#the fugitive in barbie world

[quordleona03]

Deputy US Marshal Barbie

"All right, listen up, Barbies, our fugitive has been on the run for ninety minutes. Average foot speed over uneven ground, barring injuries, is 4 miles per hour. That gives us a radius of six miles. What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every dreamhouse, dollhouse, adventure dream camper, horse stables, farmer's market, and Barbie Malibu, in that area. Checkpoints go up at fifteen miles. Your fugitive's name is Ken. Go get him."

[lilithblackwood]

Be honest with me, guys! For the next post or two, which story lore are you guys interested in so far? Because I’m always happy to talk about my works! (Definitely not because I’m needy for people’s opinions about what I write – )

Learn more about them with their summaries underneath the cut!

Witches and Nobility:

es·o·ter·ic

/ˌesəˈterik/

intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest.

Danica is a mysterious young witch who's affiliated with the infamous Edalyn Clawthorne, AKA Eda the Owl Lady. Blessed with incredible magic and a sharp mind, she is a force to be reckoned with.

When a young human girl named Luz Noceda accidentally wanders into the Boiling Isles and joins them to learn how to become a witch herself, Danica soon finds herself swept up in a tidal wave of dark secrets, hidden tales, and a twisted history that could change everything.

What are her reasons for affiliating with a fugitive like Eda? What is her connection to the Emperor's Coven? And what exactly are the full details of her past?

Lotus of Rebirth:

Lan is a soft-spoken and gentle young woman with a unique green thumb. She works part-time as a florist and lives next to a a noodles restaurant called Pigsy's Noodles, alongside an optimistic young boy by the name of MK, who serves as the delivery boy. Despite the demanding work and rough city life, Lan couldn't be any more content with her life.

Her peaceful lifestyle abruptly comes to an end when the Demon Bull King is released from his prison after thousands of years of imprisonment. The trouble seems to grow when MK is chosen to be none other than the successor of the famous Monkey King himself, as he is the one to wield his mighty staff.

Join Lan as she helps MK on his journey to become the next Monkey King, tasked with protecting humanity against the forces of evil. But it won't be easy...

Something is stirring behind the scenes.

Something that could change the world itself for the worse.

And it may have something to do with Lan's powers and these strange dreams she has been having lately...

𝕎𝕆ℕ𝔻𝔼ℝ𝕃𝔸ℕ𝔻.𝔼𝕏𝔼:

Barbie's very first memory was waking up in the Amazing Digital Circus, an eccentric virtual circus world filled with never-before seen wonders and horrors alike, all under the control of the bizarre ringleader Caine.

At first, it's a dream come true. But there's just one problem.

Every human that enters this virtual world is not only forever trapped in their digital avatars, but face the risk of "Abstraction": the moment when someone finally reaches their breaking point from the insanity of their eternal imprisonment.

Join Barbie and the others as they struggle to survive and escape their new home with the threat of insanity looming over their shoulders, along with something far more sinister working behind the scenes of the program trapping them.

...but it looks like Barbie is not who...or rather, what she appears to be.

And she doesn't seem to be very keen at the thought of escape.

[capybaraonabicycle]

Barbie movie - classifying the Doctor, Master and some companions

The question has arisen in me and on my dash yesterday whether the Doctor (or the Master) is Barbie or Ken. Now, obviously, by main character / importance to the plot criteria, all incarnations plus most companions are Barbies. But let's organise them by a funnier question:

Do they have enough of a job to be considered a Barbie?

(I still haven't seen that much of series 1 & 2, so please take 9 and 10 with a grain of salt. Also, I have obviously forgotten about several jobs because so often the Doctor just pretends to have a job for convenience sake. Which doesn't count except if they really indulge in it.)

9: Ken. No job, only trauma. Rose is the Barbie in this duo, working in retail.

10: Ken. No job and prettily pathetic, perfect for a Ken. That said, Rose has evolved into a bit of a Ken as well by now. I don't reckon working in a school cafeteria is enough of a job considering how little enthousiasm she shows. Later, Martha is absolutely the Barbie to this Ken, working in a shop, as a maid, for UNIT and as a doctor/medical student. I think Donna is a bit of a Ken too, considering how she feels about her job but evolves into Temp Barbie once she realises the worth of her work experience.

John Smith: Teacher Barbie

Professor Yana: Scientist Barbie

Simm!Master: Prime Minister Barbie, look at him go! Later, when posing as Mr. Razor he evolves into a Ken though; watching TV with Bill while planning to betray her is not a job.

11: Barbie. He works in a shop and as a caretaker and in Craig's workplace and for the US President and he even has a desk at UNIT. Always has the time of his life in a new profession. All of his companions are Barbies, too.

War: Ken. No jobs left in the universe, no Barbies left either.

12: Barbie. Works as a caretaker, for UNIT, as a professor and as president of the world. Even has his own plane. Clara is a Teacher Barbie, Bill is a Student and Cafeteria Worker Barbie and Nardole is the Ken to them. He does have a job but the description is 'annoy the Doctor' which is a very Ken-like job.

Missy: Ken. The Nethersphere is not a job, it's a hobby. And then she spends most of her time imprisoned.

13: Ken. Doesn't have an actual job and openly refuses re-employment by Division. Grace is a Barbie and Dan is a Volunteer Barbie (and almost a Museum Guide Barbie). I think Ryan and Graham start off as Barbies (Mechanic Barbie and Busdriver Barbie) and end up as Kens, defending the Earth. Yaz is a Police Barbie. She had the potential to become a happy Ken with 13 but her insisting on bringing up her former job until into Flux kinda ruined that in my eyes. Maybe she manages to become a Ken in her support group.

Dhawan!Master: Barbie. MI6 Agent, Officer, Seismologist, Advisor of the Tsar- we barely see him without a new job; it's like he collects them.

Fugitive Doctor: Ex-Division Operative Barbie. Desperately trying to become a Ken but hasn't quite been able to shake off the old persona yet.

[lindsaywesker]

Good morning! I hope you slept well and feel rested? Currently sitting at my desk, in my study, attired only in my blue towelling robe, enjoying my first cuppa of the day.

Welcome to Too Much Information Tuesday.

NASA's top priority this decade is probing Uranus.

The word ‘scumbag’ actually means ‘used condom’.

More iPhones are sold every day than people are born.

Music can repair brain damage and returns lost memories.

Laughter has been medically proven to help people lose weight.

People earning over £14,000 a year are the richest 4% on the planet.

Summer on Neptune lasts for 40 years but the temperature is minus 200°C.

The human nose can recognise over 1,000,000,000,000 different smells.

Bolivia has a 5,000 man strong navy. What Bolivia does not have is a coastline.

22% of Americans claim to attend religious services weekly. Only 3% actually do.

When a girl says, "It's not you, it's me," studies have found it's probably you.

There are enough empty homes in China for everyone in the UK to have one each.

The offspring of two sets of identical twins are legally cousins but genetically siblings.

Men have nipples because every foetus is female until the Y chromosome kicks in.

Girls in the UK have been getting higher grades than boys at school and university for nearly a century.

Japan’s poo museum features a giant inflatable poo that erupts miniature toy-poos every 30 minutes.

Psychology says that comparing yourself to others is the root cause for feelings of unhappiness and depression.

Lamborghini cars were invented when the Lamborghini tractor company was insulted by the creator of Ferrari.

In Russia, a brown bear that was abandoned as a cub and raised by humans has recently started a modelling career.

Robots gave a press conference in Geneva last week. They promised that they will not steal people’s jobs or rebel against humans.

The island of Luzon in the Philippines has a lake, which has an island in it, which has its own lake, which has its own small island in it.

A single sperm has 37.5MB of DNA information in it. That means that a normal ejaculation represents a data transfer of 1,587.5TB.

After two weeks of wear, a pair of jeans will have grown a 1,000-strong colony of bacteria on the front, 1,500–2,500 on the back and 10,000 on the crotch.

Samoa and American Samoa are roughly one hundred miles from each other but, because of time zone borders, Samoa is twenty five hours ahead of American Samoa.

There is a restaurant in New York that only employs grandmothers as their chefs. The menu is set by the grandmother in charge that night and consists of her family recipes.

Mark Twain absolutely hated Jane Austen. He wrote to a friend, “Every time I read ‘Pride And Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin bone!”

Netflix spent over $30 million on development costs for their ‘Masters Of The Universe’ movie before cancelling it. Meanwhile, they claim they don’t have enough money to pay actors & writers fairly.

During World War II, nutritionists Elsie Widdowson and Robert McCance meticulously researched a protein poor diet that allowed you to eat as much potato, veg and wholemeal bread as you wanted. The volunteers stayed fit and healthy, but their poos got bigger by 250%.

