#programming since 1973

[brianmoffet]

I've had people tell me that they wish they knew as much about computers as I do, I usually tell them "no, you really don't"...

A fun thing about computer skills is that as you have more of them, the number of computer problems you have doesn't go down.

This is because as a beginner, you have troubles because you don't have much knowledge.

But then you learn a bunch more, and now you've got the skills to do a bunch of stuff, so you run into a lot of problems because you're doing so much stuff, and only an expert could figure them out.

But then one day you are an expert. You can reprogram everything and build new hardware! You understand all the various layers of tech!

And your problems are now legendary. You are trying things no one else has ever tried. You Google them and get zero results, or at best one forum post from 1997. You discover bugs in the silicon of obscure processors. You crash your compiler. Your software gets cited in academic papers because you accidently discovered a new mathematical proof while trying to remote control a vibrator. You can't use the wifi on your main laptop because you wrote your own uefi implementation and Intel has a bug in their firmware that they haven't fixed yet, no matter how much you email them. You post on mastodon about your technical issue and the most common replies are names of psychiatric medications. You have written your own OS but there arent many programs for it because no one else understands how they have to write apps as a small federation of coroutine-based microservices. You ask for help and get Pagliacci'd, constantly.

But this is the natural of computer skills: as you know more, your problems don't get easier, they just get weirder.

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers - Monster Mash 1962

"Monster Mash" is a novelty song by Bobby "Boris" Pickett. It was released as a single in August 1962 along with a full-length LP called The Original Monster Mash, which contained several other monster-themed tunes. The "Monster Mash" single was number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on October 20–27 of that year, just before Halloween. "Monster Mash" has sustained a lasting impact in various recordings, film inclusions, and re-releases since its initial release. In 2021, nearly 60 years after its release, "Monster Mash" re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart at number 37. As of 2023, the song was generating $1 million annually in royalties.

The song is narrated by a mad scientist whose monster, late one evening, rises from his slab to perform a new dance, with a name implying it is inspired by the Mashed Potato, a popular dance of the early 1960s. The dance becomes "the hit of the land" when the scientist throws a party for other monsters, among them classic 1940s horror film icons such as the Wolfman, Igor, Count Dracula, and his son. The song was re-released several times and appeared on the US Billboard charts on two occasions after the original release: August 1970 and May 1973. The BBC had banned the record from airplay in 1962 on the grounds that the song was "too morbid", but it was later performed on the network's television program Juke Box Jury. The record was re-released in the UK in 1973, where it peaked at number three in early October. It re-entered the British charts again on November 2, 2008, at number 60.

"Monster Mash" received a total of 88,9% yes votes!

[ellipsus-writes]

Each week (or so), we'll highlight the relevant (and sometimes rage-inducing) news adjacent to writing and freedom of expression. (Find it on the blog too!) This week:

Censorship watch: Somehow, KOSA returned

It’s official: The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is back from the dead. After failing to pass last year, the bipartisan bill has returned with fresh momentum and the same old baggage—namely, vague language that could endanger hosting platforms, transformative work, and implicitly target LGBTQ+ content under the guise of “protecting kids.”

… But wait, it gets better (worse). Republican Senator Mike Lee has introduced a new bill that makes other attempts to censor the internet look tame: the Interstate Obscenity Definition Act (IODA)—basically KOSA on bath salts. Lee’s third attempt since 2022, the bill would redefine what counts as “obscene” content on the internet, and ban it nationwide—with “its peddlers prosecuted.”

Whether IODA gains traction in Congress is still up in the air. But free speech advocates are already raising alarm bells over its implications.

The bill aims to gut the long-standing legal definition of “obscenity” established by the 1973 Miller v. California ruling, which currently protects most speech under the First Amendment unless it fails a three-part test. Under the Miller test, content is only considered legally obscene if it 1: appeals to prurient interests, 2: violates “contemporary community standards,” and 3: is patently offensive in how it depicts sexual acts.

IODA would throw out key parts of that test—specifically the bits about “community standards”—making it vastly easier to prosecute anything with sexual content, from films and photos, to novels and fanfic.

Under Lee’s definition (which—omg shocking can you believe this coincidence—mirrors that of the Heritage Foundation), even the most mild content with the affect of possible “titillation” could be included. (According to the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, the proposed definition is so broad it could rope in media on the level of Game of Thrones—or, generally, anything that depicts or describes human sexuality.) And while obscenity prosecutions are quite rare these days, that could change if IODA passes—and the collateral damage and criminalization (especially applied to creative freedoms and LGBT+ content creators) could be massive.

And while Lee’s last two obscenity reboots failed, the current political climate is... let’s say, cloudy with a chance of fascism.

Sound a little like Project 2025? Ding ding ding! In fact, Russell Vought, P2025’s architect, was just quietly appointed to take over DOGE from Elon Musk (the agency on a chainsaw crusade against federal programs, culture, and reality in general).

So. One bill revives vague moral panic, another wants to legally redefine it and prosecute creators, and the man who helped write the authoritarian playbook—with, surprise, the intent to criminalize LGBT+ content and individuals—just gained control of the purse strings.

Cool cool cool.

AO3 works targeted in latest (massive) AI scraping

Rewind to last month—In the latest “wait, they did what now?” moment for AI, a Hugging Face user going by nyuuzyou uploaded a massive dataset made up of roughly 12.6 million fanworks scraped from AO3—full text, metadata, tags, and all. (Info from r/AO3: If your works’ ID numbers between 1 and 63,200,000, and has public access, the work has been scraped.)

And it didn’t stop at AO3. Art and writing communities like PaperDemon and Artfol, among others, also found their content had been quietly scraped and posted to machine learning hubs without consent.

This is yet another attempt in a long line of more “official” scraping of creative work, and the complete disregard shown by the purveyors of GenAI for copyright law and basic consent. (Even the Pope agrees.)

AO3 filed a DMCA takedown, and Hugging Face initially complied—temporarily. But nyuuzyou responded with a counterclaim and re-uploaded the dataset to their personal website and other platforms, including ModelScope and DataFish—sites based in China and Russia, the same locations reportedly linked to Meta’s own AI training dataset, LibGen.

Some writers are locking their works. Others are filing individual DMCAs. But as long as bad actors and platforms like Hugging Face allow users to upload massive datasets scraped from creative communities with minimal oversight, it’s a circuitous game of whack-a-mole. (As others have recommended, we also suggest locking your works for registered users only.)

After disavowing AI copyright, leadership purge hits U.S. cultural institutions

In news that should give us all a brief flicker of hope, the U.S. Copyright Office officially confirmed: if your “creative” work was generated entirely by AI, it’s not eligible for copyright.

A recently released report laid it out plainly—human authorship is non-negotiable under current U.S. law, a stance meant to protect the concept of authorship itself from getting swallowed by generative sludge. The report is explicit in noting that generative AI draws “on massive troves of data, including copyrighted works,” and asks: “Do any of the acts involved require the copyright owners’ consent or compensation?” (Spoiler: yes.) It’s a “straight ticket loss for the AI companies” no matter how many techbros’ pitch decks claim otherwise (sorry, Inkitt).

“The Copyright Office (with a few exceptions) doesn’t have the power to issue binding interpretations of copyright law, but courts often cite to its expertise as persuasive,” tech law professor Blake. E Reid wrote on Bluesky.As the push to normalize AI-generated content continues (followed by lawsuits), without meaningful human contribution—actual creative labor—the output is not entitled to protection.

… And then there’s the timing.

The report dropped just before the abrupt firing of Copyright Office director Shira Perlmutter, who has been vocally skeptical of AI’s entitlement to creative work.

It's yet another culture war firing—one that also conveniently clears the way for fewer barriers to AI exploitation of creative work. And given that Elon Musk’s pals have their hands all over current federal leadership and GenAI tulip fever… the overlap of censorship politics and AI deregulation is looking less like coincidence and more like strategy.

Also ousted (via email)—Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. According to White House press secretary and general ghoul Karoline Leavitt, Dr. Hayden was dismissed for “quite concerning things that she had done… in the pursuit of DEI, and putting inappropriate books in the library for children.” (Translation: books featuring queer people and POC.)

Dr. Hayden, who made history as the first Black woman to hold the position, spent the last eight years modernizing the Library of Congress, expanding digital access, and turning the institution into something more inclusive, accessible, and, well, public. So of course, she had to go. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The American Library Association condemned the firing immediately, calling it an “unjust dismissal” and praising Dr. Hayden for her visionary leadership. And who, oh who might be the White House’s answer to the LoC’s demanding and (historically) independent role?

The White House named Todd Blanche—AKA Trump’s personal lawyer turned Deputy Attorney General—as acting Librarian of Congress.

