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nyaagolor · 4 months

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Ranking the Ace Attorney main cast on whether or not I think they'd be a narc

I was making a more coherent, serious post about the different approaches to justice each of the characters have and how that is shaped by their backstory... and then I realized a funnier question is what they would do if they saw you eating a weed brownie so I made this post instead

Phoenix: In the trilogy era, yes. He trusts people, but believes that trust has to be built on pursuing justice and always accepting the harsh reality. He'd be sad about it, but a narc nonetheless. In his Beanix era he's making his money through "totally legal gambling" and on the hunt for questionably legal evidence so I have no doubt in my mind there's a pot farm under the WAA for supplemental income. He gives up his narc ways and for that I salute him

Apollo: If I were to pick a single member of this cast who is NOT invited to the rotation it would be him. He had zero hesitation throwing Kristoph to the wolves after working for him for years so I know he has absolutely zero qualms about ratting out his friends or coworkers. Loyalty means nothing in the eyes of justice and it means nothing to him. He's a narc.

Athena: She's gonna lecture you and look all sad about it, but she's no snitch. She's been through the rounds with Simon so she gets it. Having to know you hurt her feelings is enough of a punishment in her eyes

Edgeworth: He's not a narc but he IS obsessed with being right, so if you don't immediately fess up with exactly what you're doing he's going to send your stoned ass to the chess dimension and honestly I think that's worse

Franziska: Unfortunately she is a cop. Narc.

Godot: Diego-era yeah he's a narc, but after the coma? I feel like he has better things to worry about, he would just ignore you. He has some soul searching to do and some grief complexes to unlearn he doesn't have the time to be a lil snitch. Post prison I think he's stoned somewhere in Kurain and chillaxing, as is his right

Klavier: Don't let his rockstar attitude fool you he's a narc and extremely annoying about it. The gavinners tour bus is dry as hell and it's all Klavier's fault. Daryan offers him a line and he gets all uppity and says "the only LINE i want you doing is the third line in the prechorus, you keep messing up the syncopation" and that's the end of that discussion

Simon: He's been in prison so he knows what's up. Not a narc. Might glare at you until you share though

Nahyuta: He's a narc and will lecture you so long about it you're tempted to turn yourself in to get out of earshot. He also never forgets and never forgives. Datz is trying to reform him but it isn't going well

Sebastian: Yes, but I think the idea of him having to turn in someone for it would make him cry so they end up comforting him instead. Kay thinks he needs to try a weed brownie

Maya: I want you to look at me and tell me she doesn't smoke weed. Not a narc

Pearl: I think if she found out that her big sister figure smoked weed she would have a heart attack. Def a narc

Trucy: I can say with absolute certainty that if you really wanted weed she could find you a dealer faster than anyone in the cast. Trucy is a magician and has grown up around a variety of people involved with some seedier institutions, she knows better than to snitch. Has not been and will never be a narc

Kay: Will help you shoplift. Not a narc

Gumshoe: A narc on principle, but would feel really bad about it and would probably let you off with a warning if you started crying or acting upset because I think he's a softie. He's not unreasonable

Ema: If you think she has even the tiniest sliver of respect for cops you're lying to yourself. Not a narc and will actively help you evade police out of principle. A homie, honestly

Fulbright: Not only is he a narc but he definitely runs the DARE program at the local highschool and is printed on half the posters they put up in the precinct. I'm also like 80% sure he doesn't actually know how weed works

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zvaigzdelasas · 3 months

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[The Economist is Private UK Media]

Making someone do porridge (or “eat rice and beans”, to use the Korean expression) for expressing their political views is [...] not generally associated with [South Korea]. Yet Lee Yoon-seop, a South Korean poet, is currently languishing in prison for just this. The 68-year-old was sentenced to 14 months in November for threatening South Korea’s “existence and security”. His crime? Writing a poem in praise of the North.

The law used to prosecute Mr Lee, the National Security Act (nsa), is designed to protect South Korea from spies and traitors. But it also bans South Koreans from visiting or making contact with the North, reading or watching North Korean media or saying anything good about Kim Jong Un’s [...] regime. Though South Korea replaced its former military dictatorship with a democracy in 1987, such restrictions on free speech show that some of the generals’ autocratic tendencies endure.[...]

The NSA was modelled on a law designed to quash pro-independence activities during Japan’s occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945. Since 2003 there have on average been more than 60 NSA prosecutions a year, often for pretty clear espionage cases. A businessman and an army officer were arrested for allegedly selling military secrets to North Korea. Soldiers in the South have been prosecuted under the act for endangering morale by distributing pro-North propaganda.

But the NSA is too often used to prosecute satirists and raid the homes and offices of leftists. Some cases have been ridiculous. Kim Myeong-soo, a PhD student, received six months in prison and a two-year suspended sentence for selling books on North Korea that were widely available in public libraries. A South Korean woman was given a two-year sentence, suspended for four years, for owning recordings of 14 North Korean songs.

This is not Mr Lee’s first offence. But the claim that the sexagenarian posed a threat to South Korea is absurd. His ode was published on a North Korean website. Access to such sites is banned by the NSA and forbidden from a South Korean IP address. [...] It consists of a list of South Korean problems that Mr Kim, in the poet’s view, would instantly solve given the chance.

Mr Lee’s real offence appears to have been believing his own nonsense. By contrast, police decided not to investigate a man under the draconian law for selling shirts with a smiling Mr Kim and the slogan “Walk a flowery path, comrade”. That was OK, officials said, because he was selling them to make a buck.

Worse, the issue points to a broader authoritarian tendency in the South. Its president, Yoon Suk-yeol, often demonises his political opponents by calling them “anti-state forces”, a phrase lifted directly from the NSA. Unfavourable press coverage is routinely labelled “fake news” and the offices of offending outlets have been raided. The administration and its allies have sued more press outfits for defamation—which in South Korea can be a crime even when the offending words are manifestly true—in Mr Yoon’s first 18 months in office than any of its three predecessors did in total.

Yet even a more liberal government would be unlikely to remove the NSA’s illiberal clauses. No administration has made a serious attempt to address it in 20 years. There is no significant political support for scrapping the law [...]. The current administration at least flirted with allowing South Koreans access to North Korean media, but recently abandoned the idea. [...]

Mr Yoon talks often about South Korea’s democratic values. They are at the heart of his pitch for the country to be a strategic link between East and West, developed and developing countries. For that reason alone he should take them more seriously. South Korea is undoubtedly a democracy, but not a terribly liberal one so long as it locks up old men for their dotty opinions. Reforming the NSA would be a better rebuttal to the sentiment Mr Lee expressed than banning it.

22 Jan 24

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fatehbaz · 7 months

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The government of Australia’s northeastern state of Queensland has stunned rights experts by suspending its Human Rights Act for a second time this year to be able to lock up more children.

