#penal labour

[vintage-sweden]

Women’s prison, 1939, Sweden. The last photo is inside a cell.

#1939 #1930s #sweden #sverige #vintage photos #vintage women #crime #penal labour

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“The foothold created by prisoner-built roads in the Canal Zone enabled colonial officials, army engineers, and politicians in the United States to train their sights on a Pan-American Highway, which would run north-south from Alaska to Argentina. Convict road building in Panamá became part of the massively increased federal support for convict road building projects across states, territories, and colonies under US jurisdiction. Federal officials, meanwhile, pushed their modernizing agenda for prisons and roads at the convenings of international organizations like the Pan American Union (PAU) and the Pan American Prison Congress. The Pan-American Highway was shrouded in the rhetoric of hemispheric harmony, and PAU Director General L.S. Row described the “Good Roads Movement” as encapsulating “the very essence of true Pan-Americanism.”

E.W. James, chief of the inter-American regional office of the Public Roads Administration, promised the highway would open up great tracts of land and offer US motorists scenes of “exotic interest,” discovery, and adventure. Probably “no white man” has ever traveled between Central and South America overland, he wrote referring to the Darién Gap between Panamá and Columbia. He provided a list of voyages along portions of the highway, including that of Zone policeman 88, Harry A. Franck. At the 1915 Panama-Pacific World’s Fair in San Francisco, the US Office of Public Roads staged the most comprehensive road exhibit to date. By the end of World War II, the inter-American portion between the United States and Panamá included 1,557 miles of paved roadway, 930 miles of all-weather, 280 miles of dry-weather, and 567 miles of trails. “The last quarter century in the Western Hemisphere has been preeminently an era of road building,” James proudly concluded.

Forced transportation was central to the chattel mode of incarceration, along with degrading hard labor. Throughout the period of US canal construction, 1904–1914, police and prison officials routinely deported people from the Zone. Indeed, when he was appointed police chief, George Shanton saw it as his first order of business. Before he was even expressly granted expanded deportation powers, he gathered members of Teddy Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders” and other “American gunmen” to round up any “bad men” in the newly occupied territory. 

“We went after them and some we found necessary to kill off but the great majority were gradually rounded up and placed in the stocks, later being put into bull-pens which we constructed,” he told the Boston Globe years later. “The next thing to do was to get them out of the country altogether,but we were in a position where we could not legally deport them. So we rounded up some old three masters […] and, bundling the birds all aboard, shot them off to the Islands thereabout.” 

His nonchalance masked a more systematic process of targeted depopulation that combined Spanish-speaking Afro-Panamanians, French-speaking Martinicans, and English-speaking Jamaicans and Barbadians under the general category of “negro criminal,” who were then indiscriminately sent off to neighboring Caribbean islands. “With them out of the Zone,” Shanton wrote, “we were then in a position of refusing them entrance should they attempt to return.”

Canal Zone District Attorney William Jackson argued that the “great expense” the government had incurred by paying to transport some twenty thousand workers from Barbados and elsewhere in the West Indies “abundantly justified” expanded powers of deportation and judicial cost savings measures. The Canal Zone government paid the cost of deportation, he added, and rightly recouped the “enormous expense incident to jury trials.” As with other labor recruitment contracts, some officials worried they were skirting a line too near slavery. Responding to John Steven’s request to import more Chinese laborers, for instance, Secretary of War William Taft wrote, “peonage or coolieism, which shortly stated is slavery by debt, is as much in conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution as the usual form of slavery.” Others were less concerned. Despite apparent ambiguities in charting these degrees of unfreedom, they knew for certain that the Thirteenth Amendment’s convict clause provided that those convicted of a crime would become slaves of the state. Following a paradigm of patriarchal governance, Canal officials also assumed that other forms of dependent or coerced labor—of women, children, and colonial subjects—were part of the natural order of things. Evidently paying the passage of a small fraction of the total Canal Zone workforce had metaphorically, if not contractually, already indentured much wider segments of the population in the eyes of certain administrators.

...