That’s not just sus, it’s likely illegal—the Library is part of the legislative branch, and its leadership is supposed to be confirmed by Congress. (You know, separation of powers and all that.)

But, plot twist: In a bold stand, Library of Congress staff are resisting the administration's attempts to install new leadership without congressional approval.

If this is part of the broader Project 2025 playbook, it’s pretty clear: Gut cultural institutions, replace leadership with stunningly unqualified loyalists, and quietly centralize control over everything from copyright to the nation’s archives.

Because when you can’t ban the books fast enough, you just take over the library.

Rebellions are built on hope

Over the past few years (read: eternity), a whole ecosystem of reactionary grifters has sprung up around Star Wars—with self-styled CoNtEnT CrEaTorS turning outrage to revenue by endlessly trashing the fandom. It’s all part of the same cynical playbook that radicalized the fallout of Gamergate, with more lightsabers and worse thumbnails. Even the worst people you know weighed in on May the Fourth (while Prequel reassessment is totally valid—we’re not giving J.D. Vance a win).

But one thing that shouldn't be up for debate is this: Andor, which wrapped its phenomenal two-season run this week, is probably the best Star Wars project of our time—maybe any time. It’s a masterclass in what it means to work within a beloved mythos and transform it, deepen it, and make it feel urgent again. (Sound familiar? Fanfic knows.)

Radicalization, revolution, resistance. The banality of evil. The power of propaganda. Colonialism, occupation, genocide—and still, in the midst of it all, the stubborn, defiant belief in a better world (or Galaxy).

Even if you’re not a lifelong SW nerd (couldn’t be us), you should give it a watch. It’s a nice reminder that amidst all the scraping, deregulation, censorship, enshittification—stories matter. Hope matters.

And we’re still writing.

Let us know if you find something other writers should know about, or join our Discord and share it there!

- The Ellipsus Team xo

[blackstarlineage]

Assata Shakur, born Joanne Deborah Byron on July 16, 1947, later known as JoAnne Chesimard, is a revolutionary figure, former member of the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the Black Liberation Army (BLA), and a symbol of resistance against racial oppression. She is best known for her involvement in Black liberation movements, her conviction for the killing of a New Jersey State Trooper in 1973, her escape from prison, and her subsequent exile in Cuba, where she was granted political asylum.

Born in New York City, Shakur was raised between Queens and Wilmington, North Carolina, where she experienced firsthand the realities of racial segregation and discrimination. Her political consciousness developed in college, where she became involved in activism during the height of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. She joined the Harlem chapter of the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s, working on community programs focused on self-defense, education, and social welfare, particularly addressing police brutality and systemic inequality. However, the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, which targeted Black radical organizations, led to increasing government surveillance and repression of the BPP.

Shakur later became involved with the Black Liberation Army (BLA), an underground movement that believed in armed struggle as a means to combat systemic state violence against Black people. The BLA was accused of engaging in violent confrontations with police and government institutions, leading to Shakur being criminalized as a domestic terrorist by the U.S. government. On May 2, 1973, she was involved in a traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike with BLA members Zayd Malik Shakur and Sundiata Acoli. A shootout occurred, resulting in the death of State Trooper Werner Foerster and Zayd Shakur. Assata Shakur was shot and arrested, later convicted in 1977 of murder and sentenced to life in prison, despite claims of an unfair trial, racial bias, and contradictions in the prosecution’s case.

In 1979, with the help of allies in the Black liberation movement, she escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey and eventually fled to Cuba, where she was granted asylum by the government of Fidel Castro. Since then, she has lived in exile, becoming a symbol of both revolutionary resistance and controversy. The U.S. government has classified her as a fugitive and placed her on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list, offering a $2 million bounty for her capture. Despite this, she remains an icon of Black liberation and anti-imperialist struggle, inspiring activists worldwide through her writings, including her autobiography, which details her experiences, political philosophy, and unwavering commitment to justice.

Beyond her activism in the U.S., Assata Shakur’s ideology is deeply rooted in Pan-Africanism, a philosophy that aligns with the teachings of Marcus Garvey and other Black liberation leaders who emphasized unity among African-descended people worldwide. Throughout her activism, she championed the idea that Black liberation in the U.S. was intrinsically connected to the struggles of African and diasporic peoples against colonialism, imperialism, and systemic oppression. Her exile in Cuba not only provided her with refuge but also reinforced her Pan-Africanist perspective, as she engaged with revolutionary movements from Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. In her writings and public statements, she has advocated for the strengthening of global Black solidarity, emphasizing the importance of self-determination, economic independence, and resistance to neocolonial forces. Her Pan-Africanism is evident in her belief that Black people must transcend national boundaries and work collectively to dismantle oppressive systems worldwide, making her a symbol of international Black resistance and unity.

[fleurrypoet]

Bobby is Alive

okay so bare with my delusional self as i try to explain this

(i saw this on tiktok and believed it need more attention than it had)

firstly I've seen loads of posts about the idea that the army took bobby and said he was dead even though he was not. This would allow them to do all kind of tests on bobby.

so now on to the tiktok comment

someone commented about how when they were taking the body bag out of the lab we could here them say "operate under whitecoat protocal" now what is operation whitecoat well it was : Operation Whitecoat was a biodefense medical research program carried out by the United States Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland, between 1954 and 1973. it was a volunteer program BUT THEY LITERALLY TESTED ON PEOPLE. the comment explains it way better so im going to add it here:

Now why i actually believe this might be happening

first and foremost there was no music now let me explain this

Hoziers work song played from when bobby walked away from athena for that whole montage we saw reactions and everything but not once did we hear any of the reactions because the music was playing over it. the music gets lower obviously because they wanted us to hear chimney talk to maddie on the phone. It is significantly lower because they wanted to make sure our attention is on chimneys wrods but you can still clearly hear the music and right after chimney breaks down we switch to the body bag with the goverment officials and there is no music at all playing now. This is to make sure our full attention is on the scene and any words to be said then the radio call comes through and it literally says "operate under whitecoat protocal". Now if they did not want us the hear this they would have kept the music going to keep with the montage. They also could have had no radio message literally no one would have known any different.

what has also been bugging me a lot is firstly Tim Minear said in his interview with variety:

"We do see the body bag. I just felt, and this was a matter of some controversy, but I felt that I couldn’t go out of this episode, particularly since we’re not going to be on for a week, with people wondering if he died or not. I didn’t want to play his death as some kind of cheap cliffhanger. So I just felt that the cold, clinical image — and it’s not just the body bag, it ends up being the security camera view of that body bag. So it’s very detached, it’s very impersonal. But then I added a final image of just that helmet sitting in the debris, and it just says “118 Captain,” and it makes you want to stop breathing. But, yeah, that was my reasoning: I wanted it to be poetry, and then I wanted it to be a little bit of a splash of cold water in your face."

no one will convince me that he didn't that he did not know about the leaks no matter how many times he himself says he didn't expect he. He also knows about the script leaks and no one will convince me otherwise. So therefore when he says he showed the body bag and the helmet to confirm bobby was dead because he knew we were going without an episode for a week and he wanted us to know fully he was dead is bullshit. he said he did not want us basically saying he's not dead when that is exactly what is happening. considering the script leaks support a being buried alive story he knew we would talk while they were on break. It is literally what happened the minute the episode ended the theories started.

Next part

[kwebtv]

TV Guide - May 8 - 14, 1965

Robert Osbourne Denver (January 9, 1935 – September 2, 2005)  Film and television omedic actor who portrayed Gilligan on the 1964–1967 television series Gilligan’s Island, and beatnik Maynard G. Krebs on the 1959–1963 series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.

Denver made his television debut in 1957, playing a small part in one episode of The Silent Service (S01 E37: “The Loss of the Tang”). While teaching at Corpus Christi in 1958, Denver was permitted to audition for a role on the sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis as a favor to his sister, who was a secretary on the production lot. He got the role and left teaching the following year to become a regular on the series. From 1959 to 1963, he appeared on the series as Maynard G. Krebs, the teenaged beatnik best friend of Dobie Gillis, played by Dwayne Hickman. After filming the first three episodes, Denver received his draft notice, and was briefly written out of the script and replaced, but he was designated 4-F due to an old neck injury and returned to Dobie Gillis having missed only one episode. Denver later reprised his Maynard G. Krebs role in the television sequels Whatever Happened to Dobie Gillis? (1977) and Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis (1988).