The ruling Labor Party last month [August 2023] pushed through a suite of legislation to allow under-18s – including children as young as 10 – to be detained indefinitely in police watch houses, because changes to youth justice laws – including jail for young people who breach bail conditions – mean there are no longer enough spaces in designated youth detention centres to house all those being put behind bars. The amended bail laws, introduced earlier this year [2023], also required the Human Rights Act to be suspended.

The moves have shocked Queensland Human Rights Commissioner Scott McDougall, who described human rights protections in Australia as “very fragile”, with no laws that apply nationwide.

“We don’t have a National Human Rights Act. Some of our states and territories have human rights protections [...]. But they’re not constitutionally entrenched so they can be overridden by the parliament,” he told Al Jazeera. The Queensland Human Rights Act – introduced in 2019 – protects children from being detained in adult prison so it had to be suspended for the government to be able to pass its legislation.

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Earlier this year, Australia’s Productivity Commission reported that Queensland had the highest number of children in detention of any Australian state. Between 2021-2022, the so-called “Sunshine State” recorded a daily average of 287 people in youth detention, compared with 190 in Australia’s most populous state New South Wales, the second highest. [...]

[M]ore than half the jailed Queensland children are resentenced for new offences within 12 months of their release.

Another report released by the Justice Reform Initiative in November 2022 showed that Queensland’s youth detention numbers had increased by more than 27 percent in seven years.

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The push to hold children in police watch houses is viewed by the Queensland government as a means to house these growing numbers. Attached to police stations and courts, a watch house contains small, concrete cells with no windows and is normally used only as a “last resort” for adults awaiting court appearances or required to be locked up by police overnight. [...]

However, McDougall said he has “real concerns about irreversible harm being caused to children” detained in police watch houses, which he described as a “concrete box”. “[A watch house] often has other children in it. There’ll be a toilet that is visible to pretty much anyone,” he said. “Children do not have access to fresh air or sunlight. And there’s been reported cases of a child who was held for 32 days in a watch house whose hair was falling out. [...]"

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He also pointed out that 90 percent of imprisoned children and young people were awaiting trial.

“Queensland has extremely high rates of children in detention being held on remand. So these are children who have not been convicted of an offence,” he told Al Jazeera.

Despite Indigenous people making up only 4.6 percent of Queensland’s population, Indigenous children make up nearly 63 percent of those in detention. The rate of incarceration for Indigenous children in Queensland is 33 times the rate of non-Indigenous children. Maggie Munn, a Gunggari person and National Director of First Nations justice advocacy group Change the Record, told Al Jazeera the move to hold children as young as 10 in adult watch houses was “fundamentally cruel and wrong”. [...]

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[Critics] also told Al Jazeera that the government needed to stop funding “cops and cages” and expressed concern over what [they] described as the “systemic racism, misogyny, and sexism” of the Queensland Police Service.

In 2019, police officers and other staff were recorded joking about beating and burying Black people and making racist comments about African and Muslim people. The recordings also captured sexist remarks [...]. The conversations were recorded in a police watch house, the same detention facilities where Indigenous children can now be held indefinitely.

Australia has repeatedly come under fire at an international level regarding its treatment of children and young people in the criminal justice system. The United Nations has called repeatedly for Australia to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to the international standard of 14 years old [...].

[MR], Queensland’s minister for police and corrective services, [...] – who introduced the legislation, which is due to expire in 2026 – is unrepentant, defending his decision last month [August 2023].

“This government makes no apology for our tough stance on youth crime,” he was quoted as saying in a number of Australian media outlets.

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Text by: Ali MC. "Australian state suspends human rights law to lock up more children". Al Jazeera. 18 September 2023. At: aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/18/australian-state-suspends-human-rights-law-to-lock-up-more-children [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

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femsolid · 4 months

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[England]

Over the past five years more than 300 officers have been reported for rape and 500 for sexual assault. Only ten of those accused of sexual assault have been convicted. The vast majority – 350 – are still working for the police.

“Holly”, a serving police officer who was raped by a colleague, said there was “simply not a chance that all 350 are innocent of the things they are accused of”. Her attacker was allowed to stay in the force for years until he was exposed by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. In the meantime Holly and others who had been attacked struggled to get the force to take their allegations seriously.

“If you made a complaint, you were painted as having serious ‘mental health issues’ or ‘attention seeking’,” she said. “It was like you had stepped back into the 1920s before all women even had the right to vote. The police took women's voices and silenced them.”

More than 250 police officers had been reported more than once for sexual offences. A dozen had more than five separate reports against their names.

The true numbers of accused officers are likely even higher. TBIJ’s data was compiled from FOI requests to every police force in the UK, but nine failed to provide full figures.

TBIJ has been tracking forces’ failure to deal with police perpetrated domestic abuse (PPDA) for the past five years. In particular, TBIJ has highlighted how forces let down victims and the public when they fail to properly investigate allegations against their own officers.

The murder of Sarah Everard by Wayne Couzens, a serving Met police officer who had been reported for exposing himself in public, showed how catastrophic the consequences of inaction on sexual offences can be. Two years on, however, there is little sign of wider reform.

In February this year David Carrick was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison after admitting 24 counts of rape and sexual offences against 12 women while serving as a Met officer. He had been repeatedly reported for domestic abuse since joining the police in 2001, but those allegations had not been taken seriously.

In TBIJ’s research, of the 375 officers and staff reported for domestic abuse in the past two years, more than three quarters are still working for the police.

In 2020 TBIJ worked with the Centre for Women’s Justice to submit a supercomplaint to police watchdogs. The Independent Office for Police Conduct, the College of Policing, and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services responded with a joint report last year, admitting there were systemic weaknesses in how forces respond to allegations against their own people.

In particular they were “not always doing enough to ensure all PPDA cases are properly and impartially investigated”. In January the National Police Chiefs Council reported that most forces had agreed to improve procedures for dealing with PPDA. In March the Casey Review found the Met Police was institutionally misogynist, racist and homophobic.

#police #misogyny #rape #feminism #england

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dathen · 1 year

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“I suppose that I am commuting a felony. But it is just possible that I am saving a soul. . . . Send him to jail now, and you make him a jail-bird for life.”

AND THERE IT IS

THE MOMENT THAT ATE MY BRAIN FOR A MONTH

This is no Abbey Grange, where the killer is a hero in his own right, or Study in Scarlet, where you loathe the victim enough to want to overlook the crime. The man behind the theft is cowardly and selfish and unsympathetic. But that’s what makes this choice more significant, because it shift it to being a criticism of the criminal justice system, vs weighing the worthiness of an individual.

Ryder is not a good person, but Holmes knows that jail will make him a worse person. On top of that, Horner is in the picture as an example of how society makes it MORE difficult to live an honest life after conviction than it is to return to crime. Both of these elements have to be at the heart of any meaningful challenge of the criminal justice system—it can’t work if you just insist that well the Bad People should be thrown away because they’re Bad and deserve it. You have to be willing to reform the system INCLUDING what’s done with selfish and unsympathetic people.

So there you have it! A happy ending for all, with Horner going free, the commissionaire getting a thousand pound reward, the lady getting her gem back, and no one going to prison—a charming little wintertime story with a rather radical statement at the very center. Oh, and this banger of a line:

He is not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies!!

