You know, it bothers me the way it seems like people have totally forgot about Iranians... thought we were all on the same page, wasn't it... women, life, freedom? (I legit don't remember, but the reason for that is it wasn't my slogan to say. Maybe it sounds strange, but that's how I felt, so I never actually wrote it, which makes it harder to remember)

Just feels like for a brief window there we were all talking big talk about supporting them, but then it all kinda dried up

I'll be totally transparent about one of the reasons this keeps coming up for me, russia is a major ally of Iran, Iran supplies the kamikaze drones russia hits civilians with... you know they're not giving them away for free... I worry what the Iranian government uses anything it gets to do... I don't really hear anything from Iranians anymore (though once again I fully admit that most of what I was hearing was second hand, I never had found an Iranian to directly follow... I don't know if anyone's still talking)

I just... I legit worry that people talk a big game about Gaza right now, but will they in a year?

I'm frustrated because a lot of the support people and causes around the world get seems like it's almost more self masturbatory than anything real... sure, everyone really well and truly means it, but then they get bored and it's on to a new cause

So I worry the support will be fleeting... and I see some people really getting down in the mud in ways... well, I'm not a people keeper, I don't get to tell people what to do, but I wouldn't be very pleased if I was acting the way I see some people act and my real point is I worry they're doing all this shit and they're not even gonna stick it out with the cause... seen people get bored and dip to many times to trust it

I'm not perfect... I have a shit memory a lot of the time, and I got a lot on my mind, but I still remember Hong Kong... at least sometimes... even looked into it from time to time and the news never looks good

I remember the Uyghurs, though my shit spelling always makes me look it back up. I think about Syria and how forgotten they are. I do actually still keep up with Ukraine... and then I see connections between russia and Iran and assad and...

I don't know... this stuff eats a me a little... not a lot, not more than the helplessness we all feel about bad things beyond our control usually does... I just worry about people, how they act with shit

Worry that you roll around in the mud too long it starts getting hard to wash off, and I worry that people sometimes get in the mud less cause they're trying to help anything and more cause sometimes it feels good to have an excuse to get dirty... righteous anger that makes any behavior permissible

I don't talk about current events that are on everyone's radar nonstop cause I don't want to burn support out by just overloading people with horror... but I generally find murdering innocent people to be a bad thing, so yeah... I want to see a fucking ceasefire already

Don't talk about it, but I actually do care quite a bit... and I worry... I worry that it'll be forgotten the second the news cycle moves on like everything else is

Worry that every bit of vile behavior I've seen that was for high minded goals will turn out to be dropped in an instant...

Almost like that's not a bug, that's just the point

What my tumblr means

I was tagged by my wonderful friend @hiddenlookingglass! I’ve just done one of these and usually I try to space these out but this gives me the opportunity to address some things that I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while so here we go.

Header image: It’s a photo I took two years ago at a small beach in Sicily. I chose it because I think it looks really nice and it fits with my blog title (”thalatta” means “sea” in ancient Greek). Also, it sometimes looks distorted on my tumblr app, I don’t know why, it’s just tumblr being weird I guess.

Icon: A photo of me blowing bubbles. I wanted my icon to be a photo of me because this blog is very personal to me but at the same time I didn’t want to do a face reveal so that’s why I chose this one.

My content: Well, mostly anything Classics/ancient history. I sometimes share unrelated posts that I tag as “self care” because I also want to spread positivity on my blog. I usually try to stay out of politics (I want all sexualities, genders and religions to feel welcome on my blog so you can draw your conclusions where I stand politically). Lately I’ve been struggling a bit because I don’t know what to post. When I started my blog I wasn’t an ancient history student yet and I just used it as a place where I could dump all my thoughts on ancient Greece and my God, it shows! Since I’ve started studying ancient history and have gained a lot more followers I’ve become a lot more careful because I don’t want to spread any misinformation. I also feel that right now I’m in a weird “intermediate” position. I know a lot more about ancient history than I did when I started this blog but I’m by no means an expert in anything yet. There are a lot of things that I would love to write about (like, making ancient Greek more accessible) but I just don’t have the knowledge yet and/or the time to do proper research. And the things I do know feel kind of, I don’t know, generic? Like I assume everybody already knows that (or maybe that’s just what it seems to me because I’m living in the Classics bubble).

Background color: I just chose a color that I thought fitted in with my images, there is no deeper meaning to it.

URL: “disbander of armies” is the translation of the ancient Greek name “Lysistrata”. Lysistrata is one of the comedic plays by Aristophanes. It’s set during the Peloponnesian war and it’s about a group of women (lead by Lysistrata) who organize a sex strike to force the Athenians and Spartans to make peace (which the also accomplish by the end of the play). I love the play because a) it’s hilarious and b) it often gives an insight into the lives of those people who weren’t that well off and whose lives are often overlooked. And that’s one of the things I love most about ancient history, learning about the ordinary people.

Also, I just really love the name, it’s really powerful and yet peaceful. Obviously Aristophanes chose the name because of the content of the play but (and this is just a theory but I would love it to be true) he might also have chosen it because of the priestess of Athena Polias (who was probably the most powerful woman in all of Athens) whose name was Lysimache, which means “disbander of battles”. Joan Breton Connelly writes in her book Portrait of a Priestess:

“If it can be shown that the Lysistrata similarly draws upon the lives of historical Athenians, in this case priestesses, our view of the public role of women and their name recognition within the polis can be greatly enriched. Indeed, we might even understand these women to be insiders, part of the “men’s club”, so to speak, and thus fair game for public comedy.” (Connelly 2010: 63)

Blog title: “Thalatta! Thalatta!”. It’s a famous quote from Xenophon’s Anabasis and it’s very personal to me. The Anabasis is a work by the Athenian historian Xenophon who lived during the 5th/4th century BCE. When he was around 30 years old, he took part in an expedition in Asia Minor by the Persian prince Cyrus. It turned out that this “expedition” was actually just a ruse for Cyrus to gather mercenaries in order to overthrow his brother, the Persian king Artaxerxes II. They fought a battle at Cunaxa (in modern Iraq) in 401 BCE which was won by Cyrus but since he himself was killed, the victory was pointless. Now thousands of Greek mercenaries, including Xenophon, were trapped in a foreign country. A large part of the Anabasis is the story of how they fought their way back to Greece.

The “Thalatta! Thalatta!” (which means “The sea! The sea!”) quote appears when the Greeks, after months of fighting off enemies and trying to find their way back, see the sea for the first time (in this case it’s the Black sea). This was a huge milestone for them because it meant that Greek colonies were near.

Xenophon vividly describes how, since he was travelling further back, he first heard a commotion and it was thought that they were being attacked but when they heard that the others were actually shouting “thalatta!”, everybody just broke down in tears because they were so happy.

The Anabasis is my favorite book of all time (I actually got super emotional again just writing about this scene!). I love it because you learn so much about how the ancient Greeks saw their world and especially, how Xenophon saw the Gods guiding him (before he went on the expedition he had asked the oracle of Delphi to which Gods he should pray to to successfully complete his journey and the oracle replied that he should pray to Zeus Basileos (Zeus the King) (Xen. an. VI, 1, 22). To quote from the article One Man’s Piety by Robert Parker:

“Xenophon, then, was very close to Zeus Basileus. And the god did not let him down. (...). There is self-glorification and self-congratulation in all this, no doubt; but also a picture of one sense in which a Greek could feel himself especially close to a particular god.” (Parker 2004: 151)

It also had a huge impact on myself and the things I struggle with. Like a lot of other people, I struggle with mental health and there were times when I’ve been in a very dark place and thought that I would never get better. Xenophon and those soldiers must have felt like that too sometimes (though I by no means want to compare my experiences to those of the ancient Greeks!). It shows me that people can go through incredible hardships and still come out victorious. This doesn’t mean that you will never have to face difficult times again. The “Thalatta” scene is by no means the end of their journey and they had to face many more obstacles after that. But in the end, there was a happy end (of sorts) for Xenophon. After living many years as a soldier, he settled down, had a family and died at the age of around 75. Here is another favorite quote of mine of him describing his home (he speaks of himself in the third person):

“Here Xenophon built an altar and a temple [for Artemis] with the sacred money, and from that time forth he would every year take the tithe and of the products of the land in their season and offer sacrifice to the goddess, all the citizens and the men and women of the neighborhood taking part in the festival. And the goddess would provide for the banqueters barley meal and loaves of bread, wine, and sweetmeats. (...). The temple itself is like the one at Ephesus, although small as compared with great, and the image of the goddess, although cypress wood as compared with gold, is like the Ephesian image. Beside the temple stands a tablet with this inscription:

“The place is sacred to Artemis. He who holds it and enjoys its fruit must offer the tithe every year in sacrifice, and from the remainder must keep the temple in repair. If anyone leave these things undone, the goddess will look to it.” (Xen. an. V, 3, 9-12, transl. by Carleton L. Brownson)

Sources:

Joan Breton Connelly, Portrait of a Priestess. Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece. Princeton University Press 2010.

Robert Parker, One Man’s Piety. The Religious Dimension of the Anabasis, in: The Long March. Xenophon and the Ten Thousand, edited by Robin Lane Fox. Yale University Press 2004, 131-153.

He was limp and dusty from an explosion, conscious but barely. A far cry from the fierce, masked Islamic State fighters who once seized vast swaths of Iraq and Syria, the captive was a scraggly teenager in a tank top with limbs so thin that his watch slid easily off his wrist.

Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher and other Navy SEALs gave the young captive medical aid that day in Iraq in 2017, sedating him and cutting an airway in his throat to help him breathe. Then, without warning, according to colleagues, Chief Gallagher pulled a small hunting knife from a sheath and stabbed the sedated captive in the neck.

The same Chief Gallagher who later posed for a photograph holding the dead captive up by the hair has now been celebrated on the campaign trail by President Trump, who upended the military code of justice to protect him from the punishment resulting from the episode. Prodded by Fox News, Mr. Trump has made Chief Gallagher a cause célèbre, trumpeting him as an argument for his re-election.

The violent encounter in a faraway land opened a two-year affair that would pit a Pentagon hierarchy wedded to longstanding rules of combat and discipline against a commander in chief with no experience in uniform but a finely honed sense of grievance against authority. The highest ranks in the Navy insisted Chief Gallagher be held accountable. Mr. Trump overruled the chain of command and the secretary of the Navy was fired.

The case of the president and a commando accused of war crimes offers a lesson in how Mr. Trump presides over the armed forces three years after taking office. While he boasts of supporting the military, he has come to distrust the generals and admirals who run it. Rather than accept information from his own government, he responds to television reports that grab his interest. Warned against crossing lines, he bulldozes past precedent and norms.

As a result, the president finds himself more removed than ever from a disenchanted military command, adding the armed forces to the institutions under his authority that he has feuded with, along with the intelligence community, law enforcement agencies and diplomatic corps.

“We’re going to take care of our warriors and I will always stick up for our great fighters,” Mr. Trump told a rally in Florida as he depicted the military hierarchy as part of “the deep state” he vowed to dismantle. “People can sit there in air-conditioned offices and complain, but you know what? It doesn’t matter to me whatsoever.”

The president’s handling of the case has distressed active-duty and retired officers and the civilians who work closely with them. Mr. Trump’s intervention, they said, emboldens war criminals and erodes the order of a professional military.

“He’s interfering with the chain of command, which is trying to police its own ranks,” said Peter D. Feaver, a specialist on civilian-military relations at Duke University and former aide to President George W. Bush. “They’re trying to clean up their act and in the middle of it the president parachutes in — and not from information from his own commanders but from news talking heads who are clearly gaming the system.”

Chris Shumake, a former sniper who served in Chief Gallagher’s platoon, said in an interview that he was troubled by the impact the president’s intervention could have on the SEALs.

“It’s blown up bigger than any of us could have ever expected, and turned into a national clown show that put a bad light on the teams,” said Mr. Shumake, speaking publicly for the first time. “He’s trying to show he has the troops’ backs, but he’s saying he doesn’t trust any of the troops or their leaders to make the right decisions.”

Chief Gallagher, who has denied any wrongdoing, declined through his lawyer to be interviewed. Mr. Trump’s allies said the president was standing up to political correctness that hamstrings the warriors the nation asks to defend it, as if war should be fought according to lawyerly rules.

“From the beginning, this was overzealous prosecutors who were not giving the benefit of the doubt to the trigger-pullers,” Pete Hegseth, a weekend host of “Fox & Friends” who has promoted Chief Gallagher to the president both on the telephone and on air, said this past week. “That’s what the president saw.”

‘No One Touch Him. He’s Mine.’

Chief Gallagher, 40, a seasoned operator with a deeply weathered face from eight combat deployments, sometimes went by the nickname Blade. He sought out the toughest assignments, where gunfire and blood were almost guaranteed. Months before deploying, he sent a text to the SEAL master chief making assignments, saying he was “down to go” to any spot, no matter how awful, so long as “there is for sure action and work to be done.”

“We don’t care about living conditions,” he added. “We just want to kill as many people as possible.”

Before deployment, he commissioned a friend and former SEAL to make him a custom hunting knife and a hatchet, vowing in a text, “I’ll try and dig that knife or hatchet on someone’s skull!”

He was in charge of 22 men in SEAL Team 7’s Alpha Platoon, which deployed to Mosul, Iraq, in early 2017. But his platoon was nowhere near the action, assigned an “advise and assist” mission supporting Iraqi commandos doing the block-by-block fighting. The SEALs were required to stay 1,000 meters behind the front lines.

That changed on May 6, 2017, when an Apache helicopter banked over a dusty patchwork of fields outside Mosul, fixed its sights on a farmhouse serving as an Islamic State command post and fired two Hellfire missiles reducing it to rubble.

Chief Gallagher saw the distant explosion from an armored gun truck. When he heard on the radio that Iraqi soldiers had captured an Islamic State fighter and took him to a nearby staging area, he raced to the scene. “No one touch him,” he radioed other SEALs. “He’s mine.”

‘Got Him With My Hunting Knife’

When the captive was killed, other SEALs were shocked. A medic inches from Chief Gallagher testified that he froze, unsure what to do. Some SEALs said in interviews that the stabbing immediately struck them as wrong, but because it was Chief Gallagher, the most experienced commando in the group, no one knew how to react. When senior platoon members confronted Chief Gallagher, they said, he told them, “Stop worrying about it; they do a lot worse to us.”

The officer in charge, Lt. Jacob Portier, who was in his first command, gathered everyone for trophy photos, then held a re-enlistment ceremony for Chief Gallagher over the corpse, several SEALs testified.