During his time on Dobie Gillis, Denver appeared on the NBC interview program, Here’s Hollywood. In 1963, Denver played his only major dramatic role on television, as a physician (Dr. Paul Garrett) in one episode of Dr. Kildare, telecast on October 10, 1963; the episode, “If You Can’t Believe the Truth …”, also featured Barbara Eden and Ken Berry. Between the end of Dobie Gillis and the start of Gilligan’s Island, Denver appeared in an episode of The Farmer’s Daughter and in the final episode of The Danny Thomas Show. He also had a one-episode role replacing the actor who played Dudley A. “Dud” Wash, the fiancé of Charlene Darling of the Darlings, on The Andy Griffith Show which was aired March 30, 1964. This was done by the network to promote Denver’s face and make him more familiar to the viewing audience since Gilligan’s Island was about to go on air.

Following the cancellation of Dobie Gillis, Denver landed the title role on the sitcom Gilligan’s Island, which ran for three seasons (1964–67) on CBS, and became a staple of later syndication. His role as the well-meaning but bumbling first mate among a small group of shipwrecked castaways became the one for which he is most remembered. During the run, Denver privately went out of his way to help his co-stars who warmly appreciated his efforts, such as successfully demanding that Russell Johnson and Dawn Wells be included in the series’ opening credits and insisting that Wells get an equal share of the series’ publicity with Tina Louise. A decade after the series was cancelled, Denver played Gilligan in the made-for-TV reunion movies Rescue from Gilligan’s Island (1978), The Castaways on Gilligan’s Island (1979), and The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island (1981). He also lent his voice to the animated series The New Adventures of Gilligan and its sequel Gilligan’s Planet. During the 1980s, he reprised the character of Gilligan for numerous cameo appearances, including episodes of ALF, Meego and Baywatch.

After Gilligan’s Island, Denver went on to star on other TV comedy series, including The Good Guys (1968–1970), Dusty’s Trail (1973-1974) (a show similar to Gilligan’s Island, involving a lost wagon train headed to California), and the Sid and Marty Krofft children’s program Far Out Space Nuts (1975). Four episodes of Dusty’s Trail were later combined to create a feature film, The Wackiest Wagon Train in the West (1976).

Denver’s other television roles included guest appearances on multiple episodes of Love, American Style; The Love Boat; and Fantasy Island. In 1983, he starred in the television pilot The Invisible Woman as the bumbling mad scientist uncle of the title character. (Wikipedia)

Tina Louise (nee Blacker; born February 11, 1934) is an American actress widely known for her role as movie star Ginger Grant in the television situation comedy Gilligan's Island. Louise is the last surviving cast member.

She began her career on stage in the mid-1950s before landing her breakthrough role in 1958 drama film God's Little Acre for which she received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year.

She also had a recurring role on the primetime soap opera Dallas.

In 1962, she guest-starred on the situation comedy The Real McCoys, portraying a country girl from West Virginia in the episode "Grandpa Pygmalion".

In the fall of 1984, she succeeded Jo Ann Pflug as Taylor Chapin on the syndicated soap opera Rituals. (Wikipedia)

[numapompilioi]

Carta Abierta a la Junta Militar / Open Letter to the Military Junta

1. The censorship of the press, the persecution of intellectuals, the raid on my house in El Tigre, the dear friends murdered by you, and the loss of my daughter, who died fighting you: these are among the circumstances that have made me resort to this clandestine form of expression, after nearly thirty years of having freely given my opinion as a journalist and writer.

The first anniversary of this Military Junta compels a measuring-up of the actions of this government, against its officially released documents and discourses, in order to fairly balance the scales between the official version and fact. For what you have named as certified facts are errors, and what you are willing to admit as your mistakes are in fact crimes, and events that you have entirely omitted happen to be calamities.

On the 24th of March of 1976, you overthrew a government that you had formed part of, just as you contributed to its dishonor by enforcing its repressive policies. The end of term of that government was to be determined by elections, slated for 9 months from then. What you annihilated, however, was not merely the transitional mandate of Isabela Martínez: you blocked the very possibility of a democratic process that would allow the people to remedy the very ills that you, ever since the coup, have proliferated and intensified.

Illegitimate in its origins, this government you enforce could have defended its thin claim to legitimacy by reinstating the same program already chosen by eighty percent of the Argentinian population in the 1973 elections, a program which still stands as the sole objective expression of the thwarted general will of the people, the sole possible meaning of this so-called ”national Being” so often invoked by you.

Your inversion of that path has shifted the tide according to the interests and ideas of defeated minorities, groups who stall the development of our nation’s productive forces, who exploit the people and who segregate the Nation. A political rule such as this one, can only reinforce itself as a transitional regime: as it currently prohibits all political parties, busts unions, and cripples free press while sowing the most profound terror the Argentine society has ever known.

2. Fifteen thousand disappeared persons, ten thousand prisoners taken, four thousand dead, tens of thousands landless peasants— together, these comprise the naked cipher of the terror I speak of.

As the common prisons were already full, you used barracks and military complexes for what are virtually the first concentration camps this country has ever known. These are camps–where no judge, lawyer, journalist or international monitor may enter. The martial secrecy of the trials, a secrecy invoked as necessary for the purpose of investigations, has made the majority of detentions into abductions, ensuring for torture without limits, and for executions without trials.[1]

More than seven thousand pleas issued for Habeas Corpus rights met refusal in the past year. In other thousands of cases of disappearances, the recourse of Habeas Corpus has not even been presented in court, either because the effort appears useless, or because of the near-impossibility of finding a lawyer willing to present the claim after fifty or seventy lawyers were, in turn, abducted as hostages by you after they took on these cases.

In this way, you have extricated torture from its confinement in time. As the detainee does not exist, there is no possibility of presenting him before a judge within ten days, as mandated by a law that was respected even by the repressive regimes of previous dictatorships in Argentina.

The absence of a limit in time is complemented by the absence of limitations in the methods of torture, thereby regressing back to ages when torturers operated directly upon the joints and the intestines of the victims—only now they make use of surgical and pharmacological tools, unavailable to the executioners of old. The rack, the screw, the skinning-alive, the hacksaw of medieval inquisitors all reappear in the testimonies alongside the electrodes, the ”submarine”, the blowtorch, among other modern accessories.

In the midst of your rationalizations, as you claim the objective of exterminating the guerrilla justifies the means you use, you have arrived at an absolute torture: it is timeless, metaphysical torture. The barest original intention behind these methods—that of extracting intelligence information from the captives—has by now given way in the perturbed minds of those who mete it out. Those who enforce it, instead succumb to the impulse of mashing up the human substance until it breaks, as it loses the dignity already lost by the executioner, the executioner’s dignity, which you yourselves already lost.

3. The negative order given by this Junta against publishing the names of prisoners, in itself belies a cover-up of your systematic executions of hostages, carried out in deserted areas during the dawn hours. In those locales you harvest your pretexts for murder with the forged battle-scenes, the planted evidence, the fantasized chase-scenes and escape attempts.

You have disseminated stories about bungling extremists, who you allege spread pamphlets in the countryside, who paint over the irrigation channels or who amass comically into exploding cars. Such stereotypes about the resistance are straight out of a propaganda leaflet—but the function of that propaganda is not to be believable: it intends only to mock the international outcry responding to mass executions. Such official accounts are designed to downplay the brutal, disproportionate nature of your retaliations conducted in the same places and dates of the guerrilla activities of the resistance.

Seventy dead in the executions you held in a response to the bombing of the Federal Security building, 55 extra-judicially executed in retaliation for the explosions in the Police Department in La Plata, 30 in your response to the attack on the Ministry of Defense, 40 executions in the Massacre of the New Year following suit after they were blamed for the death of colonel Castellanos, 19 extrajudicial killings of those who were held responsible for the explosion that destroyed the police-station of Ciudadela: these amount to the 1200 executions in 300 purported battles in which the opponent suffered no war-wounded, and the forces you commanded had no war-dead.

Condemned to being the human personification of a collective guilt that is alien to civilized norms of justice, the demonized captives are powerless to carry any influence in those same political trials that produce the planted evidence of the crimes for which they are being penalized. Many of the hostages are syndicate-delegates, intellectuals, family of the guerrilla fighters, unarmed opposition members, or ordinary suspects. When they are killed, it is merely part of your accounting act of “balancing the scales” according to the foreign doctrine of ‘the ‘body-count”, used by the SS in the occupied countries and by the invaders of Vietnam.

The practice of rounding-up, then immediately liquidating wounded or captured guerrillas in actual battles, is evidenced by the military’s own bulletin-updates and press conferences: these report how, within a year, they attributed 600 dead, but only 10 or 15 injured, among the guerrilla enemy. Such a ratio is unheard of in the most berserk conflicts of recent memory.

This impression is confirmed by a journalistic study that circulated in the clandestine underground. The report reveals how, between the 18th of December of 1976 and February 3rd of 1977, in 40 real actions, the legal forces had 23 dead and 40 wounded, while the guerrilla had 63 dead.

