richardmurray

Michelle Yeoh and opportunity

Silicon Valley Bank and risk in fiscal capitalism

Tiktok and the war over who owns the internet

Maternity Deaths in the usa

Londonium, the roman name for london

The live streaming former elected official in japan

 

Michelle Yeoh with her historic trophy. She has roles lined up but no starring ones.Credit...Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times

 

After Her Oscar Win, Will Michelle Yeoh Get to Lead Again?
The historic victory should mean opportunities to star again, but too often after such milestones, Hollywood doesn’t find central roles for women of color.

By Kyle Buchanan
Published March 15, 2023
Updated March 17, 2023

We’re conditioned to think of an Oscar win as the endpoint to a journey. For some actors, holding that trophy is the realization of a dream held since childhood. For others, it’s the culmination of a well-deserved comeback.

But what happens after that win? In our eagerness to treat Oscar victories as career capstones, do we pay too little attention to the opportunities that are supposed to come afterward, yet often don’t?

I’ve been mulling that over since Sunday night, when Michelle Yeoh took the best actress Oscar for “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” It happened at the 95th edition of the Academy Awards, the kind of big, tantalizing milestone that prods you to contemplate what has come before, and Yeoh’s win proved especially historic: The first Asian star to win best actress, she was greeted onstage by Halle Berry, the first Black woman to have pulled off that feat.

Asking Berry to announce the winner with Jessica Chastain (the previous year’s winner) was a gamble twice over. If Yeoh had lost to one of her four competitors — all of whom were white women — the ensuing photo op would have served as a stark example of a best-actress category that has been hostile to women of color for 95 years. And though Berry has returned to the Oscars several times since her 2002 win for “Monster’s Ball,” it has always been as a presenter and never as a nominee. To see her there is to be reminded that an Oscar win carries no guarantees when an actress is already liable to receive fewer scripts and career opportunities than her white counterparts.

So though Yeoh’s triumph was a long time coming, and I teared up as she addressed “all the little boys and girls who look like me watching tonight,” I also found myself worrying that it won’t be enough. The people in the Dolby Theater looked awfully proud of themselves after Yeoh’s win, but if they really want to do right by her, they have to keep writing lead roles for 60-year-old Asian actresses; otherwise, it’s just empty back-patting.

That, after all, was the real breakthrough of “Everything Everywhere,” Yeoh told me in October. We were at an awards event where, flanked by the “Everything Everywhere” directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, she reminisced about a Hollywood career that had mostly been filled with supporting parts.

“Look, I’ve been very blessed — I’ve continuously worked, and I’ve worked with great directors,” she said. “But for the first time, I’m No. 1 on the call sheet, thanks to these guys. I do meaningful roles, like in ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ and ‘Shang-Chi,’ but it was not my movie.”

Yeoh said she hoped that “Everything Everywhere” would not be a one-off, but more than a year after the film’s release, it’s unclear when, or if, she will have another lead film role. Coming projects — including the big-screen musical “Wicked,” the third “Avatar” movie, and the ensemble mystery “A Haunting in Venice” — all consign her to supporting parts. Though she is a headline-making superstar who led the hip studio A24 to its biggest ever worldwide hit, Yeoh is still too often treated as additional casting rather than the main event.

“Even you, Michelle Yeoh — on the top of the world — has struggled to find the right roles,” Kwan told her when we met in October. “I think that has taken a lot of people by surprise.”

Yeoh laughed ruefully. “I read scripts and it’s the guy who goes off on some big adventure — and he’s going off with my daughter!” she said. “I’m like, no, no.”

Few Hollywood movies are conceived with a woman over 50 as the central character, and the ones that are greenlit tend to offer those leads to a triumvirate of white women: Meryl if she’s older, Cate if she’s younger and Tilda if she’s weirder. To ensure that Yeoh can be first on the call sheet again, filmmakers must think more creatively, as Kwan and Scheinert did when they revamped “Everything Everywhere” for Yeoh after conceiving the film as a Jackie Chan vehicle. (And while they’re at it, can they find something juicy for last year’s best supporting actor, Troy Kotsur, similarly a boundary breaker — with “CODA,” he became the first deaf man to win an acting Oscar — who has been seen in little since?)

As momentum in the best-actress race swung from the “Tár” star Cate Blanchett to Yeoh over the last few weeks of awards season, I kept hearing a common refrain from voters: While Blanchett already had two Oscars and would surely be nominated again — she has eight nominations overall — this could be Yeoh’s only chance at gold. Though I understand the practicality of that argument, I hope those voters understand that their job isn’t done simply because of how they marked their ballot. Yeoh’s Sunday-night win is a big one, but the real victory will come when the lead roles that had long eluded her grasp start to become commonplace. If Hollywood can make that so, then instead of an endpoint, Yeoh’s historic Oscar will serve as a long-needed new beginning.

Kyle Buchanan is a pop culture reporter and serves as The Projectionist, the awards season columnist for The Times. He is the author of “Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road.” @kylebuchanan

ARTICLE
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/movies/michelle-yeoh-oscars-next.html

 

A bank official trying to reassure worried depositors in 1933. Credit...Associated Press

The Silicon Valley Bank Rescue Just Changed Capitalism
March 15, 2023

By Roger Lowenstein

Mr. Lowenstein is a financial journalist and author of “When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management.”

After a career of writing about bank failures, I wound up in the middle of one when my bank, Silicon Valley Bank, was seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. On Saturday, when I tried to pay a bill online, I was greeted by this not very reassuring missive:

“This page will be unavailable throughout the weekend, but will resume next week in accordance with the guidance provided by the F.D.I.C.” I wasn’t truly worried; small depositors like me had long ago internalized the rule that it made no sense to worry about your bank’s condition, since the risks of failure were borne by the F.D.I.C.

Federal deposit insurance was introduced 90 years ago during the heart of the Great Depression. Ever since then, small depositors within the F.D.I.C. limit of coverage have slept soundly. Now, in light of the bank failures of the last few days and the F.D.I.C.’s extension of coverage, why will any depositor worry about risk? Having bailed out depositors of two banks in full, how will the government refuse others?

Established as part of the landmark Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation initially provided deposit insurance up to $2,500, supported by premiums from member banks. The act was written by two Democrats, Senator Carter Glass of Virginia and Representative Henry Steagall of Alabama. Steagall wanted to protect rural banks, which had many small depositors, from contagious panics.

In that era, banking “progressives” were centered in the heartland. During the 1920s, low farm prices led to waves of bank failures. Various states adopted insurance, but the statewide systems failed. Scores of bills for federal insurance were also introduced.

The idea was controversial. The president of the American Bankers Association protested that insuring deposits was “unsound, unscientific and dangerous.” It was opposed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and by his Treasury secretary, William H. Woodin. Roosevelt opposed insurance because he thought it would be costly and also encourage bad behavior. If there was no need to mollify depositors, then banks would be free to take all sorts of risks. Today we call this “moral hazard.”

In 1933, an estimated 4,000 banks failed. Roosevelt took office in March, and declared a national bank holiday to prevent more failures. After a pointed debate, in June Roosevelt signed the Glass-Steagall Act.

The F.D.I.C. definitely prevented panics. From its creation until America’s entry into World War II, banks failed at a rate of close to 50 per year, not bad considering the economic depression in most of that period. And most of the banks that failed were small.

By the postwar period, deposit insurance seemed to have been created for an era that no longer existed. Bankers schooled in the 1930s tended toward prudence, and the industry was risk averse. The failure rate was exceptionally low. That all changed in the 1970s and ’80s. A combination of financial deregulation, revived animal spirits on Wall Street, and rising inflation led to financial instability and swings in interest rates. Voilà — bank failures returned.

In recent days, many have been reminded of 2008 and ’09 (165 banks failed in those two years alone). But for the most part, that crisis was not the result of depositors pulling funds. Bear Stearns, Lehman and others failed or sought bailouts because overnight funding from professional investors disappeared. It dried up for two good reasons: Banks like Lehman had too much leverage, and they were overexposed to a very weak and widely held asset, mortgage securities.

That was not the case with S.V.B.

This panic was a classic bank run, and it bears an echo to a different historical episode. In the 1980s, lenders known as savings and loans had invested their funds in long-term mortgages paying a fixed rate of interest. When the Federal Reserve, under pressure of rising inflation, began to jack up rates, S.&L.s had to pay higher rates to attract deposits.

The mismatch between the cost of their money and the (lower) rate that their mortgages earned sank the industry. Many switched to riskier assets to juice their returns, but as these investments soured, their problems worsened. Roughly a third, or about 1,000, S.&L.s failed. The F.D.I.C. was not (luckily for it) involved, because the S.&L.s were covered by a separate federal insurer. This agency, known as F.S.L.I.C., became insolvent, and the subsequent bailout was estimated to have cost taxpayers more than $100 billion.

Silicon Valley Bank’s failure looks a bit like an S.&L. crisis in miniature. Like its 1980s counterparts, S.V.B. grew extremely rapidly, had many assets parked in fixed, long-term bonds, and was done in when inflation caused the Fed to raise interest rates, raising the cost of keeping deposits.

Like the S.&L.s, Silicon Valley Bank was heavily concentrated. It catered to start-ups for whom an S.V.B. account was a matter of status. One tech savant who had recently changed jobs (aren’t they always switching jobs?) told me that in his experience, roughly two thirds of start-ups banked with S.V.B. (the bank claimed that nearly half the country’s venture capital-backed technology and life science companies were customers).

These crises provoked a widening of the federal safety net. Until the 1970s, the F.D.I.C. limit on deposit coverage increased only slowly. But in 1980, as banks came under pressure from soaring inflation, Congress raised the cap to $100,000, over the objections of the F.D.I.C. itself. In the 2008 crisis, the limit was raised to $250,000. And after the failure of IndyMac in 2008, the F.D.I.C., when possible, quietly protected uninsured depositors.

In the rescue of S.V.B. on Friday and of Signature Bank in New York two days later, the F.D.I.C. overtly ignored the cap and rescued all depositors, irrespective of size. This is a breathtaking leap.

Rescued seven-figure depositors were primarily venture companies steeped in the ideology of investing. The first plank of capitalism is that it entails risk. You cannot sensibly invest without assessing the chance for loss. If venture firms relied on groupthink rather than financial due diligence, that was their doing. In the case of Signature, which was exposed to the crypto industry, the rescue probably bailed out gamblers on speculative assets.

Federal officials have seized on a technicality to claim that it is not a bailout: Any required rescue payments will come from a special assessment on (private) banks, not the public. Prudent banks, which hedged their exposure to interest rates and suffered a competitive cost for doing so, will be hit with the added expense. Most likely, banks will pass along the rescue costs in the form of higher fees to consumers.

Strictly speaking, President Biden’s assurance that taxpayers are not on the line was accurate. However, in the sense that banking customers are a pretty big group, the “public” will be affected.

Moreover, the hazardous effect on behavior will be the same.

The regulators clearly failed to monitor S.V.B.’s unhealthy mismatch of assets and liabilities. Their job will be more difficult in the future, as risk taking on deposits has effectively become socialized. What if a bank opts to attract more funds by raising its interest rate on deposits? Can the regulators permit it? Wait a second, this is what all banks do.

Once you take risk out of a part of a bank’s operations, it is hard to let market principles govern the rest. We should expect, at a minimum, tougher standards on bank capital (as now exists at the biggest banks), more regulation and higher costs. As this newspaper’s DealBook newsletter has predicted, more loans will move away from F.D.I.C.-member institutions to so-called shadow banks such as hedge funds, outside the purview of regulators.

In past bank failures, uninsured depositors did not lose all — 10 to 15 percent was typical. And in this episode, there wasn’t any systemically bad asset à la mortgages in 2008. Given that the risk was contained, and that the Federal Reserve provides liquidity to banks facing runs (and provided emergency liquidity this week), allowing uninsured depositors of banks that fail to suffer a haircut might have been healthier for the system in the long run.

And the bailout does nothing to address the condition that fostered financial instability: inflation. It may even exacerbate it. This is not what Henry Steagall had in mind.

Roger Lowenstein is a financial journalist and the author of “Buffett” and, most recently, “Ways and Means:Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

ARTICLE
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/opinion/silicon-valley-bank-rescue-glass-steagall-act.html

 

TikTok’s chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, in the ByteDance offices in Singapore. The White House is hardening its stance toward the Chinese-owned video app.Credit...Ore Huiying for The New York Times

U.S. Pushes for TikTok Sale to Resolve National Security Concerns
The demand hardens the White House’s stance toward the popular video app, which is owned by the Chinese internet company ByteDance.

By David McCabe and Cecilia Kang
March 15, 2023
阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration wants TikTok’s Chinese ownership to sell the app or face a possible ban, TikTok said on Wednesday, as the White House hardens its stance toward resolving national security concerns about the popular video service.

The new demand to sell the app was delivered to TikTok in recent weeks, two people with knowledge of the matter said. TikTok is owned by the Chinese internet company ByteDance.

The move is a significant shift in the Biden administration’s position toward TikTok, which has been under scrutiny over fears that Beijing could request Americans’ data from the app. The White House had been trying to negotiate an agreement with TikTok that would apply new safeguards to its data and eliminate a need for ByteDance to sell its shares in the app.

But the demand for a sale — coupled with the White House’s support for legislation that would allow it to ban TikTok in the United States — hardens the administration’s approach. It harks back to the position of former President Donald J. Trump, who threatened to ban TikTok unless it was sold to an American company.

TikTok said it was weighing its options and was disappointed by the decision. The company said its security proposal, which involves storing Americans’ data in the United States, offered the best protection for users.

“If protecting national security is the objective, divestment doesn’t solve the problem: A change in ownership would not impose any new restrictions on data flows or access,” Maureen Shanahan, a spokeswoman for TikTok, said in a statement.

TikTok’s chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, is scheduled to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee next week. He is expected to face questions about the app’s ties to China, as well as concerns that it delivers harmful content to young people.

A White House spokeswoman declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for the Treasury Department, which has led the negotiations with TikTok. The Justice Department also declined to comment. The demand for a sale was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.

TikTok, with 100 million U.S. users, is at the center of a battle between the Biden administration and the Chinese government over tech and economic leadership, as well as national security. President Biden has waged a broad campaign against China with enormous funding programs to increase domestic production of semiconductors, electric vehicles and lithium batteries. The administration has also banned Chinese telecommunications equipment and restricted U.S. exports of chip-manufacturing equipment to China.

The fight over TikTok began in 2020 when Mr. Trump said he would ban the app unless ByteDance sold its stake to an American company, a move recommended by a group of federal agencies known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS.

The Trump administration eventually appeared to reach a deal for ByteDance to sell part of TikTok to Oracle, the U.S. cloud computing company, and Walmart. But the potential transaction never came to fruition.

CFIUS staff and TikTok continued to negotiate a deal that would allow the app to operate in America. TikTok submitted a major draft of an agreement — which TikTok has called Project Texas — in August. Under the proposal, the company said it would store data belonging to U.S. users on server computers run by Oracle inside the United States.

TikTok officials have not heard back from CFIUS officials since they submitted their proposal, the company said.

In that vacuum, concerns about the app have intensified. States, schools and Congress have enacted bans on TikTok. Last year, a company investigation found that Chinese-based employees of ByteDance had access to the data of U.S. TikTok users, including reporters.

Brendan Carr, a Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, said the administration’s new demand was a “good sign” that the White House was taking a harder line.

“There is bipartisan consensus that we can’t compromise on U.S. national security when it comes to TikTok, and so I hope the CFIUS review now quickly concludes in a manner that safeguards U.S. interests,” Mr. Carr said.

The White House last week backed a bipartisan Senate bill that would give it more power to deal with TikTok, including by banning the app. If it passed, the legislation would give the administration more leverage in its negotiations with the app and potentially allow it to force a sale.

Any effort to ban the app or force its sale could face a legal challenge. Federal courts ultimately ruled against Mr. Trump’s attempt to block the app from appearing in Apple’s and Google’s app stores. And the American Civil Liberties Union recently condemned legislation to ban the app, saying it raises concerns under the First Amendment.

David McCabe covers tech policy. He joined The Times from Axios in 2019. 

Cecilia Kang covers technology and regulation and joined The Times in 2015. She is a co-author, along with Sheera Frenkel of The Times, of “An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination.” @ceciliakang

ARTICLE
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/technology/tiktok-biden-pushes-sale.html

 

Tammy Cunningham with her son, Calum. She gave birth while hospitalized with severe Covid-19.Credit...Kaiti Sullivan for The New York Times

 

Covid Worsened a Health Crisis Among Pregnant Women
In 2021, deaths of pregnant women soared by 40 percent in the United States, according to new government figures. Here’s how one family coped after the virus threatened a pregnant mother.

By Roni Caryn Rabin
March 16, 2023
KOKOMO, Ind. — Tammy Cunningham doesn’t remember the birth of her son. She was not quite seven months pregnant when she became acutely ill with Covid-19 in May 2021. By the time she was taken by helicopter to an Indianapolis hospital, she was coughing and gasping for breath.

The baby was not due for another 11 weeks, but Ms. Cunningham’s lungs were failing. The medical team, worried that neither she nor the fetus would survive so long as she was pregnant, asked her fiancé to authorize an emergency C-section.

“I asked, ‘Are they both going to make it?’” recalled Matt Cunningham. “And they said they couldn’t answer that.”

New government data suggest that scenes like this played out with shocking frequency in 2021, the second year of the pandemic.

The National Center for Health Statistics reported on Thursday that 1,205 pregnant women died in 2021, representing a 40 percent increase in maternal deaths compared with 2020, when there were 861 deaths, and a 60 percent increase compared with 2019, when there were 754.

The count includes deaths of women who were pregnant or had been pregnant within the last 42 days, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy. A separate report by the Government Accountability Office has cited Covid as a contributing factor in at least 400 maternal deaths in 2021, accounting for much of the increase.

Even before the pandemic, the United States had the highest maternal mortality rate of any industrialized nation. The coronavirus worsened an already dire situation, pushing the rate to 32.9 per 100,000 births in 2021 from 20.1 per 100,000 live births in 2019.

The racial disparities have been particularly acute. The maternal mortality rate among Black women rose to 69.9 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2021, 2.6 times the rate among white women. From 2020 to 2021, mortality rates doubled among Native American and Alaska Native women who were pregnant or had given birth within the previous year, according to a study published on Thursday in Obstetrics & Gynecology.

The deaths tell only part of the story. For each woman who died of a pregnancy-related complication, there were many others, like Ms. Cunningham, who experienced the kind of severe illness that leads to premature birth and can compromise the long-term health of both mother and child. Lost wages, medical bills and psychological trauma add to the strain.

Pregnancy leaves women uniquely vulnerable to infectious diseases like Covid. The heart, lungs and kidneys are all working harder during pregnancy. The immune system, while not exactly depressed, is retuned to accommodate the fetus.

Abdominal pressure reduces excess lung capacity. Blood clots more easily, a tendency amplified by Covid, raising the risk of dangerous blockages. The infection also appears to damage the placenta, which delivers oxygen and nutrients to the fetus, and may increase the risk of a dangerous complication of pregnancy called pre-eclampsia.

Pregnant women with Covid face a sevenfold risk of dying compared with uninfected pregnant women, according to one large meta-analysis tracking unvaccinated people. The infection also makes it more likely that a woman will give birth prematurely and that the baby will require neonatal intensive care.

Fortunately, the current Omicron variant appears to be less virulent than the Delta variant, which surfaced in the summer of 2021, and more people have acquired immunity to the coronavirus by now. Preliminary figures suggest maternal deaths dropped to roughly prepandemic levels in 2022.

But pregnancy continues to be a factor that makes even young women uniquely vulnerable to severe illness. Ms. Cunningham, now 39, who was slightly overweight when she became pregnant, had just been diagnosed with gestational diabetes when she got sick.

“It’s something I talk to all my patients about,” said Dr. Torri Metz, a maternal fetal medicine specialist at the University of Utah. “If they have some of these underlying medical conditions and they’re pregnant, both of which are high-risk categories, they have to be especially careful about putting themselves at risk of exposure to any kind of respiratory virus, because we know that pregnant people get sicker from those viruses.”

Lagging Vaccination
In the summer of 2021, scientists were somewhat unsure of the safety of mRNA vaccines during pregnancy; pregnant women had been excluded from the clinical trials, as they often are. It was not until August 2021 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came out with unambiguous guidance supporting vaccination for pregnant women.

Most of the pregnant women who died of Covid had not been vaccinated. These days, more than 70 percent of pregnant women have gotten Covid vaccines, but only about 20 percent have received the bivalent boosters.

“We know definitively that vaccination prevents severe disease and hospitalization and prevents poor maternal and infant outcomes,” said Dr. Dana Meaney-Delman, chief of the C.D.C.’s infant outcomes monitoring, research and prevention branch. “We have to keep emphasizing that point.”

Ms. Cunningham’s obstetrician had encouraged her to get the shots, but she vacillated. She was “almost there” when she suddenly started having unusually heavy nosebleeds that produced blood clots “the size of golf balls,” she said.

Ms. Cunningham was also feeling short of breath, but she ascribed that to the advancing pregnancy. (Many Covid symptoms can be missed because they resemble those normally occurring in pregnancy.)

A Covid test came back negative, and Ms. Cunningham was happy to return to her job. She had already lost wages after earlier pandemic furloughs at the auto parts plant where she worked. On May 3, 2021, shortly after clocking in, she turned to a friend at the plant and said, “I can’t breathe.”

By the time she arrived at IU Health Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, she was in acute respiratory distress. Doctors diagnosed pneumonia and found patchy shadows in her lungs.

Her oxygen levels continued falling even after she was put on undiluted oxygen, and even after the baby was delivered.

“It was clear her lungs were extremely damaged and unable to work on their own,” said Dr. Omar Rahman, a critical care physician who treated Ms. Cunningham. Already on a ventilator, Ms. Cunningham was connected to a specialized heart-lung bypass machine.

Jennifer McGregor, a friend who visited Ms. Cunningham in the hospital, was shocked at how quickly her condition had deteriorated. “I can’t tell you how many bags were hanging there, and how many tubes were going into her body,” she said.

But over the next 10 days, Ms. Cunningham started to recover. Once she was weaned off the heart-lung machine, she discovered she had missed a major life event while under sedation: She had a son.

He was born 29 weeks and two days into the pregnancy, weighing three pounds.

Premature births declined slightly during the first year of the pandemic. But they rose sharply in 2021, the year of the Delta surge, reaching the highest rate since 2007.

Some 10.5 percent of all births were preterm that year, up from 10.1 percent in 2020, and from 10.2 percent in 2019, the year before the pandemic.

Though the Cunninghams’ baby, Calum, never tested positive for Covid, he was hospitalized in the neonatal intensive care unit at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis. He was on a breathing tube, and occasionally stopped breathing for seconds at a time.

Doctors worried that he was not gaining weight quickly enough — “failure to thrive,” they wrote in his chart. They worried about possible vision and hearing loss.