A week later, Chief Gallagher sent a friend in California a text with a photo of himself with a knife in one hand, holding the captive up by the hair with the other. “Good story behind this, got him with my hunting knife,” he wrote.

As the deployment wore on, SEALs said the chief’s behavior grew more erratic. He led a small team beyond the front lines, telling members to turn off locator beacons so they would not be caught by superiors, according to four SEALS, who confirmed video of the mission obtained by The New York Times. He then tried to cover up the mission when one platoon member was shot.

At various points, he appeared to be either amped up or zoned out; several SEALs told investigators they saw him taking pills, including the narcotic Tramadol. He spent much of his time scanning the streets of Mosul from hidden sniper nests, firing three or four times as often as the platoon’s snipers, sometimes targeting civilians.

One SEAL sniper told investigators he heard a shot from Chief Gallagher’s position, then saw a schoolgirl in a flower-print hijab crumple to the ground. Another sniper reported hearing a shot from Chief Gallagher’s position, then seeing a man carrying a water jug fall, a red blotch spreading on his back. Neither episode was investigated and the fate of the civilians remains unknown.

Chief Gallagher had been accused of misconduct before, including shooting through an Afghan girl to hit the man carrying her in 2010 and trying to run over a Navy police officer in 2014. But in both cases no wrongdoing was found.

SEALs said they reported concerns to Lieutenant Portier with no result. The lieutenant outranked Chief Gallagher but was younger and less experienced. SEALs said in interviews that the chief often yelled at his commanding officer or disregarded him altogether. After the deployment, Lieutenant Portier was charged with not reporting the chief for war crimes but charges were dropped. So SEALs said they started firing warning shots to keep pedestrians out of range. One SEAL told investigators he tried to damage the chief’s rifle to make it less accurate.

By the end of the deployment, SEALs said, Chief Gallagher was largely isolated from the rest of the platoon, with some privately calling him “el diablo,” or the devil.

A Fox Contributor’s Cause

Chief Gallagher was reported by six fellow SEALs and arrested in September 2017, charged with nearly a dozen counts including murder and locked in the brig in San Diego to await his trial. He denied the charges and called those reporting him liars who could not meet his high standards, referring to them repeatedly in public as “the mean girls” and saying they sought to get rid of him.

David Shaw, a former SEAL who deployed with the platoon, said he saw no evidence of that. “All six were some of the best performers in the platoon,” he said, speaking publicly for the first time. “These were guys were hand-selected by the chief based on their skills and abilities, and they are guys of the highest character.”

Chief Gallagher’s case was already simmering on the conservative talk show circuit when another service member, Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, an Army Green Beret, was charged last winter with killing an unarmed man linked to the Taliban in Afghanistan. On Dec. 16, barely minutes after a segment on “Fox & Friends,” Mr. Trump took to Twitter to say he would review the case, repeating language from the segment.

At the request of many, I will be reviewing the case of a “U.S. Military hero,” Major Matt Golsteyn, who is charged with murder. He could face the death penalty from our own government after he admitted to killing a Terrorist bomb maker while overseas. @PeteHegseth @FoxNews

38.1K people are talking about this

In the tweet, Mr. Trump included the handle of Mr. Hegseth, who speaks regularly with the president and has been considered for top jobs in the administration. An Army veteran, Mr. Hegseth served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before heading two conservative veterans organizations “committed to victory on the battlefield,” as the biography for his speaker’s bureau puts it.

Upset at what he sees as “Monday morning quarterbacking” of soldiers fighting a shadowy enemy where “second-guessing was deadly,” Mr. Hegseth has for years defended troops charged with war crimes, including Chief Gallagher, Major Golsteyn and Lt. Clint Lorance, often appealing directly to the president on Fox News.

“These are men who went into the most dangerous places on earth with a job to defend us and made tough calls on a moment’s notice,” Mr. Hegseth said on Fox in May. “They’re not war criminals, they’re warriors, who have now been accused of certain things that are under review.”

Mr. Hegseth found a ready ally in Mr. Trump, a graduate of a military high school who avoided serving in Vietnam by citing bone spurs in his foot. Mr. Trump has long sought to identify himself with the toughest of soldiers and loves boasting of battlefield exploits to the point that he made up details of an account of a “whimpering” Islamic State leader killed in October.

In March, the president twice called Richard V. Spencer, the Navy secretary, asking him to release Chief Gallagher from pretrial confinement in a Navy brig, Mr. Spencer later wrote in The Washington Post. After Mr. Spencer pushed back, Mr. Trump made it an order.

In honor of his past service to our Country, Navy Seal #EddieGallagher will soon be moved to less restrictive confinement while he awaits his day in court. Process should move quickly! @foxandfriends @RepRalphNorman

27.5K people are talking about this

By May, Mr. Trump prepared to pardon both Chief Gallagher and Major Golsteyn for Memorial Day, even though neither had yet faced trial. At the Pentagon, a conservative bastion where Fox News is the network of choice on office televisions, senior officials were aghast. They persuaded Mr. Trump to hold off. But that was not the end of the matter.

In June, Chief Gallagher appeared before a military jury of five Marines and two sailors in a two-week trial marred by accusations of prosecutorial misconduct. The medic who had been inches away from Chief Gallagher changed his story on the stand, claiming that he was the one who killed the captive.

In early July, the jury acquitted Chief Gallagher on all charges but one: posing for a trophy photo with a corpse. He was sentenced to the maximum four months in prison and demoted. Having already been confined awaiting trial, he walked out of the courtroom a free man

“Congratulations to Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher, his wonderful wife Andrea, and his entire family,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “You have been through much together. Glad I could help!”

The President Intervenes

In the months afterward, Chief Gallagher was feted on conservative talk shows. Mr. Hegseth spoke privately with Mr. Trump about the case.

As it happened, the president shares a lawyer with Chief Gallagher — Marc Mukasey, a former prosecutor representing Mr. Trump in proceedings against his company. Mr. Mukasey said he never discussed Chief Gallagher with anyone in the administration. “I have been religious about keeping matters separate,” he said.

Another person with ties to Mr. Trump who worked on Chief Gallagher’s case was Bernard B. Kerik, a New York City police commissioner under former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is now the president’s personal lawyer. Like Mr. Hegseth, Mr. Kerik repeatedly appeared on Fox News pleading Chief Gallagher’s case.

The much-investigated president saw shades of himself in the case — Chief Gallagher’s lawyers accused prosecutors of improprieties, a claim that advisers said resonated with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Spencer tried to head off further intervention. On Nov. 14, the Navy secretary sent a note to the president asking him not to get involved again. But Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel, called to say Mr. Trump would order Chief Gallagher’s punishment reversed and his rank restored. In addition, he pardoned Major Golsteyn and Lieutenant Lorance.

“This was a shocking and unprecedented intervention in a low-level review,” Mr. Spencer wrote. “It was also a reminder that the president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices.”

Mr. Spencer threatened to resign. The Army secretary, Ryan McCarthy, also weighed in, arguing that the country’s standards of military justice protected American troops by setting those troops up as a standard around the world.

Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper took the complaints to the president. The Pentagon also sent an information packet to the White House describing the cases, including a primer on why there is a Uniform Code of Military Justice. Mr. Esper and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the president it was important to allow the process to go forward.

The Navy Secretary Fights and Loses

Caught in the middle was Rear Adm. Collin Green, who took command of the SEALs four days before Chief Gallagher was arrested. He made it a priority to restore what he called “good order and discipline” after a series of scandals, tightening grooming standards and banning unofficial patches with pirate flags, skulls, heads on pikes and other grim symbols used to denote rogue cliques, similar to motorcycle gangs.

For Admiral Green, the Gallagher case posed a challenge because after his acquittal, the chief regularly undermined the SEAL command, appearing without authorization on Fox News and insulting the admiral and other superiors on social media as “a bunch of morons.”

The admiral wanted to take Chief Gallagher’s Trident pin, casting him out of the force. He called both Mr. Spencer and the chief of naval operations, Adm. Michael Gilday, and said he understood the potential backlash from the White House, but in nearly all cases SEALs with criminal convictions had their Tridents taken.

Both Mr. Spencer and Admiral Gilday agreed the decision was his to make and said they would defend his call. Mr. Esper briefed Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, on Nov. 19 and the next day the Navy established a review board of fellow enlisted SEALs to decide the question.

But a day later, an hour after the chief’s lawyer blasted the decision on Fox News, the president stepped in again. “The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher’s Trident Pin,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “This case was handled very badly from the beginning. Get back to business!”

The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher’s Trident Pin. This case was handled very badly from the beginning. Get back to business!

36.8K people are talking about this

Three days later, Mr. Spencer was fired, faulted by Mr. Esper for not telling him about an effort to work out a deal with the White House to allow the Navy process to go forward.

In an interview with Mr. Hegseth this past week, Chief Gallagher thanked Mr. Trump for having his back. “He keeps stepping in and doing the right thing,” the chief said. “I want to let him know the rest of the SEAL community is not about this right now. They all respect the president.”

Phroyd

ends of the earth || stuart twombly (princess squad july 2017)

word count: 2,372

warnings: none

author’s note: and i’m back again with some of my favorite noogler! this is a drabble for the ‘princess squad’ that i whipped up in a couple hours! i hope y’all enjoy this cute little oneshot! you can find the other drabbles with this same prompt right here!

pairing: stuart twombly / reader

masterlist

coming soon

“You're always reading that one book. There's so many other books in the world, why that one?”

We all the know that one girl that's obsessed with reading and always has her nose in a book. She's usually reserved and quiet, but when she does talk, she's kind, fun, and beautiful, inside and out. Stuart knew that girl. He had a crush on that girl. He didn't know why. Maybe it was the way she smiled at him when they walked past each other in the big building that was Google HQ. Maybe it was the way her eyes twinkled when she solved a problem with her team. No one else on their team noticed. Not Billy or Nick, not Neha; no one except Stuart Twombly.

He was also the only one to notice that she read the same book over and over again. He would often think back to the day he first saw her, which was the day they were grouped together, and he tried to remember if since then, she'd carried around another book. But he always came up blank. When he pictured her, she was usually carrying around an old, worn out copy of To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

Stuart wasn't a guy that got nervous and giddy around a girl. In fact, the boy with thick framed glasses was very confident among girls. He knew how to talk to them, what to say to them and when to say it. However, when he tried talking to Y/N, he was anxious and his mind went completely blank on every possible topic of conversation. He was certain that the bright smile she wore everyday was what stopped him from thinking. Fortunately, she was usually the one to keep their conversation going and from there Stuart found it easier to talk to her. They quickly grew to be really good friends.

It was another hot, sunny day in California when Stuart was looking for a place to eat lunch and he saw the girl who practically lived in his mind sitting at a table in the shade with her book. He smiled softly when he saw her toss a green grape from the small bowl of assorted fruits she had in front of her, into her mouth. Stuart made his way to her table, wanting to eat his lunch and talk with her. She smiled when she saw him, closing her book slightly.

“Hey, Stuart. What's going on?”

Stuart shrugged and sat in the chair across from her. “I thought you looked a little lonely. Would you like some company?”

Giggling, Y/N nodded. “Well, it seems that you already made yourself comfortable.” She gestured to the food he'd set down on the table and opened. “But yes, I would like some company.”

He watched her put another grape in her mouth and put the bookmark in her book before closing it and setting it off to the side. “Still reading To Kill A Mockingbird?” He asked.

The corners of Y/N’s lips tugged up slightly as she looked at the book and then back to Stuart. “Yeah, it's my favorite.” Her fingers tracing the letters on the hard book cover.

“I've noticed.” He chuckled before eating a chip. “Can I ask you something?”

She nodded slowly. “Of course.”

With furrowed eyebrows, Stuart asked his question. “You're always reading that one book. There's so many other books in the world, why that one?”

Y/N bit her lip nervously, her gaze moving to the book. “It's special to me. I don't tell people what it means to me very often, but I'll tell you because you're special to me.” She grinned. “When I was maybe ten years old, I found this book in my mom’s things and on page ninety-four, there was a picture of my mother and father with a quote from one of the characters written on the back.”

“What did it say?”

“It said ‘Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.’” Stuart was in awe that she'd memorized that part of the book. It made him like her even more.

“It doesn't mean much, but my parents loved to read and they loved each other more because they shared that bond. Before I was born, my dad was deployed to Iraq and he was killed in battle, so I never got the chance to know him. The book was a way of connecting to him and loving him. Then my mom passed away a few years ago due to cancer. After that, the book was all I had left of the two together, so that's why it means so much to me.” She wiped a stray tear from her cheek, sniffling before looking back to Stuart.

“Y/N, I didn't know that. I'm so sorry.” He sighed, grabbing her hand across the table. His fingers rubbed circles on her knuckles.

“No one really knows. You're the first person I've ever told.” She looked into his amber eyes. “And I'm glad I did. You mean a lot to me, Stuart. You're my best friend.”

He brought her hand to his lips and placed a soft kiss on her skin. “And you're mine.”

After that day, the two became closer than they already were. Stuart would go to bookstores with her while she went to beanie stores with him. He felt himself fall in love with every perfect detail about her. He even took it upon himself to read her favorite book so they could have that bond her parents did.

Although, Stuart wasn't the only one wanting to capture the heart of Y/N Y/L/N. Graham was pestering her nonstop about going on a date. Luckily, Stuart was always around to swoop in and save the day, telling their rival team’s leader that they had better things to do then listen to his fake accent.

Today was one of those days where Graham was bothering her, but Stuart wasn't around to be her knight in shining armor and rescue her from the vile creature. Y/N mumbled curses to herself as she walked in the parking lot, on her way into the building she interned at.

“Come on, Y/N. Why don't you want to go out with me? I mean, have you seen me? And the accent, girls love the accent.” He exaggerated, throwing his arms in the air as he tried to keep up with her fast pace.

“I'm sorry, Graham. I'm not interested. I'm just not that into you.” She rolled her eyes, clutching the book in her hands.

“What about the accent?”

Y/N snapped, finally having had enough of his annoying attitude. He turned around as they stepped onto the sidewalk. “For fuck’s sake, Graham! I'm not interested! You're annoying and persistent. You're rude and obnoxious. Like seriously, you need to leave Zach alone. He's amazing and so sweet and doesn't deserve to be treated like trash. I would never date someone like you.”

