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themadauthorshatter · 3 years

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I don't know how you guys feel anout them, but I just love the Skellington kids, almost as much as I love Jack AND Sally, so...

Nightmare Before Christmas Headcanons PART 2 (FT. The Skellington kids)

Right off the bat: lay a hand on ANY of the kids, and Jack and Sally will put you in a grave.

Jack isn't a big fan of Fourth of July. The fireworks make him remember getting shot out of the sky.

Sally remembers her life before Halloween Town. She doesn't like talking about it.

People rarely see Sally angry. And that's an insanely good thing.

Jack loves abstract patterns like Sally's dress, where different colors and styles collide and make something incredible.

The witches and other females were insanely jealous of Sally when she and Jack got together. That jealousy became, 'well, damn it' sorrow when they saw the triplets.

Lock, Shock, and Barrel have interacted with the triplets, but don't get closer than glances toward each other on the street; they don't want to face Jack's pure, unbridled fury or see Sally mad.

Jack is extremely glad to have all three triplets, mainly because he wanted to have children back when he was alive.

The children asked about the electric chair, and Jack lied bysaying it was something he found and liked. Luna was smart enough to catch it and asked what really happened. The only thing Jack let her know was that he died, and she didn't need to know anymore than that.

Never try lying to Sally. She'll know instantly.

Jack's 87% sure Sally's never killed anyone, or was angry enough to get to that point, but he genuinely doesn't want to know what either is like.

Daemon is arguably the closest with Sally

While the Easter Bunny still hasn't forgiven Jack, Santa at least knows Jack is harmless... as long as he has something to keep him busy and away from taking over holidays.

Jacob and Luna would absolutely kill each other, if they were alive. It never gets worse than a firefight, but Daemon still traps them in a 'get along' shirt and locks them in a room together.

Sally joined Jack on a Halloween scare once. You would be surprised at how much she got hit on.

She wasn't a fan of it, but got a clear idea of why Jack did.

After the Christmas incident, Jack listens to all of Sally's visions, which has made her consider messing with him, though she never did.

Zero's more than glad to have Sally and the triplets around; they keep Jack from doing anything crazy.

Luna, Jacob, and Zero are best friends; neither argue around him and Zero is just glad neither tries making him a model(looking at you, Daemon).

Zero's new favorite place to sleep is in Sally's lap.

Jack and Sally share a bed, but Zero keeps sleeping between them because the triplets are already enough for him.

Jacob doesn't like the sound of high notes on a violin.

Since all he tastes is cold peanut butter, Jacob and Jack have seen what different things taste like, things like apples, lemons, pumpkins, pickles, and even spicy peppers.

Jacob was severely disappointed at feeling like he was just eating peanut butter, but Jack claimex that this was his worst idea ever,in the worst way imaginabl; he ate a lemon slice like an orange, a pickle, and a pepper.

Jack's called the Pumpkin King because he was found in the pumpkin patch, and because his original idea was to break out of a pumpkin, which didn't work as well as he'd wanted.

Dr. Finklestien wasn't sure about Jack being a partner for Sally, but was sold when Sally tripped and Jack caught her and carried her for the rest of the day.

Despite Dr. Finklestien's opinions, Jewel absolutely loved Sally.

You should've seen her reaction towards the twins.

Lock tried hitting on Luna once, just once, and Daemon and Jacob drop kicked him, much to Jack's delight.

After the Christmas incident, Jack having a new idea is like a Targaryen being born, except instead of gods flipping a coin and the world holding its breath, Jack opens his mouth and the entire town holds its breath.

Here's what would happen if Oogie Boogie was still around or we had the triplets around during the movie or Oogie's Revenge

If getting flayed and cooked alive was because Oogie threatened Sally, then Jack would tear him apart with his hands, consequences be damned.

Jack would fight harder and be more brutal in his fights against Oogie in Oogie's Revenge.

Jacob would help, because he loves his siblings and mother, even though Jack would tell him to go home, where it's safe.

Oh, yeah, Luna and Daemon got kidnapped and hidden somewhere, but escaped and found Jack and Jacob.

Luna used a poison fog attack on Shock and bolted.

Daemon, however, was found in thr fountain because, and don't laugh when you hear this, he escaped, found some rogue, evil skeletons and ghosts, and then attacked one of them, jumping on a ghost's back and holding on as it flew and then vanished, dropping him; in its defense, he bites hard. The rogue skeletons amd ghosts caught up to him, and some larger skeletons saw him and he ran like hell, all of them behind him. To get away, he climbed up a tree, lit a large skeleton on fire, and then fell in the river, where he was carried until ending up in a sort of gutter system and into the fountain, where he was found.

He repeated the story to Sally and Luna and Sally genuinely wondered if Daemon and Jack had the same IQ.

Why does Sally worry so much? Because Jack's either a blind optimist, or genuinely couldn't tell he was getting shot at with airstrike missiles, didn't get that smoke and fire on Christmas is usually a bad thing, and didn't rethink the fact that people don't like getting scared on Christmas.

#the nightmare before christmas #jack skellington #jack x sally #jack and sally

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starslikecandlelight · 5 years

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A/N: i was talking to @agentnatasharomanov one night about Carol visiting alternate universes and seeing Nat alive again in each one of them, and my hands slipped and wrote this one-shot. set after endgame, this should be read as a standalone from world enough and time.

– – –

"There are over 14 million other alternate timelines out there," she remembers Natasha telling her once, a long time ago. They'd been curled up on the couch together - Natasha had sprawled herself out over Carol's body and buried her face into Carol's shoulder; Carol had to strain her ears to hear her. "There are 14 million other versions of us. I wonder what it's like to live in a world where I never got to love you."

"That's impossible," Carol had murmured quietly in reply, running her fingers through Natasha's red hair. "In every single universe, I'll be out there, looking for you."

(It's a lie, of course - they're neither ignorant or naïve, and they know that for every universe where they meet and fall in love, there are hundreds more where their paths never crossed, where Carol never became Captain Marvel, protector of the universe, and even hundreds where Natasha never left the KGB. But with the universe in a constant, chaotic upheaval around them, three years after Thanos snapped away half the population and caused the death of millions more, sometimes it's just comforting to indulge in fantasies, if only for a short while.)

Carol stays on Earth, long after the dust lingering from the battle against Thanos - the remnants of his armies - have settled.

There's so much to do - half of upstate New York had been flattened by the barrage of his airstrikes, and with the entire world population suddenly doubling in size, there's a certain urgency to their actions as the Avengers help the world recover, and rebuild. She throws herself into her work, lifting away the largest pieces of rubble she can, and carrying in new building materials - and slowly, slowly, she watches as the city begins to regain its shape.

She thinks that if she can make her body ache enough, if her muscles strain enough under the pressure she's putting them through, she doesn't have to think about the yawning hole that's opened up in the middle of her chest, threatening to swallow her whole.