But after 66 days in the NICU, the Cunninghams were able to take Calum home. They learned how to use his feeding tube by practicing on a mannequin, and they prepared for the worst.

“From everything they told us, he was going to have developmental delays and be really behind,” Mr. Cunningham said.

After her discharge from the hospital, Ms. Cunningham was under strict orders to have a caretaker with her at all times and to rest. She didn’t return to work for seven months, after she finally secured her doctors’ approval.

Ms. Cunningham has three teenage daughters, and Mr. Cunningham has another daughter from a previous relationship. Money was tight. Friends dropped off groceries, and the landlord accepted late payments. But the Cunninghams received no government aid: They were even turned down for food stamps.

“We had never asked for assistance in our lives,” Ms. Cunningham said. “We were workers. We used to work seven days a week, eight-hour days, sometimes 12. But when the whole world shut down in 2020, we used up a lot of our savings, and then I got sick. We never got caught up.”

Though she is back to work at the plant, Ms. Cunningham has lingering symptoms, including migraines and short-term memory problems. She forgets doctor’s appointments and what she went to the store for. Recently she left her card in an A.T.M.

Many patients are so traumatized by their stays in intensive care units that they develop so-called post-intensive care syndrome. Ms. Cunningham has flashbacks and nightmares about being back in the hospital.

“I wake up feeling like I’m being smothered at the hospital, or that they’re killing my whole family,” she said. Recently she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Calum, however, has surprised everyone. Within months of coming home from the hospital, he was reaching developmental milestones on time. He started walking soon after his first birthday, and likes to chime in with “What’s up?” and “Uh-oh!”

He has been back to the hospital for viral infections, but his vocabulary and comprehension are superb, his father said. “If you ask if he wants a bath, he’ll take off all his clothes and meet you at the bath,” he said.

Louann Gross, who owns the day care that Calum attends, said he has a hearty appetite — often asking for “thirds” — and more than keeps up with his peers. She added, “I nicknamed him our ‘Superbaby.’”

ARTICLE
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/health/covid-pregnancy-death.html

 

Two skeletons that were found last year as part of an archaeological dig in northern England.Credit...West Yorkshire Joint Services

A 1,600-Year-Old Coffin May Shed Light on Roman Britain
A lead-lined coffin that was discovered in northern England could offer clues about the area’s transition from the Roman Empire to its Anglo-Saxon period.

By Jenny Gross
Published March 15, 2023
Updated March 16, 2023
LONDON — British archaeologists have uncovered an ancient coffin in a 1,600-year-old cemetery in northern England, a discovery, they said, that could shed light on the end of Roman Britain and the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

Discovered during an archaeological dig in Leeds, the lead-lined coffin contained the remains of an aristocratic woman who most likely lived in the fourth century.

Archaeologists also found the remains of more than 60 people who lived in the area more than a thousand years ago. Some bodies were buried on their backs with their legs straight out, in accordance with late-Roman customs. Others adhered to the Anglo-Saxon tradition, within which burials often included items such as clothes fasteners and knives.

The archaeological dig was part of a consultation process for a company applying for permission to build on the site. Archaeologists had previously uncovered late-Roman stone buildings and a number of structures in the Anglo-Saxon architectural style in the area.

“Very quickly, we started finding burials,” said David Hunter, the principal archaeologist of the West Yorkshire Archaeology Advisory Service, which works with the West Yorkshire planning authorities. “The potential is there to give us much better information on how this transition from the Roman population to Anglo-Saxon England happened.”

Mr. Hunter said that the presence of both late-Roman and early-Anglo Saxon people on the same burial site was unusual. Whether the use of the graveyard had overlapped between the two eras would determine the significance of the find, he added.

The Roman occupation of Britain, from 43 A.D. to around 410, transformed the culture, as settlers from Europe, the Middle East and Africa arrived. Around the third century, market towns and villages were established, and Roman objects became more common even in poor, rural areas, according to English Heritage, which manages prehistoric sites, medieval castles and Roman forts in England.

After the Romans retreated from Britain, society became much more insular and parochial, Mr. Hunter said. A lot is unknown about the period, including how the area transitioned from being part of the Roman Empire in the early fifth century to part of the English nation in the 10th.

“Different people have different theories as to how this could have happened: It could’ve happened by cooperation, it could’ve happened by aggression,” he said.

These findings may add to knowledge about an era that is largely undocumented, Mr. Hunter said. Radiocarbon dating could help determine exactly when the remains were buried. Chemical tests could reveal the diets and ancestry of the people.

Researchers would also like to understand why there were a number of instances in which two or three people were buried in the same grave, as well as why there were multiple burial styles in the same cemetery.

Mr. Hunter said that the two different burial styles could be for reasons of practicality; Since the area was already recognized as a burial place by Roman Britons, it would have been easier for subsequent groups of people to have used the same site.

While the discovery was made in February 2022, the findings were only announced on Monday, in order to keep the site safe and conduct tests on some of the findings, the Leeds City Council said in a statement. The discovery of a lead-lined coffin is rare, with only a few hundred having been discovered in Britain, said Kylie Buxton, on-site supervisor for the excavations.

The council has not released the exact location of the dig. After the analysis is completed, the lead coffin may be displayed at the Leeds City Museum, in an exhibition on death and burial customs, officials said.

A correction was made on March 16, 2023: An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to English Heritage. The organization manages prehistoric sites, medieval castles and Roman forts in England, not in the rest of Britain. (Other groups manage such sites in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.)
When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more

Jenny Gross is a general assignment reporter. Before joining The Times, she covered British politics for The Wall Street Journal. @jggross

ARTICLE
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/world/europe/uk-roman-burial-leeds.html#:~:text=By Jenny Gross March 15%2C 2023 LONDON —,Roman Britain and the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

 

Mr. Higashitani, seen on a computer monitor, celebrating after winning his election to a seat in the House of Councillors in July 2022.Credit...Kyodo News, via Getty Images

 

How to Get Kicked Out of Parliament: Livestream Instead of Legislating
The upper house of Japan’s Parliament almost unanimously voted to expel an eccentric YouTuber who won a seat last year. The reason: He never showed up for work.

By Tiffany May and Hisako Ueno
March 15, 2023
Since he was elected to Japan’s Parliament in July, Yoshikazu Higashitani has spread celebrity gossip on his YouTube channel, explored the sights of Dubai and handed out snacks to children displaced by an earthquake in Turkey.

One thing he has not done is show up for work.

On Wednesday, he was expelled from Japan’s upper house of Parliament, the House of Councillors, making him the first elected lawmaker in the country to be removed from office in more than seven decades.

Before his short-lived career as a lawmaker, Mr. Higashitani, 51, was well-known for his lengthy livestreams during which he dished out salacious celebrity gossip under the alias “GaaSyy.” He ran for Parliament from Dubai, claiming that he could not return to Japan because the police were investigating him for fraud. While in self-imposed exile, he campaigned and promised to expose dozens of celebrity scandals.

To the surprise of many, he won — running as the candidate of the single-issue NHK Party, which is dedicated to making changes to how Japan’s national broadcaster is funded. But he has missed every session in the House of Councillors since then.

In the meantime, he has maintained diverse interests, balancing his lengthy rants about celebrities with breezy posts about touring La Sagrada Familia in Spain and playing water sports in Thailand, using the hashtag “#endlesssummer.”  Last week, he said he traveled to Turkey, and in videos posted online was seen distributing snacks to children in areas devastated by a February earthquake, in front of a camera crew.

The founder of the NHK Party, Takashi Tachibana, told reporters in January that the police had asked Mr. Higashitani, a fellow party member, to cooperate with investigations related to accusations of defamatory comments and threats he had made in his videos, and that the YouTuber would return to the country in March. (The police declined to comment.)

In February, the House of Councillors demanded that Mr. Higashitani apologize in an open session, a disciplinary act second only to expulsion. He had agreed to do so, only to backtrack on that decision last week, saying that he did not feel safe enough to return, despite having immunity from arrest as a lawmaker.

Mr. Tachibana said last Wednesday that he would step down as head of the party. “As party leader, I will take responsibility for GaaSyy’s failure to keep his promise that he would come back to the upper house to make an apology,” Mr. Tachibana said at a news conference.

He added that the party would be renamed “Seijika Joshi 48 To,” which translates to Politician Girls 48 Party, and that the actress Ayaka Otsu would replace him. Mr. Tachibana said that the party would broaden its goals and would also recruit only female candidates to run for upcoming local elections.

Koichi Nakano, a professor of comparative politics at Sophia University in Tokyo, said that the party’s rebranding was a response to a movement to increase the number of female candidates in elections.

“NHK Party must have thought that they can poke fun at that in a right-wing, misogynist way, by treating female candidates as if they were teen pop idols like AKB48,” Professor Nakano wrote in an email, referring to a popular female pop group.

He added that Mr. Higashitani’s notoriety and what he characterized as the populist appeal of his party got him elected. “It’s unusual, to a degree, but Japan has had its own share of media-celebrities who are complete amateurs of politics, including comedians, actors and pop singers, though none was as unserious as GaaSyy,” Professor Nakano added.

Jeff Kingston, a professor of Asian studies at Temple University’s Japan campus, wrote in an email: “The NHK party, despite rebranding, has achieved little except to register discontent with the establishment and unhappiness with the mandatory fees every household has to pay, even if they don’t watch NHK.”

Muneo Suzuki, who heads a key disciplinary committee in Parliament, told reporters on Tuesday that Mr. Higashitani had already been given ample time to correct his behavior, but that he had ultimately undermined the electoral process. “GaaSyy doesn’t understand what democracy means in principle,” he said.

Dozens of protesters, mostly members of the Seijika Joshi 48 Party, rallied in front of the legislature before lawmakers cast votes over whether to expel Mr. Higashitani. Among the 236 lawmakers who attended the session, all but one voted in favor of his ouster.

Mr. Higashitani could not be immediately reached for comment, but in a statement read on the House floor by Satoshi Hamada, a fellow lawmaker, Mr. Higashitani said that his removal was unjust.

“There will continue to be people like me running for office. If you do not want the world you have made to be destroyed, please exclude those people from candidacy from the very beginning,” he wrote in the statement. “I wish the same punishment upon lawmakers who leave their seats immediately after propping up their nameplates and ones who are asleep and don’t show up like myself.”

Tiffany May covers news from Asia. She joined The Times in 2017. @nytmay

Hisako Ueno has been reporting on Japanese politics, business, gender, labor and culture for The Times since 2012. She previously worked for the Tokyo bureau of The Los Angeles Times from 1999 to 2009. @hudidi1

Article
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/world/asia/japan-parliament-youtuber-expelled.html
 

 

Lance Reddick

rest in peace

PHOTO LINK

if you want to make donations to his memory

MOMCares or https://www.momcares.org/

 

 

Stephanie Mills Interview

 

your thoughts? I am just simply a stephanie mills fan

 

GDBEE COLORING PAGES for Black History Month 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

High resolution versions , support gdbee and give what you can please

https://gdbee.gumroad.com/l/coloring2023

 

I have some coloring pages as well in my gallery. Here are a few, enjoy as well

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Princess-Candace-ink-899639286

 

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Ebonee-in-my-style-ink-shape-897403440

 

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Addietober-Day-26-creepy-clown-ink-896624091

 

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/My-Cookie-in-Cookie-Run-Style-BW-895979382

 

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Addietober-Day-17-bugs-ink-895211656

 

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Retrofuturism-pinup-model-R-black-and-white-894908633

 

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Addietober-Day-7-JAck-O-LAntern-ink-894195815

 

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Addietober-Day-5-Black-Cat-Ink-894114250

 

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Addietober-Day-11-Crows-ink-894624695

 

GDBEe pages

https://aalbc.com/tc/search/?&q=gdbee&type=core_statuses_status&quick=1&author=richardmurray&search_and_or=or&sortby=newest

 

 

CELEBRATING BLACK JOY

 

My thoughts in reply to the source
I don't see a problem at all. But I grew up in a home where my parents worked together to pay bills, to rear me. This concept of the male role or the female role is silly or dysfunctional.
A woman has the right to have a dominant charater type like a man has the same right. 
The following image is shared as a photo of proper gender representation

https://twitter.com/ShadayaKnight/status/1626159504575414274

I don't see the problem with either. If Oprah side her partner/husband wants to appear side to side while Rihanna's partner/husband want to be seen with her in the lead and him being led carrying their child what is the problem? 
I am a heterosexual man, a rare thing I tout , but I do now cause a dysfunctional mentality exist among many, and I argue most, of my fellow heterosexual men. And that is this idea that the man is lessened, or taken out of masculinity, ala emasculated, when he appears in any role where a woman is in a superior posture.
I do not know Rihanna, but if we actually knew each other, and we became intimate, and she said she wanted to have a child side me, and I said yes, I will not feel lessened or emasculated because we are in a photo shoot like the one above. 
I can't even comprehend why I will feel lessened or emasculated. I will not feel embarassed or insulted by Rihanna or the photographer. In the photograph, Rihanna doesn't have a chain around the man's neck. She isn't walking in front disconnected which was a common and still visible married posture in public in Nippon or Japan. 
The best question is, if Rihanna was holding the baby and being led by the male, would that then be an image of proper gender roles by those who judge the Rihanna photo above as emasculating to men? 
Not for me. If my wife, no too easy, if my girlfriend wants to create a baby side me and I concur, then I have no problem at all with her wanting to have such a photo shoot. Notice I didn't mention money. I wouldn't mind this photoshoot. Now if my girlfriend has Rihanna's money, I daresay this photoshoot is warranted. I don't mind being the father whether my girlfriend is rich or poor if we both agree. But, I am not ashamed to say my girlfriend who has joined me in creating a baby, and another baby:), who is a billionaire warrants the photo. I am not less of a man because a woman is a billionaire and I am looking for work/hustling/struggling through my own road. 
I think men who feel emasculated by Rihanna's photo are why so many women who are financially successful don't trust men. Cause many, and i argue most in global humanity, heterosexual men, whether rich or poor, feel/think/believe/know a woman , whether she is financially superior to them or not, needs to act like a housewife. 
I recall a scene in Crazy Rich Asians, I never read the book, when a male character fiscally poorer than the female character he is married to couldn't handle their environment or reality in their community.
My fellow Heterosexual Men, calm down:) Your manhood isn't lessened because a woman can make more money than you, can want children without marrying you, can not need to rely on you for what men forced women to rely on men for in the past. Men in the USA...Embrace the opportunity to have only love as what is needed living side women. Don't undermine women as men in most other places in humanity who seem infatuated to a male dominant gender structure in their community. 
Calm down and be happy women are free. Wouldn't you want your daughter to be able to be whatever she wants and not feel through peer pressure in her mind or where she lives she has to give a man an unfair or unwarranted or unnecessary role to her, just for his ego side the ego of many , and I argue most, in his gender community.

CITATIONS

source

https://twitter.com/ShadayaKnight/status/1626112523190648833

The emasculation of men continues...you can already tell who the man is in this relationship...that dude about to be a proud mother of 2

 

referral
https://twitter.com/MisterLassiter/status/1626639429153738752

 

This guy has 260K plus followers. We are doomed to more of his fragility and stupidity...pretty much forever

IN AMENDMENT to the referral
I oppose the position of the source but I don't think men who are unafraid of women are near extinction. The reality is, the future will have many men who feel/know/think a woman has a natural subservient place. The good news is that the future will also have at least as equally strong spaces for men who oppose that position. 
It isn't doom and gloom. And I comprehend the frustration. I am a heterosexual man. Yeah, lust isn't a sin, it is powerful, necessary, human. And shouldn't be cast aside. Lust all to often plays a huge role in men's, heterosexual men's physical desires for women. The key isn't to delete lust or run away from it or succumb to it, but to embrace love + liking more than lust. For when you love or like a woman, your lust can exist without guiding you to desiring a woman ill. 
 

 

KWL Live Q&A – Setting Up for Publishing Success: an AMA with the KWL Team
Setting Up for Publishing Success – Looking at the Year Ahead

The Kobo Writing Life team is excited to announce our latest Live Q&A on January 26th, 2022, from 12:00 PM-1:00 PM EST. KWL Director Tara will be chatting with all of our viewers, alongside author engagement manager and KWL podcast co-host Laura, about how to set up for a successful year of publishing in 2023. If you can’t make it to the event, feel free to comment on this post with your questions and we can ask them for you!   

Hi authors!  

In our first live Q&A of the year, we are going to feature Tara, Kobo Writing Life’s director, Laura, author engagement manager, and Rachel, promotions specialist, as they discuss relevant topics and answer questions sent in by all of YOU, our wonderful community of authors, regarding how best to set up for success in the coming year!

This AMA-style chat is a great opportunity to hear about developments at KWL, learn some new tips and tricks, and gain some inspiration for the publishing year ahead.

We’ll be discussing and answering questions related to the following:

How to make the most of your pre-orders
Reaching new readers – with Kobo Plus and OverDrive
Audiobooks and audiobook marketing
Setting up a successful release schedule
New series, new releases, and opportunities for new authors in 2023
Market research – staying ahead of the seasons
And much more!
We will also have time for questions at the end, so be sure to join the live event and bring your questions! And, as always, happy writing.
https://kobowritinglife.com/2023/01/13/kwl-live-qa-setting-up-for-publishing-success-an-ama-with-kwls-director-and-author-engagement-manager/
 

Finding Your Readers: a KWL Recap
elements
Using Patreon as an Indie Author with Lindsay Buroker
Finding Your Ideal Reader with Sue Campbell
Learning the Habits of your Readers with Emma Chase
https://kobowritinglife.com/2022/12/12/finding-your-readers-a-kwl-recap/
 

 

@Troy
I like the fact that the bill realizes that the problem the descendent of enslaved have transcends the usa. One of the problems with reparations as an issue is many can't accept that reparations is beyond the usa, it is truly about the relationship between blacks and whites in the american continent. A relationship that is historically far worse than negative. 

My only issue with the bill is , it sadly isn't needed. I have thought about reparations for a while and it occurs to me that if you look at the DOS community from a what happened and what needs to be undone perspective, no study is needed.

What happened? 

DOSers ancestors were ripped from their homes and forced to be part of another community and said ancestors descendents from the 13 colonies  to today live absent a choice for the most part in the community, the usa or the 13 colonies that preceded it,  that their forebears were forced to be a part of.  That is the simple truth of DOS history. So, that is what happened.

How do you undo that? 

Simple, DOSers need a new land all to themselves to replace the lands they were ripped from, and they need resources to build up that land reciprocating all the resources their forebears of themselves provided to make the 13 colonies and the usa what they were.

The problem is, no where on earth is uninhabited . so at least 15,000,000 people will cause chaos by default wherever they go. Exhibit a is israel. at the end of the day, the idea was tried out there and look at palestine, it is a never ending negative situation. Yes, israel has alliances but the palestineans have not forgotten and the situation is simply a blood feud, that will only end when the palestinean or the israeli are gone. DOSers will simply be another israeli group. 

The only internal black problem with reparations is something the prior commentors allude to, correctly, but they don't say straightly. White European power forced Black  African people to be part of the 13 colonies or the usa. But said power occurred for so long, many, not most , but many black people have accepted the usa side the whites in it.  Sequentially, those blacks don't need reparations. Do you comprehend Troy? 

It is historical fact that most free blacks and 99% of the enslaved blacks when the usa was founded didn't want the usa founded or wanted out of the usa. It is historical fact that it was true during the war of 1812 and up to the war between the states. It was during the war between the states that a significant percentage of black DOSers started claiming the usa as their home, and from said war between the states to 2023, the percentage of pro usa+ pro white blacks has grown.

The problem is, reparations at its heart has to be a big middle finger to the usa or the whites in it. But it offers a strong cultural question.

DOSers who have accepted the usa, the black immigrants in modernity who come from all over the world to be part of the usa. the non black immigrants who like the black immigrants come from all over the world to be part of the usa, the WASP enslavers descedants who made the usa,killed the native american and enslaved the black dosers for their usa all have a belief in the usa. A love for it. Reparations at its heart is a dislike/hatred of the usa being provided by the usa itself. And that is why the reparations issue has no traction. As an issue it spits in the face of so many in the usa who love the usa, feel its better, feel it warrants a chance, and again, reparations at its heart is DOSers saying, the usa isn't enough, it isn't wanted. 

And again, I want it comprehended or said in this forum, the Black DOS communities modern relationship to the usa is modern. It really isn't historical in the 13 colonies or the usa itself. When black people talk about forebears fighting to vote, they seem to forget more of their forebears fought to simply kill whites or leave the usa and many of them dreamed more than anything. I paraphrase james baldwin: his father in the black church of his youth hated whites. Many black DOSers have similar stories but we rarely say it in white owned media as we are ashamed or we just don't want the hassle of talking about it. 

So I conclude with a simple restatement. 

Reparations involves Black people's relationship with whites from the 13 colonies to modern usa. But it doesn't need a study. It is an issue that needed to happen in the past, but modern usa wealth doesn't happen if reparations happened in the past. Sequentially, most in modern usa, can't accept the fundamental point of reparations, which garvey best comprehended, that many and I daresay most Black DOSers don't like the usa or the whites <wasp/white asians/white latinos/white arabs/white muslims  white women or similar> in it.  So, reparations is warranted or needed but is contrapose to various communities relationship to the usa, including a large percentage of Black DOSers themselves. 

