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homomenhommes · 11 days

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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … April 7

529 Constantinople : Emperor Justinian I re-wrote Roman Law, making it distinctly Christian and stating that all same-sex acts are contrary to nature and punishable by death.

1786 – On this date William Rufus King, the U.S. Representative from North Carolina, Senator from Alabama, and the thirteenth Vice President of the United States was born (d.1853). Historians have argued about the extremely close relationship that King had with President James Buchanan.

King was close friends with James Buchanan, and the two shared a house in Washington, D.C. for fifteen years prior to Buchanan's presidency. Buchanan and King's close relationship prompted Andrew Jackson to refer to King as "Miss Nancy" and "Aunt Fancy", while Aaron V. Brown spoke of the two as "Buchanan and his wife". Further, some of the contemporary press also speculated about Buchanan and King's relationship.

Buchanan and King's nieces destroyed their uncles' correspondence, leaving some questions as to what relationship the two men had, but surviving letters illustrate the affection of a special friendship, and Buchanan wrote of his communion with his housemate. Buchanan wrote in 1844, after King left for France,

"I am now solitary and alone, having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection."

While the circumstances surrounding Buchanan and King have led authors such as Paul Boller to speculate that Buchanan was "America's first homosexual president", there is no direct evidence that he and King had a sexual relationship

Wood Self-portrait

1901 – John Christopher Wood (d.1930), often called Kit Wood, was an English painter born in Knowsley, near Liverpool.

Christopher Wood was born son of Doctor Lucius Wood. He briefly flirted with medicine and architecture at Liverpool University before pursuing an artistic career.At Liverpool University, Wood met Augustus John, who encouraged him to be a painter. The French collector Alphonse Kahn invited him to Paris in 1920. From 1921 he trained as a painter at the Academie Julian in Paris, where he met Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Georges Auric and Diaghilev. He travelled around Europe and north Africa between 1922 and 1924. He also collaborated with and became the lover of painter Francis Rose.

In 1926 Wood created designs for Romeo and Juliet for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, although they were never used. The same year he became a member of both the London Group and the Seven and Five Society plus meeting and befriending Ben Nicholson and Winifred Nicholson.

Wood was bisexual. In the early summer of 1921, Wood met Antonio de Gandarillas, a Chilean diplomat. Gandarillas, a married homosexual fourteen years older than Wood, lived a glamorous life partly financed by gambling. Their relationship lasted through Wood's life, surviving his affair with Jeanne Bourgoint. In 1927 his plans to elope and marry heiress Meraud Guinness were frustrated by her parents whereupon he required emotional support from Winifred Nicholson. Wood also had a liaison with a Russian émigrée, Frosca Munster, whom he met in 1928.

By 1930, addicted to opium and painting frenetically in preparation for his Wertheim exhibition in London, he suffered paranoia and began carrying a revolver. On August 21 he travelled to meet his mother and sister for lunch at 'The County Hotel' in Salisbury and to show them a selection of his latest paintings. After saying goodbye he jumped under a train at Salisbury railway station, although in deference to his mother's wishes it was reported as an accident.

1907 – Violette Leduc, French author, born (d.1972); Leduc was born in Arras, Pas de Calais, France, the illegitimate daughter of a servant girl, Berthe. In Valenciennes, the young Violette spent most of her childhood suffering from poor self-esteem, exacerbated by her mother's hostility and overprotectiveness. She developed tender friendships with her grandmother Fideline and her maternal aunt Laure. Her formal education, begun in 1913, was interrupted by World War I. After the war, she went to a boarding school, the Collège de Douai, where she experienced Lesbian affairs with a classmate and a music instructor who was fired over the incident.

In 1926, Leduc moved to Paris and enrolled in the Lycée Racine. That same year, she failed her baccalaureate exam and began working as a telephone operator and secretary at Plon publishers.

In 1932 she met Maurice Sachs and Simone de Beauvoir, who encouraged her to write. Her first novel L'Asphyxie (In the Prison of Her Skin) was published by Albert Camus for Éditions Gallimard and earned her praise from Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Cocteau and Jean Genet.

In 1955, Leduc was forced to remove part of her novel Ravages because of sexually explicit passages describing lesbianism. The censored part was eventually published as a separate novella, Thérèse and Isabelle in 1966. Another novel, Le Taxi caused controversy because of its depiction of incest between a brother and sister.

Leduc's best-known book, the memoir La Bâtarde, was published in 1964. It quickly became a bestseller. She went on to write eight more books, including La Folie en tête (Mad in Pursuit), the second part of her literary autobiography.

In 1968 Radley Metzger made a film of Leduc's novel Thérèse and Isabelle. The film was a commercial feature about adolescent lesbian love, starring Essy Persson and Anna Gael.

Leduc developed breast cancer and died aged 65 after two operations.

Young Harry Hay - Activist

1912 – Harry Hay, the founder of the Mattachine Society and the Radical Faeries, was born on this date (d.2002).

Although Harry Hay claimed 'never to have even heard' of the earlier Gay liberation struggle in Germany - by the people around Adolf Brand, Magnus Hirschfeld and Leontine Sagan - he is known to have talked about it with European emigres in America including Mattachine co-founder Rudi Gernreich. (However, Gernreich arrived in America at age 14, and Hay had already written his Gay manifesto when they met).

Hay, along with Roger Barlow and LeRoy Robbins directed a short film Even As You and I (1937) featuring Hay, Barlow, and filmmaker Hy Hirsh. A married man (beard/wife Anita Platky) and a member of the Communist Party USA, Hay composed the first manifesto of the American Gay rights movement in 1948, writing:

"We, the Androgynes of the world, have formed this responsible corporate body to demonstrate by our efforts that our physiological and psychological handicaps need be no deterrent in integrating ten percent of the world's population towards the constructive social progress of mankind."

Hay soon dispensed with the apologetic language and ideas. Though it may seem very dated today, the group was very radical compared to the rest of society at the time. It and Hay were among the first to advance the argument that Gay people represented a "cultural minority" as well as being just individuals, and even called for public marches of homosexuals, predicting later Gay pride parades.

Hay's concept of the "cultural minority" came directly from his Marxist studies, and the rhetoric he and his colleague Charles Rowland employed often reflected the militancy of Communist tradition. As the Mattachine Society grew with chapters around the country, the organization saw the Communist ties of its founders, including Hay, as a threat during that McCarthy-ite witch-hunt era, and expelled them from leadership. The organization took a more cautious tack so that by the time of the Stonewall riots the Mattachine Society came to be seen by many as stodgy and assimilationist.

The Communist Party did not allow Gays to be members, claiming that homosexuality was a 'deviation'; perhaps more important was the fear that a member's (usually secret) homosexuality would leave them open to blackmail and was a security risk in an era of red-baiting. Concerned to save the party difficulties, as he put more energy into the Mattachine Society, Hay himself had approached the CP's leaders and recommended his own expulsion. However, after much soul-searching, the CP, clearly reeling at the loss of a respected member and theoretician of 18 years standing, refused to expel Hay, instead dropping him as a 'security risk' but ostentatiously announcing him to be a 'Lifelong Friend of the People'.

Hay in later years

Hay later became an outspoken critic of Gay assimilationism and went on to help found both Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition and the Gay men's group the Radical Faeries, as well as being active in the Native American movements.

Hay once explained,

"We pulled an ugly green frog skin of heterosexual conformity over us, and that's how we got through school with a full set of teeth. We know how to live through their eyes. We can always play their games, but are we denying ourselves by doing this? If you're going to carry the skin of conformity over you, you are going to suppress the beautiful prince or princess within you."

Harry Hay and the Radical Faeries

In 1963, at age 51, he met an inventor named John Burnside, who became his life partner. They lived first in Los Angeles, and later in a Pueblo Indian reserve in New Mexico. After returning to Los Angeles to help organize the first Radical Faerie gathering, the couple moved to San Francisco, where Hay died of lung cancer at age 90. Hay was the subject of the 2002 documentary by Eric Slade, "Hope along the Wind: The Life of Harry Hay" (2002).

1912 – Academy Award nominated songwriter Jack Lawrence was born on this date (d.2009). He wrote about his being Gay in his 2004 autobiography, They All Sang My Songs. He was a gay man during a time when it was astronomically difficult to be one.

In addition to fun stories about divas ranging from Tallulah Bankhead to Cher, his book They All Sang My Songs covered his discreet queer life (he was closeted until sometime in his thirties), during which he attended gay "rent parties" in Harlem, and cruised Central Park for sex.

In 1945, met the love of his life, Walter Myden, who remained with Lawrence until he died 30 years later. Then Lawrence and Richard Debnam—who actually became Richard Lawrence when Jack adopted him in 1979—shared their love, with Richard more like the son he never had, Jack explained. "I think I would've been a good parent," the songwriter said, adding that not having children may have been his one regret. His songs, though, will live on longer than any child would have.

You probably know his songs through recordings like the Ink Spots' "If I Didn't Care", Rosemary Clooney's "Tenderly" and Frank Sinatra's "All Or Nothing At All" which was Sinatra's first solo hit.

Hearing his music now one can hear the sentiment of one who had to shield his life, or fight for its full acceptance, especially in "All Or Nothing At All" which has been recorded by Sinatra, Jimmy Scott, John Coltrane, Chet Baker and Diana Krall, to name just a few of its interpreters. Reading those lyrics it's easy to take it as an anthem of living and loving openly.

Lawrence died on March 16, 2009 at age 96 after a fall in his home in Redding, Connecticut. He was survived by Richard Debnam-Lawrence.

1915 – Gay diva and Jazz legend Billie Holiday was born today (d.1959). Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo.

Critic John Bush wrote that Holiday "changed the art of American pop vocals forever." She co-wrote only a few songs, but several of them have become jazz standards, notably "God Bless the Child," "Don't Explain," "Fine and Mellow," and "Lady Sings the Blues." She also became famous for singing "Easy Living," "Good Morning Heartache," and "Strange Fruit", a protest song which became one of her standards and was made famous with her 1939 recording.

Billie lived it up with a vengeance, and had a huge appetite for drink, drugs, men and women. She had an affair with actor and director Orson Welles, and also had a number of lesbian affairs - including one with Tallulah Bankhead. According to one of the later and better biographies she would call herself 'William' when she was sexually interested in a particular women.

STRANGE FRUIT Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black body swinging in the Southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant South, The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh, And the sudden smell of burning flesh! Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop, Here is a strange and bitter crop.

