#your traumatic history. your commission prices.

[hopelesshawks]

History of Us Part 35- The Storm

Summary: Once upon a time Todoroki and (y/n) were best friends. Now they haven’t spoken in years. When (y/n) is forced to transfer to UA, will she and Shoto reconnect or will their troubled past keep them apart? A childhood friends to enemies to lovers hybrid fic.

If you don’t want to see History of Us content blacklist #hopelesshou

Masterlist Kofi

The plan, both that of the reunion squad and that of the pro heroes, goes to shit almost immediately. Your father is a smart man and the compound reflects that. Almost immediately upon breaching the entrance, the pros realized that the information they had on the building’s floor plan was incorrect. They were also wrong about the compound solely being occupied by you, Dabi, and your father. Several lower level villains have been kept on retainer precisely in case of a situation like this. Not only had Shoto and the others not been able to sneak past the pros to try and find you but the pros had actively requested their help as things rapidly devolved.

Then your father finally made his appearance in dramatic fashion, and that’s when things really went downhill. Literally half the compound was blown sky high as your father released a massive flurry of shadows racing out to push back the heroes. Several of the pros on scene are immediately knocked out of commission, leaving the smaller villains to run into the city and cause trouble. Tamaki is one of the first to recover, quickly organizing some of the remaining heroes and sidekicks into squads to track down the villains now racing towards the more densely populated commercial area nearby. “I’m trusting you to handle Black Storm,” he tells Endeavor. The older man only gives him a nod before Tamaki is off to try and minimize the damage being done.

Shoto starts to worry as he realizes he still hasn’t seen you but before he can begin searching properly a familiar voice stops him in his tracks. “There you are little brother, I was worried you might not show,” Touya grins. Shoto’s eyes narrow at his brother, his quirk itching to be released as he stares him down. “Where’s (y/n)?” Shoto all but growls. “You sure she even wants you to find her?” Dabi teases, his amusement at the situation palpable. “Absolutely,” Shoto replies without even a hint of hesitation or doubt. “Tell you what, prove you really are dad’s perfect little experiment and beat me. If you can do that much I’ll lead you right to her. I’d hurry if I were you too, her daddy dearest didn’t take too kindly to finding heroes at our door and poor (y/n) is his favorite punching bag,” Dabi grins. “With pleasure,” Shoto growls before lunging forward.

This is a disaster. You’ve managed to only bump into one sidekick who’d made it deeper into the remains of the compound but even that small fight had been enough to aggravate your injuries. Your vision swims as you rush towards the sound of the fighting. You know your dad’s been using quirk enhancing drugs lately and the pros aren’t prepared for that kind of firepower. You want nothing more than to just sit down, close your eyes, and try to heal yourself, maybe even take a nap, but there’s no time. You’re the only one who can stop your dad now. You know it in your gut. So you push through the pain and the slight dizziness to keep moving. You’re nearly knocked off your feet as a series of explosions shakes the compound, followed by an all too familiar battle cry of “DIE!” Fear surges through your veins like ice. You’d recognize Bakugo’s voice anywhere and even if you couldn’t there’s not exactly a ton of explosive heroes who threaten to murder villains out there. Bakugo would never come alone, which means more of your friends are surely in the fray and in danger. You grit your teeth, focusing on them and your determination to save them, and start running towards the commotion glowing only faintly but enough to hold you together.

Shoto has never fought this hard his entire life. He lands hard on his side but quickly rolls to recover and get back on his feet. He throws up a wall of ice, partly to slow Dabi’s progress as he comes surging towards him, but partially to stave off the after effects from using his left side so much. Sweat pours off his forehead as he desperately tries to hold off from overheating. As Dabi burns through his ice, Shoto launches himself forward to meet his brother halfway. He’ll be damned if he loses this fight. He has to get to you, especially if what Dabi said about your condition is the truth. For a single moment Shoto manages to pin Touya down but before he can do anything more he notices Dabi’s gaze is focused not on him but something off to the side. “Your girlfriend finally joined the fray,” Dabi grins, causing Shoto to immediately snap his head that direction to find you. Relief floods him at seeing you alive but he’s snapped back into the moment as Dabi suddenly engulfs the two of them in flames, causing Shoto to rear back with a curse. “Don’t get distracted baby brother, this fight isn’t over,” Dabi taunts as he uses Shoto’s momentary distraction to get the upper hand. Fire and ice both emerge as Shoto is filled with another wave of determination. He’s so close to getting you back, he won’t let you slip through his fingers again.

The chaos is even worse than you thought when you finally get to where all the fighting is. All around you your friends and various pros are battling villains. Buildings further down the street are burning where Tamaki is trying to keep the villains contained to a smaller area. To your right Shoto is locked in combat with Dabi and frankly it takes your breath away. Shoto is magnificent. You’ve never seen him look so resolute before and you distantly wonder if that’s the real reason Dabi exposed your location: to see this side of his younger brother. You probably could have stood there just watching the two of them forever but a loud crashing noise to your left jerks your attention away as you watch Endeavor hit the ground hard after your father had thrown him. Your stomach sinks when you notice what rough shape he’s in. You knew this would happen the moment you found out your father was using quirk enhancers but it’s still unnerving to see the number one hero struggle so much. You look up to see your father grinning like a mad man, clearly delighting in the pain of a man he once claimed to love like family. More importantly, however, you also can see the characteristic black veins crawling up the side of his neck. Steroids or not, your quirk still comes with a price. Your father is just about to deal what looks suspiciously like a fatal blow as he gathers a large mass of shadows into both hands but before they can reach Endeavor you jump in front of the fallen hero and unleash your own blast of shadows to dissipate your father’s.

You think you hear Endeavor say something behind you but the words fall on deaf ears as you watch your father’s face twist into a grimace of betrayal and rage. “I should’ve known you’d choose them,” he spits before unleashing another torrent of inky blackness shooting towards you. You widen your stance to brace yourself and then unleash your own torrent back with your right hand, using your free hand to brace it. “After all I did for you, this is how you repay me? You traitorous bitch,” he accuses, his voice roaring over the sounds of battle around you. Rage burns through you at his words and you embrace it wholeheartedly as you continue to push back against him. “All you did was abuse and traumatize me,” you bite out. Your head is throbbing but you can’t let up, not now, not when you’re so close to ridding yourself of your father for good. “I did it to make you stronger! You could’ve been the most powerful person in all of Japan, we could’ve built an empire together!” he responds, as if somehow that justifies how he’s treated you; as if that empire wouldn’t be built atop the corpses of innocents. “I am strong. Stronger than you. In spite of you, not because of you,” you shout.

After that final declaration, you’re done talking. Instead you close your eyes, grit your teeth, and you think of every single time your father abused you, every time you lashed out at those you loved because of the trauma he ingrained in you, every time you suffered because of his crimes. You think of your poor mother who works double and triple shifts so she can provide for you. You think of that fateful day your father brought you into work and traumatized you out of his own selfish desire to mold you into what he wanted you to be. You think of all of the pain and hurt and anger and you pour it into your quirk even as black veins start to crawl up on your own skin, even as they climb up your forearm, then your shoulder, then your neck, and onto the right side of your face. Your entire right side feels like it’s on fire but you push and push through until you finally start to feel the resistance from your father giving way as his quirk overwhelms him. You hear yelling and it takes a minute to realize that the raw, pained sound is coming from you as you push and push and push until finally you feel the resistance fade completely and the shadows you’d sent out connect with your father. You gasp as you finally release your quirk although you notice the right side of your body is still on fire. Your head feels fuzzy and your vision is definitely swimming but you push through it. You have to make sure it’s over. Your father sways on his feet, eyes empty and black veins completely marring his face. After a moment his body collapses to the ground completely limp and relief floods through you.

It’s over.

It’s finally fucking over.

As the adrenaline slowly starts to drain out of you, you hear someone call out your name. They sound panicked. Why do they sound panicked? You turn to the source of the voice slowly as the world starts to spin around you. You vaguely recognize Shoto’s alarmed face as he sprints towards you before everything goes black and you collapse.

A/N: This took me literally all of yesterday to write and was difficult to start but holy shit am I happy with how it turned out. We’re entering the home stretch ladies and gentlemen.

Taglist: @sorrythatspussynal @miss-bakugo-writes @pixelwisp @larkspyrr @sokkaandzukosimp @akkaso @sunaispretty @shot0stea @todoplusultra @oliviasslut @lapysllazuly @immah0e4fictionalmen @cinnamonruts

(Bold means I couldn’t tag you)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: 06 Mar 2020 (Stunning RPG dice, Shell funded climate denial, Church sends US predator priests to Mexico, South Korea is beating covid-19)

Today's links

The most beautiful RPG dice I've ever seen: And you can also make your own.

The king of Dutch climate denial was secretly in Shell's pay: Frits Böttcher was a packrat, and his papers detail exactly how he was paid to sow climate doubt. He was very good at it.

American Catholic officials helped priests who preyed on children escape to Mexico: At least 51 "credibly accused" priests left the US and took up positions abroad.

A grifty AI company conned the state of Utah into giving access to everything: Banjo claims it will predict and head off terrorist attacks, mass shootings, and child abductions without invading anyone's privacy.

Clearview AI says it only lets cops use its facial recognition tool but it's lying: Investors, cronies and pals got to literally use it as a party trick.

South Korea's beating covid-19 with free testing: Testing is part of the free national health system, and 140,000 tests have been administered.

The web is unusably beshitted with terrible ad-tech: "No, I don't want great articles."

For $3, a robolawyer will automatically force data brokers to delete you and sue the ones who don't: Donotpay meets the CCPA, it's like peanut butter and chocolate.

:

This day in history: 2005, 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

The most beautiful RPG dice I've ever seen (permalink)

Sasha is a spectacularly talented RPG dice-maker, whose online store features the most beautiful dice I've ever seen – and as if that wasn't enough, she also sells dice-making kits to use at home.

https://www.sunshadeauarts.com/sunshadeauarts-academy/

Last month, ahead of the C2E2 con, she posted a series of new, not-for-sale (argh) dice that embed a variety of materials inside large D20s to form nebulas, clouds, alien landscapes, menacing eyeballs, and eldritch scenes. Check them out for yourself!

https://twitter.com/sunshadeauarts/status/1232722877008490497 https://twitter.com/sunshadeauarts/status/1229445585717035010 https://twitter.com/sunshadeauarts/status/1232795390916911104 https://twitter.com/sunshadeauarts/status/1233370655216881664 https://twitter.com/sunshadeauarts/status/1233380666810806274

It's hard to say what these will cost; comparable dice on her site sell for $400. They're handmade, beautiful sculptures, after all.

https://www.sunshadeauarts.com/product/less-than-perfect-midnight-aurora-handmade-resin-inkless-titan-d20/

At that price, they're maybe too expensive for a gift for yourself, but as a graduation present, maybe? And that said, it's exactly the kind of thing I sometimes buy to celebrate selling a new novel, and that's on my roadmap for THE LOST CAUSE, my post-GND, truth-and-reconciliation novel, so I'm definitely putting a reminder in my calendar.

The king of Dutch climate denial was secretly in Shell's pay (permalink)

Club of Rome founder Frits Böttcher was the Netherlands' leading climate denier. He died in 2008. Investigative journalists combing through his papers, discovered that he was paid €500K by Shell and others to sow doubt about climate change.

https://www.ftm.nl/dutch-multinationals-funded-climate-sceptic

His network pushed out scientific frauds like the idea that excess atmospheric CO2 would be "good for plants" through books, lectures and reports.

He was good at it. His work was crucial to stalling action on climate change in the 1990s. Despite this, his 24 sponsors dumped him in 1998 after the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, worried that outright climate denial had lost credibility.

No wonder! This was the guy who'd called climate science "a witch-hunt on CO2" and declared "Our planet is not a greenhouse."

In his papers, Böttcher notes that after he published these frauds, Shell contacted him and offered him giant sums to keep it up and amplify it. The work was personally commissioned by Shell managing director Huub Van Engelshoven. Böttcher was a packrat. His papers in the Noord-Hollands Archief in Haarlem stack 15.9m tall. Inside of them is an eye-wateringly detailed account of how wealthy, planet-wrecking firms deliberately and maliciously paid for climate denial.

That means that we now can name names. We think of climate denial as a kind of emergent property with no human agent, but as the world drowns, roasts, and writhes with pandemic, we have the names and addresses of the people who engineered that situation for their own gain. We know who his political allies were: the VVD party. When the Netherlands' dikes fail and the country begins to drown, these politicians might still be running for office.

It's tempting to think of the climate crisis as something we all bear responsibility for, because we didn't sort our recycling or because we didn't use the underfunded, anemic public transit options available to us. But efforts like this – from Platform Authentieke Journalistiek and Follow the Money – show we were corralled into our complicity by a network of super-rich plutes for their own gain, who knew they were wrecking the world and dooming our children but did not care.

American Catholic officials helped priests who preyed on children escape to Mexico (permalink)

A new instalment in Propublica's outstanding coverage of the Catholic Church's complicity in sexual abuse by priests shows that dozens of American priests who raped children were relocated to Mexico, where they continued to rape children

https://www.propublica.org/article/dozens-of-catholic-priests-credibly-accused-of-abuse-found-work-abroad-some-with-the-churchs-blessing#178005

These priests found new postings thanks to glowing letters of recommendation from church officials who knew that they had been accused – or, in some cases convicted – of raping children in their parishes. Some fled to Mexico to avoid prison, resisting extradition for years.