The police and prison guards charged with implementing the forced labor program brought their own ideas about dependency, deviance, punishment, and work. Racialized labor control schemes had been vitally important to their jobs throughout the American empire. Zone policemen like Harry Franck and Robert Lamastus remarked that their fellow officers were mostly Southerners and almost all military men. Police Chief George Shanton, for instance, had served in the Rough Riders during the US wars in Puerto Rico and the Philippines. His successor had been a Confederate blockade runner, and the police chief after him was a former US Marshal in Indian Territory. When a police chase was on, wrote Harry Franck, everyone from the lieutenant down to the newest rookie would swarm out of the police station: “[T]he most apathetic of the force were girding up their loins with the adventurous fire of the old Moro-hunting days in their eyes, and all, some ahorse, more afoot, were dashing one by one out into the night and the jungle.” With this turn of phrase, Franck evoked the experience of colonial violence from fighting in the predominantly Muslim region of the Philippine archipelago to characterize the rush of tracking alleged outlaws in the Panamanian jungles as a kind of manly “adventure.”

Robert Lamastus, who was put in charge of working prisoners outside the penitentiary, exemplified many of these elements guards brought to the road gangs. With his family back in Kentucky, heavily indebted after the Civil War, he had gone fortune-seeking in the far reaches of the Northwest, joining the army in Alaska. He dreamed of striking it rich prospecting for gold or purchasing land to clear and cultivate. Yet his letters home made clear that he envisioned himself directing rather than performing hard physical labor; referring to farm work, for example, he exclaimed that there were “plenty of easier ways of making a living besides working like a slave for it.” Lamastus joined the police force in 1907 and was rapidly promoted. Within two years he was making $107.50 per month, five times what he earned when he first enlisted in the army, and the following year he received an additional $10 a month to serve as labor foreman over prisoners at Culebra. “We are building roads with them,” he wrote home, “I start work at 7 in the morning and I am through 5:30 in the evening.” 

After successfully completing his road building assignments in the town of Empire, he was made Assistant Deputy Warden in charge of all outside work. “I was promoted on the 19th of Dec. my pay is $125 per mo.” he proudly wrote home. In addition to his salary, as Gold Roll employees, white police and prison officers like Robert Lamastus also received the full range of government benefits including paid housing, health care, and vacations. The racially segregated social and economic hierarchies he and his colleagues helped establish in the Canal Zone therefore ensured that white American men, as a group, would stand to gain the most from the incarceration and forced labor of Zone inhabitants deemed criminals.

The Canal Zone governors, wardens, police, and prison guards who implemented the prison labor program drew on techniques of labor extraction and domination that had characterized the American expansion under slavery, settler colonialism, and war-making. While they were not all members of the ex-Confederate diaspora who sought to spread white supremacy across the Caribbean to Brazil, or across the Pacific to Hawaii, Fiji, and Australia, most shared lived experiences of slavery and colonial violence. They also shared a vision of patriarchal mastery and racial hierarchy in which white men assumed themselves to be the head, performing mental and skilled labor, and racialized others to be the body, performing unskilled, physically demanding, menial labor. Their vision of white settler-colonial agricultural development depended on roads being built throughout the Zone and across Panamá. It also provided prison administrators and guards a unique avenue of upward social mobility. After a career commanding prison labor in the Canal Zone and directing the Panamanian island prison colony at Coiba, for example, Robert Lamastus went on to set up coffee plantations in Boquete, Chiriqui, that have remained in his family to this day.”

- Benjamin D. Weber, “The Strange Career of the Convict Clause: US Prison Imperialism in the Panamá Canal Zone,” International Labor and Working-Class History No. 96, Fall 2019, p. 88-90, 91-92.

Image at top is: “Road Making by Convicts” from Willis J. Abott, PANAMA And the Canal IN PICTURE AND PROSE. New York: Syndicate Publishing Company, 1913. p. 352.

#panama canal #canal zone #thirteenth amendment #convict clause #convict labour #american prison system #american empire #u.s. imperialism #penal labour #slavery by another name #settler colonialism #road building #road work #prison camp #good roads movement #bad boys make good roads #academic quote #academic research #history of crime and punishment #united states history #prison guards #racism in america #shoveling out the unwanted

[coraloctopus]

"yo dawg, we heard you like prison, so we put a call centre in your prison so you can do things that feel like prison to people on the outside while you're in prison"

#prison slavery #penal labour #prison #foucault #anarchism #capitalist dystopia

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

Year One (2009, Harold Ramis)

21/11/2023

Year One is a 2009 comedy film written and directed by Harold Ramis, in his last cinematic experience.

