fact, they always signaled a harsher immigration policy than the Obama administration. But they didn’t have to institute the family separation policy; the Obama administration considered implementing the family separation policy. Some of the same officials within the Department of Homeland Security brought it up. And in the book I talk about how on Valentine’s Day, 2017, less than a month into the Trump administration, some of the officials that overlapped from the Obama administration into the Trump administration, basically revived — resuscitated — a policy, a rejected, discarded policy, that even the Obama administration, which was was not beloved by immigration activists, put the side.

MH: Yes.

JS: And this was a conscious, deliberate decision by the Trump administration to move forward with something that they knew all along was a deterrence policy, that was so bad, it would try to scare people away from coming to the United States. And John Kelly, when he was the secretary of homeland security in March of 2017, admitted freely on CNN.

MH: So, just to be clear, what Trump did in 2018 at the border with these “separations” is much worse than anything Obama, or, for that matter, George W. Bush, or Bill Clinton did at the border; that is fair to say based on your own reporting and research in this book?

JS: Well, the reason I say that this was unprecedented was that it was “systematic child abuse,” in the words of Physicians for Human Rights or American Academy [of] Pediatrics, at the hands of the Trump administration — deliberate, systematic child abuse or torture.

The Obama administration, the Clinton administration, the Bush administration all had their own very harsh deterrence policies; I’m sitting in Arizona now where hundreds of people have died trying to cross in the desert because of border infrastructure walls, like the ones I’m looking at in front of my face as I talk to you. But never was the policy directed specifically at children for the purpose of hurting parents and children. And therein is the difference.

MH: Good point.

JS: I mean, that’s where the Trump administration took it to a level that had never been seen before. It doesn’t mean that, for a long time, there haven’t been cruel, harsh, and deadly immigration policies.

MH: But, in this case, it was a stated policy to cause harm in order to stop people from coming.

JS: That’s for sure. And they would never admit that, that the purpose was to hurt children. But when you say deterrence, you have to be deterred by something — and the something, here, was trauma.

MH: So, you paint a picture in the book of a president who — shock! horror! — is, you know, over his head. You know, he’s out of control, but he also doesn’t know what he’s doing. There’s a huge culture of fear around him, you say, in the White House. You talk about the chaos surrounding this policy; obviously, we know very much about the Trump administration’s incompetence when it comes to any area of public policy.

But in my view, there’s also not enough discussion in our industry, Jacob, in the ‘liberal media,’ about the ideology that drives a lot of Trump’s immigration policy. This is not just them trying to look tough or messing up. You have a White House that openly plays footsie with white nationalists.

JS: Mhmm.

MH: And a top Trump advisor, Stephen Miller, who leads on this issue, and who is at best, an apologist for white nationalism, at worst, a card carrying white nationalist himself; this is a guy who the Southern Poverty Law Center, the SPLC, has thoroughly documented by his own leaked emails, has promoted white nationalist literature, pushed racist immigration stories, obsessed over the loss of Confederate symbols. And yet, we just don’t talk about it as much as we should. It’s like we’re too polite to mention the open white nationalism from this White House when we talk about immigration and border controls.

JS: Another way to put it is that the target of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies are more often than not brown people —

MH: Yes.

JS: — who come to the southern border where the majority of people who enter this country illegally, or ultimately stay in this country illegally, come via airplane from countries other than Central America or Latin America by overstaying visas.

And the Trump administration has not — or did not, at that time — target visa overstays as their primary concern, when that was, by definition, by numbers, where most people who were in the United States ‘illegally’ were coming from. The policy has always been, the ire has always been targeting people with a different skin color coming from the southern border, and not at the majority of people who are entering the country and staying in the country illegally.

And, you said it. I mean, that’s why this policy is, or was — I guess you could still say is, family separations are still happening — racist. I mean, this is not a policy that is being targeted at people who are flying here and staying here after going to school or getting a job or some other form of immigration to the United States. He’s targeting people who come through the southern border, period.

MH: Just to clarify for our listeners, you say family separation is still happening. Just briefly, how is it still happening?

JS: Well, the Trump administration is giving families an option: either separate, or be deported, or held indefinitely in family detention. That’s called binary choice. It’s the type of policy that’s being put forward.

You won’t be surprised to learn, Mehdi, that nobody is selecting family separation as an option when they’re presented with it.

MH: Yeah.

JS: But it is still an option that the Trump administration is giving migrants in custody. It’s a catch-22 situation, you know? Either get kicked out of the country and your child stays here, and be in indefinite family detention with your child, or separate from your child, let your child go free, but you won’t see your child, because you’ll, you know, you’ll continue to be detained. It’s just family separation with a different mechanism.

MH: The ‘family separation crisis of 2018,’ I think we would agree, Jacob, was one of the biggest crises, one of the most horrifying episodes of the Trump presidency. And given how many big crises and horrific episodes there have been over the past four years, that’s a pretty high bar that it met. And even by the standard of awful Trump scandals, this one stood out.

And yet he survived. The people around him survived. A lot of people just forgot about it. Washington, the media, largely moved on. If we hadn’t moved on, if there had been consequences — for the lies, the law-breaking, the racism, the child abuse — do you think we might have avoided or even been better prepared for many of the other Trump crises that have since followed it?

JS: It’s such a good question. I would like to think so, but that goes back to the separation from the American public about what’s happening and why.

And so often, I find, that too many of us are disconnected from the reality of what’s going on in our country. It’s too easy to look around in our own neighborhood —

MH: Yep.

JS: — to talk about our own concerns versus what’s happening at the border.

I’ll give you one example. I went to Tornillo, where they had that tent city in the wake of the separation crisis and all the migrant boys housed there. And I write about this in the book, I asked a local farmer growing pomegranates what his main concern was, and he said the production of food. And this was a man that was a stone’s throw away from thousands of kids being locked up in a tent in 100-degree heat in the middle of the South Texas desert.

And, you know —

MH: Wow.

JS: — I’ll never forget that. Because, you know, if, if he’s gonna forget about it, or if it’s not going to be top of mind for him, it isn’t going to be for people in suburban America either. And which is why, I think, you know, just it was so important to me to write this book, not just to remind people of this, but to answer those questions for myself: How could this possibly have happened? How could we possibly have moved on? You know, and what is it gonna take for this to not happen again?

MH: Well, I’m so glad you wrote the book and one of the issues that really bothers me is that there’s been very little accountability for the main players in this saga.

Former Trump Chief-of-Staff, former DHS Secretary General John Kelly went off to work in the private sector. He even joined the board of Caliburn International, a company that operates the largest shelter for unaccompanied migrant children —oh, the irony. His successor as DHS secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, was invited as recently as October last year to speak at Fortune Magazine’s Most Powerful Women’s Summit in Washington, D.C.. There doesn’t seem to have been much accountability.

JS: Not just no accountability, many but some of these people have been put in charge of the response or at least on the team to the coronavirus outbreak that’s killed over 100,000 people in this country. In the early days of the coronavirus crisis, I remember sitting at home on lockdown like everybody else, watching, up on the podium, Chad Wolf, now the acting secretary of homeland security — then, a top deputy to Kirstjen Nielsen — who, as my colleague Julia Ainsley first reported, was involved in the drafting of the initial family separation policy to be presented to her.

Katie Waldman, as I mentioned, was the spokeswoman for Kirstjen Nielsen and is now the spokeswoman for the Vice President of the United States. It seems as though the people that were involved in the family separation policy have not been disciplined, or reprimanded, or faced accountability; on the contrary, they’ve been elevated to new positions. And you mentioned John Kelly, who’s started working with Caliburn, this company that is profiting off of the detention of child migrants in multiple facilities now, along the southwest border.

I would say that it’s baffling and stupefying, but, again, it’s just like you said — it’s another one of these consequence-less actions of the Trump administration that, you know, they seem to benefit from when, you know, common sense would say they should be punished.

MH: By the way, at that Fortune summit, my good friend Amna Nawaz of PBS News asked Kirstjen Nielsen if he regretted the so-called family separation policy.

Amna Nawaz: I’m asking you if you regret making that decision.

Kirstjen Nielsen: I don’t regret enforcing the law, because I took an oath to do that, as did everybody at the Department of Homeland Security. We don’t make the laws; we asked Congress to change the law, Congress reviewed the law in 2006 and decided to continue to make it illegal to cross in that manner.

MH: When you hear Nielsen saying that, Jacob, what’s your reaction?

JS: The same bewilderment that I felt when I saw her tweet that: “There is no family separation policy. Period.” I thought that that interview, by the way, was spectacular.

MH: Yeah.

JS: And the line of questioning was perfect, because Kirstjen Nielsen is an expert in slipping away from questions about the family separation policy. If anyone should face accountability for the policy, it is her.

She had to sign, and I outline it in the book, a decision memo that sat on her desk with three options to implement the end of what was known as catch-and-release: the idea that migrants who come to the southern border would be released to the interior, with their families, until their immigration case would be adjudicated in the courts, until they had to show up for court. And by the way, many migrants — most migrants — do show up for that process, because they want to attain asylum in this country.

She chose of the three options, the most severe, the most punitive of family separations. It was a deliberate and clear decision by her; she had to sign her name — literally on the dotted line — for the policy. And the idea that she doesn’t face any responsibility for this, that it wasn’t something that she ultimately would come to regret, I just don’t believe it. I don’t — knowing what I know about her, having sat face-to-face with her at the start of this policy — I do not believe that that is truly the way that she feels. And I know, certainly, that she knows the responsibility that she bears for it.

JS: And like every ex-Trump official, especially once he leaves office, everyone’s going to be spinning how they were actually resisting inside the administration — they were the good guys pushing back against awful policies from the top.

And we focus a lot on Trump, and we should focus also on these ex-Trump officials who are trying to rehabilitate themselves; they should really be shunned by polite society. But sadly, we know Washington, D.C.: they won’t be, they aren’t being shunned. And that’s depressing.

One last question for you, Jacob. Given what you saw with your own eyes, what you heard in terms of testimony from some of these parents and children — the trauma of it, as you put it — how hard a book was this for you to write.

JS: Well, certainly not as hard as being separated from your child, indefinitely, in the minds of a lot of these parents. It was — it was difficult to revisit. But covering family separations is something that will have changed me, forever, for my entire life. I think there’s a lot of people out there who, having watched the story — not just from my coverage, but from the wonderful journalism that was done, you know, during and after this policy — you know, it’s changed a lot of people.

And, for me, this was something that I wanted to do to answer questions that I didn’t know the answer to in real time. And it’s also something that I wanted to do for Juan and José, because the reason that they decided to participate in this story with me was so that it never happens again. And I really mean that. You know, I don’t know if it’s kosher to say that as a journalist, that covering this, and writing this book, you know, for me has a specific and — what I hope — is a positive outcome. But that’s really what this was about for me.

And to revisit it was, was difficult. But it’s nothing compared to what Juan and José and 5,000 other children went through.

MH: Jacob, congratulations on an important book. Thank you so much for joining me on Deconstructed.

JS: Thank you, Mehdi. Appreciate it.

[Musical interlude.]

MH: That was Jacob Soboroff, author of the new book “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy.”

And that’s our show! And we’re going to be on a little bit of a summer break, here on Deconstructed. The show will be back in August. Hope you’re all able to have a break too. Stay safe while we’re gone!

Deconstructed is a production of First Look Media and The Intercept. Our producer is Zach Young. The show was mixed by Bryan Pugh. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Betsy Reed is The Intercept’s editor in chief.

And I’m Mehdi Hasan. You can follow me on Twitter @mehdirhasan. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. Go to theintercept.com/deconstructed to subscribe from your podcast platform of choice: iPhone, Android, whatever. If you’re subscribed already, please do leave us a rating or review — it helps people find the show. And if you want to give us feedback, email us at [email protected]. Thanks so much!