It never really works.

Sometimes she still wakes up in the middle of the night, her face wet with tears and her mind still swimming in past memories, with Natasha's name on her lips.

So when Hope van Dyne approaches her with a job offer - she doesn't really know what it entails, other than "harmless, sightseeing trips into the past and alternate universes, we just need some data and we think you can help us." - she remembers what Natasha had told her once, in a better time and a better place.

There are 14 million other versions of us.

She agrees.

Her job takes her across various different timelines - she sees an alternate history where Peggy Carter becomes Captain America instead, and another timeline where she never meets Mar-vell, grew old with Maria, and died peacefully at the age of eighty-three. And then there are worlds where HYDRA wins, the Avengers are never formed, and the Earth is wiped out by Loki's invading army in 2012.

And - she sees Natasha alive, over and over again, in various different timelines, across multitudes of universes. Of course, they don't fall in love in every single timeline she watches - in some of them, Natasha lets herself die rather than join SHIELD, in others, she kills Clint instead, and never left the KGB at all. And there are others, too - she catches glimpses of herself, falling in love with Nat again and again, only for Vormir to happen, only to watch, helpless, a spectre in these timelines, as Natasha lets herself plunge off the edge of the world to save the universe.

These ones stick in her mind, and play themselves back like a film strip being looped, over and over again. They slink into her dreams, and turn them into nightmares.

She confides to Val over a drink, one day.

"I see her all the time," he voice wavers, and she clenches her fist, trying to force away the tears prickling at the back of her eyes. "I want her, Val."

"Well," Val tells her, ever-so-practical. "Just bring her back."

"I can't. They're not my Natasha."

The Natasha she sees most often - the KGB Natasha - will never know Carol, and they're set against each other on opposing sides of a war. The Natasha that goes on to join the Avengers is needed, she's a key player of the team, essential to that particular timeline, and Carol can't justify stealing her away, And in the universes where she and Natasha end up together?

She doesn't want another version of herself in some other time and some other place to feel this same hollow, hungry pain she carries around all the time.

It's not the kind of suffering she would ever wish on anyone - not even her worst enemy.

"Just a few more left," Hope tells her the following morning, running a concerned eye over the dark circles under Carol's eyes. "We're sending you to 2022 this time."

Carol shoots a weak thumbs up.

"And we'll be with you, okay?" Hope reaches up to tap at Carol's earpiece. "Just say the word, we'll pull you out."

There's a familiar sensation of tugging, and then - Carol opens her eyes to a whole other possibility.

In this universe, Natasha never sets foot anywhere near Vormir. In this universe, Natasha lives past 2023.

Carol watches as her alternate-universe self proposes to Natasha right after the final battle - they've waited around long enough (five years!), and there's no point in waiting around anymore, not when their friends and family and everyone they love is back to celebrate their happiness with them.

She watches the rest of their lives play out like - like scenes from a movie. They move into a small house in New York, just a stone's throw away from the rest of the Avengers, and they get married, and they have a family. A pair of twins from a shelter Natasha had helped run during the five years. She sees her children in an alternate universe grow up and learn to call her 'Mom' and Natasha 'Mama', and attends their first ballet recitals, and then their graduation, unseen. She spies on them as one of the follows her footsteps into the Air Force, and the other one follows Natasha into the re-established SHIELD.

"Carol," she hears Hope murmur softly into her earpiece. "Time's running short. We have to -"

"I know," she says shortly. Her fingers hover over the button that will bring her back into 2026, into a universe where Natasha gave her life to save the world, where she'll wake up everyday to the reality that she, in this one universe, will never see her Nat again.

She turns around - one last look, she promises herself.

And watches as alternate-her bends down slightly to press her lips to alternate-universe-Natasha's temple. It's a gesture so full of tenderness and love, and it rips open every single wound in her heart that she thought she'd buried months ago. She grits her teeth, and stabs angrily at wrist, and the scene dissolves before her eyes as she's yanked forcibly back into the present.

#carolnat #carol danvers #natasha romanoff #carol danvers x natasha romanoff

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itsfinancethings · 4 years

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New world news from Time: A Radical German Program Promised a Fresh Start to Yazidi Survivors of ISIS Captivity. But Some Women Are Still Longing for Help

When Hanan escaped from Islamic State captivity, there wasn’t much to come back to.

She and her five children had survived a year in a living nightmare. After her husband finally managed to arrange their rescue in the summer of 2015, they joined him in a dusty camp in Iraq where he lived in a tent. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) still controlled the territory they called home, and they were unsure if they could ever go back. And Hanan was unsure if she could ever escape the darkness she felt inside.

So when, in the fall of 2015, Germany offered her the promise of safety and a chance to heal from her trauma, it wasn’t a difficult decision. Accepting a place in a groundbreaking program for women and children survivors of ISIS captivity did mean leaving her husband behind in the camp, but she was told he could join her after two years. So she and her children boarded the first flight of their lives, out of Iraq and away from their tight-knit community, in search of safety and treatment for what still haunted them.

Hanan, now 34, was one of 1,100 women and children brought to Germany in an unprecedented effort to aid those most affected by ISIS’s systematic campaign to kill and enslave the ancient Yazidi religious minority. (TIME is identifying Hanan by her first name only for her safety.) Launched by the German state of Baden Württemberg in October 2014, the program aimed to help survivors of captivity receive much-needed mental-health treatment and support. In Iraq, there had been a rash of suicides among the heavily-traumatized survivors, who had minimal access to mental-health care and faced an uncertain future. In Germany, far from the site of their suffering, state officials hoped the women and children could find healing and a fresh start.

But for Hanan, those promises remain unfulfilled. German officials never granted visas to any of the women’s husbands, leaving families, including Hanan’s, indefinitely torn apart. Like most of the women, she’s not undergoing promised trauma therapy. She often thinks about killing herself. The only thing stopping her, she says, is her children.

Not all the women are desperate. Some are thriving in Germany, and others have become global advocates for their community, like 2018 Nobel Prize winner Nadia Murad. She is the most prominent face of a program that was so ambitious and well-intentioned it inspired other countries, like Canada and France, to follow suit. But Hanan’s experience illustrates how parts of the program failed to live up to their full potential, and shows how difficult it is for refugees to gain access to mental health services, even in a program designed for just that. Michael Blume, the state official who led the program, sees it as a “great success” overall. But he is troubled by the state’s failure to bring the women’s husbands to Germany. “A great humanitarian program should not be sabotaged by bureaucracy,” he says. “But that’s what is taking place.”

Before she left Iraq, Hanan said she was given a piece of paper with information about what awaited her in Germany. “I wish I could find that paper now,” she says, “because the promises they gave us, they didn’t keep all of them.”