As Billie Holiday later told the story, a single gesture by a patron at New York's Café Society, in Greenwich Village, changed the history of American music in early 1939, the night when she first sang "Strange Fruit." Café Society was New York's only truly integrated nightclub outside Harlem, a place catering to progressive types with open minds. But Holiday was to recall that even there she was afraid to sing this new song, and regretted it, at least momentarily, when she first did. "There wasn't even a patter of applause when I finished," she later said. "Then a lone person began to clap nervously. Then suddenly everyone was clapping."

The applause grew louder and less tentative as "Strange Fruit" became a nightly ritual for Holiday, then one of her signature songs, at least where it could be safely performed. And audiences have continued to applaud this disturbing ballad, unique in Holiday's oeuvre and in the American popular- song repertoire, as it has left its mark on generations of writers, musicians, and listeners, both black and white. The late jazz writer Leonard Feather once called "Strange Fruit" "the first significant protest in words and music, the first unmuted cry against racism." Jazz musicians still speak of it with a mixture of awe and fear - "When Holiday recorded it, it was more than revolutionary," said the drummer Max Roach – and perform it almost gingerly. "It's like rubbing people's noses in their own shit," said Mal Waldron, the pianist who accompanied Holiday in her final years. A few years back a British music publication, Q Magazine, named "Strange Fruit" one of 10 songs that actually changed the world.

1919 – Theophilus Brown (d.2012) was an American artist. He became prominent as a member of the Bay Area Figurative Movement.

A descendant of early-American intellectuals, Brown was born in Moline, Illinois. His great-grandfather was friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Brown's father was an inventor and chief designer, at the John Deere Company in Moline, Illinois.

While attending Yale University in the late-1930s, Brown met composer Paul Hindemith and poet May Sarton, with whom he would share lifetime friendships.

After graduating in 1941, Brown was drafted in World War II. Following his discharge, he began to study painting, moving between New York City and Paris, meeting an impressive range of artists that included Pablo Picasso, Braque, Giacometti, Balthus, and de Kooning, among others. Brown, who studied piano at Yale, was also close to a number of composers, including John Cage, Francis Poulenc, Samuel Barber, and Igor Stravinsky.

In 1952 Brown enrolled in the graduate studio program at the University of California, Berkeley, joining a group of artists—including Richard Diebenkorn David Park, Elmer Bischoff, James Weeks, and Nathan Oliveira —that would later be known as the Bay Area Figurative Movement. While attending Berkeley, Brown also met and fell in love with his long-time partner and fellow-painter, Paul Wonner.

In the early 1960s, Brown and Wonner moved to Santa Monica, where they developed a close friendship with fellow gay couple, novelist Christopher Isherwood, and portrait artist Don Bachardy. Over the years, Brown and Wonner also fostered friendships with playwright William Inge, composer and conductor Andre Previn, actress Eva Marie Saint and her husband, director Jeffery Hayden, and New Zealand novelist Janet Frame.

Figurative 1964

In his later years, Brown still managed to paint daily. Theophilus Brown resided in San Francisco, California at the time of his death. Four months before his death, Brown gave an interview in which he fact-checked his Wikipedia entry. He found the entry accurate, on the whole, but termed his classification as an abstract expressionist "horseshit." He died in San Francisco, aged 92.

1966 – The first Gay Community Center in the United States opens. It is located in San Francisco, led by The Society for Individual Rights.

1991 – Travis Flores is an American activist, philanthropist, motivational speaker, actor and children's book author. He has been featured in works such as Chicken Soup for the Soul, Readers Digest: Selections, Charlie's Cancer Rescue and The Lemonade Stand. Flores has cystic fibrosis and has spoken very openly about it, having served as a spokesperson for various cystic fibrosis related fundraisers. He is best known for his charitable work with both the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and has donated a majority of his book's proceeds to the two organizations. To date, he has helped to raise over half a million dollars for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Flores also established his own organization in 2005, which provides laptops to chronically ill youth in hospitals.

When Flores was twelve years old, he began work with illustrator Michelle Ciappa to prepare his children's book, "The Spider Who Never Gave Up", for publishing. In 2004, after the book was published when Flores was thirteen, he began a motivational speaking and book tour. In the same year, June 18 was proclaimed by Mayor Michael Mullen as "Travis Flores Day" in Marietta, Ohio; a city near his hometown of Newport, Ohio. A year later, Flores partnered with Disney to print an edition of his book for a Make-A-Wish Foundation event, in which two million dollars was donated to the charity. The media attention and success of the event enabled Flores to extend his tour another two years.

Flores started college when he was sixteen years old and received his bachelor's degree in Acting from Marymount Manhattan College by the age of twenty. In 2010, during his work as an undergraduate student, he had the opportunity to work with Susan Batson on the Broadway workshops of the Tennessee Williams play, In Masks Outrageous and Austere. In 2012, the play opened at Culture Project theater in New York City, but Flores was no longer affiliated with the project. While working in New York City, he attended New York University and graduated in Spring of 2013 with a master's degree in Fundraising.

On March 3, 2015, Flores successfully received a double-lung transplant at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. Following the operation, he continued his work in entertainment, and later underwent a second double-lung transplant October 3, 2017 at the same medical facility.

In May 2019, Flores came out as gay on the CW series MyLastDays, making him the first person to ever come out on the network. Flores currently resides in Los Angeles, California with his male partner. He continues to pursue his philanthropic outreaches, acting, and writing.

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haikuprajna · 11 months

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Hello readers,

BATTLE Colosseum, the latest chapter in the "FLUKE!" series, has been released as a paperback novella! Get your copy through the below links:

Paperback https://www.amazon.ca/BATTLE-Colosseum-Allen-W-McLean/dp/B0C6BSSC1L

Kindle Unlimited https://a.co/d/fq4b479

Author Central https://www.amazon.com/stores/Allen-W.-McLean/author/B0867C5D24

Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/162629835-battle-colosseum

Preview https://read.amazon.ca/kp/embed?asin=B0C67X4TMT

...

Like drifting snowfall,\\ those who were separated, \\ now reunited.

#HaikuPrajna - Finding The Way [BATTLE Colosseum - Official Paperback Release Announcement]

Read online [ https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/2023/05/20230529-haikuprajna-finding-way-battle.html ]

...

Thank you for reading,

Until next time!

Allen W. McLean

#ku #KindleUnlimited #metaphysical #scifi #fantasy #novella

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#haikuprajna #book #fiction #meditation #haiku #mindfulness #scifaiku #poem #youtube #Instagram

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trxsh3banditt · 2 years

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Ego Headcannon Updates

Ego Headcannons Updated ----> A new Ego made by me

The JSE egos were created normally by Jack’s imagination when he was little and even he had his own look in the AU. When he grew older he grew further apart from his egos as he finally felt comfortable in the normal world. While recording with his friends, who too had egos they parted from, they were transported into a different world where they met their egos face to face. Since, it’s been so long they barely recognized each other as the egos had changed so much from how they had them.

Angus the Survival Hunter

-Oldest JSE ego at age 41

-Birthday is April 4th

-Has a buzz cut and kept Jack’s natural brown hair

-Blind in his left eye due to a bear attack

-His eye color is a dark blue

-The parent of the egos other than Henrik

-Uses He/Him pronouns

-Has a snake for a pet

-Asexual Bi-romantic

-Has a temper out of this world that challenges Henriks temper

-His favorite food is raspberry pancakes with whipped cream, blueberries, and caramel sauce on top of it

-Hates coffee and tea so starts his morning off with breakfast and a protein shake he makes himself

-His bedroom is hunters themed; with wooden walls + flooring, and aesthetic hunter items

-Keeps his large machete in a glass sealed case and sharpens it weekly

Jackieboyman

-The second oldest of the egos at the age of 37

-Birthday is July 10

-Has what he considers to be long enough hair but it’s not that long, only enough for fluffy hair covering their face

-Kept Jack’s iconic green color but in a fade

-Has bright icy blue eyes

-Uses He/They pronouns

-His Septiceye Sam is a robot made by Shawn and Henrik to help Jackie during their missions so he doesn’t die

-Since they has powers he doesn’t need to work out but does so anyway cause it makes them feel better about his appearance

-Terrified of cockroaches and Henrik when he’s super mad

-Proudly a Demiboy and Pansexual

-Secret hobby of baking and collecting can tabs

-Doesn’t drink coffee but goes for energy drinks like Monster, Bang, and Redbull

-Their favorite food is Salisbury Steak and Henrik’s homemade mashed potatoes

-His room is superhero themed. Spiderman bed and curtains while batman themed everything else

-Has terrible ADHD and cannot focus on serious topics such as when Henrik is lecturing

Marvin The Magnificent

-Third oldest ego at the age of 37

-Birthday is August 11

-Considers himself to be the most fabulous ego in the house

-Has long green hair and is proud of it

-Eyes are green and blue due to his magic

-Uses He/Her pronouns

-Her Septiceye sam is a cat hybrid with a cape and his iconic mask symbols

-Hates mice, despite being a half cat hybrid himself

-Her magic has grown increasingly strong ever since Jack left

-Asexual and a proud Gay Pangender

-Focusses on his magic so much that he kinda has no other hobby

-Drinks iced coffee every morning as a part of her morning routine

-Loves warm baths with lavender soap and candles

-Her favorite food is macaroons and chocolate sauce

-His room is mage themed with a dreamcatcher collection and other things that she really enjoys

-Suffers with OCD and always has to do his morning routine otherwise she goes mad and forgets everything that is needed to be done that day

Henrik Von Schneeplestein

-Third oldest ego at the age of 37

-Birthday is September 15

-Is one of the smartest egos in the household

-Has terrible eyesight and cannot see without his glasses

-Has the same coffee brown hair as Angus and Jack, but with teal tips to it

-Uses He/It pronouns

-Its septiceye sam is a light teal sam with a white doctors cap

-Is allergic to pollen and dust

-Tends to overthink and worry too much about his family which impacts its sleep

-Trans Gay male

-Extreme caffeine addict and drinks coffee all the time on a daily basis, maybe adding an energy drink in it if he feels like it

-Collects scalpels and decorates the ones that aren’t used for work

-Loves nightly walks and classical rock music

-Keeps a pet cat he named Daisy in its room

-Has repetitive nightmares which fuels his insomnia

-His favorite food is seafood, it loves salmon rolls with wasabi and soy sauce

-Its room is modern with the exception of another room he has that is a mini version of its work office to help when he isn’t at work

