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mickstart · 4 years

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what do you think are some iconic/memorable schumi moments? i just got into f1 and would like to know more about him bc somehow i can’t really find anything like that about him.... just stats which are incredibly impressive but i can’t find anything about how he behaved or just anything about his personality..... thanks <3

:) Hi anon, thank you for unleashing the beast.

Ok I love you for asking me this thank you SO MUCH. Welcome to the circus I’m glad you’re here! Also yeah, Schumi is often talked about in terms of statistics and not as a human, Which is a shame bc like! Schumi is fascinating and the dynamics on the grid in late 90s F1 is so much fun! Also, this is mainly going to be late 90s -> early 2010s stuff bc I was born in 98 so uhhh I didn’t properly witness ANY 90s stuff and had to learn about it.

OK so I got super carried away but I’ve divided this into 3 sections: Drives/races that I think showcase some of his talents, human moments we need to talk about more, and Chaotic Little Bitch moments. The key thing to remember w/ Schumi is that he personally tends to be nice but as soon as you put him in a competition, Bastard Mode activates like a cat’s pupils going wide.

I am so sorry for the following short essay. Also some crashes are briefly mentioned but only ones with absolutely no injuries and there’s no details.

Chaotic Little Bitch Moments

Schumi debuted as a SUBSTITUTE driver for Jordan when one of their drivers was in police custody (yes. really.) The highest a Jordan had qualified all year was 10th and in his DEBUT at SPA, one of the toughest tracks, in the middle of the season, Schumi qualified that Jordan 7th! THEN his clutch failed before the first lap was even complete, but Benetton and Jordan WENT TO COURT to fight each other to sign him for their team before the next race in Monza. He couldn’t debut normally he HAD to cause a scene and set the tone.

The Red Strings of Fate: He qualified 7th, his iconic 7 starred helmet, his first victory next year was ALSO at Spa - his first complete race would be at Monza, Ferrari Holy Ground, and he finished 5th which 👀 1) he was immediately racing with The Greats. 2) Mr 5 Championships With Ferrari.

Winning a race by taking a stop and go penalty on the last lap, crossing the finish line in the pits, and making such a complicated argument about said penalty that in a hearing that was SUPPOSED to be Mclaren protesting the race result the stewards scrapped the entire penalty and the 3 who awarded it handed in their licenses??? Iconic.

Austria 2002 where Rubens was ordered to give the win to Michael. And then Michael fucking made him stand on the top step on the podium like “oh no no no RUBENS deserves this” and made a big SHOW out of it and its like “Michael stop you’re not making it heartwarming you’re making it WORSE Michael STOP” The Tension of germany 2010 podium VS the theatricality of THIS podium.

Team orders were banned because of this which also makes this indirectly responsible for Fernando Is Faster Than You having to be a coded message. You can’t escape him,

Blocking Alonso in Monaco qualifying and then, years later in 2010, overtaking Alonso technically illegally at Monaco (the race was ending under safety car, but the safety car doesn’t lead them over the line it pits and they’d crossed the safety car line and the regulations were NOT specific about the rules) and getting a 20 second penalty bc Damon Hill was a steward. Haunting FERNANDO specifically at Monaco like the ghost of christmas past? Getting a harsh penalty because ANOTHER driver he’d fucked over was a steward? Forcing the FIA to rewrite the rulebook to account for his nonsense when he was in his FOURTIES? I don’t know another chaos king.

Winning the 1995 championship by crashing into Damon Hill, getting AWAY with it for some reason, and then trying to do the same thing in 1997 to Villeneuve, failing to do so and simply rebounding off of him harmlessly, almost COMICALLY, and beaching his own car in a gravel trap at which point the FIA said “I have had ENOUGH of you Wacky Races Man!” and disqualified him from the entire championship

Forcing Mika off the track so bad at Spa 2000 that Mika realized the only way he was gonna be able to get past him was to re-invent the overtake and go for it whilst they were passing a backmarker. (The overtake itself is at 2:05 in the video but the build up to it is Important bc the key part it’s not just badass, it only happened bc Mika knew who he was dealing with.)

Spa 1998 was a Ridiculously Chaotic race it truly was the Mugello 2020 of its year, and after a crash at the start that took out almost the entire grid Schumi accidentally collided with Coulthard later in the race. (The teams used to have a spare car at every race then, so the race was able to continue after a restart.) This wasn’t a racing thing, Coulthard was getting lapped. So something in Schumi SNAPS, and he storms down the pitlane and tries to fight Coulthard while the mclaren and ferrari mechanics both hold him back and finally drag him away. He projected into the future, saw Coulthard was gonna talk non-stop shit about Seb, and acted accordingly.

Monaco 2012 Pole don’t talk to me about this I still can’t believe the audacity of this man to get the only pole of his comeback, at MONACO, at the ONE RACE where he had a 5 place grid penalty to take!!

In general, I know Cheating Bad but. I HAVE to admire the brainpower it must take to have the rulebook so memorized that whilst driving an F1 car Schumi could spot a loophole the size of the eye of a needle and then dance through it, forcing the FIA to add ANOTHER page to the rule book specially for him bc nobody else even REALISED that loophole existed.

Human Moments

A quick rant about Mika and Schumi’s entire friendship. After Spa 2000 Mika goes up to Michael, says something like “Don’t ever do that again” then they’re friends again. They had this mutual understanding that Racing was not Reality. This goes all the way back to their F3 days they were rivals AND friends for their entire career. They truly were the Sewis of the era if Sebastian was like 50% more evil. Their entire dynamic is “You’re the only motherfucker in this pit lane who can handle me”. Schumi would do some bullshit and every other driver would throw up their hands in frustration and Mika would just go “Okay” and drive better to put him in his place bc he was the only one who could keep up, and Schumi very visibly LOVED that he’s grinning after Mika owns his entire ass with that overtake at Spa. They were unstoppable force meets immovable object and I’m so sad their rivalry isn’t more talked about bc the way Mika is the only driver who can get him to behave like a normal human being is SO entertaining.

This is a sad one so I won’t link it but he started crying in the 2000 Monza press-conference with his brother and Mika when he equaled one of Senna’s records. The press kept trying to ask questions about it and Mika just has this death grip on his shoulder and tries to get them to stop or let them take a break and it’s so sad but also important to know about.

Once said he didn’t want Mick to race in F1 bc the pressure of his name would put Mick under so much stress and he wanted his son to be happy. (He fully supported Mick in his endeavors! But only after making absolutely sure it was what Mick wanted, and making sure he knew he could just race for fun if he wanted and it didn’t have to be F1)

This whole interview just after Mick was born with the Schumacher family. Special shout out to Gina on his head the entire video and also Corinna talking to the press while Michael is captivated by Mick. Me too Michael.

Once allegedly pleaded to take a stray kitten home from the track?

I reblogged this yesterday but. Sticking like glue to Sebastian at an F1 test and immediately being like “This is my new son he’s gonna go far”. There’s a lot of pictures out there also of Michael being a guest at the karting races Seb went to as a kid and baby Seb visibly losing his fucking mind at being given a trophy by his idol. Every day of my life I think about him trying to ruffle Seb’s hair through his helmet at Brazil 2012

WInning the championship in 2000. Him thanking the entire team individually and pausing mid-celebration to kiss his wife Corinna so tenderly it’s in the F1 opening. Also, the way it literally cuts from the rest of McLaren looking like they’re attending a funeral to Mika grinning at him and hugging him fucking SENDSSSSS me.

Schumi was a little shit in all the 2010-12 press conferences like, lowering Lewis’ chair, playing with a microphone wire, but ESPECIALLY corrupting baby Seb and getting him to mess with Nico Rosberg.

He’s just GOOFY! Like I refuse to let him be remembered as a terrifying force of nature he was so goofy kind of similarly to Seb. PLEASE watch this incredibly awkward interview he did with Coulthard on a golf buggy where they both had to pretend they hadn’t thought about murdering each other at least once. I think Sky F1 should force Brocedes to do this when covid’s over. “Do you mind if I drive?” “Yes.”

EDIT: I CANNOT BELIEVE I forgot the 1999 Canada press conference where Eddie Irvine and Mika Hakkinen get into a water fight and Schumi immediately grabs a towel and hides behind it and is like “I had NOTHING to do with it” 🥺 adorable, actually

A lot of people at Ferrari, including Rob Smedley (who was on the other side of the garage with Felipe Massa so not in his inner circle) have said that a lot of the success of the team came from Schumi’s LEADERSHIP more than anything, that he’d make the team get together to bond all the time. When Schumi moved to Ferrari in 1996 they were NOT dominant. He did the same thing Lewis did - went to a team that everybody said would be a huge mistake and helped build them up behind the scenes.

THIS bit of the Canada 2011 Rewind where his engineer gives him the strategy and he’s like “... OkaAaAaAay?” and then when it turns out to be the wrong strategy he cheerfully tells them it’s too late. Little shit.

Speaking of Mercedes I also wanna say that like. They were a MESS in 2012 and his car DNF’d because of a failing on their part MULTIPLE times. (In Canada qualifying his DRS was stuck open and they couldn’t close it.) He did not say a single bad word about them EVER even though the press used this to attack him non-stop as washed-up and bad without Ferrari to cheat for him. At Ferrari he was the exact same with the team, any bastard antics Schumi had for his rivals did not extend to the engineers and crew.

OK this one is soured bc Top Gear is trash BUT if you were like, a kid in England who followed motorsports? Schumi’s fake reveal as The Stig on Top Gear was like the coolest, sickest thing,

Please view this image of Schumi and Mika when they were young and stupid

Iconic Races

ok so I have limited myself to a few races that show off some of his key strengths!

Hungary 1998 / France 2004 - STRATEGY/SPEED - Schumi switched to a 3 stop strategy in 98 and a FOUR STOP strategy in 04 and won both races. In order for the strategy call to work he’d have to basically make every single lap a qualifying style ‘flying lap’ and you best fucking believe he DID THAT. God I fucking miss when Ferrari was the king of strategy.

Argentina 1998 - has it all. Talent, battling Mika, pit lane mind games with mclaren, and bullying coulthard xxx

Spain 1996 / a majority of the wet races - RAIN - One of Schumi’s nicknames was Rain Master bc he was so fucking good in the wet. If it started raining and you were a Schumi stan you were cackling evilly before the red lights even went out. I single out 1996 bc it was his first win for Ferrari and it was unexpected but in most wet races, even Canada 2011 post comeback, you can see Schumi thriving.

Malaysia 1999 - Schumi missed pretty much the entire second half of the season with a broken leg, came back for the last 2 races with everybody murmuring about whether he would struggle, and immediately put the Ferrari on pole. Also worth noting is that he was the number 2 driver for these 2 races bc his teammate Irvine was fighting Mika for the championship and he went along with that without complaint, allowing Ferrari to win the constructor’s championship if not the driver’s.

Monza 2002, 03, 04, or 06 just because it has the energy of the tifosi kneeling at the feet of an idol to their red god.

Brazil 2006 - Fuck All Y’all - Schumi’s last race for Ferrari. He got a puncture and ended up almost lapped, and then drove his way back from that to 4th bc he couldn’t go out without reminding us he’s a bad bitch.

Monza 2012 - Defending - Don’t tell F1 Twitter that there’s actual footage of Lewis and Michael having a genuine lengthy battle on track but DO watch Michael defending like a motherfucker and Lewis breathing down his neck for half the race we need to talk about this more.

Valencia 2012 - This isn’t necessarily anything special but I cried in my living room over the only podium of his comeback so it goes on here. It doesn’t have the same impact if you haven’t been watching him struggle with the car for years, DNF-ing from car failure most of 2012, and having BBC F1 telling you he’s washed up every single weekend, but you can just enjoy one of the best drives of FERNANDO’S entire career as he DRAGS that Ferrari by its hair to a home grand prix win and then watch the crowds embrace him like jesus and also Schumi being happy on the podium. Also, the very start of this clip from the press conference: him forgetting what language he’s supposed to be speaking

Basically, Schumi was a hyper-competitive ambitious bitch who turned into a goofball as soon as he switched the engine off. This is by NO MEANS everything if I was making an exhaustive best races guide I’d do more research and another post but I hope this is what you were looking for?? THANK YOU SO MUCH for letting me go MAXIMUM SPECIAL INTEREST and I apologize.

#asks #Schumi #Mika #Alonso #long post #god I'm so fucking sorry #Anonymous #This is not comprehensive bc I didn't want to accidentally turn this into a whole research project especially if you're new to it!

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lecarreverse · 3 years

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The great author recalls Smiley’s origins in one of his last pieces of writing, a new introduction to Call for the Dead.

I wrote Call for the Dead, my first novel, because I had been boiling to write for 20 years but had never quite had the prompt. I had done book illustrations, I had written bad poetry and one or two stories, and produced a couple of amateur plays, and become a reasonable hand at caricatures. In a bookless household, I had managed to acquire some sort of taste for books, largely because of a master at one of my early schools who read aloud to us beautifully from Conan Doyle and GK Chesterton. At 16, having fled my English public school, I took a huge sidestep into German language and literature and ended up teaching them at Eton, with the result that English letters always played second fiddle. It took a lurch from Eton into the intelligence community to get me writing Call for the Dead, and the prompt came from John Bingham, novelist, spy and colleague.

In MI5 the standard of report writing was very high indeed. Registry and senior officers were all pedants and descended on you like eagles if they spotted a sloppy sentence or an unsubstantiated claim: “Too fluffy. Can you actually demonstrate this? If this is hearsay, kindly say so clearly,” ran the marginal comments in different handwritings as your report came whistling back to you from the top floor. It was my first experience of having to battle for every sentence I wrote as if it had to stand up in court.

The agent-running section to which I was eventually attached was dominated by two figures, both men: Maxwell Knight, naturalist, broadcaster and the subject of at least two published biographies, and Bingham. Knight, allegedly of the far right, though I never heard him on politics, was by the time I knew him tolerated only on account of the agents he had recruited long ago and that were still beholden to him. He was a big, unwashed, silvery, boy scout of a man, of great charm and idiosyncratic habits that included bringing ailing small animals such as gerbils into the office in his jacket pocket. Bingham could scarcely have been more different.

Everything about Knight suggested that he be enjoyed with caution, but John was approachable, unassuming, quietly spoken and a kindly shepherd and confessor to his agents, mostly women. He was also a needle-sharp intelligence officer of great experience, as I had good reason to learn when one of my agents was blown and I needed his urgent advice on how to limit the damage. And John of necessity did much of his work in the evenings, when his agents returned home from their high-wire acts needing his consolation and wisdom and a large gin.

So by day, when he wasn’t writing a report, John was writing a novel. He had written quite a few by then, thrillers, all published by Gollancz and well received. I don’t remember that we ever talked about the process of writing. John, once a journalist, didn’t see himself as a literary man, just a thorough writer doing a job. The one piece of advice I remember him giving me was to stick a postcard with £100 written on it above my desk and look at it every time I thought of giving up. But far more inspiring than anything he could have said was the simple act of him sitting five yards from me day after day at his desk with his head down and a hangover, writing himself a novel on lined paper. And I suppose, at the most primitive level, I decided that if he could do that, I could.