In the 19th century, slaveholders in the US became aware that enslaved people were escaping to Mexico. In response, the US attempted to get Mexico to sign a fugitive slave treaty, but Mexico refused, insisting that all people were free once they set foot on Mexican soil.

In 2000, Mattel sued MCA, the recording company of the band Aqua, over the song ‘Barbie Girl’ and the use of a shade of pink, trademarked by Mattel. MCA sued Mattel for calling them a “bank robber”. The judge dismissed both cases concluding, “The parties are advised to chill.”

Dr. James Barry was an accomplished British military surgeon in the 19th century. After he died in 1865, it was discovered that Barry was biologically female. Born Margaret Ann Bulkley, she had lived her adult life as a man to pursue a medical career, a path not available to women at the time. Barry's contributions to medicine, particularly in military hygiene, are still respected today.

In 2010, 15-year-old Joshua Davies beat his girlfriend to death with a rock after his friend jokingly said that he would buy him breakfast if he killed her. Two days before the murder, Davies texted his friend. The message read: 'Don't say anything, but you may just owe me a breakfast'. In court, the boy who placed the bet told the jury he thought it was only a joke, and that the defendant 'was messing about'. Davies was eventually sentenced to a minimum of 14 years in prison.

Okay, that’s enough information for one day. Have a tremendous and tumultuous Tuesday! I love you all.

[tariqchosenone]

Parable of the black and white serpent race of humans

Once upon a time there was a black serpent race of people and a white serpent race of people.

The black and white serpents attacked the black hebrew royalty of God and humbled the daughters of Israel by slinging dung on their feet.

Praise the Lord for the black daughters of Israel will have clean hands and feet Perfumed with gucci and versace on their waist and sunglasses.

The black woman shall wear the sapphire and emerald and be blessed, the the female white serpent shall be servant to the black hebrew queen.

The white male serpent is a cunning hunter, he shall hunt with the gps and use the spear and axe to cut down the trees of knowledge that deceived the human Eve who fell in love with I the original serpent.

See I am he the original serpent of legend and myth, I am original deceiver and I created the seduction of pleasant fruits for women and I created the rizz of pleasant pomegranates and spiced wine.

Behold the baby serpents shall play in the Lion's den and slay the creeping things and have dominion over the unclean animal.

But the Lion of Judah, the Lamb of revelation is king of kings and Lord of Lords. The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is crowned right beside me.

The Lamb is the root of David but I deceived the woman who was married to the root of David, Therefore my power shall not be put down to the pits of hell.

Hell shall consume the whore with a everlasting furnace of fire and eat the whores flesh.

The serpent will caress the whore with mercy and the wrath of God will tread the winepress of the destruction of the sword.

The little girl will eat her father's bread and puke out dung on her father's lap.

The little boy will play with the barbie and the barbie shall come to life and become the young boys master.

The gay man will burn in fire and his burning desires for swords will slay him ever continually and he will be filled with love and affection of the serpent.

Behold the woman shall have multiple horns of love similar to the goat and the ram. Ariana Grande will be the queen of giving out the goat horn in ram to the sons of men.

Beyonce shall serve Ariana Grande for this is God's will. All the great women will bow down and be fill their pouches with large black stones.

These black stones will fall in the holes of the 7 mountains.

Behold God's throne is location within the coals of fire and Lucifer did walk through the fires of the pit with beauty and majesty.

Lucifer shall serve the original serpent for he is worthy of young pleasant fruit and pure white female serpents of the the veterans soldier's seed.

Are serpents supposed to be deceivers and liars and violent? The serpent is a sword of God who causes destruction on the wicked and the righteous alike.

The serpent will be merciful to the vagabond and fugitive for they are worthy of eating pleasant bread and drinking strong drink.

Cain the first murderer of the human race is not a serpent is it not written that he is the second son of Adam and Eve.

Remember the humans of Adam and Eve and the serpents of the old days are both creations of God and they are similar in appearance and personality but the serpent is a force of destruction that shoots the bow and arrow and handles the spear with a fierce hand and mighty strength.

These things will shortly come to pass very soon, remember is it not written in the book of Ecclesiastes that 1000 years is 1 day to the Lord, thou must be patient and tarry in thy house or mansion with the patient and faith of God's saints.

The black and white serpent will end racism and be brothers and sisters again, and the men and women who are faithful serpents to God will have crowns of gold on their horns.

[pianotuna]

Characters: Eric / Nutcracker and Clara Stahlbaum / Sugar Plum Princess

Media: Barbie in the Nutcracker (2001)

Voiced by: Kirby Morrow and Kelly Sheridan

Setting: 1800s, Germany / Parthenia

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

[0w0bean]

A biased review of every Barbie movie, in no particular order

Starting with 2001's Barbie and the Nutcracker

The animation itself is a tad bit stiff and odd, but not necessarily bad in anyway, it is the first 3D Barbie movie. The characters move like dolls, which actually really fits with the movie. They also look like the dolls you'd have been able to find in stores. Some of the movement animations are a bit weird, like running animations and jumping.

The voicing is actually pretty good. Kelly Sheridan as Barbie/Clara, Tim Curry as the Mouse King, Kirby Morrow as the Nutcracker/Prince Eric. The voices all fit their respective characters quite well. Not very much to say about it.

The are a couple holes in the story of the movie. Clara and the Nutcracker find these 2 little kids, they take them in so they can find a safe place for them. While being chased by a fully armed troop of mice, the group is rescued by a camp of tree dwelling fugitives, chased out of their homes by the Mouse King's army. Given that the village the children were found it is the only village in that area we (the watchers) are aware of, it wouldn't be unjustified to assume that the kids should at least recognize the people that had fled. But apparently not.

Clara realized that the Nutcracker is, in fact, the prince, who is hiding his identity from everyone because he wasn't really a good prince in the peoples' eyes. Though, it wasn't really hard for her to figure it out.

Eric and Clara get a cute bonding scene together after setting free a swarm (idk what to call it) of fairies. The scene was cut short by a "rock giant" interrupting. The group, our main 2 accompanied by 2 from the camp, Major Mint and Captain Candy sled across a frozen ocean.. sea..? Lets go with large body of water, on a horse drawn sleigh. Eric stabs the ice with his sword and the Rock Giant falls right through.

Just as the group is about the give up and turn back, in fear of the ice melting before they make it to land, the horse sees something, inciting Clara to walk in that direction. Finding the island that they believe to be home to the Sugar Plum Princess.

Turns out it wasn't, Eric, Mint, and Candy got captured and brought back the the Mouse King's castle, leaving Clara stuck on the island. The fairies she helped free helped her back to the main land by carrying her on a swing made of, like, a single vine.

She find her 3 friends, frees them. They all go fight the Mouse King, Eric hits his wooden head while protecting Clara, she freaks out, thinking he's, like, actually hurt, giving him a kiss, he catches a case of the blue glowies, and turns back to the prince.

Major Mint, who genuinely didn't realize he was shit talking the prince TO HIS FACE is like

"The prince! e- ooo- the prince" Pulling his hat down to cover his face, realizing he was shit talking the prince TO HIS FACE. And I'm kind of living for it.

Clara takes human Eric's hand and SHE catches a case of the PINK glowies and BOOM! Fancy hair and dress.

Turns out she was the Sugar Plum Princess!

All the people the Mouse King (who had jumped into a sewer drain by this point) had turned to stone turned back from stone. Cheered for the prince, they all danced. Major Mint and Captain Candy danced together, I think there was some break dancing? Clara and Eric danced together. Everyone was happy.

Me during their dance, "Is... is his leg ok? I'm not sure legs are supposed to bend like that?"

The world is healed, everything returns to how it was before the Mouse King. They 2 finish their dance, everyone cheers for them. Eric asks Clara to stay with him, and be queen. She agrees, but the Mouse King steals her magic necklace, forcefully sending her home. Eric proclaims his love for her and she disappears. Probably traumatizing all the kids that were watching at the time.

But, worry not, the power of LOVE conquers all and Clara meets a King that was a friend of her Aunt. And everyone lived happily ever after.

Ok, but in all seriousness, it was a cute movie. I don't have the nostalgia many others do, and I was never a fan of Christmas movies when I was little. And It came out before I was born, so that may have also been a factor.

If you like Barbie and haven't seen this one, I recommend watching it.

[mercurial-madhouse]

What you’ll find in my fics: OT5, always Louis, magic, ridiculous amounts of snark, a spin on popular tropes, so much banter, romance, soulmates, action/adventure, angst, thrills, plot twists, and happy endings.

∾

Three Days in February | E | 188K 

Action/Adventure | Angst | Happy Ending | Magical Realism | Larry

How close is too close?

