#gulag prison camps

[sheltiechicago]

Mask of Sorrow: The Crying Monument of Magadan

Mask of Sorrow is a brutalist monument located in Magadan, Russia. The statue was designed to commemorate the people in the Gulag prison camps in the Kolyma region of the Soviet Union who lost their lives under harsh conditions. Ernest Neizvestny created the design; the monument’s constructor was Kamil Kazaev, and it was unveiled in 1996.

Photographer: buttonartorg

lyubatours

one_love_magadan

oksana_lobanova

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"The idea of mothering and procreation morphed into Gorky’s fascination with prisoner transformation and perekovka. The labor camp would be the mother of a new working class. Both god-building and the maternal impulse dovetailed with the author’s largest philosophical and intellectual preoccupation: human fashioning. Whether it was the literal, biological creation of the human by the maternal womb or the transformation afforded by a personal journey or individual greatness, Gorky remained intrigued by the individual’s ability for creation, journey, and self-discovery. Maintaining that humans were inherently malleable and eternally improvable, he believed in the potential for endless refinement through diligent effort.

Gorky’s special relationship to the Belomor project allows for an understanding of his career as a symbolic representation of the ideals promoted at the camp. Gorky was a staunch enthusiast of prisoner labor and even predicted the possibility of a waterway similar to Belomor in his early works; in the April 1917 issue of his journal New Life (Novaia zhizn’) he writes

Imagine, for example, that in the interest of the development of industry, we build the Riga-Kherson canal to connect the Baltic Sea with the Black Sea […] and so instead of sending a million people to their deaths, we send a part of them to work on what is necessary for the country and its people.

Gorky’s condoning of Gulag camps such as Solovki and Belomor seems paradoxical to many scholars in light of his humanitarian endeavors, and some speculate either that Gorky was ignorant of the full extent of Stalin’s butchery or that he was aware, but was in a position that necessitated acquiescence to safeguard his well-being. When viewed in the context of his philosophical outlook on literature and labor, however, his support of prison camps seems not like an aberration but rather a natural extension of his belief in violent re-birth, a belief related to Marxist-Leninist ideology and the concept of god-building. Gorky sees people and language alike in the framework of craftsmanship. Perhaps his mistake was not so much his general support of Gulag projects, but his belief that human flesh can be formed like words on a page or cement in a factory. Gorky, after all, cared more about the craft than people themselves; in his 1928 essay “On How I Learned to Write” (O tom, kak ia uchilsia pisat’), he claimed that “the history of human labor and creation is far more interesting and meaningful than the history of mankind.” Gorky was key to the canal project because his philosophical interests exemplify the very core of Belomor: the violent transformation of people through creative acts.

Technology’s magic demonstrated humans’ usurpation of God in a tangible way, with the ever-widening capacity to harness and transform the natural environment showcasing the potential of man-made machines. Soviet pilots were imagined as literal incarnations of the New Man, and the massive expansion of the Soviet aviation industry in the mid 1920s provided some of the most concrete evidence of human superiority over the divine. Short voyages known as “air baptisms” (vozdushnye kreshcheniia) supposedly eradicated peasants’ belief in God while highlighting the majesty of Red aviation. In such “agit-flights,” pilots would take Orthodox believers into the skies and show them that they held no celestial beings. Those who participated in the flights would narrate their experiences to neighboring villagers, describing “what lies beyond the darkened clouds.” This phrase served as the title of a 1925 essay by Viktor Shklovskii in which a village elder embarks upon a conversional agit-flight that he later recounts to his fellow peasants. Six years later, Shklovskii participated in the writers’ collective that coauthored the now infamous monograph History of the Construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, in which a different, often deadly, type of technological program offered the promise of conversion. In both instances, darkness will be overcome by the enlightening potential of socialist rationalism: aviation will liberate the peasants from their ignorant beliefs, just as labor will supposedly bring the Belomor prisoners to the light of Soviet ideology. Such endeavors occurred before the backdrop of a larger civilizing project, since both the rural reaches of peasant villages and the wild expanses of untouched Karelia necessitated modernization.

Yet could such projects ever be completed? Did the New Man really exist, and could his creation ever be achieved? The messianic vision of Soviet socialism necessitated that paradise lie always just out of reach.

Similarly, Nietzsche posits the development into the Übermensch as a perennially elusive goal; like the Faustian concept of striving, the individual is forever trying to perfect oneself without necessarily ever achieving perfection. This constant yearning renders the present as the future, as the purpose of today is necessarily the reward of tomorrow. In the Soviet Union, the regime assured people that the difficulties they endured were required in order to reach the svetloe budushchee (radiant future), a utopia found at the end of an interminable road. In the absence of an end result or final destination, the voyage itself becomes the site of cultural exploration."

- Julie Draskoczy, Belomor: Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2014. p 30-32

[oneofthebestcontent]

The Gulag was a system of forced labor camps that operated in the Soviet Union from the 1930s until the 1950s. The system was initially established to imprison and punish political opponents of the Soviet government, but it was expanded to include common criminals and others deemed to be enemies of the state. The conditions in the Gulag camps were notoriously harsh. Prisoners were forced to work long hours in extreme weather conditions, with inadequate food and medical care. Many prisoners died from malnutrition, disease, or exhaustion, and others were executed for various offenses. Watch Full Video and subscribe channel

[irreplaceable-spark]

The Wrath of Kan: A Soviet-Born Anthropologist on Stalin’s Gulag

Dartmouth College anthropology professor Sergei Kan was born in the Soviet Union just a few months after the death of Stalin. He came to the United States in 1974 at the age of 21 and received his undergraduate degree from Boston University and his doctorate in anthropology from the University of Chicago. He teaches courses at Dartmouth on the native peoples of Alaska, on the Jewish diaspora, and on Russia. 

Next year—the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Gulag Archipelago—Dr. Kan will teach a course titled "Red Terror: The History and Culture of the Stalin Labor Camps."  Dr. Kan has been kind enough to offer our viewers a preview of the seminar in advance.

[letrune]

Why I don't like the "X is perversion"

So, let me give you the short version. I am a polyamorous transgender furry woman, likely asexual (jury is still out on that one), coming from Hungary. Every single one of these was called a perversion in one time of history, but especially now, they are treated like being either, like just being a furry, is to be at best ashamed of, and most a reason to isolate people like me from society forever - and that I should be thankful for nobody calling for my extermination at the government levels.