 

 

New York City Civilian Complaint REview Board 

202 New York City protest

https://www.nyc.gov/assets/ccrb/downloads/pdf/policy_pdf/issue_based/2020NYCProtestReport.pdf

New York City Civilian Complaint REview Board 

202 New York City protest

https://www.nyc.gov/assets/ccrb/downloads/pdf/policy_pdf/issue_based/2020NYCProtestReport.pdf

Ringing in the New YEar Book Tag 2023 from Thistle and Verse
mentioned

• Ties that bind from Tia Miles
• Darknesses from Lachelle Seville
• Early Departures from Justin A Reynolds
• Delicious Monsters from Liselle Sambury
• Wakanda Forever from Ryan Coogler , Joe Robert Cole
• Heaven Official's Blessing from Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
• Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self from Pauline Hopkins 
• The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan from Zig Zag Claybourne
• Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter's Saga from D.O. Fagunwa , Wole Soyinka (Translation)
• The Things That Fly in the Night from Giselle Liza Anatol
• A History of Nigeria from Toyin Falola
• The Gatekeeper's Staff: An Old Gods Story from Antoine Bandele
• Flowers for the Sea from Zin E. Rocklyn
• The Infinite from Patience Agbabi
• For the Culture Readathon from TyBooks01
• Drunken Dream of the Past from Sun Yujing performed by Lin Zhixuan

 

my comment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKreFvghrKk&lc=UgxXtsU2FVBC5yJcoOd4AaABAg

 

Ringing in the New YEar Book Tag 2023 from Thistle and Verse
mentioned

• Ties that bind from Tia Miles
• Darknesses from Lachelle Seville
• Early Departures from Justin A Reynolds
• Delicious Monsters from Liselle Sambury
• Wakanda Forever from Ryan Coogler , Joe Robert Cole
• Heaven Official's Blessing from Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
• Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self from Pauline Hopkins 
• The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan from Zig Zag Claybourne
• Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter's Saga from D.O. Fagunwa , Wole Soyinka (Translation)
• The Things That Fly in the Night from Giselle Liza Anatol
• A History of Nigeria from Toyin Falola
• The Gatekeeper's Staff: An Old Gods Story from Antoine Bandele
• Flowers for the Sea from Zin E. Rocklyn
• The Infinite from Patience Agbabi
• For the Culture Readathon from TyBooks01
• Drunken Dream of the Past from Sun Yujing performed by Lin Zhixuan

 

my comment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKreFvghrKk&lc=UgxXtsU2FVBC5yJcoOd4AaABAg

 

Ringing in the New YEar Book Tag 2023 from Thistle and Verse
mentioned

• Ties that bind from Tia Miles
• Darknesses from Lachelle Seville
• Early Departures from Justin A Reynolds
• Delicious Monsters from Liselle Sambury
• Wakanda Forever from Ryan Coogler , Joe Robert Cole
• Heaven Official's Blessing from Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
• Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self from Pauline Hopkins 
• The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan from Zig Zag Claybourne
• Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter's Saga from D.O. Fagunwa , Wole Soyinka (Translation)
• The Things That Fly in the Night from Giselle Liza Anatol
• A History of Nigeria from Toyin Falola
• The Gatekeeper's Staff: An Old Gods Story from Antoine Bandele
• Flowers for the Sea from Zin E. Rocklyn
• The Infinite from Patience Agbabi
• For the Culture Readathon from TyBooks01
• Drunken Dream of the Past from Sun Yujing performed by Lin Zhixuan

 

my comment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKreFvghrKk&lc=UgxXtsU2FVBC5yJcoOd4AaABAg

 

I have been unfortunate enough to see + experience alot of law enforcement abuse. 

I don't want to repeat myself . So I will focus on how Black people in the usa from the end of the war between the states reached modernity culturally.

Frederick Douglass side the Black church is the answer. 

At the end of the day, I realize , that the cultural trajectory of the majority, not all or me, in the Black community in the USA is a culture of individualism that Frederick Douglass side the Black church wanted when they started the Black community on this path with white financial support when the war between the states ended. 

The goal is for Black cops in mostly white law enforcement organizations to exists, for Black presidents in a mostly white country , Black Mayors in a mostly white city to exists, it isn't to deny, black cops in most black law enforcement organizations, or black mayors in black towns or black sheriffs in black counties. But the idea is for an individual allowance to exist in the Black community in the USA that will curtail Black communal strength, will curtail Black communal resilience, will curtail Black communal fiscal profit, but the goal is to get the majority of the Black community to be part of an aracial identity, an individual identity, that I argue has been reached. No, not all black people in the USA are philosophically aligned, but most are. 

The murder of Tyre Nichols represents the strength of the individual culture in the black community in the usa. These events will always occur for nothing is completely positive. All ideas have negativity, including nonviolence, including araciality, including miscegenation, including integrationists ideas like slavery... as well as militisms, or segregationists idea like Back to Africa. The question is, what are the negativities with an idea. 

The murder of Tyre Nichols represents an inevitable negativity from the individualism  which is the majority philosophy adhered to by Black people in the USA today. IT will happen again, as it already happened already. It must. 

But I think most Black people in the USA, which doesn't include me, support the individualism and with sadness or lamentations, accept the murder of Tyre Nichols as part of the price for individual cultural allowance, which I argue no community in the USA has stronger than the Black community in the USA, even if it isn't articulated. 

 

ART SUMMARY 2022

a selection for each month

 

January
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Holiday-Rex-DTIYS-B-W-905513401
February
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Valentine-s-Day-2022-Color-gif-906988319
March
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Ship-of-Fools-Legend-to-be-909901566
April
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/The-King-Of-Paradise-913395528
May
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Nanedud-feetorfins-917368124
June
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/AmpraehDTIYScolor-917892345
July
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Dreamdisappointvacation-coloringpage-923869468
August
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Invitation-A-Moment-In-the-LEgendary-Bloody-Melee-927346127
September
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/crystals-21-Witchtember-2022-930362174
October
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Chrissabugdtiys10k2022-Invitation-932158374
November
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Album-Yourself-Submit-935178300
December
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Suriel-of-Sylessae-BW-939310620
 

If you want to support my work financially consider the following

Poetry or more ebook
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/poetry-or-more-1
Ship of fools audiobook
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/ship-of-fools-legend-to-be

 

if you want to keep abreast to my work in the future, join my newsletter
https://rmnewsletter.over-blog.com/

I have been unfortunate enough to see + experience alot of law enforcement abuse. 

I don't want to repeat myself . So I will focus on how Black people in the usa from the end of the war between the states reached modernity culturally.

Frederick Douglass side the Black church is the answer. 

At the end of the day, I realize , that the cultural trajectory of the majority, not all or me, in the Black community in the USA is a culture of individualism that Frederick Douglass side the Black church wanted when they started the Black community on this path with white financial support when the war between the states ended. 

The goal is for Black cops in mostly white law enforcement organizations to exists, for Black presidents in a mostly white country , Black Mayors in a mostly white city to exists, it isn't to deny, black cops in most black law enforcement organizations, or black mayors in black towns or black sheriffs in black counties. But the idea is for an individual allowance to exist in the Black community in the USA that will curtail Black communal strength, will curtail Black communal resilience, will curtail Black communal fiscal profit, but the goal is to get the majority of the Black community to be part of an aracial identity, an individual identity, that I argue has been reached. No, not all black people in the USA are philosophically aligned, but most are. 

The murder of Tyre Nichols represents the strength of the individual culture in the black community in the usa. These events will always occur for nothing is completely positive. All ideas have negativity, including nonviolence, including araciality, including miscegenation, including integrationists ideas like slavery... as well as militisms, or segregationists idea like Back to Africa. The question is, what are the negativities with an idea. 

The murder of Tyre Nichols represents an inevitable negativity from the individualism  which is the majority philosophy adhered to by Black people in the USA today. IT will happen again, as it already happened already. It must. 

But I think most Black people in the USA, which doesn't include me, support the individualism and with sadness or lamentations, accept the murder of Tyre Nichols as part of the price for individual cultural allowance, which I argue no community in the USA has stronger than the Black community in the USA, even if it isn't articulated. 

 

 

KWL Live Q&A – Setting Up for Publishing Success: an AMA with the KWL Team
Setting Up for Publishing Success – Looking at the Year Ahead

The Kobo Writing Life team is excited to announce our latest Live Q&A on January 26th, 2022, from 12:00 PM-1:00 PM EST. KWL Director Tara will be chatting with all of our viewers, alongside author engagement manager and KWL podcast co-host Laura, about how to set up for a successful year of publishing in 2023. If you can’t make it to the event, feel free to comment on this post with your questions and we can ask them for you!   

Hi authors!  

In our first live Q&A of the year, we are going to feature Tara, Kobo Writing Life’s director, Laura, author engagement manager, and Rachel, promotions specialist, as they discuss relevant topics and answer questions sent in by all of YOU, our wonderful community of authors, regarding how best to set up for success in the coming year!

This AMA-style chat is a great opportunity to hear about developments at KWL, learn some new tips and tricks, and gain some inspiration for the publishing year ahead.

We’ll be discussing and answering questions related to the following:

How to make the most of your pre-orders
Reaching new readers – with Kobo Plus and OverDrive
Audiobooks and audiobook marketing
Setting up a successful release schedule
New series, new releases, and opportunities for new authors in 2023
Market research – staying ahead of the seasons
And much more!
We will also have time for questions at the end, so be sure to join the live event and bring your questions! And, as always, happy writing.
https://kobowritinglife.com/2023/01/13/kwl-live-qa-setting-up-for-publishing-success-an-ama-with-kwls-director-and-author-engagement-manager/
 

Finding Your Readers: a KWL Recap
elements
Using Patreon as an Indie Author with Lindsay Buroker
Finding Your Ideal Reader with Sue Campbell
Learning the Habits of your Readers with Emma Chase
https://kobowritinglife.com/2022/12/12/finding-your-readers-a-kwl-recap/
 

 

Members of the Bruce family, elected officials and community activists at a ceremony in Manhattan Beach, Calif., last year to return property that was seized from the family’s ancestors in 1924.Credit...Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

L.A. County to Pay $20 Million for Land Once Seized From Black Family
California officials seized a beachfront property from Willa and Charles Bruce in 1924. Los Angeles County returned it to their great-grandsons last year. Now they’re selling it back.

By Mike Ives
Published Jan. 4, 2023
Updated Jan. 11, 2023, 10:45 a.m. ET
The great-grandchildren of a Black couple whose beachfront property in Southern California was seized by local officials in 1924, and returned to the family last year, will sell it back to Los Angeles County for nearly $20 million, an official said on Tuesday.

The Manhattan Beach site once housed Bruce’s Lodge, a resort established in 1912 by the property’s owners, Willa and Charles Bruce, as a place where Black tourists could go to avoid harassment at a time of rampant discrimination against Black people in California and beyond. It was known informally as “Bruce’s Beach.”

Manhattan Beach officials condemned the property in 1924, paying the Bruces $14,500 and saying that they needed it for a public park. They ultimately left it undeveloped for more than three decades, and the couple lost a legal battle to reclaim it. The land was later transferred to Los Angeles County and now hosts a training center for lifeguards.

But three years ago, nationwide demonstrations against racism and police brutality led to a resurgence of local interest in the Bruce family’s campaign. And last July, after Los Angeles County and the California state legislature worked out the legal details, the county returned the property to the couple’s closest living heirs, their great-grandsons Derrick and Marcus Bruce.

Derrick and Marcus Bruce declined to comment on Wednesday through George Fatheree, a lawyer for the family.

Janice Hahn, who chairs the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, said on Tuesday that the owners had decided to sell the property to the county for nearly $20 million, a value that her office said was determined through an appraisal process.

“This is what reparations look like and it is a model that I hope governments across the country will follow,” Ms. Hahn said on Twitter.

The county received notice of the sale from the family on Dec. 30, and the escrow process will likely be completed in 30 days, Liz Odendahl, a spokeswoman for Ms. Hahn’s office, said in an email on Tuesday evening. Members of the Bruce family could not immediately be reached for comment.

Duane Yellow Feather Shepard, a relative who lives in Los Angeles, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday night that the family was “very satisfied” with the sale price. He said they had wanted to sell the property because it is zoned only for public use.

“They had no choice but to sell it and take whatever they could get out of it, and use it to invest in some other way to develop their family wealth that they’ve lost,” said Mr. Shepard, a clan chief of the Pocasset Wampanoag Tribe of the Pokanoket Nation.

Kavon Ward, who founded a group called Justice for Bruce’s Beach in June 2020 to support the family’s calls for restitution, said in a statement on Wednesday that, “While I am disappointed the Bruces have chosen to sell the land, I understand their decision as the city of Manhattan Beach is anti-Black.”

Ms. Ward is also a founder of Where Is My Land, an organization that seeks to help secure restitution for Black families who have had land taken from them.

The property consists of two adjacent beachfront lots. Ms. Bruce purchased one of them in 1912 for $1,225 and the second eight years later for $10, Los Angeles County has said, noting that the first lot measures about 33 by 105 feet. Mr. Shepard said the two lots are identical.

A persistent question has been whether officials in Manhattan Beach, a city of about 34,000 people that was incorporated in 1912 and is 75 percent white, would issue a formal apology to the Bruce family.

“I think an apology would be the least that they can do,” Anthony Bruce, the great-great-grandson of Willa and Charles Bruce, told The New York Times in 2021.

The couple, who moved to Manhattan Beach from New Mexico, were among the first Black people to settle in the area. They established their beachfront resort in the era of Jim Crow, amid a resurgence of Ku Klux Klan activities across the United States and campaigns of white supremacist terror and lynchings in the South.

Two years ago, the Manhattan Beach City Council voted, 4 to 1, to adopt a “statement of acknowledgment and condemnation” that did not include an apology. The city’s mayor at the time, Suzanne Hadley, condemned the racism against the Bruces but said that an apology could increase the risk of litigation against the city.

Steve Napolitano, the current mayor, said in an email on Wednesday that he saw the sale as a win-win for both the family and the county, which will continue to operate a lifeguard training center on the property.

“Nothing about the transaction changes the past, but it will certainly help the future of the Bruce heirs and we wish them well,” he said.

Jesus Jiménez contributed reporting.

MY THOUGHTS
I am happy for the black clan. If I think on the history of the Black Wealthy, they will do well. To be blunt, the Black Descended of Enslaved one percent tend to be very financially safe. 

Article URL
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/us/bruces-beach-la-county.html
 

 

Tananarive Due has a new short story collection coming out called The Wishing Pool. 
It is published by brooklyn new york city based akashic books , you can preorder using the link immediately below
https://www.akashicbooks.com/catalog/wishing-pool/

If you want to see a community attempt to design our own book cover for the book, use the forum link in the comment

Attending to a patient at the severe burns unit.Credit...Zied Ben Romdhane for The New York Times

In a Hospital Ward, the Wounds of a Failed Democracy Don’t Heal
Tunisia’s road to democracy began with a self-immolation, and such cases have filled hospital burn wards ever since, as elected leaders failed to deliver on a promise of prosperity.

By Vivian Yee
Vivian Yee, who covers North Africa for The Times, spent a week at the Trauma and Severe Burns Hospital in Ben Arous, near the Tunisian capital, where she watched doctors carry out their work.

Jan. 3, 2023
The most troublesome patient in the hospital’s severe burns unit was refusing to let the orderlies change the bandages that had encased him since he set himself on fire three months earlier, so Dr. Imen Jami burst into his room, her habitually knit brows drawn as tight as they would go, her lips pressed together in a magenta line.

“Look, I have someone in a coma, and I have no time,” she told the young man. “The final word is that you’ll get on the bed and change your bandages.”

“I’m so tired,” he moaned.

“You’re really not going to have them changed?” she said, looming over him.

“No, I will,” he said, quailing.

The doctor had seen this before: Tunisians who set themselves on fire in the throes of desperation often had little interest in recovering. Unable to support their families in a country that was coming apart, they had only the same old futility waiting for them back home.

In a sense, Tunisia’s 2010 revolution — and the wave of Arab Spring uprisings it inspired — began in this hospital burn ward near the capital, Tunis, and sometimes it seems as if its dying breaths are being taken there, too.

A decade ago, the Trauma and Severe Burns Hospital treated Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old fruit seller whose self-immolation came to stand for the rage that brought down a dictator and launched a democracy. Now it houses self-immolation patients whose own acts of protest changed nothing, and a host of doctors trying to escape. The country’s collective despair was so great that Tunisians turned once again to the one-man rule they had fought so fiercely to overthrow just a decade ago.

All the while, Dr. Jami had been there on the fourth floor.

She was there in the waning days of 2010, when Mr. Bouazizi was brought into the ward in critical condition, and there when the former dictator, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, came to pose for a picture at his bedside in an unconvincing attempt to show the public that he cared. Less than three weeks later, on Jan. 4, 2011, Mr. Bouazizi was dead.

She was there in the days that followed, when a surge of young men from around the country inundated the hospital after their own copycat self-immolations.

Outside the walls of the hospital in the Tunis suburb of Ben Arous, Mr. Bouazizi’s death was galvanizing Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution. “Jobs, freedom, dignity,” protesters chanted, and soon the revolt spread from young, struggling men like Mr. Bouazizi to all kinds of Tunisians. By Jan. 14, 2011, Mr. Ben Ali had fled the country, and Tunisia’s uprising had set off others across the region.

The others ended in bloodshed. But for a while, it seemed, democracy was blooming in Tunisia — the Arab Spring’s last great hope. Yet even as Tunisians’ freedoms multiplied, bread got harder to afford, and democracy itself started to seem undignified.

The old regime’s crimes went largely unpunished. Parliament deadlocked. Corruption spread. Unemployment rose. Poverty deepened. Buffeted by inexperience, infighting and bad luck, 10 prime ministers in 10 years failed to make urgent economic changes.

The post-revolution government was dominated by an Islamist party, Ennahda, and religious-secular divisions polarized a society unsure about whether politicians who wanted to govern according to Islamic principles belonged in a democracy at all.

During what Tunisians called the “black decade” after the revolution, the Bouazizi copycats arrived at the hospital by the hundreds. A relative rarity before the revolution, the act of self-immolation soon accounted for a fifth of the burn ward’s cases.

Then, in 2019, Kais Saied — an austere constitutional law professor — was elected president. Harnessing Tunisians’ rage and regret over the revolution, he suspended Parliament in July 2021, sidelined political parties, undercut civil liberties and embraced one-man rule, all but burying the country’s brief experiment with democracy.

And many Tunisians cheered.

People like Dr. Jami and many of her colleagues wanted rescuing, and after a decade of watching elected leaders fumble, they had not seen a better candidate for savior than Mr. Saied.

More than a year after his election, however, the president had been unable to do much about the foundering economy, the soaring prices or the lack of decent jobs. Which was why an estimated 15,400 Tunisians boarded rickety boats bound for Europe last year, only for at least 570 of them to drown, and part of why young men kept setting themselves on fire.

In Tunisia, illegal migration to Europe by boat was called the “harga.” The word translated, literally, to “burning.”

On the burn ward, all the doctors raised their voices so patients could hear them through the thick layers of white bandages that shrouded their heads, but Dr. Jami was loudest of all. Her “good mornings” were trumpet blasts, her entrances laughter and thunder; she could get a roomful of staff laughing with a single line, or upend it with demands for help, now.

The daughter of a nurse, Dr. Jami had studied medicine because it was her father’s dream for her, joining the burn unit soon after it opened in 2008.

She and her office mate, a fellow general practitioner, Behija Gasri, had spent five days straight in the ward during the revolution, changing diapers and mopping hallways themselves because no one else could reach the hospital. So many self-immolation cases were brought in that they ran out of beds and started putting patients on chairs.

Chaos and upheaval: That was all the revolution had brought her, she often thought.

In the decade that followed, most of Tunisia’s self-immolation cases were brought to this hospital, North Africa’s premier burn treatment center, their numbers growing just as the medical staff caring for them shrank. The increasingly bleak economy had pushed thousands of Tunisian doctors to leave the country for better opportunities abroad, including half the burn unit’s senior specialists, and now there was far more work and far less money for the ones who had stayed behind.

But Dr. Jami and Dr. Gasri were still here, even if survival and resilience in the face of adversity, it often seemed, had earned them little more than the chance to survive yet more adversity.

Doing the rounds of their patients every morning in early October, the gaggle of doctors in scrubs and rubber clogs — many of them women, most of them bespectacled, and all of them tired — tended to pass the self-immolation patient’s room without comment.

Day after day, he lay in the dark as the small TV on the wall cast ghostly light on his face, curling and uncurling the unbandaged fingers on his right hand.

Changing his bandages was always an ordeal. When orderlies wheeled him back to his room after Dr. Jami’s scolding, he was groaning in pain.

“Slowly, slowly!” he shouted as they shifted him back onto the bed. This time, Dr. Jami’s office mate, Dr. Gasri, was there to greet him. She spoke softly.

“Help us help you get better soon,” she said.

He said nothing, except to ask a nurse for a new diaper.

Dr. Gasri had the graven, planed face of a Byzantine mosaic saint, the impression of piety reinforced by a daily uniform of white head scarf and white coat. More than a head shorter than Dr. Jami, she moved quietly down hallways where her office mate whirled and strode.

During morning rounds, Dr. Jami massaged Dr. Gasri’s shoulders, patted upper arms in apology as she squeezed past the nurses, whispered jokes in people’s ears. She blew brusque little kisses in greeting, thanks and farewell. Dr. Gasri just smiled.

When Dr. Gasri first joined the unit in its early years, she had barely been able to take it. She fainted the first time she saw and smelled the burned flesh under the bandages.

Still, it was rewarding work. Former patients often came back to thank her and pray for her, she said. Sometimes they brought gifts from their home regions: dates sweet as caramel from the city of Tozeur, or, once, a bottle of fresh milk a farmer had gotten up early to deliver all the way from impoverished Kasserine. By the time it reached Ben Arous, it had gone bad.

Now a former patient was waiting for her in the hall, there with not a gift but a plea.

Ahmed Yaakoubi had first been admitted in 2012 after burning his lower legs in a car accident. Recovery was supposed to take two years, but for nearly a decade now, he had been unable to come up with the money for regular bandage replacements and follow-up treatment. At 25, unable to fully control his lower legs, walking with a limp, he couldn’t find work.

Dr. Gasri smiled at him as they shook hands, but what she had to say was serious.

“I don’t want to lie to you,” she said. “Your legs are worn out. You can’t go on like this.”

He hadn’t changed the bandages that still swaddled both legs from the knee down for four days now, risking infection and maybe even amputation. The charity his neighbors pressed on him after the accident had tapered off four years later, when he started to walk again, though he said one neighbor who was a nurse kept selling him discounted bandages.

But years had turned to a decade, Tunisians’ budgets had gone from modest to minuscule, and now nobody was giving. He felt he was a burden on the neighbor, who could no longer conceal his impatience.

Ten dinars — about $3 — for each hospital visit, 20 for fresh bandages. At the pharmacy, some products he was supposed to use had tripled in price. And he was meant to change the wrappings every day.

“I can’t even afford to eat,” Mr. Yaakoubi told Dr. Gasri. “How can I buy new bandages?”

She told him to come back on Monday. Maybe she would have something for him then. She would ask a few relatives to chip in, and, probably, dip into her own pocket.

The burn unit’s founder and head, Amen Allah Messadi, had set up an association to raise money for patients who couldn’t afford physical therapy, pressure garments, laser therapy, prosthetics and bandages, which was to say most patients. The erratic public health care system instituted after the revolution covered only the formally employed, and by the World Bank’s estimate, nearly half of Tunisians eked out a living off the books.

But the association had paused its fund-raising when Covid-19 hit, and donations dried up as times got harder. These days, it was often the staff who gave, stuffing spare dinars into an envelope that Dr. Gasri kept to help those in need.

Money had never seemed so tight when Ben Ali, the former dictator, was in power. As the regime’s heavily state-controlled approach opened up to private investment, the country’s middle class was considered sound, its education and health care systems solid, its markets’ prices steady.

Yet citified coastal Tunisia was much wealthier than the country’s rural inland, the gap between the Ben Ali cronies who controlled much of the economy and the rest stoked resentment, and the young people who made up nearly a third of Tunisia’s 11 million people, like Mr. Bouazizi, were desperate for decent jobs. He had set himself on fire to protest police harassment after municipal officials confiscated the fruit he was selling and, according to his family, slapped him.

A decade of democracy brought elections, freedom of expression, a thriving press, a muscular civil society and independent institutions, all things the country had never had under French colonial rule or the two dictators who followed. But such intangibles meant little to the revolutionaries who had demanded better lives — materially, and fast.