Graham scoffed, obviously angry. “That's fine with me. You just seemed like an easy fuck. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if you were already fucking that beanie freak.” He snatched the book from her hands and threw it in the gutter. It had rained the night before and the ground was still wet, the gutters were still filled with water. Y/N watched in horror as the book fell apart from Graham snatching it so abruptly and saw the worn pages become wet and ultimately ruined.

Tears filled her eyes as she watched the book completely fall apart. The pages ripped from the binding and became a scattered mess. She turned back to the man she had just learned to loathe and kneed him in the crotch. When he bent over in pain, she slapped him across the face. She picked up the ruined book and walked into Google, leaving Graham to groan on the sidewalk.

Y/N walked to her team's part of the building, tears falling down her cheeks. Stuart smiled when he saw her enter the room. “Hey, Y/N!” His happy demeanor fell when he saw her crying. “Woah, babe. What happened?”

She walked past him, throwing the book in the garbage can right next to him. Stuart looked to see what she'd thrown away and his heart nearly broke when he saw that it was her book. Her favorite book. Her most treasured possession. He walked over to her and sat next to her on the beanbag in the corner.

He pulled her into him, kissing her temple. “What happened?”

“Graham happened.” She mumbled.

Stuart grew angry and he was about ready to find Graham and beat the shit out of him. He couldn't stand to see the girl he loved so heartbroken. For the rest of the day, Stuart made a whole bunch of phone calls and visited so many websites, looking for an original copy of To Kill A Mockingbird. He stayed up all night before he finally found a number the next morning and called it. The person who answered was a middle aged woman. Stuart had learned that she was related to the author and had a few original copies of the classic book.

The woman had agreed to sell him one of the copies after he told her the story of how much the book meant to Y/N and how much Y/N meant to him.

“Well, you seem like a lovely young man. You really love this girl, don't you?”

“With my whole heart. She just doesn't know it yet.”

“I will sell you the book and you can come pick it up this afternoon.”

Stuart sighed in relief, thanking the universe for whatever role they played in all this. “Thank you, thank you so much.” He skipped the next day at Google and drove down to the bookstore where he had to pick it up from and then back to his small apartment. Stuart had been ignoring the text messages and phone calls from Y/N because he wanted this to be a surprise. If he talked to her, he wouldn't be able to hold his tongue. He would blab about what he spent the day doing and spoil the surprise.

The next day, he walked into HQ with the book. It was wrapped in light blue wrapping paper and a big, white ribbon was in the corner. He found Y/N at lunch. She was memorizing the information she needed to know how to code.

“Y/N!” He called to her, running to her table.

She perked up and frowned when she saw the boy missing since yesterday. “Stuart, where have you been? I've been trying to reach you since yesterday!”

“I know! I know!” He slid in the chair next to her, kissing her cheek. The action made her cheeks flush, but he didn't notice. “I was busy all day yesterday. I was looking for this.” He pulled the gift from his backpack and handed it to her.

“What is it?” She raised an eyebrow.

Stuart chuckled. “Just open it and you'll see.”

Her fingers carefully undid the wrapping at the top and pull the gift from its wrapping. Her jaw dropped when she saw what it was. Shakily, she flicked through the new pages. It may have been new and unused, but the book still had the old, dusty smell that came along with an old book. “Oh my god. It's an original copy. H-How did you find it?”

“A few phone calls to the right people and a long drive. Do you like it?” He smiled at her.

Her eyes glossed over with happy tears as she nodded. “Stuart, I love it so much.”

“Well, I'm glad-”

He was cut off by Y/N’s hand grabbing the front of his shirt and pulling him forward, their lips crashing together. He moaned softly in surprise before letting his eyes flutter shut and allowing himself to drown in the kiss. His hand went to the back of her head, his long fingers tangling in her hair. Taking a leap of confidence, he ran his tongue over her cupid's bow, eliciting a small sigh of pleasure from her. The muscle slipped into her mouth, exploring every inch he could.

Y/N’s hand cupped his cheek and she smiled into the kiss. She pulled away for air, leaning her forehead on his as their noses nuzzled and their lips brushed together, sending small sparks of electricity through the both of them. Stuart was speechless, but there was only one word that was in his head.

“Wow.”

The girl chuckled and placed a peck on the corner of his mouth, pulling away from him. “Thank you, Stuart.”

“For the book? That was a ‘thank you’ kiss?” He furrowed his eyebrows, tilting his head slightly.

“Not entirely. It was a ‘thank you for the book and everything else you do’ kiss.” She smiled. Her hand went to the back of Stuart's neck, playing in the hair in that spot. “It was also an ‘I’m hopelessly in love with you, Stuart Twombly’ kiss.”

Stuart’s grinned. “You love me?” Y/N bit her lip and nodded slowly. “You love me. Oh my god! You love me!” He yelled excitedly.

Y/N chuckled at his happiness. “And you love me.”

“How do you know that?” He smirked. “I could've been making fun of you for loving me.”

“Because you remembered. You went to so many lengths just to get me a book. You wouldn't do that if you didn't love me.”

The boy leaned in and kissed the tip of her nose. “You're right. I do love you. I love you with all my heart. With my whole being. With my whole soul. I, Stuart Twombly, love you, Y/N Y/L/N, to the ends of the Earth.”

“You're a dork.” She told him, giggling as she did so.

Stuart smiled, drunk on her love. He shook his head. “But you love me.”

And she did, she loved him to the ends of the Earth.

Chapter Five

Authours Note: This one is a bit shorter than usual, but it’s leading up to some big stuff. Enjoy and thanks again for all the support!

By the time Everly went home from Harry's after their first little date it was safe to say they were both quite smitten. They were eager to see each other again and quickly fell into a routine. Harry would come to the bar to keep Everly company every Tuesday and Wednesday night as it was a pretty safe bet no one would be around to spot them and on Sunday night she would go to his place for dinner.

The next few weeks flew by and Everly was happier than she'd been in years. The excitement she felt on the days she knew she would get to see him made her realize just how long it had been since she'd actually felt happy. She still had plenty of issues and baggage from what she'd been though, but Harry was helping her see the good things in life again and showing her how wonderful it is to have relationships with people, friendly or otherwise. She felt so much lighter. Every day wasn't filled with doom and gloom even if it still lurked around the edges and crept in more than she would have liked, he was brightening up her life in a way she hadn't expected.

He was finding their blossoming relationship quite refreshing as well. There was something about her that made him relax and his evenings at the bar quite often consisted of him bearing his soul. He'd told her about his mother, the aftermath of her death and how difficult it had been mourning in such a public way. He told her about his frustrations of not being allowed to go to Iraq after all his training and how proud he was now that he'd been given the chance to serve his country. He talked endlessly about his soon to be niece or nephew and how excited he was to be an uncle. And he talked about his reputation and how he was trying to turn himself around and dedicate himself to more charity work to honour his mother and continue what she started.

Every night when they parted ways they felt closer from their deep conversations, but Harry realized after almost a month of their little liaisons that he'd really been doing all the talking. She gave the odd anecdote here and there and loved to share fond memories of her mother, but she never opened up about her recent past or anything after she'd turned eighteen.

So, on his fourth week of keeping her company at the bar, he decided to try and get her to open up.

“I know you want to keep things mostly between us,” He started as he sipped his second scotch of the night. “But I'd be more than happy to meet your friends if you want to bring them round to mine one weekend.”

“That's very sweet of you,” Everly smiled. “But I don't have any friends to introduce you to.”

“Oh come on,” Harry wrinkled his brow in disbelief. “You have to have at least one.”

Everly shrugged and twisted a strand of her hair, something Harry had noticed she did when she felt awkward or uncomfortable.

“No, I really don't have anyone.” She insisted. “It's my own fault, I pushed them away during my last relationship, but it was hard to have them around with what was going on.”

Harry nodded, realizing it did make sense and it explained why he'd never heard her mention any friends before.

“Have you ever thought about some kind of group therapy?” He suggested cautiously, knowing he was venturing in to delicate territory. “It might be a good way for you to make some friends who understand what you've been through.”

“No, I'm not interested in that,” She said, shaking her head. “I don't need to sit in a room with other battered women, cry over what happened to us and feel sorry for ourselves.”

Harry didn't quite agree with her impression of what would happen at that kind of meeting, but could sense from her tone that it wasn't up for debate. He did have another idea though.

“What if I introduced you to Kate?”

“Your sister-in-law?” Everly raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, she's been looking into a lot of mental health charities lately and really educating herself on the topic. She might be a good friend for you to have,” He explained. “Plus, she's really sweet and a wonderful person.”

“I'm sure she is, but no. I'm not interested. I don't need any mental health help.” Her tone was harsh and her eyes were flashing with annoyance, but softened slightly when she saw Harry's face. He was just trying to help and looked disappointed. “I don't mean that I'm not interested in meeting her, but when I meet your sister-in-law or any member of your family I want them to see me as your girlfriend or uh, whatever this is that we are, not some wounded stray you've picked up on the street that needs help.”

“That's understandable,” Harry nodded, taking another swig of his scotch as he worked up the courage to say what he wanted to say next. There was a moment of silence before he spoke again. “Will you talk about it with me?”

His question brought a deep frown to Everly's face and he realized this conversation was going the way he had expected it to, but not the way he'd hoped it would.

“Harry, I don't want to talk about it to anyone.”

“I know. I just think it would be helpful,” He continued, not wanting to drop the subject without explaining himself since he knew he wouldn't be allowed to bring it up again any time soon. “It would help me to know what you went through, so I know what might upset you. Where to tread lightly and what might be okay and all that.”

“You know what I've been through, you said so yourself.” Everly reminded him. “And if there are any gaps in your memory then you can Google it. It's all over the fucking internet!”

“But I want to hear it from you,” Harry said softly, trying to keep the situation calm despite Everly's rising temper. “Don't you trust me?”

“It's not about that! It's just-” Everly stopped talking as the door swung open and a crowd of drunk university students stumbled inside. She sighed, slightly relieved by their interruption as Harry put on his baseball cap, pulling it low to hide his identity. “I think you should go.”

“What?” Harry asked, stunned that she expected him to leave half way through such an important conversation.

“I have to work, Harry. I can't talk about this right now.”

“So I'll wait until they leave and we can continue,” He suggested. “The place is dead, they won't stick around long.”

Everly bit her lip, knowing that she was testing Harry's patience, but she stood firm.

“You should go.”

Her tone was certain and steadier than it had been the first time and Harry knew there was no point in arguing. He watched her for a moment, giving her chance to change her mind, but when she stayed silent he reluctantly rose from his seat. He leaned across the bar to place a kiss on her cheek before slipping on his coat and heading to the door without another word.

*

Harry was right, the university students didn't stay more than an hour. Unfortunately that meant Everly had plenty of time to be alone with her thoughts which, while she knew it was something she needed, was the last thing she wanted.

She felt bad for sending Harry away after he asked her to share what she'd been through especially when she knew he'd been so open with her the last few weeks and realistically she knew that if they were to continue seeing each other she would have to open up to him eventually. But the thought of telling him what happened to her, opening up that wound and going through the pain again in front of someone else made her stomach knot up so bad that she felt like she was going to be sick. Especially when that someone had started to mean so much to her.

She knew deep down that Harry wouldn't run away, he wouldn't judge her like so many had or blame her for anything she went through, but she couldn't be so sure that it wouldn't change how he saw her. Other than the fact that he never ventured to put his hands under her clothing while they were kissing and had never tried to initiate anything more, Harry didn't treat her like a victim. He didn't act like she would break at any moment if he said the wrong thing, he'd tease her and make fun of her just as much as she did with him. He treated her like he would treat any girl he was seeing regardless of her issues and she didn't want that to change. She didn't want him to associate her with her past, she just wanted him to see her for who she was now.

But she also knew that he was right. If she could tell her story to a jury full of strangers then Harry deserved to hear it as well. Whatever his reasons were for wanting to know, he did have a right to hear what she'd been through. She didn't think it would necessarily help him figure out what areas to tread lightly around since even she didn't know what might set her off, but whatever his motive was, it was probably fair.

She anxiously checked her phone every two minutes for the rest of the night, hoping that by some miracle Harry would message her and let her off the hook by saying to just forget the whole thing, but when she woke up the next morning to an empty inbox she knew the ball was in her court. He knew he'd upset her, she'd asked him to leave and it was up to her to make contact when she was ready. Her stress and nerves over the whole situation had woken her up a lot earlier that usual, around nine o'clock, but it took her until eleven to work up the courage to text him. She'd written out a million different messages, ranging from novel length to a few words, but eventually settled on something short and concise.

“I'm sorry about last night. You were right, I'm ready to talk. Can you come over?”

She'd expected an instant reply, assuming Harry was just as distraught as her and also checking his phone every thirty seconds, but when an hour had past she was practically a wreck. Just as she'd jumped to the conclusion that her lack of trust and closed off behaviour had driven him away already, her phone buzzed.

“Sorry love, had a meeting this morning. I'll be there in half an hour.”

Everly quickly answered him before resting her head in her hands, dreading the conversation to come.

Trump’s Intervention in SEALs Case Tests Pentagon’s Tolerance https://nyti.ms/2OB255V

Trump’s Intervention in SEALs Case Tests Pentagon’s Tolerance

Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher’s case pits a Pentagon hierarchy committed to enforcing longstanding rules of combat against a commander in chief with no military experience but a finely honed sense of grievance against authority.

By Dave Philipps, Peter Baker, Maggie Haberman and Helene Cooper | Published Nov. 30, 2019 | New York Times | Posted December 1, 2019 |

He was limp and dusty from an explosion, conscious but barely. A far cry from the fierce, masked Islamic State fighters who once seized vast swaths of Iraq and Syria, the captive was a scraggly teenager in a tank top with limbs so thin that his watch slid easily off his wrist.

Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher and other Navy SEALs gave the young captive medical aid that day in Iraq in 2017, sedating him and cutting an airway in his throat to help him breathe. Then, without warning, according to colleagues, Chief Gallagher pulled a small hunting knife from a sheath and stabbed the sedated captive in the neck.

The same Chief Gallagher who later posed for a photograph holding the dead captive up by the hair has now been celebrated on the campaign trail by President Trump, who upended the military code of justice to protect him from the punishment resulting from the episode. Prodded by Fox News, Mr. Trump has made Chief Gallagher a cause célèbre, trumpeting him as an argument for his re-election.

The violent encounter in a faraway land opened a two-year affair that would pit a Pentagon hierarchy wedded to longstanding rules of combat and discipline against a commander in chief with no experience in uniform but a finely honed sense of grievance against authority. The highest ranks in the Navy insisted Chief Gallagher be held accountable. Mr. Trump overruled the chain of command and the secretary of the Navy was fired.