By the time ISIS swept across Sinjar, the area in northwest Iraq that is home to most of the world’s Yazidis, Hanan had already endured more than her share of hardship. Her parents were murdered in front of her when she was six. She and her two siblings went to live with their grandfather and his wife, where they were beaten, starved, and forced to work instead of going to school. Her baby sister died soon after.

In her early twenties, she escaped the torturous conditions at home by marrying Hadi. It was the first good fortune of her life, she says; they loved each other. Over the course of about seven years, they had four daughters and then a son, who was just a few months old in August 2014, when ISIS captured Sinjar and unleashed its systematic campaign to wipe out the Yazidis.

In conquered Yazidi towns, fighters executed the men and elderly women. Boys were sent off for indoctrination and forced military training. Women and girls were sold into slavery, traded among fighters like property and repeatedly raped. Hanan and her children were among more than 6,000 people kidnapped. Hadi, who was working as a laborer in a city beyond the reach of ISIS when their village was captured, was frantic when he learned his family was gone.

Within days, President Barack Obama launched U.S. airstrikes on ISIS militants, and U.S. forces delivered food and water to besieged Yazidis trapped on Sinjar mountain. In the following months, as Yazidi women and children started emerging from captivity—some escaped, while others were rescued by a secret network of activists—with tales of horror, Yazidis pleaded for more international action. Former captives were severely traumatized. Mental-health care in Iraq was limited. And because the Yazidi faith doesn’t accept converts or marriage outside the religion, the women raped and forcibly converted to Islam by ISIS members feared they were no longer welcome in the community.

In Germany, home to the largest Yazidi population outside of Iraq, officials in Baden Württemberg decided to act. In October 2014, state premier Winfried Kretschmann decided to issue 1,000 humanitarian visas and earmark €95 million ($107 million) for what became known as the Special Quota Project for Especially Vulnerable Women and Children from Northern Iraq. The state recruited 21 cities and towns across the southwestern state to host the refugees, agreeing to pay municipalities €42,000 ($50,000) per person for housing and other costs, while the state would cover the cost of their healthcare. Two other states agreed to take an additional 100 people.

Tori Ferenc—INSTITUTE for TIMESaber, six, and Sheelan, eight, playing on the bed.

Program officials interviewed survivors of ISIS captivity in Iraq, selecting those with medical or psychological disorders as a result of their captivity who could benefit from treatment in Germany. The project was not restricted to Yazidis, and a small number of Christians and Muslims also were chosen. That was when the officials told each woman that after two years, immediate family members like husbands could apply for a visa under German rules for family unification.

Read More: He Helped Iraq’s Most Famous Refugee Escape ISIS. Now He’s the One Who Needs Help

The program was groundbreaking. No German state had ever administered its own humanitarian admission program. And instead of waiting for asylum-seekers to make dangerous journeys across the Mediterranean, officials were seeking out the most vulnerable and bringing them to safety. The first plane arrived in March 2015. The last of the flights—including the one carrying Hanan—landed in January 2016.

Hanan, along with 111 others, was sent to a pleasant hilltop town of about 25,000 people at the edge of the Black Forest. (Officials asked that the town not be named to protect the survivors, whom they fear could be targeted by ISIS members.) For the first three years, she lived with about half of the group in an old hospital in the town center that had been converted into a communal residence.

Hanan and her five children occupied two rooms off a central corridor—one they used for sleeping, and the other, with a sink along one wall and a worn leather sofa along another, as a living room. They shared a bathroom and a kitchen with a large family next door.

“The neighbors are worse than Daesh,” she joked with a grimace, using a pejorative name for ISIS. It was May 2017, more than a year after her arrival. She sat on the floor to breastfeed her youngest child, Saber. At three, he was small for his age, but Hanan was small too. Her long dark hair was pulled back, and she wore a long blue skirt and a dark hoodie. Her next youngest, Sheelan, climbed into a wardrobe in the corner, peeking out from underneath thick black bangs. Haneya, her oldest at 10, and Hanadi and Berivan, eight and seven, were fighting with the neighbor’s children, their shrieks competing with the Kurdish music videos blaring from the television. Hanan yelled at them to stop.

Caring for her five children alone was wearing Hanan out. She was often sick, but found it difficult to go to the doctor because she didn’t have help with childcare. She complained about painful and unresolved gynecological issues from being repeatedly raped. She wanted to go back to the doctor, but she relied on social workers to make appointments for her and said they were blowing off her requests. And most days, she suffered debilitating headaches.

Tori Ferenc—INSTITUTE for TIMEBerivan, Hanan’s 10-year-old daughter, at home.

A trauma therapist came once a week to the shelter for a group session with the women, but Hanan usually wasn’t able to attend because of the children. And she didn’t want to talk about her experiences in front of the other women. When she slept, nightmares came. One night she dreamed she was back in captivity and an ISIS fighter was trying to take her oldest daughter, Haneya. Hanan woke herself and the children up with her screams. The older girls talked about their time in captivity often and sometimes had nightmares too. “They’re not like normal kids,” Hanan said. “When it’s nighttime, they ask me, ‘Mama, do you think Daesh is going to come to get us?’”

A year earlier, around six months after her arrival, that nightmare had become reality. She was out shopping for food when she spotted him. He had trimmed his hair and beard, and exchanged his tunic for a blue T-shirt. But it was him—the ISIS member who had been her captor for a month.

She stared, frozen in place. He saw her, too: His eyes widened in recognition and surprise. Panic shot through her and then her feet were moving, carrying her out of the store and around the corner. By the time she went to the police, he was gone. She said they treated her as if she had mistaken a random refugee for her former tormenter. But she knew what she saw. “How could I forget the face of the man who raped me?”

Germany was supposed to be a sanctuary. Now, inside the old hospital walls was the only place Hanan felt safe. She rarely ventured out, remembering threats from her captors that they would find her if she ran away.

She worried the man she’d spotted might come back to harm them. The only identifying information she could give police was his nom de guerre. And though police were stationed outside the shelter for some time after she made the report, Markus Burger, head of the department for refugees and resettlement in the town’s social office, said his office eventually received a report stating there was no direct threat. The police referred questions about the incident to the federal public prosecutor, and a spokesman for the prosecutor said the office was aware of the incident but could not comment further. At least one other woman in the program saw her own captor in Germany, and she later returned to Iraq because she no longer felt safe.

Hanan couldn’t understand why the police couldn’t find the man. She began to see threats anywhere she went. Muslim people speaking Arabic terrified her. Once at a park with her children, a bearded man on a bench called out to her. Though she had never seen him before, she was afraid. She gathered the children and rushed back to the shelter.

Tori Ferenc—INSTITUTE for TIMEOranges in Hanan’s kitchen.