More than a hundred of those put on trial were similarly overpowered, as the military provided official narratives of sensational chase-stories—none of them intended to be believed, so much as to sabotage negotiations and proceedings. These performances are intended to prevent the guerrilla brigade and the political parties from enacting any legal process for the release of recognized political prisoners. Such negotiation is prevented from interfering and encumbering the strategy of retaliation used by the Core of Commanders. The military junta’s Core of Commanders want to employ these tactics (of disproportionate retaliation) in the shifting battle-scenery, maintaining the convenience of being able to dictate attacks, while unfettered by laws and in obedience only to the impulses and momentary whims.

That is how the general Benjamin Menéndez, chief of the Third Body of the Army, earned his laurels before the 24th of March with the assassination of Marcos Osatinsky, detained in Córdoba, following the killing of Hugo Vaca Narvaja and fifty other prisoners. All were executed without pity, in varied acts of martial law that officers later attested to without shame.[2]

4. The assassination of Dardo Cabo, detained in april of 1975, liquidated on the 6th of January in 1977 with seven other prisoners in the jurisdiction of the First Body of the Army led by general Suarez Mason, serves as further evidence revealing that these episodes were not occasional excesses carried out by a deluded few, or by the bad centurions who strayed. Rather, these appear to be executions of the same policy planned in your grand assemblies, the policy that you discuss in your cabinet meetings, imposed by you as commanders-in-chief of the 3 Arms and approved by you members of the Junta government.

Between one thousand five hundred and three thousand persons or more have so far been massacred in secret detention, after you prohibited the surfacing of information on found corpses. The news seeped through despite your very best efforts. Word spread to other countries, as international media and communities were shaken by the genocidal magnitude, by the sheer horror these facts have evoked among their leaders.[3]

Twenty-five mutilated bodies flowered forth just this March and October of 1976 upon Uruguayan beaches. Perhaps these were but a fraction of the cargo, of those tortured to death inside the Technical School of the Armada, then discarded as flotsam in the river La Plata by boats of the Armada. Among them was a boy, 15 year old Floreal Avellaneda, his feet and hands tied ”with breakages in his anal region and visible fractures” according to the autopsy.

A veritable underwater cemetery was discovered in August 1976, by a local who was scuba-diving in the Son Roque lagoon of Cordoba. He sought to report his finding to the attention of the police. At the station the police refused to register the diver’s report, until he took it to the newspapers, where the editors refused to publish it.

Thirty and four corpses turned up in Buenos Aires between the 3rd and 9th of April of 1976, eight in San Telmo on the 4th of July, ten in the river Lujan on the 9th of October. These serve as a measure of the massacres of the 20th of August that piled up 30 of the corpses, only 15 kilometers from the May Field and 17 kilometers from Lomas de Zamora.

These revelations put an end to the used-up fiction of the right-wing gangs who we presumed to be none other than the heirs of the Triple A squadron of López Rega. These were able to operate in the major garrisons of the country using military trucks, capable of forming blanketing the entire river La Plata with corpses of their victims, able to throw prisoners hurtling down to the sea from the doors of the First Air Brigade [4].

All this, you allege, could have happened without the general Videla, the admiral Massera and the brigadier-gendarme Agosti ever having known—so we are told. Today, the Triple A organization are none other than the Three Branches of the Junta which you preside over, and not the phantom in your nebulous reports regarding “violent outbreaks, seemingly of different sources”. No longer can you pretend to be the just arbiter between ”two terrorisms” one of the right and the other of the left. Rather, you have become the very same fountainhead of the terror that completely lost is course, while you babble in the turbid speech, in  the very discourse of death.[5]

The same historical continuity links the assassination of the dissenting general Carlos Prats under the previous government, with the kidnappings and murders of generals Juan José Torres, Zelmar Michelini, Hector Gutiérrez Ruíz. Dozens more were made into refugees, as their persecutors sought to assassinate the future of democratic processes in Chile, Bolivia and Uruguay by murdering it inside of those who carried and represented that unborn potential for a democratic future.[6]

The proven participation of the Department of Foreign Affairs, and of the Federal Police, in these crimes conducted by officers who received scholarships from the C.I.A. (through the A.I.D.) such as the commissioners Juan Gattei and Antonio Gettor, themselves subjected to the authority of Mr Gardener Hathaway, Station Chief of the CIA in Argentina. Such involvements will provide the seedbed for future revelations of the sordid kind that today already shake the international community. These revelations will not merely stop the moment the facts are laid bare about the role played by that agency (the CIA) and Army chiefs headed by general Menéndez in creating the Lodge of Liberators of Latin America. The Lodge has replaced and fulfilled the function of the Triple A death-squadron, until its role in the international stage was taken up by the Junta and its Three Arms.

This portrait of extermination by no means excludes the personal settling of scores, such as the assassination of captain Horacio Gandara, who for a decade went about investigating the businesses of high chiefs of the Navy. This does not exclude the reporter of “Prensa Libre” (Free Press)

Horacio Novillo, stabbed to death and cremated after the newspaper denounced sundry connections between the minister Martínez de Hoz and corporate monopolies.

As these episodes come to light, so does the true and final significance of your definition of the war at hand, as uttered by one of your chiefs: “The struggle that we have unleashed knows neither moral nor natural limits; it unfolds in a realm beyond good and evil”[7]

5. These facts that shake the conscience of the civilized world, however, are not the greatest of all torments brought upon the Argentine people to date. These facts are not the worst human rights violations so far incurred by you. It is in your economic policy, where we find not only the explanation of this government’s crimes, but also a larger atrocity punishing millions of human beings with planned misery.

Within a year, you reduced the common wage of the laborers by 40%, diminishing their participation in GDP by 30%, raising work-day from 6 to 18 hours of drudgery required for the income to support a family[8], This is how your program has resuscitated forms of slave-labor that had long gone extinct, even in the world’s last few remaining colonial outposts.

Wages are frozen and knocked down, while prices soar, past the sky-ward pointing bayonets of your rifles. Coercion abolishes all forms of collective opposition, assemblies and internal committees strictly forbidden, raising the unemployment rate to a record 9% [9]. This you have promised to worsen in official forecasts with 300.000 planned layoffs, as you go about reversing the relations of production back to the beginnings of the machine age. Whenever laborers had attempted protest, you have labeled them as subversives, abducting entire delegations, which in some instances turned up murdered, or otherwise simply never turned up. [10]

The results of these policies are smoldering devastation. Within the first year of military government, consumption of foods diminished by 40%, that of clothes by 50%, supply of medicines has virtually disappeared from the social layers of the majority. Already we see regions of Greater Buenos Aires where infant mortality surpasses 30%, putting us in the company of Rhodesia, Dahomey or the Guyanas. Diseases such as chronic diarrhea, various parasites and even rabies are reported in peak numbers approximating the worst global rates according to today’s health monitors, in some cases even surpassing known records. These results must appear satisfactory to you, for you have reduced the budget for public health to less than a third of military expenditures, suppressing the free hospitals while thousands of doctors, professionals and technicians join the exodus of jobless created by the terror, by the plummeted salaries or by the policies of ”rationalizing the economy.”

It should suffice to spend a few hours roaming through Greater Buenos Aires to confirm the speed at which these policies have decayed the city outskirts into a shantytown of ten million dwellers.

Suburban cities are half of the time deprived of electricity, entire districts lack running water. Industrial monopolies plunder the subterranean earth-layers for minerals and cement, leaving thousands of housing-blocks collapsed into wasteland, as you care only to pave the streets outside of the military families’ residences, or to decorate and prettify the May Plaza. The world’s largest river is poisoning all its beaches, only because business-partners of the ministry of Martínez de Hoz pour the residual waste of industry into that river. And in the wake of the poison-pouring, the only response your government has taken is to prohibit bathers from swimming.

When it comes to the mishmash of economic abstractions and objectives that you tend to refer to as ”the country”, it seems you have been equally successful. A decline in the GDP sunk until 3%, while an external debt reaches about 600 dollars per inhabitant, at an annual inflation rate of 400%. Production of printed money within one week in December increased by 9%, with a 13% lowering of external investment which also reaches global lows. Strange fruit indeed, that has come of all your cold deliberations, your crude ineptitude.

Nearly all creative and protectionist functions of the State atrophy, unraveling into the utmost decrepitude. Only one arm of the State expands, attaining an autonomous life.