Zed and Oh are two primitive and clumsy cavemen, a hunter and a gatherer respectively, who after being banished from their village begin a long biblical journey, encountering Cain as he kills Abel.

They are then enslaved by the guards of Sodom and meet Abraham just before he sacrifices his son Isaac, and Zed stops the ritual, saying that he is a messenger of God: they are thus invited to Abraham's house and, after having dinner, the young man Isaac safely takes Zed and Oh to Sodom, where Abraham plans to circumcise them.

Here they are captured again but, just before being sodomized by the soldiers, Cain, who has also become a soldier, comes to their aid, calling them "brothers" and managing to save them.

At the palace, Zed sees Maya and Eema, reduced to slaves, serving at the banquet, while Oh is forced to follow the High Priest for a "rite", that of sensually anointing his entire body behind a curtain; Zed later sees Inanna again, who takes him to the Holy of Holies and asks him to enter, believing him to be "the Chosen One". At first both are sentenced to death by stoning, but Zed fortunately manages to convince the authorities to have mercy and instead sentence them to hard labor until their deaths.

The following morning the king of Sodom declares that he will sacrifice his daughter and two virgins (Maya and Eema, according to Cain the "followers of the Chosen One") to the gods.

The protagonists Jack Black and Michael Cera are supported by a large cast: among others, Olivia Wilde plays the role of Princess Inanna, Christopher Mintz-Plasse plays Isaac while Hank Azaria plays the role of Abraham. The film's director Harold Ramis plays Adam while Rhoda Griffis is Eve, also Kyle Gass is Zaftig the Eunuch, Bill Hader plays a shaman and Vinnie Jones the chief of the guards of Sodom. Finally Paul Rudd plays Abel.

Filming of the film, which took place during January 2008, took place between Louisiana and New Mexico, considered "the end of the world" in the film.

#year one #comedy film #2009 #harold ramis #Cain #Abel #Abraham #Isaac #Sodoma #circumcision #sodomy #High Priest of Israel #Holy of Holies #stoning #Penal labour #Virginity #jack black #michael cera #olivia wilde #christopher mintz plasse #hank azaria #Adam #Rhoda Griffis #Eve #kyle gass #bill hader #vinnie jones #paul rudd #2008 #louisiana

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Year

1. Belgium approves four-day week and gives employees the right to ignore their bosses after work

Workers in Belgium will soon be able to choose a four-day week under a series of labour market reforms announced on Tuesday.

The reform package agreed by the country's multi-party coalition government will also give workers the right to turn off work devices and ignore work-related messages after hours without fear of reprisal.

"We have experienced two difficult years. With this agreement, we set a beacon for an economy that is more innovative, sustainable and digital. The aim is to be able to make people and businesses stronger," Belgian prime minister Alexander de Croo told a press conference announcing the reform package.

2. Spain makes it a crime for pro-lifers to harass people outside abortion clinics

Spain has criminalized the harassment or intimidation of women going for an abortion under new legislation approved on Wednesday by the Senate. The move, which involved changes to the penal code, means anti-abortion activists who try to convince women not to terminate their pregnancies could face up to a year behind bars.

3. House passes bill to federally decriminalize marijuana

The House has voted with a slim bipartisan majority to federally decriminalize marijuana. The vote was 220 to 204.

The bill, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, will prevent federal agencies from denying federal workers security clearances for cannabis use, and will allow the Veterans’ Administration to recommend medical marijuana to veterans living with posttraumatic stress disorder.

The bill also expunges the record of people convicted of non-violent cannabis offenses, which House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, “can haunt people of color and impact the trajectory of their lives and career indefinitely.”

4. France makes birth control free for all women under 25

The scheme, which could benefit three million women, covers the pill, IUDs, contraceptive patches and other methods composed of steroid hormones.

Contraception for minors was already free in France. Several European countries, including Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway, make contraception free for teens.

5. The 1st fully hydrogen-powered passenger train service is now running in Germany. The only emissions are steam & condensed water.

Five of the trains started running in August. Another nine will be added in the coming months to replace 15 diesel trains on the regional route. Alstom says the Coradia iLint has a range of 1,000 kilometers, meaning that it can run all day on the line using a single tank of hydrogen. A hydrogen filling station has been set up on the route between Cuxhaven, Bremerhaven, Bremervörde and Buxtehude.