The case of the president and a commando accused of war crimes offers a lesson in how Mr. Trump presides over the armed forces three years after taking office. While he boasts of supporting the military, he has come to distrust the generals and admirals who run it. Rather than accept information from his own government, he responds to television reports that grab his interest. Warned against crossing lines, he bulldozes past precedent and norms.

As a result, the president finds himself more removed than ever from a disenchanted military command, adding the armed forces to the institutions under his authority that he has feuded with, along with the intelligence community, law enforcement agencies and diplomatic corps.

“We’re going to take care of our warriors and I will always stick up for our great fighters,” Mr. Trump told a rally in Florida as he depicted the military hierarchy as part of “the deep state” he vowed to dismantle. “People can sit there in air-conditioned offices and complain, but you know what? It doesn’t matter to me whatsoever.”

The president’s handling of the case has distressed active-duty and retired officers and the civilians who work closely with them. Mr. Trump’s intervention, they said, emboldens war criminals and erodes the order of a professional military.

“He’s interfering with the chain of command, which is trying to police its own ranks,” said Peter D. Feaver, a specialist on civilian-military relations at Duke University and former aide to President George W. Bush. “They’re trying to clean up their act and in the middle of it the president parachutes in — and not from information from his own commanders but from news talking heads who are clearly gaming the system.”

Chris Shumake, a former sniper who served in Chief Gallagher’s platoon, said in an interview that he was troubled by the impact the president’s intervention could have on the SEALs.

“It’s blown up bigger than any of us could have ever expected, and turned into a national clown show that put a bad light on the teams,” said Mr. Shumake, speaking publicly for the first time. “He’s trying to show he has the troops’ backs, but he’s saying he doesn’t trust any of the troops or their leaders to make the right decisions.”

Chief Gallagher, who has denied any wrongdoing, declined through his lawyer to be interviewed. Mr. Trump’s allies said the president was standing up to political correctness that hamstrings the warriors the nation asks to defend it, as if war should be fought according to lawyerly rules.

“From the beginning, this was overzealous prosecutors who were not giving the benefit of the doubt to the trigger-pullers,” Pete Hegseth, a weekend host of “Fox & Friends” who has promoted Chief Gallagher to the president both on the telephone and on air, said this past week. “That’s what the president saw.”

‘No One Touch Him. He’s Mine.’

Chief Gallagher, 40, a seasoned operator with a deeply weathered face from eight combat deployments, sometimes went by the nickname Blade. He sought out the toughest assignments, where gunfire and blood were almost guaranteed. Months before deploying, he sent a text to the SEAL master chief making assignments, saying he was “down to go” to any spot, no matter how awful, so long as “there is for sure action and work to be done.”

“We don’t care about living conditions,” he added. “We just want to kill as many people as possible.”

Before deployment, he commissioned a friend and former SEAL to make him a custom hunting knife and a hatchet, vowing in a text, “I’ll try and dig that knife or hatchet on someone’s skull!”

He was in charge of 22 men in SEAL Team 7’s Alpha Platoon, which deployed to Mosul, Iraq, in early 2017. But his platoon was nowhere near the action, assigned an “advise and assist” mission supporting Iraqi commandos doing the block-by-block fighting. The SEALs were required to stay 1,000 meters behind the front lines.

That changed on May 6, 2017, when an Apache helicopter banked over a dusty patchwork of fields outside Mosul, fixed its sights on a farmhouse serving as an Islamic State command post and fired two Hellfire missiles reducing it to rubble.

Chief Gallagher saw the distant explosion from an armored gun truck. When he heard on the radio that Iraqi soldiers had captured an Islamic State fighter and took him to a nearby staging area, he raced to the scene. “No one touch him,” he radioed other SEALs. “He’s mine.”

‘Got Him With My Hunting Knife’

When the captive was killed, other SEALs were shocked. A medic inches from Chief Gallagher testified that he froze, unsure what to do. Some SEALs said in interviews that the stabbing immediately struck them as wrong, but because it was Chief Gallagher, the most experienced commando in the group, no one knew how to react. When senior platoon members confronted Chief Gallagher, they said, he told them, “Stop worrying about it; they do a lot worse to us.”

The officer in charge, Lt. Jacob Portier, who was in his first command, gathered everyone for trophy photos, then held a re-enlistment ceremony for Chief Gallagher over the corpse, several SEALs testified.

A week later, Chief Gallagher sent a friend in California a text with a photo of himself with a knife in one hand, holding the captive up by the hair with the other. “Good story behind this, got him with my hunting knife,” he wrote.

As the deployment wore on, SEALs said the chief’s behavior grew more erratic. He led a small team beyond the front lines, telling members to turn off locator beacons so they would not be caught by superiors, according to four SEALS, who confirmed video of the mission obtained by The New York Times. He then tried to cover up the mission when one platoon member was shot.

At various points, he appeared to be either amped up or zoned out; several SEALs told investigators they saw him taking pills, including the narcotic Tramadol. He spent much of his time scanning the streets of Mosul from hidden sniper nests, firing three or four times as often as the platoon’s snipers, sometimes targeting civilians.

One SEAL sniper told investigators he heard a shot from Chief Gallagher’s position, then saw a schoolgirl in a flower-print hijab crumple to the ground. Another sniper reported hearing a shot from Chief Gallagher’s position, then seeing a man carrying a water jug fall, a red blotch spreading on his back. Neither episode was investigated and the fate of the civilians remains unknown.

Chief Gallagher had been accused of misconduct before, including shooting through an Afghan girl to hit the man carrying her in 2010 and trying to run over a Navy police officer in 2014. But in both cases no wrongdoing was found.

SEALs said they reported concerns to Lieutenant Portier with no result. The lieutenant outranked Chief Gallagher but was younger and less experienced. SEALs said in interviews that the chief often yelled at his commanding officer or disregarded him altogether. After the deployment, Lieutenant Portier was charged with not reporting the chief for war crimes but charges were dropped. So SEALs said they started firing warning shots to keep pedestrians out of range. One SEAL told investigators he tried to damage the chief’s rifle to make it less accurate.

By the end of the deployment, SEALs said, Chief Gallagher was largely isolated from the rest of the platoon, with some privately calling him “el diablo,” or the devil.

A Fox Contributor’s Cause

Chief Gallagher was reported by six fellow SEALs and arrested in September 2017, charged with nearly a dozen counts including murder and locked in the brig in San Diego to await his trial. He denied the charges and called those reporting him liars who could not meet his high standards, referring to them repeatedly in public as “the mean girls” and saying they sought to get rid of him.

David Shaw, a former SEAL who deployed with the platoon, said he saw no evidence of that. “All six were some of the best performers in the platoon,” he said, speaking publicly for the first time. “These were guys were hand-selected by the chief based on their skills and abilities, and they are guys of the highest character.”

Chief Gallagher’s case was already simmering on the conservative talk show circuit when another service member, Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, an Army Green Beret, was charged last winter with killing an unarmed man linked to the Taliban in Afghanistan. On Dec. 16, barely minutes after a segment on “Fox & Friends,” Mr. Trump took to Twitter to say he would review the case, repeating language from the segment.

In the tweet, Mr. Trump included the handle of Mr. Hegseth, who speaks regularly with the president and has been considered for top jobs in the administration. An Army veteran, Mr. Hegseth served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before heading two conservative veterans organizations “committed to victory on the battlefield,” as the biography for his speaker’s bureau puts it.

Upset at what he sees as “Monday morning quarterbacking” of soldiers fighting a shadowy enemy where “second-guessing was deadly,” Mr. Hegseth has for years defended troops charged with war crimes, including Chief Gallagher, Major Golsteyn and Lt. Clint Lorance, often appealing directly to the president on Fox News.

“These are men who went into the most dangerous places on earth with a job to defend us and made tough calls on a moment’s notice,” Mr. Hegseth said on Fox in May. “They’re not war criminals, they’re warriors, who have now been accused of certain things that are under review.”

Mr. Hegseth found a ready ally in Mr. Trump, a graduate of a military high school who avoided serving in Vietnam by citing bone spurs in his foot. Mr. Trump has long sought to identify himself with the toughest of soldiers and loves boasting of battlefield exploits to the point that he made up details of an account of a “whimpering” Islamic State leader killed in October.

In March, the president twice called Richard V. Spencer, the Navy secretary, asking him to release Chief Gallagher from pretrial confinement in a Navy brig, Mr. Spencer later wrote in The Washington Post. After Mr. Spencer pushed back, Mr. Trump made it an order.

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

In honor of his past service to our Country, Navy Seal #EddieGallagher will soon be moved to less restrictive confinement while he awaits his day in court. Process should move quickly! @foxandfriends @RepRalphNorman

7:14 AM - Mar 30, 2019

By May, Mr. Trump prepared to pardon both Chief Gallagher and Major Golsteyn for Memorial Day, even though neither had yet faced trial. At the Pentagon, a conservative bastion where Fox News is the network of choice on office televisions, senior officials were aghast. They persuaded Mr. Trump to hold off. But that was not the end of the matter.

In June, Chief Gallagher appeared before a military jury of five Marines and two sailors in a two-week trial marred by accusations of prosecutorial misconduct. The medic who had been inches away from Chief Gallagher changed his story on the stand, claiming that he was the one who killed the captive.

In early July, the jury acquitted Chief Gallagher on all charges but one: posing for a trophy photo with a corpse. He was sentenced to the maximum four months in prison and demoted. Having already been confined awaiting trial, he walked out of the courtroom a free man.

“Congratulations to Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher, his wonderful wife Andrea, and his entire family,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “You have been through much together. Glad I could help!”

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Congratulations to Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher, his wonderful wife Andrea, and his entire family. You have been through much together. Glad I could help!

The President Intervenes

In the months afterward, Chief Gallagher was feted on conservative talk shows. Mr. Hegseth spoke privately with Mr. Trump about the case.

As it happened, the president shares a lawyer with Chief Gallagher — Marc Mukasey, a former prosecutor representing Mr. Trump in proceedings against his company. Mr. Mukasey said he never discussed Chief Gallagher with anyone in the administration. “I have been religious about keeping matters separate,” he said.

Another person with ties to Mr. Trump who worked on Chief Gallagher’s case was Bernard B. Kerik, a New York City police commissioner under former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is now the president’s personal lawyer. Like Mr. Hegseth, Mr. Kerik repeatedly appeared on Fox News pleading Chief Gallagher’s case.

The much-investigated president saw shades of himself in the case — Chief Gallagher’s lawyers accused prosecutors of improprieties, a claim that advisers said resonated with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Spencer tried to head off further intervention. On Nov. 14, the Navy secretary sent a note to the president asking him not to get involved again. But Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel, called to say Mr. Trump would order Chief Gallagher’s punishment reversed and his rank restored. In addition, he pardoned Major Golsteyn and Lieutenant Lorance.

“This was a shocking and unprecedented intervention in a low-level review,” Mr. Spencer wrote. “It was also a reminder that the president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices.”

Mr. Spencer threatened to resign. The Army secretary, Ryan McCarthy, also weighed in, arguing that the country’s standards of military justice protected American troops by setting those troops up as a standard around the world.

Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper took the complaints to the president. The Pentagon also sent an information packet to the White House describing the cases, including a primer on why there is a Uniform Code of Military Justice. Mr. Esper and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the president it was important to allow the process to go forward.

The Navy Secretary Fights and Loses

Caught in the middle was Rear Adm. Collin Green, who took command of the SEALs four days before Chief Gallagher was arrested. He made it a priority to restore what he called “good order and discipline” after a series of scandals, tightening grooming standards and banning unofficial patches with pirate flags, skulls, heads on pikes and other grim symbols used to denote rogue cliques, similar to motorcycle gangs.

For Admiral Green, the Gallagher case posed a challenge because after his acquittal, the chief regularly undermined the SEAL command, appearing without authorization on Fox News and insulting the admiral and other superiors on social media as “a bunch of morons.”

The admiral wanted to take Chief Gallagher’s Trident pin, casting him out of the force. He called both Mr. Spencer and the chief of naval operations, Adm. Michael Gilday, and said he understood the potential backlash from the White House, but in nearly all cases SEALs with criminal convictions had their Tridents taken.

Both Mr. Spencer and Admiral Gilday agreed the decision was his to make and said they would defend his call. Mr. Esper briefed Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, on Nov. 19 and the next day the Navy established a review board of fellow enlisted SEALs to decide the question.

But a day later, an hour after the chief’s lawyer blasted the decision on Fox News, the president stepped in again. “The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher’s Trident Pin,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “This case was handled very badly from the beginning. Get back to business!”

Three days later, Mr. Spencer was fired, faulted by Mr. Esper for not telling him about an effort to work out a deal with the White House to allow the Navy process to go forward.

In an interview with Mr. Hegseth this past week, Chief Gallagher thanked Mr. Trump for having his back. “He keeps stepping in and doing the right thing,” the chief said. “I want to let him know the rest of the SEAL community is not about this right now. They all respect the president.”