One thousand eight hundred million dollars, the equivalent of nearly half of all Argentinean exports, were assigned to Security and Defense in 1977, four thousand new placements of agents in the Federal Police, twelve thousand in the province of Buenos Aires with salaries that double that of an industrial worker and will triple come February. These numbers forecast there will be no amount of freezes of stagnation or unemployment in the realm of torture and of death, the only camp of Argentinian activity in which the very gross product grows. In the concentration camps, the fixing of rates per head of smashed guerrilla grows quicker than the dollar.

6. In its fulfillment of the diktat of the International Monetary Fund, according to the prescription to be applied indiscriminately to either Zaire or Chile, to Uruguay or to Indonesia, the economic policy of this Junta serves only to acknowledge the needs of its chosen beneficiaries. Among these are the old cattle-raising oligarchies, the new speculations-oligarchs and a select group of international monopolies headed by Esso, ITT, the automotive groups, U.S. Steel, Siemens, all of whom have personal ties to Martínez de Hoz and all his members of cabinet.

An increase of 772% in the prices of animal produce (meat and leather) in 1976 encapsulates the very magnitude of the restoration of the oligarchical minorities’ power. This follows from the initiatives of Martínez de Hoz in collusion with the creed of land-owning Rural Society organization, as exposed by the organization’s president Celedonio Pereda: “It astonishes, how a handful of tiny yet very active groups continue insisting that food-prices need to be affordable.”[11]

In the spectacle of the Stock Exchange, it is possible within one week for some to profit by a hundred or two hundred per cent without working; where corporations were able to double their capital overnight without producing more output than before, as the mad fortune wheel rolls in speculations in dollars, in signs, in adjustable values, in plain usury that has already pre-calculated its interest rates on loans by the hour. How curious are these results of the self-described anti-corruption government that came along promising to put an end to ”the banquet-party of the corrupt.”

Denationalization of the banks has placed savings and national credit in the hands of foreign bankers. With the indemnification of the ITT and the Siemens corporations, rewards go to the same companies that scammed the State. Even while closing down their plants, the profits of Shell and Esso increase. By giving rebates and free passes from the customs tariffs, they create jobs in Hong Kong and in Singapore and massive unemployment in Argentina. Before the mass of these facts, you, the self-proclaimed nationalists, may ask yourselves who are these “anti-patriots”, those ‘’without fatherland’’ condemned in the blaring official propaganda.

In the light of these facts, ask yourselves: who are the real mercenaries at the behest of foreign interests adverse to those of the country? Whose is the ideology that truly threatens the national being you swore to defend in your solemn cries?

A barrage of propaganda (that deforming mirror of wicked facts) claims this Junta to be a securer of peace, and appoints Videla as a defender of human rights, while praising admiral Massera for his sheer love of life. If that propaganda machine were not in place to pour its noise, silencing all reason and access to the truth, then it might have been possible to ask the Commanders in Chief of the Three Arms that they may meditate upon the abyss they have dug. It is the chasm towards which they are driving this country. They claim to be steering the country towards victory in a war they are winning. That war and its imminent victory are illusions. For after even having killed the last guerrilla fighter, resistance would only be fermented anew in other forms.

The source of what has motivated resistance from the Argentine people, for more than the past twenty years, will not have disappeared after the last guerrilla fighter is executed: their urgency will only be intensified, by the memory of the strife and devastation, and by the revelation of atrocities that you have committed.

The above are my thoughts on the first anniversary of your infamous government, and I seek to ensure the transmission of my thoughts to the members of this Junta, without any hope of being heard. Although I am certain that I will be persecuted, I am also faithful to the commitment I made a long time ago, the commitment to bear witness in the difficult hours.

Rodolfo Walsh. – Citizen Identity number: 2845022

Buenos Aires, March 24 1977

Traducción: Arturo Desimone

[luulapants]

Incorrect comments I often see on tumblr posts about US incarceration

"The problem is private prisons!"

Private prisons are awful, and there have been specific instances of incarceration resulting from private prisons (like the Kids for Cash scandal), but they represent a very small percent of prisons in the US. Only 8% of people incarcerated in the US are in a privately-owned prison, and many states do not allow private prisons at all.

However, profiteering off incarceration doesn't stop at private prisons. There is an entire parasitic economy built around prisons, from prison phone, text, and mail-scanning companies to companies that run prison commissaries to the companies that provide food and clothing to prisons. These are all for-profit entities that contract with state or federal "justice" departments, who will choose either the lowest bidder or the company that provides the largest kickback to the officials making the decision (there is a LOT of corruption in these deals). Then they operate as a monopoly with no reason to provide incarcerated folks with anything but the bare minimum. The food companies make people sick. Until recently, prison phone companies have charged extortionary rates from the families of incarcerated people. Since the FCC put a stop to that, they have moved onto text, tablet, and mail schemes.

"The incarceration rate is so high because it's legalized slavery!"

While the 13th amendment exemption certainly plays a role in incarceration, especially the history of incarcerating Black Americans, prison labor is not the only piece of the puzzle. In 1973, 0.093% of the US population was incarcerated - a little less than 1 person for every 10,000 Americans. Today, the rate is 0.6%, or more than 1 in 200.

The factors that led to this trend are multifaceted: there was a backlash to the Black Power movement, the American Indian Movement, and resistance to the Vietnam War. There were "tough on crime" and Broken Windows policies that sought to reduce violent crime by arresting more people for petty crimes. There was the War on Drugs. There was the closing of state mental institutions and the failure to adequately fund the community-based treatment programs that were meant to replace them.

Prison labor does exist and play a role in all of this, but it's not the direct driver of incarceration, and only 1% of prisoners are employed by private corporations. Rather, the more pressing issue is that even if prisoners weren't required to do labor, they probably would still be forced to choose it because of how expensive it is to be in prison. Basic necessities like soap, toothpaste, and even shoes are not provided. In some places, they are actually charged rent - for the prison! The average wage for a prison laborer range from 13 to 52 cents per hour. People will petition to get transferred to prisons with factory jobs where they can get higher wages - like $4/hour making cardboard boxes. Even with their paltry wages, they still cost their families more than they can afford.

"Most people are in on petty drug busts!"

Drug arrests do play a pivotal role in the incarceration cycle, but only 1 in 5 incarcerated people is in on a drug-related offense. This makes sense, because those sentences tend to be short. A less direct way that drug criminalization factors in is that drug arrests give people a criminal record. They might lose their job when arrested, then incur court and parole-related fines and fees, struggle to find a job and housing because of their record, and end up in increasingly desperate situations where violent crime becomes a more viable option. Incarceration causes crime.

"Sex offenders need to stay locked up because they will offend again!"

People convicted of sex offenses actually have lower recidivism rates than people with other types of convictions. This is despite the fact that they receive no scientifically valid treatment during incarceration. This is also contrary to the wishes of the vast majority of victims, who favor less punitive sentences with greater investment in rehabilitation, mental health treatment, and victim support.

[ceofjohnlennon]

"A shoe-less Lennon opened the door and ushered me into a large sitting room.  He was on the telephone to his son Julian and gestured for me to sit on the sofa alongside. After telling Julian he had to go since "there's a fella here come to take me picture," he asked if I didn't mind if we watched the telly for a bit first. The program John was most interested in was a live transmission of Queen Elizabeth's daughter Anne's marriage to Captain Mark Phillips at Westminster Cathedral in London. Sitting alongside John Lennon with our feet up on the coffee table watching the then shaky live pictures on the TV it was a far cry from the madness of Beatlemania. After about ten minutes he said, "come on, do you fancy a cup of real English tea?" after an enthusiastic yes on my part he said "then we can get these daft 'happy-snaps' out of the way."  What a joy."

— Michael Brennan about photographing John Lennon in Los Angeles on November 14, 1973.

[creature-wizard]

hi!! i saw ur take on DID programming being a conspiracy theory, and i'd like a further elaboration if that's fine with you. i'm just curious and a bit confused, since i've met numerous systems claiming to be victims of programming

Sure! It's kind of a long story, but I'll try and summarize things as best as I can.

So, back in the early 20th century, mystical types were looking at hypnosis, trancework, and even drugs as a way to retrieve memories of past lives. The idea that you could retrieve lost memories made it way into ufology communities, where people tried to remember alien abductions. It also got into actual psychology, with therapists attempting to help patients retrieve lost early life memories. There was never any real evidence that these practices actually worked the way these people thought they did, and today we know that you can get people to confabulate memories of just about anything under the right circumstances. (If you need evidence, I can show you some very obvious examples here and here.)

Edit to add: In 1952, the book The Manchurian Candidate came out. It was basically a political thriller about a guy who'd been captured by Russians and brainwashed into being their secret assassin, complete with special triggers to activate his programming and everything. This had everything to do with the US painting communism as something subversive that people were sinisterly brainwashed into. In 1962, a film adaptation was released to theaters.