Harry and Louis are about to find out after a drunken night leaves them cursed. With two minds inside one body, the countdown is on to fix things before Louis’ uninhabited body turns irreparably cold to the bone. Oh, and Harry just has to keep his long-time crush on Louis a secret while the lad is literally in his head. Easy, right?

Link to the rebloggable fic post here.

∾

Interlude: One Night in March | E | 10K

Smut | Angst | Humour | Magical Realism | Larry

The curse has been broken, Harry and Louis finally got together, and the boys are just happy to be back to normal.

Things are normal now, right?

Link to the rebloggable fic post here.

∾

FRACTURED | G | 666 words

Angst | Supernatural Elements | Magical Realism | Louis-centric | Larry

Louis can't escape a past that won't let him go.

Link to the rebloggable fic post here.

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Event Horizon | M | 4K

AU - Soulmates | Magical Realism | Soulmarks | Dark & Angst | Intense | Actually has Happy Ending

Event Horizon (noun): the boundary of a black hole beyond which nothing, including light, can escape; the point of no return.

∾

Celebrated as the youngest soulmates to ever find each other, the world sees Harry and Louis as one. But one body was never meant to hold the magic of two.    

Link to the rebloggable fic post here.

∾

The fic where Harry calls Louis an idiot for ten days straight because he is one. | M | 17K

AU | Christmas | Angst & H/C | Soft & Fluff | And Clifford \o/

They’ve found the perfect get away from their busy lives as nationally-famous footie player and well-respected restaurant critic, escaping to the isolation of a cabin in the woods where they can simply be Louis and Harry.

If only both were actually here.

A gift forgotten in London, the untameable force of the weather, and the scent of burnt snickerdoodle biscuits find Harry and Clifford pitifully alone and Louis… Where is Louis?

Link to the rebloggable fic post here.

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PROMETHEUS RISING (Prologue to Love After the End of the World)| 5k | M | 

Soulmates AU | Dystopian/Post-Apocalyptic | Zouis FWB | Endgame Ziam/Larry | TW - Blood and Violence | Angst | Hurt/Comfort

Zayn’s had two months to adjust to the darkness that swallowed the world whole. The tie of soulmates isn’t needed when he can read Louis as easily as the safeguarded books they carry, a bond that crystallizes every time he watches Louis’ six.

They survive in silence and shadow, but even the best laid plan burns under the relentless glare of the enemy spotlight. Desperate to claw their way back to the light, how much is Zayn willing to risk when the collateral is a life he never meant to gamble.

Link to the rebloggable fic post here.

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Take Me Everywhere | 25k | T&Up | 

A co-writing adventure with the incredible Zanni!

Life Size/Barbie AU | Fluff | Humor | Light Angst | Happy Ending

Louis’ life moves a mile a minute as a growing pop-sensation. He’s used to the joyful screaming of fans as they catch sight of him on the boardwalk and the blinding lights of cellphones snapping his every move, it’s part of the whole ‘famous’ thing he literally signed up for. What he’s not used to is his little sister’s Ken doll (m’names Harry, the boy insists) coming to life. Now Louis’ stuck trying to find a way to keep Harry out of sight and get him back into his box before people recognize his bright eyes and wide smile as the picture perfect boyfriend being sold in every toy aisle. The worst part? Harry was literally made to be the perfect boyfriend. And he’s pretty.

Louis’ a little more than fucked.

Link to the rebloggable fic post here.

∾

Love After the End of the World | 158K | E

Soulmates AU | Dystopian/Post-Apocalyptic | Zouis FWB | Larry/Ziam | TW - Blood and Violence | Angst | Hurt/Comfort

Society shattered when all electricity suddenly cut off across the globe, plunging the world into darkness. Now, Prometheus Industries is the sole remaining supply of power, a saving grace to those who survived Lights Out. As fugitives in no-man’s land struggling to break into Prometheus HQ, death lurks around every corner for Louis and Zayn. Things get complicated when a routine recon falls apart and Louis collides with Harry and his mates Niall and Liam, survivors with their   own agenda.

When staying alive is already a constant battle, the   deadliest weakness is to be in love. For Harry and Louis, finding each   other sits on top of the endless list of What Else Could Go Wrong.

Link to the rebloggable fic post here.

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When the dust settles (Will we be alright?) | 3K| M

AU - A/B/O | Larry | Alpha!Harry | Omega!Louis | Friends to Lovers | Sexual Tension | Pining

A drabble-turned-ficlet in honor of the brilliant prompt: Male omegas are practically extinct. Most were eradicated due to their magical abilities, leading alphas to fear and envy them and declare civil war. A few hundred years have passed. Louis is a late bloomer, waiting to present as a beta… things don’t go as planned.

Link to the rebloggable fic post here.

[sourwolfstories]

road trip fic rec list

Camaro ‘68 by ZainClaw

Derek huffs, arching one eyebrow. "I'm not a fugitive."

"You look like a fugitive," Stiles insists, practically beaming. "Maybe you should start wearing cardigans."

In which Stiles is a hitchhiker and Derek a runaway whose paths cross at a gas station in the California desert.

Come with Me and Walk the Longest Mile by DevilDoll

"Stiles shouldn't accept rides from werewolves he meets behind abandoned convenience stores." In which the zombie apocalypse is just one of their worries.

like real people do by allhalethekings

“There’s nothing in Nebraska, Stiles. It’s Nebraska,” Derek rolls his eyes but takes the exit anyways.

Stiles vibrates in his seat, grinning widely. “There’s an air and space museum, Derek! Cheer up, buck-o, it’s kite flying day!”

Derek rolls his eyes fondly and pulls into the museum parking lot. He’ll deny it to his dying day but Stiles was right; flying kites was really fun.

-

Or, the one where Stiles agrees to drive Derek back to New York and grossly underestimates how hard it'll be to leave him there.

These are the days that bind us together by trilliastra

Laura chose a big and comfortable apartment in Chicago because she thought they deserved it. Derek mostly did what she decided and although he never really enjoyed studying, it was something to do with his time.

-

In which Stiles volunteers to go to Chicago with Derek and it's awful. (Except it isn't).

Fools Rush In by origamifrogs

"Stiles wakes up in his hotel bed in Las Vegas, sticky eyes blinking open to the sight of a stranger sleeping beside him.

A stranger who is male.

And naked.

Stiles promptly falls out of bed."

Or, the one where Stiles and Derek get drunk in Las Vegas, accidentally get married, go on a road trip, and find love along the way.

Move A Mountain by ZainClaw

Stiles goes camping with his friends in New Mexico after graduation where they befriend a biker gang led by Derek: a guy whom Stiles can’t decide if he will be either relieved or devastated to never see again once their week is up.

I’ve Been Everywhere With You by Leslie_Knope

“Dude, you should totally come with me.”

“What? Like on the road trip?"

“No, come with me. To Austin. Get out of Beacon Hills.”

Derek paused. “What?” he asked again.

Fucked Up People (Cling Together) by linksofmemories_archive

“Can we stop at a non-fast food restaurant?” Stiles asked. “Like a place where we sit down and they take our order and then bring us the food?”

“Sounds like a date.”

“It’s not a date.”

“I know,” Derek said. “I was kidding.”

“I know you were kidding.”

“It didn’t sound like you knew I was kidding.”

“Well I knew that you were.”

Inertia by apocryphal

The last thing Derek and Cora are expecting to find outside their motel room is a gaunt Stiles Stilinski, lacrosse bag on one shoulder and the weight of the world on the other.

Let’s Get Lost by gottalovev

Tragedy strikes and Derek would do anything to help Stiles get better. If that means leaving town together with no specific destination in mind? So be it.

Riders on the Storm by CricketsInTune

When the zombie apocalypse sweeps across the U.S., the Beacon Hills pack is disbanded, leaving Stiles alone in a town filled with the undead. When he finds Derek, all they can do is keep moving, keep surviving, because they may some of the last survivors left. They find out just how much they really need each other on their cross-country road trip that leads to home in more ways than one.

I Am Afraid of the Water by Sonder535

"Lies or honesty?" Stiles asked Derek after they sat there for a minute, both absorbing the poem.

"Honesty. Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it doesn’t, but at least it actually exists. I don’t have time for false things anymore.” Derek spoke like he was wounded, but recovering.

"You're a lot braver than me," Stiles confessed. He also yawned.

or

The road trip au where Stiles runs away, has a lot of anxiety, meets a group of strangers, and travels the West Coast on a RV with a Barbie-themed paint job.

A Slight Distraction by otter

Derek's parents pick up a hitchhiker. Laura is completely horrible. Everything turns out better than expected.