He was limp and dusty from an explosion, conscious but barely. A far cry from the fierce, masked Islamic State fighters who once seized vast swaths of Iraq and Syria, the captive was a scraggly teenager in a tank top with limbs so thin that his watch slid easily off his wrist.Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher and other Navy SEALs gave the young captive medical aid that day in Iraq in 2017, sedating him and cutting an airway in his throat to help him breathe. Then, without warning, according to colleagues, Gallagher pulled a small hunting knife from a sheath and stabbed the sedated captive in the neck.The same Gallagher who later posed for a photograph holding the dead captive up by the hair has now been celebrated on the campaign trail by President Donald Trump, who upended the military code of justice to protect him from the punishment resulting from the episode. Prodded by Fox News, Trump has been trumpeting him as an argument for his reelection.The violent encounter in a faraway land opened a two-year affair that would pit a Pentagon hierarchy wedded to longstanding rules of combat and discipline against a commander in chief with no experience in uniform but a finely honed sense of grievance against authority. The highest ranks in the Navy insisted Gallagher be held accountable. Trump overruled the chain of command and the secretary of the Navy was fired.The case of the president and a commando accused of war crimes offers a lesson in how Trump presides over the armed forces three years after taking office. While he boasts of supporting the military, he has come to distrust the generals and admirals who run it. Rather than accept information from his own government, he responds to television reports that grab his interest. Warned against crossing lines, he bulldozes past precedent and norms.As a result, the president finds himself more removed than ever from a disenchanted military command, adding the armed forces to the institutions under his authority that he has feuded with, along with the intelligence community, law enforcement agencies and diplomatic corps."We're going to take care of our warriors and I will always stick up for our great fighters," Trump told a rally in Florida as he depicted the military hierarchy as part of "the deep state" he vowed to dismantle. "People can sit there in air-conditioned offices and complain, but you know what? It doesn't matter to me whatsoever."The president's handling of the case has distressed active-duty and retired officers and the civilians who work closely with them. His intervention, they said, emboldens war criminals and erodes the order of a professional military."He's interfering with the chain of command, which is trying to police its own ranks," said Peter D. Feaver, a specialist on civilian-military relations at Duke University and former aide to President George W. Bush. "They're trying to clean up their act and in the middle of it the president parachutes in -- and not from information from his own commanders but from news talking heads who are clearly gaming the system."Chris Shumake, a former sniper who served in Gallagher's platoon, said in an interview that he was troubled by the impact the president's intervention could have on the SEALs."It's blown up bigger than any of us could have ever expected, and turned into a national clown show that put a bad light on the teams," said Shumake, speaking publicly for the first time. "He's trying to show he has the troops' backs, but he's saying he doesn't trust any of the troops or their leaders to make the right decisions."Gallagher, who has denied wrongdoing, declined through his lawyer to be interviewed. Trump's allies said the president was standing up to political correctness that hamstrings the warriors the nation asks to defend it, as if war should be fought according to lawyerly rules."From the beginning, this was overzealous prosecutors who were not giving the benefit of the doubt to the trigger-pullers," Pete Hegseth, a weekend host of "Fox & Friends" who has promoted Gallagher to the president both on the telephone and on air, said this past week. "That's what the president saw."'No One Touch Him. He's Mine.'Gallagher, 40, a seasoned operator with a face weathered from eight combat deployments, sometimes went by the nickname Blade. He sought the toughest assignments, where gunfire and blood were almost guaranteed. Months before deploying, he sent a text to the SEAL master chief making assignments, saying he was "down to go" to any spot, no matter how awful, so long as "there is for sure action and work to be done.""We don't care about living conditions," he added. "We just want to kill as many people as possible."Before deployment, he commissioned a friend and former SEAL to make him a custom hunting knife and a hatchet, vowing in a text, "I'll try and dig that knife or hatchet on someone's skull!"He was in charge of 22 men in SEAL Team 7's Alpha Platoon, which deployed to Mosul, Iraq, in early 2017. But his platoon was nowhere near the action, assigned an "advise and assist" mission supporting Iraqi commandos doing the block-by-block fighting. The SEALs were required to stay 1,000 meters behind the front lines.That changed on May 6, 2017, when an Apache helicopter banked over a dusty patchwork of fields outside Mosul, fixed its sights on a farmhouse serving as an Islamic State command post and fired two Hellfire missiles reducing it to rubble.Gallagher saw the explosion from an armored gun truck. When he heard on the radio that Iraqi soldiers had captured an Islamic State fighter and taken him to a nearby staging area, he raced to the scene. "No one touch him," he radioed other SEALs. "He's mine."'Got Him With My Hunting Knife'When the captive was killed, other SEALs were shocked. A medic inches from Gallagher testified that he froze, unsure what to do. Some SEALs said in interviews that the stabbing immediately struck them as wrong, but because it was Gallagher, the most experienced commando in the group, no one knew how to react. When senior platoon members confronted Gallagher, they said, he told them, "Stop worrying about it; they do a lot worse to us."The officer in charge, Lt. Jacob Portier, who was in his first command, gathered everyone for trophy photos, then held a re-enlistment ceremony for Gallagher over the corpse, several SEALs testified.A week later, Gallagher sent a friend in California a text with a photo of himself with a knife in one hand, holding the captive up by the hair with the other. "Good story behind this, got him with my hunting knife," he wrote.As the deployment wore on, SEALs said the chief's behavior grew more erratic. He led a small team beyond the front lines, telling members to turn off locator beacons so they would not be caught by superiors, according to four SEALS, who confirmed video of the mission obtained by The New York Times. He then tried to cover up the mission when one platoon member was shot.At various points, he appeared to be either amped up or zoned out; several SEALs told investigators they saw him taking pills, including the narcotic Tramadol. He spent much of his time scanning the streets of Mosul from hidden sniper nests, firing three or four times as often as the platoon's snipers, sometimes targeting civilians.One SEAL sniper told investigators he heard a shot from Gallagher's position, then saw a schoolgirl in a flower-print hijab crumple to the ground. Another sniper reported hearing a shot from Gallagher's position, then seeing a man carrying a water jug fall, a red blotch spreading on his back. Neither episode was investigated and the fate of the civilians remains unknown.Gallagher had been accused of misconduct before, including shooting through an Afghan girl to hit the man carrying her in 2010 and trying to run over a Navy police officer in 2014. But in both cases no wrongdoing was found.SEALs said they reported concerns to Portier with no result. The lieutenant outranked Gallagher but was younger and less experienced. SEALs said in interviews that the chief often yelled at his commanding officer or disregarded him altogether. After the deployment, Portier was charged with not reporting the chief for war crimes but charges were dropped. SEALS said they started firing warning shots to keep pedestrians out of range. One SEAL told investigators he tried to damage the chief's rifle to make it less accurate.By the end of the deployment, SEALs said, Gallagher was largely isolated from the rest of the platoon, with some privately calling him "el diablo," the devil.A Fox Contributor's CauseGallagher was reported by six fellow SEALs and arrested in September 2017, charged with nearly a dozen counts including murder and locked in the brig in San Diego to await his trial. He denied the charges and called those reporting him liars who could not meet his high standards, referring to them repeatedly in public as "the mean girls" and saying they sought to get rid of him.David Shaw, a former SEAL who deployed with the platoon, said he saw no evidence of that. "All six were some of the best performers in the platoon," he said, speaking publicly for the first time. "These were guys were hand-selected by the chief based on their skills and abilities, and they are guys of the highest character."Gallagher's case was already simmering on the conservative talk show circuit when another service member, Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, an Army Green Beret, was charged last winter with killing an unarmed man linked to the Taliban in Afghanistan. On Dec. 16, barely minutes after a segment on "Fox & Friends," Trump took to Twitter to say he would review the case, repeating language from the segment.In the tweet, Trump included the handle of Hegseth, who speaks regularly with the president and has been considered for top jobs in the administration. An Army veteran, Hegseth served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before heading two conservative veterans organizations "committed to victory on the battlefield," as the biography for his speaker's bureau puts it.Upset at what he sees as "Monday morning quarterbacking" of soldiers fighting a shadowy enemy where "second-guessing was deadly," Hegseth has for years defended troops charged with war crimes, including Gallagher, Golsteyn and Lt. Clint Lorance, often appealing directly to the president on Fox News."These are men who went into the most dangerous places on earth with a job to defend us and made tough calls on a moment's notice," Hegseth said on Fox in May. "They're not war criminals, they're warriors."Hegseth found a ready ally in Trump, a graduate of a military high school who avoided serving in Vietnam as a young man citing bone spurs in his foot. Trump has long sought to identify himself with the toughest of soldiers and loves boasting of battlefield exploits to the point that he made up details of an account of a "whimpering" Islamic State leader killed in October.In March, the president twice called Richard Spencer, the Navy secretary, asking him to release Gallagher from pretrial confinement in a Navy brig, Spencer later wrote in The Washington Post. After Spencer pushed back, Trump made it an order.By May, Trump prepared to pardon both Gallagher and Golsteyn for Memorial Day, even though neither had yet faced trial. At the Pentagon, a conservative bastion where Fox News is the network of choice on office televisions, senior officials were aghast. They persuaded Trump to hold off. But that was not the end of the matter.In June, Gallagher appeared before a military jury of five Marines and two sailors in a two-week trial marred by accusations of prosecutorial misconduct. The medic who had been inches away from Gallagher changed his story on the stand, claiming that he was the one who killed the captive.In early July, the jury acquitted Gallagher on all charges but one: posing for a trophy photo with a corpse. He was sentenced to the maximum four months in prison and demoted. Having already been confined awaiting trial, he walked out of the courtroom a free man."Congratulations to Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher, his wonderful wife Andrea, and his entire family," Trump tweeted. "You have been through much together. Glad I could help!"The President IntervenesIn the months afterward, Gallagher was feted on conservative talk shows. Hegseth spoke privately with Trump about the case.As it happened, the president shares a lawyer with Gallagher -- Marc Mukasey, a former prosecutor representing Trump in proceedings against his company. Mukasey said he never discussed Gallagher with anyone in the administration. "I have been religious about keeping matters separate," he said.Another person with ties to Trump who worked on Gallagher's case was Bernard B. Kerik, a New York City police commissioner under former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is now the president's personal lawyer. Like Hegseth, Kerik repeatedly appeared on Fox News pleading Gallagher's case.The much-investigated president saw shades of himself in the case -- Gallagher's lawyers accused prosecutors of improprieties, a claim that advisers said resonated with Trump.Spencer tried to head off further intervention. On Nov. 14, the Navy secretary sent a note to the president asking him not to get involved again. But Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, called to say Trump would order Gallagher's punishment reversed and his rank restored. In addition, he pardoned Golsteyn and Lorance."This was a shocking and unprecedented intervention in a low-level review," Spencer wrote. "It was also a reminder that the president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices."Spencer threatened to resign. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy also weighed in, arguing that the country's standards of military justice protected American troops by setting those troops up as a standard around the world.Defense Secretary Mark Esper took the complaints to the president. The Pentagon also sent an information packet to the White House describing the cases, including a primer on why there is a Uniform Code of Military Justice. Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the president it was important to allow the process to go forward.The Navy Secretary Fights and LosesCaught in the middle was Rear Adm. Collin Green, who took command of the SEALs four days before Gallagher was arrested. He made it a priority to restore what he called "good order and discipline" after a series of scandals, tightening grooming standards and banning unofficial patches with pirate flags, skulls, heads on pikes and other grim symbols used to denote rogue cliques, similar to motorcycle gangs.For Green, the Gallagher case posed a challenge because after his acquittal, the chief regularly undermined the SEAL command, appearing without authorization on Fox News and insulting the admiral and other superiors on social media as "a bunch of morons."The admiral wanted to take Gallagher's Trident pin, casting him out of the force. He called both Spencer and the chief of naval operations, Adm. Michael Gilday, and said he understood the potential backlash from the White House, but in nearly all cases SEALs with criminal convictions had their Tridents taken.Both Spencer and Gilday agreed the decision was his to make and said they would defend his call. Esper briefed Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, on Nov. 19 and the next day the Navy established a review board of fellow enlisted SEALs to decide the question.But a day later, an hour after the chief's lawyer blasted the decision on Fox News, the president stepped in again. "The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher's Trident Pin," Trump wrote on Twitter. "This case was handled very badly from the beginning. Get back to business!"Three days later, Spencer was fired, faulted by Esper for not telling him about an effort to work out a deal with the White House to allow the Navy process to go forward.In an interview with Hegseth this past week, Gallagher thanked Trump for having his back. "He keeps stepping in and doing the right thing," the chief said. "I want to let him know the rest of the SEAL community is not about this right now. They all respect the president."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company

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People's State of the Union Address Tuesday January 30th, 2018 Light Club Lamp Shop Burlington, Vermont

People’s State of the Union Address

Tuesday January 30th, 2018

Light Club Lamp Shop

Burlington, Vermont

  Share a story about an experience that gave you insight into the state of our union

Share a story about a time that you felt a sense of belonging, or the opposite, to this nation or your community

Share a story of an experience that gave you hope in the past year

  Hi everyone! Honestly, I’m so happy to be here with everybody today on such an important day. [1:56] My name is Devin Alejandro-Wilder. I’ve lived in Burlington for the past six years and attended at a local liberal arts college for four of those six years. I’m a working artist and I was born queer & disabled and i live in an independent co-op in the Old North End with seven other friends, two kitchens and 3 cats. In this past year, I was fortunate enough that my little sister raised the $5,000 needed to get myself a hearing aid, and it’s been extraordinarily helpful. Let me tell you, hearing footsteps and secrets and whispers has been something that I’ve never been able to experience before. [2:47] While the prosthetic that I use has a lot of faults, my friends certainly don’t, because they always help me keep track of it. It’s really small and black, and it’s meant to be invisible I guess, like myself… But, my buddies see me take it off, and they see me put it on, and turn up the volume and turn down the volume, and they never forget. They repeat questions, sentences, jokes, and punchlines and I don’t have to fake laughter so much anymore. I didn’t used to tell people that I had a disability because I firmly believe that we are told that we’re not supposed to tell people this. We’re just supposed to ‘pass’ and ‘make it work’. But when I did get my prosthetic, there was no more hiding what was going on, because people could see it pretty clearly. Even though it’s small and meant to be invisible, there’s nothing invisible about a piece of robotic technology attached to your my skull (especially when you have weird hair like mine). So, I just want to thank them, constantly, for their patience and understanding and seeming infinite kindness, because while I have employers who look at me differently for my disability, my friends don’t and that gives me hope every single day. Thank you [4:09]

  [4:32] Hi, I’m Max Engle-Strike. I moved to Burlington in May at age 29 to become a brewer, because Vermont beer is so good. I moved from across the country, which gave me a unique perspective on seeing anti-trump sentiment on all sides of the country. It also gave me an insight into the state of our union, which is that it is extremely scattered, and shattered, and torn and divided, in that not even people who are against Trump can agree on how to be against Trump. The story I want to share is about my brother, with whom I am extremely close but we disagree often, to the extent that we were talking about policies in the United States vs the Russia probe as it came down to letting Jeff Sessions being in place or getting expelled. He was in favor of making sure the Russian investigation was completed, those responsible are punished, and that Trump is held accountable for soliciting, confusing Facebook ads. I was extremely disturbed by the policies that the attorney general was putting in place, bringing back mandatory minimums, recriminalizing marijuana, bringing back racist and divisive rhetoric in a way that hasn’t been seen in decades (for good reason) [6:00]and it really scared me that to him, it’s more important to take down a figurehead than to remember that these policies are affecting thousands of Americans every day. So, in wondering how to proceed in the next three years, let’s not miss the forest for the trees: let’s not focus on just the figurehead, let’s focus on the community and each other [6:25] Sorry, Benny, but I’m not with you on this one. That’s my story.