-Has been suffering with depression, anxiety, dyslexia, and a mild form of autism with a common stim being clicking his pen repetitively or tapping it against something

Antisepticeye

-Fourth ego at the age of 37

-Birthday is October 10

-One of the most chaotic egos but listens to Henrik and Angus no problem

-Bullies the egos on a regular basis but knows then the jokes are taken too far

-The scar on the throat has healed for the most part but the rawness won’t go away

-Uses Skull/Blood pronouns

-Skulls Septic same is a dark green glitchy sam opposite of Jacks sam

-Has no allergies but hates the scent of citrus fruits

-Agender gay, no questions asked

-Always drinks bloods coffee black with three spoonfuls of sugar added to it, nothing else

-Has a pet turtle skull named it Sparrow

-Bloods favorite food is spaghetti, skull loves the way Jameson makes it

-Skulls room is more goth emo themed and has a lot of heavy metal, death metal, and hard rock band posters on skulls wall

-Blasts music on bloods headphones so blood doesn’t have to listen to the others argue

-Suffers with psychosis and anxiety which blood treats with Henrik’s handmade anxiety meds and meditation

Chase Brody

-Fifth ego at the age of 36

-Birthday is April 11

-Another chaotic ego but more contained with video games and food

-Pulls pranks on the others all in good fun

-Has self harm scars on his left thigh

-Uses He/Him pronouns

-His septiceye Sam is a gray sam with a small cap the same style as Chases cap

-Allergic to peanut butter and lactose intolerant

-Bisexual Demiromantic male

-Doesn’t like coffee and drinks tea

-Owns a lot of game stations so if anyone wanted to game they go to him for it

-His favorite food is homemade mac and cheese since the cheese he uses is low in lactose

-Owns a lot of nerf guns and always gets the newest ones

-His room is child like but the others don’t care and neither does Henrik, as long as it gets cleaned once a week

-Does suffer with depression and has thankfully stopped self harming but does drink from time to time

-Also suffers with hallucinations that he tries to ignore

Robbie the Zombie

-Sixth ego at the age of 36

-Birthday is August 15

-A calm somewhat lazy like ego but nobody minds

-Likes spending time alone or with Fawn

-Keeps headphones on him at all times

-Uses He/They/Zom pronouns

-Zoms Septiceye Sam is a purple-ish gray with black and white stripes on its tail

-Doesn’t have any allergies but does have sensitive skin

-Bigender Pan Acespike

-Enjoys chocolate milk and orange juice

-Doesn’t do much but spends a lot of time writing poems

-His favorite food is waffles with chocolate chips, whipped cream, and maple syrup

-Owns a lot of paper and pens for his poem writing and storytelling

-Their room is kinda mixed with Anti’s room with the emo like look with a coffin for a bed cause it looked nice and Shawn built it

-Keeps plushies to talk to cause it’s hard to talk to others

-Told zoms a sociopath

Shawn Flynn

-Seventh ego at the age of 36

-Birthday is September 28

-Another calm ego but is terrifying when pissed off

-Likes to sew

-Often has ink splatters on his cheeks

-Uses He/It pronouns

-Its septic sam is a black and white sam like Jamesons Sam

-Doesn’t have allergies

-AroAce

-Drinks his coffee the same way Anti does but does add creamer in it

-Spends his time sowing and working with mechanics

-Its favorite food is cheddar bacon burgers

-Owns stuffed animals, and gives them out to the other egos especially Chase, Fawn, Henrik, and Robbie

-His room is cartoonish, Bendy and the Ink Machine themed

-It has flashbacks and sleep paralysis, taking heavy homemade melatonin to help

Jameson Jackson

-Eighth ego at the age of 36

-Birthday is October 31

-The second youngest ego in the group and is most caring

-Often bakes and helps Henrik with cooking

-Always wears old fashioned clothing

-Uses They/Them pronouns

-Septiceye Sam is also an old fashioned san

-Allergic to dog fur

-Asexual, Demiromantic, Bisexual

-Hates the smell of coffee and focuses more on their favorite Earl Grey Tea

-Loves cartoons and old tv shows

-Their favorite food is Shepards Pie

-Enjoys gardening and often does it with Fawn

-Their room is decorated with things from 1950’s in which they also keep a pocket watch at all times

-Isn’t completely mute but prefers not to speak unless it is needed

-Suffers with sleep paralysis

Fawnsepticeye(ego made by me)

-Ninth ego at the age of 34

-Birthday is May 9

-The youngest ego in the group and is babied a lot

-Helps the egos around a lot with cleaning and cooking

-Is the baker of the bunch

-Uses They/Leaf/Sour pronouns

-Septic sam is red with white spots like a mushroom

-Not allergic to anything but cannot be around smoke

-They have vitiligo

-Leaf is very shy around new people and startles easily

-Has a flower clip in sours hair

-Pansexual and Demiromantic Agender

-Drinks hot chocolate most the time and water

-Loves to doodle and carves wood

-Their favorite food is homemade chocolate chip cookies

-Enjoys gardening with Jameson

-Leafs room is forest themed with a cot as a bed that’s heavily decorated with flowers and vines

-Keeps a bee plush with sourself at all times

-Has a hard time sleeping without a nightlight so keeps a few mushroom nightlights around their bed

#jacksepticeye #angus the survival hunter #jackieboyman #marvin the magnificent #dr henrik von schneeplestein #antisepticeye #chasebrody #robbie the zombie #shawn flynn #jameson jackson #fawnsepticeye #jseegos #jse au #jseheadcannons #newjseego #fan-madeego

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kneipho · 4 years

Video

youtube

@electricarmchair | Bad Habits | Original Song

(All art, lyrics, and music backing of ‘Bad Habits’ were created by Electricarmchair, the pseudonym of April Salisbury-White.)

YouTube Source Channel: Electricarmchair

Video Run-time: 4 min 53 sec

Bad Habits (lyrics):

I have a bad habit

Of finishing sentences

Minutes to hours

After they’ve passed

Days to weeks

Weeks to months

I’ll pick up the topic

Right from where I left off

Like we never stepped off

My mind tends to drift off

(Continued)

#electricarmchair #submission sunday #music #video #tumblrs on youtube #tumblrs on instagram #musicians on tumblr #bad habits

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96thdayofrage · 3 years

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When police vehicles pulled behind her, Bottom continued driving for another 10 miles, oblivious, she says, to the fact that they were trying to stop her for speeding. Bottom didn’t think she was speeding and claims she didn’t realize she was being pulled over.

Officers used stop sticks and pulled Bottom over at gunpoint. Then police yanked the 68-year-old Atlanta woman out of her driver’s seat by her hair, according to a federal lawsuit.

Bottom is suing the city of Salisbury, two of the city’s police officers and a Rowan County sheriff’s deputy who were involved in the May 30, 2019 incident. The federal complaint also names Rowan County Sheriff Kevin Auten as well as the Pennsylvania National Mutual, Casualty Insurance Company, the insurance company with which the Sheriff’s Office has a $2 million surety bond.

Bottom’s lawsuit was filed April 21 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. She alleges officers assaulted her and unlawfully searched her SUV during the chaotic ordeal. She’s asking for damages and an injunction against the policies and practices in which the officers engaged while taking her into custody.

Bottom is being represented by Scott Holmes, professor of the Civil Litigation Clinic, a program for third-year law-school students at the North Carolina Central University. The clinic has partnered with Emancipate North Carolina, a civil rights nonprofit based in Durham.

Ian Mance is the attorney handling the case for the public policy program, which is dedicated to criminal justice reform and eradicating structural racism. He said he was particularly struck by officers’ brutal treatment of an elderly woman who was unarmed and showed no signs of being violent.

“There was no indication that local law enforcement agencies we’re going to take any action against these officers,” Mance explained in an interview with Atlanta Black Star. “I think we all kind of saw this case the same way, which is this was an egregious example of excessive force. And the departments did not seem inclined to take action to hold these officers accountable. If they’re not going to hold these officers accountable in a situation like this, when will they hold officers accountable?”

The Bodycam

The incident began the evening of May 30, 2019 when a deputy allegedly spotted Bottom driving 80 mph on the interstate, which has a 70 mph speed limit. Bottom noticed the deputy’s blue lights but didn’t think she was speeding so she didn’t stop. She thought the police were attempting to stop another motorist on the interstate, and claims her music drowned out the sirens.

Pretty soon, four male officers were involved in the chase. Among them was Salisbury police officer Adam Bouk, Rowan County sheriff’s deputy Mark Benfield, a Highway Patrol trooper identified in the lawsuit only as Officer Smith and Devin Barkalow, a plainclothes Salisbury cop.

An officer pulled alongside Bottom’s SUV at one point during the chase and looked inside her vehicle. He identified her on the radio as “an older Black female.” A frustrated Barkalow called Bottom a “fucking retard” and a “douche bag” while chasing her in his squad car. Bodycam footage showed he also said it was an “exciting chase” and commented that he was “at the edge of his seat.”

Smith pulled ahead of Bottom at one point and laid down a spike strip to flatten her SUV’s tires. That’s when she pulled over to the highway’s median.

Bodycam footage showed Deputy Benfield hop out with his gun drawn as he and the other officers swarmed her car. Bottom’s lawsuit indicates Barkalow also aimed his weapon at her.

As Bottom was unbuckling her seatbelt, Barkalow rushed in from the passenger’s side of the SUV and snatched the elderly woman out of the driver’s seat by her hair, then slammed her to the pavement. The other officers swooped in and handcuffed Bottom, who yelled and writhed in pain as they yanked her arms her back to shackle her. Benfield, Bouk and Barkalow pinned her to the ground with their arms and knees on Bottom’s back, the lawsuit alleges.

Bottom appeared befuddled at the officers’ aggressive response. Bouk yelled that they’d been following her trying to get her to stop for over 10 miles.

“I was just driving,” Bottom said.

“You’re going to jail now,” the policeman responded.

“Why? What have I done wrong?” Bottom cried out, growing increasingly incredulous. “What have I done wrong? Please, why are you doing this to me?”

“It was a simple traffic stop, that’s all we had to do,” Benfield told her. “We’d write you a ticket. You turned it into this.”