To Fall As Bodies Fall, For Dead by augopher

Fortune favored the prepared, or at least that's what Stiles always believed. Never did he think the emergency supplies he'd accumulated in the event of a major disaster would ever be used.

When the world goes to hell thanks to a catastrophic outbreak, their small group of survivors has to make it halfway across the country where Gerard Argent apparently built an apocalypse-proof homestead (Leave it to that horrible man to be paranoid enough before his death for it to benefit them after it).

The road won't be easy, especially because there are almost a thousand miles separating him from college and Beacon Hills. He has no intentions of letting that stop him. He was nothing if not determined.

Can everyone make it to Iowa alive, and what will it cost them along the way?

Looking for Adventure in Whatever Comes Our Way by Onlymystory

Cora, Isaac, and Stiles want Derek to be the driver on a road trip to check out colleges. Ten days in the car with his sister, beta, and the eighteen year old that Derek is still trying to convince himself he's not in love with? This should go well.

[bulletjourneyy]

Peacefully Yours

This article was written for the Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Writing Competition 2017, where I received a Silver Award.

Guns blazing, hearts racing,

War-torn bloodshed, people dying,

I see no black or white,

But a white flag seen shall end the strife

I am Peace, Peace am I.

 As I sit on my desk overlooking the Arabian Sea, my 15-year-old mind ponders and almost collapses with the news of the terror attacks in Syria and the rest of Europe.  I feel desensitized but not because I don't care. It's because I care too much to comprehend the languid, apathetic convictions of humans. So I write to you, my Lord.

 Dear Lord Shiva,

 Fourteen years ago, I learnt to say my first word. I was surrounded with nothing but the four narrow walls of my house, abundant in love, peace, and joy. From that day on, a little voice chorused, ‘Mamma, mamma,’ all day, gradually moving onto more words. Little did I know that peace did not exist everywhere, and its serenity enshrined very few. Just outside the four walls existed peace’s enemies: hatred, anger, war.

 Ten years ago, I asked my grandmother if Mumbai was her `native place’ a la birthplace. Grandma, with misty eyes, described her majestic home in Hyderabad, Pakistan. Thoughtfully and slowly she told me about how the Hindus migrated to the `Indian region’ and why the relationship between the two neighboring countries continues to be plagued to date. It was then that I learnt that peace was a phenomenon, an ambiguity. I learnt that there was no clear definition of it and many interpreted peace differently.

 Nine years ago, I saw terror for myself. My own locality, in the iconic South Mumbai, was taken hostage by terrorists. I could see them through my window. I could hear gunshots fired through the night. People I knew, lost their lives succumbing to terror. I saw brave commandos being air dropped to fight the terror and regain peace. The remains were bullet holes, riots, streams of blood and lost souls. It was one of the worst events in Mumbai on 26/11.

 Six years ago, on May 2, the news was flooded with the news of the assassination of Al-Qaeda Emir: Osama Bin Laden. The world was joyous. They believed that peace had finally arrived. But had it? Peace was then a topic of discussion in my school and I was of the opinion that not all bloodshed brought peace.

 Two years ago when I visited West Bengal; a state in which I naively thought peace prevailed because I knew my parents would never take me to someplace dangerous. I was traveling with my friends and our parents. Suddenly our bus stopped to get a cup of  ‘chai’ and some ‘samosas,’ and `puchkas’ that were said to be the specialty of that place. I looked out, watching as my beloved mamma went to get some tidbits for me to eat. I watched on as men in uniform quizzically stopped my mother. I had always been taught that police brought peace and the men in uniform were police. I watched on as they questioned her and as my mother covered her head with her ‘dupatta’ and then quickly edged her way back into the bus, urging the children to duck and hide. I, uninformed of my surroundings, wondered what was happening. As soon as all was good, the bus moved and we continued to the airport, where we would fly home.

 When I came home, I asked my mamma who those men were and why she was so scared of them. She said, “My little girl, those were the Naxalites who have Marxist roots in their heart. They are a growing insurgency in India who attack the common man and celebrities to garner attention to their opposition of a democratic government since the Indian Government views them as the greatest internal threat to security. They follow a twisted version of communism.” The little girl who was almost a young girl was aghast by this war, a war, which was waged in the name of peace and rights but caused only destruction.

 War. Terror. Hatred. Destruction. Love. Peace. Joy. Care. They all stem from the same persona but have an uncanny similarity to diabolically conflicting personas. Dear Enlightened Shiva, why must there be war for what could be solved through peace? Why is there sorrow when there could be joy? The Naxalites believe in a form of communism but India has socialism stated in the preamble and communism is a form of socialism. So why can they not coexist? The Naxalites are fighting for rights, which have differing ideologies. Should we not give it to them? Are they bringing peace? Are they violating their rights? Are we, the ‘citizens of India’ violating their rights? The Constitution of India states that every person has the right to follow what he or she believes and propagate it as long as it does not harm the national interest. Are they harming the national interest? You know, when I was in kindergarten, they taught us to be brave, to take risks and to fight for what we thought was right. Are the Naxalites not fighting for what they believe in? On the other hand, maybe it’s not the mindset that is the problem; it’s the violence and the means to gain peace. Maybe they are overstepping the `boundaries’.

 Oh, Supreme Shiva, the Gita teaches us that peace is not just about the environment around us; it is also about having peace within us. It feels like having that constant equilibrium with yourself and also the rest of the world. We, the educated` us’, who have been taught by Gandhi to fight through `Non-Violence’, are propagating warfare, when we should be promoting peace. Instead of finding new ways to bomb countries with nuclear weapons, is there no way to utilize and harness nuclear power to fight the fuel crisis? These days, newspapers may as well be trauma harbingers, since they are a source of finding deceit and anger through unethical acts of thievery, murder, racial and caste discrimination.

Even at a political level, peace is evitable. We have the United Nations, but there is only so much in their jurisdiction before they are liable to ‘exceeding their mandate.’ The Dalai Lama propagates Buddhist values of peace, love, and relationships.  India is willing to face the Chinese wrath to house the Dalai Lama, who is a ‘fugitive’ according to the Chinese because India is a land of spiritual beliefs and Dalai Lama’s beliefs are in resonance with the land. Once again I see conflicting `Peace’ around me.

 Peace. Five letters. One syllable. Yet it holds the whole world at ransom. Every day we are fighting against things that we do not even know the extent of. These issues are sensitive: racial discrimination, domestic violence, and discrimination against women, humanitarian crises, and so many others. When we were in kindergarten, they gave us a toolbox, with flashcards in it. They called it the ‘Toolbox of Peace.” There was a bandage, to represent kindness, a tissue, to show empathy, schoolbooks, to emphasize education, a figurine of a mother kissing her child to show love and care, Barbie dolls of different colors to enunciate open-mindedness and social inclusion. But that brings me to my next point. Maybe the toolbox of peace has some new inclusions that we are unaware of now, a new ingredient to the magic potion. Or it may remain an illusion. The author, George Orwell once said, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” Maybe he was right. “

 Dear Reverend Shiva, you are omnipresent. Do you have any answers?

 Love you dearly,

 Your little, big girl.

 I folded the letter into an envelope and kept it under my mattress. I believe that someday Lord Shiva will give her me the answers because my mother wasn’t able to give me any.

 Fight for me with non-violence

Fight for me with education

Fight for me with valor

Fight for me because I am your savior

Your knight in shining armor, I am peace.

 Note: Lord Shiva is the Destroyer of all that is evil. He is a part of the Hindu Holy Trinity, consisting of him as well as Lord Vishnu (the Preserver) and Lord Brahma (the Creator). Together they are said to create and restore peace while destroying evil.  

[whatisonthemoonarchive]

Tom Ward was a CIA operative, working with Nazi Klaus Barbie, to conduct a coup in Bolivia

“In another case, Moon's organization reportedly helped finance a coup--orchestrated by right-wing paramilitaries, cocaine cartels, and fugitive Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie“ https://newrepublic.com/article/115512/unification-church-profile-fall-house-moon “Barbie’s CIA contact during this period, according to Der Spiegel, was Tom Ward, an employee of CAUSA, the political arm of the Moonies.“ https://fair.org/extra/klaus-barbie-the-businessman/

“A month after the Cocaine Coup, General Garcia Meza participated in the Fourth Congress of the Latin American Anti-Communist Confederation, an arm of the World Anti-Communist League. Also attending that Fourth Congress was WACL president Woo Jae Sung, a leading Moon disciple.

As the drug lords consolidated their power in Bolivia, the Moon organization expanded its presence, too. Hermann reported that in early 1981, war criminal Barbie and Moon leader Thomas Ward were seen together in apparent prayer.