See you next month.

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#child abuse #trump scandal #separated families #separated kids #humanitarian crisis #human rights

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sailor-cresselia · 5 years ago

Text

Zi-O 41: *SCREAMING*

:THE BLOGGER IS NOT OKAY WITH THIS:

We open with the final scene from episode 40; Sougo charging Oma Zi-O, after getting a pair of Blade transformation screens (specifically, Blade and Garren’s) thrown at him, and a green-and-purple whirlwhind sent in his direction. Interestingly, when the whirlwind connects, the W emblem rises up along with the explosion. After attempting to trade punches – with zero effect on Sougo’s part – the kid summons Build with his Grand Zi-O panel, and. Oma Zi-O summons Kuuga.

Sougo uses the same technique as in 40 – he touches the figurine, the Build emblem appears while the name is announced, and a window reading 2017 moves backward, with Build appearing through it. Oma Zi-O, however, just holds out a hand, with the Kuuga emblem showing up with the same announcement. Notably, the emblem here is torso-sized, as opposed to figurine-sized. Kuuga appears in a bit of a blur, but there is a distinct lack of any other adornment.

Oma Zi-O’s jump over the two now-fighting riders has a bit of a flashstep effect to it, which is. Worrying. Also it breaks my heart a little to see Build and Kuuga fighting, which is not helped in the slightest by my having recently finished Decade and watching Showa V Heisei for the first time. But as Sougo attempts to hit Oma Zi-O, still with zero effect, Build and Kuuga launch their respective Rider Kicks at each other – no announcements from the Build Driver, which is probably for the best. Build disappears in an explosion, shortly followed by Kuuga winking out of existence.

Hm….

OH NO. SOUGO NO! YOU STILL HAVEN’T PROPERLY GOTTEN THE DRIVE WATCH! DON’T USE DRIVE!

See what you’ve done? Now Oma Zi-O’s taken control of him, with a scary red spark effect, and definite sounds of struggle that are very much Shinnosuke’s voice. His helmet’s eyes momentarily light up red, and the standard Tridoron horn sound plays – and then plays again, slowed way the heck down.

And it’s really nice to see the Type Speed finisher again, and to hear Krim announcing the Tridoron, but! Those are still Shinnosuke’s grunts of effort! And said finisher is being launched to great effect at Sougo! To the point of knocking him out of Grand, and back to being just plain old Sougo.

Woz warps in – with a very Time Jacker-y blur to his first few steps – and rushes to Sougo’s side, helping him up. And Sougo is angry when he asks why he can’t even touch his future self.

“You haven’t obtained the powers of all the Riders.”

And at least SOMEONE based in 2019 remembers that we still haven’t had a Drive arc! Namely, Woz, reminding Sougo, the kids at home, and the production staff, that the Drive watch we currently have was stolen from 2068 by Geiz.

…I wonder why they went with Ghost and Drive. I know that at least part of the reason is that the staff wasn’t sure if they’d be able to get the actors back, but that didn’t exactly stop them in other arcs.

SOUGO NO! You can’t go trying to fight him still! You’re not transformed! You can barely walk!

I don’t think we have ever seen Sougo actually angry before. Not like this – all furious and glaring, desperate to take. Him. Down. Not that it helps him at all, not with the massive explosions that Oma Zi-O is setting off around him.

Woz’s scarf is so handy. He sends it out to wrap around Sougo, warping him away.

“For personal reasons, I have decided to side with Past You.”

Oma Zi-O looks surprised, but then. Woz starts walking up to him. (Drive is still here, by the way!)

Oma Zi-O: “Well done, Woz. You’ve made a wise choice.”

Me: wait what.

Woz: “It is my pleasure.”

Me: Wait WHAT?

A multicolored rippling effect washes over the area, incidentally fading Drive out of existence.

Woz: wait what.

Oma Zi-O: Oh, looks like someone’s changed the flow of time...

The entire scene fades out – in a manner very reminiscent of what you see when film footage dissolves.

Sougo wakes up on the ground, in a location that we haven’t seen before. A mansion is at the top of the staircase. In front of said mansion…

Me: WAIT WHAT?!

In front of said mansion is a statue. The statue… is of Kakogawa Hiyru, Another Zi-O, in his not-so-civilian form that we saw in the preview. He’s holding his Another Watch at his waist, in the manner he previously used to transform, and is surrounded by Another Riders in action poses. It’s all grey and aged, with a plague at the base that I can’t read, because RiderTime didn’t sub it. But I’m willing to bet that it says “In commemoration of the first transformation of Kakogawa Hiryuu.”

I AM THREE MINUTES IN. THIS HAS TAKEN A HALF HOUR, WITH THE REWINDING TO CATCH DETAILS AND THE TYPING. SEND HELP.

Okay I made the grave mistake of jumping into Discord for a minute, and have promptly left Discord, but not before being cued in to look carefully at the Another Rider statues.

So, the first shot of them… From left to right, we see Kiva, OOO, Fourze, Ghost, Build, Ex-Aid, Gaim, and Wizard. Interestingly, all of them except for Build are doing their Rider’s signature poses, albeit with the standard corruption. Because Early Installment Weirdness is such a thing for Another Build that he was basically feral, and that has clearly carried over.

I can’t get over how the statues are just. Clearly still shots of the actual characters with a really bad filter over them, and terribly CG’d in. The budget for this episode must be going tot he fight scenes. … HUH. From the back, it looks like Another Build is trying to do Sento’s pose, albeit with considerably less success than everyone else. I guess the terrible filter made it really hard to see from the front, with him overlapping all of the other sections.

Okay, as the camera pans down to the plague, I see Another Agito on the right, and I can’t for the life of me make out who that is second from the left, but. The second from the right sure looks like it has Decade’s shoulders. And the head on the left sure looks like a warped version of Drive’s helmet.

Guess we’re getting Another Drive and Decade after all!

Woz’s Recap this week is him on an inexplicable bench swing in the middle of a wooded area, with Sougo none the wiser to his presence as he stumbles around the trees.

And apprently, by ‘the flow of time has changed’, we mean Woz warped Sougo to yet another alternate timeline, except this time it’s 2019, and he’s implying that the future where Sougo becomes Oma Zi-O has been completely derailed.

And that mansion is in a wooded area, alright. A large one, several city blocks worth. And we can tell.

Because we get a zoom-out, and see that it’s in the middle of a city.

With a whole lot of sirens in the background.

And a whole lot of buildings on fire.

!!!

New opening narration for the OP!

RiderTime translates it as… “The Heisei Kamen Riders have run through the era. Their powers now collected, the curtain of the final battle has risen! Clear the way! For the future of the True King!”

For reference, the previous narration, as subbed by RT, is “The Heisei Kamen Riders have run through the Heisei era. A new legend is starting that inherits all their powers. Rejoice! For the birth of the new King!”

And as translated by Overtime, it’s “The legacy of the Heisei Kamen Riders has carried on throughout the era. Once their power has been passed on, a new legend begins… Rejoice! For the birth of the ultimate king!”

The shot of () in the OP has been replaced by all the Heisei Riders striking their poses, and then coalescing into a ball of light, which breaks and shows Grand. First with just the helmet – then zooming out to a fullbody shot, with the 20 emblems fanning out behind him in a circle… and those odd circles of light dropping down around him, that I failed to mention from the first Grand transformation last time.

Sougo emerges from the forest into a city apparently at war. Rubble is strewn everywhere, and several people in fatigues with guns run by down the street, the sound of gunfire in the distance. Sougo, time-traveler that he is, goes to pick up a tattered poster, confirming that it is, in fact, 2019.

Our camera zooms out, freezeframing with the sound of a camera shutter and framing the scene.

Hey there, Tsukasa! Nice to see you again, you wonderful troll, you! He’s in fatigues – clearly what he was assigned when he arrived here – and. TWO cameras. Tsukasa, ffs. He’s still got his Magenta one, but also a brown one – that is some variant on a polaroid instant camera, since it ejects a photo right after he takes it. It’s about time he learned to carry something like that.

And his photos are still supernaturally bad – with all their eerie foreshadowing abilities intact. Case in point…

Tsukasa: “So, this is the end of this world.”

He pulls the printed photo from the camera.

Tsukasa: “Then what will you do now, Tokiwa Sougo?”

We see the photo. There’s none of the recurring double-imaging here that used to be seen in so many of Tsukasa’s pictures. Instead… Sougo is half faded from existence, the wall and abandoned shop stall showing through him in places.

(Also, Tsukasa looks exhausted. Get some sleep, sir.)

There’s barricades and fencing outside of 9-to-5. It’s not a clock repair shop anymore.

It’s a resistance shelter.

And one of the people, a woman tending someone’s wounds, asks who Sougo is.

And his uncle doesn’t recognize him – tries to attack him with a daikon radish, even.

Tsukuyomi’s voice comes in over the radio, saying that Another Riders are attacking a shelter, asking someone to send help.

Sougo asks where it is, and says he’ll be right back, running off.

Junichiro: (scandalized) “Young people these days act overfamiliar… even though we just met!”

Ow, my heart.

Another Kiva and OOO are attacking some refugees. Please note, literal machine guns have no effect on them! That’s! That’s just great!

(I’m still not okay with the eyes on Another Kiva’s shoulders, BTW.)

Geiz – in armor – and Tsukuyomi work to fight off the Another Riders and get the former civilians out of there, respectively. Geiz draws Another OOO away, and Tsukuyomi gets Kiva off of a group. At least the Faiz Phone X can make them flinch, if only a little. Enough to actually serve as a nuisance, before Another Kiva lifts her by the neck as Sougo runs in.

He knocks Kiva off of her, by vaulting over the staircase railing and nailing them with a kick, and asks if she’s okay. Tsukuyomi also does not recognize him!

Hey, Sougo, maybe at least try using your name when you’re trying to totally-not-re-introduce yourself to people who don’t know who you are? It might help, I dunno, jog some memories locked by the time distortion.

You know, I’ve commented before on how Sougo could take hits really well at the beginning of the season. But now he’s full body tackling Another Riders, knocking them back. Actually, no, scratch that. After Tsukuyomi paused time for everyone in the room sans herself – good for her – and grabs the Faiz Phone X to shoot Another Kiva, when time starts back up? Said Another Rider goes after her, and Sougo just blocks them. Just takes the hit, arms raised defensively, and Another Kiva is the only one to be knocked back. Sougo doesn’t even budge. This young man is made of iron.

And also very confused as to why Geiz would think that he would run, proceeding to pull out the Zi-O II watch, transforming.

Geiz knows who Zi-O is.

I somehow doubt he knows the same Zi-O as we do, though.

Also, for this Geiz, at least, the Time Burst kick can be channeled through just. Straight up holding Another OOO against the wall with his foot, and charging the attack down through his leg, exploding Another OOO with a notable coin effect amid the flames.

And although we can’t exactly seen Geiz’s face, because helmet, he’s probably sharing Tsukuyomi’s scared expression right now.

What, no stained glass effects when Sougo’s finisher takes out Another Kiva? I’m disappointed.

Tsukuyomi and Geiz come on the underground scene… and Tsukuyomi immediately shoots Sougo several times with her blaster. Geiz is ready to do a violence, and proceeds to start attacking.

Geiz: “So you’ve made your presense known, Zi-O – today you meet your end!”

Sougo: “Why?”

Geiz: “I’ll defeat the Great Overlord and save this world!”

Geiz: “That is our, the Resistance’s, mission in life!”

I noticed that he used the term ‘daimyō’ there – not whichever term it is he usually uses to refer to Oma Zi-O in the regular timeline. Interesting. Though, to be fair… the preview shots of Hiryuu looked like he was using a very different version of absolutely terrible taste than the regular Oma Zi-O.