Bottom sobbed as she sat on the ground at the side of the high gasping in pain. She told officers she had a torn ligament in her shoulder from a previous car accident and begged them to uncuff her arms from behind her back. Bouk refused, while the three other officers ignored her pleas.

She later asked to be taken to the hospital and told a ranking police captain who arrived on scene that officers had broken her arm.

Bouk and Benfield explained to Bottom that she refused to stop when they attempted to pull her over for speeding. Bottom claimed she was driving 70 mph or 75 mph with her music turned up so loudly that she couldn’t hear the sirens. She said she didn’t realize the contingent of officers were after her.

Authorities scoffed at her explanation, finding it hard to believe she didn’t notice them for 10 miles. Bouk told her a cruiser pulled right beside her vehicle at one point during the pursuit and said she endangered “a whole lot of people.” Authorities indicated they also had their lights and sirens flashing as well.

“Ma’am, there was about four police cars behind you at one point in time,” Benfield told Bottom as she claimed she didn’t realize the officers had been chasing her for miles. “I don’t understand how they do it in Georgia, but that’s not how it’s done here.”

According to a July 2020 report from the North Carolina Justice Analysis Review, Black motorists were stopped at a rate twice as high as white drivers in the Tar Heel State, and almost 1.5 times the rates of other races. A March report from the review panel, which is part of the Governor’s Crime Commission, showed that Black drivers are also searched nearly twice the rate as white and Hispanics in North Carolina, and more than three times the rate of other races.

Mance said that was one of the reasons Emancipate North Carolina opted to take on Bottom’s case.

“We know that North Carolina has really widespread and entrenched, pronounced racial disparities in terms of the way that black and white motorists are policed,” he said. “I think that one of the main reasons we decided to get involved and impact litigation around traffic stops is that here, traffic stops are the main way that people interact with the police. So they make up the majority of citizens police interactions in a given year.

“That’s not the case in a lot of states. But here, that is kind of the main way that people interact with police,” Mance added. “So when things go wrong with the police, that is very often in the context of traffic stops.”

The Lawsuit

Bottom’s lawsuit claims officers used excessive force when they approached her at gunpoint and when they dragged her out of her SUV. Her attorneys argue the officers didn’t give the elderly woman enough time to exit her vehicle and acted recklessly by forcibly removing her.

According to the complaint, Bottom was unarmed and posed no threat. She had her hands up and was attempting to exit the vehicle, but it was difficult to do so quickly because of her age and medical conditions.

Her lawyers claim the officers’ reckless actions aggravated an old injury and caused Bottom’s shoulder to “pop” as the officers handcuffed her. She had to be hospitalized and undergo surgery for a torn rotator cuff. Her shoulder has never fully healed and the incident left her with permanent damage.

Bottom’s attorneys also argue that officers were “deliberately indifferent” to the woman’s pain. They ignored her cries for medical attention and failed to render immediate treatment for her injuries.

Bouk told other officers “that’s good police work, baby” even as Bottom continued to complain about her shoulder. Some of the other officers congratulated each other for a job well done, the lawsuit alleges. Barkalow bragged about grabbing a “handful of dreads,” and said “at that point she earned it.”

Paramedics were eventually called to the scene. According to The Associated Press, it was about an hour before EMS arrived. They determined Bottom needed to be hospitalized. The officers then decided not to charge Bottom to avoid paying the cost of her hospital bills, her attorneys allege. Instead, the officers decided to issue a criminal summons for her to appear in court at a later date.

One of the police officers who no longer works for the Salisbury Police Department declined to comment when contacted by the Charlotte Observer. The other officers did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the city of Salisbury also declined to comment about the incident.

Bottom would later be charged with speeding, failure to heed to blue lights and resisting, delaying and obstructing an officer. She was accused of “refusing to get out of her vehicle and pulling away from the officer.” The lawsuit denied those allegations.

When Bottom appeared in court, she pleaded guilty to the failure to heed blue lights charge. The two other charges were dismissed.

The suit also maintains that officers had no probable cause and never asked for Bottom’s consent to search her SUV or her purse, which was in the vehicle.

Bottom was not driving recklessly, she didn’t lead officers on a high-speed chase, and she never intentionally tried to elude them, her attorneys contend. Despite that, authorities felt justified in threatening deadly force and physically assaulting the woman because she didn’t pull over in a timely manner.

Bottom was not available for comment this week. Her attorneys said she had to foot the bill for medical treatments, repairs to her SUV and was left to grapple with the emotional fallout of her encounter.

“This was this was a very traumatic thing for her to go through,” Mance said. “It was very frightening. It caused her a very significant injury that required surgery, that required her to spend time in the hospital. She had to miss a significant amount of work. So this was very disruptive to her life in many ways.”

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greatworldwar2 · 4 years

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• Rhodesian Air Training Group

Motto: Tica Simba Nezana- "Strength will come to us through our fledgelings."

The Rhodesian Air Training Group was a Royal Air Force (RAF) training unit and base for Allied and commonwealth pilots to train in africa in Rhodesia, (modern day Zimbabwe).

Before WWII even started the British Air Ministry had begun planning to set up air training centres outside Britain; away from where there was air activity over the country and where the weather could be relied upon to be consistently good. Canada was the first country to be first chosen, the scheme being called the Empire Air Training Scheme. Ultimately the countries involved in training aircrew comprising pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, air gunners, wireless operators and flight engineers included Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Southern Rhodesia and the United States. At the outbreak of war in September 1939, the facilities in Rhodesia for air training were too small to be of any assistance to the Royal Air Force (RAF) Major D. Cloete, M.C., A.F.C. had been charge of a small air training scheme from 1937 of two RAF Officers and twelve other ranks who were seconded to Rhodesia with four Audax and six Hart aircraft and based at Hillside (later renamed Cranborne) but they only trained local Rhodesian territorial forces and personnel from the Rhodesia Regiment. In 1938 the unit was separated from territorial force and on May 12th, 1938 the Governor, Sir Herbert Stanley, presented the first seven Rhodesian flying badges at a parade at Hillside. There was an agreement that, in the event of war, Rhodesia would send an air unit to Kenya for service with the RAF and accordingly three Audax and three Hart aircraft were despatched on August 28th, 1939, six days before the actual declaration of war.

Lieut.-Col. C.W. Meredith arrived in Rhodesia in June 1939 as Staff Officer Air Services and Director of Civil Aviation. The British Air Ministry were very interested in expanding the air training into a much larger program as they wanted most, if not all, air training out of England and to involve the training of other allied personnel as well as Rhodesians. It was decided to start off in Rhodesia with one initial training wing through which pupils would pass on to three Elementary Flying Training Schools (EFTS) and matching them, three Service Flying Training Schools (SFTS) The establishment of six new Air Stations required a considerable amount of building, all of which had to be done using local resources. In Salisbury (now Harare) the EFTS was at Belvedere, with the SFTS at Cranborne; the second pair of schools would be established at Bulawayo (Induna and Kumalo) with the third pair at Gwelo (Guinea Fowl and Thornhill). At this early stage in January 1940, Meredith’s staff consisted of two territorial officers who had joined at the outbreak of war for administrative duties, and a typist. Initially RATG headquarters were based in the Salisbury suburb of Belvedere and with a heavy building program ahead, the immediate need was for staff to cope with layouts, design and construction of airfields and hangers, supplies of building materials and finance and accounting. At Cranborne total strength of the air station was 137 officers and other ranks with 16 aircraft available for training. These comprised four serviceable Harts, one Audax waiting rebuilding, eight serviceable Tiger Moths and one being repaired, and two Hornet Moths.

Major C. W. Glass MC, an architect by profession, was released from his civilian employment with the Public Works Department and agreed to transfer with the rank of Squadron Leader, later Wing Commander, with the title of Director of Works and Buildings. His Section was wholly responsible for the layout of Air Stations and the design and construction of buildings for whatever purpose. Later after building had been completed additional sections were added included air staff, air training, signals, armament, administration, equipment, engineering, personnel, medical and legal. In April 1940 the Rhodesian Air Force Training Scheme and the Empire Air Force training Scheme really began; but was known locally as the Rhodesian Air Training Group. In the same month the first draft of pupil pilots arrived at Belvedere and the air station was declared officially opened by Air Chief Marshall Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, in the presence of the Prime Minister Godfrey Huggins, E.L. Guest and C.W. Meredith. The first group graduated from elementary air school in July and by November 2nd, 1940 the first pilots to be trained by the RATG passed out at Cranborne air station, five of whom were Rhodesians. When war broke out in 1939 the Air Ministry employed the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve (RAFVR) as the principal source of aircrew into the RAF and this continued into the 1950’s. In fact the programme was such a success that it soon was realised that the Rhodesian Air Training Group could become vital to the war effort for training aircraft personnel and although the bulk of the trainees were British, they also received Greeks, Yugoslavs, Australians and South Africans. Ezer Weisman, later to be President of Israel, trained as a pilot in Rhodesia. RAF training units would still be based in this country until a decade after WWII had finished.

The war time Elementary Flying training School (EFTS) gave a recruit 50 hours of basic aviation instruction on a simple trainer, such as the de Havilland Tiger Moth. Pilot cadets who showed promise went onto training at a Service Flying Training School (SFTS) where they were awarded their “wings.” The SFTS provided intermediate and advanced training for pilots, including fighter and twin-engined aircraft, on the North American Harvard and Airspeed Oxford aeroplanes. Other trainees went onto different specialities, such as wireless, navigation, or bombing and air gunnery. The next air station to come into operation was at Guinea Fowl, Gwelo (now Gweru) in twelve weeks from bare veld to the commencement of flying training. Its construction included provision of water supplies, water-borne sewerage and building a rail siding for the special trains bringing aircrew from Cape Town. To relieve congestion at the air stations, six relief landing grounds for landing and take-off instruction were established. Two aircraft and engine repair and overhaul depots were set up and a central maintenance unit to deal with bulk stores of aircraft. In late 1940 it was decided that Cranborne and Thornhill would be used to train single-engined pilots, or fighter-pilots, and Kumalo and Heany air stations would train twin-engined pilots.