6. Princeton will cover all tuition costs for most families making under $100,000 a year, after getting rid of student loans

In September, the New Jersey Ivy League school announced it would be expanding its financial aid program to offer free tuition, including room and board, for most families whose annual income is under $100,000 a year. Previously, the same benefit was offered to families making under $65,000 a year. This new income limit will take effect for all undergraduates starting in the fall of 2023.

Princeton was also the first school in the US to eliminate student loans from its financial aid packages.

7. Humpback whales no longer listed as endangered after major recovery

Humpback whales will be removed from Australia's threatened-species list, after the government's independent scientific panel on threatened species deemed the mammals had made a major recovery. Humpback whales will no longer be considered an endangered or vulnerable species.

Climate change and fishing still pose threats to their long-term health.

Some other uplifting news from last year:

A Cancer Trial’s Unexpected Result: Remission in Every Patient

California 100 percent powered by renewables for first time

Israel formally bans LGBTQ conversion therapy

Tokyo Passes Law to Recognize Same-Sex Partnerships

First 100,000 KG Removed From the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

As we ring in the New Year let’s remember to focus on the good news. May this be a year of even more kindness and generosity. Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2023!

Thank you for following and supporting this g this newsletter

Buy me a coffee ❤️

#best news of last week

[fatehbaz]

[A]nti-homeless laws [...] rooted in European anti-vagrancy laws were adapted across parts of the Japanese empire [...] at the turn of the 20th century. [...] [C]riminalising ideas transferred from anti-vagrancy statutes into [contemporary] welfare systems. [...] [W]elfare and border control systems - substantively shaped by imperial aversions to racialised ideas of uncivilised vagrants - mutually served as a transnational legal architecture [...] [leading to] [t]oday's modern divides between homeless persons, migrants, and refugees [...].

---

By the Boer Wars (1880–1902), Euro-American powers and settler-colonial governments professed anxieties about White degeneration and the so-called “Yellow Peril” alongside other existential threats to White supremacy [...]. Japan [...] validated the creation of transnational racial hierarchies as it sought to elevate its own global standing [...]. [O]ne key legal instrument for achieving such racialised orders was the vagrancy concept, rooted in vagrancy laws that originated in Europe and proliferated globally through imperial-colonial conquest [...].

[A]nti-vagrancy regulation [...] shaped public thinking around homelessness [...]. Such laws were applied as a “criminal making device” (Kimber 2013:544) and "catch-all detention rationale" (Agee 2018:1659) targeting persons deemed threats for their supposedly transgressive or "wayward interiority" (Nicolazzo 2014:339) measured against raced, gendered, ableist, and classed norms [...]. Through the mid-20th century, vagrancy laws were aggressively used to control migration [and] encourage labour [...]. As vagrancy laws fell out of favour, [...] a "vagrancy concept" nonetheless thrived in welfare systems that similarly meted out punishment for ostensible vagrant-like qualities [...], [which] helps explain why particular discourses about the mobile poor have persisted to date [...].

---

During high imperialism (1870–1914), European, American, and Japanese empires expanded rapidly, aided by technologies like steam and electricity. The Boer Wars and Japan's ascent to Great Power status each profoundly influenced trans-imperial dynamics, hardening Euro-American concerns regarding a perceived deterioration of the White race. [...] Through the 1870s [...] the [Japanese] government introduced modern police forces and a centralised koseki register to monitor spatial movement. The koseki register, which recorded geographic origins, also served as a tool for marking racialised groups including Ainu, Burakumin, Chinese, [...] and Korean subjects across Japan's empire [...]. The 1880 Penal Code contained Japan's first anti-vagrancy statute, based on French models [...]. Tokyo's Governor Matsuda, known for introducing geographic segregation of the rich and poor, expressed concern around 1882 for kichinyado (daily lodgings), which he identified as “den[s] for people without fixed employment or [koseki] registration” [...].

Attention to “vagrant foreigners” (furō-gaikokujin) emerged in Japanese media and politics in the mid-1890s. It stemmed directly from contemporary British debates over immigration restrictions targeting predominantly Jewish “destitute aliens” [...].