Except, you know. Some do. Some US and Russiand jerks had been calling for building what amounts to be gulags for being queer and furry and foreigner, and stuff people in for that alone; simply because "you are a pervert and want to harm the women and children because you are queer or a furry".

So... What do these people actually think? Someone likimg cartoonish anthro characters is to be throw into prison? Asexuals to be throw in some cell in a panopticon? Asexuals to be sent to a forced labour camp? All of us to shut up forever and never even peep online?

Because I heard thrse proposals and yes, actual ideas on how to exterminate us. To have death squads like it's Pol Pot's Cambodia. To round furries up and shoot them. To break into homes in the middle of night and drag people away for public executions. You know, this is like "let us murder anyone who likes Star Trek!".

Back in 2017 if I recall correctly, maybe 2016, I was at a protest. LGBTQ+ people wished to be tteated equally. A man from the government came over and told us: "Come on. Stop it. Be happy you are not shot into the Danube.", which is like telling anyone wishing queer equity "be happy you are not sent to Dachau.". That same sort of "just shut up and be happy we are not murder you, secondary citizens" attitude came out again a lot of time.

Furries who want to claim being a furry is inherently perverted, some queer people wanting to throw the rest under the bus to secure themselves some secondary citizen rank, and so much more...

Just feels like these people want to go "please Mr. Government, let me kill people you don't like as long as I can keep my life, I am happy to be beaten up if I step out of line but please do not hurt me, I am willing to beat others up, please just spare me". You know, quislings. People who happily handed out blindfolds and then realised there was one for themselves and got pushed to the wall too. People who happily rounded up others to be shot into the Danube, or stuffed into a cornhopper to Dachau, or called the secret police on.

This puritanical "destroy them, because being X is perverted" is obvious when you consider that they said the same of homosexuality, trans people, furries and asexuals. That they are inherently a danger and should be removed from society, any means necessary, just like how they also wanted to remove people of other countries, religions and skin colour.

These people are a danger to society and themselves, as they want others dead for simply existing. They want everyone else to fall in line to some cis-het-compulsory, patriarchal, no-creativity allowed, it-is-all-about-me world.

Furries and being queer predate agriculture. Being a xenophobe is relatively new, especially xenophobes who think the only solution is "kill anyone in this group".

[blingblong55]

Perception- 141 x M!Reader

Based on a request

M!Reader, angst, mentions of blood,

The Gulag was the government agency in charge of the Soviet network of forced labour camps 

You are a well known member of Task Force 141. Although on field you are known for being the violent and viscous way you fight enemy soldiers, many on base don't really mind calling you names. In a way, you have become the freak of base. Ghost himself fears you at times, mainly because he has see you kill men with your bare hands and act as if it was nothing. He has seen the blood of the enemy dripping from your body and how you act as if it was normal. The team has so much respect for you though, they understand you are there for the mission, that you'd kill if it means to reach the goal.

Nothing really stands in your way when it comes to combat. But before you had become the man you are known as today, you were normal. A man of honour, never wanting to hurt anybody, no matter the circumstances.

----

What changed you, was 12 years ago, you were 2 years into your service when in a mission you were captured. Although the Soviet Union had fallen, Russia still held prisoners in infamous Gulag. You and a few of the other men who were also captured were tortured. Day and night was a living hell. The conditions were always horrible, men dying ever other hour due top weather and physical strength.

One night, you and three other men tried to escape, but because of a guard dog, you all failed. You fought back though, kicking, scratching and punching the guards. When one of the men saw you fight, he knew where they'd send you to next.

"глупый гребаный человек, думает, что может убежать от нас." a soldier spoke, some laughed as the other beat you senseless. They had broken your old self to the point that you just didn't care how you survived. For three hours straight every soldier that wanted to, would go and kick you, punch or even throw rocks at you.

Sometimes at night when you feel your most vulnerable, you feel for the cigar burns they left around your body. At times, you look in the mirror when you are shirtless, the deep scars that were scattered all over your body. Each touch took you back to the three years you were held in.

The winters were unbearable, at times, some of the men that would sustain injuries would die or have body parts be amputated. Others also died from hyperthermia, and somehow you survived the easy deaths.

On the night they sent you to a new part of the camp, they made sure to tattoo a symbol on your chest. A large skull a sword that pierced the top of it. All the prisoners were in cages, it ranged from the smallest of men to the biggest of all. You were well in your early 20's, so your shape was not so bad, even after all the days you spent without eating.

Once they clothed you properly, they threw you and a few other men into the fighting area/stage. Rich people watched from the stands as you all looked at them, you were all new. No one knew what the hell you were thrown in for.

Until you spotted the tools for fighting. And eerie sound came from speakers, the crowd clapped and cheered as soon as the prisoners started to fight each other. You, with some luck held a small dagger, a man much smaller than you sprinted to you, a sword on his hand.

If this was the way of getting out might as well fucking fight, you thought. You quickly dodged the man and soon stood behind him, you slashed his throat and took the sword from him. For hours on end, the smallest and even biggest of men fell to their demise. Blood was soaking the floor beneath you. Only 10 men survived from 50. You being lucky number 3.

And for many nights the routine was the same. Get beaten to sleep, trapped into a cage and wake up early, eat little to nothing and by sundown fight for your life.

In your time of fighting, you learned a few tricks, go for both weak and big. You did things you aren't proud to ever admit. You killed more men than any of the task force ever dared to do.

One night as you slept another prisoner escaped his cage, you woke up to being held by a knife at your throat.

"ты убил моего гребаного брата" the man spoke. (Translation: you killed my fucking brother)

"этот слабый ублюдок на это наткнулся" you answered coldly. (Translation: this weak bastard stumbled upon it)

"Я убью тебя" (Translation: I'll kill you)

"Нет, если я убью тебя первым" and thats when you grabbed the knife from him, stabbing him in the eye and then his throat. Before the guards came, you threw the night far from your cage and pretended to sleep. (Translation: Not if I kill you first)

----

You still have nightmares about it, but they aren't ever too bad. This mission that you were on though was a hard one. You and the rest of your team were captured. Price took the situation under control, trying to make negotiations with the enemy. In your years since being freed from the gulag, you hadn't spoke Russian or even heard it until tonight.

"Говорю тебе, сегодня вечером мы договоримся об этом, а завтра они проснутся мертвыми." the soldier said from the other room. (Translation: I'm telling you, we'll settle this tonight, and tomorrow they'll wake up dead.)