At its peak there were about 12,000 adult male white personnel and about 5,000 adult male Africans employed. There were also about 200 white women in the Women's Auxiliary Air Service who were employed in post offices and on clerical duties at various stations. A Rhodesian Air Askari Corps was formed under Wing Commander T. E. Price to provide armed guards and non-armed labour. From the May 1940 until the March 1954 the Royal Air Force (RAF) had a presence in Rhodesia in the form of the RATG which trained aircrew for the RAF, from many different countries, including Great Britain but also from Australia, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, USA, Yugoslavia, Greece, France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, Fiji and Malta as part of the Empire Air Training Scheme. On November 27th, 1947 after the wat the Southern Rhodesian Air Force (SRAF) was re-established as a separate unit and from that date until RATG closed, both the RAF and the SRAF took to the skies above Rhodesia. The beginning of the Cold War brought a renewed need for aircrew training; the RAF re-vitalised the Rhodesian Air Training Group (in May 1948) which continued to grow with the Korean War, although nothing like its WWII level.

Today there are almost no memorials monuments and plaques within Zimbabwe to mark the great efforts and personal sacrifices that were made by African and European servicemen and women and civilians to the Allied cause during the World War. However the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) does an outstanding job in commemorating those who lost their lives for their country and are buried within Zimbabwe.

#second world war #world war 2 #ww2 #wwii #rhodesia #zimbabwe #aircraft #air force history #royal air force #african history #military history #aviation #British Commonwealth #allies

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mmilkplague · 4 years

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I saw @reefman-a post their stats for their Fallout characters, and now I wanna tag along because I’ve been kinda bored!

-----------------------------------------------------

Name - Constance Toothhaker

Face Claim -

Age - 24

Height - 5′9

Species - Human

Gender - Female

Birthday - April 13th

Residence - Red Rocket Truck Stop located on the outskirts of Sanctuary hills and Concord, (but owns residence in Nuka-World).

Martial Status -Isn’t technically married, but her and Nick Valentine have been partners for so many years that it feels like they are.

Alignment - Chaotic Neutral / Chaotic Evil

Drink - Any Nuka-Cola for DAYS, but Victory and Cherry are her favorite. She’s also impartial to loads of Vodka and Wine.

Food - She lives off of Fancy Lads and Salisbury Steak.

Day or night - Day most certainly

Snacks - Mentats and Dandy Boy Apples

Addictions - Constance is constantly getting addicted to Mentats and Alchohol, but she carries plenty of addictols on her all the time so she can cure herself and then get addicted all over again.

Pets - Just Dogmeat

Color - R E D and B L A C K

Flower - Hubflower

Weapon - Fat man and Les Fusil Terribles

Sexuality - Straight

Body Type - Thin but very muscular

Eye Color - Foggy/Murky Green

Hair Color - Jet Black but enjoys dying it all sorts of strange colors - Burgundy, Teal, Lavender, Ruby red, and green - but NEVER white.

Affiliation - Atom Cats (and the Minute Men)

Usual Demeanor - Sarcastic and Violent but Morally Good

Friends - John Hancock and Codsworth, (and also that broken N.I.R.A mascot bot because she seems cool).

Enemies - Literally everyone who works with and for Brother of Steel. Desdemona because she was being rude and snappy when they first met and Constance didn’t have to do sh*t for her. Super Mutants.

Favorite Clothes - Rose house dress, Pompadour Wig, Baseball uniform, Atom Cats Greaser jacket, Gunner Harness, Jangles Bandanna, Cappy Glasses, Sunglasses, Fashionable glasses, Courser Uniform, and red dress.

Favorite Armor - Heavy Metal and Medium Metal armor.

Favorite Power Armor - Atom Cats Power Armor

Favorite Radio Signal - Diamond City Radio

Favorite Song - It’s the End of the World by Skeeter Davis

Favorite Destination - Easily Nuka World

S - 2

P -1

E - 3

C - 3

I - 2

A - 2

L - 2

(( I might add to it later ))

#fallout 4 #fallout oc #fallout 4 oc #vault dweller #bethesda #fallout 4 game #fallout games #nick valentine #nick valentine romance #oc #video game oc #video game #video games #commonwealth #nuka world #nuka cola #diamond city #atom cats

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creepingsharia · 5 years

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A Month of Islam in America: June 2019

Another month, and another step forward for sharia in America as more censorship was exposed. A whistleblower leak confirmed that @Pinterest protects Muslims and censors any reference to “creeping sharia,” and many other non-liberal topics.

Click any link below for more details and link to original source.

Jihad in America in June

Brooklyn: Muslim Immigrant Sentenced to 20 Years for Attempting to Join Islamic State (ISIS) Mohamed Rafik Naji was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment by United States District Judge Frederic Block for attempting to provide material support or resources to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a foreign terrorist organization. Naji pleaded guilty to the charge in February 2018.

Brooklyn: Muslim Woman Who Helped ISIS Gets 4 Years, But Will Be Out in 18 Months

With credit for time served, Sinmyah Amera Caesar will end up only serving about 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to charges accusing her of using social media to help recruit IS fighters under the nom de guerre “Umm Nutella.” She had also admitted violating a cooperation agreement with the government a — betrayal that infuriated prosecutors.

Illinois: Bosnian Muslim refugee and mother of 4 jailed for sending money, supplies to ISIS

Mediha Medy Salkicevic, a/k/a Medy Ummuluna, a/k/a Bosna Mexico, 39, was sentenced to 78 months in prison for conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.

Salkicevic, aka Medy Ummuluna and Bosna Mexico, espoused the ISIS philosophy that infidels should be killed and once said that unbelievers should be buried alive.

At the time of her arrest, she was working for an air cargo company at Chicago O'Hare Airport...

Illinois: Two Muslim converts convicted of aiding Islamic State (ISIS)

Joseph D. Jones and Edward Schimenti proudly waved a terrorist flag during a photo at a Lake Michigan park in Zion, had plotted to attack the Navy’s main U.S. training center near North Chicago and once had their eyes on planting an ISIS flag atop the White House.

Now Jones and Schimenti, both 37, have been found guilty of providing material support to ISIS.

Indiana: Yemeni Muslim who tried to join Islamic State terrorists gets 8 years in prison

U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Evans Barker handed down the 100-month sentence Friday afternoon in the case against 21-year-old Akram Musleh, U.S. Attorney Josh Minkler announced.

He admitted in the plea agreement that from about April 2016 through June 21, 2016, he offered himself to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, also known as IS, knowing it was a “designated foreign terrorist organization.”

Pittsburgh: Syrian Muslim Refugee Arrested for Planning Jihad Attack on Christian Church

Mustafa Mousab Alowemer, 21, a resident of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was arrested today based on a federal complaint charging him with one count of attempting to provide material support and resources to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization, and two counts of distributing information relating to an explosive, destructive device, or weapon of mass destruction in relation to his plan to attack a church in Pittsburgh.

“Court documents show Mustafa Alowemer planned to attack a church in the name of ISIS, which could have killed or injured many people...”

Ohio: Jordanian Muslim Immigrant Sentenced to 15 Years for Trying to Join Islamic State (ISIS)

A Dayton, Ohio man was sentenced today in U.S. District Court to 180 months in prison and 25 years of supervised release for attempting, and conspiring, to join the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

Laith Waleed Alebbini, 28, was convicted following a bench trial in November and December 2018 before U.S. District Judge Walter H. Rice.

Alebbini attempted, and conspired, to provide material support and resources to ISIS in the form of personnel, namely himself.

Alebbini, a citizen of Jordan and a U.S. legal permanent resident, was arrested by the FBI on April 26, 2017, at the Cincinnati/Kentucky International Airport, as he approached the TSA security checkpoint.

South Carolina: Muslim - twice convicted for attempts to join ISIS and kill Americans - gets 20-year prison sentence

A federal judge has sentenced a South Carolina man who tried to join ISIS to 20 years in prison.

Zakaryia Abdin, 20, pleaded guilty in September 2018. The Ladson man was arrested in March 2017.

New York: Bangladeshi Muslim immigrant arrested in Times Square terror plot

Ashiqul Alam was arrested Thursday after arranging through an undercover agent to buy a pair of semiautomatic pistols with obliterated serial numbers, prosecutors said. Police Commissioner James O’Neill said that development was “a clear indicator of (Alam’s) intent to move his plot forward.”

The defendant, a legal resident born in Bangladesh, moved to the U.S. as a child about 12 years ago...

He talked about wanting to “shoot down” gays, referring to them with a slur; using a “rocket launcher, like a huge one,” to cause havoc at the World Trade Center; and obtaining an enhanced driver’s license so he could walk onto a military base and “blow it up,” the documents said.

Illinois: Muslim Arrested for Threatening to Bomb Aurora Casino for Allah

A recently released affidavit and search warrant claimed that 30-year-old Musatdin M. Muadinov, while detained by police on Feb. 12, vowed to “pray to Allah” to “destroy the casino.” He further demanded to meet with President Donald Trump, saying that if his demands were not met, “we would all meet Allah,” according to the affidavit obtained by the Daily Herald.

Muadinov — who was dressed in what police described as “Muslim attire” when arrested — waived his right to remain silent.

More Jihad in America in June

Florida: Suspect sent bomb threats to judges ‘for cause of Islamic State’

Nebraska: Heavily armed Marine arrested trying to enter Air Force Base

Arizona: Muslim shared terror propaganda before attacking police officer

Brooklyn: Muslim in Jail for ISIS Support Pleads Guilty to Slashing Correctional Officer

South Carolina: Man who pledged allegiance to ISIS hid explosive device in teddy bear

Arizona: Witness in probe of 2015 Islamic jihad attack on free speech event convicted of lying to FBI

Libyan National Found Guilty of Terrorism Charges in 2012 Attack on U.S. Facilities in Benghazi

Iraqi Muslim who orchestrated jihad attack that killed 5 U.S. troops gets 26 years prison, then release to Canada

Immigration Jihad in America

Minnesota’s first Somali Muslim cop gets 12 years for murdering Australian woman

Minnesota: St. Paul’s first Somali Muslim city council member says criticizing his homophobic comments is… Islamophobic

New York: Brooklyn Mosque Blasts Islamic Call to Prayer to 20 Block Radius (VIDEO)

Somalis have Changed Minneapolis

New York: Thousands of Muslims take over two city blocks in Brooklyn to pray in the streets

Four Muslim ISIS suspects arrested in Nicaragua, likely headed for US

Islamization of America

Pennsylvania: 167-year-old Catasauqua church will become Islamic mosque

Pennsylvania: Former Easton church is now a Sunni mosque

Pennsylvania: Former daycare in residential Salisbury to become Muslim “community center”

Virginia: Residential home in Annandale to become a Muslim funeral home

Education Jihad in America

New Jersey Public School District to Students: “May Allah Continue to Shower You Love and Wisdom”

Maryland school fails Christian student for refusing Islamic prayer

New York: Cornell Univ. Muslim Students Demand More “Prayer Rooms”

Stanford administrators say advertising for conservative event threatens Muslim students

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Muslim Students Association: What Americans Need to Know

DOE Investigating Elite Colleges For Hiding Saudi, Qatari Cash from Regulators

Islamic Slavery & Sexual Jihad in America

Virginia: Three Muslim family members arrested for conspiracy, forced labor, and document servitude

Detroit Imam: Wife-Beating Serves to Remind Her That She Misbehaved (VIDEO)

Dhimmitude in Elected Office

Trump Admin Sues Greyhound for Banning Muslim Driver from Wearing Full Length Islamic Robe

Democrat majority passes defense authorization bill that funds transfer of remaining Gitmo jihadis to U.S.