The 1896 Landing Regulation for Qing Nationals barred entry of “people without fixed employment” and “Chinese labourers” [...], justified as essential "for maintaining public peace and morals" in legal documents [...]. Notably, prohibitions against Chinese labourers were repeatedly modified at the British consulate's behest through 1899 to ensure more workers for [the British-affiliated plantation] tea industry. [...]

---

Simultaneously, new welfaristic measures emerged alongside such punitive anti-vagrancy statutes. [...] Such border control regulations were eventually standardised in Japan's first immigration law, the 1918 Foreigners’ Entry Order. [...] This turn towards instituting racialised territorial boundaries should be understood in light of empire's concurrent welfarist turn [...]. Japanese administration established a quasi-carceral workhouse system in 1906 [in colonized territory of East Asia] [...] which sentenced [...] vagrants to years in workhouses. This law still treated vagrancy as illegal, but touted its remedy of compulsory labour as welfaristic. [...] This welfarist tum led to a proliferation of state-run programmes [...] connecting [lower classes] to employment. Therein, the vagrancy concept became operative in sorting between subjects deemed deserving, or undeserving, of aid. Effectively, surveillance practices in welfare systems mobilised the vagrancy concept to, firstly, justify supportive assistance and labour protections centring able-bodied, and especially married, Japanese men deemed “willing to work” and, secondly, withhold protections from racialised persons for their perceived waywardness [...] as contemporaneous Burakumin, Korean, and Ainu movements frequently protested [...]. [D]uring the American occupation (1945–1952), not only were anti-vagrancy statutes reinstituted in Japan's 1948 Minor Offences Act, but [...] the 1946 Livelihood Protection Act (Article 2) excluded “people unwilling to work or lazy” from social insurance coverage [...].

---

Imperial expansion relied on not only claiming new markets and territories, but also using borders as places for negotiating legal powers and personhood [...]. Japan [...] integrated Euro-American ideas and practices attached to extraterritorial governance, like exceptionalism and legal immunity, into its legal systems. [...] (Importantly, because supportive systems [welfare], like punitive ones, were racialised to differentially regulate mobilities according to racial-ethic hierarchies, they were not universally beneficial to all eligible subjects.) [...]

At the turn of the century, imperialism and industrial capitalism had co-produced new transnational mobilities [which induced mass movements of poor and newly displaced people seeking income] [...]. These mobilities - unlike those celebrated in imperial travel writing - conflicted with racist imaginaries of who should possess freedom of movement, thereby triggering racialised concerns over vagrancy [...]. In both Euro-American and Japanese contexts, [...] racialised “lawless” Others (readily associated with vagrancy) were treated as threats to “public order” and “public peace and morals”. [...] Early 20th century discourse about vagrants, undesirable aliens, and “vagrant foreigners” [...] produced [...] "new categories of [illegal] people" [...] that cast particular people outside of systems of state aid and protection. [...] [P]ractices of illegalisation impress upon people, “the constant threat of removal, of being coercively forced out and physically removed [...] … an expulsion from life and living itself”.

---

All text above by: Rayna Rusenko. "The Vagrancy Concept, Border Control, and Legal Architectures of Human In/Security". Antipode [A Radical Journal of Geography] Volume 56, Issue 2, pages 628-650. First published 24 October 2023. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Text within brackets added by me for clarity. Presented here for criticism, teaching, commentary purposes.]

#abolition

[spreens]

A couple of notes on 'Jay' (@/JayyBio on twt)'s reply on behalf of Quackity Studios, from a Public Relations and Crisis Management perspective.

Preface:

This analysis attempts to keep as neutral of a stance as I can on this. I will support any worker's right to fair pay, especially with the hours that the QSMP admins put into this project. That being said, we, the viewers, cannot fully understand everything that has gone one with regards to privacy and confidentiality within the project.

Delivery:

The source of this media release comes from Twitter account JayyBio, an account created within the last 24 hours for the purpose of posting this message. The verification for this account was a follow from the official Quackity Studios account. This is absolute bare minimum and really shouldn't be done for anything, ever. I understand that they may wish to reduce the impact on viewers following the Quackity Studios account that are unaware of the situation, but doing this (and attaching a seemingly personal account to it) significantly impacts both the credibility and visibility of the statement.