The foreign debt and economic structure that the new Tunisia inherited from the old Tunisia — the country imported expensive things and exported cheap ones — would have made that a challenge even for experienced leadership, and Tunisia’s new leaders were green, more focused on a new constitution than fixing the economy.

Early governments ineptly tried to hire and borrow their way into prosperity; later governments all failed to overhaul the economy.

But‌ they might have avoided disaster ‌if ‌Western countries had stepped up with far more aid and debt relief, and if not for a run of bad luck: a financial crisis in Europe, a war in neighboring Libya and terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists that crippled the country’s vital tourism industry.

The attacks deepened suspicion of Ennahda, vitriol that eventually tarnished the whole Parliament that the Islamist party had dominated.

The decline of faith in democracy could be measured in voter turnout. Back in 2011, during the first parliamentary elections after the revolution, 92 percent of voters went to the polls. By 2019, when Mr. Saied was elected as an incorruptible-seeming outsider, just 41 percent bothered.

Or it could be measured in self-immolations. With every fresh economic downturn, more people set themselves on fire, and eight years into Tunisia’s democratic experiment, the doctors whom Dr. Messadi had worked hard to recruit started leaving the burn unit, one by one. That left only Dr. Messadi, Dr. Jami, Dr. Gasri and two senior specialists — one of them debating whether to move abroad.

In France, where Tunisian doctors often emigrated, the pay wasn’t much better, at least not at first. But the equipment, facilities, regulations, malpractice insurance and hours were, and many of the unit’s young doctors said they believed there would be less burnout and depression.

In France, there wouldn’t be a political crisis with no sure outcome, or an economy that seemed headed for collapse.

In July, Mr. Saied rammed through a new Constitution in a referendum, demoting Parliament to more of an advisory body and giving himself the kind of presidential powers no leader had enjoyed since Mr. Ben Ali. Western experts warned that the new charter would hasten the end of Tunisia’s democracy.

Then he urged people to vote for a new, revamped Parliament, one that did away with the influence of Ennahda and other political parties. But only about 11 percent of eligible voters showed up for the Dec. 17 elections.

For Dr. Gasri, the surge of hope she had felt during the revolution was still down there somewhere, though it felt harder to remember these days. She said she would understand if her son, who was studying for an architecture degree, left for a few years’ professional experience in Europe, but she wanted him to come back someday.

She would stay.

“If we all leave,” she said, “what will happen to Tunisia?”

To Dr. Jami, it felt like the revolution had been the beginning of a long plunge into darkness. She said she spent most days now in a funk of stomach pain, fatigue and stress.

“Get me a man,” she said, hunting not for a ring but a visa to a Western country. “Get me out of this country.” It was a joke, but if she didn’t have to support her elderly mother, she said, she would be trying to leave.

The latest blow to the doctors had come when Covid-19 hit the hospitals hard, forcing intensive care specialists to the front lines, even as the strapped Health Ministry had to cut residents’ pay.

It was amid the death and chaos that Mr. Saied mounted his power grab. Dr. Jami said she had been cautiously relieved at his intervention. Dr. Gasri was just hoping for the best.

Now it had been more than a year. The staff tried not to dwell on the fact that, with the economy the way it was, with Mr. Saied apparently unable to fix things, many more young men who had tried to self-immolate might come their way.

“It’s one of the best countries, but I want to leave because they destroyed it,” Dr. Jami said to one of the physical therapists during a rare break one afternoon. Her face was soft with tiredness. “They didn’t leave us with any reasons to stay.”

She meant the politicians they had voted for, dutifully, election after election. Soon after, she told Dr. Messadi she wanted to leave early, and went home.

Ahmed Ellali contributed reporting.

MY THOUGHTS

Financial poverty is a powerful thing and many governments or communities in humanity, through a recent heritage of white european domination don't have the culture to handle how to be poor. It is easier to flee to another country, to burn yourself alive, than to be fiscal poor.
Secondly, though more potently, democracy, the rule of the people always exist. The form of government doesn't matter, the people always rule, the question is, how do the people want to be ruled. Sometimes most folk accept someone with a crown. sometimes most folk accept people voted in. Sometimes most folk accept individuals in a minority populace among them deciding among themselves. but the people always rule and yes, even when a commonly called dictator is the head.
Lastly, or rarely stated, the fiscal wealth of the governments deemed wealthiest in humanity, all comes from slavery/genocides/wars/various levels of abuse. Countries like tunisia, who are larger than city states,  who are trying to make financial changes absent the ability to commit genocides/enslavements/wars/abuses to others especially, are always going to have a hard time. Yes, Germany or Japan or China didn't need so much of that abusive power to others but all of them were given money by the usa to prevent them from joining an enemy in the commonly called cold war. To many countries are deemed financially successful absent the truth to their fiscal profit admitted in media alongside.

In Amendment

The quote by the tunisian woman about getting a man for immigration is a great public admission, when it comes to the nature of male or female relationships concerning the immigrant community and those in the countries of wealth.

 

Article URL
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/03/world/middleeast/tunisia-democracy.html

 

A Hindu ritual on the banks of the Ganges River in Varanasi, northern India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chosen Varanasi as a core vehicle of his assertion of India as a Hindu nation, raising tensions with Muslims.

Russia’s War Could Make It India’s World
The invasion of Ukraine, compounding the effects of the pandemic, has contributed to the ascent of a giant that defies easy alignment. It could be the decisive force in a changing global system.

By Roger CohenPhotographs by Mauricio Lima
Roger Cohen, the Paris bureau chief, and Mauricio Lima spent almost two weeks in India, traveling between New Delhi, Varanasi and Chennai, to write and photograph this piece.

Dec. 31, 2022
Seated in the domed, red sandstone government building unveiled by the British Raj less than two decades before India threw off imperial rule, S. Jaishankar, the Indian foreign minister, needs no reminder of how the tides of history sweep away antiquated systems to usher in the new.

Such, he believes, is today’s transformative moment. A “world order which is still very, very deeply Western,” as he put it in an interview, is being hurried out of existence by the impact of the war in Ukraine, to be replaced by a world of “multi-alignment” where countries will choose their own “particular policies and preferences and interests.”

Certainly, that is what India has done since the war in Ukraine began on Feb. 24. It has rejected American and European pressure at the United Nations to condemn the Russian invasion, turned Moscow into its largest oil supplier and dismissed the perceived hypocrisy of the West. Far from apologetic, its tone has been unabashed and its self-interest broadly naked.

“I would still like to see a more rules-based world,” Mr. Jaishankar said. “But when people start pressing you in the name of a rules-based order to give up, to compromise on what are very deep interests, at that stage I’m afraid it’s important to contest that and, if necessary, to call it out.”

In other words, with its almost 1.4 billion inhabitants, soon to overtake China as the world’s most populous country, India has a need for cheap Russian oil to sustain its 7 percent annual growth and lift millions out of poverty. That need is nonnegotiable. India gobbles up all the Russian oil it requires, even some extra for export. For Mr. Jaishankar, time is up on the mind-set that “Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s,” as he put it in June.

The Ukraine war, which has provoked moral outrage in the West over Russian atrocities, has caused a different anger elsewhere, one focused on a skewed and outdated global distribution of power. As Western sanctions against Russia have driven up energy, food and fertilizer costs, causing acute economic difficulties in poorer countries, resentment of the United States and Europe has stirred in Asia and Africa.

Grinding trench warfare on European soil seems the distant affair of others. Its economic cost feels immediate and palpable.

“Since February, Europe has imported six times the fossil fuel energy from Russia that India has done,” Mr. Jaishankar said. “So if a $60,000-per-capita society feels it needs to look after itself, and I accept that as legitimate, they should not expect a $2,000-per-capita society to take a hit.”

Here comes Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India, pursuing its own interests with a new assertiveness, throwing off any sense of inferiority and rejecting unalloyed alignment with the West. But which India will strut the 21st-century global stage, and how will its influence be felt?

The country is at a crossroads, poised between the vibrant plurality of its democracy since independence in 1947 and a turn toward illiberalism under Mr. Modi. His “Hindu Renaissance” has threatened some of the core pillars of India’s democracy: equal treatment of all citizens, the right to dissent, the independence of courts and the media.

Democracy and debate are still vigorous — Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party lost a municipal election in Delhi this month — and the prime minister’s popularity remains strong. For many, India is just too vast and various ever to succumb to some unitary nationalist diktat.

The postwar order had no place for India at the top table. But now, at a moment when Russia’s military aggression under President Vladimir V. Putin has provided a vivid illustration of how a world of strongmen and imperial rivalry would look, India may have the power to tilt the balance toward an order dominated by democratic pluralism or by repressive leaders.

Which way Mr. Modi’s form of nationalism will lean remains to be seen. It has given many Indians a new pride and bolstered the country’s international stature, even as it has weakened the country’s pluralist and secularist model.

India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, himself a mixture of East and West through education and upbringing, described the country as “some ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed” without any of those layers being effaced.

He was convinced that a secular India had to accommodate all the diversity that repeated invasion had bequeathed. Not least, that meant conciliation with the country’s large Muslim minority, now about 200 million people.

Today, however, Mr. Nehru is generally reviled by Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist party. There are no Muslims in Mr. Modi’s cabinet. Hindu mob attacks on Muslims have been met with silence by the prime minister.

“Hatred has penetrated into society at a level that is absolutely terrifying,” the acclaimed Indian novelist Arundhati Roy said.

That may be, but for now, Mr. Modi’s India seems to brim with confidence.

The Ukraine war, compounding the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, has fueled the country’s ascent. Together they have pushed corporations to make global supply chains less risky by diversifying toward an open India and away from China’s surveillance state. They have accentuated global economic turbulence from which India is relatively insulated by its huge domestic market.

Those factors have contributed to buoyant projections that India, now No. 5, will be the world’s third-largest economy by 2030, behind only the United States and China.

On a recent visit to India, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that the United States wanted to “diversify away from countries that present geopolitical and security risks to our supply chain,” singling out India as among “trusted trading partners.”

Nonetheless, India is in no mood to cut ties with Mr. Putin’s Russia, which supported the country with weapons over decades of nonalignment, while the United States cosseted India’s archenemy, Pakistan. Even in a country starkly fractured over Mr. Modi’s policies, this approach has had near universal backing.

“For many years, the United States did not stand by us, but Moscow has,” Amitabh Kant, who is responsible for India’s presidency of the Group of 20 that began this month, said in an interview. New Delhi has enough rivals, he said: “Try, on top of China and Pakistan, putting Russia against you!”

Mr. Modi’s India will not do that in an emergent world characterized by Mr. Jaishankar as “more fragmented, more tense, more on the edge and more under stress” as the war in Ukraine festers.

“Paradoxically, the war in Ukraine has diminished trust in Western powers and concentrated people’s minds on how to hedge bets,” said Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a prominent Indian political theorist. “India feels it has the United States figured out: Yes, you will be upset but you’re in no position to do anything about it.”

That has proved a good bet up to now. “The age of India’s significant global stature has just begun,” said Preeti Dawra, the Indian-born director of global marketing at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Arriving in Varanasi, Hinduism’s holiest city, in 1896, Mark Twain remarked on the “bewildering and beautiful confusion of stone platforms, temples, stair-flights, rich and stately palaces” rising on the bluff above the Ganges, the river of life.

Mr. Modi, 72, who adopted the city as his political constituency in 2014 when he embarked on his campaign to lead India, saying he had been “called by the mother Ganges,” has cut a pinkish sandstone gash through this sacred jumble of devotion.

Known as “the corridor” and opened a year ago, the project connects the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva, to the riverfront a quarter-mile away.

The broad and almost eerily spotless pedestrian expanse, with its museum and other tourist facilities, links the city’s most revered temple to the river where Hindus wash away their sins. It is quintessential Modi.

Cut through a labyrinth of more than 300 homes that were destroyed to make way for it, the passage intertwines the prime minister’s political life with the deepest of Hindu traditions. At the same time, it proclaims his readiness to fast-forward India through bold initiatives that break with chaos and decay. Mr. Modi, a Hindu nationalist and tech enthusiast, is a disrupter.

A self-made man from a humble background in the western state of Gujarat, and from a low status in India’s caste system, or social hierarchy, Mr. Modi has come to embody an aspirational India.

Through what Srinath Raghavan, a historian, called “an incorruptible aura and a genius at orchestrating public narratives,” he appears to have imbued India with the confidence to forge the singular path so evident over the 10 months since Russia went to war.

“Modi’s social mobility is in some ways the promise of India today,” Mr. Raghavan said in an interview.

That Modi-inspired promise, as invigorating to the traditionally lower castes of Hindu society as it is troubling to the Brahmins who long ran India, has come at a price.

Vishwambhar Nath Mishra, a Hindu religious leader in Varanasi and an engineering professor, said that the corridor had been a “blunder” that had destroyed 142 old shrines, an example of the bulldozing style Mr. Modi favors.

“We have always been a unique family in Varanasi, Muslims and Christians and Hindus who sit down and work things out, but Mr. Modi chooses to create tensions to get elected,” Mr. Mishra said. “If he is trying to establish a Hindu nation, that is very dangerous.”

Every morning, Mr. Mishra bathes in the Ganges. He heads a foundation that monitors the river and showed me a chart illustrating that the level of fecal matter in it is still dangerously high. So why does he do it? He smiled. “The Ganges is the medium of our life.”

One recent evening, I watched the Hindu prayer ceremony on the riverfront from a small boat. Perhaps two thousand people had gathered. Candles flickered. Chants rose. Along the great crescent sweep of the river, smoke billowed from the pyres that burn night and day. For a Hindu to die and be cremated in Varanasi is to be assured of transcendence and liberation.

A distracting electronic screen flashed behind the ceremony. On it, Mr. Modi’s bearded face appeared at regular intervals, promoting the Indian presidency of the Group of 20 largest global economies, an organization that calls itself the “premier forum for international economic cooperation.”

Mr. Modi, as this elaborate choreography of the spiritual and the political suggested, wants to turn India’s presidency of the G20 in 2023 into a premier platform for his bid for re-election, to a third term, in 2024.

“Big responsibility, bigger ambitions,” proclaimed one slogan on the screen. G20-related meetings are planned in every Indian state over the next year, including one in Varanasi in August.

India wants its presidency of the group to have the world as “one family” and the need for “sustainable growth” as its core themes. It wants to push the transformation of developing countries through what Mr. Kant, the organizer, called “technological leapfrogging.” India, with its near universal connectivity, sees itself as an example.

About 1.3 billion Indians now have a digital identity. Access to all banking activities online, through digital bank accounts, has become commonplace during Mr. Modi’s eight years in power. They were once the preserve of the middle class. Poorer Indians have been empowered.

“Nobody wants the current world order,” Mr. Kant said. “There are still two billion people in the world with no bank account.” India will advocate on behalf of poorer nations. But the issue with Mr. Modi’s “one family” theme is that, just up the road from the riverside prayers, his divisiveness is evident.

It is not easy to get into the complex, at the top of Mr. Modi’s new corridor, where the 17th-century white-domed Gyanvapi Mosque abuts the Kashi Vishwanath Temple. Intense security checks take a long time to negotiate because this is an epicenter of the inflamed Hindu-Muslim tension in India.

Armed guards are everywhere. They stand beside the mosque, which is encased behind a 20-foot metal fence topped with coils of razor wire. They patrol the Hindu crowds, who line up in saffron-color robes beside the temple to make their offerings of milk, sometimes mixed with honey, to the simple stone lingam that is the symbol of Shiva.

The only mammals that cross easily from the Hindu to Muslim worlds, as if to mock the stubborn divisions of humankind, are the lithe gray monkeys that scamper over barriers from shikhara to minaret.

A flurry of legal cases now centers on the mosque. A court survey this year claimed to have uncovered an ancient lingam on the premises of the mosque, so establishing, at least for hard-line Hindus, that they should be allowed to pray there. Large Muslim prayer gatherings have been banned.

In the ascendant Hindu narrative that Mr. Modi has done nothing to discourage, India belongs in the first place to its Hindu majority. The Muslim interlopers of the Mughal Empire and other periods of conquest take second place. Mosque must yield to temple if it can be demonstrated that a temple predated it.

If Mr. Putin has chosen to portray Ukraine as a birthplace of the Russian world inseparable from the motherland and embraced the Orthodox Church as a bastion of his power, Mr. Modi has chosen Varanasi as a core vehicle of his assertion of India as essentially a Hindu nation. Of course, the Indian leader did so in the interest of power consolidation, not conquest.

Three decades ago, the razing by a Hindu mob of a 16th-century mosque in the northern Indian city of Ayodhya, which Hindus believe is the birthplace of the god Ram, led to the death of 2,000 people and propelled the rise of Mr. Modi’s party.

A temple is now being built there. Mr. Modi, who presided over the groundbreaking in 2020, has called it “the modern symbol of our traditions.”

Faced by such moves, Ms. Roy, the novelist, voiced a common concern. “You know, the Varanasi sari, worn by Hindus, woven by Muslims, was a symbol of everything that was so interwoven and is now being ripped apart,” she said. “A threat of violence hangs over the city.”

I found Syed Mohammed Yaseen, a leader of the Varanasi Muslim community, which makes up close to a third of the city’s population of roughly 1.2 million, at his timber store. “The situation is not good,” Mr. Yaseen, 75, said. “We are dealing with 18 lawsuits relating to the old mosque. The Hindus want to demolish it indirectly by starting their own worship there.” Increasingly, he said, Muslims felt like second-class citizens.

“Every day, we are feeling all kinds of attacks, and our identity is being diminished,” he said. “India’s secular character is being dented. It still exists in our Constitution, but in practice, it is dented, and the government is silent.”

This denting has taken several forms under Mr. Modi. Shashi Tharoor, a leading member of the opposition Congress Party that ruled India for most of the time since independence, suggested to me that “institutionalized bigotry” had taken hold.

A number of lynchings and demolitions of Muslim homes, the imprisonment of Muslim and other journalists critical of Mr. Modi, and the emasculation of independent courts have fanned fears of what Mr. Raghavan, the historian, called “a truly discriminatory regime, with its risk of radicalization.”

As I spoke to Mr. Yaseen, I noticed a man with an automatic rifle seated a few yards to his left. Clearly a Hindu, with a tilak in the middle of his forehead, he took some interest in the conversation.

Who, I asked, is this man with a rifle?

“He is my guard, appointed a couple of months ago by the district administration to protect me, given the tension over the mosque,” Mr. Yaseen said.

The guard was a police officer named Anurag Mishra. I asked him how he felt about his job. “I am standing here to protect a fellow human being,” he said. “My religion does not really matter. Nor does his. My superiors told me to do the job.”

Mr. Yaseen said that he was happy to have a Hindu protecting him, even if “I trust in God, not in the guard.”

That one Indian citizen protects another — a Hindu police officer with a rifle safeguarding a Muslim community leader from potential Hindu attack — was at once reassuring, in that it suggested secular, democratic, pluralistic India would not go quietly; and alarming, in that it was necessary at all.

At the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, in November, Indian diplomacy played an important role in finding compromise language after several Western countries had pressed for harsh criticism of Russia over Ukraine or even for Moscow’s ouster from the forum. The phrase, “Today’s era must not be of war,” in the leaders’ declaration, and the reference to “diplomacy and dialogue,” were a reprise of Mr. Modi’s words to Mr. Putin in September.

Could India, with its ties to Russia, mediate a cease-fire in Ukraine, or even a peace settlement? Mr. Jaishankar, the foreign minister, was skeptical. “The parties involved have to reach a certain situation and a certain mind-set,” he said.

And when will the war end? “I wouldn’t even hazard an opinion,” he said.

Still, India wants to be a bridge power in the world birthed by the pandemic and by the war in Ukraine.

It believes that the interconnectedness of today’s world outweighs the pull of fragmentation and makes a nonsense of talk of a renewed Cold War. If a period of disorder seems inevitable as Western power declines, it will most likely be tempered by economic interdependence, the Indian argument goes.

With inequality worsening, food security worsening, energy security worsening, and climate change accelerating, more countries are asking what answers the post-1945 Western-dominated order can provide. India, it seems, believes it can be a broker, bridging East-West and North-South divisions.

“I would argue that generally in the history of India, India has had a much more peaceful, productive relationship with the world than, for example, Europe has had,” Mr. Jaishankar said. “Europe has been very expansionist, which is why we had the period of imperialism and colonialism. But in India, despite being subjected to colonialism for two centuries, there’s no animus against the world, no anger. It is a very open society.”

It is also situated between two hostile powers, Pakistan and China.

In December, there was another skirmish at the 2,100-mile disputed Chinese-Indian border. Nobody was killed, unlike in 2020, when at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers died. But tensions remain high. “The relationship is very fraught,” Mr. Jaishankar said.

Escalation at the border is possible at any moment, but it appears unlikely that India can count on Russia, given Moscow’s growing economic and military dependence on China. That makes India’s strategic relationship with the West critical.

In the light of the war in Ukraine, however, each party is adjusting to the fact that the other will pick and choose its principles.

“Ukraine is certainly not seen here as something with a clear moral tale to tell,” Ms. Roy, the novelist, said. “When brown or Black people get bombed or shocked-and-awed, it does not matter, but with white people it is supposed to be different.”

India is in a delicate position. In the face of American criticism, the country chose to take part this year in Russian military exercises that included units from China. At the same time, India is part of a four-nation coalition known as the Quad that includes the United States, Japan and Australia and works for a “free and open Indo-Pacific.”

This is Indian multi-alignment at work. The Ukraine war has only reinforced New Delhi’s commitment to this course. Washington has worked hard over many years to make India Asia’s democratic counterbalance to President Xi Jinping’s authoritarian China. But the world, as seen from India, is too complex for such binary options.

If the Biden administration has been unhappy with India’s business-as-usual approach to Mr. Putin since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it has also been accepting of it — American realpolitik, as China rises, demands that Mr. Modi not be alienated.

At the end of my stay, I traveled down to Chennai on the southeastern coast.

The atmosphere is softer there. The economy is booming. The electronics manufacturer Foxconn is rapidly expanding production capacity for Apple devices, building a hostel for 60,000 workers on a 20-acre site near the city.

“The great mass of Indians are awakening to the fact that they don’t need the ideology of the West and that we can set our own path — and Modi deserves credit for that,” Venky Naik, a retired businessman, said.

I went to a concert where a musician played haunting songs and spoke of “renewing your auspiciousness every day.” There I ran into Mukund Padmanabhan, a former editor of The Hindu newspaper and now a professor of public practice at the newly established Krea University, north of Chennai.

“I do not believe Modi can marshal Hinduism into a monolithic nationalist force,” he said. “There are thousands of Gods, and you don’t have to believe in any of them. There is no single or unique way.”

He gestured toward the mixed crowd of Hindus and Muslims at the concert. “People don’t like to talk about the project of Gandhi and Nehru, which was to bring everyone along and go forward, but it happened, and it is part of our truth, part of the indelible Indian palimpsest.”

Hari Kumar contributed reporting from New Delhi.