A single direct blow from Revive Fury is all it took to knock Sougo out of his transformation.

He’s so confused, and scared, because nobody recognizes him, and he doesn’t know what’s going on. He can’t get any answers, and he’s so sad that his only family and friends, the only ones he’s had around him in years, have no idea who he is. Are all so willing to attack him.

To the point of when Sougo is practically begging to be told what’s happened. Geiz attacks him.

Still transformed.

Still using Revive Fury.

Still using the buzzsaw.

Sougo’s not transformed.

Me: :BARELY CONTAINED SHRIEKING:

There’s a painful looking slice on Sougo’s arm and cheek – there are scorch marks where his shirt was cut open.

Geiz refuses to listen to anything Sougo has to say… and readies another attack.

Aimed right at the prone Sougo’s neck.

Me: THIS IS NOT FINE.

I mean, yes, time paused, leaving Sougo free to move – BUT VERY CLEARLY HAVING BEEN AT MOST A SECOND FROM LITERAL DECAPITATION.

AHHHHHHH!

But… who paused time? UHR. Telling Sougo to run, unless he wants to die there. Sougo rolls to his feet, and stumbles away down the tunnel. When Uhr unpauses time, we see that Geiz and Tsukuyomi definitely still know about the Time Jackers, although not Uhr specifically, with her aiming the phone-blaster at him, and him just skipping off and presumably disappearing once he gets out of their line of sight.

He can’t let them kill Zi-O now.

Here on a roof – a decidedly shabbier roof than usual – we find out that the three Time Jackers are still around… and that they, at least, know who Sougo is. Know that he has an incredible power, and that going after him with brute force won’t work. So, Swartz is going to leave the new overlord to Hora, for now.

And here’s something interesting. I’ve always thought that Swartz was clearly their superior. But.

Hora thought their positions were equal. Swartz smirks as she storms off, followed shortly by Uhr leaving in the other direction.

And yet again, we have evidence for Swartz having a different plan than everyone else.

Hat!Woz called him ��Sir Swartz’, and was acting largely according to a plan they shared.

The previews for Over Quartzer imply that Scarf!Woz’s outfit is a uniform for the group trying to stop Sougo from ever having the chance to obtain the Drive watch.

And they all have those grommets scattered all over their wardrobes.

Different sides of the same group? Different departments, where the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing?

Interesting.

Back to the former shop…

The more things change, huh?

Junichiro is still a nice guy, offering to make something for Geiz and Tsukuyomi to eat.

Tsukuyomi has her doubts about Sougo being the overlord, since he did help defeat the Another Riders.

But Geiz has a point, too. An overlord probably wouldn’t hesitate to take out his minions to fool people. (You know. Like might be going on with Woz.) The Time Jackers are still the enemy, in some way, and Uhr helped him. And, most damning of all, he transformed into Zi-O.

Geiz vows… he’s going to take him down.

Sougo, in pain, is by a riverside. It’s… it’s really depressing to see the abandoned bicycles just laying there. And Woz, at least, still seems ot remember him.

…or, maybe not. He’s acting incredibly restrained, not even really looking at Sougo, and hasn’t… actually… indicated directly that he knows who Sougo is. But he has seen the statue, and knows it’s of Hiryuu.

He saw it because Hora took him there.

…Wait. Sougo. SOUGO DO YOU NOT KNOW HORA’S NAME?!

Okay, just gonna put the realization that our main trio might not even know the time jackers names aside for now, because we’ve got bigger issues.

Namely, that Sougo’s future as Oma Zi-O has disappeared from the book. (Dark Toei, give us the forbidden book backstory.)

Namely, that Woz has decided to serve a new Overlord.

Namely, said overlord is Kakogawa Hiryuu.

That he wants to pay back the humiliation of being told to live in the present, instead of the past, of ‘not being chosen’.

And, since we’re having a dark mirror of what Sougo could have been, if he’d grown up bitter…

Let’s have a dark reprise of one of Sougo’s old catchphrases.

Hiryuu: “So, I’m going to give this a try.”

Hiryuu: I’ll take everything away from you, and then you can try ‘living in the present’.

And now…

He’s not Another Zi-O.

He’s Another Zi-O II.

…Is it just me, or does he have an actual Driver? Because when he holds his watch at his waist, that black copy of the Ziku Driver appears first, and then the rest of his form as an Another Rider.

And that Driver looks an awful lot like a black copy of Oma Zi-O’s, but with a watch attached on the right-hand side.

Sougo is still heavily beaten up, and it looks like he’s struggling a bit to raise his arms enough to insert the watches, even though he’s not using his usual flair. He’s putting them in before he puts his driver on.

Grand Zi-O starts to charge at Another Zi-O II.

Geiz and Tsukuyomi are trying to find Zi-O, but not having any luck.

That is, not until Uhr shows up, saying that Zi-O is running amok, and offering to tell them where he is.

With an incredibly smug look on his face.

The right hand doesn’t know what the left one is doing, either.

Back at the Zi-O Vs Zi-O fight, Hiryuu just straight up summons copies of Another Agito, Den-O, and Gaim out of thin air.

Agito appears with green smoke and a single light, coming from right about belt-level.

Gaim still has the orange smoke and juice-droplet effect from last time we saw Another Zi-O.

Den-O has lines of light around him that look distinctly like the lines in Actual Den-O’s attacks.

(Where was this attention to detail in the first arc?! They got much better at it pretty quickly, actually, distracting forced-amnesia subplot be damned, but still!)

Sougo summons Den-O and Gaim to take on their respective Another Riders – both of whom have those windows, still – and takes on Another!Another Agito himself. All three Another Riders go down simultaneously.

But. You know. Hiryuu is Zi-O II now.

And Zi-O II can do more than predict the future.

He just reverses the attack, rewinding time for the three Another Riders, and incidentally turning daytime into night. The same rainbow ripple effect from earlier shows up as he does it.

The Another Riders de-spawn Sougo’s summons, and he tries to defeat them with his “Giri Giri Slash” finisher… only for Hiryuu to undo that, and turn it back into daytime.

Sougo is just getting his ass KICKED today!

…and then machine gun fire blocks Hiryuu and his mooks from going further after him.

Shots fired by one Kadoya Tsukasa, still in miliary fatigues, with a magenta button-up underneath and matching bandanna tied around his arm.

TSUKASA, you’re STILL wearing two cameras! At least. At least let the pseudo-polaroid not be brown. Maybe a nice violet color, you know, for Natsumi, or a bright Cyan for Daiki. Even a yellow or some such for Yusuke.

(Yes, I ship them as an OT4. Come at me. I’ll carry my Photo Studio Polycule forever.)

So, this speech Tsukasa’s giving… it’s a pep talk. Yes, in his standard, trolling manner, but a pep talk nonetheless. “So, you’re just giving up here? Because it got hard? Because they left you? You were all high-and-mighty, going on about being a King, but here you are, an Overlord. Did you want this because they came to you? Or did they come to you because you wanted this?”

“This world is coming to it’s destruction. The only way you can stop it is to defeat Kakogawa Hiryuu.”

And at one point, Tsukasa lifts the BSOD’ing Sougo up by the collar, and he’s almost entirely limp. Just, being jerked around, almost slumping back down to the ground when he’s pushed against the wall.

Sougo stumbles off at Tsukasa’s challenge. He! Is in no way able to fight at this point! He’s just gotten beaten up three times in less than a day, all of which were very brutal! This boy! Is not okay!

The three Another Riders show up.

Tsukasa: “Defeat them, and then we’ll talk.”

So, Sougo enters Grand Zi-O. Almost reluctantly, it takes him a moment to even pull out his belt, but he still goes into battle.

(I do appreciate that they don’t show the full Grand transformation every time. Unlike certain other anniversary riders. Tsukasa. Fricking. Six episodes having to watch the full transformation into Complete. UGH. That was painful. If it were a better form, or a better sequence, I wouldn’t have been as made. But Complete is ugly, and the transformation cutscene for it is just. Bad.)

Sougo summons Den-O and Gaim’s weapons to take out the respective copies, and that leaves Agito. Who, you know. Doesn’t always have a weapon – his and Kuuga’s are form-based, unlike the more recent riders.

SO INSTEAD!

Sougo pulls out a translucent COPY of Agito, and sort of. Just. Merges with it to do Agito’s Rider Kick.

THAT’S REALLY CLEVER!

Tsukasa seems at least a little impressed. But here comes Geiz, going straight into Revive Typhoon, saying that he’s going to take Zi-O down to save the world.

And while Geiz is attacking at normal speed, so Sougo could have dodged…

But he doesn’t.

He just takes the hit.

We close out to the end screen, with the Another Den-O and Another Agito watches in the back… and once again, the Zi-O watch, glitching and being replaced by the Another Zi-O watch.

In the preview…

Zi-O II, Geize Revive Fury, and DECADE fighting Another Zi-O II.

Sougo: “There’s no point in fighting Geiz.”

A bunch of fight scenes, with Swartz saying that someone will help him, and Hiryuu sitting on a throne.

Daiki’s coming back! And still going on about treasure, because of course he is. (Still mad at Tsukasa about the first Super Hero Taisen movie, I’m guessing)

Tsukasa – still in the army jacket, but seeming to have ditched the helmet – spin kicking Another Build away from Tsukuyomi, and holding an honest to Gaim PISTOL.

AND SON OF A-

SOUNDS LIKE TSUKUYOMI IS, IN FACT, SWARTZ’S SISTER.

Or, at least, that’s what she’s being told, and Uhr – who looks to have just been holding a Faiz Phone X to Tsukuyomi’s head, being just as surprised as her.

THIS IS FIN-

YOU KNOW WHAT NO NONE OF THIS IS FINE.

THIS EPISODE IS SCARY.

So, Tsukasa’s ‘pep talk’. That’s the voice of experience that he’s using. That’s a man who has done the whole ‘evil ruler’ thing, and would really rather not see his latest successor go down that route. He’s just. Kind of terrible at saying it.

And of course he’s trying to point out to Sougo that he needs to rely on his allies, if in a roundabout way.

It was only because of Natsumi, Yusuke, and Daiki remembering him that he came back to life, after all.

Memories are a powerful thing in Kamen Rider. We just came off of the Den-O arc, which is largely powered by memories, and to go right into people not remembering that Sougo exists… well. There can’t be a coincidence that it’s also a Tsukasa arc now.

Also, as a note, we had some of the first decent shots of Oma Zi-O’s belt in this episode. Previously, we only got to see one side of it, the one not obstructed by his sash. This time… well.

The places that used to be for Ridewatches? Those look an awful lot like the extensions on the Grand watch.

#kamen rider zi o #sailorcressy says

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lilbasedqueen · 6 years ago

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story of my fucking life

First off I wanna start by saying my intention on putting this all out in the open isn’t to tarnish whatever pedestal some people might hold Adam upon. I should’ve have seen from the beginning that he was nothing but a literal walking garbage can.

Adam and I met in September of 2015, at Jamba Juice. He was my manager at the time and not shortly after he quit and I took his job. Somewhere down the line (maybe 5 months) I met and stupidly started dating Adams roommate. This OF COURSE made Adam jealous, because he saw someone have something he wanted, someone who at the time didn’t want him back. Anyway, that shit DID NOT work out, if I ever met anyone WORSE than Adam, it’s Joe. Don’t ever fw a Taurus who’s also a recovering addict, it don’t work. No matter how hard I tried to help him, he never wanted it, never accepted it, I’d bet all the $ in the world he relapsed.