Removal of Lea from the team:

Immediately, the attacks on Lea attempt to put the admin on the defensive. The evidence regarding her removal (including the 'grooming' screenshots, which she refers to vaguely, and even calls the notion crazy) is designed to target a sore spot within the community, and further complicate the situation.

As a managing body, it is administration's responsibility to clarify things like pay, fair compensation, and work. The screenshots don't call it 'stuff to do' or anything that would imply casual activities. Lea calls it work. As Lea was in a paid position instead of a volunteer one, the responsibility falls on the Studio's head to clarify these things.

The only proof of unavailability is two screenshots, a month apart, with the responding manager enthusiastically giving confirmation with no warning or advice. The only thing this proves is that Lea was not scolded (in the images provided) for taking unavailability.

This whole unavailability thing is a huge, underlying managerial issue, because a discussion should be had if a paid employee is unable to make what the team believes is the minimum activity. Both extremes claimed by both parties, i.e a full on scolding OR complete blind support are not viable solutions.

In short, either they're still not releasing the full reason for release (due to privacy or confidentiality reasons), or someone is lying. Regardless, the whole situation is underpinned by a much larger issue for the managing team.

NDAs:

Honestly, the fact that they weren't using NDAs right off the bat shocked me. In business (and a lot more frequently than you think) NDAs are used to preserve confidentiality within an organisation for a variety of reasons that I don't have time to cover. Depending on your labour laws however, they cannot be used to hide information regarding employee wages.

Quackity Studio's NDA was valid for the use of:

Protecting Copywrited Assets

Minimising Security Breaches and/or Risks

Protecting Storylines and "Lore Leaking"

Protecting the Privacy of team members and CCs

The NDA was *not* valid for:

Penalizing the formation of personal relationships (yes, even parasocial ones)

Communicating with other members of the team, even regarding Wages and Working Conditions

That isn't to say that the cases not covered by the NDA can't be called unprofessional (especially in the case of parasocial relationships) but they are not grounds for being sued.

You know what is grounds for being sued?

DOING A Q&A REGARDING SENSITIVE INFORMATION ON TWITTER!

The threats from QStudios from Lea's initial posts, while deeply unprofessional and drawing a fairly worrying image of the working environment, were just empty threats. Now that Lea has well and truly broken an Actual Signed NDA, this gets real complicated.

I'm not in law, so I'll leave it up to the armchair law students, but this is just a summary of my thoughts while reading up on the reply PDF.

Items not Covered:

Pay for the overall position (I do not know enough about french labour laws)

Treatment of staff who spoke out prior to Lea's statement (too much back and forthing)

Further Action:

Quackity Studios, please set up an account for statements and releases. I cannot emphasise how D-tier this is reading it through a brand new unbranded account.

ALSO GET YOUR CEO'S APPROVAL BEFORE POSTING A STATEMENT?

#qsmp #discourse #qsmp studios #qsmp crit

[intersectionalpraxis]

Where to unpack? First of all, I'm not saying this person doesn't deserves a haven because of what they've been through -we all do (especially since we all live in capitalistic hellscapes) -but disavowing the corporate evils of Starbucks -who, time and again has destroyed their own workers' mental health, has shut down stores to deter unionizing, has committed violence against people who farm for their coffee beans, penalized workers who posted their support of Palestine -and, in turn, has consistently remained neutral during this genocide -and it is just vile. If you think that consuming products that have been a comfort to you is more important RIGHT NOW than the the liberation of an oppressed people or communities around the world -you have blood on your hands. You can recognize how much this place has meant to you in the past (as I have -I have MANY memories of Starbs over the past decade before I stopped supporting the franchise) -but deciding to boycott is a bare minimum way to show solidarity and if you can't do that, that's beyond cruel.

You can find other businesses to support (and sit/dine in other coffee shops and cafe's) -you can find another safe space. Even if it may take time -but you won't, and that's terribly pathetic. This is also coming from someone who has and manages anxiety, and was diagnosed with clinical depression.

The bottom line is: you shouldn't hold onto the familiarity of something like this if it comes at the expense of someone else's well being and/or life, for goodness sake.

It's one thing not to know, but when you do -do better.

