#student strike of 1970

[nickysfacts]

To every student who’s protesting at their college or campus across America: don’t stop standing for what is right and you are the ones who are helping to change America for the better!

☮️🇺🇸☮️

[macabre-discotheque]

every now and then i will have a thought about the 70s and then spontaneously combust into a thousand fla[gets dragged away by security]

[amtrak-official]

can i ask you about the 1970s?

Have you ever heard of the Kent State Shooting? Basically in 1970, The Governor of Ohio sent to Ohio National Guard to end anti war student protests over the expansion of the vietnam war into Cambodia which were taking place at Kent State University due to fears that a student strike would lead to violent revolutionaries taking control of the city of Kent and by the 4th day of protests which was may 4th, the protests and tensions had escalated to such a degree that the university and town both decided to shut down the student protests, but when the protests happened anyways the National Guard fired tear gas from a grenade launcher into the crowd and when that didn't dispell the protests, the national guard began to advance on the protestors leading to 10 to 50 of the protestors throwing rocks at the national guard leading to more throwing of tear gas at the crowd. Later due to unknown causes that lead up to it, at least 29 of the 77 the national guard members present shot their 66 rounds into both the protestors and students not involved in the protests who were passing by, injuring 9 students and killing 4.

[drsonnet]

On This Day: Kent State shootings leave 4 students dead!

Four Kent State University students were killed and nine were injured on May 4, 1970, when members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a crowd gathered to protest the Vietnam War. The tragedy was a watershed moment for a nation divided by the conflict in Southeast Asia. In its immediate aftermath, a student-led strike forced the temporary closure of colleges and universities across the country. Some political observers believe the events of that day in northeast Ohio tilted public opinion against the war and may have contributed to the downfall of President Richard Nixon.

Students dive to the ground as the National Guard fires on faculty and students May 4, 1970, to protest the war in Vietnam. File Photo courtesy of Kent State University Archives

The Kent State Shootings

“… Give Peace a Chance (iastate.edu)

On This Day, May 4: Kent State shootings leave 4 students dead - UPI.com

[darkcircles4lyfe]

To Build Something Else

Whenever I read a fanfiction that takes place in the future where the hero kids continue their schooling as normal and emerge as pro heroes into the existing system, I always kinda view it as like, “AU where things weren’t as bad” or “AU where everyone is still pretending that this is the way things should be” or “AU where good and evil are morally uncomplicated.” I’m not trying to call anybody out—I’ll still read and enjoy these sometimes—but that’s how I’ve always looked at it. I’m starting to notice other people feeling it too. I’ve read fics where they point out how redundant and unfair it is to go back to being students after saving the world (remember how many pros straight up quit and left a bunch of kids to keep fighting?). I’ve seen people acknowledge how trauma will affect their ability to keep going. Perhaps the trickiest thing to wrap our heads around is how the villains will fit into it all if not through death, punishment, or imprisonment. What about all the other trappings of society? The heavily regulated quirk use, the government-funded pros aiding police control and contributing to cover-ups that maintain the illusion of peace. Hero idolization, quirk counseling, civilian helplessness. Judging a person’s worth or character based on their quirk…

It would sound too obvious and cheesy to simply point out that society isn’t “just the way things are,” that change is possible. We all know this, and yet we struggle to pinpoint exactly where to aim our sights, find the source, make any meaningful progress. The other day I read some articles from my university’s student newspaper around 1970, and it made me feel sick wondering if progress is really an illusion. Fact is, it’s easy to intellectually deconstruct society, but very difficult to imagine how to build something else.

In this fictional world, heroes have offered a mythical vision of safety and triumph. When All Might arrived, everything was going to be okay. But let’s not forget how this story began: with a moment where All Might paused, like a bystander, and in his place, a desperate civilian kid hurtled forward without any common sense. If you ask me, it wasn’t that Izuku was so good and pure and selfless, it was that he disregarded everything.

And so the person who “saves the world” (if we can even reduce it to such a concept) is not the person who puts everyone at ease and makes crowds cheer. It’s the person who makes everyone hold their breath, with a feeling in the air like the pressure changed, and it smells like rain. It is natural to be worried about the future. It’s honest. It means you can see what’s really going on. Hero society has never felt this exposed, but the people are held back from the edge of despair because there is also so much potential brewing. Electricity about to strike. The world will NOT go back to the way it was, no matter what. That much is certain. But what if we still live to see the dawn? What then? What if one person’s courage to break the mold makes all the difference?

I’m not just talking about Izuku, you know. I’m talking about Horikoshi.

To an extent, I’ve given up on predicting how exactly things will play out, because if nothing else, I can tell he’s planning something big—so big, I can’t quite picture it. I’m watching and waiting for the one person who can. I just know where he’s coming from. I think about how he’s never come this far before because his other stories were snuffed out. I know he used to struggle to see the future of his career. I relate to his stubbornly rebellious resolve to do what he wants anyway. To keep dreaming. I know that emotional sincerity is his specialty. And now he’s even directly breaking the fourth wall, having characters talk about what’s supposed to happen in comic books. Gradually, almost imperceptibly at first, we’ve been shown how something else can happen. He’s not done yet.

[rhapsodynew]

"Immigrant Song" was written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant during the band's European tour, which opened with a concert in Reykjavik. About the origins of his inspiration, Plant said the following:

There was nothing pompous about it. We really came from the "land of ice and snow". We were guests of the Icelandic government, as part of a cultural mission. We were invited to perform in Reykjavik, but the day before our arrival, all government employees of the country went on strike, which put the concert in danger of disruption.

The City University prepared a concert hall for our performance, it was phenomenal. The reaction of the audience was amazing, we had a lot of fun. "Immigrant Song" was written about this trip: it became the first track of the album, which was supposed to be radically different from the previous ones.

6 days after the performance in Reykjavik, Led Zeppelin performed the Immigrant Song for the first time on the stage of the Bat Festival.

The Immigrant Song was performed in the film "School of Rock" with Jack Black. Getting permission from Led Zeppelin to use it was not easy. Black videotaped himself singing in front of a huge crowd and begged the band to let him play their song in the film. It worked! The track is played in a scene where Black's character is driving in a car with his students, an Immigrant Song is playing on the radio, and he starts singing along.

In an interview included on the official DVD, Black says, "The moral of this story is that sometimes you have to put aside pride and beg."

Led Zeppelin opened all concerts with this song between 1970 and 1972.

[mybeingthere]

Franca Sonnino, Italian, b 1932.

A slightly awkwardly gallery-translated text: "Born on February 13, 1932 from a family of Jewish origins, Franca Coen, married Sonnino, grew up and still lives in Rome. After graduating in Literature, she devoted herself with love to her family, her artist’s hands weave the first threads to create sweaters and scarves for her children, home furnishings, and blankets for their nest.