Your blood ran cold. Your breathing started to get out of control, you looked around the room, none of the other men knew what they had said. Gaz was the one who noticed your shift in behaviour, "Mate, whats wrong?" he whispered which caused all the other to look at you.

"I won't die, not by fucking Russians." your hands slowly shaking, you tried to steady your breathing, and thats when you realised you were back in a cage. You knew you were trapped, but it was as if you were young again, fighting every night for a spot to live.

"What does that mean?" Soap asked.

"Nothin'" you answered. You have to escape, you can't live like that anymore. You looked around the room and saw a poster, the same kind that was at every fight. You started to feel dizzy, and thats when Ghost noticed it, you were having a panic attack.

"Price, we have to get him out, now."

One look at Price understood why, Ghost shifted closer to you, he positioned himself in a way that would help him rub your back.

"s'alright mate, I won't let that shit happen twice." Ghost knew about what happened to you years ago, he accidentally found the files Laswell and you worked hard to bury. But not once did he push to know more, at times when you felt comfortable, you would open up, and he'd listen to the stories of those days.

But you couldn't listen, you didn't really understand the words that came out of his mouth when he tried to reassure you. Your hands digging at your skin, trying to feel your skin brought some good.

"Gaz, you untie me, and I'll untie you." Price ordered, soon the two men were up. They untied Soap, who untied Ghost. And he knew you best, so he opted to untie you once the Russians were taken down.

And once your eyes met Price, Ghost and Gaz untied you, Soap holding close as they all comforted you. Your breathing was starting to go back to normal. But still, the memories and the horror that place brought you were no fun.

The constant nights where you wished to just end your life, that maybe I'd be best if you die by your own hands and not by someone else's, especially not in front of the all the wealthy people who would watch the fight as if it was a sport.

The memories will forever stick to you and the regret you carry is who makes you the soldier you are today.

-----

A/N: I wanted this to be longer, but my ideas ran out, sorry

REQUESTS ARE OPEN

Tags: @xweirdo101x

[achillesinhighheels]

Between the years 2000-2002, photographer Carl De Keyzer lived in Krasnoyarsk, Russia for 6-7 months where he visited 40-50 different prison camps, most of which were former Gulags. This photo series named “Zona” documents the day to day life within these

[intersexbookclub]

Discussion summary: Left Hand of Darkness

Published in 1969, The Left Hand of Darkness is a classic in science fiction that explores issues of sex/gender in an alien-yet-human society where the aliens are just like us except in how they reproduce. These aliens, the Gethenians, can reproduce as either male or female. They spend most of their lives sexually undifferentiated. Once a month, they go into heat (“kemmer”) and their sexual organs activate as either male or female (it’s essentially random).

Here's a summary of the discussions we had on 2023-08-25 and 2023-09-01 about the book:

HIGH LEVEL REACTONS

Michelle (@scifimagpie): even though it was written by a cis straight perisex woman there is a queerness to the writing that feels true and that she nailed. There is a queerness to the soul of this book that still holds up, that's true and good, and I cannot but love and respect that.

Elizabeth (@ipso-faculty): this book is such a commentary on 1960s misogyny. Genly is a raging misogynist. It takes a whole prison break and crossing the arctic for Genly to realize a woman or androgyne can be competent 👀

Dimitri: [Having read just the first half of the book] I wonder if it keeps happening, if Genly keeps going "woaaaah" [to the Gethenians’ androgyny] or if he ever acclimates. It's been half the novel my guy

vic: yeah a book where a guy is destroyed by seeing a breast makes me want queer theory

vic: [it also] makes me feel good to see how much has changed [since the 1960s]

THE INTERSEX STUFF

A thing we appreciated about the book was how being intersex is contextual. The main character of the book, Genly Ai, is a human from a planet like Earth, who visits Gethen to open trade and diplomatic relations.

On his home planet, and to Earth sensibilities, Genly is perisex - he is able to reproduce at any time of the month and is consistently male.

But on Gethen, Genly becomes intersex. On Gethen, the norm is that you only manifest (and can reproduce as) a given sex during the monthly kemmer (heat/oestrus) period. 

The Gethenians understand Genly as living in “permanent kemmer”, which is described as a common (intersex) condition, and these people are hyper-sexualized and referred to as Perverts.

At this point it’s worth noting that depiction is not the same as endorsement. Michelle pointed out the book is very empathetic to those in permanent kemmer. LeGuin does not appear to be endorsing the social stigma faced by these people, merely depicting it, and putting a mirror to how our own society treats intersex people.

Throughout the book, Genly is treated as an oddity by the Gethenians. He is hyper sexualized. He undergoes a genital inspection to prove he is who he says he is. 

When Genly is sent to a prison camp and forcibly given HRT, he does not respond “normally” to the hormones, the effects are way worse for him, and the prison camp staff don’t care, and keep administering them even if it’ll kill him. 

Two of us have had the experience of having hyperandrogenism and being forced onto birth control as teenager, and relating to the sluggishness of the drugs that Genly experienced, as well as the sense that gender/sex conformity was more important to authority figures (parents, doctors) than actual health and well-being.

Another scene we discussed the one where Genly is in a prison van en route to the gulag, and a Gethenian enters kemmer and wants to mate with him and he declines. He is given multiple opportunities over the course of the book to try having sex with a Gethenian, and declines every time, and we wondered if he avoided it out of trauma of being hyper-sexualized & hyper-medicalized & having had his genitals inspected.

We discussed the way he described his genital inspection through a trauma lens, and how it interacts with toxic masculinity - in vic’s terms, Genly being "I am a manly man and I have don't trauma"

Those of us who read the short story, Coming of Age in Karhide, noted that once the world was narrated from a Gethenian POV, the people in permanent kemmer were treated far more neutrally, which gave us the impression that Genly as an unreliable narrator was injecting some intersexism along with his misogyny

WHY IT MATTERS TO READ THIS BOOK THROUGH AN INTERSEX LENS

Elizabeth: I’ve encountered critiques of this book from perisex trans folks because to them the book is committing biological essentialism, and dismissing the book as a result. I think they’re missing that this book is as much about (inter)sex as it is about gender. I think they’re too quick to dismiss the book as being outdated or having backwards ideas because they’re not appreciating the intersex themes. 