I lived in Great Missenden in those days and commuted to Marylebone station, then walked or took the bus to Curzon Street. The train journey was an hour plus, so I wrote in small notebooks supplied, I am ashamed to say, by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. I just wrote. And the first person who came to mind was the man who got me going: John Bingham, one of the meek who do not inherit the earth.

But no real character in my experience is drawn directly from life, and for George Smiley I needed a lot of things that John simply hadn’t got and didn’t wish to have: an obsession with German literature (although he spoke decent German), a miserable private life, a sense of being strapped to the secret treadmill and not knowing how to get off it, and most importantly serious moral questions about the work I was doing. John was, to say the least, a nationalist, and doubts of that sort were simply not his thing, particularly when his every evening was spent buoying up women agents who were, in their estimation and his, sacrificing their private lives for England. So where to turn?

Well, my own life had been pretty well supplied with moral doubt, not least by my father, a conman on the run from the law. But I needed more stately concerns for George Smiley, bred in me in part by the unsparing plays of Schiller, Lessing and Büchner and the anguished cries of 17th-century Germany.

But Smiley is not at heart an academic. In the beginning was not the word but the deed, Goethe tells us through the agency of his Faust, and Smiley refuses to shirk from action where he believes in the rightness of his cause. And so it seems to me now, with the luxury of hindsight, that for Smiley’s conflicted inner life I resorted to my beloved mentor, Dr Vivian Green, by then rector of Lincoln College, Oxford: scholar, administrator, closet iconoclast and Anglican priest whose institutional faith over time gave way to a universal humanism. I don’t know any more whether you will find the seeds of all this theorising in my first stab at George Smiley, but I do. We have grown up together, changed and matured together, and seen his likeness exquisitely portrayed by two great actors, Alec Guinness and Gary Oldman. But for me he’s still the same soul-searching secret sharer that I wrote about in little notebooks on the rattly commuter train from Great Missenden to Marylebone.

Extracted from Call for the Dead by John le Carré; the 60th anniversary edition is published by Penguin Classics on Thursday.

#John le Carré #George Smiley #call for the dead #60th anniversary edition #introduction to 60th anniversary edition #books #long post #John le Carre #introduction

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bowlingshirtbellas · 4 years

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What do you think about edwin and bella's age difference? It's really weird to me because either he's truly 17 and if she had gotten just a few years older she would've probably outgrown him/it would've been creepy for her to date a teenager OR he's a creepy old man who's almost relentlessly after a teenage girl??

this is truly like THEE question isn’t it

I think it’s hard to answer based on canon because stephenie meyer writes about edward’s relationship to his age kind of inconsistently

for example, it does seem pretty transparent that vampires supposedly freeze not just physically but mentally, which is why immortal children are illegal under the rule of the volturi. immortal children are developmentally frozen and allegedly are incapable of gaining the type of control that vampires get after their “newborn” phase.

in the part of twilight where bella is meeting the cullens for the first time, it is revealed (either through esme directly or indirectly through edward, i dont remember) that esme was apparently worried for a long time that edward would never be able to find a “mate” (or whatever) like the rest of them had because perhaps he was developmentally incapable, and that carlisle might have transformed him too young. I believe he is physically the youngest of the cullens - at least of the men. but then esme was relieved when edward and bella got together for this reason. I think we can see in many instances throughout the saga evidence of edward developmentally being a 17-year-old.

edward, however, as a person, seems to like to pick and choose when he identifies with his age or not. and to an extent i think this is fair because while he is physically and mentally 17, he has alllllllll kinds of life experiences that 17-year-olds don’t have. some of them are human experiences, some are not. edward has been to medical school and is academically/intellectually very advanced, but that does not necessarily make him more emotionally intelligent or mature. he has more social, philosophical context for life than your average teen, although i would argue that his is extremely skewed because his life is not normal by any means.

in terms of creepiness - i do find it weird sometimes when edward connects intellectually with bella quite easily but never gives any other human the time of day. he is actively patronizing to jacob about his age, and consistently thinks of his peers at school as “children” (which they are, but he’s usually talking about it in a condescending way). I think it’s normal for him to consider his peers to be younger than him, but he doesn’t have to be so rude about it. and he clearly doesn’t take the time to think about the hypocrisy of believing that and then thinking bella is completely different. bella is “mature for her age” but she’s still 17. in the most basic terms, I would say the same thing about edward.

the fact that he can’t read bella’s mind is in many ways one of things that allows him to develop a relationship with a human for the first time. he can read everyone else’s juvenile thoughts and so easily think he’s above them (he’s not, lol. midnight sun will probably be evidence of this). but with bella he has to start from zero and they are on more equal footing than he would be with everyone else. I think this actually makes a lot of sense *situationally*. if he’s going to have a relationship with a human, it’s going to have to be with someone who is physically around his age. he’s not going to date an 80 year old human, or even a middle-aged human, because those humans would probably be pedophiles anyway. his only other option would be to date other vampires, which would probably be less problematic.

I guess what i’m getting at is that edward is neither truly 17 nor is he an old man. it’s not a binary. he’s straddling both, which creates a really unique situation with a lot of gray area, especially coupled with the more problematic parts of his personality (which i would honestly associate more with him being young than old). additionally, even in vampire years edward is an adolescent. a child, even. how do you even measure something like that when you live for an eternity?

on bella’s end - I truly believe she would outgrow edward in a few years. she would probably cling to the relationship through her early 20′s but then it would just become unsustainable. especially once she matured, met more people, saw more of the world. I think edward knows this, too, bella just refuses to believe him, which is pretty normal teenager/first love mentality. so I think the relationship would end before it got too creepy in that sense. and then edward would supposedly be in love with someone who is still alive but doesn’t really exist anymore because of how much she will change throughout her life.

this is a very situational answer to something that has undeniable social context but that’s almost a whole other discussion lol. would be happy to comment on that as well. in conclusion: idk the vibes are weird bro

#mod sam #edward cullen #bella swan #twilight #twilight meta

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inevitably-johnlocked · 4 years

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Okay, so my ask was about fanfics where either John or Sherlock hallucinates and sees the other one after him (allegedly?) dying. As in, actually hallucinates, not mistakes a real one for a hallucination. Have you encountered anything like that?

Anonymous said to inevitably-johnlocked: hi! i hope you're doing fine! i feel really bad for asking, but i really suck at searching, and as i see everyone asking you, i wanted to see if you could help me, if you dont want to, its fine, i feel like im taking adventage of you... im searching for fics post TRF in which John hallucinates with Sherlock, or fics in which Sherlock comes back but John cannot believe it because he hallucinated with him ... im sorry again for bothering you! hope you have a nice day

Hi Lovelies!!

Ahhh, I don’t have a LOT that have this premise, so I’m just going to give you all of the fics I have tagged with hallucinations :) I do suggest “The Quiet Man”, which has this as the primary plot point (down below) and it’s a long one so I think that will best suit you requests, but DO check out all of the others on this list! <3

And as always, Lovelies, if you have something more to what my Nonnies are looking for, please suggest them!

HALLUCINATIONS

Hallucinations can't open doors by Bespectacled dreamer (K+, 1,330 w., 1 Ch. || Reunion, Hurt / Comfort, Friendship, Hallucinations, John’s Wedding, Light Humour) – In which John gets married and Sherlock gets a broken nose.

Quite Contrary by Hollyesque (T, 1,805 w., 1 Ch. || HLV Fic, Sherlock Whump / After Mary Shot Sherlock, Hallucinations / Flashbacks / PTSD, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, Lestrade POV, ) – A short one-shot, alternate scene to Greg's hospital visit in HLV. Instead of Sherlock disappearing, Greg is faced with an unexpected reaction to a hospitalized Sherlock and winds up figuring out something that he really would have rather not known.

Bitter Nights Turned Sweet by Hyliare (T, 4,076 w., 1 Ch. || Pre-Slash, Insomnia/Hallucinations, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, POV Present Tense John Watson, Cuddling/Snuggling) – Sherlock has always had trouble sleeping; he hasn't always had someone in his life willing to help.

Between Asleep and Awake by katydidit (K, 4,309 w., 1 Ch. || Friendship, Sick Fic, Post-TRF / Reunion) – John is sick. Incredibly, extremely, dangerously sick. Plagued by a high fever, he begins to hallucinate, start seeing things that aren't really there. Because they can't be there. Can they?

A Is For Aftermath by ElvendorkInfinity (T, 10,567 w., 1 Ch. || Injury / Whump, Hurt/Comfort, Friendship/Pre-Slash/Bromance/Platonics, Hallucinations, Introspection, Insecure / Worried John, Big Brother Mycroft, Alternating POV, Anxious Sherlock, Self-Deprecating, Mildly Possessive Sherlock, 3G Moment) – John is still hallucinating, Sherlock cannot sleep, and Lestrade has a new case for them. But will life at 221B ever be able to return to normal? Epilogue to M is for Moriarty.

I Will Take Care Of You by SailorChibi (T, 16,664 w., 15 Ch. || Hurt/Comfort, Sick Sherlock, BAMF John, BAMF Lestrade, Reunion Fic) – Two years after Sherlock's death, John comes to find him on the sofa. Wounded and ill, Sherlock is convinced he's hallucinating and refuses to share any details about Moran or the fact that Mycroft has been compromised. That doesn't stop John from stepping up and taking care of the last of Moriarty's web, BAMF-style.

Wonderful, Etcetera. by VictoryCandescence (T, 16,955 w., 3 Ch. || Wonderful Life AU || Alternate Timelines, Brotherhood, Homophobia, Suicidal Ideations, Mentions of Drug Use, Friendship, Different TRF, Sherlock’s Past, Victor Trevor is Past Boyfriend, Depression, Hallucination?, Love Confessions, Christmas, First Kiss) – Sherlock thinks everyone would be better off if he had never existed, including and especially himself. When he finds himself in a world in which his wish has been granted, he begins to think perhaps even he could be wrong – but it takes an unlikely chaperone to make him not only observe, but understand.

I Think I've Come A Long Long Way To Sit Before You Here Today by ArwenKenobi (T, 18,251 w., 3 Ch. || Grief/Mourning, Passage of Time, Major Character Death, Alternating POV, Sherlock Whump, Pining Sherlock, Hospitalization, Coma, Revenge Murders, Hallucinations, Love Confessions, Brutal Accident, Mystrade, Ghost John) – One year after John is killed Sherlock starts to wonder whether John has actually gone anywhere.

A Home for Us by sussexbound (M, 30,581 w., 12 Ch. || Scars, Bedsharing, Grief, Doctor John, Hurt/Comfort, Post-TRF, Implied/Referenced Torture, Sherlock POV, Pining Sherlock, Suicidal Ideation, Heavy Emotions, Clingy Sherlock, Hallucinations, Disassociation, Emotional Turmoil) – He has been on the road for two years, and he is exhausted. He’s almost accepted that he will never see London (John) again—almost. But then there are nights like tonight, where he is weak, and all he can think of is the warmth of the flat they once shared, the crackle of the fire in the hearth, the teasing smile playing at the corner of John’s lips, the boxes of half-eaten Chinese takeaway balanced precariously in their laps. He aches at the memory of it, at the realisation that it is something he may never experience again.

Impossible to Feign by achray (M, 49,204 w., 12 Ch. || TRF Rewrite / Reverse Reichenbach, Suicidal Ideations / Discussions, Drug Use/Abuse, Mutual Pining, Friends With Benefits, John Accepts his Sexuality, Anxious Sherlock, Meddling Mycroft, Depression, Hallucinations, Secret Agent John, BAMF John, Reunion, Make-Up Sex, Ambiguous Ending) – Sherlock leant forward, his long fingers curving round to grip John’s.“I won’t let him win,” he said, eyes hard. “I will do whatever it takes to get you out.”

Lunar Landscapes by J_Baillier (M, 57,046 w., 21 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || S3/TAB Fix-It, Slow Burn Angst, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, Confessions, Drugs, Pain, Medical, Injury, Sherlock Whump, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Romance, Secrets, Tragedy, Trauma, BAMF John, Doctor!John, Drug Addict Sherlock, Injured Sherlock, Grieving John, Idiots In Love, Protective John, POV John Watson, PTSD Sherlock, Sherlock is a Mess, Medical Realism) – An accident forces John to face the fact that Sherlock's downward spiral had started long before his flight to exile even left the tarmac.

The Vapor Variant by 88thParallel (CanadaHolm) (M, 72,684 w., 18 Ch. || 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, Sickfic, 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.

The Summer Boy by khorazir (T, 94,706 w., 6 Ch. || Post S3/Post TAB/Alternate S4, Friends to Lovers, Asexual Sherlock, POV Sherlock, Flashbacks, Bullying, 1980′s Kid Sherlock, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Inexperienced Sherlock, Grief/Mourning, Pining Sherlock, Case Fic, Sherlock’s Past, Awkward Conversations, Anxious Sherlock) – About half a year after the fateful events at Appledore, Sherlock and John embark on a private case in Sussex. For Sherlock, it’s a journey into his past, bringing up memories both happy and sad that he has locked away for almost thirty years. For John, it means coming to terms with the present – and a potential future with Sherlock. Part 1 of the The Summer Boy series (possibly Imaginary Friend)

Against the Rest of the World by SilentAuror (E, 151,714 w., 20 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Post-TRF, Hiatus Fic, POV First Person Sherlock, Present Tense, First Kiss/Time, Big Brother Mycroft, Escaping from Capture, Soft Sherlock, Toplock, Insecurity, Infidelity, Travelling, Introspection, Pining Sherlock, Depression, Fantasies, Yearning for the Past, PTSD Sherlock, Suicidal Ideation) – Sherlock has been away from London for nine hundred and twelve days and counting, and has no idea what sort of reception to expect when he finally returns.

The Quiet Man by ivyblossom (E, 157,369 w., 58 Ch. || Post-TRF, John First POV, Grief/Mourning, Angst, Present Tense, Imaginary Sherlock) – "Do you just carry on talking when I'm away?"

Proving A Point by elldotsee & J_Baillier (E, 186,270 w., 28 Ch. || 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.

#steph replies #johnlock fic recs #my fic recs #hallucinations #Anonymous

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365days365movies · 3 years

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April 4, 2021: The Great Dictator (1940) (Part One)

So, Charlie’s been having an...interesting few years.

His marriage to Lita Grey has resulted in children, and a BITTER-AS-FUCK divorce, with Grey alleging that Chaplin had subjected her to “sexual perversions”. Other than the whole “she was 16, he was 35″ thing, which is...bad, obviously, Chalin was also a fan of orgies, fondling, and...pies. Yeah. Pies. Warning here, the next paragraph is...uncomfortable.