  [6:47] My name is Jane, I’m a graduate student here in Burlington. I’ve been here for six years (I moved here from Boston) and I’m 23 years old. I think that, back in 2016, when everything changed in a really big way, I became very disheartened and sort of felt unempowered about being involved in politics. It wasn’t until really this year that I started looking for pieces of hope and wisdom in my local community, and recognizing that there’s tremendous potential for us to organize in really small ways. Really, the personal is political, the local is global, and so by us meeting here today and actually having these conversations, we are setting an example for people all over the country to do the same thing. [7:45] So, while the conversations that you have with your neighbors or in your classrooms or with your friends and family may feel insignificant, they are part of a greater dialogue, and we really do have the potential to change things. Thank you all for being here.

  I’m Hallie Berksengold. I’ve been in Burlington for almost nine years now. [8:28] I’m originally from the New York City area, and it’s actually kind of become a little joke in my identity about how I’m a Vermonter in a group of New Yorkers and a New Yorker in a group of Vermonters, and that dichotomy almost rules how I look at things and approach the world a lot of the time. So, I’ve been up here for a long time (oh, by the way, I’m 26). I grew up in a—I wouldn’t call it a super religious, but relatively, comparatively observant—Jewish household. I was raised not quite as religious as a lot of other New York Jews that I knew (and I know a lot), but we followed every major holiday, and every somewhat-major holiday. When I moved up to Vermont, I initially didn’t find any Jewish communities that really resonated with me, and I tapered off that a bit. [9:58] It’s been interesting because for a long time, that tapering off was kind of accidental, but then it became very intentional as I became way more disillusioned with Israeli politics over the coming years. Looking back on this now, it seemed really silly that I ever really thought this way, but I did, up until about a year ago, felt like I was literally the only Jewish person who was upset about how Palestinians and African Jews were being treated. None of my original Jewish circles that I had grown up with really either seemed to care or seemed to want to confront the hypocrisy between “healing the world”—"Tikkun olam"—and social justice, and yet there was this very glaring problem in our midst. I came across an organization (totally by accident) and this happened a little bit after the election in 2016, and it was totally by accident because by that point I had sworn off of any Jewish spaces, but this was one was one where young adult Jews primarily were coming together to oppose Israeli occupation. And I was floored; I was like “Wow, there’s a whole group of Jews specifically who do this!”. I was definitely really vocal about my opinions up here, because I felt this need to prove to other people who are predominantly not Jewish up here that, “Hey, guess what? Not all Jews support this”. So I went down to New York last year and went to a training and then, pretty shortly after that, we did a major action in D.C. against the American-Israel public affairs committee by shutting down and blockading the front and side doors. I did take appropriate time off work because this hit me in a rather personal way. I remember just locking down with other people and looking out at the giant crowd of all different kinds of people and feeling wildly at peace in that moment, whatever happened later. Thank you. [13:07]

  [13:14] My name is Ali, my pronouns are ‘they’ and ‘them’. I’m here from San Francisco—I’m on tour for a show—it’s my second night in Burlington, thanks for welcoming me. I live in San Francisco’s oldest housing cooperative. It was founded in 1957 by a group of beatniks, and we just celebrated our 60th anniversary. I grew up in a very conservative family, predominantly Trump supporters. I’ve been a community organizer and activist for 10+ years, ranging from "lets do nice sweet fundraisers” to really militant direct action, so quite a range there. My story is about the first prompt in the State of the Union: I’d been going to and showing up for racial justice meetings starting in September 2016. In San Francisco, the core organizing group fluctuated between like 10, 15 people, sometimes 20. The Bay Area chapter is a lot bigger, but the San Francisco one was just starting. I like to call Trump “Mussolini Kardashian” because I feel like that’s the best way to describe our fascist reality star, and in the meeting after Mussolini Kardashian was elected, we had like 100+ people there. People were there in this visceral state of panic almost, and it actually really pissed me off. I was so happy to see so many people and see people mobilized. We went around and did this big check-in, and people were so utterly panicked, and the reason it bothered me was this: Under President Obama, there were almost 2 million people deported. The U.S. was at war with eight different countries. The Dakota Access Pipeline all progressed under Obama. Michael Brown was killed under Obama. Kalief Browder hung himself under Obama. All of these things were happening in that era. There’s a way in which Trump’s particular brand of being heinous and viscious and brutal is so in-your-face, but then I look at George W. Bush and I look at the invasion of Iraq, and I look at Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal Act, and I look at this historical amnesia that makes Trump into this exceptionalized boogey man, when the history of our country is genocide, theft, and slavery. There’s this aspect of the contemporary zeitgeist of panic around his behavior as if it’s different from the rest of America’s history, and I look at this too with some of the campaigns that target and attack the Confederate flag, and I’m like “what about the U.S. flag?!” Like, if we need a symbol of heinous, viscous, barbaric actions, that flag really wins the cake. So there’s this aspect for me of certain types and kinds of panic, and the reality star aspect of it for me is important because it’s this flashy, showy, outlandish in-your-face version, but the quiet and subtle aspects of white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy has been going on and will continue to go on. I feel like there’s a fireworks to the current thing that really is blinding us, in a way, from the history of it all. Thanks. [16:53]

  My name is Laurie. I am 56 years old, and I was born and raised in Burlington, Vermont. I’m a Burlington, Vermont native. Well, I’ve got kind of mixed feelings about Donald Trump and his actions. Even during his campaign, I always felt that he’s gonna be contradicting, he’s gonna do a lot of firing, and hiring, and the one’s he’s hiring are not staying in, as far as the Senate is concerned. I’m afraid for our country. What I understand is that he’s got so much money, but he ain’t got no brains to use it, so that’s my perspective. I didn’t want him to be our president. I actually wanted Bernie Sanders to be our president. I figured he was more down to earth with us, and he was the better choice. Anyway, I just really was upset when Donald Trump was elected, and I still to this very day wonder, “why did all these people elect him?” My sense of hope in my community is that we can get Trump out, and get somebody else in who knows how to run the country a lot better than it is right now.

  [18:56] My name is Chai Gang. I was born during a depression, and we had people sleeping on our floor every night, and nobody ever said the word homeless. They said, “I can’t find a job". “Homeless" was not a word yet. When I heard Trump talking about how he’s going to get everybody a job, and people voted for him for that reason, I have no respect for those people. I wouldn’t want a man running my country the way he runs this country because he promised me a job. When I was in the Occupy movement, I met a woman who had her mother living with her, and her mother babysat while she went to work. The mother was kicked out of the apartment because she wasn’t on the lease, and the woman lost her job because she didn’t have a babysitter anymore. I met another woman who had her grandfather living with her, and he was in a wheelchair, and he was kicked out because he wasn’t on the lease. So he was homeless. Well, in the old days, no landlord would kick anybody out if the rent was paid and if the place was being taken care of decently. So I’m disgusted and angry, and I feel Trump is supposed to be President, because it’s time for a change, and the change is going to be horrible. What can we hope for? I want to say ‘except that we die’… I don’t want to be here anymore, for what’s coming. And yet, when I think of dying, somebody has to fight. Somebody has to go against what’s coming, so maybe I’m one of them. [21:32]

  My name is David. I lived in Burlington and the Williston area for 56 years. I’m 56 years old now. 29 years ago, I started a career as a taxi driver, which I had for 25 years. I was pretty lucky because I did a lot of runs in Burlington, a lot of runs around Vermont, runs into Canada and all over the U.S. It used to be pretty mild conversations about “Yeah, things are going okay, my job is okay" and the longer I continued, the more I saw old problems just kinda got shoved under the rug, and the people that voted for Trump, there’s a lot of these issues that happened before Trump. Trump is just kind of a beacon of what had been going wrong for a very long time. About four years ago, I lost my house, and I lost my job, and so I ended up being homeless. Luckily, about four years ago, and I moved into a housing complex here for seniors and people with disabilities, both learning and other forms. I’ve learned in where I live that all our differences are making us stronger, and I think all this pressure from the top is finally getting to the point where we’re all starting to organize. More in the last year, we’re all starting to understand that we don’t want this anymore. Let’s go back to caring about each other, getting rid of the power and the money. Let us—the residents and the folks with jobs that are merely making a living—let us take over and head in the right direction. Thank you. [24:10]

  My name is Jen. I’ am a resident of Burlington for three and a half years. I’m a teacher, a community organizer and an artist, and.. I was the one who said that you wouldn’t not have a story, so I have an opening, we’ll see how it goes: So in 2008, when Obama was elected—it was right after the Bush years, which doesn’t seem quite as terrible anymore—I was at Nectar’s when the election results came in, and I was part of a crowd of hundreds and hundreds of people that literally took to the streets and flocked all over Burlington and celebrated this huge victory. It was the first and maybe the only time I’ve ever been that excited about a presidential election. That being said, shortly after that we went right back to the politics and it was kind of a similar but different national thing was happening in D.C., and a friend of mine was doing a local one, and it was this whole idea that we get hope from people, not from presidents. I was really happy to participate in this visual art event. So when I saw that this was happening, I got really excited because something that I always believe very strongly is that we are the power and we can make change. We are living in—I wouldn’t say an unprecedented time, because it’s happened before (before I was around, I think)—but how I’ve seen it affect my friends and my community in ways that I wasn’t expecting. But particularly, I remember—so, I teach college at CCV and up until this semester my classes have always been on Tuesdays—we were talking about the election, talking about it the whole semester, and so, we talked about it all day, told people “If you’re eligible to vote, go vote”, and I felt like we had covered all the bases about who was eligible and everything. So we left and I felt really, really confident that I was going to come into class the next day and I had already planned out how we would talk about what it meant to have our first female president. So I went out with my friends that night, I went down to Nectar’s and we watched, and we went to the OP and we watched, and then we came here, and I sat right there with my friend. As it was close to midnight, and it became clearer and clearer that things weren’t going in the direction that we thought they were going to go, we started losing words, we started having tears, and we started getting fearful. So, when I decided to do this event, we were brainstorming where to do it, and I thought, “let me call Lee, and see if the Lamp Shop is open”, and he said “Yes!”. For me personally, how really hard it is to have this event with people talking about what’s going on, in the same exact place where I felt like I personally got this initial wound, it’s really important, and to be here with people tonight is super helpful. So, thanks for coming and for listening.

  [28:01] Alright, I got one for ya. My name is Luc Arseneau. The first thing about me I guess I tell everybody seems to be—I don’t know how people aren’t bored of it now—I had chronic night terrors since I was a little kid: sleep paralysis, all that shit, for years. I was told to draw them in order to get them to go out, and eventually I did, and eventually I got good at drawing, and then eventually went away. Now I’m a lucid dreamer, and I take those same drawings and I put them up in stories so I can put out something that isn’t taxing on me. So, there you go, there’s a lot of things out there. So, that being said, I got something that I think might be the third one, was it ‘hope’? Yeah, I’ve got ‘hope’ for ya. You can be the judge or whether or not it is, but I’ll leave that up to you. It was the summertime, it must’ve been two years ago maybe, and I was walking across the blue bridge. You know, you might not know but it’s called the blue bridge by anybody who walks across it, it’s railroad tracks. I was going down there, and I live now at the place I was crashing at then, so I had this big backpack, it was my grandfather’s, and I’d used duct taped on the strap on the side to keep it from falling off. So I go down, and I noticed one thing about the bridge was that somebody shot out the streetlights above it again, so I can’t see anything other than, you know, this one lone light, ‘cause the other ones are broken. So I go up to the edge of the bridge and I think I hear a sound, but I don’t stop, because I’m counting the next wooden beam that it takes to get across. I can’t see them, but I know they’re there, so I count them. One, two, three, four, five… and I go across. I hear a sound behind me but I still don’t turn, because I don’t want to break my pace. In the middle of the bridge, I decide to stop, because I hear footsteps. I turn around, and I see a tall figure walking towards me. So I turn forward and go. One thing I didn’t mention is, having night terrors (not that anybody would know) makes you very paranoid, for no logical reason, so you insert logic into it. So I figured, “oh, it’s just a guy going by”. My hand still goes into my pocket, to where my knife is, just there. I hear “hey, boy! Hey man! Hey yo! Slow down, hey hey!” Well, I keep going, and I hear “hey man! Yo yo yo! Stop stop stop!” So I said, “Hey, what dyou want?“ 'cause I’m an idiot. ‘Cause I’m curious. Being curious makes you an idiot. I’m full of idiocy (not as much as our President though, I’ll say that. I’m not curious about what happens there). So I turn around and I say, “Hey man, what dyou want?” and he says “Yo, yo, d’you got a light, man?” I make it clear that my hand’s in my pocket, jingling around the loose change that’s in there and say, “Yeah if all you want is a light”. I realized that for some reason, at that point, I had said something that was very important. I didn’t know why, but I had said something that changed the air. He stops, and he says, “Well yeah, you know”. I realize from the shadow of the light shining past him at me that he’s got his hand in his pocket too. So I said “Yeah, well, yeah, alright I’ve got a light” and I take out some matches, and I give them to him. Then I started talking with him. He was a kid, probably 19 or 18, had a Four Loko, flat brim hat, and we just start to talk. As we start getting into talking, one of the things I notice is that he’s as drunk as I am, he wasn’t certain, he was just trying to light his cigarette. As we’re getting into this conversation I realize he’s not that bad of a guy, and I was like, “I gotta tell you man, I had my hand on my knife in my pocket, ‘cause I thought you were gonna try and mug me” and he’s like, “Yo dude! I didn’t know who you were, I had my hand on my knife too!” And I was like, “Shit, well hey, d’you want some rum?“ ‘Cause it’s 3 in the morning, it’s dark, we’re alone on a bridge, of course I’m gonna, well, you know, who cares… And he goes “No, I’ve got my Four Loko!” and I was like “Oh I’m not touchin’ that”. So we sit down, and we get to talking for about 3 hours, and I learned about his life. He was from Somalia. He got shipped off somewhere else. He was a child soldier for about a year, and then he got free somehow (I don’t know, it was broken English). But one thing he told me, I remember, was talking about how, if you were caught with a beer in his hometown, they cut off one of your hands. I said “Fuck, I’ve heard stories about that, but I never knew…”, and he says “Well, now you know”. So I was like, “Well how nice is it to be in harmony, now, to be in peace?” and he said “What’s harmony, what’s peace?”. And I was like “you know, peace”. I tried to explain to him whats harmony is, and I realized, fuck. That’s the same thing as me asking him, “if all you want’s a light”: yeah, that’s what he asked for. But the thing that we’re not certain about is whether or not we say what we mean, and whether or not somebody understands what we mean when we say it. And that’s all I have to say. [34:08]

  [Lee] As an American, I feel like there is enormous potential with the people that I share nationality with to take this country over. Living in Vermont, living in this little tiny city in this little tiny state has enormous influence to take this fucking country over, and the first thing we have to do is take over our city and start leading by this example. By being an example city, people look at Burlington, Vermont already, with 40,000 people, to lead. Because people like Bernie, and people like things that are happening here. Even though people are like “Oh fuck, they’re building a mall, oh fuck, they’re doing this”, it’s still a really fucking awesome city with a small population. Given the size of the population, we have the ability to take it over and rule this small city, to give an example to the state. People look to the State of Vermont for an example, and we can lead the world if we just take it over. I think Bernie should become the governor, and we should just be like— he has so much popularity, he could get sweeping agendas done. Vermont’s a little green splitting wedge pointing its way at Washington, D.C., and I totally believe that the revolution starts in this city, now. [35:36]

  [37:20] [Chai Gang] The two fantasies I have are: A hundred people marching down Church Street, and one fantasy is that they’re holding signs that say how they were evicted, or how somebody they knew was evicted; the other fantasy is everybody playing music and singing ‘What’s Going On?’, the Marvin Gaye song. Everything I try to get going never happens, so I’m putting this out there and hoping somebody will make it happen.