Elizabeth: The intersex themes aren’t exactly subtle, so it kind of stings that I haven’t seen any intersex analyses of this book, but there are dozens (hundreds?) of perisex trans analyses that all miss the huge intersex elephants in the room.

Also Elizabeth: I’ve seen this book show up in lists of intersex books/characters made by perisex people, and I’ve seen Estraven listed as intersex character, and it gets me upset because Estraven isn’t intersex! Estraven is perisex in the society in which he lives. Genly is the intersex character in this story and people who misunderstand intersex as being able to reproduce as male & female (or having quirky genitals smh) are completely missing that being intersex is socially constructed and based on what is considered typical for a given species.

WHAT THE BOOK DOESN’T HANDLE WELL

The body descriptions. As Dmitri put it: “ Like "his butt jiggled and it reminded  me of women" ew. It was intentional but I had to put the book down. It reminded me of transvestigators and how they take pictures of people in public.” 🤮

Not pushing Genly to reflect on how weird he is about other people’s bodies. We all had issues with how Genly is constantly scrutinizing the bodies of other humans to assess their gender(s) and it’s pretty gross.

vic asked: “how much of this is her reproducing violence without her knowing it? A thing I didn't like was how he always judging and analyzing people's bodies and realizing others treat him that way. And I wish there was more of his discomfort about this, that it made him feel icky.”

Dimitri added: “I really wanted him to have a moment of this too, for him to realize how much it sucks to be treated this way. As a trans person it's so uncomfortable. What are you doing going around doing this to people?”

Using male pronouns as default/ungendered pronouns. Élaina asked why Genly thinks a male pronoun is more appropriate for a transcendent God and pointed out there’s a lot to unpack there.

OTHER POSITIVES ABOUT THE BOOK

Genly’s journey towards respecting women, that he still had a ways to go by the end of the book. vic pointed out how “LeGuin was straight, and she loves men, and is kinda giving them the side-eye [in this book]. Her writing about how Genly is childish makes me really happy. It’s kind of hilarious to watch him bang his head against the wall because he’s so rigid.” 

To which Dmitri added: “I agree with the bit on forgiving men for stuff. I don't know how she [LeGuin] does it but she really lays it all out. She gives you a platter of how men are bad at things, how they make mistakes that are pretty specific to them. She has prepared a buffet of it.”

Autistic Estraven! As Michelle put it: “autistic queer feels about Estraven speaking literally and plainly and Genly not getting it”

The truck chapter. Hits like a pile of bricks. We talked about it as a metaphor for the current pandemic.

The Genly x Estraven slowburn queerplatonic relationship

The conlang! Less is more in how it gets used

MIXED REACTIONS

The Foretelling. For some it felt unnecessary and a bit fetishy. For others it was fun paranormal times.

Pacing. Some liked how the book really forces you to really contemplate as you go. Others struggled with a pace that feels very slow to 2023 readers.

WORKS WE COMPARED THE BOOK TO

Star Trek (the original series) - we wondered if LHOD and Genly Ai were progressive by 1960s standards, and TOS came up as a comparison point. We were all of the impression that TOS was progressive for its time but all of us find it pretty misogynist by our standards. The interest in extra-sensory perception (ESP) is something that was a staple of TOS that feels very strange to contemporary viewers and also cropped up in LHOD

Ancillary Justice - for being a book where characters’ genders are all ambiguous but the POV character is actually normal about how they describe other characters’ bodies.

The Deep - for being another book in a situation where being able to reproduce as male and female is the norm. The Deep was written by an actually intersex author, and doesn’t have the cisperisex gaze of scrutinizing every body for sex. But oddly LHOD actually winds up feeling more like a book about intersex people, because it features a character who is the odd one out in a gonosynic society. In contrast, nobody is intersex in the Deep - everybody matches the norms for their species, which makes the intersex themes in the work much more subtle.

Overall, as vic put it, “there's something to be said about an honest depiction that's not great, especially when there's no alternatives”. For a long time there weren’t many other games in town when it came to this sort of book, and even though some things now feel dated, it’s still a valuable read. We’d love to see more intersex reviews & analyses of the book!

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

Here are of some of Owens’ favorite conspiracy theories – some originate in her imagination, some in the dark corners of the web and some occasionally contain a kernel of truth. 

One of Owens' regular tropes involves questioning and belittling the significance of the Holocaust. Antisemites recognize that complete Holocaust denial is unacceptable. Therefore, they will downgrade the horrors of the Holocaust to make Jews seem overly sensitive (and ultimately, liars).

Holocaust denial and trivialization is a form of antisemitism that negates the fact that Jews were the victims of the Holocaust. Rather, it presents Jews as deceiving the world. According to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, “Holocaust denial is an updated version of an alleged Jewish conspiracy in which Jews use lies and extortion to gain advantage of everyone else.”

This is precisely what Owens evokes when talking about Jews and the Holocaust. For example:

Discussing how many Germans died in the war

It is estimated that 4.2 million Germans died in World War II that Germany started. In contrast, six million Jews were deliberately slaughtered by the Nazis in their project of ethnic cleansing.

Questioning facts like the experiments of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele

Josef Mengele, a Nazi doctor at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, conducted inhumane experiments on Jewish prisoners. He had a well-documented affinity for experimenting on twin children because he thought they were ideal test subjects in his field of interest, eugenics. His barbaric experiments exposed around 3,000 children to diseases, torture and disfigurement, and in most cases, concluded with their murder.

Obsessing about the Gulags, the Soviet prison camps

The Gulags were forced labor camps where, beginning in 1929, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin sent dissidents. Owens claims that because there were Jews in Stalin's government, Jews invented concentration camps – not the Nazis.

The earliest internment of a civilian population is accredited to the United States in 1838, when they rounded up members of the Cherokee tribes from the southeast U.S., forcing them into prison camps before relocating them to Oklahoma.

Central to the conspiracy theory that Jews control the world lies the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. Allegedly working in cahoots with the CIA, Owens and other conspiracy theorists often blame the two agencies for horrific world events.

Claiming that the Mossad was behind 9/11 is a conspiracy theory based on reports that a text message warning about the attack was sent to two workers at Odigo, a U.S. text messaging company with offices in Israel at the time.

The conspiracy theory is also based on an alleged “account” that Israelis were seen celebrating outside of the World Trade Center.

Most of these conspiracies originate in neo-Nazi online propaganda, aiming to push the antisemitic trope of Jewish people controlling the world. There is no evidence to support either of these two claims. 