In the 1950s, Dr. Cornelia Wilbur started treating her patient Shirley Mason for seeming DID. (Which, Mason did not actually have.) Dr. Wilbur was extremely irresponsible and unprofessional in general, and very notably gave Mason sodium pentothal to help her remember. (Yikes!) Dr. Wilbur would push the baseless myth that DID could only be caused by severe childhood abuse (such as SA), and push drugs and hypnosis as methods for finding said abuse if the patients didn't seem to remember it. The 1973 book Sybil was based on Wilbur and Mason.

In the 1970s, radio host, notorious prankster, and platformer of weird fringe content Long John Nebel apparently started using hypnosis on his wife, Candy Jones to try and figure out the reason for her mental health issues. Supposedly, he helped her "remember" being a CIA agent, whose alter Arlene had been trained as a spy. The 1976 book The Control of Candy Jones describes what they supposedly uncovered. Also, here's an article that talks about some of their claims, and the context around what happened.

Also in the 1970s, Dr. Lawrence Pazder (who was inspired by Sybil) attempted to find the source of his patient Michelle Smith's issues by helping her remember supposedly lost memories. Under his coaching, Smith "remembered" being abused by a Satanic cult. They didn't use hypnosis as most of us know it, but Smith was putting herself into a kind of trance. Now like, this whole book is extremely discredited. They made a lot of claims that were very easy to check, and each time somebody checked said claims, it turned out they were full of shit. Like just for one example, her school yearbook picture from the year she was supposedly being tortured by the cult doesn't show any sign of the abuses she claims she was suffering, which would have been very, very obvious.

Then in 1988, Mark Philips used hypnosis on Cathy O'Brien to help her "remember" being a mind-controlled slave for the New World Order under the CIA program Project Monarch. They published what O'Brien supposedly remembered in the 1995 book Trance-Formation of America. O'Brien claimed that she and her daughter were tortured to induce DID, with the alters being programmed to carry out specific tasks for the CIA/NWO. The whole thing was an extremely racist crock of pure conspiracy theory bullshit; it claimed, for example, that the NWO was letting Mexicans ruin America and shipping white women off to Saudi Arabia as sex slaves.

In 1994, Fritz Springmeier used hypnosis on Cisco Wheeler to supposedly uncover her memories as a member of the NWO/Illuminati. In their three books published across the mid to late 90's, Springmeier and Wheeler gave an incredibly elaborate narrative around alter programming, incorporating elements from just about every other conspiracy theory you can name. They claimed alter programming was an ancient practice developed by pagan priests, and used in modern times by a global cult that intended to enthrone the Antichrist in the year 2000. The pair of them made so many claims that are absolutely beyond ludicrous, and I posted a sample of them over here.

Basically everyone who claims that alter programming is a real thing these days is downstream of Springmeier and Wheeler, whether they realize it or not. One reason we know this is that a lot of them cite a blogger who calls herself Svali, or cite people who cite Svali (such as Dr. Alison Miller and Dr. Ellen Lacter). Svali first popped up in the early 2000s claiming to be a former Illuminati/NWO programmer. She described the same kind of Illuminati and the same kind of practices as Springmeier and Wheeler. If you need examples, here she is claiming that color, metal, and jewel programming are things. And here she is claiming Disney moves are made for Illuminati programming.

Unwelcome Ozian is another clear case of someone who's getting their material from Springmeier and Wheeler; for example, their book Chainless Slaves not only describes the same methods and styles of alter programming; it even reproduces complete paragraphs from Springmeier and Wheeler's work. Edit to add: Unwelcome Ozian's other book, Rules of Programming, reproduces material not only from Springmeier and Wheeler's work, but also from a lot of literature on topics such as abuse, cults, and self-help in general. I have a post exposing this over here.

Basically, the whole idea of alter programming/trauma-based mind control has a long, long history of medical malpractice, pseudoscience, fraud, and conspiracy theory behind it. It just doesn't take very long to start finding it once you actually start digging. Meanwhile, real evidence just never turns up, and what we do find often just flat-out contradicts these claims. Like, many people who claim to have undergone brutal tortures or major surgeries at the hands of programmers don't have the scars to show for it. The sites, tools, and costumes for the elaborate rituals described by a lot of these people are just never found.

What's very notably missing are technical manuals for the actual programming process. I'm talking about literature that fully describes the actual procedures in full, step-by-step detail, rather than the vague, suggestive descriptions you find in conspiracist literature. The fact that nothing of the sort has ever turned up anywhere you might expect it to in over seventy years is pretty damning, because this isn't the kind of thing that a bunch of random, unconnected people would just independently invent on their own.

Meanwhile, what very demonstrably does exist are therapists who still believe the in the pseudoscience and misinformation pushed by Dr. Wilbur, Dr. Pazder, etc, who will push people both with and without actual DID to try and uncover repressed memories. There are websites and articles that suggest guided imagery and hypnosis for retrieving memories you think you might have suppressed. There are hypnosis videos on YouTube that will supposedly help you recover repressed memories. We have clear cases of memory confabulation within the New Age movement, where people vividly "remember" traumatic events that very obviously never happened because they take place in non-existent places such as Lemuria and incorporate narratives from the pseudoscientific and racist ancient astronaut hypothesis.

So, hopefully this should answer things. I tried to keep this post as short as possible, but there's just a lot of history and context here. The very, very short version of this is that there are a lot of misled people who've unknowingly run afoul of 20th century conspiracy theories and psychiatric quackery.

[mariacallous]

The new Trump administration is busy. In a fury of executive orders, the restored president has frozen hiring at the federal government, cut off large amounts of science and research funding, ended or severely curtailed international programs in women’s health and HIV treatment, attempted to unilaterally amend the constitution to deny citizenship to hundreds of thousands, cut off aid to Ukraine, provoked a diplomatic spat with Colombia and renamed the Gulf of Mexico in official documents as “the Gulf of America”.

Many of these moves are stunts and distractions, meant to appease Donald Trump’s base of aggrieved culture warriors. Others are meant to further Trump’s personal power, and to make sure that no obstacles will be presented to his second term agenda of malice, retribution and corrupt self-dealing.

On Monday, Trump made a move that belongs in the latter camp. Disregarding the formal process that is required by law before nonpolitical federal civil servants can be terminated, Trump’s acting attorney general, James McHenry, summarily fired more than a dozen justice department career prosecutors. All of those fired had been assigned to the two federal criminal investigations of Trump pursued by the former special counsel Jack Smith in the classified documents and January 6 cases. In a letter informing the attorneys of their termination, McHenry wrote that their involvement in the cases was the impetus for their firing. “Given your significant role in prosecuting the president,” McHenry wrote, “I do not believe that the leadership of the department can trust you to assist in implementing the president’s agenda faithfully.”

It is the kind of sentence that has been produced by the profound shift in the constitutional order under Trump. In another lifetime – before Trump’s entry into national politics – the notion that the Department of Justice existed to “implement the president’s agenda” was the kind of thing that people could end their careers by merely suggesting.

The Department of Justice’s independence was once so fiercely protected that when Obama’s attorney general, Loretta Lynch, exchanged pleasantries with former president Bill Clinton on a tarmac in Phoenix in 2016, the incident ballooned into a national scandal that contributed to Hillary Clinton’s electoral defeat later that year. When Richard Nixon tried to exert pressure on the justice department to drop its investigations of him in 1973, demanding that the Watergate special counsel Archibald Cox be fired for his political disloyalty in much the same way that Trump has now moved to fire the lawyers who worked for Smith, the justice department officials were so aggrieved by Nixon’s overreach that both the attorney general and deputy attorney general resigned immediately, in an episode so dramatic that it became known as the “Saturday Night Massacre”.

But what was then considered an unacceptable and arrogant presumption of executive power by Nixon barely registers as an offense from Trump, who has issued a blistering series of actions rewarding his friends and followers and punishing his enemies in the week since he returned to power. He pardoned 1,500 people involved in the January 6 attack, including those who had been found guilty of violent offenses, and some have already allegedly reoffended following their release.

But no matter: to Trump, violence committed in his interests is no sin. And he has rescinded the protection details of officials and former officials who have been subjected to threats by his supporters, including Anthony Fauci; to Trump, those who displease him are not entitled to protection from violence. They deserve what they get, and any number of the roving violent January 6 rioters who have now been released may be inclined to give it to them.

We do not like to admit it, but it may be time to state plainly what many of us already know: that Trump has already largely remade our constitutional order. Powers that no one would have imagined that the president had just two weeks ago, when the office was occupied by a Democrat, are noddingly assumed to be within his purview now.