On May 31, 1981, Moon representatives sponsored a CAUSA reception at the Sheraton Hotel’s Hall of Freedom in La Paz. Moon’s lieutenant Bo Hi Pak and Bolivian strongman Garcia Meza led a prayer for President Ronald Reagan’s recovery from an assassination attempt.” https://consortiumnews.com/2014/05/14/hitlers-shadow-reaches-toward-today-2/

[back-and-totheleft]

Oliver Stone tackles the drugs war in America's backyard

A man steps across the floor of what seems to be a basement or dungeon, on a film shot by a wobbly, handheld camera. Blood, sticky underfoot, runs beneath his boots – and the camera catches what seems to be a severed head. The scene is being played on a computer screen, watched by an intense young man, transfixed. A beautiful girl looks also, over his shoulder. "Is that Iraq?", she asks, squirming at the degenerate and apparently gratuitous cruelty. "Mexico," replies the man with a grunt, clearly terrified himself. Welcome to the latest film by Hollywood's – even America's – heretic-in-chief, Oliver Stone. Unsurprisingly, this brief exchange is charged with greater meaning than it appears at first sight, and the film's director has come to elaborate.

The physical presence of Oliver Stone is not unlike that of his impact on cinema over the last four decades. He is immediately contrapuntal: tanned leathery skin, khaki waistcoat and black boots in the seamless, breezy tranquillity of a grandiose hotel in Berlin, answering waiters' questions in polite German with a growl, complimenting the pretty-prim waitress on her looks with a gravelly chuckle. And when he gets down to the business of explaining his new film – sleeves rolled up, hair like that of an old rocker (which he is) – there is no polite prologue to the heresy. "Yeah, this is one of America's wild wars that never ends and ain't going anywhere: the war on drugs." After all, this is the man who has – famously or infamously, depending on who you are – subverted and scorned every norm, rhyme and reason on which the narrative of the US political establishment (and America's strut in the world) is premised, his canon thereby so much greater than the sum of its parts.

Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July were pivotal contributions to America's attempt at reckoning with its own self-generated catastrophe in Vietnam; JFK, Nixon and W. retold and revolutionised received wisdom on the death of one president and the lives of two others. World Trade Center rescued the human story of 9/11 from that manipulated by Washington for its own reasons.

Perhaps most cogently of all, with hindsight, Salvador, from 1986, was among very few films or mainstream expressions of any kind which looked at the dirty war that ravaged the Americas during the 1980s through a Latin American lens, repositioning President Reagan's role as more that of jackboot than sponsor of the freedom he claimed to be spreading, through alliances with dictators and death squads. And more recently, South of the Border stood and stands as the only attempt of its kind to document a new dynamic across the hemisphere, and the rise of newly confident leftwing leaders in the Latin Americas, unbowed by the colossus, the US. Stone's latest, Savages, is to be seen in that vein – only the story concerns the country that is a mere 20 minutes walk from Texas across the Rio Grande, and just south of the border from the golden beaches of San Diego. It addresses the first war of the 21st century (which gives us a glimpse of what the rest of it may well look like), the narco cartel war in Mexico.

Of course Stone is drawn to this: Mexico's war – if that is what it is – has claimed 50,000 lives, and has done so with striking and baffling cruelty. "A lot of these people have died slowly," says Stone, approaching his theme. "I didn't want to show people being dissolved in acid, and there are plenty of other things we could have shown but didn't, or had to cut."

Indeed there are: in his hypothetical but meticulously researched film Stone does not detail the sewing of a flayed face to a soccer ball, or the decapitated bodies left dangling from bridges, mutilated corpses strewn along highways or filling mass graves. Strangely, though, the US media seems as keen to avoid mention of the daily litany of death across its underbelly as it is to cover it; even less does the American establishment want to understand why all this is happening, and consider the possibility that there may be deep-rooted economic causes of at least aspects of Mexico's agony for which the US bears some responsibility, quite apart from its insatiable need to consume drugs and welcome the profits they generate through its banks.

High time for a major film about all this, in an America which, as Stone says, "doesn't give a shit" – even though the violence is next door and spilling over the US government's fence through the desert, in defiance of Washington's militarisation of the sieve-like border. America wants there to be a wall along the 2,000 miles it shares with Mexico, like the one that once ran beneath the window at which Stone sits in Berlin. But that is not going to happen when the border is also the busiest commercial frontier in the world, crossed by a million people every day.

At first sight, Stone may seem to have flinched from making this badly needed film. Savages is not for the most part set in Mexico, not is it overtly about Mexico, as it might have been. It is an adaptation of a novel by the great American writer on the border and drug war, Don Winslow, about two men: Chon, a traumatised veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, and Ben, a karmic botanist par excellence. Their combined experience and knowledge enables them to grow marijuana of unrivalled potency and quality. It also helps them secure the devotion of lovely blonde O, whom they share as a narcotic-erotic ménage à trois.

Stone's generic Baja cartel, led by a matriarch called Elena, is set on acquiring the seed if not its growers, and kidnaps O in pursuit of this aim. The boys react heroically, and set out to rescue their woman. In the background is an aspirant deus ex machina, Dennis, a corrupt agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, who works alongside not only Don and Chon, but also the cartel's vicious enforcer on the US side, Lado.

There is detail in the film which Stone is the first – and only one, north of the border – to grasp, and the detail is important in reading not only this narco war, but also what it means to modern capitalist society. First is the perverse innovation in the cruelty, for its own sake and its recreational aspect. Stone treats us to the execution of a suspected snitch, hung by his wrists and whipped until he confesses (even though he is innocent), after which he is incinerated alive with a tyre around his arms and torso, running in wild circles to his death. During the scene, there's a moment of mastery: the soundtrack, the cackling laughter of those watching. It takes Stone to work that out. Yes, in Mexico's war, this is fun. "It's getting crueller out there," muses Stone. "It's gone up a level."

Another insight is the cartels' mastery of the internet and along with it their satanic sense of humour. The tit-for-tat over kidnapped O is conducted largely through cyberspace, and at one point the cartel sends our heroic duo an animated cartoon of the decapitation of their girl. And there is this about the real-life cartels: unlike the Bosnian Serbs or even al-Qaida, they do not need to speak to us, to the media or politicians, except on their terms. They control their message, they do so through their own mantas or banners, sick but funny notes pinned to the more illustrious victims' mutilated corpses, but above all through the internet – and in doing so they laugh at us. They have no cause to proselytise, nor is there any retort to them – that is their sick genius, and that is why they laugh. "Yeah – that humour thing," says Stone. "It's something else. It takes someone who knows what's going on to understand it, the humour and the cruelty. I was scared of it, but I wanted to make sure I could keep time with what is going on."

One of Stone's hallmarks, in films such as JFK and W., is that he make you suspend disbelief so thoroughly that you can be forgiven for thinking you're observing the real thing, not a dramatisation. In Savages Stone has mercilessly captured the horrific details of Mexico's war and it is tempting to ask why he opted for an action movie with rather annoyingly gym-cut Colgate Californians and a Barbie-blonde stoner as its central characters, instead of something that gets us inside Mexico. Inside, if not the Tijuana cartel, which is now, as Stone himself admits, "dealing with small pocket change", then a film about those others who are redefining what a narco cartel – indeed, criminality – is in the new world and global economy. The paramilitary Zetas, for example, are an entirely new breed of syndicate, utterly ruthless, apparently unstoppable. It seems a shame that even a film by America's most irreverent director (who has looked at the US through a rare Latin American eyepiece) must be centred on the United States. One would like Stone's take on the world's most wanted criminal, Joaquín "Chapo" Guzmán, fugitive leader of the Sinaloa cartel, or his nemesis, who has overtaken even him for savagery, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, founder of Los Zetas.

But actually I am missing the point completely, thinking this way. Stone has a terrifying and convincing thesis as to why the film has to be set in America, with American characters: "The point," he says, "is that wars come home, they come home to roost. And there are connections: one of the two main guys has come home from Afghanistan and Iraq, and he's brought all that with him, what I think are new levels of cruelty and combat technology we have out there."

He drives his theme: "Of course, humankind has always been cruel – the Third Reich and so on. But I think there are new levels of cruelty, new technologies now, a new ball game. Maybe I'm wrong, but the cruelty level in the world just went up in these recent wars. We get a lot of information about what's happening in Iraq, the Middle East and Afghanistan, which comes back to America with this guy. And who knows how this may influence what's happening in Mexico – I think it probably does."