Not just Mexico: Propublica found 51 "credibly accused" US priests who are currently working in Mexico, Ireland, Nigeria, and the Philippines. Some of them continued to draw pay from their US parishes while they settled in abroad. Parishoners' donations paid for the predators who victimized their children to escape justice.

One priest, Jose Antonio Pinal, wrote letters to Church officials blaming the boy he raped, saying, "that he is not innocent of the situation he wants to blame me for completely." Pinal is still ministering in Cuernavaca. He claims his longrunning rapes of a 15-year-old were consensual, but "he was a minor; so, legally, I am screwed."

When he moved to Mexico, Sacramento church officials wrote to him promising to support him, so long as the new diocese promised to "protect the diocese of Sacramento against any financial liability for any acts committed by you while working in that diocese."

Some of these priests are listed as "inactive" in Church websites, but are still ministering in Mexico. Rev. Jeffrey David Newell, admitted to sexually abusing another 15 year old, and called it a "mistake." He currently serves in Tijuana. Newell says it was a single slip up. Other survivors of his abuse have filed lawsuits against his old US archdiocese. Newell calls their claims "totally absurd." His name has been removed from Church lists of "credibly accused" sexual predators in the clergy.

These predators' survivors are alive and deeply traumatized. And thanks to the inaction, complicity and even encouragement of US Catholic church officials, these priests are ruining the lives of new children all over the world.

A grifty AI company conned the state of Utah into giving access to everything (permalink)

The State of Utah has secretly contracted with "Banjo," a grifty "AI" company, to analyze all the surveillance and internal data generated by all the state's agencies.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200305/13422544042/ai-company-has-access-to-pretty-much-every-piece-surveillance-tech-state-utah-owns.shtml

Banjo gets all the 911 calls, CCTV camera feeds, license plate readers, and internal state databases, and its proprietary, secret algorithm will comb through all that to direct law enforcement.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/k7exem/banjo-ai-company-utah-surveillance-panopticon

The company claims there are no privacy concerns because it has a patented system for anonymizing data. The patents do not disclose their anonymization method, and every other attempt at this kind of anonymization has fallen prey to "re-identification" attacks.

Banjo gets to locate a facility inside the Utah DOT HQ, and will operate in all 29 counties, state university campuses and 23 cities (including Utah's 10 largest cities). The company's making $20.7m on this contract over five years.

Using FOIA requests, Motherboard retrieved records showing how Banjo got Utah officials to help it sell its services ot the state. When Motherboard questioned the officials about this, they flat-out lied and denied it. The Banjo pitch claims that they'll head off terrorist attacks, mass shootings and child abductions in realtime. The company provides zero evidence that they have ever done such a thing, or that they ever could.

But that lack of evidence didn't deter Utah AG Ric Cantrell:

"They do have case studies. I'm waiting for case studies from Banjo. I'm still waiting for information from them."

Uh, maybe you should have seen the studies before putting Banjo's servers behind your firewall?

Clearview AI says it only lets cops use its facial recognition tool but it's lying (permalink)

Clearview AI is another grifty "AI" company cutting secret deals with law enforcement to use its facial recognition tech, which relies on a database of nonconsensually scraped social media photos.

They claim only cops get to use this. It's a lie.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/technology/clearview-investors.html

Clearview investors, clients and cronies all have logins to the system. Long before it was selling to cops, these people were literally using it as a party trick, getting people at parties to give them photos to subject to Clearview analysis, just for shits and giggles.

For example, billionaire John Catsimatidis used it to freak out his daughter, sneaking a pic of her data while she was at a restaurant and then IDing the guy and texting her with the guy's bio while she was still eating with him.

An investor named David Scalzo gave the app to his children: "They like to use it on themselves and their friends to see who they look like in the world. It's kind of fun for people."

It sure seems like Ashton Kutcher also got to run around and use it without limit or accountability. Last time I checked, he was also not a police officer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNhYqLbsAGk&feature=youtu.be

One tech expert, Nicholas Cassimatis, uses the app as "a hobby."

Your 21st Century panopticon, folks, brought to you by compulsive liars who ask us to trust them not to get it wrong.

South Korea's beating covid-19 with free testing (permalink)

South Korea has tested 140,000 people for Covid-19. The tests are free for all as part of the nation's public health program. Testing has led to world-leading containment of the disease.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-04/south-korea-tests-hundreds-of-thousands-to-fight-virus-outbreak

President Moon Jae-in calls it a "war" and has put the country on the kind of footing that you'd expect of any existential threat, sidelining the interests of industry in favor of national survival. They're testing 10,000 people/day. Results are available in hours. You can get tested at drive-through testing centers. The kits are 90% accurate and were developed by a domestic producer, Seegene Inc.

America is learning that offshoring high-tech manufacturing to save on labor costs and allowing its private sector to dominate its healthcare resulted in a brittle situation where it can't produce reliable tests, and the unreliable tests are only available to the wealthy.

The fate of uninsured, untested, untreated Americans is not theirs alone. They're the ones preparing wealthy Americans' food and cleaning their homes.

We have a shared microbial destiny that no amount of neoliberal doctrine can handwave away.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/01/shared-microbial-destiny/#covidclasswar

The web is unusably beshitted with terrible ad-tech (permalink)

The web is unusably beshitted and encrufted with popups, interstitials, rolldowns, nagware, paywalls, autoplaying video, ads that scroll with the page, and worse. I haven't looked at the web without an adblocker in years and it's still barely usable.

https://www.cjr.org/first_person/the-infinite-scroll.php

The modern web's equilibrium is "as terrible as possible, without being so terrible that you stop reading," or, worse, "as terrible as is necessary to get you pay to bypass the paywall."

In the CJR, David Roth publishes one of the most pitiless, accurate, evocative descriptions of using the modern internet of cruft.

"The page loads, and a little video ad box rises from the bottom left of the screen and begins buffering. Then a big box pops up over the small one with an offer to subscribe to the paper at a special promotional rate… As you contemplate it, the video begins to play in a muted spasm. This throws a scrim of gray over the rest of the page, making it impossible to read…While you've been triaging a second small video player has floated up into the middle left of the screen. You manage to close these various boxes, and now you can scroll. For a few seconds, anyway, until another ad creeps down from the banner ad above the headline."

But Roth isn't merely complaining here. He's also digging into the underlying reality: dwindling margins, short-term thinking, monopolization of the ad-market, and a buyer's market for ads that lets advertisers demand worse and worse of publishers. Publishers are staffed with people who are "perpetually maxed-out and stressed and scrabbling for a dwindling and finite amount of money." They're choosing chumboxes and other garbage because they want to keep the lights on.

This happened before, of course. It's an HTML5, CSS-enabled reprise of the pop-up wars, where exploding inventory and finite advertising allowed advertisers to play publishers off against each other with increasingly obnoxious, intrusive pop-ups.

These were unbelievably terrible, even by modern standards. Pop-ups would spawn at 1px X 1px, making them invisible, autoplaying audio. Others would sense your mouse heading for the close box and move themselves away from your pointer. They'd spawn 3 more pop-ups for every one you closed, or 300, until your computer ran out of RAM and crashed, taking all your work with it.

These pop-ups didn't go away because publishers won the battle. They went away because of pop-up blocking.

When Opera, and then Mozilla, turned pop-up blocking on by default, users finally had a meaningful reason to prefer one browser to the others. One browser was usable. The other one let pop-up ads crash your computer and eat your unsaved docs. As users switched en masse to blocking browsers, publishers could tell advertisers, "Look, we'll run any garbage ad you tell us to because we need your money. But if it's a pop-up it will be blocked by the majority of our users. They just won't see it."

The pop-up wars were won because technologists helped users exercise technological self-determination. But increasingly, browser vendors are ad-tech companies. Even when they're not, browsers are being designed to serve publishers (who are under advertisers' thumbs), not users.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

We should address monopolies in ad-tech and browsers, we should create meaningful privacy protections via a federal privacy law with a private right of action. But all of that needs to be accompanied with legal cover for users who assert the right to unshittify their web sessions.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

This won't just protect users, it will protect publishers. It's one thing to prohibit publishers from intrusive advertising. But it's another altogether to make that kind of advertising literally technically impossible.

For $3, a robolawyer will automatically force data brokers to delete you and sue the ones who don't (permalink)

The always-amazing Donotpay has a new robot-lawyer service: as part of your $3/month, they'll serve every data-broker with a demand to purge your records under the CCPA, and sue the ones who don't.

https://fortune.com/2020/03/05/delete-location-data-privacy-personal-information-donotpay/

Data-brokers don't just drive nuisance calls, they also expose you to risks like being doxed and swatted, or having your identity stolen, including by stalkers and bounty hunters who exploit mobile phone tracking to get your realtime location. Every single person should purge their data from every single data-broker, period. Donotpay targets the top 20 brokers and facial recognition companies, including Clearview AI.

Donotpay automates opt-outs for these companies. It also automates suing companies that don't comply or those that make illegal demands like requiring you to send a scan of your driver's license before they'll purge your records. Once you're signed up, you can opt out your whole family, and even your friends. If you don't want a $3/month sub (which gets you tons of other awesome robolawyering), you can just sign up once, pay $3, purge your records and cancel.

Fulfilling deletion requests costs companies about $10. You can use them punitively. Any time a company pisses you off, you can just file a data-deletion demand under CCPA.

When Donot pay started, it was Ios only and I couldn't use it. Somewhere along the way, they got a web interface, too. I just signed up. I'm gonna pay for the wifi on my flight this afternoon just so I can explore all its options.

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago Bram Cohen's Stanford talk on BitTorrent https://web.archive.org/web/20051124040524/http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/ee380/050216-ee380-100.asx

#5yrsago DMCA abuser ordered to pay $25K to WordPress https://torrentfreak.com/wordpress-wins-25000-from-dmca-takedown-abuser-150305/

#5yrsago Albuquerque PD encrypts videos before releasing them in records request https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150221/17074630102/albuquerque-police-dept-complies-with-records-request-releasing-password-protected-videos-not-password.shtml

#5yrsago Judge who invented Ferguson's debtor's prisons owes $170K in tax https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/06/ferguson-judge-owes-unpaid-taxes-ronald-brockmeyer

#5yrsago Hartford, CT says friends can't room together unless some of them are servants https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-hartford-scarborough-street-house-0218-20150217-story.html

#5yrsago Finnish millionaire gets EUR54K speeding ticket https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-31709454

#1yrago Zuckerberg announces a comprehensive plan for a new, privacy-focused Facebook, but fails to mention data sharing and ad targeting https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-zuckerberg-privacy-pivot/

#1yrago Ruminations on decades spent writing stories that run more than 1,000,000 words https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2019/03/lessons-learned-writing-really.html

#1yrago A thorough defense of Modern Monetary Theory https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2019/03/05/mmt-sense-or-nonsense/#62e9ed235852

#1yrago GOP lawmaker driven mad by bill that would decriminalize children who take naked photos of themselves, delivers a frenzied rant about anal sex on legislature's floor https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/03/05/39511377/a-bill-decriminalizing-teen-sexting-passes-the-house-causing-republican-to-scream-about-anal-sex-on-the-floor

#1yrago Bounty hunters and stalkers are able to track you in realtime by lying to your phone company and pretending to be cops https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/panvkz/stalkers-debt-collectors-bounty-hunters-impersonate-cops-phone-location-data

#1yrago From prisons to factories to offices: the spread of workplace surveillance and monitoring tech https://datasociety.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/DandS_WorkplaceMonitoringandSurveillance-.pdf

#1yrago NH GOP lawmakers mocked gun violence survivors by wearing clutchable pearl necklaces to gun control hearing https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/06/gop-lawmakers-wore-pearls-while-gun-violence-victims-testified-activists-were-outraged/?utm_term=.addd1b7a24f8

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Emptywheel (https://www.emptywheel.net/), Slashdot (https://slashdot.org), Naked Capitalism (https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/), Super Punch (https://superpunch.net/, Bas van Beek (http://www.basvanbeek.com/).

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Museums and the Web: March 31-April 4 2020, Los Angeles. https://mw20.museweb.net/

LA Times Festival of Books: 18 April 2020, Los Angeles. https://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/

Currently writing: I'm rewriting a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm also working on "Baby Twitter," a piece of design fiction also set in The Lost Cause's prehistory, for a British think-tank. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel afterwards.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Disasters Don't Have to End in Dystopias: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/01/disasters-dont-have-to-end-in-dystopias/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

[ask-de-writer]

LOST TIME (part 2 of 3) A fantasy of Flocking Bay.

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to Flocking Bay

LOST TIME

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

5556 words

© 2020 by Glen Ten-Eyck

written 2003 by Glen Ten-Eyck

All rights reserved.

Reproduction  in any form, physical, electronic or digital is prohibited without the  express written consent of the author or proper copyright holder.

//////////////

Copyright fair use rules for Tumblr users

Users  of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights. They may  reblog the story. They may use the characters or original characters in  my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical  compositions. I will allow those who do commission art works to charge  for their images.