It is the early 1970s, Franca’s children are still small, and on the floor below their apartment, located in the Balduina area, lives a small and lively Sardinian woman: the artist Maria Lai. A mutual fascination immediately arises between the two women, the world that Maria Lai brings with her captures the attention of the young housewife. From time to time she brings her the fabrics for her works (Franca’s husband works in the textile sector), but sometimes she brings her the dinner that Maria, immersed in her work, forgets to prepare. These were years of intense work for Maria Lai, who saw numerous students and young artists enter and leave her house-atelier, willing to learn her art. But what strikes Maria in the density of people that surrounds her is precisely that discreet neighbor with lively and curious eyes, and above all with very skilled hands. In their time together, which they both seek more and more often, the two women cultivate their bond through long discussions and readings. Franca observes Maria’s work and creation, while the latter urges her with one of her most emblematic phrases: “use your hands to create useless things, do not make useful objects anymore”. Read more https://www.repettogallery.com/artist/franca-sonnino/

"Thread, Sign, Space" curated by Simona Campus, Paolo Cortese.

Exhibition 15.10.2022-12.01.2023.

https://www.grammaepsilon.com/artists/franca-coen-sonnino...

[dbtucson-blog]

It has been hot. Not June hot when it’s like a very dry oven, but monsoon hot. Small humidity when you’re from other parts of the country but stifling combined with the heat. 

The heat is what pumps the monsoon moisture our way and for the bulk of the entire summer we have had much higher than normal monsoonal moisture to deal with. Typically it will rain for a few days to a week or two, then dry out for a few days and back into it. This year it has been relentlessly sticky. And when the humidity is high our temperatures don’t drop at night like they do when it’s dry. For weeks we were lucky if the nighttime low fell below 80.

At 71 years old, Tumamoc Time is an important part of my life. It gets me back in shape when I fall ill or suffer a physical injury. In shape or not it inspires me day or night with a front row “seat” to the beauty of the desert and the changes of the land, plants, animals and sky over the course of the day, and the year.

People ask, “When do you go up Tumamoc.” I say, “When it’s closest to 70 degrees.” Lately the closest has been still above 80 and sweaty so my trips to the hill have been fewer. But when I get back I can feel the change almost immediately, even if it takes me a month or more to make it to the top again. And I AM back on the hill, albeit in the dead of night.

Yesterday felt like June for the first time since May. And the continually damp weather has stalled a desert mission I’ve been trying to get done, well, since June I guess. 

I’ve been working on a ten-year project with performance artist Laura Milkins called The Forty Seasons. Each season we do an environmental portrait somewhere in southern Arizona. Logistically it’s stressful but it’s always so much fun when it’s happening. We might have an idea going into it that goes straight out the window once we get to the location. Laura is a superb improvisor who finds grand and intimate things to do in a landscape. Occasionally I manage to keep up. My work mainly comes later.

In the spring we ended up improvising both the location and the rest, and as typically takes place, a half dozen or so distinct improvisational segments  took place that were worth editing. Without spoiling it, one involved a particular saguaro that just happened to be where we decided to start shooting. And what happened was spontaneous and beautiful. Just shot at the wrong time of day. Still, it gave me an idea for our next shoot. And so I went back to see if I could find one saguaro in a forest of them.

Cut to the chase, I did not.

Yet.

In the northern part of the Ironwood National Forest is a striking mountain range that almost looks like the back of a Stegosaurus. I used to see this armor plated, jagged hunk of rock from Avra Valley in the 1970s when I was a geology student at UA doing field work for a geomorphology and remote sensing class. About seven years ago I figured out how to get there. And on average I’ve been back about once a week wherever possible ever since. There’s a lot to take it and it looks so different from various locations on the stretch of dirt road that runs alongside. A tiny bit of elevation shows you what a forest of saguaros this is. But there’s so much more.

In the past couple of years I’ve started to notice the ripple of ridges that parallels its length, each rise growing higher and higher as you approach the mountain from the road. The crests are  only 100 feet or so high, but that’s 100 feet higher than the one before. So you’re climbing constantly, trying to avoid cholla and prairie dog holes and rattlesnakes and the critters that are watching you that you likely will have no awareness of unless the wind shifts and you catch their scent. 

Naturally this was the backdrop to my needle in the haystack quest. And it was around 100 degrees when I headed there in the late afternoon, also seeking to know when the shadow of the mountain would overtake that saguaro. So I was working against the clock, and all common sense.

Going into today’s attempt I knew where I had parked and had a GPS anchor to take me there. I knew that we had started walking straight in from the road toward the mountain. Things were fairly familiar at the start because I’ve worked from this parking spot before. But the further out you get, the more uncertainty there is about how far off to the north or south you might have traveled. That was the challenge.

And then there was the actual experience.

I love the last couple of hours of the day in the desert, particularly toward the end of summer. It’s less intense than at the solstice but still beautiful in the way it touches the highest parts of the landscape at different times and changes your whole perception of where you are. 

As it turns out, that section of the desert floor wasn’t shaded by the mountain this time of year at all. Good to know for a future dusk shoot. Yes, I could look this up in the Photographer’s Ephemeris but there’s no substitute for using your own eyeballs to watch the transition into dusk and darkness.

My job was to find the saguaro and see how things looked when shadows started to engulf that section of landscape. But I was carrying an actual camera and a phone with a good camera, and I did need to stop to wheeze now and then. The shots I took are not the best. More of a quick snapshot thing rather than a seriously composed shot. But weak as they are they carry a little bit of the beauty of the rapidly changing light in the desert in early September, in a year when the desert has been made “lush” with above average rain.

Looking forward to expanding my search. Patience and endurance are the secret superpowers of the elderly. 

[aaknopf]

A multi-generational saga courses across the pages of Ædnan, by Sámi-Swedish author Linnea Axelsson, translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel. The verse epic follows an Indigenous Sámi family who have herded reindeer for generations, as the forces of colonialism and modern development of their ancestral lands threaten their culture and livelihood. The story is told by a small chorus of characters from the 1910s through the current day, and we become especially close to Lise, who left her Sámi family, following her brother Jon-Henrik, to be educated at a residential school for “Nomad” children. This excerpt from Chapter XII takes place in the early 1970s, along the Great Lule River Valley, where the state-owned Vattenfall company was developing hydroelectric resources, and Lise is graduating into a world unimaginable to her parents.

. .

The river climbed silently up the hills

as soon as Vattenfall whistled it came creeping:

–

Streamed backwards up its deep channel and drowned the earth

When the great Suorva Dam for the third time was to be regulated

–

Entreaty

shone from Mama’s eyes

–

She explained clearly to the Swedes 

that the fishing will suffer if the water rises

–

There was probably no one who understood what she was saying

– –

After the social studies lesson I went with the others to sit on the gymnasium floor

–

Almost all of Malmberget’s students had been dismissed from class

– To participate in the miners’ strike meeting

 –

Someone had heard that Olof Palme was coming

that he would travel all the way up here 

–

To the mining company’s and Vattenfall’s world the one that he himself had helped build

–

It is what he is guarding

It is all that he can see

–

The mine boss’s voice

flowed wildly above the crowded hall which was hot with bodies

–

His voice was so robust his conviction so intense

–

I glanced at Anne who was sitting beside me leaning against the wall bars

and she smiled back at me

–

Soon we would be leaving school too 

–

And could start working join the union

–

You took the job you wanted that’s all there was to it 

– 

Switchboard cleaner or cook

with the old folks at the Pioneer or the children in day care

– –

I spend the weekend up at Mama and Papa’s 

–

I stand with Jon-Henrik

 –

Watching the river flow murky across the slope

–

That brushy slope

where he and I used to go it’s underwater now

 –

How are our tracks ever to be heard Among the Swedes’ roads and power stations

–

It’s Jon-Henrik who says this he had also been drawn down to the dam

–

To work for Vattenfall as soon as school was done

 –

I’m surprised when he says

That he’d preferred to have taken up with the reindeer

–

Been elected into the Sámi community

And learned to guide that wandering gray soft ocean across the world of the fells

–

Just as the lot of us were once taught at the Nomad School that this is what the Sámi do

that this is how we all live

–

He laughs and says:

–

Who knows what the spring flood will bring with it

this drowned  earth may yet be fertile

More on this book and author:

Learn more about Ædnan by Linnea Axelsson.