It's a shocking but cogent point about the nature of the violence, and its arrival into our public domain. Stone cut his teeth in Vietnam, where images of violence (the famous girl on the bridge burned by napalm; and scenes from Stone's own films and past as a veteran) were supposed to shock us – and did. Now, in reality, all that has volte-faced: the Zetas relay their own atrocities on the web as recruiting posters, and in Stone's film, to parley with their proposed business partners. It has been posited before that the Zetas got their ideas for torture and execution videos from al-Qaida, who in turn respond to souvenir photos taken by American troops of their own abuses in Abu Ghraib. Stone, typically, hurls us to the logical, heretical, conclusion.

"This Middle East thing brought it to another level. The barbarism came back in a big way, and it was Bush who started that. It all began with Afghanistan and Iraq. The guy in the movie brings it home; and the cartel brings it home."

There are cinematic considerations too: "It's based on Winslow," says Stone, "and we've made it into a thriller. No, I don't think the cartels would work that way with independent marijuana growers in California. No, there aren't any IEDs going off in the Californian desert – but," and he grins with inimitably Stoneian mischief, "I like the idea!"

Another subtlety is Stone's depiction of the fall of Elena, the matriarch. This occurs as the result of a mutiny by Lado, who has switched sides to a rival, El Azul, and because she comes to California to visit her daughter. Her collapse – and with it, by implication, that of her cartel – could signify the arrival of a greater power, a new cartel led by El Azul. This has happened in real life: Guzmán has defeated the Tijuana cartel, which was led by one of the first female capos, Enedina Arellano Félix. It could be because "it's tough taking orders from a woman", observes Stone of Lado. But it could also be seen as Elena's weakness of character, or at least her old-fashioned view of what a cartel's code should be. As Stone puts it: "She's a good traditional woman. She's proud of the fact that her daughter is ashamed of her. And her fall is the fall of the don. Elena was weak because she had a thing for her daughter and wanted to rescue her." This is exactly it: the mutation of Mexico's cartels from the don of old, with his (or her) attachment to family and codes of honour, however criminal or perverse they were, and the transfer of power to those whose only code is raw ruthlessness – like Guzmán or, to an even greater degree, the Zetas.

In Savages, the DEA agent Dennis is corrupt and credible. He protects Chon and Ben for money, takes a bribe to deliver them Elena's daughter, and gets to strut and moralise at a press conference when Elena is finally felled – having himself switched allegiances to El Azul along with his contact, Lado. The role is in part shaped by a former DEA agent Stone hired called Eddie, who had "30 years experience. He was in the Middle East and he knew the scene in Mexico. I got into the DEA that way – Eddie took care of us; and getting that kind of insight into the DEA is a big deal."

Lado is a credible character who "wants to be an American", says Stone. "He takes his kids to little league, his wife worries that he's out last thing at night with his 'gardening business' – his cover, and of course he has other women. He comes in one night, and she can smell a woman on him and he takes her apart, he rapes her – but we had to let that scene go."

Lado "also has eight or nine chihuahuas at his feet", observes Stone, and it is a detail to relish though the scene was cut: "I've been to a couple of these drug lords' places", he says, "and it's like ocelots to them. They've got all these hairless chihuahuas, proud of the fact that 'they cost me a fucking fortune'."

Stone's conclusion focuses less on the economic backdrop in Mexico than the failure of the war on drugs. Stone of course takes this further, entwining his themes. First: "That border is going all day and all night long. And it's 2,000 miles long. There's no way they're going to stop this. Dammit – they tried to build a wall across Berlin!" He gestures out of the window towards Starbucks, where no-man's land used to be: "Walls don't work, period." And second: "I don't see anything coming out of this so far as the war on drugs is concerned. It's been 40 years now, and its just become a method by which more money can be generated to fight what they now call narco-terror." And here's the crux, the entwinement again: "Drugs and terror, they couple them together, and the drug war becomes part of the war on terror that never ends. Part of the total terror that is overcoming our lives."

Apart from connections to the Middle East already made, it is impossible to continue in this vein without invoking South of the Border – indeed it is impossible to discuss any Stone film in isolation from the others.

South of the Border is a documentary series of interviews with those who are bringing Latin America to a new critical mass, a shift in power vis-a-vis the United States. All of them are elected, leftwing presidents of countries that have been, as Stone puts it, "in Uncle Sam's backyard", but which now brandish a new self-confidence, after decades of American puppet regimes: Néstor and Cristina Kirchner of Argentina, Luiz Inácio da Silva of Brazil, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Paraguay's Fernando Lugo and, famously, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

In January 2008, Stone's audacious recent history on the theme of South of the Border began in this newspaper, with an interview he gave the Observer in Bogotá in which Stone refused to condemn the Farc guerrillas, with whom he was trying to negotiate the release of three hostages. With him were Néstor Kirchner and Hugo Chávez. "I remember it well!" he half-laughs now. "I was on a mission. I wanted to stay low key. Néstor was there, and Hugo, and the American Red Cross, flying into this shithole of a town. Anyway, the Red Cross helicopter arrives, and, well, it was called off. The Farc people are always wary of the CIA, and I think the Americans just couldn't have Hugo involved in anything that would be a success – the hostages were released shortly afterwards, after Hugo had gone."

He reflects now on the wider theme: "The numbers don't lie. These are countries which have seen growth and real improvements after being failed by neo-liberal economics. The US took the side of the bad guys constantly – the media covering up so many of the abuses, in Argentina, Chile … But now, for the first time, these countries have thrown off the stranglehold of the International Monetary Fund and US treasury, which made loans the terms of which were those of what they call the 'neo-liberal Washington consensus' – [to] not only pay back the loans, but conform their economies to the privatisation of the kind we have here: hospitals, military, prisons. Well, in South America, privatisation did not work, it had disastrous consequences.

"And what they essentially did in the last 10 years was to throw off that tyranny. Their people have suffered so much, and they voted in new leaders. But even after they were elected, these people were resented by the US. I've never read one positive word about anything these people have done in the US media – let's face it, the Americans don't accept the idea of the election of leftwing leaders in their own backyard."

Accordingly: "Each one of these leaders has been picked off, one by one, by the United States … Disunite them, break them off from each other. But they've stood firm, and I think this is an important moment. They've done good for their countries, and I hope they last."

There is a connection between Savages and another Stone film, in fact two of them: Wall Street and its recent sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Chon and Ben have a money-launderer, a finance geek who has left the big bank for whom he worked. In real life, however, we now know that this would be no freelancer; this would be the man from the bank itself, in suit and tie, protected all the way to the top. The scandal and outrage of major high street banks laundering Mexican drug cartel money has made headlines recently: American Wachovia and British HSBC were the first to be named and shamed – with more on the way – but the typical fines in such cases fall well short of proper punishment.

The banks' direct connections to the cartels' bloody war and the misery of drugs inevitably causes Stone to reflect on his two films about what was once his father's business, in those distant days when, he says "a bank was something that you saved with, and gave you a loan". He says of the money-laundering: "You kind of get a sense of where the real power lies. Gekko [his character in Wall Street] was an 1980s creature. But by 2008-9, the banks had changed. What Gekko was doing in the 1980s, everyone was doing – rigging things, fixing things – the outsider Gekko had become the system. Look at them! Making money with the money they took from the public, and gambling with it! You have these huge settlements, with AIG underwriting Goldman Sachs – and it's all over New York, that level of confidence, that level of arrogance and impunity. You go to the Hamptons, and you feel it." And there is an inevitable connection between this financial elite and the corporatisation of government.

"The United States," he says, "has been a corporate-controlled country increasingly since world war two. The concept of a national security state plays into that concept of us as a mega-corporation. I view the Pentagon as essentially a huge corporation. The United States has moved into corporate gridlock, and the gridlock controls us – the power of the lobbyists, banks, oil companies, pharmaceuticals … After Reagan triumphed in 1980, we had this embrace of the free market. But it's not a free market really, it's fixed. Because monopolies tend to dominate it, they come to the fore and push everybody out of the way. So it's a rigged playing field, like we saw in 2008 – the banks getting bigger and bigger.

"And you know the weird thing?" he asks, as if to the street below, those around the Brandenburg Gate. "Everyone wants to buy into that shit! The people take their cue from whoever has the power and the money! Go into the Four Seasons in New York, and power is the hero! No one wanted to talk about the poor Vietnamese when this all started, or the poor people in Latin America – no, we embrace power!"

He goes on: "I don't think Americans give a shit about out there. They don't understand why in the Middle East everyone hates America. They don't understand the 'backyard'. JFK did, and so did Henry Wallace when he was vice-president. They both tried to turn it round – and what happened? As soon as JFK was assassinated, Lyndon Johnson said he'd crank it up in Vietnam. In Latin America it was: 'Enough of this Alliance for Progress' shit, what about the $9bn we've got invested down there?'"