All sorts of Fan Activity, fiction, art, cosplay, music or anything else is ACTIVELY encouraged!

///////////////////////

Morton Hewitt did not last. He bought the house for back taxes in 1944. He lived there for a week. He painted the hardwood floors and then hanged himself in the garage the next day.

Byron Thomas bought the house from Hewitt’s estate. He was a grave digger for Trinity Graveyard. He updated the plumbing and lived there quietly for several years. Apparently he liked his work a little too well. He buried two people who were not yet dead. One of them lived. He was adjudged sane at his trial and hanged for his crime.

Mark Altman bought the house next. He was a reclusive sort and lived there for a quite a number of years before it was discovered that he’d had some visitors who had never left. He died in prison while awaiting trial. There was an interesting hand written note attached to the autopsy report which stated that the coroner had ruled out both suicide and homicide but refused to pronounce the death natural.

Dora Greene got the place next. She was Mark’s sister. Like Mark, she lived there quietly for years. One day she walked into town and set fire to the school, killing five and maiming six more. She spent her last years in a lunatic asylum, setting three more fires and killing two more people. She herself died in her last fire.

While she was in the asylum, one Tony Fisk, age twelve, urged on by several other urchins, had thrown some stones at the windows of the Vekin place. He had missed. Becoming angry, he took careful aim and they all watched the flight of the stone. In the young malefactor’s words, “It went away without falling.”

It would not have been worthy of a news story, except for the fact that each of the children who had watched the stone had gone severely and permanently cross-eyed. In a small town like Flocking Bay, that many kids going cross-eyed at once could not be hidden.

George Abbot bought the house and rented it at a very low price to a Michael Farley. The two had been feuding, down-state, and the house was supposed to have been a peace offering. Farley stayed only a few weeks. He went out and dynamited Abbot’s automobile. Farley was quite mad and lived out his life in an asylum for the criminally insane. The county coroner ruled Abbot’s death to be suicide. After all, he had known the history of the house and had knowingly rented that house to an enemy.

Cornelius Baker took the house next. He upgraded the kitchen and installed modern wiring. He lived there quietly and apparently got on well for about five years. He was a long-haul truck driver. Bodies followed him about the country. Finally, he was caught with one in his truck. He drove his truck into a bridge abutment at over ninety miles per hour rather than be taken alive.

Now, I had the place. I mentally withdrew my blessing. He had not been a good man at all.

Lois saw that I was finished with the file and making good inroads on my sandwich. She asked, “Did you sleep there, last night?”

“Yes, I did. Most restful sleep I have had in years.”

“What is your full name?”

“Vandervekken,” I replied, getting out my driver’s license. I was used to this. “No first name or middle initial. Just Vandervekken.”

“How old are you?”

“I don’t know, at least seventy.”

“You don’t know how old you are? Seventy? You look like you’re in your early twenties,” she said incredulously. “I told you that things connected with the Vekin place get interesting.”

“I got a head-wound during the war. Traumatic amnesia.”

“Viet Nam wasn’t that long ago. It would only make you in your fifties.”

“Not Viet Nam, Lois. WW II. Apparently, I was helping the French Underground.” I handed her the military fingerprint record. Her eyes widened as she realized that I was serious. “The amnesia’s been permanent, so far. I have language skills . . . too many. I’m a fluent, accentless polyglot. I even speak Basque. I know how to do an amazing number of things . . . no trace of name or personal past. No ID either.”

“Couldn’t they trace you by these fingerprints or something?”

“They tried. I was found among the bodies of a wiped-out unit of the French Underground during the German withdrawal from Paris in 1944. Someone from another unit was able to say that I was an American volunteer with a name that he could neither remember nor pronounce ... something sort of Dutch. That inspired my current name. I got back with a temporary ID and that military fingerprint record, which I still carry.”

“That’s sad, and eerie, too. What’s it feel like?”

“I’ve thought about that a lot. I think the best way to describe it is like a house that’s furnished but nobody is home. Empty. Alone.”

“So, how does that relate to your choice of name? You must know what having only one name does to our systems for indexing things and people.”

“True. I want to stand out, in case somebody recognizes who I am. As for Vandervekken, he was the Flying Dutchman, who swore that he would take his ship around the Cape of Good Hope, against a gale, if it took until Judgment Day. That was in the Seventeenth Century and he is still sailing. His ghost is seen as a Dutch East India Co. galleon with all sails set, sailing into the teeth of a gale. He can’t get home either.”

“I see,” Lois said, adding to her notes. “What brought you to Flocking Bay?”

“I was just passing through. I like small towns, so I avoid the main highways and big cities whenever I can. I liked the atmosphere of Flocking Bay enough to inquire about the possibility of settling here.”

“Look, we both know that small towns are dying. You could have had your pick from any of a dozen houses. Why the Vekin place?”

“I was shown fourteen places, actually. I know that it seems a bit forbidding at first, but it felt good. Like a warm glove on a cool morning. Have you ever actually been there?”

She shuddered, “No, and before you, I have never heard of anyone who said that the Vekin place felt good ... You say that you are a writer. What have you written?”

“Charles said it very well, ’Pseudonyms are great for privacy.’ My own writing aside, I do translations but you won’t find my name on most of them. Archaeologists like to take credit for their finds. I mentioned that I’m a polyglot? I sight read ancient languages as well as modern.”

I extended my hand to Lois and invited, “Would you like to come and see for yourself this house of dark history? I promise that you will find it worth your while. In all of those stories, not once was the interior of Vekin House described. Do come.”

“I have to return the file and get my camera,” she responded gamely.

“I shall await you in my auto, in front of the Voice,” I answered. As I walked her back across the street, I had the pleasure of seeing her stare at Lilitu.

“If that’s what I think its, I’ll ride with you anywhere!” she called over her shoulder as she entered the Voice’s office. True to her word, she emerged in a few minutes with a camera. Not one of those tiny little cameras that have become fashionable, but a business-like press camera. I opened the car door and gave her a hand up.

As I got into the driver’s seat, she asked, wonder in her voice, “Is this really a Packard V-12 Touring Car?”

We pulled away with the almost uncannily quiet, vibration-free ride that the car was famous for. I replied, “You bet she is. Lois, meet Lilitu. Lilitu, meet Lois. After the war, there were still quite a few of them to be had, and I liked both the ride and the durability, so I hunted one down and had it fixed up like new. I’ve kept her that way ever since. She’s only had two owners in over two-million miles. The first owner only put on about sixty-thousand of them.”

“You drive a lot,” she stated.

“I was looking for something ... I think that Flocking Bay has it. My turn for a few questions , if you don’t mind.”

“Fire away. If I don’t like the question, I won’t answer it.”

“What did you do before you took up the Voice?”

“The same thing that I still do. The stock and futures markets. I’m good at it. I got out of college with a degree in the sociology of medieval witchcraft. I got a job as a waitress on the strength of my looks. I put my first fifty dollars in tips into a risky stock that kited way up. On a hunch, I dumped it three days after I bought it. It nosedived shortly after I sold out. After commissions, I had three hundred and fifty dollars. I rolled it over the same way. The rest is history. So far, my hunches have always worked for me.”

“What brought you to Flocking Bay?”

“Like you, I was passing through. I was on my way to Lakeside Resort about three years ago. I got a hunch that I should stay, so I did. The Voice was failing. When a small town loses its paper, the end is in sight. I didn’t want the end to come, so I bought the paper. Here I am.”

“And here we are,” I said with a flourish as I pulled up in front of the house. We both stared. The yard was neatly trimmed, though the bushes and trees still retained a slightly forbidding aspect. Going up the path to the front door, I noticed that the flagstones had been leveled, the weeds removed and the joints and refilled with fresh sand. The iron fence and balustrades had been cleaned of rust.

“You’ve been busy,” was Lois’s comment.

“That’s just it,” I replied, puzzled. “I didn’t do it. I thought that stocking the fridge and setting out a snack last night was something that the real-estate agent arranged. Sort of a welcome wagon. This is beyond the call of duty.” Opening the front door, I felt that comfortable, welcoming feeling that had caused me to buy the house in the first place. Impulsively, I said, “Hello, house, you certainly look nice today.”

Lois looked at me quizzically and asked, “Do you talk to everything, or is this special?”

I thought for a moment before answering, “Actually I only talk to things that have personality enough to warrant a name, like Lilitu, my car, or Drachen, my typewriter.”

“Typewriter? You do like antiques, don't you? What are you going to call the house, then?”

“I’m not sure,” I answered. “Something good ... What does the place feel like to you?”

“The place actually looks and feels . . . well . . .” Lois groped for the right word, “I’d have to say . . . happy. Not what I expected, at all. It feels like what you see when a pup that loves its master is greeting him. No wonder you slept well, if it feels as good to you as it does to me . . .” She sort of trailed off. “I wouldn’t normally say this, but I’m getting a hunch about this place . . .” she trailed off again.

“I guess that the house was just waiting for the right kind of person,” I responded. “It was pretty rough on everyone else. I’m glad that you like it too.”

“Look at these floors,” she mused, “They were beautiful before Hewitt painted them over. You can still make out some traces of the parquetry patterns. If he hadn’t already hanged himself, I’d help you to do it.”

<==Previous    Next==>

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[bumble-booty]

Commissions Are Open! (New and Updated Version!)

Commissions are currently Open!

My writing background and preferences!

My Nickname is Bumble Booty or Baby Blue, feel free to use either! My specialty is dark/gore, body horror, psychological horror, and NSFW! However, I will absolutely do non-dark as well, so if light and fluffy is more your preference- I’m still interested in writing it! 

I have a Bachelors Degree with a Double Major and a minor- Psychology (specialized in abnormal), Philosophy (integrative study with Psychology), and Criminology (minor and main focus being crime and homicide). As for other useful background, I actually work for a movie store (and one other place, but that one doesn’t give me plot bunnies)! 

What that means for you is- don’t be shy with any prompt. I’ve probably been in contact with it before through my studies, personal research, or work-related exposure!

My specialty is Transformers, but I have recently fallen for the Hazbin Hotel fandom. However, I have not written for the latter as of yet. I will most likely get into Hazbin Hotel very soon though! If you want something outside of these fandoms, please expect a slight delay as I research the fandom. Please ask though, as I may still take it on with sufficient info!

Disclaimer: On most occasions, I typically stick to more canon-style fics. It is simply easier for me to work with plausible situations that can expand out from there- however, I might still do more crack-style if I feel confident enough. I will also do original works if I have enough information!

What I will Likely/Certainly Reject: These are subtypes I do not feel confident in/have had bad experiences with/ will not touch with a 10 foot pole. 

Pedophilia. 

While age-differences are perfectly okay, molesting a child isn’t. All characters in my work WILL be 18+ for NSFW fics, or you can politely take your business elsewhere. 

Because sometimes this apparently needs to be said, Age Regression is not Pedophilia. If your preferred characters are of consensual age and this is a psychological fic where the boundaries are CLEARLY set, please feel free to message me. If your character is a child being abused as an adult, do not. I can tell the difference. 

Farting/ Flatulence fics. 

This is a strange one, but I have had strange experiences with this subtype and those that request it. I have no opinion on your kinks or likes, but I will no longer be accepting fics with this as a PRIMARY FOCUS. 

If it happens to be something that might come up- for instance, an IBS coping fic, a period fic, an autopsy/drowning fic, etc- I will happily discuss this being an option as far as accurately describing the symptoms/struggles of those that suffer with these conditions/fates. Do not hesitate to discuss it with me, the worst you will be told is no. 

Unusually Predatory/ Targeted Hate Fics.

I am well aware of the trend of shaming someone/ channeling a targeted threat through popular media, and I will not help damage someone’s psyche. If I have reason to believe you are using this fic to try to shame a previous significant other/ trying to use your fic and its exposure to target/mislead someone into what could be a psychologically damaging situation, I will not be working with you. Deciding this is my discretion, and if it is truly not your intent I apologize but stand by my decision. As mentioned prior, If it is not your intent go ahead and email me with your prompt anyway- the worst you will be told is no! 

 Any Other Fic for Personal Reasons. 

I am a person with my own history, and I reserve the right to deny a fic if it strikes too close to home. 

My Pricing, Payments, Refunds, and Alterations!

Pricing: I charge in USD on a rising scale for minimum word counts. 50 cents per 100 words, up to $4.50 for 999. After that, it's a flat $5 for 1,000-word increments. So: $5 for 1,000 words, $10 for 2,000 words, $15 for 3,000, etc. Final Pricing will be established before I start working, but I am very flexible! Should you want something changed/altered while I’m working on the draft, please contact me! 

Payments: Payments are accepted through Venmo upon completion AND APPROVAL of your work.

Refunds: Refunds will not be served, as I usually don’t accept payment until after the work is completed and approved. 

Alterations: If we decide on an alternative prompt after or during the first draft, I will consider this the new commission and write with a new/altered price agreed on by both of us through DM/Email. I will mostly stick with my standard pricing, but any oddities will be discussed privately should something happen on my end to cause a delay. 

Side note: I do not have a maximum word count, and if I go over it's ON ME. My Prices are for a minimum, not a maximum.

Request form!