#the blue carbuncle #letters from watson #sherlock holmes #acd holmes #i went more than a little bonkers over this story last december after watching the granada ep twice in a row

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ladyloveandjustice · 1 year

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I just watched Pop Culture Detectives critique as superheroes as reactionary and defending the status quo and villains as disruptors (even when their goals are wrong and authoritarian), and I think it did a fine job summing up the MCU, but I think it would lose something when if you’re doing a conversation outside that specific focus if you don’t acknowledge that there’s very significant times that WASN’T the case in early superhero comics.

For example, several early Superman comics have him actively disrupting society. He wasn’t a friend of the law early on. He destroys an entire “slum” and forces the government to rebuild better housing, and the police come after him for this.

He infiltrates a prison to expose its systemic abuse of prisoners.

He forces war profiteers to experience the terror of war firsthand until they stop.

But as the tweet thread I linked notes, this stops. Modern Superman often states he can’t interfere in wars because humanity has to sort out their own conflicts, that he can’t use his power against systemic issues because what if he becomes the power hungry god imposing his will on humanity? It’s interesting some comics posit that if Superman was more active about social change, he’s become the ‘invader’ Lex Luthor says he is. Especially if you consider Superman’s roots as an immigrant allegory, which makes it come off like he has to avoid being too disruptive or he’ll be labeled a ‘bad immigrant’.

There’s sometimes callbacks to the roots of Superman still, like the issue where he fights that cop probably (I was out of comics by the time that happened) but of course it’s pretty absent from the movies.

It’s also worth noting that Clark Kent is an investigative reporter (often exposing the crimes of billionaire CEO) which is an inherently disruptive job. PCD mentions that heroes do tend to be creative in their civilian identities but says it doesn’t seem to connect much to their superhero selves, but I don’t think you can separate Clark Kent the reporter from his superhero activity, because they’re often closely tied together, I mean he literally took the job so he could get leads as Superman.

Then there’s Wonder Woman, who was definitely a disruptor in her early incarnation. She was absolute here to spread Marston’s idea of feminism and have others follow her. She wanted to make more Amazons. She wanted a society where women had power. She would literally take her female villains and introduce them to the pleasures of femdom and BDSM reform them, convert them to her ideology, get them to join her ranks. The comic was CERTAINLY reactionary in other ways, and Marston’s feminism was flawed, but he wrote the comic explicitly because he was hoping for social disruption, that Wonder Woman would be the building block in the utopia he envisioned.

And there was some of that in SOME modern WW comics when I was into them- I was drawn to Greg Rucka’s Wonder Woman because there was a huge emphasis on the fact she’s an ambassador for her culture, and diplomat actively working to change the world, someone who’s seeking social reform and has an ideology. However, it is true that even those comics were mostly about her reacting to threats in her superhero life. (And then in the movie’s that’s entirely absent- feminism isn’t bought up, she goes into hiding rather than mounting a social justice campaign.)

And then on the Marvel side of things. Cap fighting Hitler actually didn’t reflect the status quo of America when it came out. In-universe it did to a degree, because America had entered the war in the universe of the comic, therefore Cap was doing patriotism, but out of universe America HADN’T entered the war yet and it was controversial to take the stance we were definitely going to and sauy Hitler was bad. We all know the story of nazi-sympathizers coming to harass the creators and Jack Kirby declaring he would fight them. So there’s a very interesting dichotomy there!

Anyway, it’s interesting to see this discussion because it’s definitely a very minor theme in my own book about a girl who becomes a supervillain. Look forward to that, I guess!

#superheroes #dc comics #marvel comics #superman #clark kent #wonder woman #diana of themyscira

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odinsblog · 9 months

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So colorblind racism is a term that comes from Eduardo Bonilla Silva, and he writes about how the colorblind ideology is the dominant form of thinking about race in the US. And it basically refers to explaining or understanding racialized phenomena in “colorblind” ways.

And so you explain racial inequality by something that is unrelated to race.

And what that does is it justifies and legitimates that racial inequality.

If someone asks, hey, why are there so many Black people in prison? Their explanation is, it's not because the system is racist. It's not because Black folks are over policed. It's not because Black folks are given longer sentences for the same crimes. It's not because of the cash bail system that keeps Black folks imprisoned and really punishes the poor people who can't pay the bail in order to get out of prison and have to end up signing a plea deal in order to get out, to keep their jobs, and their families and their homes.

It's because, colorblind racists argue, Black people just commit more crimes than white people.

So that would be a colorblind way of being racist - to imply that this difference in outcomes and differences in incarceration rates is due to cultural or individual level failures, and not due to a systemic level bias.

According to the colorblind framework, racism is an idea that justifies or legitimates racial inequality, where you don't have to “hate” Black people, but if you say Black people are more criminal and that's why they're behind bars, so we don't need to reform our criminal justice system, then that is racist, because that idea continues the racial oppression that Black folks face at the hands of the criminal justice system.

So that's what colorblind racism refers to.

And then color mute is a term that comes from Mika Pollock, that refers to Black people. It's very closely related colorblind racist theory because it refers to people who are dealing with something that very clearly and explicitly relates to race, but they choose not to mention race when they're talking about it.

So the examples from that book come from schools where teachers will talk about how, “Oh, these students have been acting up and more students have been going to detention,” when really it's only Black students who have been going to detention and they're not naming the fact that there is a racial component to these trends.

And what both those things do, colorblind racism and color muteness, is it allows language to overlook the fact that racial inequality is happening.

By not naming it, it allows that inequality and those injustices to continue, without being recognized or challenged.

And so, again, that relates directly to the theme of the book, which is that when we unmask racism, when we reveal racism, we are better able to show it and to demonstrate how it works. And only then, right… and the change can only come after we name the problem.

And so that's why racists fight so hard to try and hide racism. Because once we see it, then we're going to be able to point it out to other people and recruit them to the side of antiracist thought.

And antiracist action.

—ROB ESCHMANN, When the Hood Comes Off: Racism and Resistance in the Digital Age

#colorblind racism #aversive racism #color muteness #racism #rob eschmann #language #when the hood comes off #racism and resistance in the digital age #structural racism #whitewashing history #racism deniers

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aegor-bamfsteel · 1 year

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ppl give jaehaerys shit for the way he treats his daughters but imo he's overrated in general. He built roads which is good but that was it for his legacy.