Roger Cohen is the Paris bureau chief of The Times. He was a columnist from 2009 to 2020. He has worked for The Times for more than 30 years and has served as a foreign correspondent and foreign editor. Raised in South Africa and Britain, he is a naturalized American. @NYTimesCohen

MY THOUGHTS

India is everything Japan isn't. It is historically multiracial, maintained or supports a caste system that accepts a poor life for some unlike the socialist healthcare system of Nippon, Japan has more usa debt than any other country while India does public business with a smile to USA's modern enemy in media, russia. 
Like CHina with the Ugyars, India with its Muslims , seems to be on a quest to reduce the islamic footprint in the country or at least contain it, while both do large business with islamic strict saudi arabia/iran/qatar or et cetera. so, India is correct, Asia is complex and if Asia is leading the future in humanity then dichotomies are no longer valid, these are complex times coming in the future of the alignments in humanity. 
I do think that india's immigrant community in england/usa or other will have a huge role in the complexity their prime minister speaks of in the future. 

Article Link
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/31/world/asia/india-ukraine-russia.html
 

 

Speaker Kevin McCarthy said this week that Republicans would use their leverage, including the need to raise the U.S. debt limit later this year, to corral spending.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

U.S. Deficit Fell to $1.4 Trillion in 2022
The deficit was down from $2.6 trillion a year earlier, as pandemic emergency spending slowed, the economy reopened and tax revenue rose. The new figures come as spending fights loom in a divided Congress.

By Alan Rappeport and Jim Tankersley
Jan. 12, 2023
WASHINGTON — The federal budget deficit fell to $1.4 trillion for the 2022 calendar year, down from $2.6 trillion a year ago, as pandemic emergency spending slowed, the economy reopened and tax revenue rose, according to the Treasury Department.

While the annual gap between what the nation spends and what it takes in narrowed, the monthly deficit for December 2022 widened compared with a year ago, suggesting that the deficit will most likely grow again in the year to come. The federal government recorded an $85 billion shortfall last month, up from a $21 billion deficit in December 2021.

The figures released on Thursday come at a moment of heightened attention on the nation’s finances, with Republicans, who now control the House, pledging to push for deep spending cuts and slash the national debt. Despite the smaller annual shortfall, America’s long-term fiscal picture has darkened somewhat in the last year. The national debt topped $31 trillion for the first time in 2022 and interest rates are rising, increasing the amount of money the United States must pay to investors who buy its debt.

Net interest costs have risen by 41 percent over the past calendar year, the data showed. The Peterson Foundation, which advocates debt reduction, reported on Thursday that the jump was larger than the biggest increase in interest costs in any single fiscal year, dating back to 1962.

Republicans have said repeatedly that they will make balancing the federal budget over the course of a decade and reducing the national debt a central focus of their economic agenda this year. They say large deficits under President Biden have contributed to high inflation, which hit a 40-year peak last summer but has eased in recent months. The Labor Department reported on Thursday that prices receded slightly in December.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy said this week that Republicans would use their leverage, including the need to raise the country’s debt limit this year, to corral spending.

“One of the greatest threats we have to this nation is our debt,” Mr. McCarthy said on Fox News. “It makes us weak in every place that we can.”

But Republicans have also prioritized policies this month that would add to deficits. The House passed legislation this week that would rescind much of the $80 billion that was allocated to the Internal Revenue Service last year to beef up its enforcement capacity. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that the Republican bill to cut the money would actually increase the deficit by $114 billion through 2032.

Mr. Biden said on Thursday that he would veto such legislation and assailed Republicans for backing a measure that would add to the deficit and make it easier for the wealthy to cheat on their taxes by cutting the I.R.S. enforcement budget. He has repeatedly said he will not negotiate with Republicans on the debt ceiling and will insist that lawmakers raise the limit with no strings attached.

“I was disappointed that the very first bill the Republicans in the House of Representatives passed would help wealthy people and big corporations cheat on their taxes at the expense of ordinary, middle-class taxpayers,” Mr. Biden told reporters at the end of remarks about inflation and the economy. “And it would add $114 billion to the deficit. Their very first bill.”

The president and his aides have said he is open to working with Republicans to reduce the deficit by raising taxes on high earners and corporations — proposals that Republican lawmakers have roundly rejected.

Budget watchdog groups that advocate fiscal restraint have called on lawmakers to enact policies that will stabilize the debt.

“We should not be borrowing $4 billion a day, an apparent debt addiction that is harmful to the economy and the budget,” said Maya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “We hear a lot of talk about fiscal responsibility, but very little action.”

Ms. MacGuineas and other fiscal hawks have also attacked House Republicans over their debt limit threats, saying that they risk economic calamity — and that Republicans’ vow to balance the budget over 10 years without raising taxes is both politically unfeasible and economically inadvisable.

Mr. Biden has claimed credit for the decline in the budget deficit last year, but it was in large part the result of Congress forgoing another round of pandemic stimulus spending like the $1.9 trillion economic aid package Mr. Biden signed early in 2021. The president has contended that such spending, and other efforts by his administration to fuel economic growth in the recovery from pandemic recession, contributed to stronger-than-expected tax receipts in 2022, helping to lower the deficit.

But administration officials have also predicted that the deficit is set to rise again this year. In an August update to the president’s budget proposal for the 2023 fiscal year, White House economists predicted that the deficit would grow by about 30 percent from the 2022 to 2023 fiscal years. They forecast further increases in the deficit in each of the two years after that.

Alan Rappeport is an economic policy reporter, based in Washington. He covers the Treasury Department and writes about taxes, trade and fiscal matters. He previously worked for The Financial Times and The Economist. @arappeport

Jim Tankersley is a White House correspondent with a focus on economic policy. He has written for more than a decade in Washington about the decline of opportunity for American workers, and is the author of "The Riches of This Land: The Untold, True Story of America's Middle Class." @jimtankersley

Article URL
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/12/business/us-deficit-falls-2022.html

MY THOUGHTS
If I owed 31 trillion dollars ... anyway the two questions are simple
1) can the usa pay back the debt?
2) what will happen if a country that is owed wants to collect?

1) the answer is no. The reasons why are simple. The USA won the cold war by outspending russia in its soviet form. That is where the culture of selling debt comes from. The Japanese are owed over a trillion dollars. But what does the debt really come from?
The USA has a problem. China+ India+ Russia , together have a larger populace than the remainder in humanity and each country is militaristically an opponent to the USA, in one way or the other. Most of the other countries in humanity are satraps to the USA. A minority like North Korea/Cuba or similar are oppressed. 
But the cost of the USA's satraps are expensive, and since Russia China India will not become England Japan Taiwan outside of war, the usa has to finance until the war finally begins 
About Japan < https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2202&type=status > 

2) Nothing and thus the problem. The USA military is the reason why no one will get what they are owed from the usa and why the usa has an unlimited debt value. Seven warship fleets/hundreds of thousand of nuclear missiles/satellite arrays/submarine fleets/thousands to millions of agents in the cia/fbi/nsa/ or similar set of organizations. 
THe USA military in completion is simply an expensive beast that must be maintained to allow the USA to keep gaining debt.
About India < https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2203&type=status >

In conclusion, The USA has been poorly run since the second phase of world war two. Many say how can you say that? but the numbers are true.
Immigrants historically are a financial drain, this is historic fact anywhere in humanity. Why are immigrants drains? immigrants are human beings who need food, water, shelter, and more. All of those things come at a price. Thus if immigrants get it, some already in the country will not. I am not suggesting immigrants take everything away from people already in any country. They do not. But immigrants do present a drain on any country historically.
The financial firms in the USA have fled the labor market in the usa to keep low wage, but now their industries can't afford higher wage if they are to come to the usa. 
The USA can only add to its debt and it works in the trillions every year. 
Thirty one trillion and counting is how the USA has paid for itself and its allies. And it is the prepayment to a war that is inevitable in the future, i argue near future. And the next global war will use nuclear weapons which is honest since the last global  war ended with nuclear weapons. 

 

IN AMENDMENT
two prior articles

 

 
President Biden said on Friday that the federal budget deficit fell to $1.4 trillion.Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

Federal Budget Deficit Fell to $1.4 Trillion as Pandemic Spending Eased
The gap between what the government borrows and what it spends narrowed amid less spending and higher tax receipts.

By Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Alan Rappeport
Oct. 21, 2022
WASHINGTON — The federal budget deficit fell to $1.4 trillion for the 2022 fiscal year, from $2.8 trillion a year ago, a reduction driven primarily by the winding down of pandemic emergency spending and a surge in tax receipts, according to the Treasury Department.

President Biden trumpeted the deficit reduction on Friday morning, saying the fact that it was cut roughly in half was evidence that his economic policies were working. With soaring inflation as one of the top concerns among voters ahead of tight congressional elections, Mr. Biden has often cited a shrinking budget deficit as a way to bring down rising costs.

“Today we have further proof that we’re rebuilding the economy in a responsible way,” Mr. Biden said during his remarks from the White House. “We’re going from historically strong economic recovery to a steady and stable growth while reducing the deficit.”

Mr. Biden seized on the moment to also portray the November congressional elections as not a referendum on his administration but a “choice” between his economic agenda and the policies that he said a Republican-controlled Congress would put in effect. He said Republicans would cut Social Security benefits, increase the deficit and undo his efforts to lower prescription drug prices.

“It’s mega-MAGA trickle down,” Mr. Biden said. He blamed Republicans for fueling the deficit during the Trump administration with large tax cuts. “The kind of policies that have failed the country before, and it’ll fail it again,” he said.

Deficit hawks were quick to attribute the deficit reduction under Mr. Biden to the phasing-out of pandemic relief spending, including the president’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. And they warned that Mr. Biden’s plans to forgive certain amounts of student debt would weigh heavily on the nation’s finances going forward.

“In fact, the deficit would have been almost $400 billion lower had the Biden administration not decided to enact an inflationary, costly and regressive student debt cancellation plan in August,” Maya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which argues for deficit relief, said in a statement. “It should be no surprise that the Federal Reserve is having a hard time getting inflation under control when fiscal policymakers keep making their job even harder with more borrowing.”

Republicans said Mr. Biden was misleading Americans about the deficit as he tried to embrace the mantle of fiscal responsibility and argued that the president’s policies had fanned inflation.

“President Biden is ignoring the facts about his own spending to fit his political narrative,” Representative Jason Smith, a Republican from Missouri, said on Twitter. “He says deficits are going down because of his policies, but in reality he’s spending more and fueling higher prices.”

Mr. Smith added that deficits were higher than projected because Democrats passed such an expensive stimulus package last year.

The national debt in the United States continues to be unsustainable in the long term. Treasury Department figures released this month revealed that America’s gross national debt exceeded $31 trillion for the first time, a milestone that the Biden administration did not observe with any fanfare.

While the deficit’s decline was primarily driven by reduced Covid spending, the economic rebound from the depths of the pandemic also gave the government’s coffers a boost, as corporate tax revenue came in faster than expected. A robust labor market and rising wages, which have struggled to keep up with inflation, also resulted in an increase in individual income tax receipts.

When measured against the total economic output of the United States, the federal budget deficit amounted to 5.5 percent of gross domestic product.

The federal government continued to spend more than it earned in the 2022 fiscal year and to borrow money at a fast clip. Total federal borrowing increased by $2 trillion to $24.3 trillion total, partly driven by additional borrowing to finance the federal budget deficit. The U.S. government pays interest to its bondholders, and as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, those costs are rising.

Interest on the public debt increased 28 percent from last year and is expected to continue growing as the Fed raises rates. Higher rates could add an additional $1 trillion to what the federal government spends on interest payments this decade, according to estimates from the Peterson Foundation. That is on top of the record $8.1 trillion in debt costs that the Congressional Budget Office projected in May.

Still, the administration portrayed the 2022 deficit figures as a sign that the economy was strong and that the White House was focused on improving America’s “fiscal health.”

“Today’s joint budget statement provides further evidence of our historic economic recovery, driven by our vaccination effort and the American Rescue Plan,” said Janet L. Yellen, the Treasury secretary. “It also demonstrates President Biden’s commitment to strengthening our nation’s fiscal health.”

Even as some Democrats, as well as Ms. Yellen, have called for the statutory debt limit to be abolished to carry out congressionally authorized government spending, Mr. Biden said such a move would be “irresponsible.”

But the president, citing the reduced deficit and last month’s streak of gas price declines, said he believed the recent economic outlook of the United States would give Democrats an edge in the midterm elections. A New York Times/Siena College poll this month found Republicans had a slight edge with the share of likely voters who said economic concerns were the most important issues facing America, leaping since July to 44 percent from 36 percent.

“I think that we’re going to see one more shift back to our side,” Mr. Biden said. “Let me tell you why I think that. We are starting to see some of the good news on the economy.”

Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent covering a range of domestic and international issues in the Biden White House, including homeland security and extremism. He joined The Times in 2019 as the homeland security correspondent. @KannoYoungs

Alan Rappeport is an economic policy reporter, based in Washington. He covers the Treasury Department and writes about taxes, trade and fiscal matters. He previously worked for The Financial Times and The Economist. @arappeport

What is the debt ceiling? The debt ceiling, also called the debt limit, is a cap on the total amount of money that the federal government is authorized to borrow via U.S. Treasury securities, such as bills and savings bonds, to fulfill its financial obligations. Because the United States runs budget deficits, it must borrow huge sums of money to pay its bills.
When will the debt limit be breached? Congress passed legislation in December 2021 to raise the limit by $2.5 trillion and stave off the threat of default until 2023. On Jan. 13, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen warned that she expected the United States to hit the limit on Jan. 19 and that, unless the statutory cap were raised, her powers to delay a default could be exhausted by early June.
Why is there a limit on U.S. borrowing? According to the Constitution, Congress must authorize borrowing. The debt limit was instituted in the early 20th century so that the Treasury would not need to ask for permission each time it had to issue debt to pay bills.
What would happen if the debt limit was hit? Breaching the debt limit would lead to a first-ever default for the United States, creating financial chaos in the global economy. It would also force American officials to choose between continuing assistance like Social Security checks and paying interest on the country’s debt.

Article URL
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/21/us/politics/federal-budget-deficit.html

 

The federal government continued to pump huge sums of money into the economy to help workers and businesses cope with the pandemic.Credit...Emily Elconin for The New York Times

The U.S. budget deficit hit a record $1.7 trillion in the first half of the fiscal year.
The United States is doling out twice as much money as it takes in.

By Alan Rappeport
Published April 12, 2021
Updated Oct. 22, 2021
The United States budget deficit grew to a record $1.7 trillion in the six months since October, as the federal government continued to pump huge sums of money into the economy to help workers and businesses cope with the pandemic.

The figure comes in the wake of a $1.9 trillion economic rescue package that Congress passed in March and as the Biden administration and Democrats are considering spending trillions of dollars more on a sweeping legislative package to overhaul the nation’s infrastructure.

Federal spending is far outpacing revenue — the United States is doling out twice as much money as it takes in, having spent a record $3.4 trillion so far this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, and collected just $1.7 trillion in tax revenue.

The spending continued at a record clip in March, when the government spent $927 billion, the highest total on record for any March and the third highest total of any month to date. The deficit for March was $660 billion.

A Treasury official said that the data showed a substantial increase from a year ago, when the pandemic was just setting in and the economy was starting to shed jobs. The budget deficit, which is the gap between what the government spends and what it takes in, is expected to continue to swell in the coming months as money from the stimulus bill continues to roll out.

In the first six months of the fiscal year, spending was up sharply for nutrition assistance programs, economic impact payments and expanded jobless benefits. Money for small-business loans made through the Paycheck Protection Program and funds for education and health providers also contributed to the record outlays.

Economic policymakers have said that the budget shortfall is a long-term concern but that it is manageable now.

“The U.S. federal budget is on an unsustainable path,” Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said on CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday. “Meaning the debt is growing faster than the economy. And that’s kind of unsustainable in the long run.”

He added: “That doesn’t mean debt is at an unsustainable level today. It’s not. We can service the debt we have.”

Alan Rappeport is an economic policy reporter, based in Washington. He covers the Treasury Department and writes about taxes, trade and fiscal matters. He previously worked for The Financial Times and The Economist. @arappeport

Article URL
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/business/united-states-budget-deficit.html
 

 

I am Vanessa Guillen

My thoughts are after the transcript

 

Metrofocus video

https://www.thirteen.org/metrofocus/2023/01/metrofocus-january-3-2023-08ecys/

Full Documentary

https://www.univision.com/especiales/noticias/2022/i-am-vanessa-guillen

 

DESCRIPTION

 

In April 2020, U.S. Army Spc. Vanessa Guillén was murdered after reporting her assault that took place at Fort Hood in Texas.  In late November 2022, Cecily Aguilar, the only person charged in connection with Vanessa’s murder, pled guilty to four counts, including accessory to murder after the fact, and now faces up to 30 years in prison.  While this decision is a victory for Vanessa’s family, the problem of sexual harassment and assault, as well as retaliation for those reporting these crimes, remains a major issue in our armed forces.  A documentary, available to stream on Univision.com called #IamVanessaGuillen, covers the issue of sexual violence in our military and tells Vanessa’s story, including how her situation inspired countless others to share their own stories of abuse and push for change in the military.  Joining us to discuss the film are producer and director Andrea Patiño Contreras; and Karina López, a military sexual assault survivor.

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

 TONIGHT, A MAJOR UPDATE ON THE MURDER OF VANESSA GUILLEN, THE ARMY SOLDIER WHOSE DEATH INSPIRED THOUSANDS TO SHARE THEIR STORY OF THE SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN THE MILITARY.

WE REVISIT, THE CASE, THE DOCUMENTARY TELLING THE STORY.

'METROFOCUS' STARTS RIGHT NOW.

♪

> THIS IS 'METROFOCUS,' WITH RAFAEL PI ROMAN, JACK FORD, AND JENNA FLANAGAN.

> 'METROFOCUS' IS MADE POSSIBLE BY -- SUE AND EDGAR WACHENHEIM III, THE PETER G. PETERSON AND JOAN GANZ COONEY FUND, BERNARD AND DENISE SCHWARTZ, BARBARA HOPE ZUCKERBERG, THE AMBROSE MONELL FOUNDATION.

AND BY --

> GOOD EVENING, AND WELCOME TO 'METROFOCUS.'

I'M JENNA FLANAGAN.

JUST A FEW MONTHS AGO WE BROUGHT TO YOU POWERFUL STORY OF VANESSA GUILLEN, THE U.S. ARMY SOLDIER MURDERED AFTER REPORTING THE SEXUAL HARASSMENT SHE ENDURED AT FT. HOOD IN TEXAS.

HER DEATH INSPIRED COUNTLESS OTHERS TO SHARE THEIR STORY OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND PUSH FOR CHANGE IN THE MILITARY.

PROSECUTORS SAY GUILLEN'S KILLER TOOK HIS OWN LIFE BEFORE HE COULD BE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE.

ONLY ONE PERSON, THE KILLER'S GIRLFRIEND, WAS CHARGED WITH A CRIME IN THIS CASE E CECILY AGUILAR.

SHE ADMITTED TO HELPING DISPOSE OF GUILLEN'S BODY.

SHE FACES UP TO 30 YEARS IN PRISON.

WHILE THIS IS A VICTORY FOR VANESSA'S FAMILY, THE PROBLEM OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND ASSAULT AS WELL AS RETALIATION FOR THOSE REPORTING THESE CRIMES REMAINS A MAJOR PROBLEM AND ISSUE IN OUR ARMED FORCES.

THE DOCUMENTARY ' #I AM VANESSA GUILLEN' EXAMINES THESE ISSUES AND IS STREAMING ON UNIVISION.COM.

HERE'S A QUICK LOOK FOLLOWED BY MY INTERVIEW WITH THE FILM'S DIRECTOR AND ONE THOSE IN THE FILM.

IT WAS A VERY NERVOUS VOICE.

SHE SAID SOMETHING HAPPENED AND NO ONE WAS BELIEVING HER.

SHE DID NOT KNOW, AND SHE WAS CON CON CON CONTEMPLATING HURTING HERSELF.

I DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO FEEL SAFE.

I DIDN'T KNOW ANYTHING.

A PART OF ME DIED BECAUSE SOMEBODY DECIDED TO DO THIS TO ME, AND NOBODY WANTED TO LISTEN.

I REPORTED IT AND I FOUGHT AND I'VE GONE THROUGH THE TRAUMA AND THE RETALIATION THAT I FACED AND NOW YOU HAVE A MISSING SOLDIER THAT WAS HARASSED.

I WROTE MY STORY AND PUT MY PICTURE BESIDES VANESSA BECAUSE I WAS VANESSA.

I AM VANESSA.

I AM VANESSA GUILLEN IS A HASHTAG GOING VIRAL HIGHLIGHTING SEXUAL ASSAULT AND HARASMENT WITHIN THE MILITARY.

AT FT. HOOD, A SOLDIER GONE MISSING.

THEY CREATED AN ENVIRONMENT THAT CONTRIBUTED TO SEXUAL ASSAULT, EVEN MURDER.

THE ENVIRONMENT AT FT. HOOD WAS PERMISSIVE.

WE'RE JUST LIKE ANY ORGANIZATION.

WE'RE ALL ABOUT MAKING OURSELF BETTER.

BECAUSE THE MESSAGE AND CULTURE IN THE MILITARY HAS BEEN CLEAR -- SHUT UP, SUCK IT UP, AND DON'T ROCK THE BOAT.

IN THE CIVILIAN WORLD, PROSECUTORS MAKE THE DECISION TO PROSECUTE, AND THE MILITARY NONLAWYER COMMANDERS MAKE THAT DECISION.

90% OF SEX OFFENDER IN THE MILITARY WILL NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE.

AFTER 246 YEART TIME FOR CONGRESS TO GIVE THE MEN AND WOMEN SERVING OUR NATION A JUSTICE SYSTEM WORTHY OF SACRIFICES.

YOU MEMBERS OF CONGRESS, YOU NEED TO PASS THIS LEGISLATION.

JUSTICE!

WHEN DO WE WANT IT?

NOW!

I REALLY FEEL LIKE WE'RE ON THE VERGE OF SUCCESS.

WE'RE GOING TO REFORM THIS SYSTEM AND WE'RE GOING TO GET TO A BETTER PLACE.

THE WOMEN VETERANS YOU ENCOUNTER HAVE THE ABILITY TO ADAPT AND OVERCOME BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT WE HAVE BEEN TAUGHT.

BUT HERE'S THE THING -- YOU'VE CREATED A WOMAN WHO IS UNSTOPPABLE.

JOINING ME NOW TO DISCUSS THIS POWERFUL NEW DOCUMENTARY IS THE FILM'S DIRECTOR AND PRODUCER, ANDREA CONTRAERAS, THANK YOU FOR JOINING US.

I'D LIKE TO INTRODUCE KARINA LOPEZ, A SURVEVETERAN AND SURVI THE SEXUAL ASSAULT.

SHE'S THE CREATOR OF THE VIRAL HASHTAG #I AM VANESSA GUILLEN, WHICH INSPIRED THE FILM'S TITLE.

LADIES, THANK YOU TO P 'METROFOCUS.'