Minnesota: City of Bloomington allows terror mosque to flout local laws (VIDEO)

Minnesota city council votes 5-0 to ditch Pledge of Allegiance (to avoid offending Muslims)

Diversity is our Strength Alert

Minnesota’s first Somali Muslim cop gets 12 years for murdering Australian woman

Minnesota: St. Paul’s first Somali Muslim city council member says criticizing his homophobic comments is… Islamophobic

Boston Police Dept’s First Muslim Captain Put On Administrative Leave Amid ‘Anti-Corruption’ Investigation

Minnesota: First Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar fined by state for unlawful use of campaign funds

Minnesota Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar filed joint tax returns before she married husband

Fraud for Jihad

Connecticut: Muslim Grocery Store Worker Pleads Guilty in $3.2M Federal Food Stamp Fraud

Massachusetts: Muslim Restaurant Owner Pleads Guilty to Tax Fraud Conspiracy

That’s just what we had time to compile for just the month of June.

Far too many steps forward for the sharia, and only a few pushbacks, but worth noting:

New Jersey: School District Scraps Posters Calling upon “Allah” to “Shower” Students with Blessings After Threat of Lawsuit

Rather Than Go to Trial, Terror-linked CAIR Settles with the Victims They Defrauded

Tunisian Muslim who swore allegiance to ISIS removed from U.S.

New York: Albany mosque imam convicted of terrorism is deported back to Iraq It’s almost midnight and Americans are losing their first amendment rights to sharia supremacists and the big technology, media and politicians who support them.

Please share this report before it’s too late.

#Legal #Jihad #Sharia #News #Politics #Immigration #monthly

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rottenstarlet · 4 years

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Eileen McNamee was born as Eileen O'Leary in Plymouth, Devon, England on December 16, 1892.

She was the eldest child of Richard O'Leary (b. 1866), a Royal Engineer, and Minnie Petheram (b. 1864), natives of London and Gloucestershire, respectively, who had married in Swansea in 1891 before going on to have three children, losing one in infancy.

Eileen's only surviving sibling was her younger brother Galbraith (b. January 28, 1899) who was born in Chelsea.

By 1901, Eileen and her family were living in Gillingham, Kent. Her parents are recorded on the census residing at 7 Middle Street whilst Eileen is recoded elsewhere as a patient at the Canterbury Road Infections Hospital; the nature of her illness is not stated.

At the time of the 1911 census Eileen and her family were living at 8 Wilton Road, Salisbury, Wiltshire; she was described as an unmarried bookkeeper cashier for Lipton's whilst her father was a clerk in the War Office.

Eileen was married in Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church in Pokesdown, Bournemouth on January 12, 1912 to Neal McNamee (b. 1884), a provisions dealer for Liptons and a native of Co Donegal, Ireland. The two had met whilst he was working in Salisbury.

Her new husband was offered a position at Lipton Ltd. in America and Sir Thomas Lipton himself wrote a letter of introduction to his General Manager in New York. Upon hearing that Eileen was leaving for New York, the Superintendent of Salisbury Baptist Church who was also Mayor of Salisbury at the time, Mr W. Pritchard, gave Eileen a letter of kind appreciation and a gift of a testament. This gift was the last item that Eileen's mother saw her pack into her trunk.

The newlyweds boarded the Titanic at Southampton as third class passengers (ticket number 376566, which cost £16, 2s).

It is believed that Lightoller was referring to the McNamees when he recalled events of the evacuation:

“One young couple walked steadily up and down the boat deck throughout pretty well the whole of the proceedings. Once or twice the young chap asked if he could help. He was a tall, clean-bed Britisher, on his honeymoon I should say. The girl--she was little more--never made the slightest attempt to come towards the boats, much less be taken on board, although I looked towards her several times with a look of silent invitation, but no, she was not going to be parted from her man...”

Eileen and her husband died in the sinking; her body was recovered by the MacKay Bennett (#53) and buried at sea on April 22:

NO. 53. - FEMALE. - ESTIMATED AGE, 23. - HAIR, BROWN.

CLOTHING - Brown velvet coat; sailor blouse; white, with blue anchor on front; blue flannel petticoat with "E. M. C."; blue corsets; blue skirt with black braid; black stockings and shoes.

EFFECTS - Wedding ring and keeper (turquois and diamond) gold; bracelet on right wrist; two third class tickets; one purse with 1s. 11d.; fountain pen; keys; cosmetic, & etc.; and cards as below.

THIRD CLASS.

NAME - Mrs N. McNAMEE.

Kingston House, Wilton Rd., Salisbury.

A bench with a plaque and a tree were placed in their memory in Winston Churchill Gardens, Salisbury. The original bench is still there but missing the original plaque; the original tree was destroyed by vandals. On 28 July 1999 a new tree was planted and a new bench and plaque unveiled.

What became of her parents in later years is not clear; there is some suggestion that they settled in Canada but there is also a possibility that they spent their final days living in Sidcup, Kent. Her brother Galbraith died in London on August 9, 1979. (x)

#titanic #1912

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electricarmchair · 2 years

Video

youtube

Electric Armchair - The Mind's Eye (Official Music Video) (With Lyrics)

New music video for a song inspired by a 9 hour hike at High Park in Toronto and the allergies I faced. Song is available on all streaming platforms. Written, recorded, mixed, mastered, illustrated, and animated in my home recording studio with layers of my vocals, synthesizers and drums.

#the minds eye #youtube #music #music video #Electric Armchair #April Salisbury-White

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tessa-quayle · 5 years

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full text: 2019 Telegraph piece

check out the pictures here from @ralph-n-fiennes

the article by Hermione Eyre (official link - registration required for a free trial)

Ralph Fiennes does Ralph Fiennes so well. During our interview he delivers everything one might hope for: sensitive introspection, charm, pathos, a touch of mystery and even a (partial) defence of late Soviet Russia. ‘A lot of people didn’t experience it as repressive…’

This in the context of the stunning new film he has directed, called The White Crow, about the defection of Rudolf Nureyev from the Soviet Union in 1961. Oh, and he also impersonates a horse for me. Beautiful whinny. Sensitive nostrils.

‘It’s how I feel as the house lights go down and I can feel the expectation from the audience. You can see it in horses before a race.’

As we begin, in a Shoreditch loft studio not far from his home, he seems professorial, in a woolly cardigan, neatly arranging his spectacles, notebook and copy of the latest London Review of Books. When he is ready he gives me that trademark encouraging smile – half little boy, half crocodile.

Career-wise, he has it all. Family life, not so much. His greatest luxury? ‘My independence. I lead quite a solitary life.’ When I ask him if he’s a good uncle to his siblings’ progeny – Mercy, Titan and Hero, to name a few – he says flatly, ‘I could be better.’

His sister, the film-maker Sophie Fiennes, says her son Horace, now eight, really enjoyed the sword fighting in his Richard III, which is, if you think about it, a good outcome for a small boy going to see his uncle play Richard III.

His presence is a mark of quality in a film. Both the Bond and Harry Potter franchises, where he plays M and Voldemort respectively, brought him in for gravitas. Since Rada, he has run the gamut of Shakespeare, from Romeo in 1986 to his award-winning Antony & Cleopatra last year at the National, opposite Sophie Okonedo.

‘She was spectacular. I miss Antony. I found him very moving in his brokenness; his masculinity falling away and him trying to cling on to it. He’s male and middle-aged, and he keeps saying, “I’ve still got it, haven’t I? Haven’t I?”’

Does he recognise that? ‘I am 56 and I try to stay fitter’ – he does cardio and morning yoga – ‘but I can feel myself getting… old. Little shifts of energy and ambition, little impulses. You get tired more, you want to take it easy more.’ Then summoning mercurial energy in that actorly way, he explodes, ‘But I can feel myself fighting that, like, “I’m not gonna let go! Come on, come on. Yeah!” There are plenty of virile 56-year-old men.’

When I ask if he’s got a motorbike yet, like Ralph Richardson, he isn’t impressed. ‘No, my brother Joseph rides a motorbike. He can do fast cars and handle boats.’ Joseph, now 48, will for ever be the young Bard wooing Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love, just as Ralph single-handedly made Herodotus hot, that spring of 1997 when we all went to see The English Patient and wept.

Antony gives everything up for sex. ‘Yes, he does, that’s a very real erotic connection, and it’s very emasculating for him.’ Does sex make the world go round? ‘Erm, sex produces more human beings, mostly.’ Nice deflection.

Fiennes married Alex Kingston, his great love from Rada, in 1993. Their marriage ended when he left her in 1995 for the actor who was playing Gertrude to his Hamlet, Francesca Annis, 17 years older than him. Although the relationship broke down in early 2006 amid reports of his alleged infidelity, they still talk, have a deep, mutual professional respect and go to each other’s first nights.

Kingston has since gone on to have a daughter, Salome, with her second husband and Annis already had three children; Fiennes has never wanted his own family. ‘Never say never,’ he demurs. ‘But I don’t feel that’s imminent at all. I love the family and community of plays or the cast and crew of a film.’

He recollects his lines from Man and Superman, the Bernard Shaw play, ‘where Jack Tanner [whom he played] rather brilliantly pours scorn on the idea of happiness: “No family, no marriage, spread your seed, but no marriage!” I love the mischief in that.’