Well, when the legacy of the other kings consists of:

Conquering most of a continent; building a Smelly City; causing mass destruction resulting in loss of a dragon because you couldn’t stand having other rulers in Westeros (Aegon I)

Being so bad at ruling that 4 rebellions broke out against you in the span of a season (Aenys)

Building an Evil Castle, then killing everybody involved in its construction; basically killing everybody who didn’t bend over backwards to appease you; getting shanked on your own throne (Maegor)

Inheriting the most prosperous realm ever, then leaving it on the brink of the bloodiest civil war due to crap family planning (Viserys I)

Being such a tyrannical ruler the people of the Smelly City chased you out in 6 months (Rhaenyra)

Being such a tyrannical ruler you allegedly got poisoned by your own men in 6 months (Aegon II)

Idk…being traumatized because you saw your mother eaten by a dragon, and also the dragons died (Aegon III)

Starting a bloody conquest war that ended in 60000 of your own men dead, that didn’t even stick (Daeron I)

Building a Women’s Prison in the Evil Castle so you can lock your sisters up for no good reason; building a Great Sept in the Smelly City named after yourself and moving your Rubber Stamp Popes (including an 8 year old and an illiterate stonemason) there (Baelor)

Idk…getting poisoned after a year? (Viserys II)

Raping women; trying to start unprovoked wars; unjust executions and land theft (Aegon IV)

Building a pleasure palace in a notorious war zone for your family; probably completing the Great Sept; being so bad at negotiating and family planning half the realm turned against you; harshly punishing even the children of those who turned against you (Daeron II)

Being so bad at ruling you’d rather read about prophecies, leaving a tyrant to preside over the worst humanitarian crises (drought and Great Spring Sickness) and yet more rebellions, thus creating an authoritarian police state (Aerys I)

Idk…keeping said tyrant as Hand despite him proving to be an incompetent ruler; also getting killed by a falling rock (Maekar)

Letting your kids marry “for love” causing rebellions; being unable to get your reforms for the peasants passed peacefully; resorting to trying to bring back dragons and getting yourself and half your family blown up at Pleasure Palace (Aegon V)

Idk…ordering the invasion of a sellsword kingdom on another continent due to generational paranoia; ruling for three years; demanding your kids wed because of a prophecy (Jaehaerys II)

Unjustly executing noblemen by burning them alive; calling for the executions of their families just for their blood relation, causing most of the realm to turn against you; planning to blow up the Smelly City before your teenage body guard shanked you, thus finally bringing your failure dynasty’s rulership to an end (Aerys II)

…measured against the other Targ kings, Jaehaerys’ legacy of building a six-kingdoms long road looks pretty good, considering most of the Targs’ own building projects were for themselves (Summerhall, Maegor’s Holdfast, the f—king Maidenvault) or localized in the Smelly City (Great Sept). Then Septon Barth and Alysanne had some good ideas about cleaning up the city water supply, helping fund the Night’s Watch, some laws allegedly protecting women, and then Florence Fossoway kept the kingdoms financially profitable, which I guess adds to J1’s prestige. Tbh I consider J1’s 2 wars against Dorne to also be a mark against him, and I’m annoyed that F&B added the detail that the Dornish allegedly mourned the guy who along with his sons burned hundreds of them alive on dragon back. Same with the Doctrine of Exceptionalism, and basically turning the High Septon into a rubber stamp when before the Faith had been a reliable anti-Targ faction that demonstrated some care for the smallfolk. In addition to mistreating his daughters, in a way that goes beyond politics and escalates into spite (though he’s hardly alone in that, with how Alysanne treated Viserra).

Really, I don’t see why GRRM can call Robert Baratheon “a terrible king”, when compared to the Targs he’s above average, and actually better than some of their best kings in some regards (when he pardoned those who rebelled against him with few exceptions).

#ask #opinion #anti targaryen #anti jaehaerys #asoiaf

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aumarchive · 26 days

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Interview with Nakayama Hisashi, former member of Hikari no Wa (Aum Shinrikyo branch)

cw: cults, domestic violence, sexual manipulation, conspiracy theories, verbal abuse

Do not harass anyone mentioned here. I'm only citing Mr. Nakayama's name and website because he let me do so.

Do not tag as true crime

Originally posted on Reddit by me

Matryoshka dolls are a well-known symbol of Russian arts and crafts; a majestic doll that, by the hands of others, is forced to reveal itself smaller and smaller until, finally, its tiny, hollow interior becomes visible.

Though they have dozens of tales attached to their creation and meaning, none of it is grounded on reality: these dolls were invented pretty recently with fully comercial purposes. Matryoshka aren't exactly meaningful for their land's mythology, nor original. But at least they're cute and saleable.

So is Fumihiro Joyu, ex-spokesman and executive of Aum Shinrikyo.

Joyu is the kind of person who will never run out of stories to tell about; graduated from Waseda University, one of Japan's most prestigious institutes to this day, he quickly lost interest on the labour market and used his knowledges in a new, weird yoga classroom, which would later become the infamous Aum Shinrikyo. And Aum surely got Joyu busy; he served as a spokesman, public relations representative, head of Aum's russian branch and almost as one of its men of action: in 1993, he attempted to spread anthrax in Kameido, Tokyo. It failed miserably.

But he only became infamous in 1995, when he defended the cult against allegations that they were responsible for the subway sarin attack at all costs. His devotion didn't earn him any prestige, just a lot of fans willing to steal and auction off his dirty socks and a saying attached to his name: ああいえば上祐 (Aa ie ba Joyu, which roughly translates to "If you say so, Joyu"). After being sentenced to three years of prison in late 1995 due to charges of perjury and forgery of private documents, he declared that "Master Asahara is a guide, a savior, and everything to me". It seemed unlikely that his adoration would be shaken.

But after being released from prison in 1999, it seemed that Joyu had a change of heart. He didn't leave Aum (in fact, Joyu became its De Facto representative under the name Aleph), but tried to reform it, reflect on its multiple incidents and eliminate Asahara Shoko's influence. In 2007, after a series of conflicts with Asahara's wife, children, and other executives, Joyu announced he was going to leave Aleph and launch a new organization: Hikari no Wa. According to its website:

Hikari no Wa is not a religion. This is a classroom where you can learn the wisdom and philosophy of happiness from the East and the West, including Buddhist thoughts, meditation methods, and modern psychology, without believing in a specific guru, god, or sect.

The classroom, of course, was met with protests and doubts. The U.S Department of State only lifted its designation as a terrorist foreign organization (TFO) as late as 2022, and Japanese police still surveils it.

Since then, despite still being considered a controversial figure, Joyu has made attempts to clear his image; according to Hikari no Wa's website, the classroom pays compensation to the victims of the subway sarin attack, deprogramms Aleph believers and apologises for its representative's former criminal activities. Joyu also seems to have invested in unusual methods of self-promotion, such as taking part in a hiphop EP where he sings while an edit of the 1995 subway attack plays in the background. He also published a book on how to identify dangerous cults despite his status as a potential cult leader.

There is very little information about Hikari no Wa in English. Its only known activities are events and speeches about spirituality held by Joyu himself, its alleged "Aum liquidation" and its "Pilgrimage to Sacred Places".

However, around February 2024, I stumbled upon a fairly obscure site: stop-hikarinowa.com. According to itself, its purpose is to:

Ask Hikari no Wa to disband.

Promote the exchange of information and people-to-people exchanges on the issue of Hikari no Wa.

Provide support for Hikari no Wa members to withdraw from membership.

Disseminate information to society about the problems of Hikari no Wa.