THANK YOU FOR HAVING US.

ABSOLUTELY.

I WANT TO START BY ASKING ANDREA, YOU, THE QUESTION I ASK ALL DIRECTORS, AND THAT WAS WHAT MOTIVATED TO YOU CREATE THIS DOCUMENTARY.

WHAT WAS, YOU FELT, THE NARRATIVE THAT WAS NOT ALREADY OUT THERE?

SO, DURING 2020, OUR TEAM AT UNIVISION HAD BEEN COVERING THE DISAPPEARANCE AND MURDER OF VANESSA GUILLEN, WHO WENT MISSING AT THE FT. HOOD BASE IN APRIL OF 2020, AND LATER HER BODY WAS FOUND.

DURING THAT REPORTING, THE FALLING ONES, WE HEARD FROM A COUPLE OF CASES, KARINA INCLUDED.

SHE REACHED OUT TO US TELLING US HER STORY, AND AT THAT POINT IN THE FALL OF 2020, WE HEARD FROM HER, AND IN DECEMBER OF 2020, I DECIDED TO FLY DOWN TO MEET HER.

AND ONCE WE MET, I KNEW RIGHT AWAY THAT WE -- THERE WAS A REALLY IMPORTANT STORY TO BE TOLD.

I WAS VERY STRUCK BY KARINA'S -- I TELL HER THIS ALL THE TIME -- BY HER INCREDIBLE ABILITY TO ARTICULATE HER FEELINGS AND REALLY EXPLAIN TO ME WHAT THAT WAS THROUGH AND KIND OF VERY COMPLEX -- YOU KNOW, IT'S A VERY TRAGIC SITUATION, BUT ALSO HAS REALLY DEEP AND GRAVE CONSEQUENCES FOR MENTAL HEALTH, YOU KNOW, AND KARINA, THE WAY SHE ARTICULATED THAT TO ME STRUCK ME.

SO I CAME BACK FROM THAT TRIP AND KNEW THERE WAS A REALLY IMPORTANT STORY TO TELL, NOT JUST ABOUT SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND THE LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY, BUT ALSO THE HUGE IMPACT AND LACK OF JUSTICE HAS ON SURVIVES.

THAT'S WHY I WANTED TO TELL THIS STORY.

FRONT AND SENTER THE STORY OF SUR SURVIVES.

KARINA IS THE MAIN BUT THERE'S ALSO OTHERS.

AND ALSO TELL THE STORY OF THE LEGISLATIVE CHANGES THAT TOOK PLACE BECAUSE OF VANESSA'S CASE.

IN PART BECAUSE OF KARINA'S HASHTAG, MANY CAME FORWARD.

MANY CHANGES TOOK PLACE.

THERE'S SO MUCH MORE TO DO, BUT SOME THINGS HAPPENED THAT WERE PRISS UNPRECEDENTED.

KARINA, I WANT TO BRING YOU IN AND GET YOUR TAKE ON WHAT WAS ABOUT ABOUT VANESSA'S STORY THAT RESONATED AND MADE IT CLEAR NOW IS THE TIME TO SPEAK UP?

I THINK WHEN I ORIGINALLY HEARD ABOUT HER CASE ALL I HAD KNOWN IS SHE WAS MISSING AND THE DAYS KEPT GOING WHERE YOU WOULD SEE HER FACE AND YOU WOULDN'T -- THERE WASN'T REALLY AN EXPLANATION AS TO WHY SHE WAS MISSING.

WHEN I TWRAEACTUALLY LOOKED UP STORY, SO MANY THINGS DIDN'T MAKE SENSE.

I WAS LIKE, THERE HAS TO BE MORE COVERAGE.

A COUPLE DAYS INTO IT I REALIZED I DIDN'T LOOK AT THE SPANISH SECTION OF THE NEWS AND MAYBE I'LL FIND SOMETHING THERE, AND THAT'S WHEN I -- WHEN I HEARD HER MOM SAY THAT SHE WAS SEXUALLY HARASSED AND NOW SHE'S MISSING AND SHE WANTS ANSWERS.

AND TO ME IT FELT LIKE A TON OF BRICKS JUST FELL ON TOP OF ME BECAUSE THIS WASN'T BEING SAID, YOU KNOW, IN THE ENGLISH MEDIA.

AND IT JUST MADE ME SO ANGRY.

I REMEMBER JUST SO MANY EMOTIONS, AND I STARTED, YOU KNOW, LOOKING AT EVERYBODY.

I STARTED TRYING TO GET IN TOUCH WITH THE RIGHT PEOPLE THAT COULD LISTEN AND COULD UNDERSTAND THAT THIS -- YOU KNOW, WHAT HAPPENED TO HER WAS NOT AN INDIVIDUAL THING.

IT HAPPENED ALL OF THE TIME AND, YOU KNOW, MORE SPECIFICALLY, MY CASE AND HOW I HAD JUST LEFT AND I WAS FORCED OUT OF MY CAREER BECAUSE I WAS SPEAKING UP ON THIS, AND IT HAD GONE SO BAD AND CHAOTIC THAT, YOU KNOW, CONGRESS HAD TO GET INVOLVED IN MY CASE.

SO IT WAS ONE OF THOSE THINGS THAT, YOU KNOW, I WAS ANGRY, I WAS SENDING, YOU KNOW, THE FAMILY -- MORE SPECIFICALLY THE SISTERS, YOU KNOW, MY STORE, AND IT JUST, YOU KNOW, WASN'T REACHING THEM, WHICH I UNDERSTAND, YOU KNOW, WHY.

THERE WAS PROBABLY SO MANY MESSAGES COMING IN THERE IN BOXES AND TO THEM.

AND YOU KNOW, I -- I WAS LIKE, OKAY, I'M GOING TO PUT IT ON FACEBOOK, AND I'M GOING TO COME FORWARD AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN IT'S OUT THERE.

YOU KNOW, BECAUSE THIS ISN'T -- YOU KNOW, MANY PEOPLE DON'T UNDERSTAND -- ESPECIALLY CIVILIANS DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY YOU CAN'T COME FORWARD, AND YOU THINK THAT WHEN SOMETHING TRAUMATIC HAPPENS LIKE THAT THAT YOU'RE SAFE IF YOU GO TO THE RIGHT PEOPLE.

HOWEVER, THAT'S REALLY NOT THE CASE.

YOU CAN HAVE ALL THE RIGHT PEOPLE, AND THOSE RIGHT PEOPLE, THOSE DOORS ARE SHUT ON THEM TO PROTECT YOU.

AND THE RETALIATION THAT COMES IS -- IS -- IS HORRIFYING SO, YOU MIGHT AS WELL JUST STAY QUIET AND JUST ENDURE EVERYTHING IN SILENCE.

YOU KNOW, IT'S -- IT'S A VERY SCARY THING TO GO THROUGH, AND I THINK PEOPLE NEEDED TO UNDERSTAND THAT AND SEE THAT MORE SPECIFICALLY THROUGH MY STORY, BECAUSE I CAME FORWARD AND I HAD MOMENTS WHERE, SHOULD I HAVE COME FORWARD?

MAYBE I WOULD STILL HAVE MY CAREER IF I DIDN'T, AND I WOULD JUST GET MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES BEHIND THE SCENES, BEHIND, YOU KNOW -- BEHIND EVERYONE'S BACK AND JUST TOOK CARE OF IT THAT WAY.

YOU KNOW, WHO KNOWS?

ANDREA, I WANT TO GO BACK TO YOU, BECAUSE WE DID SHOW OF COURSE A CLIP FROM THE FILM, AND WE ALWAYS DEFINITELY WANT PEOPLE TO WATCH THE FULL DOCUMENTARY, BUT CAN YOU TELL US, JUST FILL IN FOR PEOPLE WHO MIGHT NOT BE AWARE OF VANESSA'S STORY, WHO WAS SHE, AND WHAT DO WE NOW KNOW HAPPENED TO HER?

YEAH, SO VANESSA WAS A LATINA SOLDIER.

SHE WAS STATIONED AT FT. HOOD IN TEXAS.

SHE STARTED, AND SHE WAS VERY EXCITED TO JOIN THE MILITARY.

HER FAMILY SAYS SHE WAS JUST VERY PROUD TO SERVE.

HER FAMILY IS AN IMMIGRANT FAMILY.

THEY'RE MEXICANS, OF MEXICAN DES DESCENT, AND I THINK SHE SAW THIS AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO SERVE HER COUNTRY AND WAS JUST VERY PROUD.

AT SOME POINT, VANESSA CAME HOME AND HER MOM NOTICED SHE WAS A LITTLE OFF, WASN'T SLEEPING, JUST SEEMED REALLY OFF TO HER, AND WHEN SHE ASKED HER WHAT WAS HAPPENING, VANESSA WOULDN'T TELL HER.

EVENTUALLY SHE TOLD HER SHE WAS BEING SEXUALLY HARASSED BY A SARGENT, BUT SHE DIDN'T WANT TO REPORT IT BECAUSE SHE WAS AFRAID OF RETALIATION.

FAST FORWARD A FEW MONTHS, AND VANESSA GOES MISSING IN APRIL OF 2020.

INITIALLY -- YOU KNOW, THE FAMILY KNEW RIGHT AWAY THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THAT, BECAUSE THEY WERE A VERY TIGHT KNIT FAMILY AND NOT HEARING FROM VANESSA WAS JUST REALLY OFF TO THEM.

THEY WENT TO THE BASE.

THEY WERE NOT GETTING A LOT OF ANSWERS.

THEY WERE, YOU KNOW, KIND OF KEPT -- PUSHED AWAY IN SOME WAYS.

BUT THEY WERE VERY, VERY PERSISTENT.

THEY WERE JUST DEMANDING ANSWERS.

AND EVENTUALLY, HER BODY WAS FOUND, AND WE KNOW THAT SHE WAS MURDERED BY SOMEONE IN HER UNIT.

WE KNOW THAT HE WASN'T THE PERSON THAT WAS HARASSING HER NECESSARILY, BUT THERE'S STILL A LOT OF ANSWERS THAT NEED TO BE -- TO BE CLEARED OUT, AND THE FAMILY'S STILL WAITING FOR A LOT OF ANSWERS.

AND THROUGHOUT THAT SEARCH, YOU KNOW, WITH KARINA'S HASHTAG WHEN VANESSA WAS STILL MISSING THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE CAME FORWARD WITH THEIR OWN STORY OF HARASMENT AS WELL.

KARINA, I WANT TO GO BACK AND GET YOU TO EXPLAIN A LITTLE BIT FOR SO MANY OF US WHO ARE CIVILIAN, WHAT IS THAT MILITARY CULTURE LIKE THAT PUSHES, MAYBE COERCES, MAYBE EVEN DEMANDS THAT WOMEN WHO ARE SERVING REMAIN QUIET ON AN ISSUE LIKE THIS?

THAT'S THE QUESTION I GET FROM A LOT OF PEOPLE, AND I THINK -- I DON'T THINK THAT THERE'S A REALLY GOOD ANSWER TO IT.

I THINK, FOR EXAMPLE, BEFORE I JOINED MY FAMILY SAT DOWN AND TALKED TO ME ABOUT WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE A WOMAN AND WORK IN A MALE FILLED INDUSTRY, AND THEN ME AS A MINORITY AS A WOMAN, ESPECIALLY BEING 19 YEARS OLD, BECAUSE I WAS 19 AT THE TIME.

AND THEY WENT THROUGH, YOU KNOW, DIFFERENT THINGS THAT COULD BE ISSUES.

YOU KNOW, THEY TOLD ME THAT I WAS VERY NAIVE, I WAS VERY YOUNG, AND YOU KNOW, THEY WANTED TO MAKE SURE I WAS SET UP FOR SUCCESS WITH KNOWING THINGS LIKE THIS.

I REMEMBER MY FAMILY SHOWED ME THE LIVEINA JOHNSON CASE AND I REMEMBER THINKING, YOU KNOW, THEY'RE STILL FIGHTING FOR THIS.

BUT THAT WAS THE ONLY CASE I REMEMBERED.

BUT THE STATISTICS OF THAT HAPPENING TO ME WERE PRETTY LOW.

HER FAMILY IS STILL FIGHTING FOR ANSWERS.

THEY'RE GOING TO GET THOSE ANSWERS.

I WAS VERY I WAS VERY NAIVE, VERY -- I HAD A LOT OF TRUST IN THE SYSTEM.

I WAS LIKE, I'M GOING TO DO THIS.

I'M GOING THE GO SERVE MY COUNTRY.

I'M SUPEREXCITED ABOUT IT.

THERE'S GOING TO BE A LOT OF OPPORTUNITIES.

I'M NERVOUS.

AND YOU KNOW, I REMEMBER BEING IN BASE, GOING THROUGH I.T., GOING THROUGH THE MILITARY PROCESS.

I REMEMBER JUST HOW MANY FEMALES PULLED ME ASIDE AND GAVE ME ADVICE OR TOLD ME TO STAY AWAY FROM A SPECIFIC PERSON OR, YOU KNOW, JUST SOMETHING THAT KIND OF -- THEY WERE DOING THE BEST THEY COULD TO GIVE ME ADVICE, BUT, YOU KNOW, TO A 19-YEAR-OLD, A 20-YEAR-OLD, YOU'RE JUST LIKE, THAT'S SO WEIRD THAT THAT PERSON HAD TO COME AND TELL ME AND GIVE ME THAT ADVICE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

I REMEMBER HAVING THIS REALLY, YOU KNOW, BEING SEXUALLY HARASSED IN ONE SPECIFIC INCIDENT IN KOREA, AND I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO.

I FELT LIKE I WAS, YOU KNOW, SUFFOCATING AND I WAS BLOCKED INTO A KITCHEN.

AND I REMEMBER GOING TO AN NCO, A FEMALE NCO AND I TOLD HER HOW I FELT BECAUSE I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT I WAS FEELING.

AND SHE TOLD ME -- SHE GAVE ME ADVICE AND SHE WAS LIKE, YOU KNOW -- SHE WAS BACKING ME UP THE FULL TIME AND TOLD ME HOW TO HANDLE SITUATIONS LIKE THAT, AND SHE MADE ME CONFRONT HIM AND TELL HIM THAT WAS UNACCEPTABLE AND JUST STAND UP FOR MYSELF.

SO WHEN THIS HAPPENED ON FT.

HOOD AND I THOUGHT THAT I COULD DO EXACTLY THAT, THAT I WAS SHOWN HOW TO DO IT AND I WOULD GET HELP IN MY SITUATION, AND I WAS INSTEAD REDIRECTED AND GUIDED TO NOT GET THAT HELP AND INSTEAD TO JUST STAY QUIET ABOUT THAT BECAUSE THE BASE DIDN'T -- THE UNIT DIDN'T NEED EYES ON -- OR EXTRA ATTENTION ON THE UNIT.

I KIND OF FELT ASHAMED.

I FELT LIKE I COULDN'T STAND UP FOR MYSELF.

I HAD ALWAYS BEEN THAT 19-YEAR-OLD THAT WAS LIKE, IF THIS EVER HAPPENS I'M GOING TO STAND UP FOR MYSELF, I'M GOING TO FIGHT BACK.

NO ONE'S GOING TO BE ABLE TO DO THAT.

THAT STARTED THAT INNER WAR WITH MYSELF WHERE I DIDN'T -- I FAILED MYSELF, BECAUSE HERE I WAS, YOU KNOW, LETTING THEM WIN AND INTIMIDATE ME AND KEEP ME SILENT, AND I FELT UNSAFE, AND THEN ON TOP OF THAT I DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO -- MY FAMILY MEMBERS WERE THE ONES WHO TOLD ME ALL OF THIS, SO THEN I FELT COMPLETELY SHATTERED, BECAUSE THAT 19-YEAR-OLD GIRL WHO WAS TELLING THEM, I WILL STAND UP AND FIGHT FOR MYSELF AND I'LL DO WHAT'S RIGHT, AND, YOU KNOW, THEY'LL HAVE TO HELP ME.

NOW IT'S THE OPPOSITE.

SO WHEN SOMETHING HAPPENS LIKE THAT, YOU GET -- IT'S THE SUBJECT THAT'S EXTREMELY HEAVY.

SO EVEN IF YOU DO TELL THE RIGHT PEOPLE, THEY DON'T KNOW REALLY HOW TO APPROACH THE SITUATION AND THEN ON TOP OF THAT IF YOU GO TO THE WRONG PEOPLE, THE WRONG PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO YOU ACKNOWLEDGE IT AT ALL.

IT'S YOUR FAULT AND THAT'S IT.

EVEN WHEN I STARTED RECEIVING MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES, I HAD BEEN TOLD IT WAS MY FAULT.

YOU START REALLY BATTLING YOURSELF, AND I THINK ULTIMATELY THAT'S HOW THEY KIND OF WIN, BECAUSE THEY TARGET -- THEY MAKE YOU QUESTION YOURSELF.

YOU'RE NOT QUESTIONING THEM.

IF YOU'RE QUESTIONING THEM YOU'RE LIKE, NO, I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO ME, AND THAT'S WRONG.

BUT ONCE YOU HEAR IT ENOUGH AND YOU'RE IN THAT FRAGILE STATE OF MAYBE THIS WASN'T -- YOU KNOW, MAYBE THIS WASN'T THEIR FAULT.

MAYBE THIS WAS MY FAULT.

WHAT DID I DO WRONG?

YOU'RE RETRACKING AND GOING THROUGH THE PROCESS OF, OKAY, IT HAPPENED HERE, BUT WHAT DID I DO THAT LED ME TO BE PUT INTO THE SITUATION?

WELL, IT'S SOUNDING A LITTLE BIT LIKE PERHAPS ISSUES OF HIERARCHY AND CHAIN OF COMMAND ARE ALSO COMING INTO PLAY WITH YOU AS A 19-YEAR-OLD RECRUIT.

FOR THE NONSERVING CIVILIAN AUDIENCE, JUST VERY QUICKLY CAN YOU JUST LET EVERYBODY KNOW, SO THEY FULLY UNDERSTAND, WHAT EXACT LY IS AN NCO?

THE NCO IS BASICALLY THE -- THEY'RE KNOWN AS THE BACKBONE OF THE ARMY, OR THE MILITARY IN GENERAL.

THEY HAVE SERVED FOR SOME TIME.

THEY'VE GONE THROUGH THE BASIC LEADERSHIP SCHOOLS, AND THEY HAVE THAT RANK.

SO THEY'RE THE ONES THAT ARE PUT IN CHARGE OF THE LOWER ENLISTED SOLDIERS SOME BASICALLY THEY ARE A FORM OF LEADERSHIP.

THEY ARE SOMEONE YOU REPORT TO AND HELP YOU --

OKAY, AND DOES THAT STAND FOR SOMETHING?

I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE PEOPLE ARE LIKE, OH, THAT'S WHAT NCO IS.

YES, NONCOMMISSIONED OFFICER.

MY SECOND QUESTION IS ALSO -- YOU DO KEEP GOING BACK TO YOUR AGE, AND ONE THING I THINK EVERYONE CAN RELATE TO IS BEING A 19-YEAR-OLD AND THINK YOU UNDERSTAND BUT NOT FULLY UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD YOU'RE STEPPING INTO.

HOW LONG AFTER YOU GOT TO FT.

HOOD DID YOUR ASSAULT HAPPEN?

AND I KNOW THAT YOU SORT OF TOUCHED ON IT, BUT AS MUCH AS YOU CAN SHARE, CAN YOU SHARE WITH US WHAT HAPPENED?

YES.

SO I JOINED WHEN I WAS 19, JUST TO CLARIFY, AND I HAD SEEN, YOU KNOW, JUST THE SEXUAL HARASSMENT FROM 19, 20, YOU KNOW, THOSE AGES.

WHEN I WENT TO FT. HOOD I WAS 21 ALREADY, AND I HAD ARRIVED LATE JULY.

SO I WENT THROUGH THE PROCESS OF -- THEY CALL IT -- IT'S BASICALLY FOR CIVILIAN TERMS ONBOARDING WHEN YOU FIRST GET THERE, THEY HAVE TO IN-PROCESS YOU.

AND I REMEMBER SENDING MY MOM A TEXT MESSAGE, RIGHT, THAT FIRST DAY, AND I REMEMBER TELLING HER I FELT LIKE A PIECE OF MEAT.

I REMEMBER TEXTING HER AND TELLING HER I WAS CRYING, BECAUSE SHE WAS LIKE, MAYBE YOU'RE GOING TO LOVE IT.

I WAS LIKE, I DIDN'T WANT TO GO TO TEXAS, BUT WHATEVER.

I'M SO FAR AWAY FROM HOME.

I WANTED TO GO TO FT. BRAGG AND BE CLOSER TO MY FAMILY AFTER BEING AWAY FROM THEM FOR A YEAR.

I'M YOUNG.

I WANT TO BE CLOSE TO MY FAMILY.

THAT FIRST DAY WAS FRUSTRATING FOR ME.

I FELT LIKE EVERY TIME I ASKED A QUESTION THEY WERE SETTING ME UP FOR FAILURE.

THEY THOUGHT IT WAS REALLY FUNNY THAT I WAS ASKING THESE QUESTIQUE QUESTIONS SO I WOULDN'T BREAK ANY RULES BECAUSE THEY WERE GIVING ME THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE ANSWER.

IT WAS LIKE YOU WERE BACKED AGAINST A WALL AND I DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO BELIEVE OR DIDN'T.

THAT WAS EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING.

ON TOP OF THAT IT WAS THE COMMENTS AND THINGS LIKE THAT THEY WOULD MAKE.

THAT WAS BEFORE I GOT TO MY UNIT.

I WAS SEXUAL ASSAULTED IN SEPTEMBER, SO I HAD BEEN THERE TECHNICALLY ONE FULL MONTH AND A COUPLE WEEKS.

BUT ALSO WITH THAT, TOO, YOU KNOW, ONE THING I ALWAYS TELL PEOPLE IS, WE GROW UP WITH OUR PARENTS TELLING US DON'T TALK TO SPRAI STRANGERS, DON'T GET IN THE CAR WITH STRANGERS, BUT IN THE MILITARY, YOU DO WHAT YOU'RE TOLD, SO THERE WERE A LOT OF TIMES THAT I WAS IN A CAR WITH A STRANGER, BECAUSE I -- YOU KNOW, SOMEBODY WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO PICK ME UP DIDN'T SHOW UP, SO THEY SENT SOMEONE ELSE.

SO TECHNICALLY I'M GETTING IN THIS CAR ON A BASE WHERE I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE ANYTHING IS OR WHO ANYONE IS AND THEY'RE DRIVING ME AND IT'S LIKE, OH, I NEVER MET THIS PERSON IN MY LIFE.

SO IT KIND OF GOES INTO THAT KIND OF SITUATION WHERE IT'S LIKE, WE'RE TOLD OUR WHOLE ENTIRE LIVES NOT TO GET INTO CARS WITH STRANGERS AND THINGS LIKE THAT, BUT THEN THAT'S WHAT WE DO IN THE MILITARY.