Check out The Rumpus for a conversation between Linnea Axelsson and Susan Devan Harness about Axelsson's Sámi heritage and the decision to write Ædnan in verse. 

Click here to read Linnea Axelsson's op-ed piece for LitHub on Scandinavia’s hidden history of Indigenous oppression.

Visit our Tumblr to peruse poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series.

To share the poem-a-day experience with friends, pass along this link.

[justforbooks]

Alexander Knaifel

Russian composer whose sparse musical landscapes create a spiritual ambience of meditative calm

Alexander Knaifel, who has died aged 80, did not set out to be a composer. As a student in the 1960s, he studied the cello with Mstislav Rostropovich until injury intervened. Then he redirected his energies towards composition, at a time when the Khrushchev thaw could accommodate the musical modernism of the Soviet Union’s second avant-garde period (the first having come in the years around the 1917 revolution).

But the cello retained a significant role in Knaifel’s output. Rostropovich went on to commission and premiere three religious works that reflected both Knaifel’s adoption of Russian Orthodox Christianity around 1970 and his conviction, which appealed to Rostropovich, that experience can be heightened by performers thinking – “silently intoning” – a text as they playe the music.

Chapter Eight – Canticum Canticorum (The Song of Songs, 1993), a work “for church, choirs and cello”, unfolds slowly over the course of an hour. With three a cappella choirs adopting a cross formation in Washington National Cathedral in the US, the premiere was recorded for the Teldec label and released under the title Make Me Drunk With Your Kisses (1995).

The Fiftieth Psalm (1995) is for solo cello. Psalm 50 in the Orthodox numbering is Psalm 51 in the west: Miserere/Have Mercy. With his concern for “playing as if singing”, Knaifel felt that “only Rostropovich could articulate this text”, and his recording of it was released on the ECM label in 2005.

Blazhenstva (1996) is a meditation on the Beatitudes, Jesus Christ’s sermon on the mount. Rostropovich’s last cello student, Ivan Monighetti, later recorded it with Knaifel’s wife, Tatiana Melentieva, as the soprano soloist with the State Hermitage Orchestra from St Petersburg for another ECM release.

That 2008 recording also features Monighetti playing a piece in the modernist style that preceded Knaifel’s more ethereal approach, his Lamento for Solo Cello (1967, revised 1986). Built upon serialist tone rows, and with a striking approach to timbre and performance techniques, it is also highly expressive.

From the same period came his Monody for Female Voice (1968), again written in a modernist style, with modal phrases juxtaposed with glissandi descending in quarter-tones and wide intervals. Premiered by Melentieva, it was written with her crystal-clear tone and extensive vocal range in mind.

Knaifel first made his mark with the opera The Canterville Ghost, given a semi-staged student production in 1966, at the end of his studies at the Leningrad Conservatory. Based upon the humorous ghost story by Oscar Wilde, it was taken up by the Kirov Orchestra under Alexander Gauk in Leningrad in 1974 and the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Gennady Rozhdestvensky in London in 1980. A 1990 recording with Michail Jurowski directing the Moscow Forum Theatre, reissued on Brilliant Classics in 2012, brings out the young composer’s confident delivery of musical humour and mastery of orchestration.

In Knaifel’s more ascetic and contemplative works, solo lines and single sustained pitches are spun out over long durations – sometimes over the course of two hours – almost to the point of stasis. In the more minimalist language of what he called his “quiet giants”, he was ahead, among Soviet composers, of either Giya Kancheli or Arvo Pärt, in presenting pared-down content that is rich in spiritual ambience. There is no obvious parallel to Knaifel’s music in the west, although it bears some similarity in style to that of the American composer Morton Feldman.

Of two large-scale works from the 1970s, Knaifel said: “In Jeanne, I discovered the number, in Nika, the word.” He reworked a Joan of Arc ballet into Jeanne, Passion for 13 Instrumental Groups (1978), a work of extreme asceticism drawing on the principle that the universe is built on numbers and proportions with rational and symbolic power, while Nika, 72 Fragments for 17 Performers on Bass Instruments (1974), was the first of his works to use unspoken texts.

Agnus Dei for Four Instrumentalists A Cappella (1985), with a characteristically paradoxical title, is powerful in impact given its sparse musical landscape and the sense of meditation that this creates. It utilises a wide range of literary examples, ranging from the liturgical to quotations from the diary of a young girl, Tanya Savicheva, who died during the siege of Leningrad.

These texts, printed in the score as well as in the audience’s programme notes, are never heard in performance, with the musicians being instructed to “think the text” as they play. Knaifel maintained that the word does not needed to be explicitly stated for the work’s spiritual intention to be understood.

His compositions of the 1990s and beyond increasingly displayed a religious aesthetic and an even more ascetic musical language. Texts both secular and sacred were present, but, in line with the Gnostic tradition, Knaifel asserted that “truth” must be hidden and revealed gradually to the listener in order for it to have validity.

This approach found its fullest and most original expression in In Air Clear and Unseen (1994), for texts by Fyodor Tyutchev, piano and string quartet, with its extremes of register, periods of silence, silent intonation, religious symbolism and virtuosic performance techniques. A recording by the pianist Oleg Malov and the Keller Quartet was released on ECM in 2002.

Knaifel’s opera Alice in Wonderland, premiered in Amsterdam in 2001 with a cast including the baritone Roderick Williams, has a libretto based upon Lewis Carroll’s narrative. But the text is rarely sung, instead being either mimed, or even in a few instances, coded visually, through coloured lights playing on a backdrop on stage.

Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Alexander was the son of Russian-Jewish parents: his father, Aron Knaifel, a violinist, and his mother, Muza Shapiro, a music theory teacher, had been evacuated from Leningrad at the time of the siege. From the Leningrad Central Music School (1950-61) he went on to the Moscow Conservatory, where his cello studies under Rostropovich were ended by a nerve inflammation in his left hand. At the Leningrad Conservatory (1963-67) he studied composition with Boris Aparov, a student of Shostakovich.

In 1979, Knaifel was blacklisted by the Soviet authorities as one of the “Khrennikov Seven”, including Edison Denisov and Sofia Gubaidulina, following the premiere in Cologne of his improvised piece A Prima Vista (1972), attracting the ire of Tikhon Khrennikov, leader of the Union of Composers of the USSR.

Knaifel turned his attention to writing film scores, written in a more conventional idiom. There were 40 in all, including those written for his frequent collaborator, the Russian director Semyon Aranovich.