In addition, we will carry out all activities that we deem necessary for issues related to Hikari no Wa and Aum Shinrikyo.

It also claims Hikari no Wa is, in fact, a cult:

Just like Asahara in Aum Shinrikyo, I think it boils down to the fact that Joyu is in control of everything in Hikari no Wa. It's true that Hikari no Wa changed its doctrine because it wanted to get rid of probation, and it also said that it was a philosophy and thought class. All of the reforms that have been carried out over the past 10 years have been carried out at the discretion of Joyu. This fact proves that it is possible to return to the doctrines and operations of the past with the sole intention of Joyu. As long as he's under inspection, he can't do anything as crazy as Aum (and this is the same for Aleph), but if it were to be removed, no one would be able to stop him from running wild like he did with Aum. The guru becoming a dictator is common to other cults, but if a cult that has crossed the line in the past is allowed to go unchecked, it will be a different danger than other cults. The danger of Hikari no Wa varies greatly depending on what happens to the government's surveillance, but at least it seems that it is an organization that cannot guarantee even safety without national surveillance. * On "Frequently Asked Questions"

I contacted its representative, Nakayama Hisashi who's both a former Aum believer (from 1996 to 2007) and a Hikari no Wa one (from 2007 to 2016) and managed to interview him on March 30, 2024.

The interview go as follows:

Q: Tell us about yourself. You joined Aum to find out more about its practices, but what made you stay for such a long time? A: It was cosy. Aum believers are serious and selfless, so it was really healing to talk to such people.

Q: From what I have read, despite precarious living conditions, including poor diet and cockroach-infested flats, Aum believers formed a strong sense of community. What was daily life like when you joined the organisation? A: Food was considered a bother, and the idea was that it was good if you could get the minimum amount of energy. Even cockroaches were souls that were trying their best to live, and we looked after them with compassion. Such different values from the world were fresh and a strong sense of community existed. It was a similar life in Aum and in Aleph. In Hikari no Wa we secularised, so the ordained people remained Aum, but they disliked the filthy environment.

Q: When did you first come into contact with Joyu? What was your first impression of him? A: Around 2005. My first impression was that he was a hard-working practitioner.

Q: Were you aware that he was at odds with the Asahara family? Were there any tensions within Aum in the late 2000s? A: Initially I did not know that there was a conflict. Inside Aum, the explanation was that Joyu was in training, so I didn't think there was a conflict. Believers like me were not informed of anything. When Joyu came out of prison and the Group Regulation Law was passed, believers though Aum was going to be destroyed, so there was a sense of tension, and although there were people who opposed Joyu's methods, none of us thought that there would be a split later on.

Q: When Hikari no Wa was formed in 2007, why did you join it instead of staying with Aleph? What convinced you? A: Because they sympathised with the idea of social reconciliation by acknowledging the incident. And I was banned from Aleph for having contact with Joyu.

Q: What were the first days of Hikari no Wa like? I have seen a video from around 2009[1], and it seems that many people protested its existence. A: Hikari no Wa was not trusted at all, even if they said they were reflecting on Aum. I thought that if I reflected sincerely, society would one day understand me. Perhaps it was only the believers who were deceived by Joyu's words that he had reflected on his life.

Q: What was your daily life like? Did you go to work or interact with normal society? Did you talk to family and friends? A: I moved from one job to another and worked on construction sites for a long time. I told my family about it, but my wife was vehemently against it, so I didn't talk much about being a believer. Once I mentioned that I was a member at work, but I was discriminated against so quit my job. Since then, I stopped talking about Hikari no Wa to my friends. But I did have normal social interactions outside of the classroom.

Q: I assume you are familiar with the B.I.T.E model, which lists cult behaviour. Let's use it to ask some questions. To what extent was your personal life regulated by Hikari no Wa? Was your diet, social or sex life regulated by the cult, or did you need permission to make major decisions? A: I was a noisy believer [laughs], so I was never dominated by the cult. But they were giving detailed instructions to other people on how to spend their money. I would immediately announce it on social media, so I guess the cult was also cautious. It seems that I was treated differently from the others.

Q: I watched some videos from Hikari no Wa's Youtube channel[2] and they seem to travel frequently. At the same time, they pay compensation to Aum victims. I wonder if a tremendous amount of money is being taken from its believers, or if Joyu is making money in other ways. A: The pilgrimages are a means of collecting large sums of money from believers. Devotees are desperate to join in (laughs). "Why is it so expensive?" I asked him, and he excused himself by saying, "Because I'm compensating them". Compensation is the excuse for the high participation fees. But we couldn't operate on that alone, so some of our staff went out to work, and I think we took a lot of money from the rich and quiet believers.

Q: Hikari no Wa page claims to be a place to learn psychology and natural doctrine, without any religious elements. Is this true? Joyu is not licensed to talk about psychology, and he seems to be getting increasedly incoherent. A: I was confused too. In the classroom, I was reading sutras and doing zazen[3]. And then they said, "It's not a religion", so I thought they were deceiving the world. I think that Joyu himself probably doesn't know what he is doing anymore (laughs).

Q: I saw you accuse Joyu of still being an Aum believer and simply hiding Asahara. Can you elaborate on that? A: When I left Aleph, Joyu said to me: 'I will surely share my reincarnation with the Venerable Master (Asahara). So if you follow me, you will surely meet the Venerable Master again." In other words, following Joyu means that no matter how much you deny Asahara, you are recognised in the doctrine of Aum. Joyu still does not deny reincarnation; if there is reincarnation, then Joyu and Asahara will meet again, and people who are closely related to Joyu will meet Asahara again. The only way to deny this is to deny reincarnation or to dissolve the organisation and live modestly. Because of this idea, everything that Joyu says and does to get people to recognise him is to hide Asahara. There's no retraction or apology to his followers for what he said at that time. I don't think he is remorseful at all.

Q: Wait, that's big! Do you have evidence? A: It was just my experience because it was in a private conversation. I've told the public security authorities and I also think it's evidence for the renewal of my observation, but it's just my testimony, I don't think it's evidence.

Q: That is unfortunate, but I still think it stands out. From reading various discussions of yours, it seems that there is sexual manipulation going on within Hikari no Wa. Can you tell us a bit more about it?" I saw terms such as "sexy business". A: It's a technique known in Japan as 'shirokoi business'. In Aum, love was also an affliction, but having romantic feelings for the Venerable Master (Asahara) was considered a good thing. Intense romantic feelings of wanting to be recognised by the Master and to keep him to oneself were considered to be a form of faith. Joyu frequently appeared in the media during the Aum Affair, which gave rise to a group of fans called "Joyu Gals". Such Joyu fans started coming to Hikari no Wa. Not only 90s Joyu fans, but also new fans are still coming to Hikari no Wa through YouTube and events. They are taking money by cleverly utilising such fan psychology and romantic feelings. The method is to stimulate women's romantic feelings and dominate them by saying, for example, "I have a connection with you from the past". In Japan, there are 'host clubs' where men entertain women, and the sales method is similar to this. Although there was only one victim, I was consulted by a victim who said she actually had sexual relations with Joyu. But at the strong request of the victim, we don't really take it up.