When contacting me about a commission, please send me this general format for ease of keeping everything straight! If you do not, I will reply with this copied in so I know exactly what you want and can ask for more information wherever needed!

Characters: (This is who you want to see! If you want couples, please mark them in the x/x format, with non-couples listed singularly and separated by a comma.) 

EX: Prowl/Jazz, Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Unnamed Mecha.

Basic Plot: (SFW/NSFW, what you want to happen. This is the main idea I’m working with!)

EX: NSFW, Jazz returns from a mission in a dangerous head space. He is fairly violent to everyone, and is searching for Prowl due to his ability to calm his coding. Optimus and Bumblebee are helping Prowl contain the rouge Ops mech before he offlines half the base. 

Sub-Plot: (Kinks/Small Details/ Triggers you want to see. If going into more detail on a particular thing, put a hyphen after the general descriptor and continue. End this with another hyphen, then continue listing if you have more!)

EX: Pinning, Biting, Clawing, Mild Body Horror- Maybe Optimus gets some tubing cut loose? Or a random, unnamed Mech meeting a foul end after startling Jazz?  I just want it to be obvious how dangerous Jazz is in this state!- Feral Behavior, Aftercare, and Post-Recovery Apology.

Other: Things you DO NOT WANT TO SEE AT ALL. Please clarify in the same way you clarified in Sub-plot. This is especially important if you are requesting Gore/Trauma fics.  

******Please be clear on this!!!! This can be as broad as "no gore" to as specific as the word "moist". Please understand that it is not necessary for you to explain why, nor do you have to give me any reasoning should I ask for you to expand/elaborate. I do, however, reserve the right to ask if similar words/situations would also be off-limits. As mentioned in the personal background, I have studied Psychology and I do not want to be the reason you expand a phobia or traumatic event.  PLEASE REMEMBER THIS IS A SERVICE YOU ARE PAYING FOR, AND IT IS MY DUTY TO FILL THIS SERVICE IN A WAY THAT YOU ENJOY! Not put you in a bad head space or trigger you!******

EX: Gutting, Descriptive Bone/strut snapping, Overly Possessive Language- especially the word ‘pet’ or other dehumanizing possessive language along those lines- Unsanitary, and the word “Moist”- similar words such as ‘damp’ or ‘sweltering’ are acceptable (I just don’t like that word). 

How To Reach Me!

Email: My work email is “bootybumble@yahoo.com”- please put ‘commission’ somewhere in the subject line so I know to look ASAP. I usually respond pretty quick, but I do hold two jobs. Expect an answer within 24 hours. I will reply to the email you contact me with if I have further questions and clarification, or if I’m accepting/rejecting the commission right away!

If you do not receive an answer in 24 hours, feel free to email me again and explain you did not get an answer- it might be a filtering problem that I need to fix! 

DM: Direct Messages are also acceptable here, but I will warn that I often forget to check! Email is more reliable for a faster reply, but I will do my best do accommodate those that don’t want to/ can’t email! 

Please keep to the same format as you would for an email, but feel free to break it up into sizable portions since messages read a bit weird. I don’t mind the spam messages, I'm that kind of texter myself!

Priority/Timeframe, Rejecting, and Posting/Delivery! 

Priority/Timeframe: Commissions will take top priority over other writing work, and if I happen to get two at once it will be by order of receiving. I strive to have 2,000 words and below done per a one week period, anything more than that I will discuss with you over email/pms due to job balancing.

Rejecting: I would like to mention that I still reserve my rights to reject commissions if I feel I am unable to complete them in a manner worthy of accepting payment, or if I feel I cannot give enough personal effort due to work/personal qualms.

Posting/Delivery: Upon completion of the first draft, I will send you the draft script in a downloaded document (usually .docx format) if you like the draft/bones, please respond with any alterations you would like to see! This is additions, subtractions, substitutes, or changes! You can do anything as small as a word, to as large as the entire fic as long as it is agreed upon. 

After this is cleared, I will go back through the fic and add flourish and final details. After that is the proofreading phase, then I will send you the completed fic. If you are not happy with the final fic, please respond with what you would like changed and I will GLADLY fix the issues!

DISCLAIMER: I will not post your finished product without your permission if it is a payment-finalized product! This means that if you have paid for it, it is yours to keep. If I really liked the fic, I might ask your permission to post it to my AO3 Account with it either listed as a gift fic to your AO3 account, or with a notice placed in the notes at the top of the page that this was a commissioned piece, followed by your username/"anonymous" if you would not like it known that it was yours. 

HOWEVER: I ask that you do not post these works as if they were your own! I work very hard on my commissions and put substantial research into each piece, and I am more than willing to signal boost you on the work as well for sponsoring it! If you have a private archive or something similar that you intend on posting it to, please mention it to me during the initial emails/dms and we can discuss it. (I highly doubt I will mind though, I can understand some organization quirks!)

Samples!

If you would like to read some samples of my works, Check me out on AO3!

http://archiveofourown.org/users/BumbleBooty 

Here are some samples of my personal favorite works within my most popular word count brackets!

Less than 1K- http://archiveofourown.org/works/13413417

Thuck! E's Thuck! - Bumblebee/Grimlock, NSFW, Vore 

1K- http://archiveofourown.org/works/13445199

Those Who Need Us The Most- Bumblebee/Grimlock, SFW, Comfort 

2K- http://archiveofourown.org/works/13356138

The Sweetest Melody- Tarn/Pharma, NSFW, Body Horror

3K- http://archiveofourown.org/works/12662973

Detecting the Undetectable- Jazz/Prowl, NSFW, Heat Cycles

4K- http://archiveofourown.org/works/12275850

SCP 3262- Bumblebee, Original work, SCP Crossover

Just under 5K- http://archiveofourown.org/works/12199893

All For You- Jazz/Prowl, NSF, Candy Armour Vore Style

6K+- http://archiveofourown.org/works/13407669 

Pretty Kitty-Prowl/Jazz/Smokescreen, NSFW, Neko/Werewolf Heatfic

[alatismeni-theitsa]

(part 1) Could go describe the greece thoughts on the war reparations that are asked of germany? I am stuck in a debate with my grandpa because of it. You see my town in germany is broke to the point where they have to cut public transport in order to have the money to repair and build other public transport that is more sustainable ( we have 3 types, only 1 that is cut is working ) and you can see a big hit to our economy coming as the biggest part of our tax payers are older people who want to

(part 2) go into early retirement, meaning cuts in the state retirement fonds and way higher taxes for the rest of us. (that is also why the elder genderation kinda looks down on south europe “they go so early in retirement, they don’t work as long as we do so ofc their economy is bad” ) that with the mentality of saving up for everything and the idea that we worked hard for our economic wonder after the war makes him think that greece is asking out of entitlement ? While in my age group it’s more like we want to help , one of my teachers even phrased it as helping out euopean neighbours helps us too , but at the same time have enough money left over so that the towns still can operate normally ( the city where the grandparents of my bff live didn’t have enough money immediantly to change faulty water pipes in a neighborhood ) and maybe it’s because we’re still in school so the number in the reparation seems really big. //

============================================

Hello! :) To sum my big response up, I believe

reparations must be paid and that this is the most suitable situation for this

to happen. Germany has enough money to support its citizens and Greece. I believe with this is the majority opinion of Greeks on the matter. If any Greek wants to add soemthing, feel free to reblog and comment. For now, let’s analyze that a bit more.

To put a disclaimer here, I am not saying that Greece is the perfect state or that it handled its financial matters in the best way. Not all the blame falls on Germans. Greeks are to blame too, of course. We did some poor choices and we can be scumbugs from time to time. But enough blame falls on Germany (as well), enough to not give them the right to accuse Greece this way. At the same time I don’t support the “all Germans are bad” notion. 

Point 1

As I said, reparations must be paid no matter what. And they should be paid especially in this situation because the German Nazi regime harmed Greece A LOT. (I am not implying that all Germans were Nazis, I am not implying that Germany wasn’t hurt by the regime and I am not implying you don’t know your own history. I will do the mention for the reason I just want to lay some numbers.)

The Great Famine was a period of mass forced starvation during the Axis occupation of Greece, during World War II (1941–44). Deaths estimated to 300,000 just from this. People who have survived this are our grandparents and their traumatic experiences bleed into our families. Also, imagine how many more died of sudden mass executions in villages and by opposing the regime. Let’s not mention the Greek Romani, Greek Jewish, Greek people with disabilities and Greek lgbt+ people were led to death camps. At least 80% of the country’s Jewish population, were murdered (that is tens of thousands). Bulgaria had taken the North with German blessings and there was more destruction on their part. So, what sort of “entitlement” is to get money after war crimes being commited onto your country? 

Point 2

At the same time I recognize that simple people had to work very hard to bring Germany back to its feet after WW2. I am not denying that your grandfather and his generation are worthy of good pensions and rest. And, with the current economic state of Germany, I am sure they will take that money. See, Germany has become one of the most influential and powerful states in the EU, even the most powerful someone say. So much that countries like France and the UK are overshadowed and worried about “a German hegemony”. So we know that the government, at least, has the money. (I will elaborate more on that on Point 4).

 Point 3

Now contrast this to Greece. Germans say Greeks are lazy. I say that Greeks have worked very hard to overcome the poverty their nation had. While Germanic kingdoms were thriving, Greece was under Ottoman occupation (which lasted for 200-500 years depending on the area). After 1825 Greeks slowly started getting freed and they had to gather money from level zero to build their new government and offices. Less than 100 years later the nation also suffered from a refugee crisis, as our Greek brothers in the Pontus region were going through a literal genocide so they run to Greece for safety. WW1 before that had brought nation to its knees. And then came WW1. And not to mention the Greek civil war afterwards. More poverty, more hunger for everyone. All we hear from our grandparents is poverty and hunger (unless you are descended from an old rich family, which, for the most of us its unlikely).

So, Greeks always worked to overcome this. We are not lazy but we had one “lazy” generation. It was in the early days of the Euro in the country when the government had money and chose to spend it immoderately on its citizens. The people who were in their prime in the in 80’s-00’s worked normal hours with an extravagant pay. And since they were paid well and the retirement funds were good, they went into retirement early. Other than that, Greeks never worked less, especially less than Germans. Even today, Greeks work the longest hours in Europe, while Germans clock the least hours, according to data by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reveal. (article from 2018: https://greece.greekreporter.com/2018/01/24/greeks-work-longest-hours-in-europe/)

Greeks still work hard to overcome the crisis. Many households are bleeding and striving to keep the basic goods coming into the house. Most of our elderly don’t have enough to take basic medicine because of the extreme cuts in their pensions. And more cuts are on the way (https://www.politico.eu/pro/greek-mps-pass-further-austerity-measures-amidst-violent-protests/). People will retire after their sixties because if they go on retirement they won’t have enough money to even maintain a household. That is because the EU, with Germany as a leading force, put extreme meters of austerity for us and great taxes which grow every year even ten years after the crisis. To top that, Greece almost doesn’t have an industry at all because the EU has make us dependent on other countries (because of our debt). It’s not that we have a great amount of dept. There are countries with great industry that have a huge dept, see USA with its 20 trillion debt. It must be noted that the European countries were quick to put Greece into their debt since our revolution in the 19th century. Of course, I don’t expect anyone to just give Greece money. The problem is that we were put in debt for very small help. Sometimes it was almost like a scam.

Point 4

Moreover, Germany knows the situation in Greece and it’s profiting from it. For example, Fraport, which is majority-owned by state and local governments in Germany, bought 14 Greek airports in 2017. The European commission asked Greece to sell 40% of our state electrical production units. As you will see in this 2015 article, more sales were done. (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/germans-begin-the-looting-of-greece-2015-08-21). “the country must sequester 50 billion euros worth of public assets to sell off at distressed prices to mostly foreign bidders — with German companies first in line.” and “Other assets to be sold will include the ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki and valuable waterfront properties for hotel and casino development. State-owned electricity and train operations are also targeted for privatization.”

Germany made billions from the crisis, as stated in this article. (https://www.thelocal.de/20180621/germany-made-billions-on-greeces-debt-crisis-berlin-confirms) Plus, the German newspaper “Handelsblatt” confirmed that Germany gained 368 billion euros, which is 10% of its Gross Domestic Product - GDP. And how could it not, since it’s buying everything Greece has and on top of it gives us loans with a very high interest rate. It’s obvious that Germany’s government is not here to see us thrive but to gain from our misfortune. If it wanted to see us thrive it would support Greece with investments, not robbery of its state assets. And I say robbery because, due to the crisis, they find the excuse to buy everything very cheap, as we depend on them.

Greeks feel like they are colonized by the Germans, since they just want to milk us and at the same time they treat the country as their vacation resort because our prices have gone down due to the bigger crisis they put us in. I am not ungrateful for tourism but you can see the messy social implications of that. See the 2017 article “Why Greece is Germany’s ‘de facto colony’” (https://www.politico.eu/article/why-greece-is-germanys-de-facto-colony/)

And I should comment on the irony of the situation, since, even with the way Germany treats Greece, Greece’s youth mainly migrates to Germany to work, as there are no jobs here. That means we give the country our knowledge and our labor and we work to advance the country for the benefit of all - while at the same time we are looked down upon because we are supposedly lazy. While having jobs in Germany. There is a chance I go to the country for work, and while with my degree I can help advance the technological companies of Germany, a lot of people will just name me “a lazy Greek” or they will name my parents “lazy Greeks” - my parents who almost pass out of exhaustion working multiple jobs to support the family. Or my grandparents, who opened four different shops (with great debt) because each one was failing and were always struggling to get by.