After things ended between Joe and I, I would still talk to and hit up Adam, mainly because he sold me weed. Now at this time, Adam had a girlfriend who he had moved out here from Hawaii and was living with him in the apartment that eventually became ours. I’m not exactly sure what the reasoning was for her leaving, but something made her go back home and thats when Adam and I started messing around. I should’ve took the fact that he so willingly cheated on this girl he was SOOOO IN LOVE WITH as a huge red flag but apparently I’m just as stupid as he is.

February 2016 was the first time Adam and I had sex, when we officially started dating and when I should’ve seen the signs of his narcissistic, emotionally abusive ways. When we first got together it was all about sex drugs and alcohol. I’m not gonna go deeeep into it, cause some stuff really is better left unsaid and unknown, but we spent the majority of almost everyday together drunk and high. We’d drive out to lake mead, Nelson’s landing, state line and back, intoxicated. I had become so infatuated with this BOY who gave me free weed and took me wherever I wanted, I got undeniably caught up in the moment and never once thought about how things would be down the line.

Fast forward to April 2016, my 22nd birthday. That night was when everything started going wrong. My debit card got stolen out of my wallet by someone I thought of like family, someone I trusted. That person, you know who you are, I will never EVER forgive them. Anyway, after that happened, I lost my bank account and all my money with it AND THEN Adam and I came home one day to find the apartment emptied of almost everything, roommates gone. They just packed up and left and I assume it was because of me. Joe was still living there even after Adam and I started dating, talk about awkward. So after these guys moved out and the other fucked me over, it was just Adam, Cloud and I, in a three bedroom apartment we couldn’t afford.

I had started working, Adam had gotten fired from his job. It was just us living off an 8.50/hr paycheck every two weeks.We could hardly afford to eat, but eventually Adam got a job at a restaurant as a server and things were starting to look up...until I first caught him hitting up girls/older women off of Craigslist sex. This continued throughout the entirety of our relationship, while I was pregnant, while I was in labor, and after. He spent the past three years only caring about himself and his shrimp dick.

So, after my first initial catching him talking to bitches, he got his phone shut off and eventually pawned it to pay rent...but somehow he was still managing to meet girls (through his job). I realize how much of an idiot I was and am, for not leaving, for believing his lies of changing, for falling in love with him. He’s become far to comfortable, and any chance he got of me leaving the house, he’d bring a girl up into our room, into our home. We went through about 8-9 roommates before we ended up on our own, and every single person would tell me the same thing: “He doesn’t deserve you.” At a point we had 6 people living in a 3 bedroom apartment, Adam and I had broken up, he broke up with me ONLY so he could fuck a FIFTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL in our house.

Let’s jump ahead, to September 2017, when I found out I was carrying this bum ass niggas baby. My initial reaction was fear, I had never EVER EVER wanted to be pregnant, especially by someone like him, but I was...and I couldn’t even get the pregnancy terminated which was my first choice. How shitty dos that sound? I so badly wanted away from this dude I was gonna have a whole ass abortion to do it. I was 24w pregnant and had only 3 months to completely GROW UP. I had to stop smoking, and drinking, which I had been doing up until the day we found out. Adam and I made a pact that if I couldn’t get high or drunk then neither could he...y’all could imagine how well that worked out. We were now living with his brother and his girlfriend, Adam was working at Carl’s Jr. and WAS STILL CHEATING ON ME WITH CRAIGSLIST WHORES. I just could not believe his thought process, what type of dude cheats on their pregnant girlfriend?! At this point, I was so far along in my pregnancy it was almost like I HAD TO STAY, he made me believe that everything would be different once that baby was earthside.

March, 2018. Zander was born in December and was now three months old. Hold onto your seats cus this where shit gets JUICY. So by this time we had moved out of his brothers house and into a real house, with my friends mom. Adam was now working at Levis, since he just up and quit Carl’s Jr. He was finally making decent money, working good hours to help and PROVIDE for his family like a man should. A friend of his had gave him this cheap ass Obama phone, since he didn’t have one, so that I could call and text him when needed. He hardly ever used that phone to contact me, but instead he again WAS FINDING PPL OFF CRAIGSLIST TO FUCK. Me being the curious cat that I am, I went and looked in that phone to see just who he was talking to and again this is when I should’ve left. Adam was now not only cheating on me with FEMALES, but this dude was LEGITIMATELY hitting up other guys. He was texting someone named Alex, who I at the time assumed was a girl but me being the spy that I am, I put that phone number into my phone and it popped up on Snapchat AS A DUDE!!

So, the year went on and our relationship at this point is nonexistent. I harbored so much hate and anger and resentment toward him I had absolutely no tears left to shed over him and his disgusting ways. By August of 2018, we had moved out of the house, and into the co do we are still currently in. He was at Levis from May 2017 until November, fired yet again from another job. In December he started working at FedEx, and my health was the worst it had ever been. I wasn’t eating, hardly sleeping, my headaches were completely incapacitating me, I couldn’t care for myself let alone my child. I was alone at night from 5-11 while he went to work at FedEx, alone and in pain and left to care for a baby.

Three days before Zanders first birthday, I woke up at 4am on Thursday morning, got out of bed and fell to the ground, where I started having a partial seizure, awake and aware of every going on, unable to move or speak. I was completely STUCK on the ground almost the whole entire time while I waited for my dad to pick me up and take me to the ER. I was in the worst pain of my life, and honestly wished I would’ve just died so I did t have to feel like that anymore. I was brought back to surgery around I think noon, came out around 2pm. Anesthesia is a HELL OF A DRUG, that shit is so crazy bro, almost as crazy as all the shit I put up with.

You’d think after having BRAIN SURGERY, your boyfriend would do anything he could to make life easier for you but shit just went back to the way it always has been. I was the one cleaning, taking care of the baby, cooking, taking care of the dogs. I JUST GOT OUT OF THE HOSPITAL FROM BRAIN SURGERY and it was back to how shit had always been. All things considered I was feeling better, but it was shitty having your significant other not give a shit about you or your health. Dude could hardly be bothered to visit me in the hospital I had to BEG him to come see me.

Now, we jump ahead to today...2019 and I’ve again caught him on CL hitting up people. At this point Adam is again UNEMPLOYED, hasn’t had a job since March. We haven’t paid Mays rent, can’t pay bills or buy food because he uses MY ebt card as if it’s his. Now, I say people because at this point I have no clue if it’s guys or girls he’s trying to talk to. I had about two other more times where I saw gay stuff that rose my suspicions as to whether or not Adam like boys...I mean I hook up with girls so what’s to be embarrassed about? Right now is May 23, 3 days ago I was on my email on MY PHONE, checking emails like anyone else would, when I saw yet again something from Craigslist. Emails exchanged since JANUARY up until now, between Adam and another guy, talking about stuff they’ve done, Adam asking him if he wants to suck his dick again, and if they can smoke. I realize one reason for his actions is Adams extreme addiction to cannabis. He hits up people online to ‘party and play’, who tf ever thinks their baby daddy is a closet homosexual? People say you can’t be addicted to weed but I assure this nigga is an addict. When he’s not high he’s grumpy and rude and takes everything out on everyone but once he smokes his whole mf mood changes.

I literally feel like my whole last four years of my life is a movie. Who the hell finds out their boyfriend cheated on them with MEN? lol wtf bro, is this even real? But yes, it is, so very real and so very much my life. Adam and I broke up two days ago, and unfortunately for me, I got no where else to go. So for all of you who constantly ask me if I’m okay, if everything’s alright, NO IM NOT OKAY, no everything’s not alright. My life is a fucking prison, and I have nowhere to go to escape him and his absolute toxic ways.

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comicteaparty · 5 years ago

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June 22nd-June 28th, 2019 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from June 22nd, 2019 to June 28th, 2019. The chat focused on the following question:

Describe your comic’s main antagonist. How do their goal’s conflict with the protagonist’s?

Nutty (Court of Roses)

I haven't revealed the main antagonist yet... not outside of Merlow's nightmares, anyways. ;)

ErinPtah (Leif & Thorn | BICP)

The main antagonist of http://bicatperson.com/ is an apocalyptic industrialist who's trying to kill off the other battle monsters so hers has a better chance of surviving the end of the world. The protagonists...do not want their battle monsters dead, and don't believe this apocalypse stuff anyway. The main antagonist of http://leifandthorn.com/ is, uh, probably capitalism. (I mean, there's also vampires! But the legal system is arranged so that the more debt you have, the more license they have to go after you.)

NeilKapit

I hate capitalism too, go on

AntiBunny

Oh wow where to even begin with http://antibunny.net/ It's gone through a few minor antagonists, but the main antagonist Dark Pooky has only revealed bits and pieces of what he's up to.

He's mostly just been pulling strings and tormenting the protagonist Pooky, allowing Pooky to think he's just a hallucination, while he tries to push and nudge Pooky to a more unstable mental state, and undo the slow progress Pooky has made. His actual goals aren't going to be revealed for a while though but he's mentioned that his real enemies are still very far away. He also played a role in the past in Nailbat, but to explain that would be a huge spoiler.

As for the antagonist of Nailbat the prequel to AntiBunny http://nailbat.antibunny.net/ Malphas, he's a simpler megalomaniac. His ambitions go from city level, to global, to cosmic in scale as he continues to leverage resources that become available to him both supernatural and technological. He's extremely intelligent and has the financial power to put that intellect to use. He might have succeeded if he didn't treat people as disposable objects. He comes into conflict with Nailbat all to save one life from his abusive clutches.

ShaRose49

Sunstrike and Bluemist’s main antagonist in this first story is named Xan, whom I will be getting back to sooner than later. He’s a weapons designer who is very practical but also ruthless. He has a lab underground where they make weapons to sell on the black market. The main way his goals conflict with Kairo’s is that he is basically a more extreme version of Kairo. Kairo is apathetic which enables him to do questionable things to survive, whereas Xan not only survives—but thrives in an apathetic world. The things he is willing to do to accomplish his goals make Kairo feel sick. http://sunstrikeandbluemist.thecomicseries.com/

ErinPtah (Leif & Thorn | BICP)

@NeilKapit XD So in Leif's country, if you go into debt, you're sold into indentured servitude until you can pay it off. He's not actually the one who incurred the debt -- it was inherited from his parents, he doesn't like to talk about it -- but it's still at the root of Every Bad Thing that happens to him.

Meanwhile, Thorn's country has socialized medicine, a universal basic income, universal health insurance, all kinds of useful things. He was severely burned pre-canon while dragonslaying! And all the treatment he needed was covered.

So it takes him foreeeeeeever to figure out the real depth of how bad Leif's situation is, because it's so alien to his experience. And he doesn't understand Leif's language well enough to pick up the hints.

(Leif refers to himself as "not a citizen" and Thorn is just like "huh, guess I don't know what that word means")

NeilKapit

Well, I certainly need to catch up on Leif and Thorn

varethane

In Chirault, I have several antagonists but it's hard to categorize most of the antagonists as villains-- some are just trying to do what they perceive to be right based on what they know, and one was killed trying to do something (that he believed to be) heroic and then his body became the puppet of angry spirits trying to take back something that was stolen from them. The one human I would consider a real villain did most of the worst stuff in the distant past out of cowardice and greed, and at the point where the story begins he's a wreck in the beginning stages of dementia, consumed by paranoia.

MJ Massey

Black Ball's main antagonist is a mystery--Emily is trying to find who murdered her sister Amelia and why, and so far she doesn't have much to go on. A mysterious letter to someone named "Millie" might be a clue to get her started, and it is most assuredly connected to the illegal spellcraft trade

so all we know so far is it's: someone connected to spellcraft, and someone who murders people

Mharz

The main antagonist of The Angel with Black Wings http://blackwings.mharz.com/ Vladimir Hector is pretty much a goody-two-shoes guy who can seem to do nothing wrong. The problem is he's a perfectionist and he takes that perfectionism to insane levels. He wanted the world to be perfect without anyone suffering so he wanted to eliminate people who had sinned and caused suffering even the most pettiest misdeeds. The thing is, nobody's perfect and everyone makes mistakes so pretty much everyone is ded under his eyes. So Silver and her angelic army pretty much try to prevent that.