AND BEING THAT YOUNG AND STILL, YOU KNOW, DOING WHAT YOU'RE TOLD, YOU THINK THAT WHAT YOU'RE BEING TOLD IS LAW AND YOU HAVE TO DO IT.

SO THERE'S A LOT OF INTIMIDATION THAT COMES INTO WHEN YOU'RE TELLING YOUNGER SOLDIERS, HEY, YOU HAVE TO DO THIS OR YOU HAVE TO BE HERE AND IN A LOT OF CASES AND A LOT OF STORIES, THAT, ESPECIALLY FROM THE SURVIVES THAT CAME FORWARD WITH THE HASHTAG, THEY'LL TELL YOU, I WAS DOING WHAT THEY TOLD ME TO DO BECAUSE I THOUGHT THAT'S WHAT WAS EXPECTED FROM ME.

THERE'S A LOT THAT GOES INTO BEING YOUNG.

I HAVE HAD SURVIVES TELL ME THAT THEY WERE 25, 26 EVEN, AND STILL, IT'S THAT -- IT'S JUST WHEN YOU COME INTO THE MILITARY, EVERYTHING IS COMPLETELY BRAND NEW BECAUSE IT'S NOT THE CIVILIAN WORLD.

IT IS ABOUT AGING BUT IT'S THAT INTIMIDATION FACTOR WHERE YOU HAVE SOMEBODY SUPERIOR TO YOU OR TELLING YOU OR GIVING YOU AN ORDER THAT IF YOU DON'T FOLLOW THAT ORDER YOU COULD GET IN TROUBLE.

IT'S ALSO, I DON'T WANT TO MAKE THIS PERSON UPSET, BECAUSE THIS PERSON LEGIT HOLDS ALL OF THE POWER FOR MY CAREER.

MY CAREER PROGRESSION AND MY REPUTATION AS WELL.

BECAUSE IF I DON'T DO THIS, THEN THAT PERSON'S GOING TO GO AND TELL EVERYONE THAT I'M A BAD SOLDIER AND I DON'T LISTEN AND I'M DISRESPECTFUL.

IN MY CASE, YOU SEE THAT WHERE IT'S LIKE, EVERY TIME I WOULD COME ALL OF A SUDDEN SOMETHING WOULD COME OVER MY HEAD AND SAY, YOU WANT TO GO TO I.G.? HERE'S THIS.

WE'RE GOING TO SAY YOU DID THIS.

IT'S LIKE, WAIT A MINUTE, WHY ARE YOU BRINGING THIS UP AT THIS EXACT MOMENT WHEN I'M TRYING TO GET HELP?

IT SILENCES YOU AGAIN AND YOU JUST KEEP GOING ON WITH YOUR LIFE, UNABLE TO LOOK AT YOURSELF IN THE MIRROR AND REALIZE, YOU'RE JUST STUCK.

WELL, ANDREA, I WANT TO BRING YOU BACK IN.

WE ONLY HAVE ABOUT A MINUTE LEFT, BUT YOU DID MENTION ABOUT SOME OF THE LEGISLATIVE CHANGES THAT WERE BEGINNING TO TAKE PLACE.

CAN YOU JUST LET US KNOW WHAT IS POTENTIALLY ON THE TABLE TO HAPPEN TO ADDRESS SOME OF THESE ISSUES?

YEAH.

THE BIGGEST CHANGE THAT HAPPENED LAST YEAR -- ONE OF THE MAIN ISSUES IN THE MILITARY, GOING BACK TO KARINA'S STORY IS THAT BASICALLY THE MILITARY -- YOU KNOW, LIKE, CHECKS THEMSELVES.

YOU HAVE -- IF YOUR CASE IS IN THE CHAIN OF COMMAND, IT'S YOUR COMMANDER WHO DECIDES WHETHER THE CASE OF ASSAULT OR HA HARASSMENT IS PROSECUTED.

CHAIN OF COMMAND IS NONLAWYERS SO IT'S NOT AN UNBIASSED BROSS.

FOR DECADES ACTIVISTS HAD BEEN WANTING TO TAKE THOSE CASES OUT OF THE CHAIN OF COMMAND TO A BODY THAT WOULD REGULATE, AND THAT WAS ACHIEVED LAST YEAR FOR THE FIRST TIME, AND IT'S A HUGE CHANGE.

IT'S GOING TO TAKE A FEW YEARS FOR IT TO BE IMPLEMENTED.

BUT THERE ARE OTHER THINGS THAT STILL NEED TO CHANGE.

FOR INSTANCE, THOSE -- THE CASES THAT WE'RE TAKING OUT OF THE CHAIN OF COMMAND WERE SEXUAL ASSAULT BE AND MURDER AND OTHER REALLY GRAVE ASSAULTS.

BUT FOR INSTANCE SEXUAL HARASSMENT WAS NOT TAKEN OUT OF THE CHAIN OF COMMAND, AND THAT IS VERY CONTRADICTORY BECAUSE SEXUAL HARASSMENT IS A HIGH INDICATOR OF SEXUAL ASSAULT, RIGHT?

SO IF THE COMMANDERS ARE STILL HANDLING THOSE CASES THEN IT KIND OF FEELS LIKE A BIT OF A CONTRADICTION.

LIKE, PEOPLE ARE NOT GOING TO FEEL COMFORTABLE.

THAT'S A HUGE CHANGE.

I THINK CULTURE NEEDS TO CHANGE AS WELL, AND THAT'S OBVIOUSLY GOING TO TAKE MANY, MANY YEARS.

OKAY.

IMPORTANT STEPS.

I DON'T MEAN TO CUT YOU OFF, BUT WE HAVE RUN OUT OF TIME.

I WANT TO THANK YOU BOTH SO MUCH FOR JOINING US.

THE FILM IS ' #I AM VANESSA GUILLEN'. YOU CAN STREAM IT ON UNIVISION.COM.

AND OF COURSE I WANT TO THANK THE FILM'S PRODUCER AND DIRECTOR, ANDREA.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR JOINING US.

AND OF COURSE KARINA, ALSO, THANK YOU FOR JOINING US, AND THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR STORY.

SO THANK YOU BOTH.

THANKS FOR HAVING US.

THANK YOU FOR HAVING ME.

AND ANDREA.

> 'METROFOCUS' IS MADE POSSIBLE BY -- SUE AND EDGAR WACHENHEIM III, THE PETER G. PETERSON AND JOAN GANZ COONEY FUND, BERNARD AND DENISE SCHWARTZ, BARBARA HOPE ZUCKERBERG, THE AMBROSE MONELL FOUNDATION.

 

MY THOUGHTS

 

I recall years ago a village voice article about women in the NYPD with tons of accusations. 

The woman in the metrofocus video said she was 18 and naive, but when I was 12 I knew the military or nypd  were not organizations for a black person to be in. Maybe I simply had honest parents but it bothers me that the woman abused was told by relatives the environment of the military was abusive to women and she thought the military would be this mythological knights of the round table place. 

I am not trying to suggest women should be abused by men in any environment . But, in all earnest, women who join organizations that should be commonly known as abusive to women, are fools to me. It is the same with Blacks, male or female. I don't have the desire to give lenience to a person, in my opinion, who should know better. Women, stop joining the military, that is the answer. 

I have always called feces of bull on Black people who feel joining organizations that are clearly anti black is the best way to change them. I have always felt that is a stupid thing to do and has no proof of being a historically valid strategy. The NYPD is still anti black, the military, anti black, the federal government anti black. Am I wrong? If you want to change an organization , the best thing to do is to not try to change it and make a new one with a similar purpose that you control so you can start it with the cultural principles you want. It is that simple. 

I am Vanessa Guillen

My thoughts are after the transcript

 

Metrofocus video

https://www.thirteen.org/metrofocus/2023/01/metrofocus-january-3-2023-08ecys/

Full Documentary

https://www.univision.com/especiales/noticias/2022/i-am-vanessa-guillen

 

DESCRIPTION

 

In April 2020, U.S. Army Spc. Vanessa Guillén was murdered after reporting her assault that took place at Fort Hood in Texas.  In late November 2022, Cecily Aguilar, the only person charged in connection with Vanessa’s murder, pled guilty to four counts, including accessory to murder after the fact, and now faces up to 30 years in prison.  While this decision is a victory for Vanessa’s family, the problem of sexual harassment and assault, as well as retaliation for those reporting these crimes, remains a major issue in our armed forces.  A documentary, available to stream on Univision.com called #IamVanessaGuillen, covers the issue of sexual violence in our military and tells Vanessa’s story, including how her situation inspired countless others to share their own stories of abuse and push for change in the military.  Joining us to discuss the film are producer and director Andrea Patiño Contreras; and Karina López, a military sexual assault survivor.

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

 TONIGHT, A MAJOR UPDATE ON THE MURDER OF VANESSA GUILLEN, THE ARMY SOLDIER WHOSE DEATH INSPIRED THOUSANDS TO SHARE THEIR STORY OF THE SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN THE MILITARY.

WE REVISIT, THE CASE, THE DOCUMENTARY TELLING THE STORY.

'METROFOCUS' STARTS RIGHT NOW.

♪

> THIS IS 'METROFOCUS,' WITH RAFAEL PI ROMAN, JACK FORD, AND JENNA FLANAGAN.

> 'METROFOCUS' IS MADE POSSIBLE BY -- SUE AND EDGAR WACHENHEIM III, THE PETER G. PETERSON AND JOAN GANZ COONEY FUND, BERNARD AND DENISE SCHWARTZ, BARBARA HOPE ZUCKERBERG, THE AMBROSE MONELL FOUNDATION.

AND BY --

> GOOD EVENING, AND WELCOME TO 'METROFOCUS.'

I'M JENNA FLANAGAN.

JUST A FEW MONTHS AGO WE BROUGHT TO YOU POWERFUL STORY OF VANESSA GUILLEN, THE U.S. ARMY SOLDIER MURDERED AFTER REPORTING THE SEXUAL HARASSMENT SHE ENDURED AT FT. HOOD IN TEXAS.

HER DEATH INSPIRED COUNTLESS OTHERS TO SHARE THEIR STORY OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND PUSH FOR CHANGE IN THE MILITARY.

PROSECUTORS SAY GUILLEN'S KILLER TOOK HIS OWN LIFE BEFORE HE COULD BE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE.

ONLY ONE PERSON, THE KILLER'S GIRLFRIEND, WAS CHARGED WITH A CRIME IN THIS CASE E CECILY AGUILAR.

SHE ADMITTED TO HELPING DISPOSE OF GUILLEN'S BODY.

SHE FACES UP TO 30 YEARS IN PRISON.

WHILE THIS IS A VICTORY FOR VANESSA'S FAMILY, THE PROBLEM OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND ASSAULT AS WELL AS RETALIATION FOR THOSE REPORTING THESE CRIMES REMAINS A MAJOR PROBLEM AND ISSUE IN OUR ARMED FORCES.

THE DOCUMENTARY ' #I AM VANESSA GUILLEN' EXAMINES THESE ISSUES AND IS STREAMING ON UNIVISION.COM.

HERE'S A QUICK LOOK FOLLOWED BY MY INTERVIEW WITH THE FILM'S DIRECTOR AND ONE THOSE IN THE FILM.

IT WAS A VERY NERVOUS VOICE.

SHE SAID SOMETHING HAPPENED AND NO ONE WAS BELIEVING HER.

SHE DID NOT KNOW, AND SHE WAS CON CON CON CONTEMPLATING HURTING HERSELF.

I DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO FEEL SAFE.

I DIDN'T KNOW ANYTHING.

A PART OF ME DIED BECAUSE SOMEBODY DECIDED TO DO THIS TO ME, AND NOBODY WANTED TO LISTEN.

I REPORTED IT AND I FOUGHT AND I'VE GONE THROUGH THE TRAUMA AND THE RETALIATION THAT I FACED AND NOW YOU HAVE A MISSING SOLDIER THAT WAS HARASSED.

I WROTE MY STORY AND PUT MY PICTURE BESIDES VANESSA BECAUSE I WAS VANESSA.

I AM VANESSA.

I AM VANESSA GUILLEN IS A HASHTAG GOING VIRAL HIGHLIGHTING SEXUAL ASSAULT AND HARASMENT WITHIN THE MILITARY.

AT FT. HOOD, A SOLDIER GONE MISSING.

THEY CREATED AN ENVIRONMENT THAT CONTRIBUTED TO SEXUAL ASSAULT, EVEN MURDER.

THE ENVIRONMENT AT FT. HOOD WAS PERMISSIVE.

WE'RE JUST LIKE ANY ORGANIZATION.

WE'RE ALL ABOUT MAKING OURSELF BETTER.

BECAUSE THE MESSAGE AND CULTURE IN THE MILITARY HAS BEEN CLEAR -- SHUT UP, SUCK IT UP, AND DON'T ROCK THE BOAT.

IN THE CIVILIAN WORLD, PROSECUTORS MAKE THE DECISION TO PROSECUTE, AND THE MILITARY NONLAWYER COMMANDERS MAKE THAT DECISION.

90% OF SEX OFFENDER IN THE MILITARY WILL NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE.

AFTER 246 YEART TIME FOR CONGRESS TO GIVE THE MEN AND WOMEN SERVING OUR NATION A JUSTICE SYSTEM WORTHY OF SACRIFICES.

YOU MEMBERS OF CONGRESS, YOU NEED TO PASS THIS LEGISLATION.

JUSTICE!

WHEN DO WE WANT IT?

NOW!

I REALLY FEEL LIKE WE'RE ON THE VERGE OF SUCCESS.

WE'RE GOING TO REFORM THIS SYSTEM AND WE'RE GOING TO GET TO A BETTER PLACE.

THE WOMEN VETERANS YOU ENCOUNTER HAVE THE ABILITY TO ADAPT AND OVERCOME BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT WE HAVE BEEN TAUGHT.

BUT HERE'S THE THING -- YOU'VE CREATED A WOMAN WHO IS UNSTOPPABLE.

JOINING ME NOW TO DISCUSS THIS POWERFUL NEW DOCUMENTARY IS THE FILM'S DIRECTOR AND PRODUCER, ANDREA CONTRAERAS, THANK YOU FOR JOINING US.

I'D LIKE TO INTRODUCE KARINA LOPEZ, A SURVEVETERAN AND SURVI THE SEXUAL ASSAULT.

SHE'S THE CREATOR OF THE VIRAL HASHTAG #I AM VANESSA GUILLEN, WHICH INSPIRED THE FILM'S TITLE.

LADIES, THANK YOU TO P 'METROFOCUS.'

THANK YOU FOR HAVING US.

ABSOLUTELY.

I WANT TO START BY ASKING ANDREA, YOU, THE QUESTION I ASK ALL DIRECTORS, AND THAT WAS WHAT MOTIVATED TO YOU CREATE THIS DOCUMENTARY.

WHAT WAS, YOU FELT, THE NARRATIVE THAT WAS NOT ALREADY OUT THERE?

SO, DURING 2020, OUR TEAM AT UNIVISION HAD BEEN COVERING THE DISAPPEARANCE AND MURDER OF VANESSA GUILLEN, WHO WENT MISSING AT THE FT. HOOD BASE IN APRIL OF 2020, AND LATER HER BODY WAS FOUND.

DURING THAT REPORTING, THE FALLING ONES, WE HEARD FROM A COUPLE OF CASES, KARINA INCLUDED.

SHE REACHED OUT TO US TELLING US HER STORY, AND AT THAT POINT IN THE FALL OF 2020, WE HEARD FROM HER, AND IN DECEMBER OF 2020, I DECIDED TO FLY DOWN TO MEET HER.

AND ONCE WE MET, I KNEW RIGHT AWAY THAT WE -- THERE WAS A REALLY IMPORTANT STORY TO BE TOLD.

I WAS VERY STRUCK BY KARINA'S -- I TELL HER THIS ALL THE TIME -- BY HER INCREDIBLE ABILITY TO ARTICULATE HER FEELINGS AND REALLY EXPLAIN TO ME WHAT THAT WAS THROUGH AND KIND OF VERY COMPLEX -- YOU KNOW, IT'S A VERY TRAGIC SITUATION, BUT ALSO HAS REALLY DEEP AND GRAVE CONSEQUENCES FOR MENTAL HEALTH, YOU KNOW, AND KARINA, THE WAY SHE ARTICULATED THAT TO ME STRUCK ME.

SO I CAME BACK FROM THAT TRIP AND KNEW THERE WAS A REALLY IMPORTANT STORY TO TELL, NOT JUST ABOUT SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND THE LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY, BUT ALSO THE HUGE IMPACT AND LACK OF JUSTICE HAS ON SURVIVES.

THAT'S WHY I WANTED TO TELL THIS STORY.

FRONT AND SENTER THE STORY OF SUR SURVIVES.

KARINA IS THE MAIN BUT THERE'S ALSO OTHERS.

AND ALSO TELL THE STORY OF THE LEGISLATIVE CHANGES THAT TOOK PLACE BECAUSE OF VANESSA'S CASE.

IN PART BECAUSE OF KARINA'S HASHTAG, MANY CAME FORWARD.

MANY CHANGES TOOK PLACE.

THERE'S SO MUCH MORE TO DO, BUT SOME THINGS HAPPENED THAT WERE PRISS UNPRECEDENTED.

KARINA, I WANT TO BRING YOU IN AND GET YOUR TAKE ON WHAT WAS ABOUT ABOUT VANESSA'S STORY THAT RESONATED AND MADE IT CLEAR NOW IS THE TIME TO SPEAK UP?

I THINK WHEN I ORIGINALLY HEARD ABOUT HER CASE ALL I HAD KNOWN IS SHE WAS MISSING AND THE DAYS KEPT GOING WHERE YOU WOULD SEE HER FACE AND YOU WOULDN'T -- THERE WASN'T REALLY AN EXPLANATION AS TO WHY SHE WAS MISSING.

WHEN I TWRAEACTUALLY LOOKED UP STORY, SO MANY THINGS DIDN'T MAKE SENSE.

I WAS LIKE, THERE HAS TO BE MORE COVERAGE.

A COUPLE DAYS INTO IT I REALIZED I DIDN'T LOOK AT THE SPANISH SECTION OF THE NEWS AND MAYBE I'LL FIND SOMETHING THERE, AND THAT'S WHEN I -- WHEN I HEARD HER MOM SAY THAT SHE WAS SEXUALLY HARASSED AND NOW SHE'S MISSING AND SHE WANTS ANSWERS.

AND TO ME IT FELT LIKE A TON OF BRICKS JUST FELL ON TOP OF ME BECAUSE THIS WASN'T BEING SAID, YOU KNOW, IN THE ENGLISH MEDIA.

AND IT JUST MADE ME SO ANGRY.

I REMEMBER JUST SO MANY EMOTIONS, AND I STARTED, YOU KNOW, LOOKING AT EVERYBODY.

I STARTED TRYING TO GET IN TOUCH WITH THE RIGHT PEOPLE THAT COULD LISTEN AND COULD UNDERSTAND THAT THIS -- YOU KNOW, WHAT HAPPENED TO HER WAS NOT AN INDIVIDUAL THING.

IT HAPPENED ALL OF THE TIME AND, YOU KNOW, MORE SPECIFICALLY, MY CASE AND HOW I HAD JUST LEFT AND I WAS FORCED OUT OF MY CAREER BECAUSE I WAS SPEAKING UP ON THIS, AND IT HAD GONE SO BAD AND CHAOTIC THAT, YOU KNOW, CONGRESS HAD TO GET INVOLVED IN MY CASE.

SO IT WAS ONE OF THOSE THINGS THAT, YOU KNOW, I WAS ANGRY, I WAS SENDING, YOU KNOW, THE FAMILY -- MORE SPECIFICALLY THE SISTERS, YOU KNOW, MY STORE, AND IT JUST, YOU KNOW, WASN'T REACHING THEM, WHICH I UNDERSTAND, YOU KNOW, WHY.

THERE WAS PROBABLY SO MANY MESSAGES COMING IN THERE IN BOXES AND TO THEM.

AND YOU KNOW, I -- I WAS LIKE, OKAY, I'M GOING TO PUT IT ON FACEBOOK, AND I'M GOING TO COME FORWARD AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN IT'S OUT THERE.

YOU KNOW, BECAUSE THIS ISN'T -- YOU KNOW, MANY PEOPLE DON'T UNDERSTAND -- ESPECIALLY CIVILIANS DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY YOU CAN'T COME FORWARD, AND YOU THINK THAT WHEN SOMETHING TRAUMATIC HAPPENS LIKE THAT THAT YOU'RE SAFE IF YOU GO TO THE RIGHT PEOPLE.

HOWEVER, THAT'S REALLY NOT THE CASE.

YOU CAN HAVE ALL THE RIGHT PEOPLE, AND THOSE RIGHT PEOPLE, THOSE DOORS ARE SHUT ON THEM TO PROTECT YOU.

AND THE RETALIATION THAT COMES IS -- IS -- IS HORRIFYING SO, YOU MIGHT AS WELL JUST STAY QUIET AND JUST ENDURE EVERYTHING IN SILENCE.

YOU KNOW, IT'S -- IT'S A VERY SCARY THING TO GO THROUGH, AND I THINK PEOPLE NEEDED TO UNDERSTAND THAT AND SEE THAT MORE SPECIFICALLY THROUGH MY STORY, BECAUSE I CAME FORWARD AND I HAD MOMENTS WHERE, SHOULD I HAVE COME FORWARD?

MAYBE I WOULD STILL HAVE MY CAREER IF I DIDN'T, AND I WOULD JUST GET MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES BEHIND THE SCENES, BEHIND, YOU KNOW -- BEHIND EVERYONE'S BACK AND JUST TOOK CARE OF IT THAT WAY.

YOU KNOW, WHO KNOWS?

ANDREA, I WANT TO GO BACK TO YOU, BECAUSE WE DID SHOW OF COURSE A CLIP FROM THE FILM, AND WE ALWAYS DEFINITELY WANT PEOPLE TO WATCH THE FULL DOCUMENTARY, BUT CAN YOU TELL US, JUST FILL IN FOR PEOPLE WHO MIGHT NOT BE AWARE OF VANESSA'S STORY, WHO WAS SHE, AND WHAT DO WE NOW KNOW HAPPENED TO HER?

YEAH, SO VANESSA WAS A LATINA SOLDIER.

SHE WAS STATIONED AT FT. HOOD IN TEXAS.

SHE STARTED, AND SHE WAS VERY EXCITED TO JOIN THE MILITARY.

HER FAMILY SAYS SHE WAS JUST VERY PROUD TO SERVE.

HER FAMILY IS AN IMMIGRANT FAMILY.

THEY'RE MEXICANS, OF MEXICAN DES DESCENT, AND I THINK SHE SAW THIS AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO SERVE HER COUNTRY AND WAS JUST VERY PROUD.

AT SOME POINT, VANESSA CAME HOME AND HER MOM NOTICED SHE WAS A LITTLE OFF, WASN'T SLEEPING, JUST SEEMED REALLY OFF TO HER, AND WHEN SHE ASKED HER WHAT WAS HAPPENING, VANESSA WOULDN'T TELL HER.