#feminist #feminism #social justice #free palestine #free gaza #boycott starbucks #starbucks #fuck starbucks #capitalism #capitalism is evil #boycotting #bds movement #settler colonialism #settler violence

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Alexei  navalny did not like tragedies. He preferred Hollywood films and fables in which heroes vanquish villains and good triumphs over evil. He had the looks and talent to be one of those heroes, but he was born in Russia and lived in dark times, spending his last days in a penal colony in the Arctic permafrost. A fan of “Star Wars”, he described his ordeal in lyrical terms. “Prison [exists] in one’s mind,” he wrote from his cell in 2021. “And if you think carefully, I am not in prison but on a space voyage…to a wonderful new world.” That voyage ended on February 16th.

Mr Navalny’s death was blamed by Russian prison authorities on a blood clot—though his doctor said he suffered from no condition which made that likely. Whatever ends up on his death certificate, he was killed by Vladimir Putin. Russia’s president locked him up; in his name Mr Navalny was subjected to a regime of forced labour and solitary confinement. Mr Navalny will be celebrated as a man of remarkable courage. His life will be remembered for what it says about Mr Putin, what it portends for Russia and what it demands of the world.

A man of formidable intelligence, Mr Navalny identified the two foundations on which Mr Putin has built his power: fear and greed. In Mr Putin’s world everyone can be bribed or threatened. Not only did Mr Navalny understand those impulses, he struck at them in devastating ways.

His insight was that corruption was not just a side hustle but the moral rot at the heart of Mr Putin’s state. His anti-corruption crusade formed a new genre of immaculately documented and thriller-like films that displayed the yachts, villas and planes of Russia’s rulers. These videos, posted on YouTube, culminated in an exposé of Mr Putin’s billion-dollar palace on the Black Sea coast that has been watched 130m times. Despite the palace’s iron gates, adorned with a two-headed imperial eagle, Mr Navalny portrayed its owner not as a tsar so much as a tasteless mafia boss.

Mr Navalny also understood fear and how to defeat it. Mr Putin’s first attempt to kill him was in 2020, when he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok smeared inside his underwear. By sheer good luck Mr Navalny survived, regained his strength in Germany and less than a year later flew back to Moscow to defy Mr Putin in a blast of publicity.

He returned in the full knowledge that he would probably be arrested. On the way back to confront the evil ruler who had tried to poison him he did not read Hamlet. He watched Rick and Morty, an American cartoon. By mocking Mr Putin, he diminished him. “I’ve mortally offended him by surviving,” he said from the dock during his trial in 2021. “He will enter history as a poisoner. We had Yaroslav the Wise and Alexander the Liberator. And now we will have Vladimir the Poisoner of Underpants.”

Mr Navalny was sentenced to 19 years in jail on extremism charges. He turned his sentence into an act of cheerful defiance. Every time he appeared in court hearings via video link from prison, his smile cut through the walls of his cell and beamed across Russia’s 11 time zones. On February 15th, on the eve of his death, he was in court again. Dressed in dark-grey prison uniform he laughed in the face of Mr Putin’s judges, suggesting they should put some money into his account as he was running short. In the end there was only one way Mr Putin could wipe the smile off his face.

In his essay “Live Not by Lies”, in 1974, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Nobel-prize-winning Soviet novelist, wrote that “when violence intrudes into peaceful life, its face glows with self-confidence, as if it were carrying a banner and shouting: ‘I am violence. Run away, make way for me—I will crush you’.” Mr Navalny understood, but instead of running he held his ground.

His great strength was to understand Mr Putin’s fear of other people’s courage. In one of his early communications from jail he wrote that: “it is not honest people who frighten the authorities…but those who are not afraid, or, to be more precise: those who may be afraid, but overcome their fear.”

That is why his death portends a deepening of repression inside Russia. Mr Navalny’s murder was not the first and it will not be the last. The next targets could be Ilya Yashin, a brave politician who followed Mr Navalny to prison, or Vladimir Kara-Murza, a historian, journalist and politician who has been sentenced to 25 years on treason charges for speaking against the war. The lawyers and activists who continue to defend these dissidents are also in danger. Since Mr Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012, the number of prisoners has increased 15 times. Even as the remnants of Stalin’s gulag fill with political prisoners, professional criminals are being recruited and released to fight in Ukraine.