Yazidis are no strangers to trauma. The religious minority has endured centuries of persecution and attacks, from the Ottoman empire to Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda. Jan Kizilhan, an expert in psychotraumatology and transcultural psychotherapy who was the program’s chief psychologist, was born to a Yazidi family in Turkey and immigrated to Germany as a child. Survivors of ISIS captivity are dealing not only with their own individual trauma from the violence and family separation they endured, he said, but also the historical trauma borne by their people, and the collective trauma from ISIS’s attempted genocide.

But after the women arrived in Germany as part of the program, trauma therapy wasn’t a top priority. At first, most of the refugees were focused on adjusting to life in Germany, said Kizilhan. They were also following the situation back home, where a multinational coalition was wrestling territory away from ISIS. With every victory, Yazidi families waited for news of their missing relatives, hoping they would not be among the bodies discovered in mass graves. Most had family members in camps, and others still in captivity. They weren’t ready to work through past trauma in therapy, because it was still part of their present.

There was another, more basic, obstacle to treatment: Most of the women were unfamiliar with the concept of psychotherapy. “To even help them understand why they would need this or how it would help, it takes time,” said Kizilhan. In many Middle Eastern cultures, including the Yazidi community, psychological trauma is often expressed somatically, he explained — many women complained of a burning liver, headaches, or stomachaches when the root was a psychological, rather than physiological, problem.

In 2017 and 2018, Tübingen University Hospital and the University of Freiburg, which were also involved in psychotherapeutic care for program participants, carried out surveys of 116 of the women in the program. Ninety-three percent of those surveyed fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder during the first survey, and the number remained the same a year later. That makes the fact that just 40% of the women have received trauma therapy, years after their arrival, striking.

But Kizilhan insists the figure does not represent a failure. Some women simply don’t want therapy, he says, and it can’t be forced. He expects that an additional third of the women will be ready for therapy in the coming years. “And then we will be there to help them,” he says. “Each person is individual, different, and needs different timing.” The state decided to cover the cost of the womens’ healthcare indefinitely—initial plans were to foot the bill for three years—after it spent only €60 million ($71 million) of the allocated €95 million ($113 million) on the program.

Kizilhan acknowledges the challenges, including finding enough therapists and translators to work with the women. Kizilhan and Blume, who led the Special Quota project, say the program was an emergency intervention, and that a more long-term solution is building capacity for mental health care in Iraq. The state of Baden Württemberg has put resources toward that, too—donating €1.3 million ($1.5 million) to help establish the first master’s program for psychotherapy in Iraq, started by Kizilhan at the University of Duhok in 2017.

Kizilhan and Blume say the program in Germany has been successful despite the challenges. In the Tübingen University study, 91% of the women surveyed said they were satisfied to be in Germany, and 85% said they were satisfied with the program. When asked if they were satisfied with the psychosocial care, the number who said yes dropped to 72%. Hanan was among those who found it lacking.

Her struggle to access medical care and therapy were two of the ways she felt let down by the program. For her first three years in Germany, Hanan received minimal therapy, even though she wanted it. She rarely attended the group sessions, both because she found them unhelpful and because of the ongoing childcare issues. She said she was not offered individual sessions. Burger said when social workers saw some women were unhappy with group sessions, they arranged for individual therapy, and Hanan began talking with a therapist every few weeks. She said it helped a little, but she felt the same after each session.

***

On a Wednesday in July 2018, Hanan left German class early to shop for food. Before leaving home, she pulled on a fitted black blazer over her beige shirt and leggings. The clothes were new; she had recently cast aside the long, dark skirts and sweaters that she had worn ever since her escape for a more modern wardrobe. Friends had urged her to make the switch, teasing her that she dressed like she was still living under ISIS. Hanan walked to the store, passing traditional timber-frame buildings and window boxes overflowing with geraniums and petunias. She spotted a friend outside the supermarket and stopped to chat before buying chicken legs and vegetables. Managing the family’s budget alone—something she had never done in Iraq—was challenging. Sometimes she didn’t have enough money at the end of the month.

Two years on from encountering her former captor, the town was beginning to feel less threatening, though Hanan still didn’t like going out at night. She attended German language class four mornings a week. She’d never learned how to read or write as a child, so learning German was doubly hard, but she was making slow progress. She was also making a few German friends, and she’d found a way to decipher their text messages even though she couldn’t read. When she received a message, she’d paste it into the Google Translate app and press the audio button. A robotic voice would read it aloud and she’d reply via voice note.

Back at home, she put a pot of rice on the stove and began browning the chicken, preoccupied by the logistics of her upcoming trip to Iraq to visit her husband, Hadi. She’d learned through her social worker that her stipend would be paused while she was away, and Hanan wasn’t sure how she would make it through the month without the money.

It would be the second time she had to travel to see Hadi. (The women were admitted as humanitarian refugees, rather than asylum seekers, which spared them the process of applying for asylum and meant they were allowed to return to visit family in Iraq, unlike asylum holders.) Saber, now four, had spent most of his life separated from his father, and didn’t recognize him. The girls no longer even missed him. He was becoming a faraway memory.

Two and a half years had now gone by since she left Iraq, well past the two years after which Hadi had been promised he could apply for a visa. Hanan’s social worker helped her file papers related to his visa application. But whenever Hanan asked what was happening, she was given the same answer: Not yet.

What she didn’t know was that Germany’s position toward refugees had shifted. The welcoming stance the country adopted when more than a million people poured into the country seeking asylum in 2015 had hardened amid a backlash fueled by far-right anti-immigration parties. When he interviewed the women in 2015, and told them their husbands could apply for a visa after two years, Kizilhan was in line with the rules at the time. But now laws governing refugees and family unification visas were tightened. German courts even began ruling against Yazidis who requested asylum, saying it was safe for them to go back to Iraq.

To date, no husbands of women in the Special Quota Project have received visas. It’s hard to know how many are waiting: Kizilhan says he has identified 18. According to the study, 28 percent of the women surveyed had husbands in Iraq.

Read More: Syrian Women Are Embracing Their New Lives in Germany. But At What Cost?

A spokesman for the Baden Württemberg Ministry of Interior, Digitalization and Migration said that “special rules” apply to family reunifications for those granted humanitarian admission, and may only be allowed “for reasons of human rights, on humanitarian grounds or to protect political interests.” The special rules “must be considered on a case by case basis,” he said, and added the federal authorities are responsible for issuing visas, not the state.

Kizilhan said the ministry could intervene to make sure the family members are issued visas. But the political will behind the creation of the Special Quota Project has evaporated. In January, Kizilhan said he had recently met with state interior ministry officials to ask that they find a way to bring the husbands to Germany, but that they told him the change in federal law made it difficult to do so. “This is ridiculous,” Kizilhan says. “If you can take 1,100 with the special quota, you can take 18 people in one day.”