  Friendship and strength for us all [David]

  [38:20] Reset, ready… hope? Yeah, there’s hope, totally. Hope. [Jen]

  Vehemence, precognition, adverse, and doubting doubts [Luc]

  Invincible, in the sense that we break social, economic, racial, physical barriers, 'cause these are things that hold us together, instead of things that keep us apart. So I really hope that this movement breaks generations and bodies and spirits. I think there’s a lot more that we have in common than in difference, so, that’s cool. [Devin] [39:33]

  Confusion and kinship [Max]

  [40:24] [Phinn] Your story kind of resonated a little more, 'cause I do a lot of photography in my spare time, and it often leads me into very desolate places where I’m completely alone and not expecting to see other people. So basically, there’s this abandoned Cold War era radar base in eastern Vermont. It’s on the top of a mountain, it’s in the middle of nowhere, and it’s a place that I go to kind of be alone, ‘cause there’s no one around, and there’s no one up there, ever. A few months ago, I decided to go up there in the winter time. As I was walking up, I spotted someone ahead of me on the trail up. You know, I was a little hesitant, seeing this guy walking in front of me, but I just kept walking. I was walking significantly faster than him, so I eventually caught up. As I got closer, I could see he was holding onto something in front of him that looked like a gun, and so I got a little bit.. hesitant. As I got closer, I realized it definitely was a gun: he was walking with a gun on a hip and a rifle slung across his chest. So I was a little scared to be walking in the middle of the woods with no cell service past someone with a gun. I had no idea why he would also be up here, you know, out in the middle of nowhere. But, as I got closer—and I had a knife too on my chest and I had a knife on my side—I kind of just slid my hand down along my side as I walked past him, because I was just not sure what was gonna happen. As I walked past, I kind of turned and said “Hello”. He said it back, and then he asked me what I was doing up there. I explained I was taking pictures and he was like, “Oh, well I’m just going target shooting”. We began to talk, and I learned that his name was George and he had grown up in the area, and he was simply this guy going out for a hike, but I had had this heightened sense of urgency of there being any kind of issue with this person, because of an uncertainty of people. Something that I generally hadn’t been feeling, but it was because of the state of the environment that we were in. And now with the state of our country, there’s a little more uncertainty of other people, something I really haven’t felt before and hadn’t felt in Vermont especially, as a generally safe place, somewhere I’ve never really felt unsafe. But it was this moment of second-guessing this person, who also was just out there exploring this place. So I think that was something that really resonated with me, this kind of uncertainty. [43:22]

  [Phinn] Hope is a good one. It’s very wonderful to see everyone from a range of ages and occupations. The wide range is just very good to see. I really appreciate not seeing just a really select group of people talking.

  [Jane] Apprehension, and excitement. And gratitude!

  [Hallie] Improvisation, and connections, and empathy.

  [Ali] Pessimism, cynicism, and optimism.

  [Laurie] I am hopeful and I’m positive (or at least I try to stay positive!)

  [Chai] I’m happy to be here.

Expert: Sometimes it is useful to take a break from news bulletins and newspapers, and even from ‘friendly’ Internet publications. Occasionally it is good to realize that there are actually two parallel realities that are constantly competing for the ‘hearts and minds’ of people living all over the world. There is real life and ‘fake life’. There is reality and elaborately manufactured pseudo-reality, which is designed to appear more real than the reality itself. It is like that chemically produced green apple shampoo that smells more authentic than the fruit itself. Periodically I disappear into some jungle or a war zone, in Afghanistan, Southern Philippines or in the middle of plundered Borneo Island. When I return to what some people would readily describe as the ‘normal world’, and a news bulletin unexpectedly confronts me at some airport lounge, everything suddenly appears to be bizarre, grotesque, totally surreal, at least for the few initial but excruciating moments. It is because most of the mainstream news communiqués and analyses are produced in the plush comfort of an armchair, or at a mahogany writing table, thousands of miles from shrapnel, sweat, torn flesh, blood, burning forests, polluted waterways, and the other horrors which are, in fact, nothing other than the true reality for billions of human beings inhabiting our planet. Remembering how things really feel, taste and smell I get desperate. I don’t recognize places described by the mass media. We are talking about two different universes; yes, about two absolutely opposite realities. ***** If mainstream reporters go to the field, they are well equipped with bulletproof vests, helmets, with 4×4 vehicles (some of them also bulletproof), with excellent life and health insurances that include airlifts and other evacuation clauses, as well as with hefty salaries and other compensation schemes. On their chests and their backs, it says loudly and explicitly “PRESS”. So what am I bitching about? Is it wrong to compensate people who are risking their lives, or to try to protect them? No, it is not; of course, it is not wrong. Author at Goma War Zone, DRC (2009) Except, there is that one tiny ‘but’… You can never, ever get ‘too close’ to anything real, this way. You cannot turn yourself into a buffoon or a walking media Rambo, and expect to uncover something hidden, something important, and something thoroughly groundbreaking. If you over-protect your life, over-insure your each and every step, you’d build a thick wall between yourself and the real life. If you go into the field looking like this, you will be spotted and questioned, and you will need all sorts of permits and stamps. It is almost like declaring: “I’ll play by your rules, I’ll not rock the boat, and I’ll let you monitor each step that I take”. Imagine arriving while being decked out like that and attempting to cover genocide in Papua! Good luck, really. About official permits, if you are from a ‘friendly’ mainstream agency, you can get them almost immediately. Yes, of course, organizations such as the BBC or CNN could easily supply you with all the necessary credentials. You could even count on an official government armed ‘escort’, or you could count on an escort supplied by friendly (to the West) ‘rebel groups’. Not to speak of all those ‘all you can eat’ press briefings. However, the chances that real people would talk to you would be slim. But would you care about hearing from real people if you work for an official mainstream newspaper or a television channel? I doubt it. Real people could, God forbid, say real things, instead of what you are ordered to ‘discover’ in such places as Bosnia, Rwanda, Syria or Afghanistan. In the end, you’ll hear what you came to hear and report, and your writing and clips would be mainly in accordance with the established stereotypes. Then what, how? Who could do it; who could describe reality, and actually stay alive? In a brilliant film directed by Oliver Stone, Salvador (1986), one of the main characters declared: You got to get close to the truth. You get too close, you die.’ He died, but what he said – that is precisely it! There is this invisible, imaginary line, in the air or on the ground, somewhere. You never see it, but if you have worked in many war zones before, you sense it, and it is what actually saves your life. It saves it often, most of the times, but, of course, not always. Those who usually die are men and women who make crucial mistakes during their first attempts, before developing their instincts. What I’m talking about cannot be taught; it is not logical – it’s just ‘there’. To get as close to the truth as possible, one has to work fast, decisively and with certain precision, avoiding obvious blunders. People around you have to trust you, and you yourself have to know whom to trust and from whom to hide. You are on your own, or at least most of the time you are. All this guarantees nothing, but these are some of the basic preconditions, if you want to understand a conflict, a war. Working in devastated places is very emotional, very deep, and sometimes you get overwhelmed, and sometimes your glasses get blurry. You make mistakes; hopefully not too many. Occasionally you go after a particular story, or you know generally what you want to find and a story bumps into you, or you stumble over it, or it just hits you frontally, brutally and at full strength. If it is good, it is never just ‘reporting’. It is much more than journalism, or it is simply shit. There must be some poetry in what you are doing, there has to be also philosophy and humanism, as well as plenty of context and ideology and passion. There can be no ‘objectivity’ in this work: objectivity is just an illusion, a fairytale dispersed by mainstream media. But you should never lie: you witness and say what you have to say, the way you believe it should be said, and while you do it, it is your obligation to inform your readers and viewers where precisely you stand. As a human being, as an artist and thinker, you should always take sides. But your position – on which side of the ‘barricade’ you stand – has to be clear and honest. Otherwise you are a liar. ***** The bitter but essential truth is: Even if you put your life on the line, even if you get badly injured or psychologically exhausted, do not expect much gratitude or support. After US bombing near Mosul, Iraq Many local victims – people whom you came to defend – will suppose and even tell you straight to your face that ‘you came to get rich using their suffering and misery’. Your readers in wealthy countries will imagine that you are being generously funded. They were conditioned to believe that there are no altruistic individuals, governments and countries left on this earth. The reality is quite different: if you work independently, if you refuse to repeat lies and take orders, to merge with the mainstream, if you go against the interest of the West and its allies and ‘clients’, the chances are that you will get zero financial support, no protection whatsoever and absolutely no perks. You may get millions of readers, of course. And you can recycle your reports in your books and films, as I did in my more than 800-page long “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. If your writing is good, your books will sell, somehow, even if they attack the establishment frontally. But don’t count on any support from ‘friendly governments’ or wealthy but ‘left leaning individuals’. There is no Engels around, these days. You are really on your own. Trust me, you are. You and your determined work may save several villages, or if you are very good, you could make a difference on a global scale. Your writing or your films may help to stop a war. But never expect any official recognition, any practical backing or even mercy from your readers. In 2015, after making several films and writing books about several particularly horrid war zones, mostly in Africa, I totally collapsed. For several weeks, I was not able to move. I thought it was the end. There was no help at all coming from those millions of my readers living in all parts of the world. At that time I made my condition public. Still nothing. Few letters of ‘moral support’ arrived. Few: “Be strong, the world needs you!” In the end, it was my close family circle that literally pampered and rescued me and put me back to my feet and into fighting order. This is not a reproach, just a warning to those who are getting ready to fight for the survival of humanity: “You will be totally on your own. You will most definitely collapse on several occasions.” At a war zone Still, I know no other way how to live meaningfully. I would never trade my life with the life of anyone else. ***** There is another very important and revealing piece of information, which I’d like to share with you, my readers. In 2017 I worked in several extremely dangerous parts of the world, including Afghanistan, the Pakistani-Afghan border during the exchange of fire between the two countries, on the Turkish-Syrian border in Euphrates area during the Turkish invasion, in the war-torn southern Philippines, in Lebanon and in the fully devastated (by logging and mining) Indonesian part of the Island of Borneo. I drove all around Afghanistan, with no protection, no security and no one covering my back. My friend who doubled as my driver and interpreter was the only man I could count on. Sometimes I held the wheel myself. We even made it into the Taliban controlled territories and drug-infested slums of Kabul. All in a 20 year old, beat up Toyota Corona. Afghanistan Soviet Tanks Cemetery In all these places, I did not see one single Western mainstream reporter. Not one! Where were they, all those media superstars?  I don’t know, but most likely they were holed up somewhere at the NATO headquarters, or at least in the only remaining plush hotel in Afghanistan – Serena. The same can be said about the southern Philippines, although there, to be ‘objective’, one Aussie colleague actually got hit by a sniper’s bullet, just a couple of days before I arrived. Do never trust those who write about the suffering of others exclusively from the safety of their living room couches. It is fine to write from there, of course, but only after you have actually seen the people you are talking about; after you have seen them at least once, for a substantial amount of time, after you have listened to their stories, to their desperate cries, and after you have got very dirty and very scared yourself, and truly desperate.  In short: after you have got right there, near that invisible line which separates life from death, and after you have tasted the water of the proverbial river Lethe. ***** But back to where I began. Imagine: I leave the places where people are fighting for survival, or where they are fighting for true freedom, or against imperialism. I hardly have time to take a deep breath, to recover from food and air poisoning, to change into some presentable clothes, and it all hits me directly in my face: I see some news bulletin, I read articles published by mainstream media, and while doing it, I absolutely don’t recognize the world, which I have witnessed in all its rainbow of colors, with all its glory and its misery. I feel ‘out of place’. I know, some call it ‘Vietnam Syndrome’. There are many other definitions for these feelings, or for this outrage, or desperation, or whatever you want to call it. You suddenly feel it, you know it: somewhere far away where you had been living and working just several hours ago, there is still what could be defined as the ‘real world’, inhabited by real people. And then, right now, there is this other world, which over imposes, almost fully covers (and even dwarfs) that real one, by using its mainstream clichés and false mass-produced certainties. ***** This year – this ‘departing year’ 2017 – has definitely not been a good year for our planet. A group of nations, which has been controlling the world for already several centuries brutally and shamelessly, is pushing us, our entire human race, closer and closer towards complete disaster, towards a showdown, towards a confrontation that may abruptly terminate millions of innocent human lives. I’m concerned. I’m very concerned. I have already witnessed indescribable calamities in so many places. I know, I can perfectly well imagine, where all this could lead. Colonialism is always wrong. Imperialism is always wrong. Cultural, religious or economic supremacy theories are wrong, with absolutely no exceptions. If a group of nations from one relatively small continent has been continuously usurping the entire world, shaping it to its advantage and enslaving people of other colors, beliefs and values, it is all unmistakably wrong. But the world is like that – brutal, unjust, and controlled by one aggressive, greedy, sly and arrogant minority. The world is still like that. Once again, it is increasingly like that. And I cannot stand such an ‘arrangement’. I don’t want it to be like that. I’m tired of covering grief, pain, horror and violence. I’m exhausted of filming or photographing perpetual destruction and downfalls. That’s why I’m writing this, at the very end of the year 2017. Perhaps it is just one more futile attempt to stop something inhuman and unnecessary from happening. Perhaps it is almost impossible to cut through the pseudo-reality manufactured by the mainstream media, academia and ‘culture’. Or maybe it’s not impossible. I actually believe that ‘it is never too late’, as I believe that nothing in life is truly ‘impossible’. HAPPY NEW YEAR 2018! Let me inform you that the world is totally different, actually much more beautiful and diverse than you have been told. Even most of those places that are now in flames are beautiful. And if left in peace, they’d thrive. The world is worth fighting for. It is worth defending. Gaza Intifada 3 Don’t ever trust the “news” and “information” which is being disseminated by those who are continuously trying to loot and enslave the world. Trust only what you see and hear, and what you feel. Trust people who are in love with this world, if you manage to identify them. Trust your own senses, your inner logic, and your emotions. Do not vote for bombing or putting sanctions on any foreign country, anywhere on Earth, before you see it with your own eyes, before you are really convinced, before you talk to its people, and before you truly understand what they are saying. Do not make decisions or conclusions after staring at the television set only. Remember: pseudo-reality kills! And it wants you to participate in this murder. Go! Discover! See for yourself. I hope to encounter you, at least some of you, in Syria, in North Korea, in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Russia, China, South Africa, Cuba, and Eritrea – also in hundreds of other great places, which have been brutalized and smeared by those who are dreaming about making this entire world thoroughly banal, consisting only of a few super-wealthy nations served and fed by all those “others” that have been reduced to slavery. After seeing the world with your own eyes, after understanding it, I’m almost certain that you will agree with me: right now there are two parallel realities on this planet. One consists of true human lives and human stories, the other one only of trivial but manipulative interpretations of the world. One (true) reality is longing for progress, kindness, optimism and harmony; the other (fake one) is constantly spreading uncertainty, nihilism, destruction and hopelessness. It is not only what they call “fake news”, it is an entire ‘fake reality’ that has been manufactured by the establishment and upheld by men and women with helmets, bulletproof vests, 4WD’s and prominent PRESS insignia. Once again, HAPPY NEW YEAR 2018! Happy Discovery Of The World! Happy Struggle For Survival Of Our Precious Planet!” Year 2018 will be crucial. Let us all join forces in order for Humanism and that beautiful lady called ‘The True Reality’ survive, to prevail, and to triumph. • Photos by Andre Vltchek http://clubof.info/