Dude would allegedly audition actresses having then sit on a couch, strip naked for him, and then he’d grope them on said couch. Then, he’d have them stand up against the wall, and he’d...well, he’d throw pies at them. Yeah. Um. He, uh...yeah.

I know, Matt Mercer, I know. And Hollywood agreed, because they didn’t really see to care? This info, amongst other stuff that I can’t seem to find out more about, was enough for grounds of divorce against Chaplin, and Lita Grey was gone from his life, taking the kids and a lot of money with her.

Film fame continued for Chaplin, though, and his 1927 film The Circus was a huge hit. But now, the “talkie” had been invented, and Chaplin HATED it. He believed that it was an unartistic addition to the medium, eliminating the need for his pantomiming. And, uh...he was technically right about that last point. He chose not to give the Tramp a voice, and made the film City Lights, which came out in 1931, and is considered one of his greatest films.

But the writing was VERY MUCH on the wall at this point, and silent films were a thing of the past. Still, City Lights did really well, and was Chaplin’s favorite of his films. Then, in 1932, he met Pauline Goddard (who was 21), and she would eventually become his third wife. He made his next major (still silent) film, Modern Times, in 1936, and it didn’t do quite as well. That’s because Chaplin had started to become more politically conscious, and used the film to make commentary on the industrialization of the USA, which he disliked. And that, interestingly enough, was a sign of the end for Chaplin.

Still, the film was good, as was still popular then and now. But in the years to follow, something else would rear its head and plague Chaplin...something with the same mustache.

Hooooooo boy. Yeah, Hitler was rising to power in the 1930s, and Chaplin fuckin’ HAAAAAAAATED HIM. At the time, remember, Hitler’s fascist policies definitely weren’t universally derided, and he didn’t show his true monstrous colors in the early 1930s. But, Chapin still understandably disagreed with his politics and character, which was interesting for a few reasons. The two were bourn FOUR DAYS APART FROM EACH OTHER, had similar rags-to-riches origins, and both used that same toothbrush mustache. But Hitler was a feverish militaristic nationalist dictator, and Chaplin was...not that.

However, this would inspire Chaplin’s next ambitious film, considered to be one of his greatest films ever, and his first ever talkie film. And one that would age interestingly, considering what would come afterwards. In 1939, Chaplin began making this film, the United Kingdom declared war of Germany, and Europe became embroiled in the Second World War. And then, in 1940, Chaplin’s controversial (at the time) film, The Great Dictator was released. And...oh BOY, this will be Chaplin’s high and low point, lemme tell you.

But enough history (for now)! Let’s jump into this movie; I’m very excited! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

WAR!!! A world war has ended, and another is about to begun! The small (fictional) country of Tomainia is preparing for war by testing their gigantic anti-aircraft gun, Big Bertha. Helping with these efforts is a Jewish Barber (Charlie Chaplin), and YES. THAT IS HOW HE’S CREDITED. After some comedic hijinks with the gun, and with one of the large shells, enemy aircraft is sighted ahead.

The Barber gets aboard another anti-aircraft gun (which he has no control over), but soon falls off of it. He’s directed into the trenches with the others, and is given a grenade, which he has no idea to use, and Chaplin shows that his physical comedy is as funny WITH sound as it was without.

On the battlefield, the Barber encounters and rescues a downed pilot, Commander Schultz, and helps him back t his plane as the enemy approaches. They get on the plane together, only for the pilot to repeatedly faint in mid-air. In the process, they begin to fly upside down for a period, and once again, Chaplin shows that he’s just as funny speaking as he was silent.

Despite their attempts, the pair crash as the plane runs out of fuel, but both men survive. The country has lost the war at this point, and the Barber is now unconscious and brought to a hospital. 20 years pass, and he’s finally able to leave, unaware of how his country of Tomainia has changed in the process. Now, they are ruled by a ruthless dictator, Adenoid Hynkel (Charlie Chaplin).

And i case you were wondering what the phrase “on the nose” actually meant...GODDAMN, this is an on-the-nose parody of Hitler. I mean, it’s very funny, of course, but HOT DAMN is it not even a little bit subtle. Also, living in a post-Trump world...Jesus, this is eerie. Anyway, the other reason this film is great is the fake German. And yeah, honestly, this is a very funny scene, even with the dark undertone, and the knowledge of what would be to come in World War II under Hitler’s regime.

youtube

Alongside his primary aides, Minister of War Herring (Billy Gilbert) and Secretary of the Interior (and Minister of Propaganda) Garbitsch (Henry Daniell), he makes a speech that’s clearly a parody of Hitler’s speeches. He also namedrops the Jewish population in the speech, which immediately makes them a target by his stormtroopers. This is noted by Mr. Jaeckel (Marice Mossovich), an elderly Jewish man who lives in the ghettos of Tomainia.

Mr. Jaeckel bemoans the fate of the country under Hynkel’s rule, and also notes the fate of those like his tenant, a young woman named Hannah (Paulette Goddard) who lost her parents since the last war. He also mentions the Barber, who writes every few weeks to say that he’ll be back soon. Just then, the Barber actually DOES wake up, completely unaware of what’s occurred in the last few years.

He heads to his barber shop, which has been boarded up, with the word “Jew” painted on the boards. Did I mention that this is a very on-the-nose satire? Anyway, he attempts to reopen his shop, only to be savaged by stormtroopers following Hynkel’s orders to control the ghetto. He fights back against two of them, and is saved by Hannah, who had attempted to stand up to them earlier with little success. They bond over this, and become friends.

But Hynkel’s savaged even more by a crowd of stormtroopers next, and they grab him with the intent to hang him from a lamppost, only for him to be saved by Commander Schultz, the pilot from the plane! He guarantees that he will never be attacked again, and that courtesy extends to his friends. He barber reopens his shop, and begins to fall in love with Hannah in the process.

Back to Hynkel. He’s enduring Herring’s introductions of military technology, including a bulletproof uniform and a parachute hat. Neither work, to hilarious effect. He then speaks to Garbitsch about the financial state of affairs in the country, which aren’t great. Gabitsch sugggests speaking with a banker, Epstein, to finance the money.

Garbitsch, by the way, is a massive Grima Wormtongue figure, and basically just fuels his megaloaniacal fervor, convincing him to extend his desires to the world at large, not just limit them to their small country of Tomainia. Soon, well...soon, the world will be in the hands of Emperor Hynkel; an Aryan world in the hands of a brunette dictator. And that starts YET ANOTHER of the most iconic scenes of the film. But only one of the most iconic.

It’s darkly beautiful, in and out of context. And eventually, the inflatable globe pops, which makes this even more poignant. Meanwhile, in the ghetto, the Barber is doing his best Bugs Bunny impression and cutting hair to a classical music piece (Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5). Bugs did the whole Barber of Seville routine WAY after this in Rabbit of Seville in 1950. One of the best Bugs Bunny shorts ever.

Back in the palace, bad news arrives. Epstein, the banker, has refused to give Hynkel any money, as he’s Jewish, and is protesting against the persecution of his people in the ghetto. Hynkel immediately decides to double down on his attacks on the ghettos, which he calls on Schultz to perform. But he refuses, noting that the persecution of an innocent people will only serve to demoralize the entire country. Hynkel sends Schultz to a concentration camp as a result, and proceeds on his path.

In the ghetto, people have been doing OK, as the stormtroopers had been lightening up their attacks on the ghetto, to attempt to please Epstein to get more money. But no more of that. As Hannah and the Barber are about to go on a date, loudspeakers broadcast an angry speech from Hynkel, in fake German. And while it’s never translated...the reactions from the populus, Hannah, and the Barber, aren’t difficult to read. Hynkel just waged war on the ghetto and the Jews.

Well, will you look at that; a halfway point! Let’s stop here, then head into a Part Two. See you there!

#the great dictator #charlie chaplin #paulette goddard #jack oakie #henry daniell #reginald gardiner #billy gilbert #maurice mossovich #comedy april #user365 #365 movie challenge #365 movies 365 days #365 Days 365 Movies #365 movies a year #365days365movies

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joachimnapoleon · 4 years

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Meet the Bonapartes: Pauline (1/3)

New project! I got it into my head recently to do some research/mini-bios on all of Napoleon’s siblings. I find all their stories pretty interesting, but predictably (and understandably) they’ve always ended up relegated to the background of Napoleon’s much more famous story. I’m planning on each write-up being multiple parts. And, if the way this first one has gone so far is any indication, probably more parts than I originally intended them to be.

The conventional thing to do would be to write them in order from oldest sibling to youngest.

...

Anyway we’re starting with Pauline, the third youngest, because she’s one of my favorites. :)

*****

Pauline Bonaparte was born in Ajaccio, Corsica, on 20 October 1780; she was the sixth of what would be eight surviving children born to Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino. Baptized the following day at the local cathedral, she was christened Maria-Paola; her family would refer to her throughout her childhood as "Paoletta."

Almost nothing is known of her childhood in Ajaccio other than that her education was woefully neglected (as would be that of her younger siblings, Jerome and Caroline), and that she delighted in mischief at a young age. Her father died when she was only five years old, and her mother did little to instill discipline into the younger children; they were given a room in the house in which they were pretty much left to their own devices. Napoleon, eleven years her elder and appearing only sporadically during her early years as he continued his education in France, nevertheless developed a strong affection for her which he would retain for the remainder of his life, and which Pauline would reciprocate for the rest of hers.

In June of 1793, the inflammatory political sentiments of her third eldest brother, Lucien, set the ire of the supporters of the Corsican patriot Paoli against the Buonapartes, and the family was soon forced to flee Corsica for the French mainland. They eventually settled in Marseilles, and it was at this time that the names of the family were "Frenchified"; the surname Buonaparte was refashioned to Bonaparte, Maria-Paola into Pauline, and her affectionate nickname of Paoletta now became Paulette.

In Marseilles, she continued with the mischief of her childhood, stealing figs from a neighbor, who once caught her in the act and chased her off with a vine whip, sputtering curses. In her less mischievous moments, Pauline made herself dresses; by her mid-teens she was already becoming known for her beauty, and had developed a taste for finery, although the family was still far from wealthy at this point.

In later years, once Napoleon had come to power and royalist (and British) propagandists began taking aim at the Bonaparte family, numerous sordid stories were published about the behavior of Pauline and her sisters, with the earliest accounts of their alleged promiscuity occurring during their time in Marseilles. The royalist Peltier was one of the first to spread these rumors, depicting Pauline as having taken her first lover at the age of fourteen, and claiming that all three siblings had worked as prostitutes in while living Marseilles (Caroline was only eleven years old). There is nothing credible in any of these stories, but they were the start of a near-constant stream of rumors and tabloid gossip that would continue to accumulate about the Bonaparte sisters for the rest of their lives, and which have unfairly tarnished their reputations to this day.

However, Pauline did fall in love for the first time during this period, at the tender age of fifteen, with a much older man: a forty-one-year-old politician named Stanislas Fréron. Fréron had been tasked with establishing the authority of the revolutionary Convention to Toulon, where he first encountered Napoleon Bonaparte. How he first met Pauline is less clear, but she soon fell head-over-heels in love with him. With the assistance of older sister Elisa (and possible Lucien), she wrote love letters to Fréron, featuring excerpts such as the following:

Ti amo, sempre, et passionnatissimamente, per sempre ti amo, ti amo, amo, amo, amo, amo, si amatissime amante.

Fréron seems to have genuinely reciprocated the feelings. It was through him that Pauline became acquainted with the writings of Petrarch, which would always remain dear to her. Fréron intended to marry the girl, and Napoleon was not initially opposed to the match. Letizia Bonaparte, on the other hand, did oppose it; whether because of the age difference or because of the stories of Fréron's less-than-savory private life (he had at least two illegitimate children from an Italian actress) is unclear. Pauline scorned her mother's opposition, gushing to Fréron:

My heart is not for sharing. It's given to you whole. Who could oppose the union of two souls who seek only happiness and who find it in loving each other? No, my love, not Maman, not anyone can refuse you my hand.

It wasn't until Fréron began to fall out of political favor that Napoleon finally vetoed the impending marriage himself. Pauline was devastated, but submitted to her brother's will, writing him the following (again with the help of Elisa):

As for me I would rather be unhappy all my life than marry without your consent and bring your curses down on me. If, my dear Napoleon, you, for whom I have always had the most tender affection, could see the tears that your letter has caused me to shed, I believe that even you would be touched.

By way of consolation, Napoleon invited her to visit him. At some point after the Fréron affair, one of Napoleon's young aides-de-camp, Jean Andoche Junot, fell passionately in love with Pauline, and hoped to marry her. But Napoleon bluntly shot him down, saying "You have nothing. She has nothing. What does that total? Nothing. Your children will be born to wretchedness. Best to wait."

Pauline accompanied the rest of the family to stay with Napoleon in Mombello, Italy, in 1797. This was the first time the Bonaparte and Beauharnais family were in regular close contact with each other; it did not go well. Letizia despised Josephine, and in short order all of her children (minus, of course, Napoleon) followed suit. Pauline, envious of Josephine's grace, polish, and fine wardrobe, made it a point of sticking her tongue out at Napoleon's wife whenever her back was turned. She ran wild enough at Mombello--allegedly taking numerous young officers as lovers--that Napoleon became determined to marry her off as quickly as possible. He finally settled on a promising subordinate, twenty-five-year-old Charles-Victor-Emmanuel Leclerc. The match was convenient, as Leclerc, like numerous others before him, had also fallen in love with Pauline. She would refer to him affectionately as her "little Leclerc." The pair were married on 14 June 1797.

The French academician Arnault leaves the following impression of the newly-married couple, after a visit to their home on the rue de la Ville-l'Evêque:

I found Leclerc at home and intoxicated with happiness; amorous and ambitious, and both with reason. His wife seemed to me very happy too, not only because she was married to him, but also just because she was married. Her new position had not increased her seriousness, as was the case with her husband; he seemed more serious than usual. But as for her, she was just as much of a madcap as ever.

She became pregnant soon after the wedding, and Leclerc doted over her anxiously during what proved to be a difficult pregnancy. Their only child, a boy named Dermide Louis Napoleon Leclerc, was born on 20 April 1798. Pauline was plagued with recurring poor health from this pregnancy on. Her biographer Margery Weiner writes:

A difficult confinement left her debilitated and probably with some minor disorder easily rectified nowadays but, without proper treatment, a constant source of malaise and lassitude. It is likely that she suffered from post-natal inflammation for which contemporary medicine could prescribe only a round of therapeutic waters and baths, recommending in desperate cases baths of beef tea, surely more efficacious to swallow than to wallow in.