On trips back to Iraq, Kizilhan said he’s been confronted by husbands demanding answers, and is distressed that the state has not followed through. He notes that bringing the women’s immediate family to Germany would improve their psychological health—the goal of the program—by helping to reduce post-traumatic stress symptoms and easing their integration into society. Hanan often spoke of waiting for Hadi’s arrival to move into an apartment on her own. She was fearful of handling all the responsibilities of living in a new country without him. And she desperately needed help caring for the children, help she thought would be provided in the program. They’d spent a year separated from Hadi in captivity. Now, they were once again separated, once again waiting for their family to be reunited.

Tori Ferenc—INSTITUTE for TIMEHanan braiding her 11-year-old daughter Hanadi’s hair while Berivan, 10 (L) and Haneya, 13 (R) watch.

After Hanan’s visit to Iraq, months went by with no news about Hadi’s visa. They both began to despair that it would ever materialize, their frustration compounded by a dearth of information about the delay.

In the spring of 2019, after waiting three years, Hadi decided he could wait no longer. He borrowed money and set out for Germany along irregular migration routes. It took him eight months—he was detained in Greece on the way—but eventually he made it to Hanan. Their reunion, though, was far from perfect. After his arrival in Germany, the once-happy couple separated. Hanan would not discuss the details of their estrangement except to say that it took root because of their physical separation and left her distraught. He is now in a relationship with another woman and Hanan said he is not in touch with his children. His future in Germany is uncertain, too—it is unclear whether he will be permitted to stay.

Last summer Hanan moved into a light-filled two-bedroom furnished flat rented for her by the municipality in a quiet residential neighborhood. It’s decorated brightly in orange—a peach wall, tangerine dining chairs, an ochre shag carpet, and a sofa the color of carrots. While there’s a bunk bed in the kids’ room, they usually end up sleeping in Hanan’s king-size bed every night, a tangle of arms and legs. She was finally able to see a doctor to resolve her lingering gynecological health problem, although the daily headaches are still there. She’s no longer afraid of going out at night.

On a Sunday morning in January, she awoke late, groggy from hosting friends the night before. Saber, now six, and Sheelan, seven, plopped on the sofa to watch Tom and Jerry on the television as Hanan made bread in the kitchen. Squeezing small lumps off the dough, she quickly slapped each one from hand to hand, stretching it into a thin disc. In Iraq, she would have baked the loaves in an outdoor clay oven. Here, she used a small metal box oven, heated with an electric coil, placed on the countertop. She placed each loaf on top to let it brown, then baked it inside the oven before stacking the finished loaves on the windowsill.

When she was done, the children gathered at the table, scooping up fried eggs, yogurt, tahini, and cheese with the fresh bread. They chattered together in German; they rarely spoke Kurdish with one another anymore. Saber, impish and sensitive, speaks German with a near flawless accent. After breakfast, the three older girls clear the table, wash the dishes, and sweep the floor unbidden. Hanadi, now 11, and Berivan, now 10, both with round cheeks like their mother, are learning how to swim at school. Haneya, now 13, reads and translates the mail and types messages in German for her mother.

“Sometimes I look at my kids and think ‘OK, I’m all right.’ But I just feel bad,” Hanan said, lowering herself onto the sofa. “It’s a bad feeling inside of me, I don’t know how to explain it. Sometimes I want to hit myself, because of this bad feeling inside, and I don’t know how to deal with it. Many times I thought about killing myself, but then I remember my kids, that they need me.”

The situation with Hadi has her so upset she doesn’t think about ISIS anymore, Hanan said, adding that she doesn’t know what to do or where to turn. She’s spent hours crying with a Yazidi friend, another survivor, who lives nearby. That’s the closest she gets to therapy now.

After Hanan moved into the apartment, her therapy sessions ended. A few months later, social workers took her to an appointment at a new therapist’s office, but she hadn’t gone back. She said the appointment time of 7 p.m. was impossible as there was no one to watch the children at home. But she knows she needs help. “It’s too much for me,” she said. “I can’t hold all these problems alone.”

Read More: Is Germany Failing Female Refugees?

Burger, of the town’s department for refugees and resettlement, said that as more of the women moved into private apartments last year—all but 10 now live on their own—it became harder to arrange therapy sessions. Some therapists have waiting lists, and there is always the problem of timing, he said. “It’s difficult finding a time when the trauma therapist and the translator both are available, and also when someone can take care for the children, and when the German classes aren’t at the same time. But we are working on it.” He could not give a number for how many of the women in the town were undergoing therapy, saying it was constantly changing, but said therapy was available to all who wanted it. “We can only offer it,” he said. “In the end it is the decision of the women if they want to take part in the programs, and we don’t want to and can’t force anyone to take part.”

Hanan knows it was right to come to Germany. She’s better off than she would be in Iraq, where despite the territorial defeat of ISIS, most Yazidis are still displaced, and their future is uncertain. She feels safe now in Germany, and she can see bright futures for her children here.

But she can’t muster any of that hope for herself, not after losing Hadi. The darkness she had hoped to escape never went away. “Maybe I’m going to go crazy, or I’m going to kill myself. Maybe I won’t find a solution for myself except to die,” she said. “Now I’m 34, and I didn’t see any hope in my entire life. And for the future also, I don’t have any hope. Only God knows.”

—With reporting by Navin Haji Semo and Madeline Roache

Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from the International Women’s Media Foundation Reporting Grants for Women’s Stories.

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cutsliceddiced · 4 years

Text

New top story from Time: A Radical German Program Promised a Fresh Start to Yazidi Survivors of ISIS Captivity. But Some Women Are Still Longing for Help

When Hanan escaped from Islamic State captivity, there wasn’t much to come back to.

Tori Ferenc—INSTITUTE for TIMESaber, six, and Sheelan, eight, playing on the bed.

Read More: He Helped Iraq’s Most Famous Refugee Escape ISIS. Now He’s the One Who Needs Help

Tori Ferenc—INSTITUTE for TIMEBerivan, Hanan’s 10-year-old daughter, at home.

Tori Ferenc—INSTITUTE for TIMEOranges in Hanan’s kitchen.

***

Read More: Syrian Women Are Embracing Their New Lives in Germany. But At What Cost?

Tori Ferenc—INSTITUTE for TIMEHanan braiding her 11-year-old daughter Hanadi’s hair while Berivan, 10 (L) and Haneya, 13 (R) watch.

Read More: Is Germany Failing Female Refugees?