Attila Polyák

I sooooo like this question, but I just simply can't give a proper, one name, answer. In Tales of Midgard I couldn't really name one main antagonist, as a matter of fact the person I'd name as one, first appears as someone who actually helps the main crew not because he has some hidden agenda or anything, but because their interests in that particular situation happen to align. As a matter of fact several antagonists later return as helping side characters and those who help at first sometimes return as antagonists. The reason for this is simple, characters in different situations act differently. The only thing that saddens me in this topic is the fact that in 2017 we had to greatly rethink how many pages we can actually produce and for the sake of quality we cut quantity down. Or in other words I can't really showcase this dynamic for years... https://talesofmidgard.com/comic/book-1-cover-page/

Respheal

The antagonist of Galebound (http://www.galebound.com/) hasn't really revealed themselves yet...as far as we know, anyway. But they're the sort of antagonist I really enjoy--the sort whose goals are not bad at all.. A villain with a good point. In fact, their goal is the same as what Conan's will be, the difference is how they choose to pursue it. The antagonist has long since given up on doing things the "nice" way and is out to just get things done, to hell with anything and anyone who stands in their way. Surprisingly the main antagonist is not Din

Well, there's also a second antagonist. He's just plain awful xD He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth with the promise of more to come...and then that never happened. The wealth he was promised was denied to him and he was given a shadow of the power he thinks to be his birthright, so of course he wants more and he's doing everything he can to get it. He's a Noble (of course he is), which does unfortunately mean he's got some modicum of power to use in pursuit of his goal, and he chooses to use that power in the worst ways possible. He doesn't actually directly conflict with Conan much xD His true opposition is another character, the one character who (as far as Villain B knows) is the one keeping him from claiming his birthright, so their "battle" becomes a bit of a game of wits...Unfortunately for Villain B, he's playing with someone who knows where all the aces are in the deck and has a decade lead on him(edited)

Sarai

Villain B sounds like someone I grew up with I am very afraid

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #creator interview #comic creator interview #comic tea party #creator babble

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inevitably-johnlocked · 3 years ago

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OOOF A LOT of fics, and probably some I haven’t read yet; there’s a lot of “new classics” in my opinion.

I’ve done other lists:

Top 20 Fave 40K+ w. Fics (April 2017)

Ten Fave Short Johnlock Fics (Easy Reads April 2018)

25 Fave Johnlock One Shots (April 2018)

Top 10 Fave Fics (September 2018)

Top 20 Bookmarks of 2018 (March 2019)

Another Top 10 Fave Fics (June 2019)

Top 30 Read-Again Fics (March 2019)

Top 30 Read-Again Fics Pt. 2 (Sept. 2019)

Top 25 Fave Non-Ao3 Fics (Nov. 2019)

Top 25 Bookmarks of 2019 (Dec. 29/2019)

Top 30 Bookmarks of 2020

BUT if you want my opinion, here are 5 unread fics that I think can qualify, since they’re so well-known and popular (and not on the previous lists I did):

Brooklyn Heat, Summer Jazz by Zigster (E, 41,820 w., 10 Ch. || New York Ballet AU || Jazz Pianist John, Ballet Dancer Sherlock, Modern Setting, Brooding Sherlock , Confused John, Non-Linear Storytelling, Sexual Tension, Angst, Alcohol / Pot / Club Drug Use, First Time, Not-Good Mycroft, Happy Ending) – "There was, however, one thing that made it easier to stay on his piano bench every day. One thing that kept John Watson showing up to class on time, every morning at ten with a large thermos of honeyed tea and a conviction to see a job well done. His name was Sherlock Holmes and he was the most confounding and extraordinary thing John had ever come across - the most exotic of birds and the most unattainable of men."

Enigma by khorazir (M, 289,667 w., 23 Ch. || Codebreaker / WWII / Imitation Game-Inspired AU || Case Fic, Espionage, Period-Typical Homophobia / Sexism, Pining Sherlock, Inexperienced / VirginSherlock, Implied / Referenced Drug Use, Non-Graphic Violence) – It’s the autumn of 1941, war is raging in Europe, German U-boats are raiding Allied convoys in the Atlantic, the Luftwaffe is bombing English cities, and the cryptographers at Bletchley Park are working feverishly to decode their enemies' encrypted communications. One should consider this challenge and distraction enough for capricious codebreaker Sherlock Holmes. But the true enigmas are yet waiting to be deciphered: an unbreakable code, a strange murder, and the arrival of Surgeon Captain John H. Watson of the Royal Navy.

Radioactive Trees In A Red Forest by Maribor_Petrichor (E, 280,251 w., 73 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Post-S4, Suicidal Ideations, Alcohol / Rx Drug Abuse, Coming Out / Bisexual John, Seizures, Past/Referenced/Implied Child Abuse, Hallucinations, Rehab, Celibacy, Sobriety / Relapse, Slow Burn, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Psychological Trauma, Nice /Not Anti-Mary, John’s POV, Parentlock, First Time, Angst, Switchlock, Angst with Happy Ending) – John Watson is what happens when a man can no longer see a reason to go on. John Watson is what happens when a man starts to let go. "It is what it is." John Watson is what happens when what "it is" becomes too much to bear. This is a story of the life, death, and resurrection of John Hamish Watson.

Over Fathoms Deep by bittergreens (E, 438,536+ w., 56/? Ch. || WiP || Historical / Regency / Sailing AU || Sailor!John / Aristocrat!Sherlock, Pining Sherlock, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, Virgin Sherlock, Sailing, Bottomlock, UST / RST, Hand/Blow Jobs, Frottage, Masturbation, Happy Ending, Anal) – When the youngest son of the aristocratic Holmes family is shipped off to sea in an attempt to cure him of his poor temper and bad manners, he fully expects to spend a long tedious voyage as miserable as ever. What he does not count on is having his heart stolen by the strapping young crewman, John Watson.

You Go To My Head Series by 7PercentSolution and J_Baillier (E, 976,576+ w. across 22 Works || Series WiP || Surgeon AU || Medical Realism, Autism Spectrum, Anaesthetist John / Neurosurgeon Sherlock, Friends to Lovers, Pining, Addiction, Angst, Slow Burn, PTSD, Pining, Insecurity, Additional Tags Under Link) – This series is an alternate universe one, featuring the exciting medical and romantic adventures of doctors Watson and Holmes.

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Or maybe it’s just because these are the ones I want to read the most, hahah.

And 5 fics I have read and I think should be “new classics” because I re-read them a lot and I love them (and not on the previous lists I did):

A Promise Made to Be Broken by PlantsAreNeat (E, 37,018 w., 7 Ch. || Fake Relationship, Pining, Slow Burn, RST, Eventual Relationship, POV Sherlock) – A young John makes an ‘if we’re still single at 40, we’ll get together’ pledge to a woman who ends up all wrong for him. She keeps reminding him of the promise, and won’t let go of it. John asks Sherlock to pose as his boyfriend at a family wedding, so as to dash her hopes permanently. Sherlock, who has at last acknowledged his feelings for John, reluctantly agrees despite knowing how painful it will be to ‘have’ John, but not keep him.

A Hundred Crimson Sols by elldotsee (E, 55,536 w., 16 Ch. || Astronauts AU || Mars Exploration / Space Travel, Slow Burn, Shy Sherlock, Scientist Sherlock / Biomed Engineer John, Alternating POV, Mutual Pining, UST, Angst with Happy Ending, Domestic Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Injuries, Suicidal Ideation, Zero-G Sex) – Will Holmes is a chemical researcher recognized widely for his contributions to the new Mars exploration program. Thanks to his ground-breaking developments, the IMMC (International Mars Mission Corporation) is one step closer to Martian colonization. Will and his team of scientists are headed out on the first of three manned missions before the first group of settlers arrive. Three days before launch, one of the crew has to be replaced. Will panics because...new people. The replacement is of course one John Watson, biomedical engineer and space hottie who was pretty sure he had retired from actual space exploration and was now content to work in the nice, quiet research lab. Can the crew survive this TOTALLY ROUTINE trip? Will they be able to endure each other for the looooooong trip in close quarters? Gonna be a wild ride... prepare for blast off. Part 1 of SpaceBois go to Space

The Vapor Variant by 88thParallel (CanadaHolm) (M, 72,684 w., 18 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Post-THoB, John Whump, Protective Sherlock, Guilty Sherlock, Anxious/Worried Sherlock, Virgin Sherlock, Angst with Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, PTSD John, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Suspense, Virus, Sick Fic, Big Brother Mycroft) – They stood face to face in the middle of a clearing. The dim light of the moon barely allowed Sherlock to see the glassy terror in John’s eyes and the sweat that glistened off his forehead. His nose was bleeding again, blood dripping in a slow stream from his right nostril. They were both gasping for air, John’s eyes locked on Sherlock’s. There was no recognition there, just wild animal fear. Time stood still for an eternal few seconds, and Sherlock took a shaky breath. “John—”Spell broken, John spun and bolted back into the woods. Still heaving for air, Sherlock took off after him.

A Further Sea by i_ship_an_armada & ShinySherlock (E, 125,492 w., 23 Ch. || Historical Pirates AU || Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Doctor John / Pirate Captain Sherlock, Sailing, UST / RST, Masturbation, Action / Adventure, Mild Angst & Peril, Romance, Shaving, Molly/Janine, Bottomlock, Hand / Blow Jobs, Past Drug Use, Slow Burn, Mild Violence, Facial Shaving, Happy Ending) – Here be a tale of adventure for both body and soul, but beware if ye be not of stout heart, for this be piratelock, ya savvy? Luckless ship's surgeon John Watson takes a chance, and finds himself eye to eye with The Ghost, the scourge of the seven seas and a definite thorn in the side of the blaggard, James Moriarty. But when John finds there's more to this most cunning pirate than be meetin' the eye, he has to choose... is it a pirate's life for him?

Proving A Point by elldotsee & J_Baillier (E, 186,270 w., 28 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Me Before You Fusion || Medical Realism, Insecure John, Depression, Romance, Angst, POV John, Sherlock Whump, Serious Illness, Doctor John, Injury Recovery, Assisted Suicide, Sherlock’s Violin, Awkward Sexual Situations, Alcoholism, Drugs, Idiots in Love, Slow Burn, Body Image, Friends to Lovers, Hurt / Comfort, Pain, Big Brother Mycroft, Intimacy, Anxiety, PTSD, Family Issues, Psychological Trauma, John Whump, Case Fics, Loneliness, Pain) – Invalided home from Afghanistan, running out of funds and convinced that his surgical career is over, John Watson accepts a mysterious job offer to provide care and companionship for a disabled person. Little does he know how much hangs in the balance of his performance as he settles into his new life at Musgrave Court. Part 1 of the Care And Companionship series

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OBVIOUSLY this is a limited list; I love so many stories and I hate picking/choosing, but there it is, hah.

Hey steph ❤ In your opinion which are the most iconic fics, the classics if you will? Love your blog it was the final push for me to join Tumblr.

Hey Lovely!!

I've done this exact post before! :D

Top Five Fandom Fics on Ao3, Plus 1M Hit Fic (Dec. 2018)

Fandom Favourites / Popular Fics

I personally think I need to do a "New Personal Fandom Classics" list, I just never have done because I don't want to see egocentric to say "THESE ARE THE BEST FICS NOTHING ELSE" lol. I dunno. Plus I'm stupid picky with my fic recs and haven't read everything. If that's something you guys want, I guess I can do that, LOL.