Leclerc eventually resigned his post in Paris and was reassigned to Brittany. Pauline did not accompany him to this post, staying in Paris with baby Dermide (Napoleon was campaigning in Egypt at this time). She was befriended by Madame Permon and her daughter Laure (future wife of Junot), who helped her make her way into Parisian society. In short order, Pauline was dazzling the salons of Paris with her natural charm and beauty (as well as her increasingly expensive wardrobe). "Nothing can give an idea of this ravishing figure," says Laure Junot in her memoirs. "She truly lit up the salon when she entered."

Perhaps entranced by her own talents for seduction and manipulation by this point, Pauline embarked on a brief triple love affair with three generals who were also close friends: Moreau, Macdonald, and Beurnonville. She seemed to take as much delight in being able to play the men against each other as she did in experiencing their affections; but it wasn't long before the three friends compared notes and decided to walk away from her in unison in order to preserve their friendship. The greatest effect of this affair was undoubtedly the stain it left on Pauline's reputation, not only in France but eventually abroad, as it quickly made its way into the British tabloids.

In late 1801, Napoleon--now First Consul--ordered Leclerc to Saint Domingue, to take charge of the 23,000 French troops there and suppress the rebellion of Toussaint L'Ouverture. To Pauline's dismay, her brother commanded her to accompany her husband on the expedition. Historian Michael Broers describes her resistance to this measure:

She... tried every trick she knew to get out of it. She claimed to be pregnant: Napoleon had her examined by his own doctor with the predictable result; she said she could not cope with the coach drive from Paris to Brest: he sent her in a sedan chair. She retaliated by going on a ruinous spending spree in Paris, which she landed on Napoleon, before her departure.

***

Sources:

Broers, Michael. Napoleon: Soldier of Destiny. 2014.

Cronin, Vincent. Napoleon Bonaparte: An Intimate Biography. 1972.

Fleischmann, Hector. Pauline Bonaparte and Her Lovers, 1914.

Fraser, Flora. Venus of Empire: The Life of Pauline Bonaparte, 2009.

Roberts, Andrews. Napoleon: A Life. 2014.

Weiner, Margery. The Parvenue Princesses: Elisa, Pauline, and Caroline Bonaparte. 1964.

Zamoyski, Adam. Napoleon: A Life. 2018.

#Pauline Bonaparte #Napoleon #Napoleon Bonaparte #history #18th century #19th century #Meet the Bonapartes #Charles-Victor-Emmanuel Leclerc

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sueshicakes-blog · 4 years

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Manila Bay has White Sand

The Manila Bay Rehabilitation project planning started in January 27, 2019, declared by DENR Secretary, Roy A. Cimatu. On September 20, 2020, the government would allegedly be opening a new, beautiful, and clean Manila Bay to the public.

Unfortunately for the government, like all their other recent decisions, not a lot of people are happy about the timing of this project. A lot of Filipinos and politicians voiced out their concerns about the timing, health, and legal problems this has, with one of them even being our own Vice President.

Ms. Leni Robredo has expressed on her weekly radio show, BISErbisyong LENI, that the timing of this project is quite insensitive. Many Filipinos were suffering from the pandemic, yet somehow the government found the time to focus on beautifying a beach. She also expressed her disappointment in the fact that these funds used for the project could’ve instead gone to COVID-19 related projects in order to protect the Filipino people.

We do believe that the timing is very off, and that the government could have used the money for more important matters. It is also quite questionable that this is what the government is focusing on instead of trying to fix the Covid-19 situation. Some might say that this Manila Bay project could help us economically, which would be cool, but what would be the point if in the end our government ended up killing all of us off? Why are we trying to appeal to tourists during a world pandemic when people on the streets are starving after losing their jobs? When people’s temporary shelters are being torn down by police only for the same people to get arrested for violating quarantine rules?

Manila City Mayor Isko said, “Ako naman nananawagan, ‘wag nyo nang idamay ang Maynila sa pulitika ninyo. Kailangan namin nito, kailangan namin ng malinis na dagat, kailangan namin ng malinis na ilog, kailangan namin ng malinis na creek, kailangan ‘yon ng mga susunod na salinlahi namin.” He also added, “Let [us] pay the price today so that the next generation will have a better vibrant city of Manila. We deserve it,” he stressed, noting that if the development of the bay area is not done today, “then when is the time to take care of our environment?”

To hear this is incredibly mind-boggling. We would like to respectfully question this man if he had any sort of common sense left in his brain. Adding sand to a beach isn’t going to clean anything, nor is it going to help the next generation. You know what could help the next generation, though? Making sure that the people who are still alive today won’t die out now thanks to the pandemic. Environmental protection is incredibly important, of course, but replacing the sand of a beach will do absolutely nothing. The recent fishkill, although experts are not sure what caused it, should be a sign that their project is useless in terms of protecting the environment.

On September 18, news started to spread that fishes have been found dead near the Baseco area. Some of the residents said that the cause of death of the fishes were because of bad weather (heavy rains) and some said it could be that the surrounding water was poisoned by a substance. Specifically, dolomite in the white sand in placed in Manila Bay.

DENR Undersecretary, Benny Antiporda said that it is “very erroneous” or even impossible for that to happen. He also explained that “Kasi if you will look at the distance, talagang napakalayo. ‘Yung direksyon ng hangin eh hindi nag p-point sa lugar na yon. ‘Yung fishkill sa lugar lang nila.” But due to the growing speculation, DENR decided that they will check the water quality and salinity, test the waters from the nourishment area and Baseco area.

From our perspective, all we can observe are a bunch of grown men and women acting like a sensitive high school student that refuses to take criticism on a project as they’re quite sensitive. What could help protect Manila Bay and other beaches like it is the implementation and creation of environmental laws. Making sure that large corporations can’t abuse the environment either should be on the top of their list as well, instead of doing whatever it is they’re doing. But hey, can we really be surprised? After all the failures this government has been showering us with lately, it’s not at all a surprise that another complicated situation was ‘solved’ with a band aid solution. Sure, the sand in Manila Bay may look clean for now, but one strong typhoon (that is bound to happen thanks to climate change and the way that higher global temperatures affect typhoons) is all it takes to wash it all way. We Filipinos will have the privilege of watching our money get wasted in real time, and we will be mocked by our own government for expressing our concerns about the safety of our own lives.

May God bless the Philippines and her people.

References:

· Romero, P., Nonato, V., Crisostomo, S., Romero, A., & Villanueva, R. (2020, September 8). Wrong Priorities? DENR Under Fire, ‘White Beach’ In Manila Bay Could Be Harmful, Unnecessary Amid The Pandemic. Retrieved from https://www.onenews.ph/wrong-priorities-denr-under-fire-white-beach-in-manila-bay-could-be-harmful-unnecessary-amid-the-pandemic

· Pedrajas, J. (2020, September 19) Mayor Isko: Set aside politics in Manila Bay beautification. Retrieved from https://mb.com.ph/2020/09/19/mayor-isko-set-aside-politics-in-manila-bay-beautification/

· Gozum, I. (2020, September 17) Manila Bay Rehabilitation: DENR denies connection of Baseco fish kill to Manila Bay white sand project. Retrieved from https://rappler.com/nation/denr-denies-connection-baseco-fish-kill-manila-bay-white-sand-project

· Agoncillo, J. A., & Valenzuela, N, G., (2020, September 18) ‘Impossible’ for Manila Bay ‘white sand’ to cause fish kill. Retrieved from https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1336857/denr-official-impossible-for-manila-bay-white-sand-to-cause-fish-kill

#politics #philippines

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blackkudos · 4 years

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Eazy-E

Eric Lynn Wright (September 7, 1964 – March 26, 1995), known professionally as Eazy-E, was an American rapper and rap mogul who propelled West Coast rap and gangsta rap by leading the group N.W.A and its label, Ruthless Records, pushing the boundaries of lyrical content.

Born and raised in Compton, a small yet violent city near Los Angeles, Wright had several legal troubles before founding Ruthless in 1987. After a short solo career with frequent collaboration with Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, they joined, forming N.W.A, later that year.

N.W.A's debut studio album, Straight Outta Compton, released in 1988, highly controversial then, is now ranked among the greatest and most influential albums. The group released its third and final studio album, Niggaz4Life, in 1991, and soon disbanded.

During N.W.A's splintering, largely by disputes over money, Eazy-E became embroiled in bitter rivalries with Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, who had departed for solo careers in 1989 and 1991, respectively. Resuming his sole career, Eazy-E released two EPs.

Yet Wright remained more significant behind the scenes, signing and nationally debuting the rap group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony from 1993 to 1994. But in 1995, suddenly hospitalized and diagnosed with AIDS, Wright died through its complications.

Early life and Ruthless Records investment

Eric Wright was born to Richard and Kathie Wright on September 7, 1964, in Compton, California, a Los Angeles suburb noted for high crime rates and gang culture. His father was a postal worker and his mother was a grade-school administrator. Wright dropped out of high school in the tenth grade, but later received a general equivalency diploma (GED).

Wright supported himself mainly by selling drugs, and introduced his cousin to the illicit occupation. Wright's music manager Jerry Heller recalls seeing Wright selling marijuana, but not cocaine. Heller would claim that Wright's "dope dealer" label was part of his "self-forged armor". Wright was also labeled as a "thug". Heller explains: "The hood where he grew up was a dangerous place. He was a small guy. 'Thug' was a role that was widely understood on the street; it gave you a certain level of protection in the sense that people hesitated to fuck with you. Likewise, 'dope dealer' was a role that accorded you certain privileges and respect."

In 1986, at age 22, Wright had allegedly earned as much as US$250,000 from dealing drugs. However, after his cousin was shot and killed, he decided that he could make a better living in the Los Angeles hip hop scene, which was growing rapidly in popularity. He started recording songs during the mid-1980s in his parents' garage.

The original idea for Ruthless Records came when Wright asked Heller to go into business with him. Wright suggested a half-ownership company, but it was later decided that Wright would get eighty percent of the company's income and Heller would only get twenty percent. According to Heller, he told Wright, "Every dollar comes into Ruthless, I take twenty cents. That's industry standard for a manager of my caliber. I take twenty, you take eighty percent. I am responsible for my expenses and you're responsible for yours. You own the company. I work for you." Along with Heller, Wright invested much of his money into Ruthless Records. Heller claims that he invested the first $250,000 and would eventually put up to $1,000,000 into the company.

Musical career

N.W.A and Eazy-Duz-It (1986–1991)

N.W.A's original lineup consisted of Arabian Prince, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, and Ice Cube. DJ Yella and MC Ren joined later. The compilation album N.W.A. and the Posse was released on November 6, 1987, and would go on to be certified Gold in the United States. The album featured material previously released as singles on the Macola Records label, which was responsible for distributing the releases by N.W.A and other artists like the Fila Fresh Crew, a West Coast rap group originally based in Dallas, Texas.

Eazy-E's debut album, Eazy-Duz-It, was released on September 16, 1988, and featured twelve tracks. It was labeled as West Coast hip hop, gangsta rap and, later, as golden age hip hop. It has sold over 2.5 million copies in the United States and reached number forty-one on the Billboard 200. The album was produced by Dr. Dre and DJ Yella and largely written by MC Ren, Ice Cube and The D.O.C.. Both Glen Boyd from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and MTV's Jon Wiederhorn claimed that Eazy-Duz-It "paved the way" for N.W.A's most controversial album, Straight Outta Compton. Wright's only solo in the album was a remix of the song "8 Ball", which originally appeared on N.W.A. and the Posse. The album featured Wright's writing and performing; he performed on seven songs and helped write four songs.

Ice Cube left N.W.A in 1989 because of internal disputes and the group continued as a four-piece ensemble. N.W.A released 100 Miles and Runnin' in 1990 and Niggaz4Life in 1991. A diss war started between N.W.A and Ice Cube when "100 Miles and Runnin'" and "Real Niggaz" were released. Ice Cube responded with "No Vaseline" on Death Certificate. Wright performed on seven of the eighteen songs on Niggaz4Life. In March 1991 Wright accepted an invitation to a lunch benefiting the Republican Senatorial Inner Circle, hosted by then-U.S. President George H. W. Bush. A spokesman for the rapper said that Eazy-E supported Bush because of his performance in the Persian Gulf War.

End of N.W.A and feud with Dr. Dre (1991–1994)

N.W.A began to split up after Jerry Heller became the band's manager. Dr. Dre recalls: "The split came when Jerry Heller got involved. He played the divide and conquer game. Instead of taking care of everybody, he picked one nigga to take care of and that was Eazy. And Eazy was like, 'I'm taken care of, so fuck it'." Dr. Dre and The D.O.C. sent Suge Knight to look into Eazy-E's financial situation as they began to grow suspicious of Eazy-E and Jerry Heller. Dr. Dre and The D.O.C. asked Eazy-E to release him from Ruthless, but Eazy-E refused. The impasse led to what reportedly transpired between Suge Knight and Eazy-E at the recording studio where Niggaz4life was recorded. After he refused to release Dr. Dre and The D.O.C., Suge Knight told Eazy-E that he had kidnapped Jerry Heller and was holding him prisoner in a van. This did not convince Eazy-E to release Dr. Dre and The D.O.C. from Ruthless, and Suge Knight threatened Eazy-E's family: Suge Knight gave Eazy-E a piece of paper that contained Eazy's mother's address, telling him, "I know where your mama stays." Eazy-E finally signed Dr. Dre and The D.O.C.'s releases, officially ending N.W.A.

The feud with Dr. Dre continued after a track on Dre's debut album The Chronic, "Fuck wit Dre Day (And Everybody's Celebratin')", contained lyrics that insulted Eazy-E. Eazy responded with the EP, It's On (Dr. Dre) 187um Killa, featuring the tracks "Real Muthaphuckkin G's" and "It's On". The album, which was released on October 25, 1993, contains pictures of Dre wearing "lacy outfits and makeup" when he was a member of the Electro-hop World Class Wreckin' Cru.

Personal life

Wright had a son, Eric Darnell Wright (known as Lil Eazy-E), in 1984. He also had a daughter named Erin who has legally changed her name to Ebie In October 2016 she launched a crowd-funding campaign to produce a film called Ruthless Scandal: No More Lies to investigate her father's death. It ended unsuccessfully in December 2016.

Wright met Tomica Woods at a Los Angeles nightclub in 1991 and they married in 1995, twelve days before his death. They had a son named Dominick and a daughter named Daijah (born six months after Wright's death). After Wright's death, Ruthless was taken over by his wife. According to Jerry Heller, Wright had 11 children with eight different women.

Illness and death

On February 24, 1995, Wright was admitted to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles with a violent cough. He was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. He announced his illness in a public statement on March 16, 1995. It is believed Wright contracted the infection from a sexual partner.During the week of March 20, having already made amends with Ice Cube, he drafted a final message to his fans. On March 26, 1995, Eazy-E died from complications of AIDS, one month after his diagnosis. He was 30 years old (most reports at the time said he was 31 due to the falsification of his date of birth by one year). He was buried on April 7, 1995, at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, California. Over 3,000 people attended his funeral, including Jerry Heller and DJ Yella. He was buried in a gold casket, and was dressed in a flannel shirt, jeans, and his Compton hat. On January 30, 1996, ten months after Eazy-E's death, his final album, Str8 off tha Streetz of Muthaphukkin Compton was released.