Which brings Stone to another subject he wants to talk about; for it never rains, it only pours with this tempest of a man. As Savages premieres, get ready – at the end of this month – for the publication of his book and thereafter the 10-part television series (to be shown in Britain next year) on which it is based, The Untold History of the United States. Working with the American University historian Peter Kuznick, Stone has compiled a series which, he says "is inspired by your British series The World at War – pure narrative, no talking heads and actors to portray some of the players. Ten one-hour programmes; everything's been fact-checked and now CBS has a copy. It's an unorthodox, true global story about America. About how Truman did not have to drop the atomic bomb that all the kids get taught was dropped to save lives and stop the war. That isn't why it happened, it was so that the world would become a huge amphitheatre for America. It's about the true origins of the cold war, which we all think was started by the Russians when they invaded eastern Europe (he gestures towards the window again, sun glinting off an S-Bahn train trundling through the glorious iron-and-glass station at Friedrichstrasse – not long ago, the overground platforms were in East Berlin; the underground ones were an interchange for the West Berlin U-Bahn system).

"It's about Truman after the war, a small man, a cold warrior and a political hack. After the war, we tried to demobilise, but it didn't last long. They created this legacy of rightwingers who pulled at this alarm that we were falling behind the Russians. But the Russians never achieved anything like parity – maybe at the end of the 1970s, but it broke them."

This is not history for history's sake, however – this is the history of our present and future, long beyond cold war, into war on terror, war on drugs: "It's the history," says Stone, "of our building the national security state, which is interested in nobody's security apart from that of the state. Always supposedly falling behind the enemy, so there would be no end to it. It's a legacy thing," he pleads, almost. "The American history our kids are reading is all upside down. Everything is the opposite to what you think." With Stone, a conversation can only return to the beginning – in the best sense – "because it is all interconnected", as are his films. But there is not time – though he does afford himself a valedictory thought that sends a shiver down the spine.

"This terror that we're supposed to be so terrified of … What the fuck is it? Why should we all be so scared? Well, there's big money in it, for sure. So now we have every form of technology at the disposal of the government and its war on terror – but who are we supposed to be terrified of? Why must we be so terrified?" For want of any further answers to his terrifying rhetorical question about being terrified of terror, Stone affords himself a joke, for like all good heretics, he is a jester too, at the court of America: "Jeezus!" He swallows a small bowl of salad dressing, neat, and rises from his chair. "The idea that the government is doing all this to protect me from marijuana!?"

-Ed Vulliamy, "Oliver Stone tackles the drugs war in America's backyard," The Observer, Sept 22 2012 [x]

[smilingformoney]

Endless Summer 3 Diamond Scene: Enter the First Rift with Jake

As the brush begins to catch flame, you enter the rift with Jake close behind.

The roar of the eruption is suddenly gone, replaced by chirping insects and the gentle lap of water along a mossy riverbank. You: Looks safe enough. Behind you, the burning rainforest can still be seen through the rift you’ve just exited. You: Guess we’ll have to pass the time here until the fire dies down. Jake: Guess so. The two of you sit down by the water’s edge. Jake: Whatever this place is… it’s sure a dead ringer for Pearl River. You: Is that where you grew up? Jake: Yeah. We moved around a bit before I headed off to Annapolis, but my grandparents always had their place out in the backcountry. Jake: That house was the center of the family.

You: … -What was it like there?

Jake: It’s a different world out there. Simpler way of life. You: Simple sounds pretty nice right about now. Jake: You’re tellin’ me. Jake: My sister and I would spend the day swimming fishing, and pranking the neighbour kids… Jake: Our favourite trick was a little thing called ‘Crabby Britches.’ You: ‘Crabby Britches’? You mean… Jake: Exactly what it sounds like. Strategically placed crawdad when you least expect it. You: You two were little brats. Jake: We were. It was great.

-Do you miss it?

You: All the time. My sister and I had free run of the place. Two kids and the big ol’ river. You: Every day was a new adventure. Flying’s the only thing that even comes close to that sense of freedom. You: Sounds like a really special time.

Jake: Hold still. You: What? Why? Jake reaches up and gives your neck a sharp swat. You: Hey! Jake: Maringwin… Otherwise known as a mosquito. You: Got him though. Not to worry. You: My hero. Jake: I do what I can. Jake pauses thoughtfully. His gaze becomes distant. Jake: … You: Something wrong? Jake: I just… I keep going back to the moment I lost him. You: You mean Mike? Jake: Lundgren got his claws in him. Made him into something inhuman. Jake: I could’ve saved Mike from all of this… And I didn’t. And now whatever’s left of him is in there watching, suffering… Jake: I can’t take it, Princess/Boy Scout. Jake’s gaze meets yours. There’s a helplessness in his expression, his eyes full of grief.

You: Jake… -It’s not your fault. Jake +1

You: Lundgren did this. Not you. Jake: Yeah… But Mike and I, we were all each other had. It was him and me against that bastard and somehow I let him go down.

-We’re gonna get him out. Jake +2

Something wells up inside Jake, but he nods fiercely, swallowing away the pain. Jake: No matter what it takes. You: That’s the spirit.

You place a comforting hand on Jake’s back. He exhales slowly, shaking his head. Jake: Helluva place, this island… You: You’re telling me. Jake: We’ve been through a lot here, but I gotta say… For you, Taylor, I’d do it all again. Jakes reaches up to take your hand.

You: … -Squeeze his hand. Jake +1

You grasp Jake’s hand firmly and smile. You: With the way time works around here, you might have to. Jake: Good point. You: Hey. We’re gonna do something about what happened to the rest of the world. And we’re gonna do it together. Jake: Aye aye.

-Kiss him. Jake +2

You grasp Jake’s hand and pull him closer. You: … As your faces find each other, Jake grins and brings his lips to yours. Jake: Don’t mind if I do. His kiss is soft and warm, caressing you passionately, gradually… slowly taking your breath away. You pull apart, and he reaches up to run his fingers through your hair. Jake: … The two of you gaze out over the water, watching ripples cascade across its silken surface. Jake: You ever think maybe… we were meant to be?

-If you’re dating Jake

You: I do think that. Yes. Jake: All of the craziness this place has thrown our way couldn’t keep us apart. Even brought us to this Land Before Time swamp that looks just like my old stomping grounds. You: I’m glad I could see it with you. Jake: Me too, Princess/Boy Scout.

-If you’re not dating Jake

Do you want to start dating Jake? -Yes!

You: …I guess I’m starting to believe in fate. Jake: Me too, Princess/Boy Scout.

-No.

You: I’m glad I met you, Jake McKenzie. Your friendship means a lot to me. Jake: Ah, yeah. Same here, Princess/Boy Scout.

Jake glances over at the hovering rift. The sliver of visible rainforest is dark and smoky. You: Fire’s died down. Jake: As we say in the South, ‘tempus sure does fugit.’ You ready? You: As I’m ever gonna be.

The ground is covered in writhing smoke. The lava fissures till emit a dull glow, but the surrounding brush appears to have stopped burning. Estela stands a short distance away, near the second rift. Estela: Welcome back. Jake hops over a cooling fissure and peers into the third rift. Jake: Ground Control to Buccaneer Barbie. You can come out now. Yvonne gingerly pokes her tricorn-topped head out, checks the area, and emerges. Yvonne: A surprisingly pleasant sieste… Shall we be on our way?