Q: I have also read that Joyu is prone to domestic violence, please elaborate on this. A: Joyu has a strong desire for control, so he would yell at staff and others when he didn't like something, and sometimes beat them up. When I asked someone who was actually hit, he said that he had his karma taken away (laughs). I think this is a typical example of Aum thinking, which is pro-violence. I criticised him a lot, so I don't think he does violence now, but I think he still uses words to corner his opponents. Joyu has a male-dominated mindset, so his desire for domination over women is particularly strong, and I think it tends to lead to violence.

Q: Have you witnessed physical or verbal violence? or have you been subjected to violence? Again, there is no intention to invade your privacy. If you do not wish to answer, you do not have to. A: I have never been hit directly. However, when I quit, I was verbally abused. I saw him shouting at staff on many occasions. Old believers know this all too well. He didn't have any anger control at all (laughs).

Q: Why did you start to leave Hikari no Wa? Did other members also quit? A: I loved Hikari no Wa, not Joyu, so I wanted society to be a comfortable and secure place for the followers who gathered there. In reality, however, the believers were only paying money and being used. I wanted to reform that, but I couldn't do it and was forced to quit. I was also exhausted, so it was probably just as well. There were more than 100 staff members at the time of the Aleph Joyu Faction, but by the time Hikari no Wa was established, there were only about 60, and now there are less than 10. Those who had survived Aum and Aleph gave up on the Joyu and quit. Originally, Aum was a cult with two sides of the same coin, and only those close to them would have known the true nature of the guru, but as it became smaller and smaller, I think the number one reason is that the true nature of Joyu could not be hidden and came to the surface (laughs). The same is true of Aleph, as the closer to Asahara you were, the less you remain in Aleph. The only people left in Aleph now are people who don't know Asahara directly. The same is true of Hikari no Wa, who fled as they learnt about Joyu's character. People who found out that he was the king of the naked left. Conversely, the staff who remain now are people who don't want to admit that Joyu is naked, so they may no longer run away. It's pitiful.

It's important to note that, in July 11th 2018, it was revealed Joyu witnessed the murder of a female believer[4] back in 1991, though he didn't say anything until he could no longer be charged for it, and he still avoids this topic. Nakayama says:

After I left, it was revealed after Asahara's execution that Joyu had left female followers to die during his Aum days and had been covering it up for a long time. When I found out about the incident, all the slight remaining feelings I had for Joyu were gone. I thought that everything I had been working on with hope, saying that I would reflect on the incident, was a lie. I now seriously hope that the cult will be disbanded.

Moving on.

Q: Sorry to digress, but I was very interested in Hikari no Wa's instance on science. Joyu often talks about psychology, even if he's not licensed to talk about it. And he apparently gathered at events without masks during the pandemic. A: Right. What the Joyu says publicly, he says it with an awareness of what society will think of him. He pretends to be a sensible person. But in his true feelings, he thinks completely differently, and what he says and what he does are completely different. If you look at what he does, not what he says, you can see what he really thinks.

Q: Sorry to be too straightforward, but is Joyu a conspiracy theorist? I'm not talking about extreme and flash cases like Qanon. It's about things like "this disease can be cured with X, Y and W" A: He has not been vaccinated. This may be because he believes that vaccines are not desirable from a parrot doctrinal point of view and that if he practices, he will not get infected. I don't want to call it a conspiracy theory, but I think he thinks that practising is a better way to fight infection than vaccines or medicine.

Q: That's bad. Do believers have the freedom or critical skills to get themselves vaccinated? A: It might be different for different people. Maybe many people think the same way as Joyu. That is, that practice is more effective than medical treatment. If Joyu would be asked by his followers, he would not deny the vaccine, but he would not dare to recommend it either. Since many people are dependent, I think many of them would not take the vaccine themselves if Joyu had not taken it.

Q: Sorry to change the subject again, but there is one more thing I wanted to know. I browsed through some of the accounts and posts and found screenshots of Joyu himself talking about and endorsing Vajrayana[5]. One of them was yours[6]. Is it authentic? A: I always think about the risk of a court case when I send out screenshots, so I don't fake it. Hikari no Wa always say it'll go to court and then ask me to delete it.

And, then, the interview ended. I had more to ask, but it was 3 AM and I didn't want to waste more of Mr. Nakayama's time.

It's important to note that all of this is simply alleged and I'm solely giving voice to a former member. Joyu has still a large platform, with around 17k followers on Twitter, and appears on documentaries and interviews as an cult expert of some sorts. It's not uncommon for former cult members to study about it later on, but Joyu didn't go through any deprogramming initiative, not even during his time in prison. And, of course, it's certainly unusual for an ex-believer to establish a "non religious' (though with holy pilgrimages) and "non guru centered" (though he's the only member with an online presence) organization.

Do not track and harass former Aum/Hikari no Wa members. Mr. Nakayama gave me permission to say his actual name and site, but this experience has been traumatic to many people.

During my research, I found a quote associated with Joyu in some foruns and websites, but couldn't find any proof it was actually his nor the context in which it was supposedly said.

A snake that doesn't shed its skin will die

Matryoshka are self aware, I guess.

#aum shinrikyo #interview #spiritual abuse #cult mention #organized abuse #pipeline #cw antivax

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poisonousquinzel · 2 months

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As we've entered into the 2024 election year, I Beg you all that feel disappointment and rage at the disgraceful excuses for politicians we have in the US rn to look into the campaign of the two women shown in this video.

Claudia de la Cruz and Karina Garcia are running for President and VP in 2024. Here's their campaign video, as I can only include 1 vid per post. And here is their website.

I implore everyone who has the ability to vote in the November US election to read up on them.

Claudia De la Cruz (Presidential Candidate) is a mother, popular educator, community organizer and theologian. Being at the nexus of many different projects, organizations and social movements, Claudia connects different groups of people to link and merge struggles together in the overarching fight for justice. Born in the South Bronx to immigrant parents from the Dominican Republic, she was nourished by the Black and Caribbean working class communities of the Bronx and Washington Heights in the 1980s and 90s. At an early age, she was already questioning the conditions of poverty, violence, and oppression in her neighborhood, and what she saw and experienced served as her first entry point to understanding working class consciousness. When she was 13, Claudia began her political organizing work at her home church—Iglesia Episcopal Santa Maria (later the Iglesia San Romero de Las Américas–UCC), grounding her work on principles of liberation theology. She actively participated in campaigns to free political prisoners; to get the U.S. Navy out of Vieques, Puerto Rico; to end the U.S. blockade against Cuba; for the freedom of Palestine; against police terror—to name a few. In high school, she became a peer educator, conducting workshops on reproductive health and safe sex at community hubs and progressive churches, particularly for youth in the Bronx. It was through this work and her experiences as a working class Black Caribbean young woman that she understood there was only one solution to our collective problems: to fight for a better future, a socialist future