Seeing all the profit Germany made and will

make, it’s hard for me to believe that the country lacks money. It must be the

government officials that don’t want to give this money to the people. It seems so ridiculous that the state won’t give enough money to your grandparents’ community to do basic things. It’s exactly like the situation in Greece, but our government indeed doesn’t have the money :P In some places our buses are so ancient they barely hold themselves together and you can hear the sounds their metals do as it goes on the road. (And you can feel them, it’s like a Luna Park ride :P) Roads are not fixed, our state buildings (and university buildings among them) are literally collapsing… Like… not such a good situation. 

Point 5

For the fake credentials fiasco: I don’t know how true is this but if it is indeed true, our politicians are scumbags. People who were not government officials at the time didn’t know about this and they didn’t support it. It was a previous government that did all this. Moreover, if Greece gave fake credentials, it was the job of EU officials to check them. It seems they didn’t do their job either, since they let us enter the EU. Or maybe they were as corrupt as our government at the time? And now they want to say they have the moral high ground? As I said, I am not well informed in this case but if it happened both parties are to blame, even in an unequal rate.

===================================================

Oook that’s it! If you want to add something, or ask me further my ask box is open! And thank you for supporting the Greek case! I think we should find a middle ground so neither German nor Greek citizens are harmed by political decisions. 

[rogeryang96-blog]

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[antoine-roquentin]

ARON MATÉ: It's The Real News, I'm Aaron Maté. The opioid drug crisis is the deadliest in US history. On Thursday, President Trump indicated he will formally declare it a national emergency.

DONALD TRUMP: The opioid crisis is an emergency and I'm saying officially, right now, it is an emergency. It's a national emergency. We're going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of money on the opioid crisis.

AARON MATÉ: Joining me now is Dr. Gabor Maté, a physician and author of several books, including, "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction." Full disclosure, he is also my father. Hello there.

GABOR MATÉ: Hi.

AARON MATÉ: Thank you for joining us. Let's start first with what this crisis is. The figures on overdose deaths in the US are something like 140 every single day, two-thirds from opioids. Describe for us what kind of crisis we're dealing with here.

GABOR MATÉ: As the President's Commission said, every three weeks in the US you have the equivalence of a 9/11, so that every year, currently, you have 14, 15 9/11s happening. In that sense, it's reasonable to speak about it as an emergency. Another sense, of course, it's been going on for a long, long, long time, it's just that the numbers have increased in the recent years.

AARON MATÉ: The numbers and also in terms of who the victims are, right, demographically?

GABOR MATÉ: Yes. It's now been found that the life expectancy of the white, working, and middle class is decreasing because of alcoholism and drug overdoses. It's a question of who it's hitting. It was always certain sections of the population, but now it's hitting the mainstream.

AARON MATÉ: The implication there is that that's the reason why it's perhaps getting so much more attention and resources now?

GABOR MATÉ: Well, there was an article in New York Times earlier this year which said exactly that, that because it's now hitting the white middle class, people are really starting to wonder what it's all about, and what else can you do beside the usual ineffective responses. It's interesting enough that, in the 2016 election, Trump got some of the biggest support in areas that are hardest hit by alcoholism and the opioid crisis and suicides.

AARON MATÉ: Why do you think that is?

GABOR MATÉ: That speaks to the very heart of addiction and what drug use is all about. It's all about an attempt to escape from desperation. Those areas are the areas of the country with the greatest desperation. Those are the ones that most were susceptible to Trump's message.

AARON MATÉ: Okay, let's talk about that. You talk about addiction being an attempt to escape desperation. You've worked with addicts over many years. You were a physician at the Portland Hotel Society, which is a residential and hospice service for residents of Vancouver's downtown east side, an area with a huge drug problem. Talk more about that, addiction being rooted in an attempt to escape adverse conditions.

GABOR MATÉ: If you look at the opioids, what are they? The opioids have been used in medicine for thousands of years. Used for what? Used for pain relief. They're the most powerful pain relievers that we have. They don't only soothe physical pain, they also soothe emotional pain. It turns out that the same area of the brain that experiences suffering from physical pain also experiences suffering from emotional pain. In other words, the primary question in any addiction, but especially in opioid addiction, is not why the addiction, but why the pain?

We have to look at what is the pain that people are trying to escape from. For that, there are two major causes. One cause is childhood trauma. We talk about how childhood trauma actually affects the brain in such a way as to make it more susceptible to addictions later on. Childhood trauma is one source of deep pain and all the addicts I worked with have been traumatized significantly so. That's what the large scale studies in the US shows about it, the more trauma in childhood, exponentially the greater the risk of addiction. Childhood trauma is a huge problem in our society and in American society.

The other question is, what's going on right now? That's stress. What we also know is that stress makes the brain more susceptible to addiction and stress also makes people more desires of escape from the stress. If you look at what's happening socially, economically, politically, culturally, is increasing insecurity, increasing stress, increasing uncertainty, increasing difficulty for people. Therefore, people will turn to short-term measures to escape those difficulties, or at least the awareness of them, by escaping into addictions, including drug use. What we're looking at is, A, childhood trauma, and B, severe social stress. It's not surprising that the areas where Trump got the greatest support are areas of great social stress.

AARON MATÉ: Right. Taking your analysis and looking at this response now, Trump poised to, it appears, declare this a national emergency. Looking at how this problem is discussed, what do you think is missing from the conversation and from the actual policy choices that are being made to respond to it?

GABOR MATÉ: The conversation in the mainstream media and political circles, and I would say even in medical circles, largely excludes the central importance of trauma and stress. They talk about the problem of addiction as it was simply a matter of a choice that somebody makes, in which case, two things you can do. One, is you can try to deter people or at least dissuade them from making that choice. That's what your attorney general, the American Attorney General Jeff Sessions talked about, about reviving the old Nancy Reagan "Just Say No" ethic, where you're just telling people how bad drugs are and then they won't use them [crosstalk 00:06:30]-

AARON MATÉ: You know what? I'm going to cut in. It wasn't just Sessions, it was also Trump. This is him speaking just a few days ago. Let's hear what he says and you can respond to this as well.

DONALD TRUMP: The best way to prevent drug addiction and overdose is to prevent people from abusing drugs in the first place. If they don't start, they won't have a problem. If they do start, it's awfully tough to get off. We can keep them from going on and maybe by talking to youth and telling them, "No good. Really bad for you in every way." If they don't start, it will never be a problem.

AARON MATÉ: "If they don't start, it will never be a problem."

GABOR MATÉ: Yes. That, again, is based on the view that just telling people how bad drugs are will keep them from using them. If that strategy worked, why do we have the crisis right now? If the Nancy Reagan "Just Say No" and telling people how bad it is to use drugs strategy worked, why has the heroin use rate in the US gone up five-fold in the last 10 years and why the current crisis? Clearly, that doesn't work.

The reason it doesn't work is is drug addiction is not a choice that anybody makes. Nobody chooses to do that. The real question is, how do we get that information across? The problem is that the children, the young people who are listening to adults, are not the ones at risk. The ones who are at risk are not listening to adults. It doesn't matter what we tell the kids, because again, the ones that don't need it, they'll get it, and the ones who need the information won't get it, because they're the hurt ones, and the abused ones, and the alienated ones to whom this kind of message falls on deaf ears. Yes?

AARON MATÉ: No, go ahead.

GABOR MATÉ: Well, the second perspective is that addiction is this disease that people inherit. Again, that excludes looking at people's lives, looking at their childhood trauma history, at the family history, of modern generational trauma perhaps, and looking at all the social factors that put stress on people. While the addiction to the brain looks like a disease to the brain, it's truly not.

What the disease [inaudible 00:08:44] is that that disease is the result of life experiences and social factors. Simply talking about trying to stop or prevent the addiction without looking at those social factors and those personal historical factors and then when you treat people without treating their trauma and treating their pain, you [inaudible 00:09:08].

AARON MATÉ: What about the side, though, that says the main problem is the supply, especially from in the case of opioids from big pharmaceutical companies? Purdue Pharma, it's well known that they entered Oxycontin into the market in the mid '90s. They concealed some of the impacts of it and that did lead to a huge spike in addictions and overdoses.

GABOR MATÉ: It's certainly true that the pharmaceutical companies profit, and very happily, over the overuse of pharmaceuticals. That's true. It's also true that Purdue, which engaged in subterfuge that contributed to the deaths of hundreds of people, paid a very small price and none of their executives went to jail, contrary to a small-time drug dealer who's responsible for much less degradation.

That's true, however, as an American judge very astutely said that you can no more control or suppress the law of supply and demand than you can suppress or control the law of gravity. The real issue is not just the availability, because people will use something. People that need to escape will use something. If they will not use available prescription drugs, they'll use illicit heroin. There's a lot of cheap heroin available in the United States right now.

If they will not use that, they'll use crystal meth. They'll use cocaine. They'll use alcohol. They'll use something. Ultimately, while it's certainly true that the pharmaceutical companies have contributed to this, and it's also true that physicians have contributed to it because of their insufficient understanding of chronic pain and how to deal with it, ultimately we still have to look at the broad social factors. In individual cases, we have to address those factors when we're treating people.

AARON MATÉ: Right. On the issue of treatment, I went to a event recently where I heard people who have experienced dealing with rehab facilities, having loved ones who are in rehab facilities. It was just a series of complaints about these facilities did not properly address their loved ones' issues. Specifically, there was very little therapy and attempts to address people's internal pain. I'm wondering your thoughts on that, the issues that the rehab approach and then treatment in general might face?

GABOR MATÉ: The problem is that most addiction specialists, physicians, psychiatrists, and counselors do not get trained in trauma. In fact, it's quite possible, for most training physicians in the United States or in my country, Canada, to graduate without ever hearing the word "trauma," let alone learning how to deal with it.

It's not surprising that, when people go to rehab facilities, the attention and the emphasis is put strictly on the behavior of addiction and trying to get them to stop the behavior and not on the causes that made them addicted in the first place. People go to rehab and then they're never helped to integrate and deal with their emotional pain, with their trauma. They're never given the help to learn and to help them rewire their brains in such a way that they can go out there and deal with stress more effectively and more consciously, with more awareness.

AARON MATÉ: Right. As we wrap, I have two questions about the psychological dynamics of addiction. The first is one that you touched on a bit earlier. What is the neuroscience of addiction? Why is someone with trauma, with unaddressed childhood pain, more wired to become addicted?

GABOR MATÉ: Well, first of all, because of the pain itself. All addictions, in my view, are an attempt to escape from emotional pain, discomfort, distress. The more distress, discomfort, pain, shame you have, the more likely you'll want to escape from it through addictions. That's an impact of trauma. Secondly, the childhood experience itself wires the brain. This is not controversial, this is just state of the art brain science, how the human brain develops depends very much on your early environment and, particularly, the emotional atmosphere, so how connected and attuned and emotionally present or, on the contrary, how stressed, absent, perhaps traumatized themselves the parents are will actually affect the wiring of the brain.

For the healthy brain development, you need a calm, connected and non-stressed parenting environment, which is less and less available to American kids or with social circumstances. Then, thirdly, if you look at the brain circuits involved in addiction, the opioid circuits where the opioid medications work, over the incentive motivation circuits where all the drugs and all the behaviors of addiction, from gambling, to sex tend to network, if you look at the circuits of emotional stress regulation and self-regulation, if you look at the circuits of impulse regulation, where we can make decisions not to engage in something even though we want to, if we know that it's bad for us, all these circuits develop or don't develop in response to the early environment.

In other words, the greater the early stress and the trauma and the less calm and supportive the early environment, the greater the risk that person is at for addiction later on. Not to mention not only for addiction, also for mental health problems. As this interim report by the President's Commission pointed out, about 40% of substance users also have correlated mental health issues, which also need to be addressed. By the way, I would say 40% is a gross underestimate. It's probably closer to 80, 90%.

AARON MATÉ: Quite likely, they're using drugs to deal or cope with those mental health issues?

GABOR MATÉ: Very often drugs are, apart from the general escape that provide from stress and emotional pain and distress, they're also specifically self-medications for diagnosable mental conditions such as post traumatic stress, such as depression, such as anxiety, such as attention deficit hyperactive disorder, such as bipolar illness, such as social phobia and so on. Again, these conditions and their basis in trauma all have to be addressed if we're to help addicts, addicted people really overcome their problem.

AARON MATÉ: Okay, so a final question, and it's also about psychology, I'm curious your thoughts on what is the psychology of those who stigmatize addicts, who have a hard time seeing them as people in need, people with pain, more seeing them from a criminal perspective? What, in your view, is going on there?

GABOR MATÉ: That's a great question. I think there are three levels that we can distinguish here, one is on the level of thought. They just don't understand. They haven't actually looked at what drives addiction. They see it as a moral question, because this is how they've been taught, and they have no other perspective. [inaudible 00:16:59], it's just shallow thinking based on a lack of information.