According to his son Lil Eazy-E, Eazy-E was worth an estimated USD$50 million at the time of his death.

Musical influences and style

Allmusic cites Eazy-E's influences as Ice-T, Redd Foxx, King Tee, Bootsy Collins, Run–D.M.C., Richard Pryor, Egyptian Lover, Schoolly D, Too $hort, Prince, the Sugarhill Gang and George Clinton. In the documentary The Life and Timez of Eric Wright, Eazy-E mentions collaborating with many of his influences.

When reviewing Str8 off tha Streetz of Muthaphukkin Compton, Stephen Thomas Erlewine noted "... Eazy-E sounds revitalized, but the music simply isn't imaginative. Instead of pushing forward and creating a distinctive style, it treads over familiar gangsta territory, complete with bottomless bass, whining synthesizers, and meaningless boasts." When reviewing Eazy-Duz-It, Jason Birchmeier of Allmusic said, "In terms of production, Dr. Dre and Yella meld together P-Funk, Def Jam-style hip-hop and the leftover electro sounds of mid-'80s Los Angeles, creating a dense, funky, and thoroughly unique style of their own." Birchmeier described Eazy-E's style as "dense, unique and funky", and said that it sounded "absolutely revolutionary in 1988".

Several members of N.W.A wrote lyrics for Eazy-Duz-It: Ice Cube, The D.O.C. and MC Ren. The EP 5150: Home 4 tha Sick features a song written by Naughty By Nature. The track "Merry Muthaphuckkin' Xmas" features Menajahtwa, Buckwheat, and Atban Klann as guest vocalists, and "Neighborhood Sniper" features Kokane as a guest vocalist. It's On (Dr. Dre) 187um Killa features several guest vocalists, including Gangsta Dresta, B.G. Knocc Out. Kokane, Cold 187um, Rhythum D, and Dirty Red. Str8 off tha Streetz of Muthaphukkin Compton featured several guest vocalists, including B.G. Knocc Out, Gangsta Dresta, Sylk-E. Fyne, Dirty Red, Menajahtwa, Roger Troutman and ex-N.W.A members MC Ren and DJ Yella.

Legacy

Eazy-E has been called the godfather of gangsta rap. MTV's Reid Shaheem said that Eazy was a "rap-pioneer", and he is sometimes cited by critics as a legend. Steve Huey of AllMusic said that he was "one of the most controversial figures in gangsta rap". Since his 1995 death, many book and video biographies have been produced, including 2002's The Day Eazy-E Died and Dead and Gone.

When Eazy was diagnosed with AIDS, many magazines like Jet, Vibe, Billboard, The Crisis, and Newsweek covered the story and released information on the topic. All of his studio albums and EPs charted on the Billboard 200, and many of his singles—"Eazy-Duz-It", "We Want Eazy", "Real Muthaphuckkin G's, and "Just tah Let U Know"—also charted in the U.S.

In 2012 an Eazy-E documentary was released by Ruthless Propaganda, called Ruthless Memories. The documentary featured interviews from Jerry Heller, MC Ren and B.G. Knocc Out.

In the 2015 film Straight Outta Compton, Eazy-E is played by Jason Mitchell and the film is dedicated in his memory.

Discography

Studio albums

Eazy-Duz-It (1988)

Str8 off tha Streetz of Muthaphukkin Compton (1996)

Extended Plays

5150: Home 4 tha Sick (1992)

It's On (Dr. Dre) 187um Killa (1993)

Impact of a Legend (2002)

with N.W.A

N.W.A. and the Posse (1987)

Straight Outta Compton (1988)

100 Miles and Runnin' (1990)

Niggaz4Life (1991)

#09/07 #03/26

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missmist93 · 4 years

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Top-4 Badass Female Rulers

Strong women in power more than once sparkled like bright stars on the canvas of history. Let's take a look at some of them that have left their mark on the history of Russia. 1. Princess Olga Our first officially known female ruler and the first Orthodox ruler. She’s a princess who ruled Kievan Rus from 945 to 960 as regent under her young son Svyatoslav, after the death of her husband, Prince Igor. She was known as a proud, wise and brave woman. She signed several lucrative contracts with neighboring lands, laid the foundation for stone urban planning, streamlined tax collection and paid attention to the improvement of the lands under her control. There is a legend about how Olga outwitted the Byzantine king. He, marveling at her intelligence and beauty, wanted to marry Olga, but the princess rejected his claims, noting that it was not proper for Christians to marry pagans. It was then that the king and the patriarch baptized her. When the king again began to harass the princess, she pointed out that she was now his goddaughter, so he couldn’t marry her anyway.

But her cruel revenge for the death of her beloved husband is best known. In 945, Prince Igor died at the hands of the Slavic tribe of the Drevlyans after repeatedly collecting tribute from them. After the murder of Igor, the Drevlyans sent 20 "best husbands" to Olga, deciding to woo her to their prince Mal. Olga pretended to agree to the Drevlyans' proposal, and, allegedly in order to honor the ambassadors, ordered her subjects to solemnly carry them on boats to her palace. Meanwhile, a pit had already been dug in the courtyard, into which, by order of Olga, the ambassadors were thrown. In 946, Olga went out with an army on a campaign against the Drevlyans. According to Russian chronicles, after an unsuccessful siege during the summer, Olga burned the city of the Drevlyans, Iskorosten, with the help of birds, to whose feet she ordered to tie lighted tows with sulfur. Some of Iskorosten's defenders were killed, the rest obeyed. After the reprisal against the Drevlyans, Olga began to rule Russia until Svyatoslav came of age, but even after that she remained the de facto ruler, since her son spent most of his time on military campaigns and didn’t pay attention to managing the state.

2. Marfa Boretskaya, also known as Martha the Mayoress Formally, Martha was never a ruler, but she had great influence as the widow of the Novgorod mayor Isaac Boretsky, and she was one of the leaders of the Novgorod opposition to Ivan III. In the Novgorod folk legends, Martha appears in the form of a strong and domineering ruler who firmly held her position no matter what. In the 15th century, autocracy spread across Russia, but the Novgorod principality remained a stronghold of democracy. Martha and her son, the Novgorod dignified mayor Dmitry, in 1471 advocated the withdrawal of Novgorod from dependence on Moscow. Martha was the informal leader of the boyar opposition to Moscow; she was supported by two more noble Novgorod widows. Martha, who possessed significant funds, negotiated with the Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland Casimir IV on the entry of Novgorod into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania on the basis of autonomy while preserving the political rights of Novgorod.

Upon learning of the negotiations on the annexation of Novgorod to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Grand Duke Ivan III declared war on the Novgorod Republic and defeated the army of Novgorod in the Battle of Shelonsk (1471). Martha’s son was executed as a political criminal. However, Novgorod's right to self-government in its internal affairs was retained. Martha, despite the death of her son and the actions of Ivan III, continued negotiations with Casimir, who promised her support. In 1478, during a new military campaign, Ivan III finally deprived the Novgorod lands of the privileges of self-government, extending the power of autocracy to them. The veche bell, which used to call the townspeople to meetings, as a symbol of Novgorod democracy, was taken to Moscow. Martha's lands were confiscated, she and her grandson Vasily were first brought to Moscow, and then sent to Nizhny Novgorod, where she was tonsured a nun under the name of Mary in the Conception (since 1814 - Holy Cross) monastery, where she died in 1503. 3. Princess Sophia Alekseevna Romanova Another strong woman with a tragic fate. Voltaire said about her: “She had a lot of intelligence, she wrote poetry, was a skilled writer and orator, she combined a pleasant appearance with lots of talents; they were overshadowed only by her ambition". She ruled as regent of Russia from 1682 to 1689, during the minority of her brother Ivan V and half-brother Peter I. A daughter of tsar Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov and Maria Miloslavskaya, she lost her father during a period of violent feuds that broke out between relatives of her deceased mother and stepmother. According to the laws of that time, only a man could inherit the throne. Sophia had no rights to it, although she was an older sister. After the Streltsy revolt, in May 1682, the warring factions reached a compromise and chose two tsars, two half-brothers - Ivan V and Peter I. Sophia headed the government under both minor tsars.

Sophia achieved that her name was included in the official royal title "Great Sovereign and Grand Princess and Grand Duchess Sophia Alekseevna". A few years later, her image was minted on coins, and from 1686 she already called herself an autocrat and the next year she issued this title by a special decree. The policy of the reign of Princess Sophia in many ways contributed to the renewal of public life. Industry and trade began to develop noticeably. The country began to produce velvet and satin. The Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy was opened. International contacts are being established. Sophia began to reorganize the army according to the European model. Even the noble supporter of Peter I, Prince Kurakin, admitted: Sophia ruled “with all diligence and justice, so there was never such a wise government in the Russian state. And in the whole state during her reign great wealth flourished, commerce, and crafts, and science also multiplied... and the freedom of the people triumphed". But time passed, Prince Ivan died and Prince Peter grew up. Like Sophia, he actively advocated reforms for the good of the state, but Sophia flatly refused to cede the throne to her half-brother.

Sophia lost power while trying to eliminate Peter, who had already reached adulthood. In 1689, relations between Sophia and the boyar-noble group that supported Peter I escalated to the extreme. As a result, the party of Peter I won the final victory, and the royal biography of Sophia ended. All supporters of the princess lost their real power, her name was excluded from the royal title. Sophia herself was sent without tonsure to the Novodevichy nunnery in Moscow, where she copied church books and wrote a lot. During the Streltsy Uprising of 1698, Sophia repeated her attempt to gain power. In her letters to the streltsy, she asked to support her and oppose Peter I. The uprising was brutally suppressed. Sophia was tonsured as a nun and imprisoned in the nunnery forever.

The tragic story of his half-sister prompted Peter I to issue a decree on succession to the throne in 1722. The decree canceled the ancient custom of transferring the royal throne to direct descendants in the male line and provided for the appointment of an heir to the throne at the behest of the monarch. 4. Catherine II or Catherine The Great The 18th century in the Russian Empire was the heyday of the Russian "kingdom of women" - and the most beautiful flower in this garden was Empress Catherine the Great. The country's longest-ruling female leader (1762 – 1796). She came to power following a coup d'état that overthrew her husband, Peter III. Under her reign, Russia was revitalised; it grew larger and stronger, and was recognised as one of the great powers of Europe.

She wasn’t Russian in blood, but she became one in spirit. Sophia Frederica Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst converted to Orthodoxy and received the name Catherine, studied Russian language and Russian culture. The Empress formulated the tasks facing the Russian monarch as follows: - to educate the nation to be governed; - to introduce good order in the state, to support society and make it comply with the laws; - to establish a good and accurate police force in the state; - contribute to the flourishing of the state and make it abundant; - to make the state formidable in itself and inspiring respect for its neighbors. Under Catherine, special attention was paid to the development of women's education, in 1764 the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens and the Educational Society for Noble Maidens were opened. The Academy of Sciences has become one of the leading scientific bases in Europe. In the provinces there were orders of public charity. In Moscow and St. Petersburg there are orphanages for homeless children, where they received education and upbringing. The Widows Treasury was created to help widows. If we talk about the disadvantages of her rule, then they include favoritism, corruption and connivance with the nobility to the detriment of ordinary people and especially serfs.The ideas expressed by Diderot and Voltaire, of which she was an adherent in words, didn’t correspond to her internal politics. They defended the idea that every person is born free, and advocated the equality of all people and the elimination of medieval forms of exploitation and despotic forms of government. Contrary to these ideas, under Catherine there was a further deterioration in the situation of serfs, their exploitation intensified, inequality grew due to the granting of even greater privileges to the nobility. In general, historians characterize her policy as "pro-noble" and believe that despite the empress's frequent statements about her "vigilant concern for the welfare of all subjects", the concept of the common good in the era of Catherine was the same fiction as in general in Russia in the 18th century.

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wearyewe · 4 years

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...The candidates were talking about health care. At first, Biden sounded strong, confident, presidential: “My plan makes a limit of co-pay to be One. Thousand. Dollars. Because we—”

He stopped. He pinched his eyes closed. He lifted his hands and thrust them forward, as if trying to pull the missing sound from his mouth. “We f-f-f-f-further support—” He opened his eyes. “The uh-uh-uh-uh—” His chin dipped toward his chest. “The-uh, the ability to buy into the Obamacare plan.” Biden also stumbled when trying to say immune system.

Fox News edited these moments into a mini montage. Stifling laughter, the host Steve Hilton narrated: “As the right words struggled to make that perilous journey from Joe Biden’s brain to Joe Biden’s mouth, half the time he just seemed to give up with this somewhat tragic and limp admission of defeat.”

Several days later, Biden’s team got back in touch with me. One of his aides gingerly asked whether I’d noticed the former vice president stutter during the debate. Of course I had—I stutter, far worse than Biden. The aide said he was ready to talk about it. In November, after Biden stumbled multiple times during a debate in Atlanta, the topic would become even more relevant.

...Stuttering is a neurological disorder that affects roughly 70 million people, about 3 million of whom live in the United States. It has a strong genetic component: Two-thirds of stutterers have a family member who actively stutters or used to. Biden’s uncle on his mother’s side—“Uncle Boo-Boo,” as he was called—stuttered his whole life.

In the most basic sense, a stutter is a repetition, prolongation, or block in producing a sound. It typically presents between the ages of 2 and 4, in up to twice as many boys as girls, who also have a higher recovery rate. During the developmental years, some children’s stutter will disappear completely without intervention or with speech therapy. The longer someone stutters, however, the lower the chances of a full recovery—perhaps due to the decreasing plasticity of the brain. Research suggests that no more than a quarter of people who still stutter at 10 will completely rid themselves of the affliction as adults.

The cultural perception of stutterers is that they’re fearful, anxious people, or simply dumb, and that stuttering is the result. But it doesn’t work like that. Let’s say you’re in fourth grade and you have to stand up and recite state capitals. You know that Juneau is the capital of Alaska, but you also know that you almost always block on the j sound. You become intensely anxious not because you don’t know the answer, but because you do know the answer, and you know you’re going to stutter on it.

Stuttering can feel like a series of betrayals. Your body betrays you when it refuses to work in concert with your brain to produce smooth speech. Your brain betrays you when it fails to recall the solutions you practiced after school with a speech therapist, allegedly in private, later learning that your mom was on the other side of a mirror, watching in the dark like a detective. If you’re a lucky stutterer, you have friends and family who build you back up, but sometimes your protectors betray you too.

...The students are taking turns reading a book, one by one, up and down the rows. “I could count down how many paragraphs, and I’d memorize it, because I found it easier to memorize than look at the page and read the word. I’d pretend to be reading,” Biden says. “You learned early on who the hell the bullies were,” he tells me later. “You could tell by the look, couldn’t you?”