BIAFRA @50 : REFLECTIONS AND HOPES

Below is the speech of the President of Ohanaze Ndigbo Chief Nnia Nwodo Jnr at the Yar Adua center on 50 years of Biafra.

  The conference was held yesterday, Thursday, 25th May, 2017, Acting President Prof Yemi Osinbajo and Chief Olusegun Obasanjo were guests.

  PROTOCOLS:

  1. I am grateful to Shehu Musa Yar Adua Foundation, Ford Foundation and OSIWA - the co-sponsors of this event for your kind invitation. I commend your foresight in convening this conference, the first major conference discussing Biafra outside of Igboland. Nigeria. In hosting this conference the Yar’Adua Centre, which is best known for promoting national cohesion, honours the legacy of a great patriot: Shehu Musa Yar Adua. He died building bridges of understanding across our nation. I salute his family and associates for sustaining the legacy of Shehu through the works of this Foundation.

2.  It is significant that you have chosen to harvest sober memories of Biafra. By so doing, you help us to wisely situate today’s talks of Biafra in the proper context: namely, as an opportunity for nation building; and not - as an invitation for invectives or recrimination. 

3. 50 years ago, Nigeria faced disintegration by the declaration of the Republic of Biafra. Biafra was born out of the political crisis which engulfed Nigeria at that time. The crisis began with the struggle for leadership in the Western Region of Nigeria, the declaration of state of emergency in the West, the coup of January 1966, the counter coup of July 1966, the pogroms, the declaration of Biafra and the commencement of a police action that turned into a three years civil war. 

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4.  I hope that our gathering today may contribute to the body of knowledge or body of lessons from the war. Lest we forget, there is wisdom in the words of George Santayana that: those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. That is why I thank you for the chance for us to collectively remember, reflect, hope and seek ways to build anew.

5.  My most heartfelt reflection is that in the Nigeria-Biafra conflict, we can and should acknowledge the sacrifice - in blood, suffering and toil - by millions of citizens on both sides of that divide. They shared a common hope for their sacrifice: namely, that out of that war, we shall build a nation where no man is oppressed. The only difference was that for one side, Nigeria was that nation. For the other it was Biafra. 

6.   Let us spare a thought for every victim of that conflict and the crises before that: the leaders and the soldiers, ordinary men, women and children. Each one loved life; had hopes and dreamt dreams. They died prematurely and often, painfully.

7. For those of us that survived the war and others who came afterwards, we are both heirs to the sacrifices of fallen brethren. Let us commit ourselves today and always to their hopes for peace and justice. Anytime that we are violent, anytime that we are unjust in the exercise of our public trust, anytime we lower the ideals of this nation, we betray them; and we act as if they died in vain. As we honour their memory, today my worry is not only about the rising feeling of marginalization of Igbos or any other group but that our nation may emerge from this conflict a more united and prosperous country.

8.   At the end of the war, in spite of a policy of no victor no vanquished by the Government of General Yakubu Gowon, an unconscionable policy of impoverishment of Biafrans was unleashed by the federal government. Every bank deposit of Biafrans that had encountered a transaction whether by deposit or withdrawal was reduced to £20. Massive savings were completely wiped out. Capacity for investment and recovery from the war was shattered. Whilst this poverty pervaded, the Indigenisation Decree was promulgated enabling other Nigerians, except Biafrans to acquire commanding heights in the indigenised companies which held at that time the critical and commanding heights of Nigeria’s private economy.

9. Nevertheless, on the issue of reconciliation, we must give due credit to the resilience of the people from the war affected areas and the generosity of millions of other Nigerians that opened their hearts and homes to their friends and neighbours that were victims of war. In many ways, it was by these incredible citizen to citizen relationships that Nigeria achieved one of the most remarkable post-conflict people to people reconciliation and reintegration in modern times. 

10. Before the war national unity was the norm. A Biafran was a member of Northern Nigeria House of Chiefs. Biafrans lived freely and invested in all parts of Nigeria. In Lagos Dr Azikiwe was elected leader of Government Business. Mbonu Ojike was elected Deputy Speaker. In Enugu Alhaji Umoru Altine, a Fulani man was elected Mayor of Enugu. Mr Willougby a Yoruba man, was Accountant General.

11.  On the economic front, the economy was buoyant. Import substitution industries grew rapidly and were more profitable. In the North, groundnut production and export fuelled economic growth. Textile industries flourished, agriculture boomed. Ahmadu Bello University thrived with outstanding international reputation.

12.  In Lagos and the entire Western Region growth was phenomenal. Cocoa was a dependable foreign exchange earner. Cement, soft drinks, rubber, beer, soap and other import substitution industries grew phenomenally. Lagos, Ibadan and Ife housed universities of world standards. The first television station in black Africa was built. The first stadium in Nigeria was also built in the West.

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13.  In the Eastern Region palm produce grew the Eastern economy. Coal was mined and exported.  Beer, cement, cashew nuts, tyres, aluminium, steel and soft drink factories grew rapidly. University of Nigeria was built and run by Americans.

14. Reflecting on 50 years after the Nigeria-Biafra conflict, it would seem to me that we have made very elaborate efforts: constitutional, political and administrative to ensure a united Nigeria. We must not shy away from giving our nation its due credit, after all, some other societies with challenges like ours did not fare as well as we did. 

  15. However, we should not rest on our oars. Unity is not an end in itself; and ultimately, the best way to sustain our unity is to apply it to achieve a higher objective; namely, nation building.

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16. Our political system is jaundiced, unfair, exploitative and unsustainable. Since attainment of independence the civilians have not been able to agree on a political structure. Our present constitution and the previous 1979 constitution were impositions of the military – an unrepresentative and dictatorial corps whose decrees were seriously influenced by the lop-sidedness of their composition.

17. The economic and development data from Nigeria is unencouraging in many sectors. Our law and order system including the police, the court system and the penal system has been characterised by impunity, incompetence and indiscipline.

18. On the global Terrorism Index Nigeria ranks 3rd after Iraq and Afghanistan and ahead of  Pakistan and Syria. The World Economic Forum ranks Nigeria 127 out of 138 on the Global Competitiveness Index. The UNESCO ranks Nigeria with Chad, Pakistan and Ethiopia as the worst educational system in the world. Nigeria, according to the report, has the highest number of children out of school and one of the world's worst education systems due to a combination of corruption, conflict and lack of investment. In the Human Development Index of the United Nations Development Program, Nigeria ranks 152 out of 188 countries and is the lowest among OPEC countries. The data points to a bleak future as we march to post-oil world without a coherent plan to reduce conflict and build a new national consensus.

19. On the positive side, there is a global consensus that Nigeria is highly potentiated. With a population of about 182 million people, by current estimates; and with our vast mineral and material resources; a well-organized Nigeria should be a land of plenty that supports its people and a leader in the comity of nations. Sadly, this is not the case.

20. Almost every Nigerian is agreed that Nigeria is not working but there is no clear consensus on why; or on what to do about it. Some say that it is merely a problem of leadership and once that is fixed all other things will fall in place. Others say that it is a problem of corruption. Once you tackle that, everything will be fine. Others have said that our problem is one of law and order; some say it is more fundamental and has to do with control of resources, structure of the Federation and thus requires more equitable sharing of revenue and the devolution of powers. Others say it can be fixed with power rotation and a more level playing field. It has been said that it could be a bit of all of the above; and that Nigeria cannot be fixed without a fundamental change of values and attitudes. Whatever the case, it will not profit us to pretend that we do not face existential challenges

21. These challenges are worrisome; especially to our younger ones who must face the fact that the next 50 years could be even more challenging and there is a good chance that we could be left behind if we fail to take action today. For instance, it is estimated in some quarters, that by 2050 – that is in 33 years’ time – Nigeria could be the 4th most populous country in the world. That means that Nigeria, which is just twice the size of Texas; would be more populous than all the United States of America. Meanwhile, as of today, we have a GDP that is barely 2% of that of the United States. 

22.  At the same time, in the years ahead, we could face very severe ecological challenges that will impact negatively on our economy.  The desert is encroaching southwards at a speed of up to 6 km per annum. Thus within 33 years we could lose about 200 km of land to the desert - across the north. This can only exacerbate competition for arable land in the north and elsewhere – with dire political consequences. 

23. In the South East, we could expect more ecologically-induced dislocation. For instance, the government of Anambra State estimates that about 40% of the State is threatened by erosion. In the South-South, by 2050 we could be dealing with the reality of a post-oil economy and yet have massive environmental degradation that is yet unattended to. There is also the possibility that much of the mangrove ecosystem could be lost to deforestation. Lagos could have a population of up to 50 million people and face unbearable challenges of massive urbanization. 

24. We must become more responsive to the world around us, or we and our children will be left behind. These are some of the fears and anxieties of our youths. We have for too long allowed the bitterness of the war and its lingering feelings to dictate our political relationships. The coalition that fought the war is still in control of Nigeria engaging in rhetoric that fuelled the war in managing renascent Nigeria. The young men and women who were not part of the war are frustrated by this impasse.

25. Those who are in the East fuel strong agitations for separation in the face of clear treatment as second class citizens.  War is the primary instrument of military dictatorship while negotiation and agreement are the essential ingredients of civilian democracy and political diplomacy.  Nations are not created and sustained by street warfare. The federal government of Nigeria must instruct its police and army to promulgate a ceasefire and disengage from further unproductive street warfare with IPOB and MASSOB.  There are no problems which cannot be resolved by negotiation. 

26. We do not want any more wars.  We have shed enough blood without producing corresponding political results.  50 years after Biafra the time is now overripe for a fresh approach.  We must immediately commence discussions and fruitful negotiations about our political future.  In the era of assymetrical warfare, war is no more an easy option for states, therefore we must negotiate our way out of a sense of national despair to a new national consensus that unlocks our national possibilities.

27. Nigeria, blessed as the richest and the most popular nation in Africa has enormous potentials. Every part of Nigeria can survive as an independent country. The North with its mineral and agricultural potentials can build a strong nation. The West with its cocoa, oil, indomitable intellectual know how and commerce can build another Britain. The South South with its oil, notwithstanding its declining economic potency can transform its area before oil ceases to be a major foreign exchange earner. The East with industry, outstanding innovation and little oil may still emerge as the African wonder. But none of these little enclaves will rival the capacity of a united and reconciled Nigeria. We must all rise up and save this nation from a trajectory that will make a break up a more viable option.

28. The challenges ahead are beyond Biafra. Just like the challenge in North East Nigeria exploded in our face and has engaged our nation for almost 9 years; we could face challenges anywhere and anytime. In my view, if we fail to build a nation that caters fairly for all its citizens; and prepares us for the world of tomorrow – there will be new challenges in the future.

29. We must find creative ways to manage a complex multi-ethnic and multi-religious state. History teaches us that no society is static; the status quo cannot endure forever. We must find creative ways to promote political, economic and social justice within a nation and between the people that comprise it. If not, then we are invariably opening the doors to future threats of chaos, disorder and societal dislocation. 

30. The final challenge of our generation is to show that we learnt the right lesson from that sad conflict of 50 years ago. We must bequeath our children with a nation that works for all and one that looks ahead. We want a Federal Republic of Nigeria which is collectively owned by all Nigerians as opposed to a Federal Republic that will be perceived as a the private property of one group or groups of ethnic groups depending on who is in office. The categorical destination is a Nigerian Nigeria under the collective hegemony of the people of Nigeria. In order to achieve this we must have a flexible federation; strong enough to guarantee our collective defence and protect individual rights, agile enough to react to emerging tensions and threats, yet expansive enough to allow each state room to develop at its own pace. We must create a national order whereby each state bears the primary responsibility for its development.

31. Today majority of Nigerians are yearning for a restructuring of the federation. The beneficiaries of our current system are resisting it. A famous British Prime Minister in the wake of nationalist struggles in colonial Africa said to the British ‘there is a wind of change blowing throughout Africa. Those who resist it do so at their own peril’. 

32. Nigeria cannot prosper, as it should, unless we redress some aspects of our current condition. I believe we have enough men and women of vision and experience, in every part of the country, to help us plot a bright future. I commit Ohaneze Ndigbo to this path. It may be difficult but it is doable. 

33. True leadership evolves in historical circumstances like this. Our country is at cross roads. You can feel the tension every day. It is palpable, it is potent, it is real. Let us wake up to the change imperative at this moment and claim a glorious judgment by History.

34. Thank You for your kind attention 

  JOHN NNIA NWODO

PRESIDENT GENERAL, OHANEZE NDIGBO

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