[juney-blues]

not to be a failed communist liberal anarkiddy but I don't think *anyone* should be imprisoned and tortured even if they're really bad

like there are people in power who need to be stopped, and who have used their power to make violence the only way of stopping them, and these people do abhorrent things and do need to be stopped

I might personally think they're monsters who deserve to suffer for their crimes against humanity but idk

hearing someone gleefully brag about putting *anyone* in gulags and labour camps really reminds me that my personal desire for someone to eat shit and die has no place in my politics.

when I say no one should be tortured, unfortunately that means *no one* should be tortured, prison abolition y'know

"yay we're torturing the bad people who deserve it in the people's labor camp" okay who else deserves it by the way, are you normal about disabled people and queer people and drug users, is the violence of the state bad on its own merits, or is it just because you're not the one wielding it

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"According to Nietzsche, violence is inherent in the formation of society, a process he describes in terms uncannily similar to those of the Soviet project of re-forging:

The welding of a hitherto unchecked and shapeless populace into a firm form was not only instituted by an act of violence but also carried to its conclusion by nothing but acts of violence—that the oldest “state” thus appeared as a fearful tyranny, as an oppressive and remorseless machine, and went on working until this raw material of people and semi-animals was at last not only thoroughly kneaded and pliant but also formed.

Coupled with physical force (thousands of prisoners died in building a waterway that came to be known as the “road of bones”) was ideological force. As prisoners toiled at Belomor, the regime transmogrified their minds as well as their bodies. Imbedded in the ideals of the Russian Revolution was a sense of aggressive transformation, and the Bolsheviks sought to re-mold forcefully those not willing to submit to their worldview. According to Lenin, Marxism had “assimilated and refashioned everything of value in the more than two thousand years of the development of human thought and culture.” The Communist Party, in turn, served as the vanguard of the proletariat. Their task was to actively lead the workers and peasants to consciousness, to help them make the pilgrimage from darkness to light. Not only Belomor but the entire Soviet project is modeled off of the assumption that perekovka—the potential for human self-transformation—is possible. Marxism-Leninism particularly embraced this possibility, since peasants and workers had to become enlightened, class-conscious citizens in the absence of the full development of capitalism."

- Julie Draskoczy, Belomor: Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2014. p. 28

[ammg-old2]

I last saw my old professor Abduqadir Jalalidin at his Urumqi apartment in late 2016. Over home-pulled laghman noodles and a couple of bottles of Chinese liquor, we talked and laughed about everything from Uighur literature to American politics. Several years earlier, when I had defended my master’s thesis on Uighur poetry, Jalalidin, himself a famous poet, had sat across from me and asked hard questions. Now we were just friends.

It was a memorable evening, one I’ve thought about many times since learning in early 2018 that Jalalidin had been sent, along with more than a million other Uighurs, to China’s internment camps.

As with my other friends and colleagues who have disappeared into this vast, secretive gulag, months stretched into years with no word from Jalalidin. And then, late this summer, the silence broke. Even in the camps, I learned, my old professor had continued writing poetry. Other inmates had committed his new poems to memory and had managed to transmit one of them beyond the camp gates.

In this forgotten place I have no lover’s touch Each night brings darker dreams, I have no amulet My life is all I ask, I have no other thirst These silent thoughts torment, I have no way to hope

Who I once was, what I’ve become, I cannot know Who could I tell my heart’s desires, I cannot say My love, the temper of the fates I cannot guess I long to go to you, I have no strength to move

Through cracks and crevices I’ve watched the seasons change For news of you I’ve looked in vain to buds and flowers To the marrow of my bones I’ve ached to be with you What road led here, why do I have no road back home

Jalalidin’s poem is powerful testimony to a continuing catastrophe in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. Since 2017, the Chinese state has swept a growing proportion of its Uighur population, along with other Muslim minorities, into an expanding system of camps, prisons and forced labor facilities. A mass sterilization campaign has targeted Uighur women, and the discovery of a multi-ton shipment of human hair from the region, most likely originating from the camps, evokes humanity’s darkest hours.

But my professor’s poem is also testimony to Uighurs’ unique use of poetry as a means of communal survival. Against overwhelming state violence, one might imagine that poetry would offer little recourse. Yet for many Uighurs — including those who risked sharing Jalalidin’s poem — poetry has a power and importance inconceivable in the American context.

[jethroq]

the soviet union did some great things, some things as bad as its imperialist rivals, but you know, also some things worse. the gulag and the purges, joke fucking all you want about kulaks having it coming, unless you are a complete psycho you should recognize that some people went there for somethi g they didn’t do, something minor and arguably not criminal, and crimes that you wouldn’t want someone to go to jail for the rest of their life in the nicest prison on earth, let alone a camp system equally ran by guards who answer to no one about prisoner abuse, and an army of hardened inamtes that use rape as a standard punishment. like these are not disputed facts about soviet prisons. I’m not getting this from Arvhipelago or The Black Book, these are things the societ system acknowledged.

[kaelio]

Full article:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has cost it dearly on many fronts, but especially when it comes to casualties. Since the first days of the war, the invaders have been bleeding manpower. Plugging those holes became one of the tasks of the Wagner Group, the mercenary company with close ties to the Russian state. Its founder, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s close ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, began to actively and sometimes forcibly recruit from the country’s prisons, offering convicts the chance of freedom in return for service. The Russian army has gone on to follow that model itself.  

With those recruitments have come a whole series of subcultural notions that are shaping the lives of soldiers and the conduct of the war—but which are often ignored or overlooked by Western analysts. The power of Russia’s criminal culture, known as the “thieves’ world,” is not new. Prigozhin himself, like a surprising number of players in Putin’s world, is a former convict—because the men who profited most in the chaos of the 1990s were very often outright criminals. But the invasion of Ukraine has made these notions even more prominent, and understanding them all the more important.

On April 9, Prigozhin’s press service posted a response on Telegram to a question about the state of prison recruitment that had been sent to the Glas Naroda (Voice of the People) news site—one of the many parts of his media empire. In response, Prigozhin had some harsh criticism toward how prisoners are treated by the state authorities: “There are rumors of roosters, downcast and resentful prisoners fighting together with ordinary prisoners, which violates their [the prisoners’] internal laws, so-called unspoken rules, in a flagrant way. Everyone knows that Russia has been living by these rules, by a certain way of life for centuries, and therefore it seems to me that such situations are absolutely unacceptable.”