On the level of emotion, though, there's a tremendous hostility towards drug users and addicts in a part of a lot of people. What is that all about? I think what that's all about is something that Jesus talked about, when he said, "Don't judge, lest ye be judged." Basically, he points out that all the judgements you make of others are always, in the end, come back to ourselves.

If you look at American society or Western society in general, it's a highly addictive culture. People have all kinds of addictions. There's not really a deep difference between drug addictions, and sex addiction, and gambling addiction, and shopping addiction, and eating additions, in terms of their causes, in terms of their brain circuits, and in terms of negative impact. What I'm saying is [crosstalk- 00:17:52]-

AARON MATÉ: Well, but listen, a lot of people would push back on that and say, "You can't compare the impact of heroin use to the impact of gambling or sex or whatever else."

GABOR MATÉ: Well, first of all, we can make a more direct comparison if we look at cigarettes use or alcohol use. You can make a direct comparison between cigarette use and alcohol use and, on the one hand, in heroin use and the other. You know what the comparison says? The comparison says that heroin use is far safer. In other words, if you take a thousand people who smoke or drink heavily or who inject heroin, as long as they don't overdose, 30 years from now, there'll be a lot more disease, a lot more death in the alcohol and cigarette groups than in the heroin group.

AARON MATÉ: This is assuming, though, that the heroin is clean, right? Obviously, street heroin is far different.

GABOR MATÉ: That's what I'm saying. We have this arbitrary decision as to what drugs are acceptable and what drugs are not. What I am saying is that people don't have the same [inaudible 00:18:59], the same negative, hostile response to smokers and people who drink. In fact, drinking is publicly advertised on the Superbowl. It's totally arbitrary.

In other words, it's fueled in emotional reaction. What I'm saying is that the emotional reaction is based on the fact that addictions are so rife in our society, we just don't want to admit it, so we want to see the addict as somehow different. We want to see them as inferior to us. Now, if we want to judge them, and then we can feel superior, and that's on the emotional level.

On the neurological level, this part of the brain here, in the front part of the brain, the mid frontal cortex, has a function which is called "response flexibility," which means that when we are confronted with the situation, we can consider the facts. We can calmly evaluate what's best and respond from a flexible, rather than an emotional reactive point of view.

Now, for a lot of people in our society, that response flexibility is not available. They tend to react from an emotional-based patterned reactive ground. They don't have the equipment themselves. They're not mindful enough to really consider what's actually going on. Instead of being responsive, they're being reactive. That reaction is an emotional one of hostility.

AARON MATÉ: Okay. Very quickly as we wrap, because we haven't talked about it yet, but it relates to what we're talking about right now, which is that clean heroin is provided to people at safe injection sites, like the one that you worked at in Vancouver's downtown east side. I'm wondering if you could talk about that quickly and the impact that that has had on the community?

GABOR MATÉ: Well, the first thing you have to realize is that much of the negative impact of drug addiction is due to the illegal situation, where people have to use unreliable supplies polluted by whatever, what medication, particularly fentanyl, which is lethal. Nobody's advocating that drugs should become legal, in the sense of being freely available on the streets or corner stores, like cigarettes or alcohol is, but there are programs in Canada and in Europe, which have provided clean heroin to confirmed addicts who cannot be helped by methadone or suboxone or other medications. These people actually get a prescription, not that they take home, but they inject in the clinic.

It's been shown over and over again that people who are given access to such programs have much less disease, passed on much less disease to other people, far more economically viable, they have better family lives and far fewer health risks and incur far smaller health cost to the system.

What I'm suggesting is that, although supplied heroin will not be the answer to most people or certainly not to everybody, but there needs to be response flexibility in the healthcare system. Right now, the approaches are way too narrow, way too reactive, and way too limited. If we actually looked at all the possible ranges of what we already know is available to us and all the programs that we could actually use here, we will do much better than we're doing right now.

AARON MATÉ: Just to clarify, in Vancouver, there's two facilities, right? There's the facility where people are provided with prescription heroin and one where they're not provided with heroin, but they can go and inject safely. I believe, in both these facilities, the overdose deaths around that area have declined sharply, right?

GABOR MATÉ: There are two clinics, yes. One is the Supervised Injection Site, where people bring their illegal drugs, but they inject them under supervision with no harassment from the police. They're given clean needles, sterile water. In other words, they don't pass on or receive disease from other people. If they overdose, they're actually resuscitated. A lot of lives have been saved.

At another clinic, just one clinic in Vancouver, they prescribe and supervise prescribed heroin to people under the principles I just explained. Now, unfortunately, Vancouver's also seen a great increase in the overdose deaths and the clinics have not been able to keep up with that because of the introduction of fentanyl and still because of the retrograde drug laws that drive people underground. We're far from having solved the problem in Vancouver, but those two initiatives have demonstrated, in many studies, a lot of promise.

AARON MATÉ: Dr. Gabor Maté, physician, author of several books, including, "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction," thanks very much.

GABOR MATÉ: Thanks for having me.

AARON MATÉ: Thank you for joining us on The Real News.

[mlmcompanies]

When you see a legal advisor embroiled in ongoing legal battles, you can’t help but wonder…

If they’re the real deal, why can’t they defend themselves?

But LegalShield may finally have their act together. The question now is whether you can make any money with this MLM.

LegalShield was once a big, bad, publicly-traded company with a network marketing opportunity on the New York Stock Exchange…until they went private faster than a celebrity in rehab.

Judging from some of their past scandals and legal troubles, going private was definitely a smart move. But are they worth joining? We’ll let you decide.

FAQ

1. What does LegalShield sell? LegalShield gives access to affordable legal coverage to its members, no matter how traumatic or trivial the situation. They’re the No. 1 subscription-based provider of legal plans to families and small businesses across the U.S. and Canada.

2. What are LegalShield’s most popular products? LegalShield’s Personal Legal Plan costs about the same as a dinner out ($24.95/month) and gives you coverage for you, your spouse or partner, and your children. Included with your membership are advice, letters/phone calls on your behalf, legal document review, standard will preparation, 24/7 emergency assistance, and trial defense services. Another popular service is ID Shield, which protects your identity, including customized alerts, complete identity monitoring, credit scores, and unlimited consultation.

3. How much does it cost to join LegalShield? It costs $99 plus any applicable state licensing fees to become a LegalShield associate. This gives you an Associate Start-Up Kit with brochures and applications so you can begin your business right away.

4. Is LegalShield a scam? No, LegalShield is a legitimate business with 1.7 million members in 50 states and 4 provinces. They have provider law firms across the United States and Canada, so the legal support you get comes from a lawyer who’s well acquainted with your local laws and regulations. What does feel scammy is the lack of full disclosure about becoming an Associate and how much you can earn. If it’s such a great opportunity, why aren’t they more forthcoming with information about how to join?

5. What is LegalShield’s BBB rating? A+

6. How long has LegalShield been in business? Since 1972

7. What is LegalShield’s revenue? $457 million

8. How many LegalShield distributors are there? 287,812

9. What lawsuits have been filed? In 2001, Wyoming came down on Pre-Paid Legal Services (which was LegalShield’s original name) for making income representations that were prohibited by Wyoming law. [1] The SEC also required them to stop counting commissions as assets instead of expenses. Complying with their ruling essentially cut their reported earnings by more than half. [2] In 2005, LegalShield lost a case related to deceptive advertising and fraud and paid $9.9 million in punitive damages. [3] In 2007, the FTC began investigating their marketing, saying it was misleading. Fortunately for LegalShield, in 2010 the investigation ended without any action. [4] In 2018, LC Technology International filed a proposed class action against Harvard Risk Management and LegalShield for sending unlawful, unsolicited fax messages as part of a pyramid sales scheme. [5]

10. Comparable companies: Market America, Life Leadership, Primerica

So should you join LegalShield?

I’m not a hater of the company at all, there’s definitely a market for legal advice and resources. But as far as passive income opportunities go, there are better options out there.

Click here for my #1 recommendation

Either way, here’s the full review on LegalShield.

Overview

LegalShield was founded in 1972 under the name Sportsman’s Motor Club in Ada, Oklahoma. A couple of years later, they changed their name to Pre-Paid Legal and went public, selling its shares on the New York Stock Exchange.

In 2011, the company was acquired by MidOcean Partners, a private equity firm worth $3.5 billion, for $650 million. They then went private and changed their name to LegalShield. In 2011, before they went private, they were raking in an annual revenue of $461 million. [6]

Back in 2001, they were hit twice by the law – first by the state of Wyoming for misrepresenting distributor earnings, and again by the SEC for counting commissions as assets to inflate their stock prices. They also faced legal troubles in Missouri that year. [7]

In 2009, they were subpoenaed by the SEC for various documents which were never sent over to the SEC despite multiple demands. After that, the FTC filed a complaint against LegalShield for multiple violations, including misleading representations. [8]

Jeff Bell is LegalShield’s new CEO, and this guy is no joke.

Bell got his MBA from none other than the Wharton School of Business back in 1989. He’s worked in key positions at Ford Motors, Chrysler, NBCUniversal, Advertising Age, where he won them their first-ever Online Marketer of the Year award in 2005, and Microsoft, where he oversaw the launch of Halo 3, among other major releases, as Vice President of Global. [9, 10]

He’s got decades of experience in marketing and advertising at some of the world’s biggest corporations, and he was named as LegalShield’s new leader in 2014. [11]

Hopefully, he can replicate his success in the world of multi-level marketing. This will be his first MLM, but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe his credentials can fend off the FTC.

So maybe he can turn their rep around. However, in March of 2016, he made the decision to leave the Direct Selling Association, the regulatory body that pretty much ensures that an MLM is at least semi-legit (see the full MLM rankings here).

Bell claims their decision to leave the DSA is because the DSA actually isn’t enforcing its own Code of Ethics against other MLMs who are clearly breaking it, and thus is weakening the direct selling industry as a whole. Wouldn’t be the first time. [12]

As of January 2016, LegalShield membership began a steady increase, hitting 1,612,183 members before the end of the year. Now, they’re over 1.7 million members. Smells like a comeback.

How much does LegalShield cost?

At the time of writing this, it costs $99 for a New Associate Start-Up Kit, which includes online training, materials, sponsor support, a back office, and a few other perks.

Products

LegalShield sells legal services, in case their name didn’t tip you off. They claim to offer direct and affordable access to law firms.

They have a network of almost 7,000 independent attorneys throughout the United States and Canada who offer these services. For your monthly membership fee, which varies by state but usually comes out to just under $25/month, you get:

Legal Advice: If you ever need advice or consultation from a legal representative, you always have one at your service.

Legal Representation: In the case that you should need legal representation, you have their independent attorneys at your disposal.

Automotive Defense: Accident defense and moving violation assistance.

Familial and IRS Legal Services: This covers everything from divorce and name changes to IRS audits.

Considering legal advice can cost hundreds, and representation from an attorney can cost anywhere from $150-$500 per hour, it’s not a bad deal.

The company also now sells identity theft protection services starting at $9.95/month. The basic plan covers you and a spouse, and includes:

Credit report and credit score analysis

Credit restoration

Unlimited ID theft consultations

Minor protection

Credit monitoring and alerts

Honestly, if you have even a halfway decent bank or own a credit card, you probably already have access to all of these services for free.

Compensation Plan

You’re selling a monthly membership, and when you get a new customer, LegalShield pays you an advance for a year’s worth of that customer’s membership. Sounds great, right? Yeah, until that customer decides to cancel, and you have to pay back a huge chunk of that advance.

The compensation plan is nowhere to be found on their website, and the information you can find is very vague. It doesn’t list any specific commission rates.

There are four ways to earn:

Personal Sales

You make a percentage on each membership you sell, which varies by rank. This is roughly what you can make, according to rank:

Junior Associate: Up to 50%

Associate: Up to $75 on each sale

Senior Associate: Up to $100 on each sale

Manager: Up to $125 on each sale

Director: Up to $150 on each sale

Executive Director: Up to $182.50 on each sale

These numbers look generous, but remember, they are advances on 12 months of membership payments. Also, it’s very, very difficult to move up even past Junior Associate, let alone all the way to director levels.

Build a Team

Team commissions are offered in the form of bonuses for every membership they sell. Exact numbers are not specified.

Residual Income

After a membership that you’ve sold lasts a year, you make a monthly commission on each month they stay active. Whether or not this commission is the same as before isn’t stated, but this is basically number one rehashed.

Performance Club

Each time you sell memberships and recruit new associates, you earn points. If you earn enough (fat chance), you can start earning cash bonuses and prizes.

Recap

The company is not without their scandals. They’ve got a pretty colorful history, to say the least.

However, it seems that the worst might be over for them. They’ve survived dozens of legal battles, and since going private, they’ve only had one claim made against them. (It looks pretty frivolous; they’ll probably pull it out.) On top of that, they’re being run by a rock star CEO, and so far, he’s doing good things for the company.

That being said, the commission plan is vague, at best. It’s really not clear how much money you’d make as an associate. One thing that is clear – you’re probably not getting rich here.

I’ve been involved with network marketing for over ten years so I know what to look for when you consider a new opportunity.