Working with the composer on preparing a number of written texts for publication led me to appreciate his childlike sense of wonder alongside his warmth and playful sense of humour. This sense of a child’s world was apparent in both the Alice opera and its predecessor, the surrealist song cycle A Silly Horse (1981), of which a recording by Melentieva and Malov was reissued on the Megadisc label in 1997.

Knaifel married Melentieva in 1965. She survives him, along with a daughter and a grandson. 

🔔 Alexander Aronovich Knaifel, composer, born 28 November 1943; died 27 June 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[theoutcastrogue]

Prison Paintings by Gülsün Karamustafa

"Prison Paintings is a series of fifteen paintings in acrylic on paper made by the Turkish artist Gülsün Karamustafa between 1972 and 1978. The works present an emotive sequence of images showing women of all ages in prison settings. They are painted in bright bold colours in a quasi-naïve style. The sombre subject matter draws on the artist’s personal experience of being incarcerated in Turkey in the early 1970s. The Prison Paintings were painted from memory, after the artist had been released from an institution intended for female prisoners serving life sentences. The paintings depict intimate and private moments in the lives of the women prisoners and reflect Karamustafa’s personal observations of daily life in prison. With scenes of inmates sleeping, playing cards or cooking, and portraits of others behind bars or shown in head shots with their prison numbers writ large across their chests, Prison Paintings can be seen as a response to the climate of political repression in Turkey during the 1970s." [Tate]

Context

"Problems occurred as a result of the politics of the nineteenth government and the Americanization of the 1950s in postwar Turkey. This led to the sociological and political confusion of the 1960s, as influenced by the leftist movements in May 1968. The country went through a significant change: besides the student clashes between right and left wing groups, economic problems led to large-scale migration from small villages to bigger cities, creating a hybrid city culture. Despite the traumatic effects of the 1960 and 1971 military coups, the leftist youth of the 1970s dreamed of a better future. In such a chaotic environment, Karamustafa was jailed for six months for concealing a political fugitive soon after her graduation from Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul in 1969. The series Prison Paintings (1972) depict those years of imprisonment: women in vibrant reds, oranges, purples and blues are depicted sleeping in the prison dormitory, or waiting in line to get a bowl of soup. The video Making of The Wall (2003) documents some of the imprisoned women, recalling the days of torture and hunger strikes they experienced. The trauma is alleviated, yet certain memories remain present." [Ibraaz]

[mothy-chan]

Many people started talking about their au based on the future diary, and I just have an idea that I’ve been working on for a long time.

Ahem.

This is future diary X Glitchtale (undertale fan au).

Here our characters will find themselves in a new fantasy world with monsters. Some characters will even... Become monsters. In any case, I'll tell you everything now...

Meropos is the content on which all events take place. A fictional corner of the world.

People here draw magic from the main trait of their character, which manifests itself in the soul.

People share life on the lands of Meropos with monsters. Creatures of various types and colors. And their relationship is very strained.

Now it's 1960-1970. A war with two countries ruled by monsters and half-breeds of humans and monsters.

In general, this au is also a glitch fan au, and there is a lot of lore that I need to explain, and it will be complete fucked up, so I will show my boys in general terms.

(Yes, here au in au and au drives.)

Yukiteru. Distinctive feature: patience. (one of the key features is the soul, which gives magic based on the most striking character trait).

A boy who spent several years in siege. His parents were killed, he lived in devastation and constant danger. There was no place to even steal food; he ate bread made from grass and earth, and collected water from an ice hole. He even had to run away from people who were so mad with hunger that they decided to eat the unfortunate boy instead of bread and land.

He was lucky to leave this city by boat, he was transported to the capital, where he was not only assigned to work, but also placed under the care of Keigo.

Yukiteru had to not only be force-fed, but also taught to live first. The boy was quiet and melancholic, Keigo's tutelage did not make it any better, since the man treated his pupils more like soldiers: Yuki began to show more aggression, but at least he had other guys who could calm him down, hug him and feel sorry for him.

Yuno. No distinctive feature.

Just a sweet, good girl. She was adopted by a wealthy family, and Yuno responded by becoming an almost perfect daughter. Smart, beautiful, loved by the residents of her city. She has no problems with her head, is doing well at school, and has also started a career as a singer. In her repertoire you can find patriotic songs.

One day went to a party at John’s house (father brought her), after which she became friends with the old man and even began to come to his parties from time to time to dance and sing with him. They get along well, despite the age difference.

Takao Hiyama. Distinctive feature: Bravery.

He was a teacher, but he was forcibly taken into the army as an officer.

Despite his incredibly menacing appearance (almost 230 centimeters tall, a large and stern man), he was very affectionate and kind to his students, and in particular he got along well with girls.

Takao is a herbalist and cook, knows how to brew tea, alcohol and other medicinal infusions, gets along well with monsters, is not afraid of and is accepted.

So strong that he can tear a lion to pieces with his bare hands and overcome a bear, but does not attack animals unless necessary or unless in a fit of rage.

Has a bear friend in the forest, whom he feeds with berries and mushrooms. In principle, he gets along well with animals.

He was Naoka's teacher a long time ago, and from that time on he developed an unhealthy attachment to her.

There is a luxurious garden around Takao's house.

Takao hates Keigo for daring to steal his love, but Keigo doesn't feel the same hatred for Takao. Dislike, and Keigo also likes to tease the redhead.

Keigo Kurusu. Distinctive feature: justice.

Field Marshal. A stern, mysterious military man who inspires fear among his people.

Keigo's only relative is his mother, Irena, who killed her own husband when he beat his son for a stolen toy, after which he gave the boy to another person to raise.

Keigo, like Karyudo and John, is under a curse: not only will he live too long, but he also does not need sleep and food, which is why he has mental problems.

Hates being touched. Constantly washes his hands. Naoka had to try very hard to get him to accept her and agree to take her hand. When she succeeded, the man could no longer live without her touch.

Keigo was on good terms with John and gets along with Tsubaki. He considered them to be his mom and dad, as they helped him a lot in childhood.

Keigo has many children that he adopted, and some of them became orphans due to him killing their parents (most often because they were oppositionists or spies working for the enemy).

He is strict and harsh towards them, but they have more or less good relations, especially among all the adopted children he loves Masumi, who respects his mentor.

Affectionately calls Minene "Nuna".

He is proficient with firearms and good at strategizing. Thanks to the magic of his trait, he can shoot homing bullets.

Tsubaki Kasugano.

A monster with small and large snakes on its head instead of hair. Because of them, she has no eyes, but she does not need her own, since she sees through the small reptiles on her head. She lived a long time, Irena's old friend, and has a slight dislike for people.

Her cult exists as a refuge for broken monsters. She took the blind Yomotsu and his monster friend there, as well as many other victims of the war.

She appears to be a calm and collected young lady. She is quite caring, as Keigo has become very attached to her and even considers her to be his mother.

Karyudo Tsukishima. Distinctive feature: patience.

Scientist, pharmacist. In fact, started working in this field to earn a lot and provide himself with a dream life in old age. Closer to 20, John noticed his success and invited him to work together. They conducted many experiments, terrible and unpleasant, and Karudo made a lot of money from it. Despite his callous and slightly stern nature, the rest of the time he appears as a wonderful, humorous grandfather who is simply having fun. He often comes up with unusual competitions or skits. He got along very well with Takao and more often sticks to him outside of work, invites him to the theater and helps him get a job as a tutor at school so that he can again feel the joy of working as a teacher.