...“The paragraph I had to read was: ‘Sir Walter Raleigh was a gentleman. He laid his cloak upon the muddy road suh-suh-so the lady wouldn’t soil her shoes when she entered the carriage,’ ” Biden tells me, slightly and unintentionally tripping up on the word so. “And I said, ‘Sir Walter Raleigh was a gentle man who—’ and then the nun said, ‘Mr. Biden, what is that word?’ And it was gentleman that she wanted me to say, not gentle man. And she said, ‘Mr. Buh-Buh-Buh-Biden, what’s that word?’ ”

...Listening back to that part of the conversation after our interview made me feel dizzy. I can only speculate as to why Biden’s campaign agreed to this interview, but I assume the reasoning went something like this: If Biden disclosed to me, a person who stutters, that he himself still actively stutters, perhaps voters would cut him some slack when it comes to verbal misfires, as well as errors that seem more related to memory and cognition.

But whenever I asked Biden about what appeared to be his present-day stuttering, the notably verbose candidate became clipped, or said he didn’t remember, or spun off to somewhere new.

I wondered if I reminded Biden of his old self, a ghost from his youth, the stutterer he used to be. He and I are about the same height. We happened to be wearing the exact same outfit that day: navy suit, white shirt, no tie. We both went to all-male prep schools, the sort of place where displaying any weakness is a liability.

As I listened to the recording of our interview, I remembered how I used to respond when people asked me about my stutter. I’d shut down. I’d try to change the subject. I’d almost always look away.

...This evolution in treatment has been accompanied by a new movement to destigmatize the disorder, similar to the drive to view autism through a lens of “neurodiversity” rather than as a pathology. The idea is to accept, even embrace, one’s stutter. There are practical reasons for this: Research shows, according to Donaher, that the simple disclosure “I stutter” benefits both the stutterer and the listener—the former gets to explain what’s happening and ease the awkward tension so the latter isn’t stuck wondering what’s “wrong” with this person. Saying those two words is harder than it seems. “I’m working with people who spend their whole lives and are never able to disclose it,” Donaher told me.

Eric S. Jackson, an assistant professor of communicative sciences and disorders at NYU, told me he believes that Biden’s eye movements—the blinks, the downward glances—are part of his ongoing efforts to manage his stutter. “As kids we figure out: Oh, if I move parts of my body not associated with the speech system, sometimes it helps me get through these blocks faster,” Jackson, a stutterer himself, explained. Jackson credits an intensive program at the American Institute for Stuttering, in Manhattan, with bringing him back from a “rock bottom” period in his mid-20s, when he says his stutter kept him from meeting women or speaking up enough to reach his professional goals. Afterward, Jackson went all in on disclosure: Every day for six months, he stood up during the subway ride to and from work and announced that he was a person who stutters. “I had this new relationship with my stuttering—I was like Hercules,” he told me. At 41, Jackson still stutters, but in conversation he confidently maintains eye contact and appears relaxed. He wishes Biden would be more transparent about his intermittent disfluency. “Running for president is essentially the biggest stage in the world. For him to come out and say ‘I still stutter and it’s fine’ would be an amazing, empowering message.”

Occasionally, Biden has used present-tense verbs when discussing his stutter. “I find myself, when I’m tired, cuh-cuh-catching myself, like that,” he said during a 2016 American Institute for Stuttering speech. Biden has used the phrase we stutterers at times, but in most public appearances and interviews, Biden talks about how he overcame his speech problem, and how he believes others can too. You can watch videos posted by his campaign in which Biden meets young stutterers and encourages them to follow his lead. They’re sweet clips, even if the underlying message—beat it or bust—is out of sync with the normalization movement.

Emma Alpern is a 32-year-old copy editor who co-leads the Brooklyn chapter of the National Stuttering Association and co-founded NYC Stutters, which puts on a day-long conference for stuttering destigmatization. Alpern told me that she’s on a group text with other stutterers who regularly discuss Biden, and that it’s been “frustrating” to watch the media portray Biden’s speech impediment as a sign of mental decline or dishonesty. “Biden allows that to happen by not naming it for what it is,” she said, though she’s not sure that his presidential candidacy would benefit if he were more forthcoming. “I think he’s dug himself into a hole of not saying that he still stutters for so long that it would strike people as a little weird.”

...As he watched The King’s Speech, Biden accurately guessed that the screenwriter, David Seidler, was a stutterer. “He showed me a copy of a speech they found in an attic that the king had actually used, where he marks his—it’s exactly what I do!” Biden tells me, his voice lifting. “My staff, when I have them put something on a prompter—I wish I had something to show you.”

He pulls out a legal pad and begins drawing diagonal lines a few inches apart, as if diagramming invisible sentences: x words, breath, y words, breath. “Because it’s just the way I have—the, the best way for me to read a, um, a speech. I mean, when I saw The King’s Speech, and the speech—I didn’t know anybody who did that!”

...A stutter does not get worse as a person ages, but trying to keep it at bay can take immense physical and mental energy. Biden talks all day to audiences both small and large. In addition to periodically stuttering or blocking on certain sounds, he appears to intentionally not stutter by switching to an alternative word—a technique called “circumlocution”—which can yield mangled syntax. I’ve been following practically everything he’s said for months now, and sometimes what is quickly characterized as a memory lapse is indeed a stutter. As Eric Jackson, the speech pathologist, pointed out to me, during a town hall in August Biden briefly blocked on Obama, before quickly subbing in my boss. The headlines after the event? “Biden Forgets Obama’s Name.” Other times when Biden fudges a detail or loses his train of thought, it seems unrelated to stuttering, like he’s just making a mistake. The kind of mistake other candidates make too, though less frequently than he does.

During his 2016 address at the American Institute for Stuttering, Biden told the room that he’d turned down an invitation to speak at a dinner organized by the group years earlier. “I was afraid if people knew I stuttered,” he said, “they would have thought something was wrong with me.”

Yet even when sharing these old, hard stories, Biden regularly characterizes stuttering as “the best thing that ever happened” to him. “Stuttering gave me an insight I don’t think I ever would have had into other people’s pain,” he says. I admire his empathy, even if I disagree with his strict adherence to a tidy redemption narrative.

In Biden’s office, as my time is about to run out, I bring up the fact that Trump crudely mocked a disabled New York Times reporter during the 2016 campaign. “So far, he’s called you ‘Sleepy Joe.’ Is ‘St-St-St-Stuttering Joe’ next?”

“I don’t think so,” Biden says, “because if you ask the polls ‘Does Biden stutter? Has he ever stuttered?,’ you’d have 80 to 95 percent of people say no.” If Trump goes there, Biden adds, “it’ll just expose him for what he is.”

I ask Biden something else we’ve been circling: whether he worries that people would pity him if they thought he still stuttered.

He scratches his chin, his fingers trembling slightly. “Well, I guess, um, it’s kind of hard to pity a vice president. It’s kind of hard to pity a senator who’s gotten six zillion awards. It’s kind of hard to pity someone who has had, you know, a decent family. I-I-I-I don’t think if, now, if someone sits and says, ‘Well, you know, the kid, when he was a stutterer, he must have been really basically stupid,’ I-I-I don’t think it’s hard to—I’ve never thought of that. I mean, there’s nobody in the last, I don’t know, 55 years, has ever said anything like that to me.”

He slips back into politician mode, safe mode, Uncle Joe mode: “I hope what they see is: Be mindful of people who are in situations where their difficulties do not define their character, their intellect. Because that’s what I tell stutterers. You can’t let it define you.” He leans across the desk. “And you haven’t.” He’s in my face now. “You can’t let it define you. You’re a really bright guy.”

He’s telling me, in essence, that my stutter doesn’t matter, which is what I want to tell him right back. But here’s the thing: Most of the time, Biden speaks smoothly, and perhaps he sincerely does not believe that he still stutters at all. Or maybe Biden is simply telling me the story he’s told himself for several decades, the one he’s memorized, the one he can comfortably express. I don’t want to hear Biden say “I still stutter” to prove some grand point; I want to hear him say it because doing so as a presidential candidate would mean that stuttering truly doesn’t matter—for him, for me, or for our 10-year-old selves...

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Vote for whomever you think would be the best president. There are plenty of valid reasons to prefer one candidate over another. But stop spouting off bullshit conspiracy theories while pretending to be an expert in speech pathology, stuttering, AND senility. (And realize you’re also implicitly calling everyone with a stutter or any speech disorder mentally demented or mentally deficient).

#long post #don't care #this shit is starting to really piss me off #and sounds exactly like the shit the alt-right and fox news puts out

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anhed-nia · 5 years

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CATTOBER #2 10/20/2019: CAT PEOPLE (1942)

When RKO released Jacques Tourneur’s classic CAT PEOPLE in 1942, it was about a decade after DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN had roughly co-created the monster movie, and a year after THE WOLFMAN joined Universal’s creature canon. It is hard not to see their influence on Tourneur’s feline-themed effort--a half-human paranormal being, generally bearing a curse from a foreign land, is torn between its craving for love and its urge to kill, effectively symbolizing the loneliness and frustration of the average ticket buyer. There’s nothing wrong with an extra dose of that now and again, as history has proven, but we are lucky that DeWitt Bodeen’s script goes above and beyond the call of those familiar gothic romances. CAT PEOPLE provides a detailed and even confrontational analysis of alienated sexuality and clinical depression that is startling for its era, or perhaps any era.

Serbian fashion illustrator Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon) innocently initiates the ruination of her own life when she casually litters at the Central Park Zoo. Her carelessness attracts the attention of all-American male Oliver Reed (?! Kent Smith), who promptly sets about trying to tame the eccentric and exotic artist. Having penetrated her apartment (but nothing more) and chided her for her unusual decor, she explains Serbia’s history of witch hunts--specifically, the purging of satanic cultists who could transform into cats. Oliver’s bemused condescension will be a constant presence in their evolving relationship, which somehow escalates to marriage in spite of Irena’s unwillingness to consummate. Irena is open with Oliver about her emotional troubles, claiming that there is something wrong with her that can be catalyzed by sexual stimulation. Irena is a lonely creature who is painfully aware of the difference between herself and ordinary, non-pathological women who are free to do as they please without serious physical and emotional consequences. Oliver, the perennial skeptic, moves from making fun of his wife’s neuroses, to thrusting a shrink upon her. Following in Freud’s footsteps, Dr. Judd (Tom Conway) is an intellectual predator who believes that he can “cure” Irena’s frigidity himself by forcing himself on her. While she tries to navigate this terrible experience, Oliver grows closer and closer to a coworker who has been waiting patiently in the wings for him. Once Irena determines that she has been betrayed by her supposed loved ones and caretakers, more than one of these characters will be doomed.

CAT PEOPLE is just as astute about depression and anxiety as it is about abuse. Irena’s feelings of being sick and unworthy are sadly standard responses to one’s own inability to be happy and uncomplicated--those blithe qualities that define the concept of normality for many. Unfortunately, when this kind of alienation is your problem, it can beget other problems, as it often activates dangerous individuals in your midst. Oliver is a particularly dangerous sort of person, as he fully believes himself to be healthy, happy, and normal. He shoves his way into Irena’s life, in spite of her consistent resistance, because he is incapable of self-doubt. Instead, he focuses all of his critical energies on Irena, scoffing at her ancestral belief system, and glibly dismissing her frank and open discussion of her distress. He thinks he “loves” his wife, but shows her no respect to her face, and shares all of her confidential thoughts and feelings with his friends and acquaintances, to her total mortification. Though he seems incapable of speaking with his wife as equals, he shares a disturbing moment of truth with his colleague Alice (Jane Randolph). “I don’t really know what love is,” he says, just as Alice is bravely confessing her own feelings for him. Alice, a stable and self-confident person, gives him a reasonable definition of a healthy relationship: “It’s understanding...no self-torture, no doubt.” Bypassing Alice’s profession of love, Oliver counters, “That isn’t the way I feel about Irena...I’m drawn to her...I have to watch her when she’s in the room, I have to touch her when she’s near. But I don’t really know her.” He is only really attracted to primitive sexual tension, mystery and vulnerability--an inaccessible woman, the conquest of whom feeds his ego--and Alice, a person of substance and honesty, has neither.

Eventually, Alice will win out, though. Oliver amuses himself with Irena on a grand scale, even paying the price of a wedding to enjoy the drama of trying to undermining her. Just as he is gaining the upper hand, convincing her to revisit the psychiatrist who tries to molest her, Oliver loses interest. He awakens to Alice’s good-natured steadiness, to which she replies ironically, “That’s what makes me dangerous, I’m the new kind of other woman.” This remark identifies the hitch at the center of any relationship with a shallow, gaslighting abuser like Oliver. They make women who are compassionate and emotionally available feel “boring” and sexually worthless, but their seeming preference for “crazy girls” is really just a preference for the opportunity to abuse someone. They don’t take their excitingly volatile and often traumatized lovers seriously, and will eventually turn to the temporarily greener-looking grass of a more socially acceptable female who has her proverbial shit together. Oliver openly flaunts his growing intimacy with Alice, sending Irena away in public so they can be alone, and chastising her for failing to work on herself, for refusing to be honest about her “real” problems. These insults are all too familiar to people battling mental illnesses. The allegedly Healthy will say that the Sick aren’t sick, they’re lazy, and if the Sick try to tell the inconvenient truth about their feelings, they are dismissed as liars. Any other concession would entitle someone like Irena to a little more compassion, which is more work than Oliver is willing to put in.

Honesty is an embattled concept in CAT PEOPLE. Irena goes out on a very unstable limb when she explains herself to Oliver and Dr. Judd, and they use her shocking statements to invalidate anything she has to say. ”I have never lied to you,” she pleads pitifully, as the men build up her reputation as a liar. Judd may or may not fully believe that Irena is convinced of her satanic heritage, but he is happy to paper it over with broad psychoanalytic concepts. “There is in some cases a psychic need to loose evil upon the world,” he says, suggesting that her fixation on wild cats is just a reflection of her destructive nature. “All of us carry within us the desire for death,” he adds, identifying her thanatropic drive as at fault for her perceived refusal to simply *be happy*. This all makes him sound pretty bright, but as the audience can plainly tell, he will pay for his inability to acknowledge that Irena is genuinely trapped between two worlds. Her story ends in tragedy when the bestial impulses that she has fought to contain are finally set free by all of these attacks from those who begged her to trust them. In the film’s final moments, Oliver and Alice look down at the feline corpse of the friend they betrayed, as he infuriatingly remarks, “She never lied to us.” Even at the end, CAT PEOPLE presents a painful reflection of real life, in which those vulnerable people who are disbelieved are rarely around to hear it when they are finally validated.

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theculturedmarxist · 4 years

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1. The Swedish Police constructed a story of rape

Nils Melzer, why is the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture interested in Julian Assange? That is something that the German Foreign Ministry recently asked me as well: Is that really your core mandate? Is Assange the victim of torture?