Karina Garcia (VP Candidate) is a Chicana organizer and popular educator who has been fighting for a better world since she was 17 years old as a high school student in California. From El Barrio in New York City to the border areas of Texas, she has helped lead campaigns against landlord abuses, wage theft, and police brutality, as well as fights for reproductive justice, immigrants rights and student financial aid reform. She is a founder of the Justice Center en El Barrio in New York City and is a member of the Central Committee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

Karina’s father migrated to the U.S. from Mexico when he was just 16 years old, and the will of working-class immigrants like him to survive and thrive inspired her to take on life with determination. This served her well when Karina received a full scholarship to study at Columbia University. She moved across the country by herself, knowing that she had to seize upon every opportunity to give back—a single year of tuition was the equivalent of her family's entire household income. As soon as she arrived, she joined every conceivable progressive organization on campus. She led struggles to expand financial aid for low-income students, for immigrant and worker rights, and to speak out against the Iraq war. In 2006, her activism received national attention when she led a campaign to confront and shut down the anti-immigrant fascist militia, the Minuteman Project. When Karina took a semester off to do a speaking tour in California, she met with high school and college students to keep building the movement for immigrant rights. That same year, she joined the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Graduating with a degree in Economics, Karina went on to become a New York City high school math teacher. After school, she advised a student group that protested against budget cuts, the Iraq war, police brutality and anti-immigrant laws. In 2012, she moved into a national organizing position for the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice where she worked for nearly a decade training immigrant women and working-class Latina activists in New York, Texas, Virginia and Florida.

[Taken from the About The Candidates section on their website.]

Understand that despite the mainstream medias desperate attempts to make us believe that our choices are really just Biden and Trump that that is not true.

We have other options.

We have better options.

#not dc #karina garcia #claudia de la cruz #election 2024 #palestine #free palestine

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metalheadsforblacklivesmatter · 2 years

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Everyone is talking about the Roe v Wade, so I'd like to draw your attention to another decision made this morning that should scare the shit out of you if you have any distrust in cops.

Supreme Court ruled that cops don't HAVE to read you your Miranda Rights.

"Today's ruling doesn't get rid of the Miranda right," said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law. "But it does make it far harder to enforce. Under this ruling, the only remedy for a violation of Miranda is to suppress statements obtained from a suspect who's not properly advised of his right to remain silent. But if the case never goes to trial, or if the government never seeks to use the statement, or if the statement is admitted notwithstanding the Miranda violation, there's no remedy at all for the government's misconduct."

What does this mean?

Well, your Miranda Rights is the whole "You're under arrest. Anything can and will be used against you in the court of law. You have a right to an attorney. If you can not afford one one will be appointed for you."

Why is this important?

Miranda Rights were established in 1966. Basically an 18 year old and interrogated when we was accused of rape. The police left with a confession, which he later recanted. He was obviously sent to prison, but his appeal was essentially "I didn't know I had the right to remain silent."

Now, the right to remain silent may seem obvious, but you know how cops are bullies and will strong arm literally anyone with "You will do as I say because I'm in a position of authority." Ergo, it's not off-point to believe that you have to answer the questions just because the cops are in a position of authority.

Why is this an issue, especially in a time when so many people are fighting for police reform?

Because in the interrogation room there's a HUGE power imbalance between you and the cops. You need that lawyer to offset the power imbalance. You need that lawyer (even if it's a court appointment) to say "My client won't be answering that question." Shit. You NEED a representative in that room with you that can leave the room at the end of the day that's an upstanding citizen that the general populace will believe. So you know if the cops do any shady interrogation tactics, you've got a witness by your side that's legally obligated to look after your best interest.

-fae

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zvaigzdelasas · 4 months

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Mariusz Kaminski and Maciej Wasik were sentenced to two years' jail last month for abuse of power when they led an anti-corruption office in 2007.[...]

The men, who were elected PiS MPs in October, refused to recognise last month's court decision because President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, pardoned them for the crime in 2015. Mr Duda has also said he does not recognise the court's ruling because he insists his pardon remains valid.

The pair have been stripped of their parliamentary mandates, but both they and President Duda insist they remain legally elected MPs because of the pardon.

On Monday evening, the court issued a warrant to police to detain the men. Despite this, Mr Duda invited both to Warsaw's Presidential Palace on Tuesday morning to attend a ceremony to swear in two of their former colleagues as presidential advisers.

Several hours later, they emerged from the palace to speak briefly to reporters, all the while remaining inside its grounds. Mr Kaminski said they will be "political prisoners" if they are arrested and thanked Mr Duda for his support.

"We are dealing with a very serious state crisis. A grim dictatorship is being created," Mr Kaminski said. They then returned inside the palace as the political theatre unfolded.

Moments later, Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a news conference the situation was "unbelievable". He said the court's ruling must be respected and suggested President Duda was helping the men evade justice.[...]

Following the arrests, several hundred PiS supporters demonstrated outside the palace in support of the men.[...]

Mr Tusk's coalition took office last month pledging to undo PiS's changes to the judiciary, public media, and civil service that the European Commission and many other international bodies say have undermined the rule of law in Poland. One of its first acts was to reform the state TV, radio and news agency that PiS had transformed into a propaganda mouthpiece for its government.

But its methods were similar to PiS's, first using a government minister to sack media boards and install new people ahead of planned legislative reform.[...]

Former PiS prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki told the BBC Mr Tusk's government talked loudly about democratic standards but fell well short in practice.

"We are witnessing an unprecedented attack on the rule of law. Tusk's government decided it could take over public television and media by force. This has nothing to do with democratic standards. We have not seen such brutal government action since communism. It is all the more outrageous that this is done by people who have such slogans of democracy on their lips," Mr Morawiecki said.

Given PiS's record of controlling state institutions while in office, many Tusk supporters argue such accusations are the height of hypocrisy.

Welcome to Modern Polish Politics, where Liberals accuse other Liberals of being Communists [9 Jan 24]

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fatehbaz · 11 months

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The state intervenes in children’s use of the city, criminalising children’s uses of the streets [...]. Much of this age-segregation emerged in the so-called Progressive Era (1890-1918) in northern cities of the United States, particularly Chicago. Informed by turn-of-the-century science [...], [t]hese child-savers sought to transform delinquent urban children into upright citizens. In doing so, reformers changed the shape of America’s cities. [...] Only a handful of dedicated playgrounds existed in urban America in the 1890s. [...] Contrasting images of working-class, immigrant youth left unsupervised on the streets with children of their own class, who led increasingly sheltered lives, middle-class urbanites feared for the future of the country. The burgeoning reform class, led by Chicagoans such as Jane Addams, feared so-called “swarms” of children on the streets [...].