After reviewing 200+ business opportunities and systems out there, here is the one I would recommend:

Click here for my #1 recommendation

[antionetterparker]

LegalShield: Are their legal services really legal? [Review]

When you see a legal advisor embroiled in ongoing legal battles, you can’t help but wonder…

If they’re the real deal, why can’t they defend themselves?

But LegalShield may finally have their act together. The question now is whether you can make any money with this MLM.

LegalShield was once a big, bad, publicly-traded company with a network marketing opportunity on the New York Stock Exchange…until they went private faster than a celebrity in rehab.

Judging from some of their past scandals and legal troubles, going private was definitely a smart move. But are they worth joining? We’ll let you decide.

FAQ

1. What does LegalShield sell? LegalShield gives access to affordable legal coverage to its members, no matter how traumatic or trivial the situation. They’re the No. 1 subscription-based provider of legal plans to families and small businesses across the U.S. and Canada.

2. What are LegalShield’s most popular products? LegalShield’s Personal Legal Plan costs about the same as a dinner out ($24.95/month) and gives you coverage for you, your spouse or partner, and your children. Included with your membership are advice, letters/phone calls on your behalf, legal document review, standard will preparation, 24/7 emergency assistance, and trial defense services. Another popular service is ID Shield, which protects your identity, including customized alerts, complete identity monitoring, credit scores, and unlimited consultation.

3. How much does it cost to join LegalShield? It costs $99 plus any applicable state licensing fees to become a LegalShield associate. This gives you an Associate Start-Up Kit with brochures and applications so you can begin your business right away.

4. Is LegalShield a scam? No, LegalShield is a legitimate business with 1.7 million members in 50 states and 4 provinces. They have provider law firms across the United States and Canada, so the legal support you get comes from a lawyer who’s well acquainted with your local laws and regulations. What does feel scammy is the lack of full disclosure about becoming an Associate and how much you can earn. If it’s such a great opportunity, why aren’t they more forthcoming with information about how to join?

5. What is LegalShield’s BBB rating? A+

6. How long has LegalShield been in business? Since 1972

7. What is LegalShield’s revenue? $457 million

8. How many LegalShield distributors are there? 287,812

9. What lawsuits have been filed? In 2001, Wyoming came down on Pre-Paid Legal Services (which was LegalShield’s original name) for making income representations that were prohibited by Wyoming law. [1] The SEC also required them to stop counting commissions as assets instead of expenses. Complying with their ruling essentially cut their reported earnings by more than half. [2] In 2005, LegalShield lost a case related to deceptive advertising and fraud and paid $9.9 million in punitive damages. [3] In 2007, the FTC began investigating their marketing, saying it was misleading. Fortunately for LegalShield, in 2010 the investigation ended without any action. [4] In 2018, LC Technology International filed a proposed class action against Harvard Risk Management and LegalShield for sending unlawful, unsolicited fax messages as part of a pyramid sales scheme. [5]

10. Comparable companies: Market America, Life Leadership, Primerica

So should you join LegalShield?

I’m not a hater of the company at all, there’s definitely a market for legal advice and resources. But as far as passive income opportunities go, there are better options out there.

Click here for my #1 recommendation

Either way, here’s the full review on LegalShield.

Overview

LegalShield was founded in 1972 under the name Sportsman’s Motor Club in Ada, Oklahoma. A couple of years later, they changed their name to Pre-Paid Legal and went public, selling its shares on the New York Stock Exchange.

In 2011, the company was acquired by MidOcean Partners, a private equity firm worth $3.5 billion, for $650 million. They then went private and changed their name to LegalShield. In 2011, before they went private, they were raking in an annual revenue of $461 million. [6]

Back in 2001, they were hit twice by the law – first by the state of Wyoming for misrepresenting distributor earnings, and again by the SEC for counting commissions as assets to inflate their stock prices. They also faced legal troubles in Missouri that year. [7]

In 2009, they were subpoenaed by the SEC for various documents which were never sent over to the SEC despite multiple demands. After that, the FTC filed a complaint against LegalShield for multiple violations, including misleading representations. [8]

Jeff Bell is LegalShield’s new CEO, and this guy is no joke.

Bell got his MBA from none other than the Wharton School of Business back in 1989. He’s worked in key positions at Ford Motors, Chrysler, NBCUniversal, Advertising Age, where he won them their first-ever Online Marketer of the Year award in 2005, and Microsoft, where he oversaw the launch of Halo 3, among other major releases, as Vice President of Global. [9, 10]

He’s got decades of experience in marketing and advertising at some of the world’s biggest corporations, and he was named as LegalShield’s new leader in 2014. [11]

Hopefully, he can replicate his success in the world of multi-level marketing. This will be his first MLM, but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe his credentials can fend off the FTC.

So maybe he can turn their rep around. However, in March of 2016, he made the decision to leave the Direct Selling Association, the regulatory body that pretty much ensures that an MLM is at least semi-legit (see the full MLM rankings here).

Bell claims their decision to leave the DSA is because the DSA actually isn’t enforcing its own Code of Ethics against other MLMs who are clearly breaking it, and thus is weakening the direct selling industry as a whole. Wouldn’t be the first time. [12]

As of January 2016, LegalShield membership began a steady increase, hitting 1,612,183 members before the end of the year. Now, they’re over 1.7 million members. Smells like a comeback.

How much does LegalShield cost?

At the time of writing this, it costs $99 for a New Associate Start-Up Kit, which includes online training, materials, sponsor support, a back office, and a few other perks.

Products

LegalShield sells legal services, in case their name didn’t tip you off. They claim to offer direct and affordable access to law firms.

They have a network of almost 7,000 independent attorneys throughout the United States and Canada who offer these services. For your monthly membership fee, which varies by state but usually comes out to just under $25/month, you get:

Legal Advice: If you ever need advice or consultation from a legal representative, you always have one at your service.

Legal Representation: In the case that you should need legal representation, you have their independent attorneys at your disposal.

Automotive Defense: Accident defense and moving violation assistance.

Familial and IRS Legal Services: This covers everything from divorce and name changes to IRS audits.

Considering legal advice can cost hundreds, and representation from an attorney can cost anywhere from $150-$500 per hour, it’s not a bad deal.

The company also now sells identity theft protection services starting at $9.95/month. The basic plan covers you and a spouse, and includes:

Credit report and credit score analysis

Credit restoration

Unlimited ID theft consultations

Minor protection

Credit monitoring and alerts

Honestly, if you have even a halfway decent bank or own a credit card, you probably already have access to all of these services for free.

Compensation Plan

You’re selling a monthly membership, and when you get a new customer, LegalShield pays you an advance for a year’s worth of that customer’s membership. Sounds great, right? Yeah, until that customer decides to cancel, and you have to pay back a huge chunk of that advance.

The compensation plan is nowhere to be found on their website, and the information you can find is very vague. It doesn’t list any specific commission rates.

There are four ways to earn:

Personal Sales

You make a percentage on each membership you sell, which varies by rank. This is roughly what you can make, according to rank:

Junior Associate: Up to 50%

Associate: Up to $75 on each sale

Senior Associate: Up to $100 on each sale

Manager: Up to $125 on each sale

Director: Up to $150 on each sale

Executive Director: Up to $182.50 on each sale

These numbers look generous, but remember, they are advances on 12 months of membership payments. Also, it’s very, very difficult to move up even past Junior Associate, let alone all the way to director levels.

Build a Team

Team commissions are offered in the form of bonuses for every membership they sell. Exact numbers are not specified.

Residual Income

After a membership that you’ve sold lasts a year, you make a monthly commission on each month they stay active. Whether or not this commission is the same as before isn’t stated, but this is basically number one rehashed.

Performance Club

Each time you sell memberships and recruit new associates, you earn points. If you earn enough (fat chance), you can start earning cash bonuses and prizes.

Recap

The company is not without their scandals. They’ve got a pretty colorful history, to say the least.

However, it seems that the worst might be over for them. They’ve survived dozens of legal battles, and since going private, they’ve only had one claim made against them. (It looks pretty frivolous; they’ll probably pull it out.) On top of that, they’re being run by a rock star CEO, and so far, he’s doing good things for the company.

That being said, the commission plan is vague, at best. It’s really not clear how much money you’d make as an associate. One thing that is clear – you’re probably not getting rich here.

I’ve been involved with network marketing for over ten years so I know what to look for when you consider a new opportunity.

After reviewing 200+ business opportunities and systems out there, here is the one I would recommend:

Click here for my #1 recommendation

via https://mlmcompanies.org/legalshield/

[fashiontrendin-blog]

Essential Oils: So Much Hype, So Little Science

http://fashion-trendin.com/essential-oils-so-much-hype-so-little-science/

Essential Oils: So Much Hype, So Little Science

The rise of the wellness industrial complex has put things like natural beauty and essential oils in the spotlight for their perceived lack of chemicals.

Though common in skincare and household cleaning products today, essential oils have long been revered for their healing powers and are used for health and medicinal purposes such as alleviating anxiety or curing the common cold. In fact, a cursory glance at the web results for “essential oils” tells the story of a magical cure-all — one most vehemently told by the multi-level marketing companies that sell them.

But when it comes to the science-backed benefits of essential oils, what’s actually effective? According to experts and research, not much. Here’s what you should know before you invest.

What are essential oils?

Essential oils are not vital to humans, as their name might suggest. They’re compounds extracted from plants through a distillation or cold-pressing process that captures the plant’s “essential” scent and flavor.

Known for demystifying chemistry, Joe Schwarcz, director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society, explains that many plants’ compounds are volatile: “Some [are] destined to attract pollinators, others to ward off bugs that have the intention of making a tasty meal of the leaves. It is the volatile chemicals that are regarded as the plant’s essence and are the ones captured in the ‘essential oil.’”

(In fact, another name for essential oil is “volatile oil.”)

How they’re used

Today, essential oils are used to add scent to cosmetics and cleaning products, and flavor to food and beverages, Schwarcz says; but they’re also used as “medical treatments by application to the skin, through ingestion, or through inhalation, the latter commonly being referred to as ‘aromatherapy.’”

Essential oils have a long history of use. They were used for thousands of years in cosmetics and perfumes and for therapeutic purposes by ancient cultures from China and India to the Egyptians and Romans.

Dilini Vethanayagam, an internist and associate professor of pulmonary medicine at the University of Alberta, says Western countries are simply new to the trend. “I’m originally from South Asia, and alternative medicines are very popular there, but that’s over many decades of training,” she notes.

It’s undeniable that it’s a booming business right now, thanks in part to billion-dollar companies selling essential oil products. Rachel Monroe reported for The New Yorker last fall that in 10 years, essential oil company Young Living grew tenfold. Its competitor doTERRA claimed it made $1 billion in sales in 2015.

As Monroe theorized, people today are turning to essential oils because they’re disillusioned by Western medicine. And as Annaliese Griffin recently speculated in Quartz, women are doing so in particular, since modern medicine and the U.S. healthcare system has failed them time and time again:

“The medical system is even more terrible for women, whose experience of pain is routinely minimized by health practitioners. … Enter the wellness industry, which specializes in creating safe, welcoming, amber-lit spaces that make people feel cared-for and relaxed, and which treats the female body as its default. … The problem is that the rest of the wellness industry hitches a ride on their coattails of compassion and competency, benefiting from the utter lack of warmth found in mainstream medical treatment.”

So, what are the claims?

Lavender oil is good for skin irritations, easing muscle tension and helping with sleep problems. Rose oil cures acne and increases sex drive. Sweet orange oil controls gas and stomach problems.

There seems to be an essential oil solution for just about every condition and problem. Guides on the topic are common on health and natural living blogs, but even institutions like the University of Maryland Medical Center offer reference guides for aromatherapy.

Many of the claims about essential oils come from studies showing that their chemical compounds have certain benefits — like tea tree oil, which has antibacterial and antifungal properties. But just because it has antibacterial properties doesn’t mean it can necessarily cure your acne. Other circulating claims are based on studies in which essential oils were tested on rats or other animals rather than humans, or studies that were inconclusive, the results indicating a placebo effect.

In other words, the leap to suggest they can cure and treat conditions is a stretch, Schwarcz says.

Sketchy companies and marketing

In her New Yorker piece, Monroe goes into detail about Young Living (the self-described “World Leader in Essential Oils”) founder Gary Young’s questionable background, which includes opening a health center in Washington state in 1982 where his own daughter died from a birthing service in which she was submerged for an hour in a whirlpool bath; being arrested for practicing medicine without a license; and opening a clinic in Tijuana where he made false diagnoses to get patients to join a costly detox program.

Young, by the way, is a naturopathic doctor who uses natural healing to cure and treat illness. (The legitimacy of naturopathy as a practice has been criticized.)

Even taking Young out of the picture, the business model for these companies is problematic. Two of the biggest essential oil companies, Young Living and doTERRA, work as multi-level marketing schemes. Salespeople in the companies are known as distributors who buy the products at wholesale prices and mark them up to sell them to consumers. “But the real money,” Monroe writes, “comes from recruiting other distributors into your ‘downline’ and getting a commission on their sales.”

Schwarcz adds that distributors often make incredulous claims in order to make sales. “Some of the people the company has snared with its promises of wealth through multi-level marketing end up making a bevy of claims about essential oils helping with cancer, autism, Alzheimer’s disease, mononucleosis and arthritis,” he says.