Obsessed with dogs. So much so that he turned his only daughter, Hinata, into a hybrid of a dog-human monster, depriving her of reason and the right to further life, since her body was mutilated.

John Bacchus.

His body itself is human, but he has a curse that makes him look like a monster to people (this does not apply to the monsters themselves or Keigo). He is calm and collected, sometimes arrogant and very sarcastic. Reasonable, but honest and very affectionate with some people he likes.

He treats Yuno warmly, sends Tsubaki medicine and food, and treats his employees well. The only problem is that he is waging a war against people and this includes all the concentration camps and ghettos.

He was close to Irena and also treats Keigo with warmth. For some time in childhood, he looked after him and acted as a substitute father for him. For Keigo, he became a real father, but John, at an older and more conscious age, began to show sympathy for his pupil in a romantic way.

He can drink a whole barrel of wine without harming himself.

Yomotsu Hirasaka. No distinctive feature.

A blind boy who was abandoned by his mother and found by another family of monsters. They took pity on the child and took him with them. Their son became Yomotsu's good friend. At some point, he joined Tsubaki's cult and became her faithful assistant. He is the caretaker of the mountain, thanks to his hearing and intelligence, as well as the help of his followers and friend, he guards it very well.

Minene Uryu.

During the capture of the city, her parents were killed, but Minene survived and was among those unlucky enough to go to the concentration camp where Karyudo worked. He chose her for his experiment to create a monster-human hybrid. The experiment was to merge the soul of both types into one (not only magic is concentrated in the soul, but also the personality, character, and mind of a person, and the monster’s body is added to all this, since after the soul breaks, the monster’s body crumbles into dust). Minene was turned into a fish monster, and her consciousness began to burn, since two personalities were fused in one soul. Minene almost went crazy; fortunately, the concentration camp was quickly liberated by soldiers who walked under the command of Keigo. They took Minene home with them, but she felt so bad that on the way she managed to wound several of her saviors.

She was locked in a cell, Naoka was assigned to her as a doctor and warden. While the higher ranks were deciding what to do with the fish girl, Naoka managed to become imbued with the fate of Minene and persuaded Keigo to take the child under her care.

Minene has become brighter and cheerful, she can often quarrel with Keigo, but she is still grateful to him for saving her. Naoka is like a mother to her, and she is very happy when she comes to visit her.

Nishijima Masumi. Distinctive feature: bravery and kindness.

An ordinary boy living in the capital and studying at school not only science, but also his magic. Studied very well. He had some problems with this, since he could not come up with a spell that would combine the magic of two traits, but the teachers decided to help him by calling Keigo. While the two of them were training, Masumi managed to become attached to the teacher, and Keigo liked him too.

His parents were killed the day after Masumi's birthday. The teacher took pity on him and took him under his wing. They communicated well with each other, he began to consider Keigo a father.

From the orphanage he became best friends with Minene, although they constantly quarreled and could fight.

He is kind and brave, tries to be fair, but often rushes ahead. Became chief of police when he grew up.

His body is very warm, so he will keep you warm in winter (unlike the body of John, Minene, Keigo, Ryuji and Tsubaki. Possibly Irena).

Ryuji Kurosaki.

A bullfinch monster who became a man. He is cunning and cheerful, he cares very much about his boss, because he is afraid that he might be killed. There are many feathers left on his body, and his cheeks are unnaturally red, and his fingers are long and black. He often keeps an eye on all the employees who work near John to make sure they don't do anything wrong.

Naoka Kurusu. Distinctive feature: persistence.

A plague doctor, most often working as a pathologist or at the front, helping the sick. In principle, a kind woman with a touch of dark humor and a love of alcohol. By herself, she’s already gotten used to all the crap that’s going on around her, so she doesn’t care anymore. not scary.

Wears a doctor's coat style coat and a plague doctor mask, although her trait's magic allows her to walk through an area contaminated by any poison without taking damage. She is also immune to poisons and has tried arsenic and liked it.

Unlike Keigo, she is very nice to children, although they are afraid of her, because she works in a very specific field, and often tells stories that are not the most pleasant to hear.

Her plague doctor mask contains a canned crow monster whose voice she can hear. She communicates with him and they take care of each other together.

Due to the fact that Naoka wears a mask, she herself began to mutate and resemble a crow: she has black feathers all over her torso, paws instead of feet, and the woman also began to be drawn to carrion. She often caught herself wanting to eat the rotten body of some animal (Ryuji, unlike her, constantly eats rowan berries or fruits with nuts).

Takao was her teacher and friend, but she did not know about his love for her.

Mao, Hinata and Kosaka. There is no distinctive feature.

Ordinary children, Yuno's best friends at school, often go for walks with her. After Hinata disappeared, Mao tried for a long time to find out where, until she heard rumors of what Karyudo had done to her daughter.

Kosaka often appears as a protector not only of Yuno, but also of Mao. During the war, he helps Mao and the distraught Hinata escape.

Kosaka himself wanted to join the army and was accepted, but unfortunately he died at the front.

Irena.

Keigo's mother and wife of the nameless thief. For a long time, she was a mother to Keigo, and a quiet and meek woman to those around her, until one day she suddenly killed her own husband. Then she showed herself to be cruel and very aggressive.

She had a strong connection with John, they may have been friends, but now she told him to go to hell.

That's all for now. Yes, to a greater extent this universe is devoted to military themes (the entire order, in principle, is based on the war between people and monsters, the non-acceptance of the two species).

There’s still a lot of lore left behind, which I’ve skipped for now because I’m tired of writing a post of 1,172,672 words. If you are interested, please clarify, plus it uses the canons of two universes and my own developments.

HAVE A GOOD DAY BRO 🩷🩷🩷

[xtruss]

Study Finds 99% of Pro-Palestine 🇵🇸 🇵🇸 Protests At US Universities Are Peaceful

Data from ACLED, leading source of realtime data on political violence and protest activity across the globe, belies claims of Biden and Trump that Student Spring movement — campus protests against Israel's war on Gaza — is violent.

Police have arrested around 200 protesters from the anti-war encampment at UCLA, with the campus police restricting access to the area, and police helicopters hovering overhead. Photo: Reuters

A new report has found that 99 percent of pro-Palestine protests at US colleges have been peaceful, despite remarks from President Joe Biden characterising such demonstrations as violent and ex-American leader Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans supporting police crackdown on students and scholars.

"While some notable violent clashes have recently taken place, such as on the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus, where demonstrators and counter-demonstrators fought at a student encampment overnight on 30 April, the overwhelming majority of student protests since October — 99% — have remained peaceful," data from Armed Conflict Location & Event Data [ACLED] revealed.

ACLED report showed that student-led pro-Palestine demonstrations in the US — dubbed "Student Spring" - have almost tripled from April 1 to 26, surpassing the total for the entire month of March 2024. "The arrest of more than 100 students at Columbia University in New York around 18 April heralded a new wave of campus demonstrations," said ACLED, a credible source of real-time data on political violence and protest activity around the World.