#johnlock fic recs #next day reblog #steph's classic fic lists #classic fics

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baseballtogether-blog · 5 years ago

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What is Seattle's Kyle Lewis?

Almost as much as baseball, I love Star Wars. That’s right, I said it. Now, to be clear, I love the movies and everything that’s spun off as a result of the magnificent original trilogy, but I’m not a snob. Yes, I loved “The Force Awakens,” despite its flaws. I thought “The Last Jedi” was even better. In fact, “Rogue One” is my favorite of the entire series. Yes, I saw the ending coming with about 30 minutes left. I had the realization that (**SPOILER ALERT**) everybody was going to die. But, what I wasn’t prepared for was the final line of the movie. For those who haven’t seen this cinematic masterpiece, let me give a brief recap of the last few minutes. A rebel shipped is boarded by Darth Vader (who’s pissed) after the plans to the Death Star have been stolen. He goes on a tear and destroys everything and everyone in his path using his lightsaber and the force. The rebels are frantically passing what looks like an 8-inch floppy disk along a crowded hallway filled with frantic rebels and pressure-locked doors before Vader can get to it. Finally, the luckiest member of the crew escapes the carnage and reaches a digitally recreated version of a young Carry Fisher’s Princess Leia. He hands her the disk and asks, “What is it they’ve sent us.” She responds with a single word. “Hope.” Cue John Williams! Back to baseball. I’m a documented Seattle Mariners fan and have experienced a generation of losing that’s going on nearly 20 years without a playoff appearance and just six seasons with a winning record since Lou Piniella left the Pacific Northwest after the 2002 season. Since then, the franchise has been decimated with bad managers and general managers that include the likes of Jack Zduriencik, who was described as “learning on the job” when he was fired in 2015. Yes, there have been times where what felt like a potential winning roster was assembled during this run. With the additions of pitcher Cliff Lee and leadoff hitting infielder Chone Figgins, ESPN’s Mike Greenberg even picked the M’s to make the World Series in 2010. That team completely melted down by June under manager Don Wakamatsu and finished 61-101, by the way. After Zdurencik’s firing, the Mariners brought GM Jerry Dipoto aboard to start the 2016. His first pick with the 11th pick in the MLB June Amateur Draft was an outfielder from Mercer University by the name of Kyle Lewis. Thirty games into his first minor league campaign, Lewis blew out his knee in an injury that left him with a torn ACL and kept him out for the remainder of that season and about half of 2017. However, he returned from the injury for the second half of the 2017 and played very well for Seattle’s Arizona Rookie League affiliate and the Class Advanced A Modesto Nuts with a .740 OPS and seven homers in 49 total games. He put together similar campaigns for the 2018 and 2019 season with the Nuts and Arkansas Travelers. Touted as the future of Seattle’s outfield and the bat to anchor the batting order, Mariners fans were continually fed Lewis’ stats on social media displaying his ability at the plate. However, fans weren’t entirely sure when Lewis would make his appearance in Seattle. I mean, he seemed ready by all accounts. On Sept. 10, 2019, Lew made his MLB debut by going 1 for 3 with a strikeout and a solo home run. The next day he hit a 3-run home run. The day after that he hit another solo home run. In his first 10 games as a big leaguer, Lewis hit six home runs and drove in 12 runs. Yes, it was against inferior pitching. The M’s faced the Cincinnati Reds, Chicago White Sox, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Baltimore Orioles during his first 12 games. Yes, he managed just three hits over his final six games. However, he finished with an OPS of .885 and a 0.3 WAR. Lewis’ call-up energized a floundering Mariners team to a .440 September winning percentage. It was the team’s best month since a .500 April. After he blew up the roster and traded away nearly every veteran from the 2018 season, Dipoto said he was “reimagining” how the team would be assembled and started stockpiling prospects in Double A Arkansas. Lewis was part of the first wave of young talent to be sent up to the big club in 2019 by Dipoto. What is it he sent us? Hope. Read the full article

#mariners #mlb

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thecoroutfitters · 6 years ago

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I has been delayed this morning simply by One hour. They are the procrastinators that need concentrates on to www.unt.edu hold prompted. Just about the most widespread your woman sorted because deadliners. I’ve tried trance, meditation, notes, etcetera. Bring a magazine, call someone a person haven’t talked to in a while, or perhaps check out your current agenda for a few days. People normally understand multiple lateness individuality. Even so, if someone else is definitely past due, lifestyle the remainder military hang on giving you, simply just so they might take; but while they could hesitate along with skip chow, meals is part to your Affiliate marketer.

When you’re late, an individual decrease the value of your own manufacturer. “Well of course only were being an important purchaser this might donrrrt you have occurred in the first place.” And so your woman kept as well as worked out the condition causing us to be Six min’s later for that planned visit. In the Army (in almost any side branch to become much more precise) tardiness is unacceptable, and so due to being https://www.mei.edu/experts/abbas-assi on moment is important. There isn’t need to present suggestions about ways to perform occasion, since everybody knows tips on how to be on moment. Below you’ll uncover Six methods for currently being timely. Accomplish this: Every time your companion is definitely overdue by simply 15 minutes or more, the lady will pay for delicacy. “well you are in this article now, that’s what matters” he / she responded happily.

Why Perform Moment? We have witnessed an abundance of a few things i have been dying to complete me personally i always include omitted connected with to the penalties associated with no one nonetheless my family. I didn’t desire to stroke the idea within, so I only reported, “Here are generally all of our cards” and also handed down on them but she recognized she’d neglected these but we all in no way gave a talk of the usb ports. Any time you don’t display on time, you’re causing your friends to complete your job and unique. In its place, come with an truthful discussion – just before you’re totally frustrated – and a few guidelines. Distractibility is believed to get a genetic time frame and might include full-blown add for you to not liable flakiness.

We are Cydcor, a accepted chief within contracted gross sales companies situated in Agoura Hillsides, Ohio. In case you show up missed by way of Ten mins to at least one issue plus 30 minutes to a different one, the main problem is probably technical. Knowing the potential side effects regarding lateness as well as tardiness, it is crucial with regard to solutions to end up being implemented. With today’s world locating a new job is not really always easy. doubts i’d viewed this particular sooner thanks just for this & a person’s information on how to quit stalling & the reason it occurs. Does this kind of happen to you every morning? Is definitely “Do stop overdue to college!” or perhaps “You are usually overdue all over again!” everything you hear from friends and family and also instructors? Next, writing a strong essay on getting late will probably be a very useful work for anyone.

Liability is a good feature to have nonetheless it merely is sold with punctuality. THE UNTHINKABLE! The single thing your lover always belittled me personally for! Standard excuses, you name it. We didn’t neglect everything crucial, and if there was a celebration important I would not have already been. Just one knight remaining overdue will make the particular program completely disturbed. Should your employer possibly there is, overlook the marketing. Nino School with Bamban Included thinks about a person late if the student occurs after the hunt marriage ceremony (Star trek online Nino School regarding Bamban Involved Scholar Information 2017-2018).

In instance you continue to require reasons why you should perform time, allow me to share Several major models: To find out how the item believes. It will be your work to go by the actual requests of those hired previously mentioned a person if they will be legitimate and also meaningful. I had lotto tickets to your Oscars two years uninterruptedly. This allows other individuals to plan the daily activities correctly. You have to be timely within all you could conduct.

Usually apologizing/making justifications – I’m often apologizing as past due to someone. In addition, it will make you efficient to try to get ambitions when they are shown to an individual. believe inspiring feelings in my situation. Punctuality teaches you are responsible, genuine which enable it to comply with information. You point out stuff has been around the mind but didn’t be aware how you can communicate.

Change Your thinking About Currently being Early. A lot of people think that those who find themselves vital maintain people waiting. For that reason, becoming early on can be a sign that certain isn’t crucial. And no one desires to feel immaterial. On the other hand, currently being beginning is really a manifestation of organization, having admire persons, and having good time management knowledge. That are common personality connected with essential people today. Keep telling your self, “Important folks are timely.”

When You’re And not on Time frame, You’re Stealing: When time is actually funds, and then by simply showing up a few minutes late you’ve merely stolen something worthwhile from your body else, that isn’t a powerful way to get started just about any crucial small business mediation. Another person feels like they’ve presently provided some thing, thus they’re not seeing that prone to give you more.

Indicates which you recognition your promises and you can now become trusted

Be Wanting to Wait. People ordinarily don’t try to be early on given that they think enough time that they spend watching for some others can be wasted time period. That is certainly, they like being missed in lieu of acquiring while relaxing. The important thing to help alleviating this particular problem is going to be ready to have got to hang on. Hanging around moment doesn’t must be lost moment. When you get there beginning for a client’s household, most likely the carer at the move previous to your own house may have the perfect time to offer you an revise, as well as in addition supply you with a buffer of their time to get your elements in the home by using another health professional present.

“Punctual persons do not BPE critical review essays understand. Most people reverence lateness for a modest and pardonable offense and infrequently yield to help events blatantly past due, ready for another party to easily forgive these folks. Are you an staff exactly who valuations standing on time frame? Enroll in our team! Zero reward.

There exists full in addition to did not reach the record which in turn genuinely indicates you can not established limitations at the job, which equals small self-esteem, and also worse, not any knowledge of your individual restricts. You can find incapable of carrying out the particular survey therefore you put it off. Irrrve never shown interest in stick to anybody on facebook at my everyday living. The Absent-Minded Teacher is definitely diverted.

If you proceed, the actual apology will be worthless. Simply just “being about time” will just bring so many good out-puts, through obtaining the campaign to your director, so that you can forming a much better Armed service. The client reacted together with. couldn’t prevent thinking about it.. For those who avoid your time prudently; you could certainly not get your investment back.

I am certain that you can imagine what happened future. I personally collection Several alerts today 5:30AM but appeared intended for work on On the lookout for:40AM(Ten minutes overdue). As well, celebrate people reputable to defend myself against ambitions should they be offered to you. When you find yourself late to help whatever, jewel a creation and also scheduled appointment, it is going from nearly all of all these prices that happen to be instilled in just about all members of the military. In event you continue to need reasons to be on time frame, here i will discuss 6 big people: Eating habits study Tardiness Nakpodia & Dafiaghor (This year’s) pointed out that lateness or even tardiness is not only the challenge in the past due pupil but it surely has an effect on surrounding people.

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auxgod · 6 years ago

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San Diego Artist To Watch 2019

In the past, it usually took a year or two for an artist to really find their groove and reach their audience. One or two early singles would lead to initial buzz, but that breakthrough moment took time. Not anymore.

This list is by no means an attempt to name all of 2019's potential breakthrough acts. There are plenty of other artists who could have been included, but these are some of my favorites that should be on your radar.

Sethii Shmactt-

By the time this list comes out The MOB x CG rising star might be in the studio making another blap! Sethii Shmactt has continued to prove he’s one of the popular faces in San Diego and with the success he’s beeing receiving since the release of “Strip Talk” Sethii is definitely a name i’d remember.

YHG Pnut-

Figuring out who you are as a young artist isn’t an easy task but Kosher Life’s YHG Pnut had no trouble with this at all. When i first came across his music he had only been making music for 3 months prior and since then he has become one of the most popular names in San Diego. Receiving a lot of love from the youth by popping out at various schools around the city, Pnut looks to keep momentum going with the release of his upcoming debut he’s finishing up.

Ghost Dad-

Since announcing “Break Bread” was available on all streaming services, many began to ask when we’d be blessed with more music from the 4th FL front man Ghost Dad. Well it appears the way is over as the San Diego rapper decided to gift us with the official cover and release date to follow up and with the lyricism and wordplay that Ghost Dad embodies, it’s easy to say this may be one of the most well rounded projects in 2019.