An unregulated market

Like other complementary and alternative medicines (CAM), the essential oil market is unregulated. But several years ago, the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates prescription medication, issued a warning about Young Living’s marketing. After reviewing the company’s websites and social media accounts, the FDA found that the company was mislabeling and misbranding their products as drugs even though they were not approved as such.

The company had been marketing their products as cures, treatments and preventative measures for things like viral ebola, Parkinson’s disease, autism, diabetes, hypertension, cancer, insomnia, heart disease, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), dementia and multiple sclerosis.

Per ATTN’s reporting, the FDA sent similar warnings to doTERRA and another company, and FDA spokesperson Lindsay Meyer informed the outlet that consumers should be wary of fraud and scams that involve claims to prevent, treat or cure health conditions. “Health fraud scams waste money and can lead to delays in getting proper diagnosis and treatment. They can also cause serious or even fatal injuries,” she told ATTN.

(The companies have also had legal troubles unrelated to product claims.)

The language on Young Living’s website and other similar companies’ websites has since softened, for example, by claiming a scent will help you “refocus.”

No proven benefits

As opposed to modern medicine, CAM is difficult to clock as pseudoscience or not, because human studies and clinical trials on things like essential oils are lacking. “If patients talk about using them as treatment,” Vethanayagam says, “I stop them right there.”

According to two studies (one in 2000 and another in 2012), there’s no convincing evidence that aromatherapy can calm hypertension, depression, anxiety, pain or symptoms of dementia. Schwarcz adds that studies shown to prove the benefits of essential oils are often not reliable, noting that “the scent of lavender may have a calming effect in some people and help with sleep, but it can cause headaches in others.”

And while it may be true that scents can be calming and pleasing to people, Pam Dalton of the Monell Chemical Senses Center says that “they likely aren’t working due to any pharmacological or biological effect, [but] rather a sensory/psychological effect.” For instance, the scent of mint may make you feel more alert because it stimulates a nerve that allows you to perceive irritation and pain (or lack thereof).

In other words, these are mood-based changes rather than physiological ones, and the evidence for the mood-based changes depend on subjective memories you have tied to particular scents. Dalton is currently working on a project funded by an essential oil company, but she says she’s still a skeptic.

In addition, in most studies looking at the benefits of aromatherapy on cancer patients as complementary to chemotherapy and other treatments, the results are mixed.

Dermatologist Diane Berson, who recently spoke at a conference about essential oils as a cosmeceutical trend, says they’re typically okay to use in skincare products if you don’t have an allergic reaction to them. Many people use them since they’re advertised as “botanicals,” but she says there’s no evidence that these are any better than ingredients made synthetically.

Are they dangerous?

Most essential oils are generally considered safe to inhale or apply topically, but be aware that they can cause different reactions in different people, Vethanayagam cautions.

Some people with underlying health conditions might experience problems. A 2013 study she authored, focused on fragranced household items, confirms this. “In an open air environment, if you whiff an aroma, maybe it doesn’t cause negative issues,” she says, “but if you have asthma, it can have a negative impact. It can either be an irritant effect or an inflammatory effect.”

Vethanayagam, whose practice focuses on allergies, says this can potentially cause damage to the hairlike projections, or cilia, that line our airways. As for ingesting? Vethanayagam says it’s probably okay in small quantities. “The lungs are very sensitive, but the stomach goes through many processes to take out the bad stuff,” she says. Berson warns that “some ingredients do cause dermatitis or negative reactions, and some common ones that cause allergic reactions are tea tree oil, lavender, peppermint.”

The University of Maryland Medical Center states that, in general, essential oils should not be used during pregnancy.

The bottom line: Essential oils smell nice, but there’s no evidence they work. In fact, depending on your sensitivity to fragrance and your past medical history, they might even be irritating.

If you enjoy how they smell and still want to use them, go ahead! “If the smell of lavender relaxes you for whatever reason, sniff it at bedtime when you find it difficult to disengage,” Dalton says. “If the smell of wintergreen makes you feel more energized, take a whiff when you’re heading off for a run on the treadmill.”

But you’d be wise to be aware of their limitations and — perhaps more importantly — of the companies that stand to profit from understating them.

  Photos by Louisiana Mei Gelpi. Photos feature UMA oil kits and a Bel Air Naturals oil kit.

[mystlnewsonline]

New Post has been published on https://www.stl.news/most-mudslide-stricken-california-town-told-empty-out/66733/

Most of mudslide-stricken California town told to empty out

MONTECITO, Calif./January 12, 2018 (AP)(STL.News) —Most residents of mudslide-ravaged Montecito were under orders to clear out Friday as the search for victims dragged on and crews labored to clean up massive debris and repair power, water and gas lines.

Even those who didn’t lose their homes in the disaster that left at least 18 people dead were told to leave for up to two weeks so they wouldn’t interfere with the rescue and recovery operation.

It was another frustrating turn for those living in the Southern California town that has been subject to repeated evacuation orders in recent weeks, first because of a monster wildfire last month, then because of downpours and mudslides.

Cia Monroe said her family was lucky their home wasn’t ruined and they were all healthy and safe, though her daughter lost one of her best friends.

But Monroe said it was stressful after evacuating three times during the wildfire to be packing up a fourth time. A family had offered them a room to stay overnight, but then they were looking at spending up to $3,000 a week for a hotel.

“Where do you go when you’re a family of four and you don’t have a second house?” Monroe asked, noting that some residents of town have third and fourth homes. “Financially that’s a burden.”

More than 1,200 workers taking part in the search and cleanup effort flooded into the town with a population of about 9,000.

Curious and concerned citizens who had trudged through the mud Thursday to view the devastation were nowhere to be seen as more firefighters in bright yellow rain gear searched methodically and utility crews in orange safety vests worked with chain saws and jackhammers.

A backhoe scooped up mud and rocks around buckled and flattened homes, while bulldozers cleared roads of tangled trees, muck and boulders. Tanker trucks were being used to haul off floodwaters sucked up from U.S. Highway 101, the crippled coastal route connecting Santa Barbara to Ventura.

Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said residents who had stayed behind or tried to check on damage in neighborhoods where homes were leveled and car-size boulders blocked roads and littered properties had hindered the recovery effort.

On Thursday, Brown expanded what was known as the public safety exclusion zone to incorporate most of the town. That meant even those who had stayed behind would have to leave and those who entered the zone would be subject to arrest.

Residents who remained in town Friday were either seen packing their cars with clothing and other belongings for their latest evacuation or staying out of sight.

“It is a little frustrating,” said Sarah Ettman. “It’s martial law here, basically. You know there are looters being caught and there are so many gawkers and people that just have no business being in here.”

Rescuers were busy probing thick muck, swollen creeks and tangled trees with poles in search of five missing people while dogs sniffed for bodies.

A crew found the body of the 18th victim, Joseph Bleckel, 87, before noon in his home near Romero Canyon, Brown said.

The cause of Bleckel’s death wasn’t announced, but all other victims died from multiple traumatic injuries due to a flash flood and mudslides.

At the start of a news conference, Brown named six people still missing. He returned to the microphone moments later to announce that he had just received a call that a man feared missing had been found in a hospital out of town.

The five missing people included Fabiola Benitez, the mother of Jonathan Benitez, a 10-year-old killed in the flooding.

Benitez lived with her sister-in-law, Marilyn Ramos, 27, who was asleep with her daughter, Kaelly, 3, when mud crashed through their Montecito rental home, carrying both to their deaths.

“My sister was such a good person, she only thought of others to the point that she would cry with you when you were hurt or sick,” said Ramos’ sister, Jennifer Ramos, pausing to sob for several seconds.

The husbands of both women and the 2-year-old son of Fabiola Benitez, were hospitalized with injuries, Ramos said.

Drenching rains that unleashed the deadly torrents managed to finally contain the largest wildfire in state history, which burned for weeks above Montecito and stripped the steep hills of vegetation, making it prone to mudslides. The U.S. Forest Service announced Friday that the fire that burned 440 square miles (1,140 square kilometers) was fully contained.

While Montecito is best known as a getaway for the rich and famous — the median home price among current listings is more than $4 million — there are also working families living in modest houses and apartments.

With most utilities out of commission or about to be cut off, staying behind was not an option for many.

Ettman’s home was undamaged, and her section of town still had gas and electricity, even though nearby Romero Creek was choked with cars, trees and rocks.

But with gas and power expected to be shut off Saturday and sewage running into the nearby creek, she decided to heed the order to leave.

“I mean you’re losing all your basic health and sanitation services,” she said. “When those go down, you have to leave.”

___

Melley contributed from Los Angeles. Associated Press writers Amanda Lee Myers, John Antczak, Michael Balsamo and Andrew Dalton in Los Angeles and Aron Ranen in Montecito contributed to this report.

By KRYSTA FAURIA and BRIAN MELLEY, by Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC (Z.S)

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[mystlnewsonline]

New Post has been published on https://www.stl.news/mudslide-stricken-california-town-is-all-but-emptied-out/66713/

Mudslide-stricken California town is all but emptied out

MONTECITO, Calif. /January 12, 2018 (AP)(STL.News) —Most residents of mudslide-ravaged Montecito were under orders to clear out Friday as the search for victims dragged on and crews labored to repair power, water and gas lines as well as clean up massive debris.

Even those who didn’t lose their homes in the disaster that left at least 18 people dead were told to leave for up to two weeks so they wouldn’t interfere with the rescue and recovery operation.

It was another frustrating turn for those living in the Southern California town that has been subject to repeated evacuation orders in recent weeks, first because of a monster wildfire last month, then because of downpours and mudslides.

Cia Monroe said her family was lucky their home wasn’t ruined and they were all healthy and safe, though her daughter lost one of her best friends.

But Monroe said it was stressful after evacuating three times during the wildfire to be packing up a fourth time and looking at spending up to $3,000 a week for a hotel.

“Where do you go when you’re a family of four and you don’t have a second house?” Monroe asked, noting that some residents of the town have third and fourth homes. “Financially that’s a burden.”

More than 1,200 workers had flooded into the town of about 9,000 residents for the search and cleanup effort.

The presence of curious and concerned citizens who had trudged through the mud Thursday to view the devastation was replaced with more firefighters in bright yellow rain gear and utility crews in orange safety vests working with chainsaws and jackhammers.

A backhoe scooped up mud and rocks around buckled and flattened homes, while bulldozers cleared roads of tangled trees, muck and boulders. Tanker trucks were being used to haul off floodwaters siphoned off U.S. Highway 101, the crippled coastal route connecting Santa Barbara to Ventura.

Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said residents who had stayed behind or tried to check on damage in neighborhoods where homes were leveled and car-size boulders and trees blocked roads and littered properties had hindered the recovery effort.

On Thursday, Brown expanded what was known as the public safety exclusion zone to incorporate most of the town. That meant that even those who had stayed behind would have to leave and those who entered the zone would be subject to arrest.

Residents who remained in town Friday were either seen packing up their cars with clothing and other belongings for their latest evacuation or staying out of sight.

“It is a little frustrating,” said Sarah Ettman, who planned to leave Saturday. “It’s martial law here, basically. You know there are looters being caught and there are so many gawkers and people that just have no business being in here.”

Rescue crews were busy sticking poles into thick muck, swollen creeks and tangled trees in search of five missing people while dogs sniffed for bodies.

The 18th victim, Joseph Bleckel, 87, was found dead in his home near Romero Canyon before noon, Brown said.

The cause of Bleckel’s death wasn’t announced, but all other victims died from multiple traumatic injuries due to a flash flood and mudslides.

Brown named the five people still missing, which included Fabiola Benitez, the mother of Jonathan Benitez, a 10-year-old killed in the flooding.

Benitez lived with her sister-in-law, Marilyn Ramos, 27, who was asleep with her daughter, Kaelly, 3, when mud crashed through their Montecito rental home, carrying both to their deaths.

“My sister was such a good person, she only thought of others to the point that she would cry with you when you were hurt or sick,” said Ramos’ sister, Jennifer Ramos, pausing to sob for several seconds.

The drenching rains that unleashed the deadly torrents managed to finally contain the largest wildfire in state history, which burned for weeks above Montecito and stripped the steep hills of vegetation, making it prone to mudslides. The U.S. Forest Service announced Friday that the fire that burned 440 square miles (1,140 square kilometers) was fully contained.

While Montecito is best known as a getaway for the rich and famous — the median home price among current listings is more than $4 million — there are also working families living in modest houses and apartments.

With most utilities out of commission or about to be cut off, staying behind was not an option for many.

Ettman’s home was undamaged, and her section of town still had gas and electricity, even though nearby Romero Creek was choked with cars, trees and rocks.

Because she couldn’t re-enter the area if she left, Ettman arranged to have groceries delivered to her at a police checkpoint. But with gas and power expected to be shut off Saturday, she said she would heed the order to leave.

“I mean you’re losing all your basic health and sanitation services,” she said. “When those go down, you have to leave.”

___

Melley contributed from Los Angeles. Associated Press writers Amanda Lee Myers, John Antczak, Michael Balsamo and Andrew Dalton in Los Angeles and Aron Ranen in Montecito contributed to this report.

___

By KRYSTA FAURIA and BRIAN MELLEY, by Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC (Z.S)

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