What was your response? The case falls into my mandate in three different ways: First, Assange published proof of systematic torture. But instead of those responsible for the torture, it is Assange who is being persecuted. Second, he himself has been ill-treated to the point that he is now exhibiting symptoms of psychological torture. And third, he is to be extradited to a country that holds people like him in prison conditions that Amnesty International has described as torture. In summary: Julian Assange uncovered torture, has been tortured himself and could be tortured to death in the United States. And a case like that isn’t supposed to be part of my area of responsibility? Beyond that, the case is of symbolic importance and affects every citizen of a democratic country.

Why didn’t you take up the case much earlier? Imagine a dark room. Suddenly, someone shines a light on the elephant in the room – on war criminals, on corruption. Assange is the man with the spotlight. The governments are briefly in shock, but then they turn the spotlight around with accusations of rape. It is a classic maneuver when it comes to manipulating public opinion. The elephant once again disappears into the darkness, behind the spotlight. And Assange becomes the focus of attention instead, and we start talking about whether Assange is skateboarding in the embassy or whether he is feeding his cat correctly. Suddenly, we all know that he is a rapist, a hacker, a spy and a narcissist. But the abuses and war crimes he uncovered fade into the darkness. I also lost my focus, despite my professional experience, which should have led me to be more vigilant.

Let’s start at the beginning: What led you to take up the case? In December 2018, I was asked by his lawyers to intervene. I initially declined. I was overloaded with other petitions and wasn’t really familiar with the case. My impression, largely influenced by the media, was also colored by the prejudice that Julian Assange was somehow guilty and that he wanted to manipulate me. In March 2019, his lawyers approached me for a second time because indications were mounting that Assange would soon be expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy. They sent me a few key documents and a summary of the case and I figured that my professional integrity demanded that I at least take a look at the material.

And then? It quickly became clear to me that something was wrong. That there was a contradiction that made no sense to me with my extensive legal experience: Why would a person be subject to nine years of a preliminary investigation for rape without charges ever having been filed?

Is that unusual? I have never seen a comparable case. Anyone can trigger a preliminary investigation against anyone else by simply going to the police and accusing the other person of a crime. The Swedish authorities, though, were never interested in testimony from Assange. They intentionally left him in limbo. Just imagine being accused of rape for nine-and-a-half years by an entire state apparatus and by the media without ever being given the chance to defend yourself because no charges had ever been filed.

You say that the Swedish authorities were never interested in testimony from Assange. But the media and government agencies have painted a completely different picture over the years: Julian Assange, they say, fled the Swedish judiciary in order to avoid being held accountable. That’s what I always thought, until I started investigating. The opposite is true. Assange reported to the Swedish authorities on several occasions because he wanted to respond to the accusations. But the authorities stonewalled.

What do you mean by that: «The authorities stonewalled?» Allow me to start at the beginning. I speak fluent Swedish and was thus able to read all of the original documents. I could hardly believe my eyes: According to the testimony of the woman in question, a rape had never even taken place at all. And not only that: The woman’s testimony was later changed by the Stockholm police without her involvement in order to somehow make it sound like a possible rape. I have all the documents in my possession, the emails, the text messages.

«The woman’s testimony was later changed by the police» – how exactly? On Aug. 20, 2010, a woman named S. W. entered a Stockholm police station together with a second woman named A. A. The first woman, S. W. said she had had consensual sex with Julian Assange, but he had not been wearing a condom. She said she was now concerned that she could be infected with HIV and wanted to know if she could force Assange to take an HIV test. She said she was really worried. The police wrote down her statement and immediately informed public prosecutors. Even before questioning could be completed, S. W. was informed that Assange would be arrested on suspicion of rape. S. W. was shocked and refused to continue with questioning. While still in the police station, she wrote a text message to a friend saying that she didn’t want to incriminate Assange, that she just wanted him to take an HIV test, but the police were apparently interested in «getting their hands on him.»

What does that mean? S.W. never accused Julian Assange of rape. She declined to participate in further questioning and went home. Nevertheless, two hours later, a headline appeared on the front page of Expressen, a Swedish tabloid, saying that Julian Assange was suspected of having committed two rapes.

Two rapes? Yes, because there was the second woman, A. A. She didn’t want to press charges either; she had merely accompanied S. W. to the police station. She wasn’t even questioned that day. She later said that Assange had sexually harassed her. I can’t say, of course, whether that is true or not. I can only point to the order of events: A woman walks into a police station. She doesn’t want to file a complaint but wants to demand an HIV test. The police then decide that this could be a case of rape and a matter for public prosecutors. The woman refuses to go along with that version of events and then goes home and writes a friend that it wasn’t her intention, but the police want to «get their hands on» Assange. Two hours later, the case is in the newspaper. As we know today, public prosecutors leaked it to the press – and they did so without even inviting Assange to make a statement. And the second woman, who had allegedly been raped according to the Aug. 20 headline, was only questioned on Aug. 21.

What did the second woman say when she was questioned? She said that she had made her apartment available to Assange, who was in Sweden for a conference. A small, one-room apartment. When Assange was in the apartment, she came home earlier than planned, but told him it was no problem and that the two of them could sleep in the same bed. That night, they had consensual sex, with a condom. But she said that during sex, Assange had intentionally broken the condom. If that is true, then it is, of course, a sexual offense – so-called «stealthing». But the woman also said that she only later noticed that the condom was broken. That is a contradiction that should absolutely have been clarified. If I don’t notice it, then I cannot know if the other intentionally broke it. Not a single trace of DNA from Assange or A. A. could be detected in the condom that was submitted as evidence.

How did the two women know each other? They didn’t really know each other. A. A., who was hosting Assange and was serving as his press secretary, had met S. W. at an event where S. W. was wearing a pink cashmere sweater. She apparently knew from Assange that he was interested in a sexual encounter with S. W., because one evening, she received a text message from an acquaintance saying that he knew Assange was staying with her and that he, the acquaintance, would like to contact Assange. A. A. answered: Assange is apparently sleeping at the moment with the “cashmere girl.” The next morning, S. W. spoke with A. A. on the phone and said that she, too, had slept with Assange and was now concerned about having become infected with HIV. This concern was apparently a real one, because S.W. even went to a clinic for consultation. A. A. then suggested: Let’s go to the police – they can force Assange to get an HIV test. The two women, though, didn’t go to the closest police station, but to one quite far away where a friend of A. A.’s works as a policewoman – who then questioned S. W., initially in the presence of A. A., which isn’t proper practice. Up to this point, though, the only problem was at most a lack of professionalism. The willful malevolence of the authorities only became apparent when they immediately disseminated the suspicion of rape via the tabloid press, and did so without questioning A. A. and in contradiction to the statement given by S. W. It also violated a clear ban in Swedish law against releasing the names of alleged victims or perpetrators in sexual offense cases. The case now came to the attention of the chief public prosecutor in the capital city and she suspended the rape investigation some days later with the assessment that while the statements from S. W. were credible, there was no evidence that a crime had been committed.

But then the case really took off. Why? Now the supervisor of the policewoman who had conducted the questioning wrote her an email telling her to rewrite the statement from S. W.

What did the policewoman change? We don’t know, because the first statement was directly written over in the computer program and no longer exists. We only know that the original statement, according to the chief public prosecutor, apparently did not contain any indication that a crime had been committed. In the edited form it says that the two had had sex several times – consensual and with a condom. But in the morning, according to the revised statement, the woman woke up because he tried to penetrate her without a condom. She asks: «Are you wearing a condom?» He says: «No.» Then she says: «You better not have HIV» and allows him to continue. The statement was edited without the involvement of the woman in question and it wasn’t signed by her. It is a manipulated piece of evidence out of which the Swedish authorities then constructed a story of rape.

Why would the Swedish authorities do something like that? The timing is decisive: In late July, Wikileaks – in cooperation with the «New York Times», the «Guardian» and «Der Spiegel» – published the «Afghan War Diary». It was one of the largest leaks in the history of the U.S. military. The U.S. immediately demanded that its allies inundate Assange with criminal cases. We aren’t familiar with all of the correspondence, but Stratfor, a security consultancy that works for the U.S. government, advised American officials apparently to deluge Assange with all kinds of criminal cases for the next 25 years.

2. Assange contacts the Swedish judiciary several times to make a statement – but he is turned down

Why didn’t Assange turn himself into the police at the time? He did. I mentioned that earlier.

Then please elaborate. Assange learned about the rape allegations from the press. He established contact with the police so he could make a statement. Despite the scandal having reached the public, he was only allowed to do so nine days later, after the accusation that he had raped S. W. was no longer being pursued. But proceedings related to the sexual harassment of A. A. were ongoing. On Aug. 30, 2010, Assange appeared at the police station to make a statement. He was questioned by the same policeman who had since ordered that revision of the statement had been given by S. W. At the beginning of the conversation, Assange said he was ready to make a statement, but added that he didn’t want to read about his statement again in the press. That is his right, and he was given assurances it would be granted. But that same evening, everything was in the newspapers again. It could only have come from the authorities because nobody else was present during his questioning. The intention was very clearly that of besmirching his name.

Where did the story come from that Assange was seeking to avoid Swedish justice officials? This version was manufactured, but it is not consistent with the facts. Had he been trying to hide, he would not have appeared at the police station of his own free will. On the basis of the revised statement from S.W., an appeal was filed against the public prosecutor’s attempt to suspend the investigation, and on Sept. 2, 2010, the rape proceedings were resumed. A legal representative by the name of Claes Borgström was appointed to the two women at public cost. The man was a law firm partner to the previous justice minister, Thomas Bodström, under whose supervision Swedish security personnel had seized two men who the U.S. found suspicious in the middle of Stockholm. The men were seized without any kind of legal proceedings and then handed over to the CIA, who proceeded to torture them. That shows the trans-Atlantic backdrop to this affair more clearly. After the resumption of the rape investigation, Assange repeatedly indicated through his lawyer that he wished to respond to the accusations. The public prosecutor responsible kept delaying. On one occasion, it didn’t fit with the public prosecutor’s schedule, on another, the police official responsible was sick. Three weeks later, his lawyer finally wrote that Assange really had to go to Berlin for a conference and asked if he was allowed to leave the country. The public prosecutor’s office gave him written permission to leave Sweden for short periods of time.

And then? The point is: On the day that Julian Assange left Sweden, at a point in time when it wasn’t clear if he was leaving for a short time or a long time, a warrant was issued for his arrest. He flew with Scandinavian Airlines from Stockholm to Berlin. During the flight, his laptops disappeared from his checked baggage. When he arrived in Berlin, Lufthansa requested an investigation from SAS, but the airline apparently declined to provide any information at all.

Why? That is exactly the problem. In this case, things are constantly happening that shouldn’t actually be possible unless you look at them from a different angle. Assange, in any case, continued onward to London, but did not seek to hide from the judiciary. Via his Swedish lawyer, he offered public prosecutors several possible dates for questioning in Sweden – this correspondence exists. Then, the following happened: Assange caught wind of the fact that a secret criminal case had been opened against him in the U.S. At the time, it was not confirmed by the U.S., but today we know that it was true. As of that moment, Assange’s lawyer began saying that his client was prepared to testify in Sweden, but he demanded diplomatic assurance that Sweden would not extradite him to the U.S.

Was that even a realistic scenario? Absolutely. Some years previously, as I already mentioned, Swedish security personnel had handed over two asylum applicants, both of whom were registered in Sweden, to the CIA without any legal proceedings. The abuse already started at the Stockholm airport, where they were mistreated, drugged and flown to Egypt, where they were tortured. We don’t know if they were the only such cases. But we are aware of these cases because the men survived. Both later filed complaints with UN human rights agencies and won their case. Sweden was forced to pay each of them half a million dollars in damages.

Did Sweden agree to the demands submitted by Assange? The lawyers say that during the nearly seven years in which Assange lived in the Ecuadorian Embassy, they made over 30 offers to arrange for Assange to visit Sweden – in exchange for a guarantee that he would not be extradited to the U.S. The Swedes declined to provide such a guarantee by arguing that the U.S. had not made a formal request for extradition.

What is your view of the demand made by Assange’s lawyers? Such diplomatic assurances are a routine international practice. People request assurances that they won’t be extradited to places where there is a danger of serious human rights violations, completely irrespective of whether an extradition request has been filed by the country in question or not. It is a political procedure, not a legal one. Here’s an example: Say France demands that Switzerland extradite a Kazakh businessman who lives in Switzerland but who is wanted by both France and Kazakhstan on tax fraud allegations. Switzerland sees no danger of torture in France, but does believe such a danger exists in Kazakhstan. So, Switzerland tells France: We’ll extradite the man to you, but we want a diplomatic assurance that he won’t be extradited onward to Kazakhstan. The French response is not: «Kazakhstan hasn’t even filed a request!» Rather, they would, of course, grant such an assurance. The arguments coming from Sweden were tenuous at best. That is one part of it. The other, and I say this on the strength of all of my experience behind the scenes of standard international practice: If a country refuses to provide such a diplomatic assurance, then all doubts about the good intentions of the country in question are justified. Why shouldn’t Sweden provide such assurances? From a legal perspective, after all, the U.S. has absolutely nothing to do with Swedish sex offense proceedings.

Why didn’t Sweden want to offer such an assurance? You just have to look at how the case was run: For Sweden, it was never about the interests of the two women. Even after his request for assurances that he would not be extradited, Assange still wanted to testify. He said: If you cannot guarantee that I won’t be extradited, then I am willing to be questioned in London or via video link.

But is it normal, or even legally acceptable, for Swedish authorities to travel to a different country for such an interrogation? That is a further indication that Sweden was never interested in finding the truth. For exactly these kinds of judiciary issues, there is a cooperation treaty between the United Kingdom and Sweden, which foresees that Swedish officials can travel to the UK, or vice versa, to conduct interrogations or that such questioning can take place via video link. During the period of time in question, such questioning between Sweden and England took place in 44 other cases. It was only in Julian Assange’s case that Sweden insisted that it was essential for him to appear in person.

3. When the highest Swedish court finally forced public prosecutors in Stockholm to either file charges or suspend the case, the British authorities demanded: «Don’t get cold feet!!»

Why was that? There is only a single explanation for everything – for the refusal to grant diplomatic assurances, for the refusal to question him in London: They wanted to apprehend him so they could extradite him to the U.S. The number of breaches of law that accumulated in Sweden within just a few weeks during the preliminary criminal investigation is simply grotesque. The state assigned a legal adviser to the women who told them that the criminal interpretation of what they experienced was up to the state, and no longer up to them. When their legal adviser was asked about contradictions between the women’s testimony and the narrative adhered to by public officials, the legal adviser said, in reference to the women: «ah, but they’re not lawyers.» But for five long years the Swedish prosecution avoids questioning Assange regarding the purported rape, until his lawyers finally petitioned Sweden’s Supreme Court to force the public prosecution to either press charges or close the case. When the Swedes told the UK that they may be forced to abandon the case, the British wrote back, worriedly: «Don’t you dare get cold feet!!»