Axelle Goldie-

Now that the buzz around so-called "alternative" R&B is fading out, artists are finding ways to push the genre forward in more subtle ways and Cairo Egypt’s Axelle Goldie personifies this. Being a triple threat as an Artist, Graphic Designer and Event planner, the San Diego songstress has been teasing us with her highly anticipated project “Cigarettes & Stolen Whisky” and it looks like in 2019 we will finally receive it. No word on the official release date or track list but with tracks like “Never Let Me Go” & “Blue Monday” we can expect the shit to be fire!

O’Way-

By the time O’Way released his video for “Gettin Shifty”, he was already one of the most buzzed about new artists in the music industry. Despite being incarcerated, the San Diego rapper is full of Izm and incredible 1 liners that you could use in almost any situation. Expect Plu$ Tax to be the new Death Row is O’Way continues to have an incredible 2019.

Sebby OG-

The whole entire Suav City collective continue to each play their part whether it be dropping singles or cinematic visuals. Next up to bat is Sebby OG and 2019 seems to be the year we will finally receive his long awaited debut “Jimmy Panthers” Sebby has an all around fun style which you can hear on songs like “Hundred Dollar Feels” and a whole solo project from him would be exactly what his fans have been waiting for.

DBRVSS-

Ever since he released his ep “3.0″ in 2018, Dbrvss has been one of my favorite artist in San Diego and if you’re still sleeping on him you gotta wake the fuck up. Having a great ear for production and word play that’ll motivate you to get some money, Dbrvss is expected to be releasing something new very soon and im sure he will be on everyones radar by summer 2019.

Sir Karri-

Sir Karri came out of no where with his ep “I Felt A Way” for all his YUNOS and got everyone anticipating an album release. With him working on visuals along with running his own podcast to shed light on local talent and creatives doing their part, Karri has placed himself in the driver seat and now it’s just a waiting game on when he decides to drop the official project.

Kalia-

Kalia songs are honest and relatable whether she's rapping about worrying about others or nascent relationships, she delivers verses in a refreshingly straightforward way, and her presence on instagram is great too with her #KaliaTakeOverTuesdaze . It's still early days, but Kalia's emergence feels like the start of something very special.

ServvvOne-

ServvvOne might be the youngest on this list but do not let that mistake you. The artist/producer has been making waves since 2017 and it looks like it’s finally leading him in the right direction. His soundcloud is full of unlimited waves and his beats alone are crafted in a way where his sound has become a trademark. Lets hope we get another body of work from Servvv in 2019.

Lil Gino-

Artist like Lil Gino can be so versatile that it’s hard to put them in just one category. Hearing his track “Tainted” late last year put him in a different class with vivid imagery and punchlines, it’s fun to imagine what a full length project would sound by the San Diego rapper. Lets hope Gino blesses the streets with an album

Saucalini-

Saucalini easily my favorite San Diego artist and has continued to prove time and time again he’s a star in the making. Many saw signs of this on “Stone Cold Pilots” with Sebby OG but after releasing “Mardi Gras” and “Bluer Pools” a full length Saucalini mixtape is what the streets need

BLEACH-

The minutes I heard his name i knew bruh was dope and i was 100% right. Songs like “Fee” give you the perfect introduction of what to expect from the San Diego rapper. Whether its his gritty vocal tone or his punchlines, Bleach is a name that you should expect to see more of in the music scene in 2019.

DRECAT-

San Diego’s DreCat is one of the most underrated acts and if you haven’t heard “Made In Daygo” you should prolly go listen DreCat displays his versatility and lyrical structure on every song he’s apart of and one rapper who’s all about the bars, no gimmicks! After being nominated for having one of the best albums of 2018, lets hope we’re fortunate enough to get another full length project.

Gang$ta L-

Gang$ta L seemed to be on a hiatus after releasing his “Port Tape” a few years back but apparently that wasn’t the case. In 2018 he emerged and came back with his “Showtime” ep to let others know he’s back on his bullshit. Now with a steady growing fan base and a signature vocal tone, lets see what Logan has mapped out for the rest of 2019.

Khofa | #AuxGod

Khofa is a known name in San Diego and whether it be for actual music, setting up events or selling merch, he’s someone always staying busy. After releasing a few singles in 2018, Khofa has decided to give us his long awaited project titled “Fatherless” and after speaking with him about the project, it won’t be like your typical album. There’s a story and message around the project I believe everyone will enjoy once it’s released.

MemoTheMafioso-

MemoTheMafioso is someone i would not be sleeping on because he is a problem! The San Diego rapper creates music that make you wanna chase a bag and stay the fuck out the way and with him gaining hundreds of streams and views by the day, The ball is in his court on when he decides to give his fans an ep in 2019.

ObnoxiousAssYabbie | #AuxGod

Yabbie is one artist i can say I have never heard anyone sound like before but many have mimicked after. The SEM Gang front man has created his own lingo and delivery making it fun to be a fan because with every release, you learn a bit more of the lingo and appreciate the work ethic that much more. Yabbie has been going stoopid with the visuals so lets anticipate an album is in the works.

Q.Hype-

Since dropping his Cranium Curse project in 2017, Q.Hype has been on a tear releasing singles and visuals making sure he’s one of the artist you name when talking about consistency. Q.Hype marches to the beat of his own drum so don’t expect his music to sound like your ordinary radio hit. He does just about everything and looks to capitalize off that in 2019.

Kevin Watts-

Kevin Watts is on a mission to release one song per for the entire year and with already being on week 14, people are paying attention. Many are waiting to see what happens when he reaches his final week and if a project will follow but regardless, the journey is whats making people gravitate to the rappers content in 2019.

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itsfinancethings · 4 years ago

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After Wayne Fella Morrison’s death in detention in 2016, his sibling Latoya Aroha Rule organized rallies to call for justice for him and the hundreds of other Aboriginal people who have died in custody across Australia.

The circumstances of Morrison’s death drew national attention at the time: He was pinned down by correctional officers. His hands and feet were bound with restraints, a spit-hood was pulled over his head and he was placed face-down in the back of a prison van. When he was taken out, minutes later, he was blue and unresponsive.

About 500 people showed up for a march in Adelaide in October 2016 and 150 supporters turned out to events in Melbourne and Sydney.

But, earlier this month, tens of thousands of took the streets for Black Lives Matter protests in cities across Australia following the killing of George Floyd in the United States. Rule, who uses the pronoun “they,” has been blown away by the response. “Wayne’s name is up on banners in marches of tens of thousands of people. That’s not something I ever thought would be possible. It’s incredible,” they say.

Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, Minn. has sparked protests in solidarity on almost every continent. Some 9,000 miles away in Australia, it is focusing renewed attention on a longstanding problem: the deaths of Aboriginal people in custody.

“A lot of people were not aware of the amount of Aboriginal deaths in custody that were occurring,” says Cheryl Axleby, co-chair of the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Legal Services (NATSILS) and the CEO of the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement in Adelaide.

She tells TIME: “I think it’s sort of ignited a passion in mainstream Australians who are saying, ‘This is not acceptable in our country, and why haven’t we done anything about it?'”

Photo courtesy of Latoya Aroha Rule Latoya Aroha Rule (L) and Wayne Fella Morrison (R)

‘Not getting the results we want’

Aboriginal Australians have faced a legacy of oppression. Mass killings and imported diseases wiped out the majority of the population within years of the British arrival in the late 18th century. Later, they were subject to officially-sanctioned killings and the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families. Members of the so-called Stolen Generation were placed in church missions and other institutions in a bid to assimilate them into white society.

Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday, University of New South Wales professor (UNSW) Don Weatherburn said: “You can’t invade a country, drive the original inhabitants off their land, destroy their way of life, pass on your diseases, herd them into camps or on to islands, forcibly remove their children and expect this to have no long-term adverse effects.”

Today, Aboriginal people die about 8 years earlier and earn about 33% less than other Australians. They are more likely to struggle with mental health issues and to face domestic violence. There is also a high proportion of Aboriginal people in the prison system. In 2019, Indigenous Australians, who account for only about 2 to 3% of Australia’s population, made up 28% of the prison population.

June Oscar, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission, tells TIME that over the last 10 years, there has been an 88% increase in the number of Aboriginal people incarcerated.

Such trends are reflected in the comparatively high number of deaths of Indigenous Australians in custody. At least 437 Aboriginal people died in custody from 2008 to 2020, according to Deaths Inside, a reporting project by Guardian Australia.

An official inquiry into previous deaths in custody made 339 recommendations to address the problem in 1991. A government-ordered review in 2018 found that 78% of the recommendations were fully or mostly implemented. However, many experts say meaningful changes haven’t been made. A group of academics called the report “misleadingly positive” in a letter published at the end of 2018.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on June 12 that reducing the incarceration rate is a complex and difficult task. Official statistics show that more than 60% of Aboriginal people in prison from 1990 to 2004 were there on violent crimes, and 65% of deaths were “self-inflicted.”

“It’s health policy, it’s youth policy, it’s a suicide policy, it’s employment policy, it’s welfare policy—this is an incredibly complicated area and not all Indigenous experiences are the same,” he said. “There is no shortage of funds being thrown at this issue, but clearly the application of funds by governments over decades and decades and decades is not getting the results we want.”

Still, not one person has yet been convicted in the death of an Aboriginal person in custody, although police officers involved in the recent deaths of two Aboriginal people have been charged with murder and are awaiting trial, and a coroner has referred the 2017 death of 55-year-old Tanya Day to prosecutors.

A ‘real potential for change’

Although the issue has been a talking point for Australians for years, the problem appears to be entering the public conversation in a way that it hasn’t in the past. Since the start of June, tens of thousands of people have marched across Australia, in Sydney and Melbourne and in smaller cities like Darwin, Perth and Adelaide.

Those marching have held signs reading “Black Lives Matter” and others with the names of those who have died in custody scrawled on them. One of the deaths highlighted is that of David Dungay Jr., who died in 2015 at the age of 26 after being held down by prison guards as he screamed “I can’t breathe” several times.

“To see 20,000 Australians to show up and rally in solidarity with David Dungay Jr. and George Floyd in the middle of a pandemic is astounding, and for the first time, I sense a real potential for change,” says George Newhouse, the lead lawyer at the National Justice Project, which is working with the Dungay family.

James D. Morgan��Getty Images Thousands of protestors marching in solidarity with “Black Lives Matter” down Castlereagh Street in the CBD in Sydney, Australia on June 06, 2020.

Local media reports that 25,000 Australians donated to a GoFundMe campaign set up for Indigenous rights in the first days June, contributing a combined $1 million.

“I’ve taken too long to open my eyes up on what’s happening in my own backyard,” commented someone who donated to a fundraiser for the Dungay family.

The Prime Minister has sparked criticism for his response to the protests. He said in early June that there was “no need to import things happening in other countries here to Australia,” and he has called for those who protested in violation of COVID-19 social distancing rules to face charges. He also drew widespread criticism when he said during a June 11 interview that Australia had no history of slavery, a claim he later walked back and apologized for.

But there are already some signs that the latest protests is sparking government action. Following protests in Sydney, a parliamentary inquiry into how deaths in custody are investigated in the state of New South Wales was launched.

“It is a really good thing now that Australia has sort of opened its eyes to what’s going on in its own country, but it’s heartbreaking, it takes up to tens of thousands of people protesting for them to acknowledge what we’re going through,” 28-year-old Apryl Day, the daughter of Tanya Day, tells TIME.