A graduate student from the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design at George Washington University, who chose to remain anonymous because of the fear of getting suspended, told TRT World that anti-war protests on the campus were characterised by peaceful demonstrations.

"We received support from the faculty during these moments, which shows the sense of solidarity and encouragement within the academic community that includes students and staff at GWU".

Columbia University has announced that all classes at its main campus will be hybrid until the end of the spring semester.

The burgeoning wave of student protests against Israel's brutal war in Gaza sweeping across top university campuses throughout the US stands as an echo of the anti-Vietnam War movement that indelibly shaped the spirited and often polarising discourse in the nation during the latter half of 1960s and early 1970s.

The ongoing demonstrations not only reflect the deep-seated discontent surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict in the US civil society and youth, but also serve as a potent precursor to the collective efforts that ultimately brought an end to the Vietnam War.

Divestment From Entities Supporting Isra-hell

ACLED data is a trusted resource for development, humanitarian, and policy organisations worldwide, including the UN and is used by governments globally, including the US, UK, Canada, Europe, Australia.

Since April 18, over 2,300 students and faculty have been arrested on college and university grounds amidst a surge of pro-Palestine protests sweeping across the US.

While protesters' demands vary, a common theme has emerged: urging colleges and universities to divest from entities supporting Israel because of Tel Aviv's role in the widespread killing and mayhem in Gaza, which some experts believe has already assumed genocidal proportions.

Students Strike First Victories

The wave of student protests has extended beyond the US, reaching other countries as well including France, Germany, Canada, Mexico, Australia and many Middle East countries.

Protesters in some universities struck initial victories and ceased their demonstrations after school leaders made deals with them.

The agreements at schools including Brown, Northwestern and Rutgers stand out amidst the chaotic scenes and 2,400-plus arrests on 46 campuses across the nation since April 17.

Deals included commitments by universities to review their investments in Israel or with firms linked to Tel Aviv's war on besieged Gaza, where Tel Aviv, according to Palestinian data, has killed at least 34,622 Palestinians - 70 percent of them babies, children and women - and wounded over 77,867 while some 10,000+ are feared buried under debris of annihilated buildings.

[toastofthetrashfire]

Shadow Meta Series Post #5: Anurak and Trin, Trauma and Power

I'd planned for the next piece in this series to be about the Asian horror boom and technology, but I ran out of time before part 2 aired and then took a break for end of the year festivities. So I'll be pushing that one back to talk about Anurak and Trin once again. This post is part of my ongoing Shadow meta series on technology, time, and horror. I touch in previous posts on both Anurak and Trin, and I'll be picking up, adjusting, and further developing some of those threads here.

We'll be looking at the relationship the show is drawing between trauma and power through Anurak and Trin, starting in 1976 and moving to 1998/9.

I want to start with Anurak. In my post on Anurak and technology, I put forth the theory that Anurak is a queer man who was traumatized (going on the one-armed man theory, which turned out to be true, congrats once again @wen-kexing-apologist), and that he now serves the system out of fear. I was kind of right. Just off in terms of the catalyst and how much him explicitly being queer would factor into that (okay I was a lot off on that).

So let's begin by looking at Anurak through the lens of trauma and power with the full story in mind. I don't want to waste too much time covering what Anurak went through, since it really stands for itself.

But I do want to begin in...

Anurak's office 1976 

During the violence of Red October, Anurak tries to protect the college students, but his ability to do so is undermined through technology when his desk is bugged. I don't know much about bugging technology, but given that it's used by the military, I have to imagine that it was cutting edge for the time. In my previous post on Anurak, I noted how he surrounds himself by technology from the 1970s or earlier (okay I said 1979 specifically, but I imagine the show runners just said pre-1980s and called it a day). It marks the way he has become stuck in the past, and with the bug, we can see how technology became a trauma point stopping him from moving forward.

Anurak's Office: 1999 to 1976

While the future Anurak (1998/9) is stuck in the past, he is also trying to suppress this past at the same time. This becomes apparent in a lot of ways, but is perhaps most striking to me in this scene in episode 12:

Anurak confronts Dan and Josh over the weed found in their room, and the scene eventually culminates with Dan setting Anurak on fire and discovering he's the one-armed man.

But what is particularly notable to me is that this is really the first time we see this part of Anurak's office, including the cabinets on the wall.

At the start of the scene we only see the cabinets' edges or they're blurred out of focus. But as Dan and Anurak begin to fight, they come into clear view.

This is the first time we see this angle of Anurak’s office. All of the shots prior are very careful to only show specific angles of the space. Shadow consistently hides this part of the room up until we get our official reveal that Anurak is the one-armed man.

A few episodes later we'll learn that this closet was the place where the last college student was shot and Anurak’s last hope of saving anyone died. 

The show literally hides his past trauma from us both narratively and visually. 

And for Anurak, it marks the way he is constantly running from the past but can never escape it. He tries to hide it from view, to avoid that part of the room, but he remains in his office nonetheless. Just as he remains at the school and surrounds himself with technology of the past.

Both past and present are touched with trauma. There is no escape.

From 1976 to 1998/9

We can see that in the past, Anurak was much more open to change and was genuinely coming from a desire to help the college students. He was willing to leverage his position at the school to try and protect the students from state power and violence up until this threatened his and his colleagues lives.

But by 1998 and 1999 he is clearly operating under and holding up the power system out of fear and trauma. And, unfortunately, what he hides comes with a cost to those around him.

He restricts what the students get to know about the past, particularly Red October. He's absolutely doing this out of trauma. On the one hand, he is trying to create a distance from himself and the event to prevent himself from being triggered and re-traumatized. On the other hand, he likely feels he is protecting the students by shielding them from the consequences of resisting the government.

It seems at this point that the government itself hasn't banned the information, since it's Anurak and one other instructor who are the main objectors at the school. However, his censorship would still prevent students from developing a political consciousness. Because if the students know the wrongs of the past, how could they not be moved to object? Anurak has seen the cost of that consciousness--not only did he witness the college students being murdered for it, but he has lived with the trauma (including survivor's guilt) himself.

He's reacting in a way he feels will protect himself and the students. However, in reacting this way, Anurak is also aiding the overall political project to hide this history and suppress political consciousness.  

1998

This places Anurak in direct opposition with Trin. In the flashback of Trin questioning Red October, Anurak tells Trin that he should be setting an example as student president.

In a previous post, I discussed Anurak scolding Trin for pushing his campaign promises. In that scene, Anurak emphasizes logic to shut Trin down. In this first encounter in episode 10, Anurak makes a point about Trin's behavior rather than his ideas. However, in both cases Anurak emphasizes the effect Trin has on the school as a community.

According to Anurak: Trin's not thinking about who will pay for or clean the bathroom. Trin's not considering how he is being a bad model for other students by distributing information about Red October.

By emphasizing his role as student president, Anurak also perhaps hopes to use the language of democracy to influence Trin. Trin is clearly still angry, but visibly resigns; leaning back in his chair, he backs off for now.

Their back and forth continues after Trin's love letter is circulated. Anurak responds to Trin's explanation by asking him: "Didn't I tell you you have to set a good example to your peers as student body president?" Again, Anurak uses Trin's role as president to play on Trin's sense of duty to community and constituents.