From the outside, Prigozhin’s statement seems incomprehensible. But in the world of Russia’s prison culture, where brutally imposed caste systems govern life and death, his statement makes perfect sense. The thieves’ culture is a set of rules, modes of action, and a strict social hierarchy that regulates everyday life among those in the criminal underground. It is especially focused on organizing the life of inmates in the many prisons and camps, known as “zones,” of Russia and other former Soviet countries. While traces of it existed even under the tsars, the system was largely forged in the vast gulags of the Soviet Union, the network of camps that formed almost a separate country inside Soviet borders.

The thieves’ culture gets its name from the ruling class, the “lawful thieves” who enforce the thieves’ law—an unwritten set of rules called ponyatiya, literally translated as “concepts” or “notions.” These rules include positive recommendations on how a “proper criminal” should act, harsh prohibitions on various actions with corresponding punishments, as well as a basis for how the social hierarchy in prisons should be organized. All this is described in jargon that, even for ordinary Russians, is hard to understand. For instance, the prisons themselves are measured on a scale from blackness to redness—those prisons where everyday life is mostly organized by the criminal authorities are called “black,” and the prisons where the unspoken rules and thieves’ culture are being actively suppressed and everyday life is in the control of the prison administration are considered “red.” Very few prisons are entirely one way or the other, of course, so arguments about whether a particular institution is red or black are commonplace—and baffling to outsiders.

The unspoken rules enforce a harsh hierarchy, one that serves the interests of the men on top—and sometimes of authorities who see it as a way to help keep prisoners under control. There are four basic groups of prisoners, known as “suits,” as if they were a deck of cards. This is essentially a caste system; it is extremely hard to move up, extremely easy to move down, and fear of degradation governs every social interaction. Of course, each suit, like any caste system, has many detailed subdivisions, branches, and complex substructures, but at the basic level, they are the following: blatniye (thieves), muzhiki (men), kozliy (billy goats), and petukhi (roosters).

Blatniye are the criminal authorities. They are career criminals—thieves and those who have chosen to embrace the rules and live by them full time. They are few in number but hold a lot of power and influence. Among them, the lawful thieves or thieves-in-law are a special subcategory, the equivalent of a mafia don or a yakuza elder. Their word is literally law in the criminal underworld—and they are bound only to the ponyatiya themselves, which they also have the power to change in specially organized gatherings.

Men and billy goats make up the “middle class” of this hierarchy. Men are those who just want to serve their terms with no fuss, but who are also informed about these prison laws, who pay respects to the notions, listen to the blatniye, and most importantly, do not cooperate in any way or form with the prison administration, even when it comes to, say, kitchen or library duties.

Billy goats are inmates who participate in formal prison structures, and are willing to work with the prison authorities but also pay some respect to the criminal ones. The people who run the black market inside a prison, who can get you cigarettes, drugs, gaming consoles, or whatever else, are also in the billy goat caste—but they’re obviously left alone and respected as long as they pay their tax into the common pool for the blatniye to use as they please. There is a subsection of those people, called “activists,” who are lower in the hierarchy and try to hide their position. Those are the billy goats who actively try to cooperate with the administration for extra benefits, which often are more than just being released on parole. In black prisons they’re hated like snitches are in U.S. prisons, whereas in extremely red ones, they often take positions that a blatniye would take otherwise.

The lowest caste, and the one that every prisoner fears degradation to, are the roosters, also known as the “offended,” the “pederasts,” or the “downcast.” That is a position to which it is extremely easy to fall down to, but one that you can never climb up from. They’re forced to do all the worst jobs—such as cleaning the cell’s latrine, washing everyone’s underwear—because no, your average Russian prison does not have any washing machines—and often serving as sexual slaves. They also get the worst sleeping spots in the cell, usually next to the latrine.

A rooster is untouchable outside of sex. One is not allowed to share anything with a rooster except as a payment for services—not only is it taboo to touch them, but also anything that they have touched, as that instantly moves one to their caste. Their kitchenware is explicitly marked as such, for one, and whenever transferring cells, they’re supposed to publicly announce their suit status and move in with “their own” accordingly. There is also an extensive list of other infractions that can instantly move one into this caste, far too long for me to list here. Many of those are linked to a toxic sense of masculinity. Gay and transgender prisoners are automatically placed among the roosters, but so are those who foolishly admit to having given oral sex to a woman—an act that, as among the ancient Romans or the modern Italian mafia, is seen as fundamentally impure.

The only interactions allowed between higher-caste prisoners and roosters are purchasing sexual services from them, raping them (my personal sources say that this was completely acceptable up until approximately 2010, but that currently, although it won’t make you a rooster, it is considered to be a minor infraction with a material fine attached to it), and beating them up—but only with kicks or using improvised weapons, as even the touch of a punch is still considered taboo. It might seem bizarre that a man who rapes another man is not seen as impure, but his victim is—but it harks back to a sense of sexual dominance found in prison cultures and reactionary machismo worldwide. A rooster’s status is truly miserable. It’s driven many people to suicide and made people so miserable that they used to rebel and intentionally touch blatniye inmates as a last attempt of revenge—sure, they would be instantly killed by other inmates, but the prisoner who previously belonged to the higher caste would instantly be a rooster inside the prison system and out, and would never be able to move upwards in the hierarchy.

These notions, especially the revulsion against LGBTQ people, are powerful in Russian mainstream culture as well. Take the ex-liberal, now extremely pro-war and pro-Putin Russian journalist Anton Krasovsky, who was thrown out of the Donbas under threats of violence because he’s also openly gay. He’s the kind of gay man who agrees with the Kremlin’s stance of “traditional values” and believes that “gay cure” procedures should be mandatory, but nonetheless, he reported that he’s received messages that he’s not welcome there although he completely supports the Russian side in the war. Those messages included people stating he couldn’t even dig trenches, because the shovels he used would have to be burnt afterward.

In his post on Telegram, then, Prigozhin was making it clear that there was no redemption from prison caste even when fighting for the nation—and that the caste mixing was an active threat to morale. It might seem bizarre to stick to such prejudices given Russia’s dire need for manpower, but the laws of the underworld can’t be cast aside that easily.