It is hardly a debate, now, whether the president has the power to impose tariffs without the cooperation of Congress, though the legal question is far from settled; it is assumed that his bizarre directives to suspend funding that has already been appropriated by Congress must be obeyed. The firing of the prosecutors is a transparent overreach, but it is not clear that anyone will be able to stop him: if the lawyers sue to try to enforce their own rights as civil servants – or to try to force the president to recognize the limits of his own power – it seems perfectly likely that the large number of Trump-appointed judges on the federal bench will retroactively rewrite the law to say that Trump, if not other presidents, has in fact had this power all along.

Such is the vision of the constitution that Trump seeks to impose: one in which his whim becomes law, one in which the power of his office is constrained only by the limits of his imagination. When Trump suspended birthright citizenship last week, a judicial order suspending the declaration’s effect went into place quickly. But that case will wind its way up, to the highest echelons of our very conservative judiciary, and though the law is clear, the extent of the US supreme court’s willingness to abase itself for the sake of Trump’s whims is not. The Trumpist vision of the constitution, after all, is that it says whatever Trump wants it to say. And there are some in the judiciary who believe that their job is to create post-hoc rationalizations for why everything this president does it legal.

Is the justice department a mere accessory for Trump’s agenda? The Republicans seem to think so. But this is their vision of all government, now: as tools for the exercise of one man’s will. Trump’s vision of governance reminds me of nothing so much as the declaration attributed to Louis XIV: “L’état, c’est moi”: I am the state. There is a word for a government that runs this way, contorting itself merely to one man’s will. But that word is not “democracy”.

[mydaddywiki]

Lyndon B. Johnson

Physique: Average Build Height: 6'3½" (1.92 m)

Lyndon Baines Johnson (August 27, 1908 – January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He became president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, under whom he had served as the 37th vice president from 1961 to 1963. A Democrat from Texas, Johnson also served as a U.S. representative and U.S. senator. Johnson is one of only three, along with Richard Nixon and Andrew Johnson, to have served in all four federally elected positions of the U.S. government. After he left office, Johnson suffered a heart attack and died on January 22, 1973 at the age of 64.

Tall, lanky and homely looking, during his administration he signed into law the Civil Rights Act (1964), the most comprehensive civil rights legislation since the Reconstruction era, initiated major social service programs, and bore the brunt of national opposition to his vast expansion of American involvement in the Vietnam War. He was also a philanderer of the highest order and a grade A dick, literally and figuratively, that is if you believe the rumors.

LBJ was married to Claudia Alta Taylor, known to her friends as "Lady Bird." The couple had two daughters. Throughout his life, LBJ’s extramarital affairs were anything but discrete. His wife, endured his behavior, with only occasional reprimands. LBJ has been referred to as a "giant" of a man, a description only his late wife Lady Bird (and dozens of other younger women) could verify. When swapping tales of womanizing with his fellow Senators, he would often brag about it, saying things like “Old Jumbo sure got a workout last night.” Now that's swagger.

[darkmaga-returns]

Documents that shed the light on the CIA’s notorious mind control program decades ago, are being published by a transparency group.

Historic memos about brainwashing “Russian agents” and drugging US inmates with LSD have already been put online.

RT reports: The National Security Archive, an NGO dedicated to using Freedom of Information Act requests to expose government secrets, put some of the records online on Monday to mark 50 years since the CIA’s activities were exposed by the New York Times. A full collection of more than 1,200 documents is to be hosted by ProQuest, a scholarly research assistance firm.

Starting in the early 1950s, the CIA secretly searched for ways to control human behavior with drugs, including the then novel hallucinogen LSD, hypnosis, and extreme maltreatment, such as sensory deprivation.

The experiments, including those done on unwitting subjects, largely stemmed from interest in anti-war sentiments expressed by US troops who fought in the Korean War and went through captivity. The media coined the term ‘brainwashing’ to explain why soldiers would sympathize with the Communist enemy. The CIA hoped it could replicate the effect, conducting research under the code names BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE and MKULTRA

CIA Director Richard Helms and MKULTRA chief Sidney Gottlieb destroyed most of the original records in 1973 in what the Archive called “perhaps the most infamous cover-up in the Agency’s history.” The bulk of its documents came from author John Marks, who in 1979 wrote a book about the controversial program.

One of the memos highlighted by the NGO claimed success in inducing amnesia in “Russian agents suspected of being doubled.” In another one, Gottlieb signed off on giving federal inmates in Atlanta larger doses of LSD as part of the research. The Archive pointed the finger at pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Company as the supplier of “tonnage quantities” of LSD to the CIA.

[rjzimmerman]

The agency that carries out this "program" is called the Wildlife Services of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. I hate this agency with all the passion I can generate, and have ever since I learned about it and what it does 15 years ago. It exists to murder wildlife, particularly to benefit farmers and ranchers. Long ago, someone put handle on the agency, calling it the "gopher chokers." The name fits. I have done more than a fair amount of yelling to my dead representatives in Congress and senators to dismantle the agency or change its purpose and mission.

My favorite statistic. I don't remember the year, but let's just say 2014. In that year, Wildlife Services killed about 350,000 red-winged blackbirds. Why? They were eating sunflower seeds in sunflower farms. You'd think that a sunflower farmer should be taking that risk rather than causing us taxpayers to make his profit for him, right?

Other stats. We're starting to believe that beavers need to be returned to the wild to help us with floods and drought resistance. Wildlife Services killed 24,603 beavers in 2023. Other stats for death: 525 cardinals; 68,562 coyotes; 430 black bears; 17,109 mourning doves; 6,952 cattle egrets; 1,292 red foxes; 24,744 Canadian geese (even though they are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act); 1,209 jackrabbits (four species of them); 1,981 possum; 905 robins. I could go on, but I'm going to puke. Here's the link to the chart.

Sorry about the length of this post, but it takes a while to describe pure evil.

Excerpt from this story from NPR:

The United States Department of Agriculture's [USDA’s] Wildlife Services program is a holdover from the 1930s, when Congress gave the federal government broad authority to kill wildlife at the request of private landowners. In that era, government-sponsored extermination programs for native wild animals, like wolves and grizzly bears, were common.

After the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, federal agencies were required to change course and start helping some of those wild animal populations recover. But today, Wildlife Services employees still kill hundreds of thousands of noninvasive animals a year, data from the agency shows. Even species considered threatened under the Endangered Species Act, like grizzly bears, are not exempt. So long as livestock or human life are threatened, federal rules allow Wildlife Services to kill those animals, too.

Conservationist groups have long protested the program, saying the government is killing animals at the request of private livestock owners without first presenting enough evidence to show that the management methods aren’t harming the environment, as federal law requires.

“One of the biggest issues that comes up with Wildlife Services, and where we've beaten them in court multiple times in multiple states, is the controversy of the science,” said Lizzy Pennock, an attorney for the nonprofit WildEarth Guardians. “We need to get out of the framework of the 1800s and 1900s where it's like, kill any carnivores that might be inconvenient.”

Wildlife Services officials say that with the exception of invasive species, employees only kill wild animals that attack livestock or cause damage. But data obtained by NPR indicates the program often kills native wildlife that didn’t kill or injure livestock.

NPR obtained and digitized thousands of Wildlife Services work orders from Montana, created from 2019 through 2022, and built a database that shows that the program’s employees frequently kill native wild animals without evidence of livestock loss. The documents reveal that during those three years, employees killed approximately 11,000 wild animals on Montana properties where no wildlife was recorded as responsible for killing or injuring any livestock. In those cases, only a "threat" from those wild animals was logged in the records.

The agency frequently used helicopters and planes to shoot large numbers of wild animals at a time, the documents show, a method activists consider cruel and scientists say can lead to local eradications.

Although some livestock organizations financially support part of Wildlife Services' work, individual livestock owners do not pay a fee when federal employees come to their properties. Employees are allowed to kill wild animals on those private areas as well as on public land, like state forests and parks.

“That’s a bloodbath,” said Collette Adkins, a lawyer who leads the Carnivore Conservation program at the Center for Biological Diversity. “That just seems like yahoos with rifles killing everything they see that moves. It’s horrible to imagine the amount of suffering involved there.”

“Of all wildlife encountered in FY 2023, Wildlife Services lethally removed 5.14%, or approximately 1.45 million, from areas where damage was occurring. Invasive species accounted for 74.2% (1,079,279) of the wildlife lethally removed,” a representative wrote.

An NPR analysis of those reports shows that Wildlife Services killed more than 370,000 noninvasive animals across the country in the 2023 fiscal year. And over the past nine years, Wildlife Services killed 30 threatened grizzly bears and at least 1,500 gray wolves in states where they were otherwise supposed to receive protection under the Endangered Species Act, like in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

But the reports don’t reveal the names of the livestock owners that use Wildlife Services. That’s to protect the privacy of people in the agriculture industry, the agency has said. Wildlife Services also doesn’t disclose in those reports how many wild animals were killed by federal employees on public land.