EVENTUALLY SHE TOLD HER SHE WAS BEING SEXUALLY HARASSED BY A SARGENT, BUT SHE DIDN'T WANT TO REPORT IT BECAUSE SHE WAS AFRAID OF RETALIATION.

FAST FORWARD A FEW MONTHS, AND VANESSA GOES MISSING IN APRIL OF 2020.

INITIALLY -- YOU KNOW, THE FAMILY KNEW RIGHT AWAY THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THAT, BECAUSE THEY WERE A VERY TIGHT KNIT FAMILY AND NOT HEARING FROM VANESSA WAS JUST REALLY OFF TO THEM.

THEY WENT TO THE BASE.

THEY WERE NOT GETTING A LOT OF ANSWERS.

THEY WERE, YOU KNOW, KIND OF KEPT -- PUSHED AWAY IN SOME WAYS.

BUT THEY WERE VERY, VERY PERSISTENT.

THEY WERE JUST DEMANDING ANSWERS.

AND EVENTUALLY, HER BODY WAS FOUND, AND WE KNOW THAT SHE WAS MURDERED BY SOMEONE IN HER UNIT.

WE KNOW THAT HE WASN'T THE PERSON THAT WAS HARASSING HER NECESSARILY, BUT THERE'S STILL A LOT OF ANSWERS THAT NEED TO BE -- TO BE CLEARED OUT, AND THE FAMILY'S STILL WAITING FOR A LOT OF ANSWERS.

AND THROUGHOUT THAT SEARCH, YOU KNOW, WITH KARINA'S HASHTAG WHEN VANESSA WAS STILL MISSING THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE CAME FORWARD WITH THEIR OWN STORY OF HARASMENT AS WELL.

KARINA, I WANT TO GO BACK AND GET YOU TO EXPLAIN A LITTLE BIT FOR SO MANY OF US WHO ARE CIVILIAN, WHAT IS THAT MILITARY CULTURE LIKE THAT PUSHES, MAYBE COERCES, MAYBE EVEN DEMANDS THAT WOMEN WHO ARE SERVING REMAIN QUIET ON AN ISSUE LIKE THIS?

THAT'S THE QUESTION I GET FROM A LOT OF PEOPLE, AND I THINK -- I DON'T THINK THAT THERE'S A REALLY GOOD ANSWER TO IT.

I THINK, FOR EXAMPLE, BEFORE I JOINED MY FAMILY SAT DOWN AND TALKED TO ME ABOUT WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE A WOMAN AND WORK IN A MALE FILLED INDUSTRY, AND THEN ME AS A MINORITY AS A WOMAN, ESPECIALLY BEING 19 YEARS OLD, BECAUSE I WAS 19 AT THE TIME.

AND THEY WENT THROUGH, YOU KNOW, DIFFERENT THINGS THAT COULD BE ISSUES.

YOU KNOW, THEY TOLD ME THAT I WAS VERY NAIVE, I WAS VERY YOUNG, AND YOU KNOW, THEY WANTED TO MAKE SURE I WAS SET UP FOR SUCCESS WITH KNOWING THINGS LIKE THIS.

I REMEMBER MY FAMILY SHOWED ME THE LIVEINA JOHNSON CASE AND I REMEMBER THINKING, YOU KNOW, THEY'RE STILL FIGHTING FOR THIS.

BUT THAT WAS THE ONLY CASE I REMEMBERED.

BUT THE STATISTICS OF THAT HAPPENING TO ME WERE PRETTY LOW.

HER FAMILY IS STILL FIGHTING FOR ANSWERS.

THEY'RE GOING TO GET THOSE ANSWERS.

I WAS VERY I WAS VERY NAIVE, VERY -- I HAD A LOT OF TRUST IN THE SYSTEM.

I WAS LIKE, I'M GOING TO DO THIS.

I'M GOING THE GO SERVE MY COUNTRY.

I'M SUPEREXCITED ABOUT IT.

THERE'S GOING TO BE A LOT OF OPPORTUNITIES.

I'M NERVOUS.

AND YOU KNOW, I REMEMBER BEING IN BASE, GOING THROUGH I.T., GOING THROUGH THE MILITARY PROCESS.

I REMEMBER JUST HOW MANY FEMALES PULLED ME ASIDE AND GAVE ME ADVICE OR TOLD ME TO STAY AWAY FROM A SPECIFIC PERSON OR, YOU KNOW, JUST SOMETHING THAT KIND OF -- THEY WERE DOING THE BEST THEY COULD TO GIVE ME ADVICE, BUT, YOU KNOW, TO A 19-YEAR-OLD, A 20-YEAR-OLD, YOU'RE JUST LIKE, THAT'S SO WEIRD THAT THAT PERSON HAD TO COME AND TELL ME AND GIVE ME THAT ADVICE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

I REMEMBER HAVING THIS REALLY, YOU KNOW, BEING SEXUALLY HARASSED IN ONE SPECIFIC INCIDENT IN KOREA, AND I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO.

I FELT LIKE I WAS, YOU KNOW, SUFFOCATING AND I WAS BLOCKED INTO A KITCHEN.

AND I REMEMBER GOING TO AN NCO, A FEMALE NCO AND I TOLD HER HOW I FELT BECAUSE I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT I WAS FEELING.

AND SHE TOLD ME -- SHE GAVE ME ADVICE AND SHE WAS LIKE, YOU KNOW -- SHE WAS BACKING ME UP THE FULL TIME AND TOLD ME HOW TO HANDLE SITUATIONS LIKE THAT, AND SHE MADE ME CONFRONT HIM AND TELL HIM THAT WAS UNACCEPTABLE AND JUST STAND UP FOR MYSELF.

SO WHEN THIS HAPPENED ON FT.

HOOD AND I THOUGHT THAT I COULD DO EXACTLY THAT, THAT I WAS SHOWN HOW TO DO IT AND I WOULD GET HELP IN MY SITUATION, AND I WAS INSTEAD REDIRECTED AND GUIDED TO NOT GET THAT HELP AND INSTEAD TO JUST STAY QUIET ABOUT THAT BECAUSE THE BASE DIDN'T -- THE UNIT DIDN'T NEED EYES ON -- OR EXTRA ATTENTION ON THE UNIT.

I KIND OF FELT ASHAMED.

I FELT LIKE I COULDN'T STAND UP FOR MYSELF.

I HAD ALWAYS BEEN THAT 19-YEAR-OLD THAT WAS LIKE, IF THIS EVER HAPPENS I'M GOING TO STAND UP FOR MYSELF, I'M GOING TO FIGHT BACK.

NO ONE'S GOING TO BE ABLE TO DO THAT.

THAT STARTED THAT INNER WAR WITH MYSELF WHERE I DIDN'T -- I FAILED MYSELF, BECAUSE HERE I WAS, YOU KNOW, LETTING THEM WIN AND INTIMIDATE ME AND KEEP ME SILENT, AND I FELT UNSAFE, AND THEN ON TOP OF THAT I DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO -- MY FAMILY MEMBERS WERE THE ONES WHO TOLD ME ALL OF THIS, SO THEN I FELT COMPLETELY SHATTERED, BECAUSE THAT 19-YEAR-OLD GIRL WHO WAS TELLING THEM, I WILL STAND UP AND FIGHT FOR MYSELF AND I'LL DO WHAT'S RIGHT, AND, YOU KNOW, THEY'LL HAVE TO HELP ME.

NOW IT'S THE OPPOSITE.

SO WHEN SOMETHING HAPPENS LIKE THAT, YOU GET -- IT'S THE SUBJECT THAT'S EXTREMELY HEAVY.

SO EVEN IF YOU DO TELL THE RIGHT PEOPLE, THEY DON'T KNOW REALLY HOW TO APPROACH THE SITUATION AND THEN ON TOP OF THAT IF YOU GO TO THE WRONG PEOPLE, THE WRONG PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO YOU ACKNOWLEDGE IT AT ALL.

IT'S YOUR FAULT AND THAT'S IT.

EVEN WHEN I STARTED RECEIVING MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES, I HAD BEEN TOLD IT WAS MY FAULT.

YOU START REALLY BATTLING YOURSELF, AND I THINK ULTIMATELY THAT'S HOW THEY KIND OF WIN, BECAUSE THEY TARGET -- THEY MAKE YOU QUESTION YOURSELF.

YOU'RE NOT QUESTIONING THEM.

IF YOU'RE QUESTIONING THEM YOU'RE LIKE, NO, I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO ME, AND THAT'S WRONG.

BUT ONCE YOU HEAR IT ENOUGH AND YOU'RE IN THAT FRAGILE STATE OF MAYBE THIS WASN'T -- YOU KNOW, MAYBE THIS WASN'T THEIR FAULT.

MAYBE THIS WAS MY FAULT.

WHAT DID I DO WRONG?

YOU'RE RETRACKING AND GOING THROUGH THE PROCESS OF, OKAY, IT HAPPENED HERE, BUT WHAT DID I DO THAT LED ME TO BE PUT INTO THE SITUATION?

WELL, IT'S SOUNDING A LITTLE BIT LIKE PERHAPS ISSUES OF HIERARCHY AND CHAIN OF COMMAND ARE ALSO COMING INTO PLAY WITH YOU AS A 19-YEAR-OLD RECRUIT.

FOR THE NONSERVING CIVILIAN AUDIENCE, JUST VERY QUICKLY CAN YOU JUST LET EVERYBODY KNOW, SO THEY FULLY UNDERSTAND, WHAT EXACT LY IS AN NCO?

THE NCO IS BASICALLY THE -- THEY'RE KNOWN AS THE BACKBONE OF THE ARMY, OR THE MILITARY IN GENERAL.

THEY HAVE SERVED FOR SOME TIME.

THEY'VE GONE THROUGH THE BASIC LEADERSHIP SCHOOLS, AND THEY HAVE THAT RANK.

SO THEY'RE THE ONES THAT ARE PUT IN CHARGE OF THE LOWER ENLISTED SOLDIERS SOME BASICALLY THEY ARE A FORM OF LEADERSHIP.

THEY ARE SOMEONE YOU REPORT TO AND HELP YOU --

OKAY, AND DOES THAT STAND FOR SOMETHING?

I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE PEOPLE ARE LIKE, OH, THAT'S WHAT NCO IS.

YES, NONCOMMISSIONED OFFICER.

MY SECOND QUESTION IS ALSO -- YOU DO KEEP GOING BACK TO YOUR AGE, AND ONE THING I THINK EVERYONE CAN RELATE TO IS BEING A 19-YEAR-OLD AND THINK YOU UNDERSTAND BUT NOT FULLY UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD YOU'RE STEPPING INTO.

HOW LONG AFTER YOU GOT TO FT.

HOOD DID YOUR ASSAULT HAPPEN?

AND I KNOW THAT YOU SORT OF TOUCHED ON IT, BUT AS MUCH AS YOU CAN SHARE, CAN YOU SHARE WITH US WHAT HAPPENED?

YES.

SO I JOINED WHEN I WAS 19, JUST TO CLARIFY, AND I HAD SEEN, YOU KNOW, JUST THE SEXUAL HARASSMENT FROM 19, 20, YOU KNOW, THOSE AGES.

WHEN I WENT TO FT. HOOD I WAS 21 ALREADY, AND I HAD ARRIVED LATE JULY.

SO I WENT THROUGH THE PROCESS OF -- THEY CALL IT -- IT'S BASICALLY FOR CIVILIAN TERMS ONBOARDING WHEN YOU FIRST GET THERE, THEY HAVE TO IN-PROCESS YOU.

AND I REMEMBER SENDING MY MOM A TEXT MESSAGE, RIGHT, THAT FIRST DAY, AND I REMEMBER TELLING HER I FELT LIKE A PIECE OF MEAT.

I REMEMBER TEXTING HER AND TELLING HER I WAS CRYING, BECAUSE SHE WAS LIKE, MAYBE YOU'RE GOING TO LOVE IT.

I WAS LIKE, I DIDN'T WANT TO GO TO TEXAS, BUT WHATEVER.

I'M SO FAR AWAY FROM HOME.

I WANTED TO GO TO FT. BRAGG AND BE CLOSER TO MY FAMILY AFTER BEING AWAY FROM THEM FOR A YEAR.

I'M YOUNG.

I WANT TO BE CLOSE TO MY FAMILY.

THAT FIRST DAY WAS FRUSTRATING FOR ME.

I FELT LIKE EVERY TIME I ASKED A QUESTION THEY WERE SETTING ME UP FOR FAILURE.

THEY THOUGHT IT WAS REALLY FUNNY THAT I WAS ASKING THESE QUESTIQUE QUESTIONS SO I WOULDN'T BREAK ANY RULES BECAUSE THEY WERE GIVING ME THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE ANSWER.

IT WAS LIKE YOU WERE BACKED AGAINST A WALL AND I DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO BELIEVE OR DIDN'T.

THAT WAS EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING.

ON TOP OF THAT IT WAS THE COMMENTS AND THINGS LIKE THAT THEY WOULD MAKE.

THAT WAS BEFORE I GOT TO MY UNIT.

I WAS SEXUAL ASSAULTED IN SEPTEMBER, SO I HAD BEEN THERE TECHNICALLY ONE FULL MONTH AND A COUPLE WEEKS.

BUT ALSO WITH THAT, TOO, YOU KNOW, ONE THING I ALWAYS TELL PEOPLE IS, WE GROW UP WITH OUR PARENTS TELLING US DON'T TALK TO SPRAI STRANGERS, DON'T GET IN THE CAR WITH STRANGERS, BUT IN THE MILITARY, YOU DO WHAT YOU'RE TOLD, SO THERE WERE A LOT OF TIMES THAT I WAS IN A CAR WITH A STRANGER, BECAUSE I -- YOU KNOW, SOMEBODY WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO PICK ME UP DIDN'T SHOW UP, SO THEY SENT SOMEONE ELSE.

SO TECHNICALLY I'M GETTING IN THIS CAR ON A BASE WHERE I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE ANYTHING IS OR WHO ANYONE IS AND THEY'RE DRIVING ME AND IT'S LIKE, OH, I NEVER MET THIS PERSON IN MY LIFE.

SO IT KIND OF GOES INTO THAT KIND OF SITUATION WHERE IT'S LIKE, WE'RE TOLD OUR WHOLE ENTIRE LIVES NOT TO GET INTO CARS WITH STRANGERS AND THINGS LIKE THAT, BUT THEN THAT'S WHAT WE DO IN THE MILITARY.

AND BEING THAT YOUNG AND STILL, YOU KNOW, DOING WHAT YOU'RE TOLD, YOU THINK THAT WHAT YOU'RE BEING TOLD IS LAW AND YOU HAVE TO DO IT.

SO THERE'S A LOT OF INTIMIDATION THAT COMES INTO WHEN YOU'RE TELLING YOUNGER SOLDIERS, HEY, YOU HAVE TO DO THIS OR YOU HAVE TO BE HERE AND IN A LOT OF CASES AND A LOT OF STORIES, THAT, ESPECIALLY FROM THE SURVIVES THAT CAME FORWARD WITH THE HASHTAG, THEY'LL TELL YOU, I WAS DOING WHAT THEY TOLD ME TO DO BECAUSE I THOUGHT THAT'S WHAT WAS EXPECTED FROM ME.

THERE'S A LOT THAT GOES INTO BEING YOUNG.

I HAVE HAD SURVIVES TELL ME THAT THEY WERE 25, 26 EVEN, AND STILL, IT'S THAT -- IT'S JUST WHEN YOU COME INTO THE MILITARY, EVERYTHING IS COMPLETELY BRAND NEW BECAUSE IT'S NOT THE CIVILIAN WORLD.

IT IS ABOUT AGING BUT IT'S THAT INTIMIDATION FACTOR WHERE YOU HAVE SOMEBODY SUPERIOR TO YOU OR TELLING YOU OR GIVING YOU AN ORDER THAT IF YOU DON'T FOLLOW THAT ORDER YOU COULD GET IN TROUBLE.

IT'S ALSO, I DON'T WANT TO MAKE THIS PERSON UPSET, BECAUSE THIS PERSON LEGIT HOLDS ALL OF THE POWER FOR MY CAREER.

MY CAREER PROGRESSION AND MY REPUTATION AS WELL.

BECAUSE IF I DON'T DO THIS, THEN THAT PERSON'S GOING TO GO AND TELL EVERYONE THAT I'M A BAD SOLDIER AND I DON'T LISTEN AND I'M DISRESPECTFUL.

IN MY CASE, YOU SEE THAT WHERE IT'S LIKE, EVERY TIME I WOULD COME ALL OF A SUDDEN SOMETHING WOULD COME OVER MY HEAD AND SAY, YOU WANT TO GO TO I.G.? HERE'S THIS.

WE'RE GOING TO SAY YOU DID THIS.

IT'S LIKE, WAIT A MINUTE, WHY ARE YOU BRINGING THIS UP AT THIS EXACT MOMENT WHEN I'M TRYING TO GET HELP?

IT SILENCES YOU AGAIN AND YOU JUST KEEP GOING ON WITH YOUR LIFE, UNABLE TO LOOK AT YOURSELF IN THE MIRROR AND REALIZE, YOU'RE JUST STUCK.

WELL, ANDREA, I WANT TO BRING YOU BACK IN.

WE ONLY HAVE ABOUT A MINUTE LEFT, BUT YOU DID MENTION ABOUT SOME OF THE LEGISLATIVE CHANGES THAT WERE BEGINNING TO TAKE PLACE.

CAN YOU JUST LET US KNOW WHAT IS POTENTIALLY ON THE TABLE TO HAPPEN TO ADDRESS SOME OF THESE ISSUES?

YEAH.

THE BIGGEST CHANGE THAT HAPPENED LAST YEAR -- ONE OF THE MAIN ISSUES IN THE MILITARY, GOING BACK TO KARINA'S STORY IS THAT BASICALLY THE MILITARY -- YOU KNOW, LIKE, CHECKS THEMSELVES.

YOU HAVE -- IF YOUR CASE IS IN THE CHAIN OF COMMAND, IT'S YOUR COMMANDER WHO DECIDES WHETHER THE CASE OF ASSAULT OR HA HARASSMENT IS PROSECUTED.

CHAIN OF COMMAND IS NONLAWYERS SO IT'S NOT AN UNBIASSED BROSS.

FOR DECADES ACTIVISTS HAD BEEN WANTING TO TAKE THOSE CASES OUT OF THE CHAIN OF COMMAND TO A BODY THAT WOULD REGULATE, AND THAT WAS ACHIEVED LAST YEAR FOR THE FIRST TIME, AND IT'S A HUGE CHANGE.

IT'S GOING TO TAKE A FEW YEARS FOR IT TO BE IMPLEMENTED.

BUT THERE ARE OTHER THINGS THAT STILL NEED TO CHANGE.

FOR INSTANCE, THOSE -- THE CASES THAT WE'RE TAKING OUT OF THE CHAIN OF COMMAND WERE SEXUAL ASSAULT BE AND MURDER AND OTHER REALLY GRAVE ASSAULTS.

BUT FOR INSTANCE SEXUAL HARASSMENT WAS NOT TAKEN OUT OF THE CHAIN OF COMMAND, AND THAT IS VERY CONTRADICTORY BECAUSE SEXUAL HARASSMENT IS A HIGH INDICATOR OF SEXUAL ASSAULT, RIGHT?

SO IF THE COMMANDERS ARE STILL HANDLING THOSE CASES THEN IT KIND OF FEELS LIKE A BIT OF A CONTRADICTION.

LIKE, PEOPLE ARE NOT GOING TO FEEL COMFORTABLE.

THAT'S A HUGE CHANGE.

I THINK CULTURE NEEDS TO CHANGE AS WELL, AND THAT'S OBVIOUSLY GOING TO TAKE MANY, MANY YEARS.

OKAY.

IMPORTANT STEPS.

I DON'T MEAN TO CUT YOU OFF, BUT WE HAVE RUN OUT OF TIME.

I WANT TO THANK YOU BOTH SO MUCH FOR JOINING US.

THE FILM IS ' #I AM VANESSA GUILLEN'. YOU CAN STREAM IT ON UNIVISION.COM.

AND OF COURSE I WANT TO THANK THE FILM'S PRODUCER AND DIRECTOR, ANDREA.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR JOINING US.

AND OF COURSE KARINA, ALSO, THANK YOU FOR JOINING US, AND THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR STORY.

SO THANK YOU BOTH.

THANKS FOR HAVING US.

THANK YOU FOR HAVING ME.

AND ANDREA.

> 'METROFOCUS' IS MADE POSSIBLE BY -- SUE AND EDGAR WACHENHEIM III, THE PETER G. PETERSON AND JOAN GANZ COONEY FUND, BERNARD AND DENISE SCHWARTZ, BARBARA HOPE ZUCKERBERG, THE AMBROSE MONELL FOUNDATION.

 

MY THOUGHTS

 

I recall years ago a village voice article about women in the NYPD with tons of accusations. 

The woman in the metrofocus video said she was 18 and naive, but when I was 12 I knew the military or nypd  were not organizations for a black person to be in. Maybe I simply had honest parents but it bothers me that the woman abused was told by relatives the environment of the military was abusive to women and she thought the military would be this mythological knights of the round table place. 

I am not trying to suggest women should be abused by men in any environment . But, in all earnest, women who join organizations that should be commonly known as abusive to women, are fools to me. It is the same with Blacks, male or female. I don't have the desire to give lenience to a person, in my opinion, who should know better. Women, stop joining the military, that is the answer. 

I have always called feces of bull on Black people who feel joining organizations that are clearly anti black is the best way to change them. I have always felt that is a stupid thing to do and has no proof of being a historically valid strategy. The NYPD is still anti black, the military, anti black, the federal government anti black. Am I wrong? If you want to change an organization , the best thing to do is to not try to change it and make a new one with a similar purpose that you control so you can start it with the cultural principles you want. It is that simple. 

ART SUMMARY 2022

a selection for each month

 

January
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Holiday-Rex-DTIYS-B-W-905513401
February
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Valentine-s-Day-2022-Color-gif-906988319
March
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Ship-of-Fools-Legend-to-be-909901566
April
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/The-King-Of-Paradise-913395528
May
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Nanedud-feetorfins-917368124
June
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/AmpraehDTIYScolor-917892345
July
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Dreamdisappointvacation-coloringpage-923869468
August
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Invitation-A-Moment-In-the-LEgendary-Bloody-Melee-927346127
September
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/crystals-21-Witchtember-2022-930362174
October
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Chrissabugdtiys10k2022-Invitation-932158374
November
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Album-Yourself-Submit-935178300
December
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Suriel-of-Sylessae-BW-939310620
 

If you want to support my work financially consider the following

Poetry or more ebook
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/poetry-or-more-1
Ship of fools audiobook
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/ship-of-fools-legend-to-be

 

if you want to keep abreast to my work in the future, join my newsletter
https://rmnewsletter.over-blog.com/