This isn’t Prigozhin’s only extolment of the virtues of the thieves’ law. In a leaked video from the Feb. 21 this year, where he’s giving a recruitment speech to inmates, he explains the “working conditions” in the Wagner Group. He notes, “We need criminal talent. I did 10 years myself before becoming a hero of Russia,” letting the potential recruits know that Wagner Group is being run according to the thieves’ law. “We don’t take any kind of the offended, the downcast, and so on—we respect all the unwritten rules.” Prigozhin says that those who are in prison for drugs are “taken care of.” Violence, on the other hand, puts you on the top of the hierarchy. The desirable charges are murder, grievous bodily harm, robbery, and armed robbery. He especially notes that “If you beat up  the administration or the cops, that’s even better.”

In another cruel example, Wagner Group recruits who are suffering from HIV, hepatitis, and other hard-to-cure illnesses, who have been enticed with the promise of a cure should they survive, are made to wear specific wristbands that mark them as “impure” in an attempt to not “taint” others. And, as reported by Ukrainska Pravda, “according to the [Ukrainian] intelligence, the fighters are becoming angry about this situation. Russian medics are known to routinely refuse to treat injured [soldiers] with hepatitis or HIV.”

None of this makes for good soldiers, and it’s already having serious consequences in Russian society. Organized violence is both physically and mentally demanding. A sense of camaraderie among the soldiers and respect, or at least obedience, for officers is vital. The Wagner Group operates on a different culture—one where such mutual respect and military tradition does not exist, and obeying formal superiors is literally taboo for the highest castes of prisoners. Nor can the dead be respected—after all, they might be roosters. Because of these prison laws and hierarchy, soldiers in the Wagner Group are not encouraged to bond; instead, they’re treated as expendable and sent as a human wave into the  “meat grinder.”

Extreme violence—like the shocking sledgehammer execution of a Wagner recruit who tried to defect to Ukraine—is used to keep soldiers in check. As Prigozhin commented about that event: “A dog’s death for a dog.” And while this does keep the prisoner recruits under some control and can achieve limited results, it also has made the Wagner Group tactically inflexible and predictable. Once Ukrainian defenders of Bakhmut understood that these blunt, straightforward assaults were the only thing that Wagner forces would ever do, the Ukrainians adapted and improved, eventually negating the costly gains that Prigozhin’s private army had made.

The normalization of prison culture may be contributing to the brutalization of the Russian army and its war crimes in Ukraine—but it’s also affecting the home front. Many of the prisoner recruits return home with a full pardon after serving out the six months they’re contracted for, often having served a tiny fraction of their sentence. Wagner specifically looked for violent criminals—who usually have long sentences. Already, the crimes of these returning Wagner soldiers are piling up, and analysts and Russian opposition politicians, such as Mikhail Khodorkosky, are warning against the return of the violence of the 1990s, when crime soared. Lawful thieves, prison laws, and ponyatiya in general are surging again, as the country is once again criminalizing itself to the point of gang wars, but this time, with military-grade armaments. Yet the Western press has largely missed most of this. The reports of Prigozhin’s comments, such as this UPI wire, entirely skipped it over. The lede simply states: “Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Russia’s Wagner Group, said Sunday that the mercenary group “acted honestly” by hiring prisoners to fight in Ukraine as he branded the convicts “heroes.”

In an April 10 report from the Institute for the Study of War, the ponyatiya are entirely ignored. Instead, it mentions only “Prigozhin insinuated that the Russian MoD [Ministry of Defense] would treat convicts worse than Wagner treated them to further advertise recruitment into Wagner and discredit the MoD’s recruitment efforts. The insinuation seems odd given that Wagner reportedly used convicts in human wave attacks that cost thousands of them their lives.” That misses the point entirely. Prigozhin isn’t talking about regular treatment, but about the deeply embedded caste notions—and under those, being degraded to a rooster is far worse than death.

While Prigozhin frequently uses the language of thieves , Putin avoids explicitly stating the rules, but nevertheless hints that he sticks to them himself. Putin was a KGB agent, of the organization that jailed many “thieves” back in Soviet days, and never a convict himself. However, he has long-standing ties to Russian organized crime—most notably through the Cooperative Ozero, which was founded as a dacha cooperative in November 1996 by Putin and his friends and has since grown to a powerful group, bonding together oligarchs and more conventional criminal activities.

Putin’s emphasis on supposedly traditional Russian values also implicitly includes the laws of the prison—especially when it comes to macho behavior and sexual purity. The Russian state’s homophobia can’t be understood without recognizing the sadism of a caste system that sees raping men as normal but loving them as degrading. Maxim Katz, a prominent Russian opposition journalist and politician currently living in Israel, told me that the ponyatiya are important to understand Putin and the Russian political elite in general. But he said  that “it is not the criminal authorities’ notions of the Russian prison that reign in the Russian security services, but their ersatz version.

Chekists, especially retired Chekists [a term for former KGB officers such as Putin, referring to the old Soviet secret police service], like to copy the style of behavior of high-ranking criminals. But for these criminals themselves, the Chekists are second-rate people, frankly not even people. The moment an employee of the ‘office’—current or former—is taken to a detention facility, he is immediately relegated to a lower caste and never gets beyond the latrine.

“Putin’s criminal behavior is more the case of a boy from an educated family trying to imitate the behavior of school bullies—but never quite becoming one of them. The Russian criminal world distinguishes between the blatniye and the ‘trash’ very clearly; the trash can try all they want to mimic this world, but they will always be subhuman to it, and their rhetoric is cheap cosplay, not true adherence to ‘the notions,’ since the notion is to kill them on the spot.” Putin may only be playing at the rules, but the criminal world takes them very seriously. So too should Western analysts striving to understand the actions of Russian troops, especially Wagner’s, in Ukraine, and the kind of culture that will become even more prominent back in Moscow and St. Petersburg when they return from the war.    

Kristaps Andrejsons is a journalist in Latvia and the creator of The Eastern Border podcast on the USSR and modern Eastern European politics.

[beardedmrbean]

Memorials to victims of Stalinist repression in Russia are disappearing or being vandalised amid increasing attempts to rehabilitate the Soviet dictator.

For the past nine years, more than 700 plaques have been put up in Russia and elsewhere, commemorating the final residences of people who died in Stalin's purges in the 1930s.

Since May, however, dozens have disappeared in several Russian cities, according to Oksana Matievskaya, who is part of the plaque project Posledniy Adres (last address).

Police are not investigating the issue and Ms Matievskaya believes this is no coincidence.

"The memory of the Soviet terror challenges the concept of the state always being right and is, therefore, inconvenient for the Russian authorities. Especially following the invasion of Ukraine," she said.