Of course, this comes with an added sting because he is also weaponizing Trin's expression of his feelings and queerness against him. Yes, Trin put Joe and the school in a tough spot by writing to a teacher, but Anurak doesn't specify here nor address the impact of the homophobia Trin is facing.

Trin pushes back on the idea that he has failed his community, stating that "It's just an expression of my feelings for a person." On one level, Trin pushes back on the homophobic framing by emphasizing that it is simply feelings for a "person." On another level, he is re-situating the conversation around his personal "feelings" rather than how the world feels about him. He is arguing for the private in a context where society deems his sexuality always a public matter.

In another post I discuss how Anurak feeds into a trend in the show of queerness and alterity always needing to be narrated. And here I discuss the way Trin continually loses his narrative agency to others.

These trends continue in this scene as Anurak punishes Trin for not respecting the narrative. Compared to earlier confrontations, here Trin is not just being punished for political opinions but for something that he can't fundamentally change. Of course, Anurak also has something he can't change in his left arm. He chooses to hide this difference along with his trauma, and he censures Trin for not doing the same. Ultimately telling Trin to "keep a low profile"

When Trin's appeal to privacy doesn't work, he threatens to resign as president. If the system can't be changed, if it doesn't have space for him to be himself without acting a part, then Trin will opt out.

Anurak comes at Trin with his usual moves--an appeal to logic and community. He calls Trin's proposal "utter nonsense" framing it not only as illogical but lacking in narrative weight, thus cutting off his options and narrative agency once again.

Anurak seals the deal by escalating his appeal to community. He tells Trin that "It would be absolute chaos" to hold another election, then digs the knife deeper when he forbids Trin from seeing Joe. All through this we see Trin's face go from resigned to heartbroken as he leans back in his chair (this time with no anger just defeat).

The system is hurting Trin, but Anurak, fearing that leaving the system will harm Trin, refuses to let him leave.

This dynamic plays out in horrific ways in Trin's unraveling and death/disappearance. During this period, Anurak reacts to any moves Trin makes by desperately hiding the truth, weaponizing Trin's mental illness against him, and eventually using physical force to stop Trin.

In the very space where the college students faced state violence 22 years ago, Anurak uses physical force that cuts Trin's head. This moment mirrors the scene in the art room in episode 8 where the bust falls and it's head is smashed. In a post about art in the first part of Shadow I mention how this can be read as the failure of logic. However, here it takes on another dimension, where the reason and logic Anurak uses to cover his trauma leads him to enact harm and violence.

In addition to Trin's injury, the bust has parallels with the statue that must ultimately fall to reveal the past. This statue is a saint that has been tainted by a history of violence and murder. It thus mirrors Anurak's own path from resisting power to enacting its violence. All of this rooted in a mire of trauma and a misguided attempt to help.

While Anurak tries to keep the past hidden, this past threatens Trin's life and causes his mental decline. We know that the spirits may not be malevolent but are communicating in the only way they can (perhaps another example of trauma leading to more trauma). He tries to opt out in multiple ways, by quitting his medication, by cutting his arm, by taking pot, by leaving the community and it's collective trauma behind. The pot is a reprieve, but it isn't a sustainable escape. He still has to go back to school and society. But there the haunting escalates until Trin can't take it anymore. He turns to the forest shaman and the shadow.

1999

As the show reaches it's climax, Anurak must finally reckon with the past. Dan has collapsed after the play, and at this point we see Anurak say something very familiar to the school board. He tells them he will "resign from [his] position."

I think this is Anurak's attempt to finally remove himself from authority, to stop clinging to the system for safety. Like Trin, if the system is doing harm, he'll leave it. Of course, it's too little too late; Dan dies at the end of the same episode. And we already know from Trin's fate: staying in the system harmed him, leaving it harmed him. If Anurak stays he perpetuates more trauma, but if he leaves he will experience trauma in another form. He tries to leave, but trauma won't let him. So he takes his own life, hoping that at least then he might stop the cycle and atone. And even this path forward is thwarted.

The Shadow

What happens when you're always seen as a threat to the community (for your political views, queerness, disability, trauma, etc) but without community you lose your sense of belonging and self? What happens when opting out of these systems of power leads to trauma but conforming to them results in its own traumas?

I'm still thinking a lot about @brifrischu's review of Shadow where he notes how the show places characters like Dan in an in-between state. I think the show gives us the answer to my questions above in the shadow. It's a horror that encapsulates the grotesque "neither-nor" dynamic of this kind of trauma. It speaks to the way such power structures don't just kill us but leave us as nothing and no-one trapped in a shadow's realm.

[leftistfeminista]

THE DEMONSTRATIONS THAT LASTED ELEVEN MONTHS and THE DAY MOTHERS STRIPPED NAKED.

On March 3rd 1992, mothers of the political prisoners stripped naked at Uhuru park to demand for the release of their sons caught in Moi's torture chambers.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the political atmosphere in Kenya was characterized by brutal government repression and terror, under the de-facto single-party rule of President Daniel Arap Moi. 

Any form of political dissension was swiftly met with government interrogation, detention, and torture, using the justification of the Public Order Act, the Chiefs Authority Act and the Sedition Law. 

This resulted to the arrest, killing and exiling of many students, politicians, lawyers and journalists. Those arrested were tortured and thrown in prisons, some came back alive while others died in the torture chambers and prisons. 

On Feb 28th, 1992, Mothers of Political Prisoners, aged between 60-80 years presented a Petition with a list of 52 political prisoners who had been imprisoned for perceived anti-government statements, ideas, and actions, to the then Attorney General, Amos Wako. 

The mothers then proceeded to a now famous corner at the Uhuru Park in Nairobi for an undefined hunger strike. The mothers were supported & led by the late Nobel Laurent, Prof. Wangari Maathai who joined them in their protest, which was ignored by the mainstream media, KBC & KTN. 

The mothers set up camp in the Uhuru (Freedom) Park that is located across the infamous “Nyayo House Torture Chambers” and not far off is the Parliament Building. There, they staged a hunger strike and waited for the release of their sons. 

The striking mothers soon garnered much support for their cause. Several sympathizers set up a tent under which the mothers could sleep, and many frustrated Kenyans came forward and openly recounted their stories of torture. 

These supporters joined in on the mothers’ singing of traditional Kenyan songs, which included such lyrics as, “Go and take the child back…” The mothers set up banners and handed out flyers to curious Kenyans as they continued their vigil. 

On March 3rd, the Moi government decided to forcibly disperse the demonstrators. Government police forces beat protesters with batons, fired gunshots into the air, and hurled tear-gas into the tent where protesters were gathered. 

Wangari Maathai who was criticized by President Daniel Arap Moi, being called a “madwoman” & “a threat to the order & security of the country”, was was beaten into the coma. This made it to the newspaper headlines, causing uproar across the nation and criticism internationally. 

To ward off the police, two of the protesting mothers stripped their clothing and dared the police to kill them. They shouted “What kind of government is this that beats women! Kill us! Kill us now! We shall die with our children!” 

Perhaps the mothers were inspired by the 1922 bravery actions of women led by Mary Muthoni Nyanjiru, who stormed a police station in Nairobi to demand the release of Harry Thuku. Men who had come along started retreating upon coming face to face with armed colonial police. 