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 5.11

330 – Byzantium is renamed Nova Roma during a dedication ceremony, but it is more popularly referred to as Constantinople. 868 – A copy of the Diamond Sutra is printed in China, making it the oldest known dated printed book. 912 – Alexander becomes Emperor of the Byzantine Empire. 1310 – Philip IV of France has fifty-four members of the Knights Templar burned at the stake, ostensibly for heresy. 1502 – Christopher Columbus departs Cádiz on his fourth and final voyage to the Americas. 1647 – Peter Stuyvesant arrives in New Amsterdam to replace Willem Kieft as Director-General of New Netherland, the Dutch colonial settlement in present-day New York City. 1672 – Franco-Dutch War: Louis XIV of France invades the Dutch Republic. 1745 – War of the Austrian Succession: French forces defeat an Anglo-Dutch–Hanoverian army. 1792 – Robert Gray commands the first expedition to sail into the Columbia River. 1812 – Prime Minister Spencer Perceval is assassinated by John Bellingham in the lobby of the British House of Commons. 1813 – William Lawson, Gregory Blaxland and William Wentworth discover a route across the Blue Mountains, opening up inland Australia to settlement. 1833 – The Lady of the Lake strikes an iceberg off Newfoundland and sinks with the loss of up to 265 passengers and crew. 1846 – President James K. Polk asked for a Declaration of War against Mexico, starting the Mexican–American War. It is approved on May 13. 1857 – Indian Rebellion of 1857: Indian rebels seize Delhi from the British. 1858 – Minnesota is admitted as the 32nd U.S. State. 1862 – American Civil War: The ironclad CSS Virginia is scuttled in the James River. 1880 – Seven people are killed in the Mussel Slough Tragedy, a gun battle in California. 1889 – An attack upon a U.S. Army paymaster and escort results in the theft of over $28,000 and the award of two Medals of Honor. 1891 – Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich of Imperial Russia (later Nicholas II) suffers a critical head injury in an sword attack by a Japanese policeman. He is rescued by Prince George of Greece and Denmark. 1894 – Four thousand Pullman Palace Car Company workers go on a wildcat strike. 1910 – An act of the U.S. Congress establishes Glacier National Park in Montana. 1918 – The Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus is officially established. 1927 – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is founded. 1942 – William Faulkner's collections of short stories, Go Down, Moses, is published. 1943 – World War II: American troops invade Attu Island in the Aleutian Islands in an attempt to expel occupying Japanese forces. 1944 – World War II: The Allies begin a major offensive against the Axis powers on the Gustav Line. 1945 – World War II: Off the coast of Okinawa, the aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill is hit by two kamikazes, killing 346 of its crew. Although badly damaged, the ship is able to return to the U.S. under its own power. 1949 – Siam officially changes its name to Thailand for the second time. The name had been in use since 1939 but was reverted in 1945. 1953 – The 1953 Waco tornado outbreak kills 114. 1960 – In Buenos Aires, Argentina, four Israeli Mossad agents capture fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann who is living under the alias of Ricardo Klement. 1963 – Racist bombings in Birmingham, Alabama disrupt nonviolence in the Birmingham campaign and precipitate a crisis involving federal troops. 1970 – The 1970 Lubbock tornado kills 26 and causes $250 million in damage. 1972 – The United States performs a nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site, which was part of Operation Grommet. 1973 – Citing government misconduct, Daniel Ellsberg's charges for his involvement in releasing the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times are dismissed. 1985 – Fifty-six spectators die and more than 200 are injured in the Bradford City stadium fire. 1987 – Klaus Barbie goes on trial in Lyon for war crimes committed during World War II. 1995 – More than 170 countries extend the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty indefinitely and without conditions. 1996 – After the aircraft's departure from Miami, a fire started by improperly handled chemical oxygen generators in the cargo hold of Atlanta-bound ValuJet Flight 592 causes the Douglas DC-9 to crash in the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 on board. 1996 – The 1996 Mount Everest disaster kills eight people. 1997 – Deep Blue, a chess-playing supercomputer, defeats Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player in a classic match format. 1998 – India conducts three underground atomic tests in Pokhran. 2000 – Second Chechen War: Chechen separatists ambush Russian paramilitary forces in the Republic of Ingushetia. 2011 – An Earthquake of magnitude 5.1 hits Spain. 2013 – Fifty-two people are killed in a bombing in Reyhanlı, Turkey. 2014 – Fifteen people are killed and 46 injured in Kinshasa in a stampede caused by tear gas being thrown into soccer stands by police officers attempting to defuse a hostile incident. 2016 – More than 120 people are killed in an ISIL bombing in Baghdad.

[todaynewsstories]

Nazi Hunter Serge Klarsfeld receives top French award | News | DW

France’s most famous Nazi hunter, Serge Klarsfeld was awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor in a ceremony led by French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday. 

Klarsfeld, 83, received France’s highest award, while his wife the 79-year-old Beate Klarsfeld received the National Order of Merit having already been awarded the Legion of Honor in 2014.

The Chief Rabbi of France Haim Korsia was among those who attended the ceremony at the Elysee Palace. The event was limited to family and close friends and associates.

Serge Klarsfeld was born September 17, 1935, in the Romanian capital of Bucharest. He escaped the Holocaust after his family moved to France but witnessed his father being taken away to die in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz.

He became a naturalized French citizen in 1950, and 10 years later, while studying at the prestigious Science-Po University in Paris, he met Beate Kuenzel, the daughter of a former German soldier, on a metro platform.

Found their calling

Serge and Beate decided to bring fugitive Nazis to justice together, a mission they pursued for more than half a century.

“Neither could have succeeded without the other,” their daughter Lida once said.

One of their most high-profile cases involved the capture of the notorious Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, a former Gestapo officer known as the “Butcher of Lyon.” 

In 1971, the Klarsfelds revealed that Barbie was living in Bolivia. In 1983 he was extradited to France where four years later he was convicted in a trial, and later died behind bars.

Serge and Beate Klarsfeld found Klaus Barbie hiding in Bolivia

They also pursued members of France’s Vichy regime who collaborated with the Nazis. Officials included Rene Bouquet, Jean Leguay and Marice Papon, despite obstruction from former President Francois Mitterrand.

It was Mitterrand’s successor Jacques Chirac who finally recognized France’s role in the deportations, a declaration Serge Klarsfeld said owed much to his and Beate’s campaigning.

The men who led Nazi Germany

Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945)

As Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, the virulently anti-Semitic Goebbels was responsible for making sure a single, iron-clad Nazi message reached every citizen of the Third Reich. He strangled freedom of the press, controlled all media, arts, and information, and pushed Hitler to declare “Total War.” He and his wife committed suicide in 1945, after poisoning their six children.

The men who led Nazi Germany

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)

The leader of the German National Socialist Workers’ Party (Nazi) developed his anti-Semitic, anti-communist and racist ideology well before coming to power as Chancellor in 1933. He undermined political institutions to transform Germany into a totalitarian state. From 1939 to 1945, he led Germany in World War II while overseeing the Holocaust. He committed suicide in April 1945.

The men who led Nazi Germany

Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945)

As leader of the Nazi paramilitary SS (“Schutzstaffel”), Himmler was one of the Nazi party members most directly responsible for the Holocaust. He also served as Chief of Police and Minister of the Interior, thereby controlling all of the Third Reich’s security forces. He oversaw the construction and operations of all extermination camps, in which more than 6 million Jews were murdered.

The men who led Nazi Germany

Rudolf Hess (1894-1987)

Hess joined the Nazi party in 1920 and took part in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, a failed Nazi attempt to gain power. While in prison, he helped Hitler write “Mein Kampf.” Hess flew to Scotland in 1941 to attempt a peace negotiation, where he was arrested and held until the war’s end. In 1946, he stood trial in Nuremberg and was sentenced to life in prison, where he died.

The men who led Nazi Germany

Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962)

Alongside Himmler, Eichmann was one of the chief organizers of the Holocaust. As an SS Lieutenant colonel, he managed the mass deportations of Jews to Nazi extermination camps in Eastern Europe. After Germany’s defeat, Eichmann fled to Austria and then to Argentina, where he was captured by the Israeli Mossad in 1960. Tried and found guilty of crimes against humanity, he was executed in 1962.

The men who led Nazi Germany

Hermann Göring (1893-1946)

A participant in the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Göring became the second-most powerful man in Germany once the Nazis took power. He founded the Gestapo, the Secret State Police, and served as Luftwaffe commander until just before the war’s end, though he increasingly lost favor with Hitler. Göring was sentenced to death at Nuremberg but committed suicide the night before it was enacted.

Author: Cristina Burack

av/rt (AFP, AP)

Each evening at 1830 UTC, DW’s editors send out a selection of the day’s hard news and quality feature journalism. You can sign up to receive it directly here.

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[dfroza]

it was my first time hearing those 2 elbow songs tonight

since they were just recently added to my iPod Touch when i synced it with iTunes while at my cousin rodney’s house last week.

and i noticed the video for the song ‘fugitive motel’ was uploaded to YouTube under ElbowVEVO 2 days before Christmas and 2 days after my daughter Kelsey’s birthday, on 12.23.09

and this reminded me of a poem i typed that same day while staying with my sister Barbie and her kids on kinnrow court in walker, michigan. this later becoming poem #40 of (spinning in circles & rhymes), a chapter of my thought-life, and the same alphabetic number “40” of the word “coffee”

40. stare

let’s find a place just you and me where all we can see is the color in each other’s eyes where the world is quiet but love is lived out loud and we can stare into the future of this story together…

(december 23, ‘09) dfroza

and i enjoyed these lyrics to the song because they seem to reflect upon the nature of this seed, this kiss sent out to find the heart of a girl, the “One” who is a perfect fit for me…

Lost in a lullaby Side of the road Melt in a memory Slide in a solitude Not ‘til I can read by the moon Am I going anywhere Not ‘til I can read by the moon

I blow you a kiss It should reach you tomorrow As it flies from the other side of the world From my room in my fugitive motel Somewhere in the dust bowl It flies from the other side of the world