Millions of people described as "enemies of the people" were sent to Soviet labour camps, known as the Gulag, and 750,000 were summarily murdered during Stalin's Great Terror in the 1930s.

Other memorials are also being targeted.

At least 18 monuments to victims of repression as well as foreign soldiers who fought in World War Two have been reported stolen or vandalised since February 2022. Most are dedicated to Polish nationals.

In October, a brick memorial to a prominent Polish priest was torn down and destroyed in the city of Vladimir.

A concrete cross erected in Komi republic, in memory of Polish prisoners, was also found demolished. Police attributed its destruction to bad weather and declined to initiate criminal proceedings, local media said.

Soviet authorities executed hundreds of thousands of Poles after 1939. In 1940, 1.7 million were deported to Gulag camps in Siberia and Kazakhstan.

Alexandra Polivanova of civil rights group Memorial believes the damage was ordered or carried out by authorities because Moscow wants the Soviet Union to be perceived as a powerhouse rather than an oppressive state.

She suggests the government doesn't want Russians to know the truth about their tragic past, especially now that Russian soldiers have been accused of war crimes in Ukraine.

"The authorities try to erase the memory of the crimes of that empire to cover up or justify the crimes of this one."

This is taking place alongside a resurgence in Stalin's popularity.

In July, a survey by independent pollster the Levada Centre suggested that 63% of Russians had a favourable attitude towards the Soviet leader - his highest approval rating in 13 years.

The explanation behind his rising popularity is not certain but Russian propaganda justifying the war with Ukraine has also glorified its Soviet past.

And unlike memorials to his victims, those to Stalin have increased in number.

An investigative channel on social media site Telegram called "We can explain" says there are 110 Stalin statues in Russia - 95 erected during President Vladimir Putin's rule and at least four during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Some Russians want even more. In August the private Russkiy Vityaz (Russian Knight) Foundation inaugurated an 8m-high statue of Stalin in the town of Velikiye Luki, and is collecting money for more.

Its website argues these monuments are crucial given that Russia is fighting "a real Patriotic war". The "Great Patriotic War" is how Russians describe the 1941-1945 war between the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Kremlin regularly compares Russia's invasion of Ukraine to World War Two.

Russkiy Vityaz, which is said to have been founded by the Russian Special Forces Veterans Association, has declined to comment on the reasons for its campaign.

[edutainer2022]

Waves at @janetm74 with the text. I have no idea if it's going anywhere, but the idea haunted me to be put out there. Mentions of murder and torture, because Bereznik. Colonel Casey gets some disturbing news.

COUP DE GRÂCE

Colonel Casey leaned deeper into her office chair, a heavy weight settling in her chest, as a holographic grid of data points, crimescene photos, some more gruesome than others, and interconnected arrows was rotating in the middle of the room. Her branch wasn't even the law enforcement arm of GDF per se, so the fact this has been brought to her attention was alarming in and of itself. More alarming still was the number of murders in the span of several months - 19 in total.

There was frustratingly little in the victims' profiles to suggest a pattern - different ages, genders, nationalities, appearances, different countries of residence, different social backgrounds. Different professions too - some former or serving GDF, some civilians - engineers, medics, computer scientists, independent contractors. The GDF officers could be maybe loosely placed as stationed in Europe at some point, but that covered only half of the sample. Yet the pattern was there. Somebody of the GDF best and brightest in counter terrorism division or special ops, figured it out. That's why Colonel Casey was contacted. The assumption was still slim to the naked eye, but the implications made her blood run cold. She forced her breathing to even out, thinking fondly of her ginger spacebound godson - John wouldn't have taken this long to figure out and calculate the pattern. The boy was a patented genius. She also wished none of Jeff's kids, she loved so dearly, would ever have to know about it - the kind of evil that still walked the earth and lurked in the shadows.

The murders were vicious - the victims were held captive and brutalized before they were allowed to die. The MO clearly spoke of a maniac, unhinged and cruel, and hungry for control. It was deduced with some effort that while none of the victims shared more than a handful of common traits, or crossed paths to generate veryfiable connections, at some point all of them dropped off of social media for different periods of time. When they next reoccured - most looked notably changed, gaunt, as if having undergone an exhausting illness. The interviews with families yielded little - absolutely noone mentioned that gap in social media presence or feigned ignorance when pressed.

The victims among different GDF officers were easier to counter reference against more classified databases. That's where Colonel Casey was brought in. The results had her grip the armrests of her chair till her knuckles popped. There were no traceable records, because the GDF and World Council chose not to keep any mention above counter of a POW gulag smack in the middle of the flourishing European continent for a very diplomatic reason of there officially having never been a war. All those years later, someone was methodically tracking, capturing and brutally murdering the survivors of a liberated prisoner camp in Bereznik.

Val Casey felt her head spin from strain and allowed her eyes to rest for a briefest moment. On the backdrop of memory was her oldest friend Jeff's face, contorted with fury and pain, towering and yelling at a stammering World President for cowardly evasion and hypocrisy. Jeff's face again, a picture of pure agony, as he was clutching a scrawny lifeless figure in tattered bloody fatigues to his chest and weeping. She didn't keep track if all the guards and officers of the compound were ever rounded up. Their mission was as black ops as it got - get in, extract, get out. Fast. Were they caught behind Bereznik border, the World Council would feign ignorance and give them up to be tried by the local authorities for an act of war. She forced herself to look back at the holoscreen again and shuddered - among the pictures of victims who made it out of hell and survived unspeakable atrocities, only to succumb to a cruel and vindictive hand, was clearly slotted a place for one more. The crown jewel of whatever vendetta the vile mind of a psychopath was acting out. Humanity's brightest beacon of Hope. Scott Tracy.

Colonel Casey knew her first order of business should have probably been shutting IR operations down immediately and ordering the boys to stay confined on the island, under Kayo's protection. She wasn't naive enough to hope the maniac, whoever he was, would not resort to the surest way to lure his designated victim out - a captured brother or two. But she also knew her eldest godson enough to know it would be a loosing battle to try and have him stay put for his own safety. It hasn't worked so far on any other occasions. She was also weary to even bring the subject of the imposed grounding up and stir the memories of hell. The profiling team dismissed, she reached for a secure comm unit in a locked drawer and dialed the only viable number there:

- Lord Hugh? I need to meet with you and Kyrano asap. The usual place. Off record.