In disappointment, Nyanjiru stripped to shame the fleeing men, and asked them to give women their trousers since they were brave. The charged crowd overrun the police station, and Mary Nyanjiru was shot dead on that day. Her brave actions aroused people into active resistance. 

Back to 1992, the police officers on seeing the nakedness of mothers in their 60s, responded by turning away and leaving the scene. According to Maathai, the tactic of disrobing was particularly effective in stopping the police because.... 

... “In the African tradition,people must respect women who are close to their mother’s age, & must treat them as their mothers. If men beat mothers,it is like sons violating their mothers, & the mothers respond by cursing them & they cursed them by showing them their nakedness.” 

The news of the violent beatings of the mothers sparked riots all over Nairobi. Transportation workers boycotted their work in protest of the govt beating the mothers, & large crowds of stone-throwing demonstrators had to be dispersed by tear gas-firing riot police. 

[paranormal-xfiles]

ANNABELLE COMES HOME: THE TRUE STORY OF ANNABELLE THE HAUNTED DOLL

Annabelle is a haunted doll who has managed to gain international notoriety, striking fear into the hearts of many. She has been written about, spoken about and depicted in recent Hollywood horror films that have now solidified her reputation for being one of the most feared objects in the world.

The Annabelle Doll as depicted in the latest Conjuring franchise film, Annabelle Comes Home. (image from imdb.com)

But what exactly makes Annabelle, an innocent appearing Raggedy Ann doll, so frightening? The answer to this is not so much the doll, yet what has become demonically attached to it. To understand this fear we need to delve into the origins of Annabelle the doll and peel away the sensationalized layers of Hollywood horror to reveal the true story of Annabelle, which begins with a well-meaning birthday present.

ANNABELLE TRUE STORY

The true story of Annabelle began in the 1970s when an inconspicuous doll was purchased as a birthday present. The doll was gifted to a young nursing student by her mother. The young lady who received this doll kept her within her apartment as a decorative item, often displaying the doll on her bed after making it.

Soon after the doll was brought into the home, her new owner and her roommate started noticing some strange activity. It is said that the doll would move around on its own. This initially started with subtle movements, such as the doll’s legs being crossed. This steadily increased to the point that the doll would be seen in other rooms to where it was earlier left. It was even captured kneeling, which was physically impossible for the doll to later repeat.

In addition to these unexplainable movements, small handwritten notes began to be found around the apartment. These appeared to be written by a child and contained messages such as “Help me.” The strangest part about the presence of these notes was that there were no pencils or parchment paper within the apartment, so it seemed as though they must have been coming from somewhere outside of the home.

TALKING TO ANNABELLE

This behavior both concerned and intrigued the two young students who lived alongside the doll. Yet, their concern peaked after blood was discovered on the doll one day. This fresh, wet blood was present on the doll’s hands and 3 distinct blood drops could be seen upon the doll’s chest.

This event led the girl’s to make the decision to contact a medium who could assist them with a seance in their home. This was held in an attempt to uncover whether something paranormal was at play. During this seance, the medium allegedly communicated with the spirit of a young seven-year-old girl named Annabelle Higgins. Annabelle had supposedly been killed and left on the empty field where the apartment complex the young nurses now lived was built upon. Her spirit was allegedly lonely and had been looking for young people who she felt comfortable around to seek acceptance from. Being the caring person she was, the doll’s unsuspecting owner made the grave mistake to invite Annabelle to occupy the doll.

Before this decision is revealed for the mistake it was, Annabelle’s activity was to take a darker turn.

ANNABELLE ATTACKS

After Annabelle was invited to occupy the doll and hang around, stranger and more dangerous events began to take place. A close male friend of the young nurse’s was to experience the wrath of Annabelle after visiting and expressing concern over the strange activity associated with the doll.

He claimed to have woken up one night, while sleeping at the apartment, to see the Annabelle doll standing over him. He claimed the doll then reached out towards his neck and commenced strangling him to the point that he passed out. The following morning when he woke up, he could have sworn that this experience was not a dream.

Scared and confused, he continued to spend time at the girl’s apartment until he was again viciously attacked. One night, as he and one of the girl’s were planning an upcoming trip, they heard a disturbance coming from the empty room, where Annabelle was kept. Fearing that an intruder may have entered the apartment, they investigated the room. The room was empty and the only thing that seemed out of place was the Annabelle doll, which appeared to have been thrown onto the floor in a corner.

The man entered the room to investigate further and was stopped dead in his tracks as he approached the cursed doll. He clutched at his chest as his own blood began to seep through his shirt. He lifted his top to reveal 7 large scratches across his chest. These formed the mark of the beast with 3 vertical and four horizontal scratch-like marks having been burnt into his skin.

It seemed apparent that something a little more sinister than a lost, little girl may be haunting Annabelle and this young group of friends became increasingly desperate for answers and help.

ANNABELLE AND THE WARRENS

Since these troubling events had transpired, the young girls who were living with Annabelle decided to reach out to the church for help. After telling their story, the young women were soon referred to Ed and Lorraine Warren for assistance. The Warrens were renowned demonologists who had extensive knowledge in such matters and had worked on countless similar cases.

They were able to determine that there was likely a negative, demonic energy that had tricked these girls into inviting it into their home by posing as an innocent child’s spirit. It seemed that the entity would have no other motive than to acquire a human host for possession and thus, should be removed from the home.

The Warren’s assisted the young students to have their home blessed and removed the troublesome Annabelle doll. Though, it seemed as though the attached entity followed the doll and caused life-threatening issues for the Warren’s, messing with their car as they drove home. These issues only ceased after Ed doused the doll with holy water.

Even once Annabelle made it to Warren’s home, it continued its diabolical deeds. Continuing to move on its own and terrorize those who were unfortunate enough to come into contact with it.

WHERE IS ANNABELLE NOW?

Today, the Annabelle doll resides within the Warren’s Occult Museum in Connecticut. The doll is displayed within a glass case, lined with crosses and protective bible inscriptions. Annabelle, along with the entire Occult Museum, is also regularly blessed by a priest.

A warning sign constantly on display on Annabelle’s case at the Warren’s Occult Museum. (image from frightfind.com)

Despite all of these precautions, Annabelle has been said to have caused the death of a young man. It is said that this man entered the museum, along with his girlfriend, and challenged the doll against the advice of Ed. After their visit, as they drove away on a motorcycle, this young couple proceeded to continue laughing about Annabelle. The young man driving then unexpectedly lost control of his bike, crashed and then died. Many are of the belief that Annabelle may have somehow caused this crash.

ANNABELLE COMES HOME

The latest film installment in The Conjuring franchise is set to release featuring Annabelle. In the film Annabelle Comes Home the doll is brought by Ed and Lorraine Warren to their haunted artifact room. It is here that the Warren’s young daughter and her babysitters unwittingly release the dark entity within Annabelle, in return being terrorized.

The Annabelle doll on the latest film about her, Annabelle Comes Home. (image from imdb.com).

Though these Hollywood adaptions are not completely true to the real story of Annabelle, they do portray the fear that this doll inspired in real people well.

I hope you enjoyed this article. If you are looking for some similar reading, check out this haunted rocking chair with ties to Ed and Lorraine Warren