—With reporting by Navin Haji Semo and Madeline Roache

Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from the International Women’s Media Foundation Reporting Grants for Women’s Stories.

via https://cutslicedanddiced.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/how-to-prevent-food-from-going-to-waste

#Time #top stories #IFTTT #news

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johangraffiti-blog · 5 years

Text

What “them” say about us

“to have a second language is to have a second soul”

- Charlemagne

Introduction

Some roam the dark woods of youtubes outlandish side, the chatforums and craigslist articles in a state of boredom mixed with an emerging need to communicate with someone and unfathomable curiosity. We know these people. They discover groups and digital communes that would rather remain undiscovered. Sometimes joining them, sometimes starting them, but always silently. A double life, no exposure, secrecy. Or thats how it once was. Something happened. Someone must’ve said no. Whatever happened, it happened rapidly - one moment later we have conventions filled with human sized, stuffed - “human-stuffed” - animals (aka the furry-fandom), we have grown women in school-girl outfits imitating a troublingly oversexualised, 15-year old Japanese comic character (cosplay schoolgirl fandom), and we have THEM, who were until recently known as a group of graffiti artists with strange make-up - but there is much more to THEM.

They are by far the strangest creatures among us. Similar to the groups still remaining anonymous somewhere out there in deep, they hide. (The only difference is that they have real big problems following it through). What we knew is that they exist, we’ve seen their lettering online somewhere, sometime. Then, more and more - here and there and suddenly everywhere. Office buildings in London, slums of Kyoto, on a wall 40 meters from Meccas Kaaba. Offline.

Theories about THEM exploded: it was whistleblowers, Rothchilds, the new world order, nazis, aliens seeking world domination, or just another ‘social experiment’ designed by a couple of college students. I was convinced they were a group of spraypainters. It was everything and nothing - it was all smoke and smoke doesn’t disappear until someone opens a window or blows it away.

And then channel 5 the video that went viral. Click here or view below this post

It is the media. Ever since broadcasting had been invented in the 1920s, the media was doomed to pave the way to what intellectuals these days call fake news. Having to face a decrease in popularity due to the internets faster communication methods offline news purposely manipulate information to the extremes - for attention. Attempts to identify the tipper have failed, he is completely undercover. Even in an era of possibilities, it is seemingly impossible to prove his point.

Seemingly, a key point is at disregard concerning this whole issue - whilst everyone is distracted solving the true or false question, no one has confronted the possibility, no ones asked “what if?”. An atmosphere of ignorance is uncovered when we forget that these borderline groups are but bones in our societies anatomy. Broken bones - ones we stopped caring about, forgot and left to rot. This brings me to my key question:

How does a language reflect modern issues? or What “THEM” say about us

Needs, wants and priorities of individual cultures are often represented in their language. It’s vernacular reflects concepts, indicated by the composition of words they chose. The most common example is that of the Inuit, the peoples occupying the Arctics’ frosted wastelands. Their language evidence for their habitat - as it comprises of more than 50 different expressions describing the same thing: snow. No other language, including this one, has such a significant arsenal for describing what is essentially frozen drops of water. Ironically we don’t need to travel that far north to illustrate an argument regarding a plethora of words for the same exact thing. Found in the British Isles, countries known for their predominantly wet and cold terrain, are 100 different dialects for expressing either light, heavy, windy, frosty, brief, sudden or stormy rain. This means, whilst I will be incapable of conveying an equal amount of information about ice or snow in this language as an Inuit may in his, native South Americans, residing in the driest countries on earth, will find themselves in exactly the same situation regarding rain.

What this means in the context of THEM is really quite simple - if the anonymous interviewee is right about the interpretation of their symbols, being all about “escape, anonymity and isolation” then thats what plays a big role to them - it’s their snow.

So, by not paying attention to those in shame, by disregarding the isolated, among us exists a new sort of marginalised group.

This one is not bound by race, faith, sexuality. This one isn’t created by a hierarchy, a border or a shared history. It is international, it is seemingly impenetrable and, paradoxically, even though it is present, it is invisible. And its ways of communicating are scarily similar to a group of people, hidden in the shadows until just recently.

Let us talk about Polari.

Picture central London, 1951. Top hats and pea-coats swarming a densely packed nightclub. Two men stand at the bar, a coy exchange of looks through the sea of hats. The younger approaches the older, lights a cigarette, leans against the bar and politely asks for a drink. Intense eye contact as this moment is decisive - the boy hadn’t asked in a language just anyone would understand. He had asked in a language for people who lived on the margins of British society. He had asked in Polari.

noun: Polari; noun: Palari; noun: Palare

1 a form of theatrical slang incorporating Italianate words, rhyming slang, and Romany, used especially by homosexuals.

Being gay in the 1950’s in Britain wasn’t easy

Personal relationships had been left in shattered pieces following the war - sisters lost their brothers, mothers their children and children their fathers. Around 300.000 British soldiers were killed, 70.000 citizens in airstrikes. Just let that number sink in for a second. The war on terror is good enough reason for some people to avoid airports, trainstations and Christmas markets - 2.977 people died in 9/11, 138 in the bataclan November 2015 Paris attack, 11 in the Berlin Christmas market attack of 2016.

Fear is very real and, by avoiding those places, people still live in fear now.

Imagine the fear felt during the second world war - the rate of casualties feeds on your own hope of mortality. Any hour could be the next, could be the last one you live. So people began living in the moment. One finds himself perhaps experimenting, craving, discovering a new beautiful lust in these apparent last moments of light. Even in the armed forces homosexuality wasn’t frowned upon “with Britain seriously threatened by the nazis forces, weren’t fussy about who they accepted”

(source. 1)

But then, victory, the war was won. Structure rose from the chaos and old values were reasserted. So-called family values, with the traditional heterosexual build-up. The silent generation gave way to the baby boomers, child births were on the rise. What happened in the war stays in the war - and so the wartime indiscretions were pushed under the rug, needed to be forgotten. Among them the new sexual curiosity. Being gay was now a lot tougher than before, in the chaos.

Just 4 years after the war a British survey revealed that the general population was disgusted by homosexuality. Drag was banned until the mid 1950’s, simply sitting around as a cross-dressed man would get you arrested.

In 1963 the number of “homosexual offences” skyrocketed, with over 20 times the amount it was in 1921. More than 2.000 gay men incarcerated for living out their instinctual desires. (source 2.)

It also had something to do with laziness on the polices side, as they were conscious of how easy it was to arrest gay people. Gay people aren’t real criminals - often shy, polite and terrified of being arrested - but generally speaking never violent. It was an easy arrest for any officer trying to avoid a rough situation, hence their name in the Polari language: Betty bracelet. Feminisation of their own character was a common referral in Polari, yet the gay predominantly male community knew the police would deem that new title an insult. The slur was underlined using a clever innuendo, drawing comparison between their handcuffs and womens’ jewellery.

The executive wasn’t the only society the Polari felt rightfully threatened by - leading to the slow fading into the shadows of the their current civilisation. In medical terms, by most professionals of the time, men laying with other men was defined as a mental illness, often resulting from an overly dominant mother. Interestingly enough, one may interpret this belief as a way of enforcing the behaviour of the straight people as well. It would enforce the patriarchy, as a sort of warning to women, not to be overly bold, confident and assertive.