[goodnight-bloodsucker]

Terri Pines

(Picrew by @potatolordofficial, hand drawn art by myself)

Yup, I made a Gravity Falls oc.

Teresa Ann "Terri" Pines (Née Ross) was born on February 14th, 1954 to Virginia and Howard Ross in Newark, New Jersey. She was the middle child and only girl of five children (Her brothers are Warren, Clarence, Leroy, and Seymour).

She was a pageant girl, her family lived pretty much solely off of the prize money she won.

She went to school for cosmetology in '72 (Her parents were not thrilled, they expected her to find a rich bachelor instead) and graduated in 1973 (Apparently, cosmetology school programs are pretty short!) . The money she earned doing what she loved wasn't good enough for her family and so she left home in 1974.

She drifted around, using her looks and charms to steal and con people, and met Stanley Pines in 1980. He was getting hassled by the police and she was like "Guess I'll use up my one good deed for the year" and helped out by pretending to be his wife ("Oh, honey, I've been looking for you everywhere! Sorry 'bout that, officer-"), and he evaded arrest.

Seeing her con artist ways and good looks, Stan was convinced that this was his dream woman- He tried to woo her for a bit, but she wasn't interested.

Because she's gay.

Even so, the convenience of having somebody that you can pretend is your partner worked for both of them, so they just went with it and slummed around the U.S., cartels and scams galore, what a wild ride.

Stuff went downhill, they were out of money and cons, when they were contacted by Stanford Pines.

You know the story from here.

Terri was kinda just waiting in the car when the portal incident happened, Stan came outside looking like he wanted to vomit and explained (through a very shaky voice) what happened.

They hid out in the house before running out of food, yada yada, Lazy Susan's eye is zapped, Stan takes Ford's name, fakes his death, you know what happens. Terri knows about the portal and all of Stan's secrets, she's his confidant and best friend.

In 1985, Stan and Terri got married. Partially because of the tax benefits, partially because they wanted the money and gifts that came with a wedding (Also, marital law says you can't be forced to testify against your spouse. Convenient!). Caryn Pines came to the wedding but Filbrick didn't (Fuck you, Filbrick). Terri's family also came but left pretty fast when they didn't get a hand out.

In 2013, Dipper and Mabel came to Gravity Falls. Terri is their Grauntie, she loves those kids. She also takes a motherly role towards Wendy, despite being pretty different in personality.

Terri is very similar to Stan, rough around the edges and always looking to make a buck, this is why he thought he was in love with her lol. She is a beauty queen, her pageant roots and love for cosmetology has always influenced her significantly. She is desperately trying to stall the effects of age (Hard to do that since she's 60 during the show), hence the spray tan and makeup and the hair dye. She also wears a corset (ooh la la!) and likes to join in on makeovers with Mabel and her friends.

She's also pretty badass- She has a lipstick taser and packs a mean punch. Being on the streets for so long has left her rugged and a bit grizzled and we love her for it.

A very motherly lady, she always wanted children of her own but the time was never right (Stan wouldn't mind being a donor, so long as he gets to skip out on any child support-). Wendy and the mystery twins fill that gap, she gets to mother them to her hearts content.

I will write up some unique episodes that center on her eventually, but it's 1 am rn and I need to get this done-

In Roadside Attraction, Terri flirts with Darlene alongside Stan. She's chill when Darlene only responds to Stan, she's a good wingwoman. It's also implied at some point that she went out with Lazy Susan before.

She was arrested alongside Stan in Not What He Seems, and escaped alongside him, also trying to stop Mabel from pressing the button.

Okay now here is where I deviate from canon pretty majorly-

So, I guess you'd say that Terri's whole existence in itself is an au. At first glance, the only difference would be her being there and extra interactions. That'd be wrong-

I know that the tweet about Ford being transfem was fake, but I still really love the headcanon. I headcanon Dipper as being transmasc and Ford being transfem would further the parallels between them without just making them a copy of each other.

So yeah, Ford is transfem here. She discovered it in the portal ("The author of the journals...my...sister??"). She chooses the name Nicole, after Nikola Tesla.

Back to Terri and how she changes the series!!

Mabel and Dipper are pretty shocked that she knew everything, they're definitely mad as well. This is also the reveal that Stan and Terri are only really married for legal reasons.

Here's that reveal, written out:

Stan: -and then me and Terri got married. But we're just friends with benefits.

Dipper and Mabel: *Disgust*

Terri: What? The tax benefits! Duh!

Nicole addresses her briefly but the rest of the episode pretty much goes on as normal except for the ending, Nicole and Stan would both mention her.

"Okay, Stanley, here's the deal. You and Terri can stay here for the summer to watch the kids. I'll stay down in the basement and try to contain any remaining damage. But when the summer's over, you give me my house back, you give me my name back, your wife and I divorce, and this Mystery Shack junk is over forever. You got it?"

"You really aren't gonna thank me, are you? Fine. On one condition: you stay away from the kids and Terri; I don't want them in danger. Cause as far as I'm concerned, they're the only family I have left."

Well, Nicole didn't listen because she and Terri get together (I call it "Terrole" hehe). I don't have their whole romance written out, but Nicole has no clue how to date and tries to woo her with stuff she learned in other dimensions. Hilarity and cuteness ensues. And hey, legally Terri is married to Nicole anyways, so it would work out in the end! Yeah, Stan isn't a fan of all this-

Weirdmageddon goes down, she hides in the Mystery Shack with Stan. She's pretty damn worried about Nicole. She's part of the zodiac, her symbol is lipstick. Blah blah blah, she gets turned into tapestry like the others and then everything goes on as usual. She joins Stan and Nicole in their adventures.

Boy that took ages to write. It was fun though! And I hope you guys like Terri as much as I do!

(My dear friends @ghosty-seapancake and @i-overanalyze-musicals helped loads with creating Terri! So much love to them! The timeline I referenced is by @fordtato so lots of love to them as well!!!)

[floodkiss]

A couple weeks ago, I led a zine making workshop/Palestinian solidarity event for my local Asian racial solidarity group. I gave a primer on zines and DIY as well as the political roots of DIY publishing, and some tutorials. The theme was reconnecting to resistance in an open learning circle since the Asian continent has a long and wide breadth history of resistance. We provided zine making supplies and I brought both some Palestinian zines and a curated collection of examples from my personal zine library! It was also potluck style.

It was kind of interesting leading this workshop! I don't consider myself to be an expert on revolutionary histories, there's a lot of theory and info to catch up on, but I read a lot of PFLP and Palestinian resistance writing when I was in my undergrad because I was able to meet Joe Sacco who was the cartoonist who published Footnotes in Gaza and Palestine (around 2017?). I also designed some posters for his Toronto visit in partnership with the TPFF. Most significantly, I read Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine by the PFLP - it is both a historical document and a live program that lays out the fundamentals of Palestinian liberation as well as localized analysis (160~ pages). There were Asian people in attendance originating from all over the continent and of varying faiths but no one was familiar with historic Palestinian resistance, only with the current narrative about israhelli occupation - so of course I was happy to to talk about Ghassan Kanafani, Leila Khaled, and the PFLP and the historic 3rd world solidarity movements across Asia!

Most people weren't familiar with zines either, so I was also very sparkly-eyed in info dumping about zines to the room! One of the participants brought musakhan rolls which are a traditional Palestinian dish... they were SO yummy... I did have more than I should have... and they included the recipe as one of the zine pages!!! There were also many Filipinos present resulting in me going home with a lot of leftover turon (it helped me survive my ongoing depressive episode in April lol)

Overall it was so nice having conversations with others regardless of where they were at in their politicization journey. There is always more to learn, and more time to spend with one another...and we can all grow together too 🫶🏼 politicization can be very personal and I think as long as we can develop principles, sense for collective, and maintain revolutionary imagination - we can survive together!

Here are some of the Palestinian zines that I brought for people to sift through! I have like 20+ pdfs on my computer and more from encampments that I've visited and will hopefully scan soon!

Palestine: An Introduction from DecolonizePalestine ABCs of Occupation & Resistance by Rachel Mattson The Palestinian Struggle for National Liberation by OBF-HRD/Manila University BDS: What it is, Why it matters by Leila Abdula Razzaq Digitized copy of Ghassan Kanafani by Anni Kanafani (Beirut, 1973), found via the internet archive! From Galilee to Gaza, A voice from Palestine from CrimetheInc. Handala and Other Symbols of Palestinian Resistance & Revolution by...me! (I'll add a link later)