The elder Day died from head injuries after being taken off a train for public drunkenness and placed in a cell, where she fell and hit her head. An investigation into her death found that the train conductor’s decision to call the police was “influenced by her Aboriginality.” Prison officers failed to check on her every 30 minutes as per guidelines.

“She should be here today with her family, her grandkids. She deserved so much more than what she received,” Apryl Day says.

Photo courtesy of Charandev Singh Apryl Day (L) and her siblings in 2019

A major shift is needed

Some are cautious about what this moment might mean for Aboriginal rights. “There is a national reflex of denial and deflection of concerns about discrimination,” Tim Soutphommasane, a sociology and political theory professor at the University of Sydney, tells TIME. “Many Australians simply don’t see racism as a problem within our institutions.”

A study released this month by researchers at Australian National University found that three in four Australians have an implicit negative bias against Indigenous Australians.

Actor and writer Meyne Wyatt, whose recent television performance of a monologue about racism in Australia has gained national attention, tells TIME that he had his first encounter with law enforcement when he was just 11 years old. Police stopped him on his way to a skate park.

“We were stopped for no reason other than racial profiling,” Wyatt says. “From that point on, I knew the relationship that I had with police that would be a negative one.”

Meyne Wyatt closes #QandA with a monologue from his play, City of Gold. pic.twitter.com/9ALFIYRAnq

— QandA (@QandA) June 8, 2020

UNSW’s Weatherburn, who is also a former director of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, told TIME that police behavior towards Aboriginal people did need to improve, but a wider set of problems—unemployment, substance abuse, violence, poor school performance and child neglect— also needed to be addressed.

“Everybody is picking the low hanging fruit, the change to police procedure, and that’s important but it’s not going to address the elephant in the room,” he said.

While many of the demands of those fighting for Aboriginal peoples’ rights do call for changes to policing, like accountability for deaths in custody and independent investigations of police abuse allegations, many recognize the need for wider changes. Activists are calling for treatment options (rather than criminal penalties) for drug and alcohol abuse, and are demanding anti-racism programs in schools and workplaces as well as an end to what is seen as a systemic racism that leads to disproportionate incarceration rates. Many also say the age of criminal liability should be raised from 10 to 14 years old to stop Aboriginal children from ending up in jail, which can push them into a lifetime of cycling in and out of the prison system.

Activists say that they hope the Australians now paying renewed attention to their cause will help them to make their voices heard.

“We’ve seen great support from non-Aboriginal people asking what they can do, they’re donating to Aboriginal causes, they’re raising awareness,” says Axleby. “We’re hoping they will take these issues up with their own local politicians and those in power to say that change must occur.”

Some of those fighting for justice say the movement in the U.S. gives them reason for optimism.

Grieving for Morrison, Latoya Rule cites a call for Minneapolis to defund its police department and invest in community development as a major boost. “I got so much hope I cried. That looks like real structural, systemic change, and that’s a moment that I’d love to see here in Australia.”

If you or someone you know may be contemplating suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 or text HOME to 741741 to reach the Crisis Text Line. In emergencies, call 911 or seek care from a local hospital or mental-health provider.

#IFTTT #Blogger

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idunazccarlynqp79insurance-blog · 5 years ago

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Ferrari California Cheap Insurance

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Ferrari California Cheap Insurance

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topmixtrends · 6 years ago

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I REMEMBER THE FRISSON of excitement that rippled through this nation two summers ago as we anticipated the Great American Eclipse. It was ours and ours alone, starting in Oregon and ending in South Carolina. For a few brief minutes we could forget about the hate exploding in Charlottesville and Donald Trump’s “blame-on-both-sides” travesty. The heavens were about to upstage the new president, turn off the lights, and cast our world into a profound, welcome stillness.

But as the skies darkened, traffic jams clogged the roads. Millions tweeted, blogged, broadcast, live-streamed. From a cruise ship, Bonnie Tyler belted out her signature song, “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” to the swaying, bespectacled crowd. Not since 1776 had America been awarded an eclipse all its own, and for one sweet day we were one nation under God, indivisible, heads tilted in awe and anticipation.

It is hard to imagine a celestial symbol better suited to a dramatic tale than a blackened sun. Shakespeare and Milton used it, and so have American writers from Mark Twain to Stephen King. Now add to that list Rachel Barenbaum, who places an eclipse squarely at the center of her ambitious, sweeping debut, A Bend in the Stars. Set in Russia at the beginning of World War I, her novel takes us on a harrowing ride in pursuit of the solar eclipse of 1914.

The significance of these celestial events radiates far beyond science. As the Earl of Gloucester warns in King Lear, “These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good for us.” For some, an eclipse is a sign of the devil; for others, it foreshadows the end of the world. And for one of this novel’s protagonists, Vanya Abramov — a passionate young scientist whose hazardous journey we follow over 450 pages — it holds his future. Through it he hopes to disprove Einstein’s early theories about relativity and to secure a life in the United States, where his family can live safely.

Vanya is convinced that Einstein’s original theory is doubly flawed: it failed to take into account the effects of gravity, and it was based on the assumption that objects move at constant speeds. Early on he tells his skeptical sister, Miri: “Gravity bends space and light. The eclipse will prove it. And that proof, it will change everything.”

Even though he is barely out of his teens, there is something of the mad professor in Vanya — his disheveled appearance, his obsession with equations, his distracted air. His sister points out that his scheme sounds delusional, and the reader is likely to agree. He has no way of getting to the eclipse; he doesn’t have the necessary calculations to disprove Einstein; if he actually witnesses the eclipse, he needs photographs of light bending in order to make his case. And for that last, crucial step, he has to rely on an American scientist who has never heard of him.

As if all this uncertainty weren’t deterrent enough, Vanya also faces a powerful enemy at home, a creepy character named Kir. He is the chair of Vanya’s department at the university, a brooding presence with enormous hands. Kir hovers around Vanya waiting to snatch his latest calculations. Already he has stolen a batch of Vanya’s notes and published them under his own name, to great acclaim. When Vanya protested, Kir whispered, “Remember you’re a Jew.” Antisemitism hangs over this novel as an oppressive, ever-present shadow, embodied in any number of characters eager to destroy the idealistic and daring siblings. Through graphic descriptions, Barenbaum brings into sharp focus the threats and assaults Jews endured under the tsarist regime.

At the beginning of A Bend in the Stars, Miri and Vanya are living with their grandmother, a wise, tough woman who serves as the local matchmaker to the Jewish community of Kovno (present-day Kaunas). She escaped the pogroms of Odessa and now sees signs of the same violent hatred infiltrating this town. She says to her grandchildren: “Death will come, again. They’ll blame us Jews. For war. For starvation. Cold. Haven’t I taught you? Hasn’t the past been loud enough?”

The tsar’s army is rounding up Jewish men to use as fodder in the war. Vanya signs up before they can conscript him. That way, he reasons, he can request a post near where the American scientist is expected to witness the eclipse. Miri thinks her brother has made a deadly mistake, that on the battlefield he’d be lost in his equations and wouldn’t survive. Neither, she thinks, would her handsome fiancé, Yuri, who is a surgeon and Miri’s mentor at the local Jewish hospital. She sees in him a softness that she adores, and she is stunned to learn that he, too, has signed up for the army, and that he vows to accompany her brother on his quixotic quest.

Meanwhile, Miri is reluctant to leave Kovno herself, despite her grandmother’s warnings. Recently she has been promoted from doctor to surgeon — a rare accomplishment for a woman in Russia, and unheard of in this town. Just as this most deeply held wish is realized, her family urges her to leave, and she resists. But within days of Vanya and Yuri’s departure, Miri’s life takes a dramatic turn and she has no choice but to flee and go searching for her brother and fiancé. Accompanying her is Sasha Petrov, a dashing defector from the army whom she rescues and hides in her grandmother’s cellar.

Some elements of this setup seem unnecessarily convoluted, and at times the reader’s patience is strained as Barenbaum reiterates the novel’s premise. But as Miri boards her first train with Sasha and we begin the siblings’ harrowing parallel journeys, Barenbaum tightens the pressure and pace. We are with Miri and Vanya every step of the way, racing across Russia, leaping from train to train, and hurrying through short, tense chapters. Like a constantly ticking clock, the chapters written from Vanya’s point of view begin with a reminder of how many days, how many minutes, how many hours remain until the all-important eclipse. In the chapters written from Miri’s perspective, tension comes from the grueling trials she and Sasha endure to reach her brother and fiancé, and a growing attraction that is unspoken but hard to ignore.

In many ways, A Bend in the Stars reads like a folktale: the young heroes face an arduous journey and a difficult quest; they are brilliant and good-looking and pure of spirit. The villains, of course, are odious and ugly — one is described as having a nose and cheeks “littered with broken blood vessels and pores that looked like gaping holes.” But this is not purely a good-versus-evil adventure. A third of the way through, a wily sailor named Dima appears, and with him, the story gains texture. Dima is rough but endearing, a schemer out to make as much money as he can. If that means double-crossing the “pathetic soldiers,” well, that’s just the cost of doing business. When it seems Dima has betrayed Yuri and Vanya, Yuri takes him for a Jew-hater and asks, “Why does it still have to come down to that — to being Jewish?”

Barenbaum names the five main sections of the novel after months in the Jewish calendar, which itself is based on astronomical phenomena. In so doing, she threads into the novel’s fabric two central themes — what it means to be a Jew in Russia in the early 1900s, and the power of celestial forces. “Life doesn’t travel in a straight line,” we are told early on, and Barenbaum herself bends time and space by bracketing the novel with chapters set in modern-day America, which provide a startling and rewarding denouement.

Some of the novel’s best writing is in descriptions of place, whether it be a horrific hospital scene, a train station coated in coal ash, a city’s bejeweled spires, or a river that “smelled of waste and moved so slowly sticks oozed past like slugs.” Barenbaum embeds the reader in a three-dimensional world of slums, cities, and war-ravaged countryside, far from the gauzy shtetl tableaux one remembers from Fiddler on the Roof. She is equally deft at capturing dramatic events. A tussle in an alley, a long-anticipated kiss, a woman giving birth — in simple phrases, Barenbaum builds toward these moments, lingers on them, and wrings out every particle of suspense. The eclipse itself she handles with straightforward effectiveness:

The last shadows fell over the fruit trees in the orchard. Light came through the leaves in the quarter-moon shape of the eclipse.

A black veil slid over to the house and covered the dacha.

The animals that had been so loud just seconds earlier, stilled.

Day turned to night.

Occasionally, the writing is overly intense, as when a character describes an eclipse as a passionate act, “the kind that makes a woman want to jump into the bath with a man after a sweaty day.” Conversely, at times the writing goes limp. In one instance night is simply described as being “as dark as dark can be.” As the story reaches its conclusion, Barenbaum rushes through events and I found myself wishing she’d slow down and allow the story to breathe. The narrative of Dima the sailor, in particular, gets short shrift and is wrapped up in a summary. But these are minor complaints. The novel offers an epic adventure that spins through rich terrain; several engrossing love stories, including one between remarkable siblings; and a scientific intrigue that pits dark ambition against a passionate love of science.

From my deck in Massachusetts on that August afternoon in 2017, I watched the day turn mildly sullen. Crescent-shaped shadows spilled from the colander that I held in my hands. Even though mine was the slimmest of partial eclipses, I felt its power, and my smallness. Likewise, with the eclipse of 1914 as both backdrop and main event, A Bend in the Stars reveals our collective impotence against the whims of the universe. And yet, the characters Barenbaum brings to life demonstrate resilience in the face of prejudice, steadfastness in the face of defeat, and the ability to love even when the world has cracked with hate.

Jean Hey’s essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Plain Dealer, The Chicago Tribune, and Solstice Magazine. She is currently at work on a novel set in South Africa.

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