Away from the horribly cruel practice of chemically castrating discovered gay men, a new form of punishment was introduced as the 1950’s continued - aversion therapy. (source 3.

It was dubious to say the least and demonstrated such ignorance of the working ways of the human brain. Men would be shown images of those they loved, those they found attractive or wanted to court whilst being exposed to electrical shocks or vomiting by forcefully injecting substances into their system - a nightmare.

Then there was the media, which built its hatred using police and medical strategies as a foundation. Gays were criminals hence they were ‘evil men’ (source 4.), a connection between them and pedophiles was often drawn - apparently a strong theory as some people actually still believe in this correspondence today. (source 5.) Said theory was another piece of propaganda supporting the conservative family structure, with extra protective responsibility placed upon parents, in fear their children might fall victim to a homosexual.

Concluding, the British government, media, medical profession, the not mentioned church and most importantly the law constructed a prison limiting the self-expression and personal development and completely marginalising the gay community in the mid 20th century. All of this in hopes of eradicating homosexual behaviour - an attempt to stop interaction. A failed attempt.

Polari was born - a way of covering ones footsteps from any and everyone, except the like-minded. Being a reflection of marginalisation in society, Polari and the just recently emerged languages’ differences are mostly legal. Theres no law, except that of vandalism, enforcing this new groups identity. The media is onto them, but instead of portrayal in a purely negative light, THEM are embedded in way too much smoke for us to clearly see what they’re up to. There have been rumors of arrests, but this one again only due to vandalism - theres no actual crime being broken by their sheer existence - not like the British gay community of the post-war era.

So then, why was this comparison made?

Legal boundaries may differ but we still have a group of people here that hide due to their anxieties towards the general societies. Due to whatever reasons, some say loss of jobs caused by automatisation, some say disconnection from real human contact caused by social media and theres a few other theories, these people isolate and seclude themselves, just like the Polari community. A conclusion can be drawn by the parallel established here: like 70 years ago, we, the general society, are at fault for creating this fear.

Another interesting aspect of modern societies is reflected by a newly found type of speech due to technological progress. Communication and technology have always emerged hand in hand. A milestone in the early 1400’s, Johannes Gutenbergs moveable printing press allowed the first ever euro-national mass production of a book in a time of emerging enlightenment, a time when more and more people started to read. Newspapers were published, presenting new forms of communication - headlines, cartoons, editorials, columns; there was new paths to self-express as reading was turning into a form of entertainment for the first time in mans history. A perfect reflection of the then vanishing millennia commonly knows as the dark ages, characterised by a demographic, cultural and economic deterioration.

Broadcasting in the early 1940’s marked the beginning of a time of fast-paced knowledge, wether it was the temperature or recent events in politics - the common citizen knew. Sports commentary, chat shows and news readings were only a few of the new forms of using language introduced - but it was also the birth of many concepts. In a time of increasing surveillance and public safety, citizens raised concerns about allowing these tiny figures on screens into their home - with worries of brainwash, government controlled news and faked moonlandings, the first dystopian novels were born. What Broadcasting reflected in its pure essence is the next form of enlightenment among western humanity, a faster exchange in knowledge, a questioning of what was true and false.

Along came the internet and computers, changing everything. This is where our new groups language comes into play. New conventions were established - abbreviations, emoticons, acronyms. We live in a time that moves faster than any documented era has before. Writing on a keyboard takes a fragment of the amount of work it once did with a pen, or even a feather. What used to be a full letter and then a phone call is now just three abbreviated words on a screen we all carry in our pockets: “wyd” (what you doing?) Tweeting and texting have come along, giving us the most modern forms of new language yet - for the first time being limited to a certain word count resembles the fast paced time of slow attention spans we find ourselves in - something new has to happen, all the time. We have become addicted to the constant feed of information going into us via the world wide web. Everything spreads like wildfire, for the first time in history a new language doesn’t establish itself over centuries but over minutes and hours. We now move and establish fast - just like the new vernacular brought into existence by the unknown. Its roots are seemingly nowhere and everywhere at the same time, just like the internationally famous three letter acronym, “lol”, which has replaced an entire generations digital form of laughter.

Identifying a few of modern societies’ traits via the emergence of “THEM” language lies in the simplicity of analysing the lingual priority - what words are chosen, what does the language revolve around. A fear of society, similar to the forcefully-pushed-underground gay society in the British mid 20th century, demonstrates the severity of what the movement is about: although isolated and in need for escape, they remain independent. They fear us due to reasons that are yet to be verified, yet reasons that have emerged with recent times - otherwise THEM would’ve existed earlier. Guesses are automatisation and therefore the loss of jobs, some say the replacement of warm human relationships by the cold distance of social media - in the end it doesn’t really matter which of these. It was us a society that created a problem and it must be us a society that wakes up from a trance that has created yet another marginalised community. If we take these points into consideration, accept our responsibility and instead of starting yet another witch hunt, get together and actually try to solve a problem we might be able to help. Technology has made us become fast in knowledge but short in attention spans and therefore writing. What we must not forget is that the faster we go and the smaller our words become to make time for other things, the more people can’t keep along with this sort of a pace. They will feel left behind.

Anonymity is easily achieved on the internet, but is that really what we are aiming for? Being put into little groups along the margins of what once was a fully-functioning society in order to hide our faces in fear, rather than accepting our personalities and beginning to love ourselves. As we can see, with modern technology it’s extremely easy to create a new identity, even a new language in the course of minutes, yet fracturing the core of what makes our community - the shared values and morals present through language - will not help us evolve into something greater, but rather something even more distant and isolated than ever before. This is what the emergence of THEM teaches us about ourselves, that is how their language reflects our modern society.

Maybe it was a hoax created by the new world order, perhaps even aliens or another social experiment created by design students. But it does not matter. THEM are a symbol, an x-ray to our societies anatomy showing us the broken bones we did not notice.

Sources

1. Bbc.co.uk. (2019). BBC - WW2 People's War - A Gay Soldier's Story. [online] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/36/a2688636.shtml [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

2. Butler, D. and Freeman, J. (1969). British political facts 1900-1968. London: MacMillan.

3. Glenn smith, Annie bartlett, Michael king, Treatments of homosexuality in Britain since the 1950s, British medical journal, pp.427-9

4. Series of articles released under that name by the Sunday Pictorial in 1952

5. https://www.afa.net/the-stand/culture/2019/01/the-inescapable-link-between-homosexuality-and-pedophilia/)

6. SOLL, J. and Glorioso, A. (2019). The Long and Brutal History of Fake News. [online] POLITICO Magazine. Available at: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/fake-news-history-long-violent-214535 [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

7. Pew Research Center. (2019). Political Polarization. [online] Available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/topics/political-polarization/ [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

8. The National Archives. (2019). Deaths in the First and Second World Wars - The National Archives. [online] Available at: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/deaths-first-and-second-world-wars/ [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

9. BBC News. (2019). Berlin attack: What we know. [online] Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38377428 [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

10. BBC News. (2019). Paris attacks: Who were the victims?. [online] Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34821813 [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

12. Reallycoolblog.com. (2019). Introspection # 32: “Language as a Reflection of Society” – A Really Cool Blog. [online] Available at: http://www.reallycoolblog.com/introspection-30-language-as-a-reflection-of-society/ [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

Boinod, A. (2019).