He says, ‘I am the eldest of six,’ as if it explains everything. The Fiennes children were born within seven years. Martha and Sophie make films; Magnus is a composer; Joseph is an actor and his twin Jacob is a gamekeeper in Norfolk. Their foster brother, Michael, now an archaeologist, came to live with them when he was 11, Ralph was two and their mother Jini was only 24.

‘My wonderful parents [Mark Fiennes, a farmer, and Jini Lash, a writer] were pressured by tough financial situations and a very erratic income,’ says Fiennes quietly. ‘They were extraordinarily courageous in giving us love and a sense of home, but also a feeling, early on, of what it is to be a burden on your parents – somewhere I think that’s affected my choices.’

‘We experienced family life with bells on,’ says sister Sophie, who’s currently working on a new series of the brilliant Pervert’s Guide to… documentaries with philosopher Slavoj Zižek. ‘You have lived that and you don’t need to replicate it.’ She remembers that as a child Ralph ‘really liked getting away from us all and being alone’.

He adored his Pollock’s toy theatre and insisted his siblings formed an audience, ‘furious’ if they didn’t comply. He set up footlights in matchboxes. ‘It was magical, very Fanny and Alexander,’ says Sophie, referencing the Bergman paean to childhood.

Ralph always had ‘a love of practical jokes’, she remembers. When they lived by the sea, on the Sheep’s Head peninsula in Ireland, he stood on a rock at high tide and pretended to be drowning.

‘Gave our mother a fit.’ He also called their neighbour to say his wife had been changing a light bulb and was now hanging from the ceiling, twitching. ‘It was April Fool’s. Our neighbour was furious.’

As a young man Fiennes became, after Schindler’s List, the intellectual’s pin-up. Is ageing harder when you’ve been a heart-throb? ‘Look, there’s lots of heart-throbs out there. You see it in younger actors who are having their moment, there’s a new one and they’re written up, how beautiful they are… You see the waves and the breaks, that person had that moment, or that opportunity. There are a handful of actors and directors who stay [the course], but mostly it’s ups and downs.’ In other words, the challenge is to convert being a heart-throb into something more meaningful and lasting.

Such as directing. He directed himself in 2011’s Bafta-nominated Coriolanus with Vanessa Redgrave as his mother Volumnia; in 2013 he directed and appeared as a passion-struck Dickens opposite Felicity Jones in The Invisible Woman.

His latest is The White Crow, based on Julie Kavanagh’s biography of Nureyev. He spent months touring Russian ballet schools before finding Oleg Ivenko, a young unknown from the Tatar State Ballet company, who is devastatingly good as the dancer. Fiennes plays his mentor Pushkin.

I didn’t really want to be in it,’ he says. ‘But I felt this creeping pressure and although I had a cast of wonderful Russian actors and dancers, the Russian producer said to me, “If you want Russian investment then we need Western names, why aren’t you in it?”’

He will dig deep to make the films he wants to make: has he put his own money in? ‘I have done, yes.’ Would you again? ‘No! I’ve had to put money into all the films I’ve made. They don’t sparkle with commercial appeal.’ Did the money come back? ‘No.’ Harry Potter helps? ‘Definitely. I don’t regret doing it. I have the resources and I believe in the project. You get one life, so f— it.’

The script of The White Crow is by David Hare, who questions the view of Nureyev’s defection as a ‘leap to freedom’, showing instead a certain nostalgia for the Nikita Khrushchev era.

Hare and Fiennes spoke to friends of Nureyev from 1950s Leningrad, twin dancers Leonid and Liuba Romankov, now in their 80s, who appear in a lunch party scene alongside actors playing their younger selves. ‘Liuba said, “I felt free, I felt happy inside myself at that time.” Nureyev was so nurtured and nourished by the dance school.’

The film doesn’t have anything to say about the propaganda and food shortages. ‘If you say I should have laid out a history lesson of the regime, I say no, I think that would have been heavy-handed. I think an audience is smart. You see the ideological pressure of the regime and the constant surveillance Nureyev was under.’

Do you feel the Soviet approach to the arts got something right? ‘I do, because that was, as I understand it, the philosophy of “we’re all a group”, though of course the individual is stifled. I’ve always been moved by what I feel to be the dedication of the Russian arts ethos, the discipline, the intense seriousness with which people take it.’

His love of Russia began in his early 20s, with him performing Chekhov and reading Dostoyevsky; he is now fluent in Russian, has ‘a lingering fantasy of buying a flat in St Petersburg’ and has been presented to Putin. ‘At the St Petersburg International Cultural Forum, which they hold every year. He was very quiet and listening.’

This was before the Salisbury poisoning. Does Fiennes believe Russia was responsible? Briskly, ‘Yes, yes. It seems to me like it was. Clearly there are problematic things with the current regime to our eyes and I do feel it’s been a tricky time since Salisbury, and that’s a shame and sad.’ Oddly enough he knows the town well, having been to Bishop Wordsworth’s grammar school.

‘I had a mostly happy time there. It was an extraordinarily shocking, cack-handed event, unacceptable and wrong in every way. And in reaction the Brits have made things harder with visas and it becomes tit for tat, and the Russians have closed down the British Council, which was a wonderful enabler of cultural interaction. I don’t know if the British Council is a cover for espionage, maybe it is…’ Bond bells are ringing. But you’re M, you must know! He replies, curtly, ‘But I’m not M, am I?’

We return to the topic of growing older. ‘There are pluses to ageing, you know? You can let go of some shit. The competition falls away. You can see the cycles of your own mistakes, hopefully you’re learning… All the things that have caused you upset: I hurt that person, I got a bad review. You start to feel: did that really matter? The things you were so concerned about just drift away on the current of life. And your idealism is tempered and your vanity gets knocked…’

He brings up, as an example, the 2002 film he made with Jennifer Lopez called Maid in Manhattan, a comedy fairy tale in which he plays a US senatorial candidate who falls for his chambermaid. ‘I saw in the newspaper they had J Lo’s most successful films and’ – big smile – ‘Maid in Manhattan was there, and it came quite near the top’ – bigger smile – ‘and then I read: “Let down by the fact that Ralph Fiennes seems like a serial killer.” Ha ha ha! I had to laugh.

’Cos my vanity scrolled it and then… bam!’ He gives a proper belly laugh. Didn’t he get together with J Lo while they were filming? ‘No. No. I was set up by her manager and the producer. So a picture was taken of us saying goodnight after dinner and sold to the New York Post. It was a decoy, to take the focus away from the fact that she was going out with Ben Affleck.’ You didn’t mind? ‘I did, actually. I thought it was really crap.’ He shrugs, smiles. The things fame brings.

‘I give my agent all these neurotic phone calls, asking about reviews, who said this, who said that, but then, glass of wine, laugh it off.’

I feel I’ve had a flash of the blazing, naughty, fun side of Fiennes; we have known it’s there ever since we saw his suavely clownish Gustave in The Grand Budapest Hotel, and his irrepressible Harry in A Bigger Splash (complete with gyrating dance routine). There is a fun side to him, then? He smiles enigmatically as we say goodbye. ‘You won’t ever see that in an interview situation.’

#ralph fiennes #mixed feelings #appreciate his insight and humility #still feel like he struggles with interviews sometimes #or depending on the writer he's shown in an odd light #the 2016 gentleman journal's interview is probably still my favorite #the telegraph #fulltext

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haikuprajna · 1 year

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Hello readers, the eBook for BATTLE Colosseum Part II: Unified Field Theory is now available!

Download or save it to be read later through the below links:

Amazon [Read with Kindle Unlimited] [ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C3XL99YV/ ]

Goodreads [ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/144500319-battle-colosseum-part-ii ]

Trailer [Featuring the poem from Pt. I] [ https://youtu.be/9HRbKedbM9E ]

youtube

Part I : Hiding One's Tracks [ https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/2023/03/20230328-hiding-ones-tracks-batt-le.html ]

...

Fearless, but alone // lost in darkness, yet doubtless // following the path.

#HAIKUPRAJNA - Unified Field Theory [BATTLE Colosseum Part II]

Read online [ https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/2023/04/20230429-unified-field-theory-battle.html ]

...

Thank you for reading,

Until next time!

Allen W. McLean

...

PS. April 23rd is the fourth annual HaikuPrajna Day, celebrating my haiku journey; submit to the #HaikuPrajnaChallenge to participate in the occasion! [ https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/2023/04/20230423-haikuprajna-challenge-001.html ]

For the rest of the month, rolling $0.99 sales on the Amazon US and UK stores! Check out my Author Profile on Amazon here [ https://www.amazon.com/Allen-W-McLean/e/B0867C5D24 ] and remember to come back every Monday and Friday to download a free Kindle ebook. I will be sharing links to the books on socials throughout the rest of the month of April.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Allen W. McLean (@haikuprajna)

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#Youtube #Instagram

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antoine-roquentin · 5 years

Link

It was a warm evening this past July when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shared a drink with the world’s most powerful intelligence network.

Spy chiefs from the Five Eyes nations had come to a secure resort in coastal Nova Scotia for an informal evening after intense talks in nearby Ottawa.

Trudeau, who’d spent part of the day pledging to fix a “death trap” highway in the Atlantic province, dropped in on the gathering to share some thoughts about geopolitical threats.

When he left, as the lobster dinner was being served, the conversation returned to a debate that began well before this annual meeting and would run long after it: should the agencies go public with their concerns about China?

In the months that followed that July 17 dinner, an unprecedented campaign has been waged by those present – Australia, the US, Canada, New Zealand and the UK – to block Chinese tech giant Huawei from supplying equipment for their next-generation wireless networks.

This increasingly muscular posture towards Beijing culminated in last week’s arrest of Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, in Vancouver, over alleged breaches of US sanctions with Iran. Meng, the daughter of the Huawei’s founder Ren Zhengfei, was granted bail on Wednesday ahead of efforts to extradite her to the US.

As the spy bosses sat down to savour Nova Scotia’s famous lobster that evening with a glass of local wine, their recent clash with Russia was seen as a template for the power of working collectively. The British delegation led by MI6 boss Alex Younger – a man who signs official documents in green ink with a single letter “C” – had detailed evidence of the brazen attacks in Salisbury, where Moscow had used a military-grade chemical weapon on UK soil.

In the aftermath the British went public and the Five Eyes coordinated the largest ever expulsion of Russian intelligence officers from NATO and partner states. All agreed this would significantly degrade Russia’s intelligence capability.