---

A new theory of child-development known as recapitulation theory had recently emerged. Proponents of this theory, such as G. Stanley Hall, argued that children passed through (or recapitulated) all the stages of the evolution of the race before they achieved adulthood. [...] Advocates [...] idealised almost all of white boys’ misbehaviour as recapitulation of the race’s past [...]. Although recapitulation theory had room for the sons of European immigrants, [...] children of colour remained outside the narrative of idealised misbehaviour. [...] [W]hite Americans [...] sought to repress the misbehaviour or so-called childhood savagery of children of colour rather than encourage it. Thus, just as white children were encouraged to embrace their inner savage and hold mock powwows and “to play Indian”, Progressive reformers confined Native American children to “civilizing” boarding schools [...].

Growing concerns over masculinity at the turn of the twentieth century limited reforms that could be seen as “molly-coddling”. To completely crush the misbehaving instinct, many middle-class Americans believed, would be just as dangerous [...]. Drawing on recapitulation theory, reformers believed the key to anti-delinquency among [...] European [...] children was providing these children with supervised, orderly places where the misbehaving instinct could safely play out. Central to reformers’ attempts to save but not tame [...] children meant the development of the world’s first municipal playground system in Chicago [...]. By 1915, the city of Chicago ran sixty-six recreation centres [...]. President Teddy Roosevelt heralded it as “one of the most notable civic achievements of any American city.” From Chicago, the idea spread around the country. By 1921, almost 200 cities employed a total of over eleven thousand men and women as year-round playground workers. [...]

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But the state, too, struggled to control urban childhood. [..] [T]ruant officers [...] struggled with huge caseloads in the early twentieth century. [...] On the streets, escapees evaded police, probation and truant officers [...]. A study of reform schools in and near Chicago in the early twentieth century found two-fifths of detainees left in what was euphemistically called ‘informal departure’ [...]. Escape caused such an issue for reformatories that it was considered among the most serious offences and, as such, carried the heaviest punishments including beatings, being hung by the wrists, being shackled, wearing heavy iron studded shoes, being placed in a tub of ice water, and being caged.

Even as Progressive ideals ostensibly moved prisons and other reform institutions further from the punishment of the body to the treatment of the individual’s soul, in practice, reformatory officials often resorted to physical punishments for the treatment of runaways. [...] [T]he new juvenile institutions of the early twentieth-century differed so wildly in practice from their conception in theory. [...]

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By the 1930s, however, the concept of the dangerous but ultimately salvageable swarm which had shaped Progressive Era responses to the problems of children and the city was gradually replaced by the far more pessimistic idea of individual deviant personalities. Faith in the ability to transform children through transforming the city collapsed. [...] Juvenile Courts also faced increasing pessimism. In 1936, leading child-saver Grace Abbott asked rhetorically whether the Juvenile Court of Chicago had proved a success or a failure and concluded pessimistically [...].

Delinquency experts increasingly turned to psychiatry to explain and treat criminal behaviour; the psychiatrist supplanted the playground as the key to anti-delinquency.

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As reformers advocated individualised treatment of delinquent personalities, on the streets, changing priorities of policing increasingly and aggressively targeted children of colour. In addition, suburbanisation was changing the demographics of the inner city. Increasingly, white families were choosing to move out to the suburbs [...]. As inner-city youth became more and more synonymous with minority youth, the urban child seemed increasingly outside the realm of “saving” and middle-class white Americans responded to black youth’s corner culture with intense policing and urban flight, not playgrounds and child-saving. The pessimistic view [...] laid the foundation for the increasingly racialised and violent attempts to control poor urban children in the later twentieth century. [...]

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Most importantly, Progressive reformers criminalised and delegitimised much of children’s traditional use of the streets, ensuring that age became a crucial component of urban discipline. [...] When encounters with real children transformed institutions and regulations in unexpected ways, the result was increasingly coercive methods and policing.

---

All text above by: Oenone Kubie. “Child’s Play: How Progressive Era Science Shaped America’s Playgrounds.” Oxford Urbanists. 15 September 2019. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

#abolition #ecology #colonial #imperial

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redhatmeg · 5 months

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I really like the journalist subplot with Yuri, because of couple of things.

Of course, this is the first chapter where Yuri is not reduced to being just a guy obsessed with his sister. This story expands on his work in SSS and shows more of him as an officer.

At the same time, for a story involving secret police invigilating a "traitor", you might think that said traitor will be treated as more or less a heroic figure - someone who fights with this terrible, oppressive regime and that's why SSS sees him as a public enemy. And maybe this is how Franklin Perkin was at some point in his life, but the man we see during Yuri's investigation is a pathetic man, who trades journalistic integrity for cheap sensationalism (which the scene where he throws a toy into a dumpster to photograph children diving into it, shows).

Obviously Perkin's actions make Yuri angry, but later we have a scene when Yuri listens to his target talking with his father, and it seems like it makes Yor's brother think more deeply about what he just heard. He even writes down on his report that Perkin might be motivated not by greed but by concern for his family.

Finally when Yuri finally comes to arrest Franklin Perkin, he makes sure to do it in a way that Perkin's father won't see it. He even says: "Your family doesn't need to see you in such a pathetic moment." and he assures his prisoner that his father will get some financial aid.

It really is a story that shows Yuri Briar in a more sympathetic light - as someone who is capable of compassion, even though he works in Ostanian equivalent of KGB (or Stasi, since Ostania and Westalis are based on Cold War Germany).

Which also is an interesting take on this secret organization, the third one introduced in Spy x Family, after WISE and Garden. Notice that the latter two are presented as more heroic that do what they do to assure peace. And while WISE is unambiguously heroic, remember that Garden is an assassin's guild, but they kill only scumbangs, so they're good.

Meanwhile SSS is introduced when Yor hears that an unmarried woman was arrested by them under suspicion of espinoge (which prompts Yor to find a partner to seem less suspicious). It is only when we are with Yuri that we see that maybe SSS are onto something with all those spies and traitors. Yuri's first on-screen victim is an adulterer who was selling his country's secrets for his lavish lifestyle and mistresses and in one of the latest chapters he gives a long speech to a small criminal-turned-activist.

Yuri's assessment is treated as harsh and also probably as him lashing out after the defeat at Twilight's hands, but Bobby Buckle seems to be a criminal who committed couple of misdemeanors and then made up a whole ideology to justify it. Yuri sees him as a parasite that blames others for his own misfortune. What I particularly find interesting is the line about "all of society's solutions for you just aggrivate your persecution complex". Because it indicates that there are some social programs in Ostania that at least try to reform criminals, help the unemployed etc.

I can see Yuri getting jaded that way. He can have compassion for people like Franklin Perkin who is down on his luck and commits crimes to support his family; but not for Bobby Buckle who is a petty criminal pretending to be an activist for higher cause but not doing anything meaningful with his life.

But also at the end of journalist story Yuri comes to Forgers' household to see his sister and we get a scene when Anya senses that something is wrong and she pats her uncle on the hand to comfort him. I think it's here to showcase that a job in SSS takes its toll on Yuri. He sees it as his true calling and tries to be positive about it, but at the same time situations like the one with Perkin might shake him to his core. So he goes to Yor for comfort.

#spy x family #spy x family spoilers #yuri briar #franklin perkin #bobby buckle

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