13. Cultural vocabularies: how many words do the Inuits have for snow?. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/apr/29/what-vocabularies-tell-us-about-culture [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

leonard England, ‘a British sex survey’, international journal of sexology, February 1950, p.153

14. Study.com. (2019). What Are Baby Boomers? - Definition, Age & Characteristics - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com. [online] Available at: https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-are-baby-boomers-definition-age-characteristics.html [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

15. Owlcation. (2019). Johannes Gutenberg and the Printing Press: Social & Cultural Impact. [online] Available at: https://owlcation.com/humanities/Johannes-Gutenberg-and-the-Printing-Press-Revolution [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVqcoB798Is&t=523s

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nothingman · 7 years

Link

Jeff Sessions looks a lot like the Trump administration's Dick Cheney—the evil genius who gets things done.

Under the headline “Trump’s debut as commander-in-chief,” Mike Allen at Axios reported last Friday:

The White House sees this as “leadership week”: the decision to order a missile strike on Syria after its deadly nerve-agent attack on its own citizens, including children; a prime-time announcement to the nation from Mar-a-Lago last night, in which Trump said, “God bless America and the entire world”; his assertive stance on North Korea, with the rogue state testing him by firing a ballistic missile; and meetings with the heads of state of Egypt, Jordan and, continuing today, China.

The whole week went just swimmingly for the White House, with the bombs bursting in air giving Beltway insiders big thrills and compelling them to declare that Donald Trump had finally become president. Apparently ordering airstrikes are a sort of manhood ritual that confers legitimacy on a new president.

The decision to drop the bombs has been widely seen as a result of the Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump faction (aka “Jivanka”) rising in influence as the Steve Bannon wing loses steam, which shows the success of what Allen referred to in another piece last week as “Operation Normal”:

Operation Normal — the steady, loud accumulation of power by Jared Kushner and his allies, at the expense of the more ideological force of hardline ideologues, led by Steve Bannon — keeps winning.

Bannon’s demotion from the from National Security Council was covered as a demotion and therefore cost him juice. Drudge bannered: “BANNON LOSES POWER IN WHITE HOUSE SHAKEUP.”

Since then, Bannon was marginalized by the president himself in interviews with both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, in which Trump acted as if he barely knew the guy. (As I noted on Monday, Trump’s biographers all saw this coming a mile away.)

But Trump’s critics and his fans who are seeing this as the latest evidence of the long-awaited “Trump pivot” are missing the point. Bannon's leaving the White House could very well cause serious political trouble with his right-wing base, but it will make no difference in policy. That’s because Trump has always been a bellicose imperialist, no matter what Bannon may believe about “globalism.” He isn’t building up the military to obscene levels for no reason; he believes the world should do America’s bidding on America’s terms. If “Operation Normal” is encouraging Trump to take an interventionist approach, all the Jivanka forces had to do was remind him that he has promised his ardent followers on the campaign trail that he would “bomb the shit out of ’em.”

When it comes to domestic policy, Bannon’s alt-right agenda is being carried out efficiently by someone who is far more experienced at it. That would be the attorney general of the United States, Jeff Sessions. He’s been talking about white nationalism since Bannon was a fresh-faced college kid listening to the Grateful Dead and rambling on about Arnold Toynbee. And unlike Bannon the political gadfly, Sessions is an experienced bureaucratic infighter.

As the Washington Post reported on Wednesday night, Sessions told Laura Ingraham’s radio listeners that all was going according to plan:

“I’m an admirer of Steve Bannon and the Trump family and they’ve been supportive of what we’re doing,” said the attorney general, who in recent days has unveiled tough policies aimed at illegal immigration and drug crimes. “I’ve not felt any pushback against me or on anything I’ve done or advocated.”

That same article points out that Sessions’ former protégé Stephen Miller has been aligning himself with the Kushner cartel, so even if Bannon goes, there will be a keeper of the flame right there in the White House.

Earlier this week I wrote about Sessions’ decision to disband the Forensic Science Commission, a decision that can only be seen as a desire to convict more innocent people with junk science. But that was just the beginning. On Tuesday, the attorney general traveled to Arizona and declared “This is a new Trump era,” laying out in chilling detail the Justice Department’s draconian new plans on undocumented immigration. He apparently wants to fill up some prisons. Betsy Woodruff of The Daily Beast reported:

All federal prosecutors, Sessions said in his slow Alabama drawl, must now consider bringing cases against people suspected of the “transportation or harboring of aliens.” Those prosecutors must also look to bring more felony prosecutions against some immigrants who illegally enter the country more than once and should charge immigrants with document fraud — which includes using a made-up Social Security number — and aggravated identity theft when they can.

One veteran federal prosecutor told The Daily Beast these changes are generating significant concern.

“It’s fucking horrifying,” the prosecutor said. “It’s totally horrifying and we’re all terrified about it, and we don’t know what to do. The things they want us to do are so horrifying — they want to do harboring cases of three or more people,” the prosecutor continued. “So if you’re illegal and you bring your family over, then you’re harboring your kid and your wife, and you can go to jail.”

While Beltway reporters were all gushing over Ivanka Trump’s emotional appeal for her father to bomb an airstrip, they didn’t notice that right here at home Trump’s administration is turning the country into a dystopian nightmare for immigrants, Muslims and African-Americans. They also didn’t note that Jivanka failed to change the president’s mind about allowing Syrian refugees into the U.S., and quite likely didn’t even address the matter. Apparently that’s just normal now too.

Meanwhile, Sessions has some allies coming on board to help as the Department of Homeland Security announced the hiring of two extremist anti-immigrant advocates and according to the Washington Post has drawn up plans to “assemble the nationwide deportation force that President Trump promised on the campaign trail.”

“This is an administration that very much is interested in setting up that mass deportation infrastructure and creating the levers of a police state,” said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center.

So while everyone applauds the alleged “moderating influence” of Ivanka and Jared — as they encourage Trump to do what he already wanted to do with national security and foreign policy — Jeff Sessions and company are enacting the white nationalist agenda that Bannon pushed on the pages of Breitbart before he joined the campaign. The attorney general is Trump’s Dick Cheney, and he’s not going anywhere.