Are you serious? Yes, the British, or more specifically the Crown Prosecution Service, wanted to prevent Sweden from abandoning the case at all costs. Though really, the English should have been happy that they would no longer have to spend millions in taxpayer money to keep the Ecuadorian Embassy under constant surveillance to prevent Assange’s escape.

Why were the British so eager to prevent the Swedes from closing the case? We have to stop believing that there was really an interest in leading an investigation into a sexual offense. What Wikileaks did is a threat to the political elite in the U.S., Britain, France and Russia in equal measure. Wikileaks publishes secret state information – they are opposed to classification. And in a world, even in so-called mature democracies, where secrecy has become rampant, that is seen as a fundamental threat. Assange made it clear that countries are no longer interested today in legitimate confidentiality, but in the suppression of important information about corruption and crimes. Take the archetypal Wikileaks case from the leaks supplied by Chelsea Manning: The so-called «Collateral Murder» video. (Eds. Note: On April 5, 2010, Wikileaks published a classified video from the U.S. military which showed the murder of several people in Baghdad by U.S. soldiers, including two employees of the news agency Reuters.) As a long-time legal adviser to the International Committee of the Red Cross and delegate in war zones, I can tell you: The video undoubtedly documents a war crime. A helicopter crew simply mowed down a bunch of people. It could even be that one or two of these people was carrying a weapon, but injured people were intentionally targeted. That is a war crime. «He’s wounded,» you can hear one American saying. «I’m firing.» And then they laugh. Then a van drives up to save the wounded. The driver has two children with him. You can hear the soldiers say: Well it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle. And then they open fire. The father and the wounded are immediately killed, though the children survive with serious injuries. Through the publication of the video, we became direct witnesses to a criminal, unconscionable massacre.

What should a constitutional democracy do in such a situation? A constitutional democracy would probably investigate Chelsea Manning for violating official secrecy because she passed the video along to Assange. But it certainly wouldn’t go after Assange, because he published the video in the public interest, consistent with the practices of classic investigative journalism. More than anything, though, a constitutional democracy would investigate and punish the war criminals. These soldiers belong behind bars. But no criminal investigation was launched into a single one of them. Instead, the man who informed the public is locked away in pre-extradition detention in London and is facing a possible sentence in the U.S. of up to 175 years in prison. That is a completely absurd sentence. By comparison: The main war criminals in the Yugoslavia tribunal received sentences of 45 years. One-hundred-seventy-five years in prison in conditions that have been found to be inhumane by the UN Special Rapporteur and by Amnesty International. But the really horrifying thing about this case is the lawlessness that has developed: The powerful can kill without fear of punishment and journalism is transformed into espionage. It is becoming a crime to tell the truth.

What awaits Assange once he is extradited? He will not receive a trial consistent with the rule of law. That’s another reason why his extradition shouldn’t be allowed. Assange will receive a trial-by-jury in Alexandria, Virginia – the notorious «Espionage Court» where the U.S. tries all national security cases. The choice of location is not by coincidence, because the jury members must be chosen in proportion to the local population, and 85 percent of Alexandria residents work in the national security community – at the CIA, the NSA, the Defense Department and the State Department. When people are tried for harming national security in front of a jury like that, the verdict is clear from the very beginning. The cases are always tried in front of the same judge behind closed doors and on the strength of classified evidence. Nobody has ever been acquitted there in a case like that. The result being that most defendants reach a settlement, in which they admit to partial guilt so as to receive a milder sentence.

You are saying that Julian Assange won’t receive a fair trial in the United States? Without doubt. For as long as employees of the American government obey the orders of their superiors, they can participate in wars of aggression, war crimes and torture knowing full well that they will never have to answer to their actions. What happened to the lessons learned in the Nuremberg Trials? I have worked long enough in conflict zones to know that mistakes happen in war. It’s not always unscrupulous criminal acts. A lot of it is the result of stress, exhaustion and panic. That’s why I can absolutely understand when a government says: We’ll bring the truth to light and we, as a state, take full responsibility for the harm caused, but if blame cannot be directly assigned to individuals, we will not be imposing draconian punishments. But it is extremely dangerous when the truth is suppressed and criminals are not brought to justice. In the 1930s, Germany and Japan left the League of Nations. Fifteen years later, the world lay in ruins. Today, the U.S. has withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council, and neither the «Collateral Murder» massacre nor the CIA torture following 9/11 nor the war of aggression against Iraq have led to criminal investigations. Now, the United Kingdom is following that example. The Security and Intelligence Committee in the country’s own parliament published two extensive reports in 2018 showing that Britain was much more deeply involved in the secret CIA torture program than previously believed. The committee recommended a formal investigation. The first thing that Boris Johnson did after he became prime minister was to annul that investigation.

4. In the UK, violations of bail conditions are generally only punished with monetary fines or, at most, a couple of days behind bars. But Assange was given 50 weeks in a maximum-security prison without the ability to prepare his own defense

In April, Julian Assange was dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy by British police. What is your view of these events? In 2017, a new government was elected in Ecuador. In response, the U.S. wrote a letter indicating they were eager to cooperate with Ecuador. There was, of course, a lot of money at stake, but there was one hurdle in the way: Julian Assange. The message was that the U.S. was prepared to cooperate if Ecuador handed Assange over to the U.S. At that point, the Ecuadorian Embassy began ratcheting up the pressure on Assange. They made his life difficult. But he stayed. Then Ecuador voided his amnesty and gave Britain a green light to arrest him. Because the previous government had granted him Ecuadorian citizenship, Assange’s passport also had to be revoked, because the Ecuadorian constitution forbids the extradition of its own citizens. All that took place overnight and without any legal proceedings. Assange had no opportunity to make a statement or have recourse to legal remedy. He was arrested by the British and taken before a British judge that same day, who convicted him of violating his bail.

What do you make of this accelerated verdict? Assange only had 15 minutes to prepare with his lawyer. The trial itself also lasted just 15 minutes. Assange’s lawyer plopped a thick file down on the table and made a formal objection to one of the judges for conflict of interest because her husband had been the subject of Wikileaks exposures in 35 instances. But the lead judge brushed aside the concerns without examining them further. He said accusing his colleague of a conflict of interest was an affront. Assange himself only uttered one sentence during the entire proceedings: «I plead not guilty.» The judge turned to him and said: «You are a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own self-interest. I convict you for bail violation.»

If I understand you correctly: Julian Assange never had a chance from the very beginning? That’s the point. I’m not saying Julian Assange is an angel or a hero. But he doesn’t have to be. We are talking about human rights and not about the rights of heroes or angels. Assange is a person, and he has the right to defend himself and to be treated in a humane manner. Regardless of what he is accused of, Assange has the right to a fair trial. But he has been deliberately denied that right – in Sweden, the U.S., Britain and Ecuador. Instead, he was left to rot for nearly seven years in limbo in a room. Then, he was suddenly dragged out and convicted within hours and without any preparation for a bail violation that consisted of him having received diplomatic asylum from another UN member state on the basis of political persecution, just as international law intends and just as countless Chinese, Russian and other dissidents have done in Western embassies. It is obvious that what we are dealing with here is political persecution. In Britain, bail violations seldom lead to prison sentences – they are generally subject only to fines. Assange, by contrast, was sentenced in summary proceedings to 50 weeks in a maximum-security prison – clearly a disproportionate penalty that had only a single purpose: Holding Assange long enough for the U.S. to prepare their espionage case against him.

As the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, what do you have to say about his current conditions of imprisonment? Britain has denied Julian Assange contact with his lawyers in the U.S., where he is the subject of secret proceedings. His British lawyer has also complained that she hasn’t even had sufficient access to her client to go over court documents and evidence with him. Into October, he was not allowed to have a single document from his case file with him in his cell. He was denied his fundamental right to prepare his own defense, as guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights. On top of that is the almost total solitary confinement and the totally disproportionate punishment for a bail violation. As soon as he would leave his cell, the corridors were emptied to prevent him from having contact with any other inmates.

And all that because of a simple bail violation? At what point does imprisonment become torture? Julian Assange has been intentionally psychologically tortured by Sweden, Britain, Ecuador and the U.S. First through the highly arbitrary handling of proceedings against him. The way Sweden pursued the case, with active assistance from Britain, was aimed at putting him under pressure and trapping him in the embassy. Sweden was never interested in finding the truth and helping these women, but in pushing Assange into a corner. It has been an abuse of judicial processes aimed at pushing a person into a position where he is unable to defend himself. On top of that come the surveillance measures, the insults, the indignities and the attacks by politicians from these countries, up to and including death threats. This constant abuse of state power has triggered serious stress and anxiety in Assange and has resulted in measurable cognitive and neurological harm. I visited Assange in his cell in London in May 2019 together with two experienced, widely respected doctors who are specialized in the forensic and psychological examination of torture victims. The diagnosis arrived at by the two doctors was clear: Julian Assange displays the typical symptoms of psychological torture. If he doesn’t receive protection soon, a rapid deterioration of his health is likely, and death could be one outcome.

Half a year after Assange was placed in pre-extradition detention in Britain, Sweden quietly abandoned the case against him in November 2019, after nine long years. Why then? The Swedish state spent almost a decade intentionally presenting Julian Assange to the public as a sex offender. Then, they suddenly abandoned the case against him on the strength of the same argument that the first Stockholm prosecutor used in 2010, when she initially suspended the investigation after just five days: While the woman’s statement was credible, there was no proof that a crime had been committed. It is an unbelievable scandal. But the timing was no accident. On Nov. 11, an official document that I had sent to the Swedish government two months before was made public. In the document, I made a request to the Swedish government to provide explanations for around 50 points pertaining to the human rights implications of the way they were handling the case. How is it possible that the press was immediately informed despite the prohibition against doing so? How is it possible that a suspicion was made public even though the questioning hadn’t yet taken place? How is it possible for you to say that a rape occurred even though the woman involved contests that version of events? On the day the document was made public, I received a paltry response from Sweden: The government has no further comment on this case.

What does that answer mean? It is an admission of guilt.

How so? As UN Special Rapporteur, I have been tasked by the international community of nations with looking into complaints lodged by victims of torture and, if necessary, with requesting explanations or investigations from governments. That is the daily work I do with all UN member states. From my experience, I can say that countries that act in good faith are almost always interested in supplying me with the answers I need to highlight the legality of their behavior. When a country like Sweden declines to answer questions submitted by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, it shows that the government is aware of the illegality of its behavior and wants to take no responsibility for its behavior. They pulled the plug and abandoned the case a week later because they knew I would not back down. When countries like Sweden allow themselves to be manipulated like that, then our democracies and our human rights face a fundamental threat.

You believe that Sweden was fully aware of what it was doing? Yes. From my perspective, Sweden very clearly acted in bad faith. Had they acted in good faith, there would have been no reason to refuse to answer my questions. The same holds true for the British: Following my visit to Assange in May 2019, they took six months to answer me – in a single-page letter, which was primarily limited to rejecting all accusations of torture and all inconsistencies in the legal proceedings. If you’re going to play games like that, then what’s the point of my mandate? I am the Special Rapporteur on Torture for the United Nations. I have a mandate to ask clear questions and to demand answers. What is the legal basis for denying someone their fundamental right to defend themselves? Why is a man who is neither dangerous nor violent held in solitary confinement for several months when UN standards legally prohibit solitary confinement for periods extending beyond 15 days? None of these UN member states launched an investigation, nor did they answer my questions or even demonstrate an interest in dialogue.

5. A prison sentence of 175 years for investigative journalism: The precedent the USA vs. Julian Assange case could set

What does it mean when UN member states refuse to provide information to their own Special Rapporteur on Torture? That it is a prearranged affair. A show trial is to be used to make an example of Julian Assange. The point is to intimidate other journalists. Intimidation, by the way, is one of the primary purposes for the use of torture around the world. The message to all of us is: This is what will happen to you if you emulate the Wikileaks model. It is a model that is so dangerous because it is so simple: People who obtain sensitive information from their governments or companies transfer that information to Wikileaks, but the whistleblower remains anonymous. The reaction shows how great the threat is perceived to be: Four democratic countries joined forces – the U.S., Ecuador, Sweden and the UK – to leverage their power to portray one man as a monster so that he could later be burned at the stake without any outcry. The case is a huge scandal and represents the failure of Western rule of law. If Julian Assange is convicted, it will be a death sentence for freedom of the press.

What would this possible precedent mean for the future of journalism? On a practical level, it means that you, as a journalist, must now defend yourself. Because if investigative journalism is classified as espionage and can be incriminated around the world, then censorship and tyranny will follow. A murderous system is being created before our very eyes. War crimes and torture are not being prosecuted. YouTube videos are circulating in which American soldiers brag about driving Iraqi women to suicide with systematic rape. Nobody is investigating it. At the same time, a person who exposes such things is being threatened with 175 years in prison. For an entire decade, he has been inundated with accusations that cannot be proven and are breaking him. And nobody is being held accountable. Nobody is taking responsibility. It marks an erosion of the social contract. We give countries power and delegate it to governments – but in return, they must be held accountable for how they exercise that power. If we don’t demand that they be held accountable, we will lose our rights sooner or later. Humans are not democratic by their nature. Power corrupts if it is not monitored. Corruption is the result if we do not insist that power be monitored.

You’re saying that the targeting of Assange threatens the very core of press freedoms. Let’s see where we will be in 20 years if Assange is convicted – what you will still be able to write then as a journalist. I am convinced that we are in serious danger of losing press freedoms. It’s already happening: Suddenly, the headquarters of ABC News in Australia was raided in connection with the «Afghan War Diary». The reason? Once again, the press uncovered misconduct by representatives of the state. In order for the division of powers to work, the state must be monitored by the press as the fourth estate. WikiLeaks is a the logical consequence of an ongoing process of expanded secrecy: If the truth can no longer be examined because everything is kept secret, if investigation reports on the U.S. government’s torture policy are kept secret and when even large sections of the published summary are redacted, leaks are at some point inevitably the result. WikiLeaks is the consequence of rampant secrecy and reflects the lack of transparency in our modern political system. There are, of course, areas where secrecy can be vital. But if we no longer know what our governments are doing and the criteria they are following, if crimes are no longer being investigated, then it represents a grave danger to societal integrity.

What are the consequences? As the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and, before that, as a Red Cross delegate, I have seen lots of horrors and violence and have seen how quickly peaceful countries like Yugoslavia or Rwanda can transform into infernos. At the roots of such developments are always a lack of transparency and unbridled political or economic power combined with the naivete, indifference and malleability of the population. Suddenly, that which always happened to the other – unpunished torture, rape, expulsion and murder – can just as easily happen to us or our children. And nobody will care. I can promise you that.

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