That episode reminded everyone that espionage and foreign interference continues to be a pervasive threat. Some believed since 9/11 that mission had been obscured by the fight against terrorism and so at their own pace each had concluded the greatest emerging threat was China’s Communist Party.

They also knew that to contend with this challenge there was no other group of nations that enjoyed such shared knowledge, cultural affinity and technical expertise.

Not all agreed to speak publicly about China when they returned home, but all were determined to act. And the Five Eyes network would include allies like Japan and Germany in the conversation.

This coming in from the cold was viewed as a countermeasure to China and its many proxies, who have long argued fears over its rising power and influence were a fiction, or worse still, signs of xenophobia.

Since that July meeting there has been a series of rare public speeches by intelligence chiefs and a coordinated effort on banning Huawei from 5G networks. It began with one of Malcolm Turnbull’s last acts as Prime Minister.

The Sunday before he was deposed Turnbull rang the US President Donald Trump to tell him of Australia’s decision to exclude Huawei and China’s second largest telecommunications equipment maker ZTE from the 5G rollout.

Australia’s statement on the rules it would apply to building next-generation wireless networks was released on August 23 and largely lost in the leadership maelstrom.

Huawei was not named but it ruled out equipment being supplied by “vendors who are likely to be subject to extrajudicial directions from a foreign government”.

Mike Burgess put Huawei back on the national agenda when on October 29 he became the first Director-General of the Australian Signals Directorate to make a public speech in the organisation’s 70 year history.

Listening attentively from the head table that night was the Director-General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Duncan Lewis and his counterpart at the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, Paul Symon.

All three men were at the meetings in Canada. Again, Burgess never named Huawei or ZTE but said the stakes with 5G “could not be higher” as it “will underpin the communications that Australians rely on every day.”

The man who runs an agency that unlocks electronic secrets had a poacher’s view of the threat: “Offence informs defence and defence informs offence. Or to put it another way, to catch a thief, you will need to think like one (or perhaps, be one).”

Since then he has given a TV interview and opened a Twitter account with a lively first post; “Hi internet, ASD here. Long time listener, first time caller.”

Burgess has even dabbled in some light trolling of Huawei. On November 21 when a Huawei executive boasted of successfully separating the core and access parts of a 5G network in New Zealand he tagged the ASD boss on his post.

To the surprise of most Burgess replied; “Thanks for sharing. In my business I’ve never seen anything “fully isolated...”.

Seven days later New Zealand banned Huawei from supplying 5G equipment to mobile phone company Spark.

Then on December 6, the head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, David Vigneault, who had hosted the annual Five Eyes gathering, used his first ever public speech to warn of an emerging threat.

“CSIS has seen a trend of state-sponsored espionage in fields that are crucial to Canada’s ability to build and sustain a prosperous, knowledge-based economy,” he said.

“I’m talking about areas such as AI [artificial intelligence], quantum technology, 5G, biopharma and clean tech. In other words, the foundation of Canada’s future growth.”

No one was in any doubt he was talking about China. A formal ban on Huawei and ZTE from Ottawa is expected within weeks.

A day after the Canadian spy boss spoke, the head of MI6 was on his feet at his old Scottish university, St Andrews.

In a speech described as “rare” he warned that “much of the evolving state threat is about our opponents’ increasingly innovative exploitation of modern technology”.

The United Kingdom posed a particular problem for the Five Eyes as, 15 years earlier, British Telecom had struck a partnership with Huawei and that example was routinely used to counter arguments it posed a threat.

In answer to a question Younger took direct aim at Britain’s Huawei problem.

“We need to decide the extent to which we are going to be comfortable with Chinese ownership of these technologies and these platforms in an environment where some of our allies have taken a very definite position,” he said.

On the same day the BT Group announced it was stripping Huawei's equipment out of the core of its existing 3G and 4G mobile operations and would not use its technology in the 5G network.

But no country has been more aggressive than the United States, represented at the Canadian meetings by Gina Haspel.

The newly appointed director of the Central Intelligence Agency was battle hardened by a life spent in the shadows. She shed some light on that in a bruising Senate confirmation hearing in May saying she had “excelled in finding and acquiring secret information that I obtained in brush passes, dead drops, or in meetings in dusty alleys of third world capitals.”

Well before her arrival at the helm of the CIA, the US has been focused on Beijing and the proceedings against Huawei’s Meng are just one front in its efforts to bring China to heel.

Washington’s sharp focus on Beijing plays into Trump’s obsession with trade wars but it would be wrong to think it’s solely driven by the President. Over the past two years Republicans and Democrats in Congress and the Departments of Defence, State and the security agencies have come to the conclusion China is a strategic threat.

US prosecutors have filed charges against Chinese hackers and, in an audacious sting in April, American agents lured Chinese Ministry of State Security deputy director Yanjun Xu to Belgium, where he was arrested for orchestrating the theft of military secrets.

There is also speculation further indictments are imminent over a concerted Chinese hacking campaign known as “Operation Cloud Hopper”, which is believed to have penetrated networks across the globe, including Australia.

In addition the White House used its bi-annual report on China, last month to say Beijing had "fundamentally" failed to change its behaviour around cyber espionage giving it unfair access to intellectual property, trade secrets, negotiating positions and the internal communications of business.

The report added weight to revelations in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald the same week that China had diverted internet traffic heading to Sydney and its peak security agency had overseen a surge in attacks on Australian companies.

This industrial scale cyber theft is just part of a form guide which convinced the Five Eyes intelligence chiefs that Beijing would not hesitate to recruit Huawei to its cause and the company would have no choice but to comply.

All the evidence before the spy bosses at the dinner in Canada pointed to a rising superpower mounting the most comprehensive campaign of espionage and foreign interference that any had witnessed.

The Party was aggressively exporting a worldview that was hostile to democracy and actively sought to undermine it.

A new Great Game was afoot and the West had been slow to act. But it is acting now.

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opedguy · 2 years

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London Reports Putin Purges FSB

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), April 12, 2022.--Reports from London about Russian President Vladimir Putin purging the Fifth Service of the FSB [formerly KGB] for feeding Ukraine, possibly the CIA, intel about the Ukraine War, landed 68-year-old FSB Firth Service chief Sergey Beseda in Lefortovo prison, notoriously used by Stalin to torture dissidents and spies. Whether Putin sees a wide betrayal by his FSB agents working on Ukraine is anyone’s guess. Officials in London think Putin’s lashing out because he’s not happy with progress in the Ukraine War, now dismantling the Fifth Service for his long history of involvement with Ukraine. Beseda was apparently accused by Putin of feeding the Kremlin false information about the Ukraine war, failing to mention serious setbacks in terms of casualties and lost military hardware. Beseda was fired for “reporting false information to the Kremlin about the real situation in Ukraine before the invasion.” Russia analyst Alexi Muraviev said that Putin faces a “potential coup” from within the military intelligence service,” speculating, without real knowledge of what’s going on in Putin’s FSB and military. No one likes to stir the pot more than British tabloids like the Sun, where un-sourced or anonymously sourced stories flow like the Thames River. “I think that there have been tensions between Russia and the intelligence community and Russia’s president Vladimir Putin,” Muraview told the Sky News. Whatever happened with Beseda, there’s probably little link to the FSB’s Fifth Service, regarding supplying factual information to Putin. British and U.S. tabloids have repeated that Putin’s “big blunder” starting the Feb. 24 Ukraine War, expecting a 48-hour victory. Nothing sounds more preposterous than the U.S. and British officials saying Putin’s invasion failed because it didn’t topple Kiev. British and U.S. officials are on the same page when it comes to disinformation about the war. Talking about Putin’s failures are supposed demoralize the Russian military, bringing about a coup knowing that Russia is losing the war. But if you look at the real bomb damage assessment [BDA], Ukraine is in ruins, getting worse by the day. So Ukraine’s 44-year-old President Volodymer Zelensky and the White House can boast victory every day while Ukraine has been reduced to a rock pile. “Because clearly, there’s been a clear error of judgment that was made an it was probably driven by Putin himself about the situation in Ukraine,” Muraview said, making things up as he goes. Putin never thought he would topple the Kiev government in a few days. That’s the White House and Downing Street talking points to find a silver lining in clearly a disastrous situation in Ukraine. Whatever problems Putin or his agents found with Beseda, they have nothing to do with what’s happened or hasn’t happened in Ukraine. Reported in U.K. tabloids, Ukraine insists that Russia has lost some 20,000 troops and tons of military hardware. U.N.’s High Commission on Human Rights estimated that Ukraine has lost under 2,000 civilians, not matching Mairupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko saying today that up to 20,000 residents have been killed. Wildly reported unverified death counts indicate that Ukraine grossly exaggerates its own or Russian losses. Whatever happened to Beseda, MI6 has lost its edge providing factual intel. Remember former MI6 agent Christopher Steele? He concocted the fake dossier for former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton tying former President Donald Trump to the Kremlin. All the fakery goes hand in had with the U.K. tabloids. Sending Fifth Service FSB Spy Chief to infamous Lefortovo prison sends a strong message to anyone seeking to challenge Putin’s authority. “I can say that although a significant number of them have not been arrested they will no longer work for the FSB,” said Christo Grozev, executive director of Bellingcat, the group that revealed the identities of the Salisbury Novichok Russian agents that nearly poisoned Sergei and Yulia Skripal. “Putin could have very easily just fired him [Beseda] or sent him off to some regional job in Siberia,” said Adrei Soldatov, a FSB expert. British and U.S. reports about Putin’s failures are the real rubbish, when they only speculate what the mission in Ukraine intended to accomplish. If you look at the widespread destruction occurring daily all over Ukraine, it’s hard to see Ukraine winning the war, especially through U.S. and U.K. rose-colored glasses. U.S. and British tabloids mirror the official party line about the Ukraine War, touting the great success of Ukraine to resist the Russian onslaught. But if you look at the widespread bomb damage assessment, clearly Ukraine has been bombed into the stone age all so Ukraine’s 44-year-old President Volodymr Zelensky can show he’s holding his own against Putin. But is he really? Zelensky refuses to take the Istanbul ceasefire talks seriously, instead allowing the White House to prosecute its war to topple Putin’s government. No U.S. or British citizens knows what’s really happening in Ukraine because the government keeps feeding the public the same rubbish. Who cares if Ukraine citizens didn’t greet Russian troops as liberators? What become obvious is that Ukraine fights a proxy war for the White House to topple Putin, something that could easily backfire. About the Author John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma,

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