Mr Navalny’s death also casts a shadow over ordinary Russians. In Moscow and across Russia, people flooded the streets at the news. Before the police started to arrest them, they covered memorials for previous victims of political repression in flowers. Yet that repression is intensifying. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, 1,305 men and women have been prosecuted for speaking out against it. A wave of repression is also swallowing up people who never before engaged in politics. The president will shoot into the crowds if he must.

For the West, Mr Navalny’s death contains a call to action. Mr Putin considers its leaders too weak and too decadent to resist him. And for many years Western politicians and businessmen did much to prove that fear and greed work in the West, too. When Mr Putin first bombed and shelled Chechnya in the early 2000s, Western politicians turned a blind eye and continued to do business with his cronies. When he murdered his opponents in Moscow and annexed Crimea in 2014, they slapped his wrist. Even after he had invaded Ukraine in 2022, they hesitated to provide enough weapons for Russia to be defeated. Every time the West stepped back, Mr Putin took a step forward. Every time Western politicians expressed their “grave concern”, he smirked.

The West needs to find the strength and courage that Mr Navalny showed. It should understand that Mr Navalny’s murder, the soaring number of political prisoners, the torture and beating of people across Russia, the assassination of Mr Putin’s opponents in Europe and the shelling of Ukrainian cities are all part of the same war. Without resolve, the West’s military and economic superiority will count for nothing.

Western governments should start by treating people like Mr Kara-Murza as prisoners of Mr Putin’s war who need to be exchanged with Russian prisoners in the West or prisoners of war in Ukraine. They should not stigmatise ordinary Russians living under a paranoid dictator and his goons, or put the onus on ordinary people to overthrow the dictator who is repressing them.

The best retort to Mr Putin is by arming Ukraine. Every time America’s Congress votes down aid, Russia takes comfort. The leaders assembled at the Munich Security Conference, who heard Mr Navalny’s wife, Yulia, speak of justice for her husband’s death, need to stiffen their resolve to see through the war. For their part Ukrainian politicians must see that standing up for Russian activists and prisoners is also a way of helping their own country—just as Mr Navalny called for peace, for rebuilding Ukraine and the prosecution of Russian war crimes. Liberating Ukraine would be the best way to liberate Russia, too.

The voyage ends

After he had been poisoned, Mr Navalny returned home because he believed that history was on his side and that Russia was freeing itself from the deadly grip of its own imperial past. “Putin is the last chord of the ussr,” he told The Economist a few months before he took that last fateful journey. “People in the Kremlin know there is a historic current that is moving against them.” Mr Putin invaded Ukraine to reverse that current. Now he has killed Mr Navalny.

Mr Navalny would not want Mr Putin’s message to prevail. “[If I get killed] the obvious thing is: don’t give up,” he once told American film-makers. “All it takes for evil to triumph is the inaction of good people. There’s no need for inaction.”

Mr Navalny’s death has seemed imminent for months. And yet there is something crushing about it. He was not alone in believing that good triumphs over evil, and that heroes vanquish villains. His courage was an inspiration. To see that moral order so brutally overturned is a terrible affront. ■

#heros #Navalny #alexei navalny #Putin #Putin Caucus in US House of Representatives #war in Ukraine

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 18 July 1912, four suffragettes – Mary Leigh, Gladys Evans, Lizzie Baker and Mabel Capper – attempted to set fire to the Theatre Royal in Dublin during a packed lunchtime meeting due to be addressed by Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. They left a canister of gunpowder close to the stage and hurled petrol and lit matches into the projection booth, which contained highly combustible film reels. The previous day, Mary Leigh had hurled a hatchet (around which a text reading “This symbol of the extinction of the Liberal Party for evermore” was wrapped) into the carriage containing Asquith, which narrowly missed him and instead cut the Irish Nationalist MP John Redmond on the ear. Redmond's focus on the campaign for Home Rule had led to his refusal to insert a clause giving women the vote, assuring his status as a target. All four were remanded in prison during the trial and on August 7, Mary Leigh and Gladys Evans were sentenced to 5 years penal servitude, Jennie Baines (under the nom de guerre Lizzie Baker) was given seven months hard labour, and the charges against Mabel Capper were dropped. If you value our social media posts please check out our podcast! You can listen on Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever you listen to podcasts or go to our website: https://workingclasshistory.com https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=663627615810457&set=a.602588028581083&type=3

[wulfhalls]

reading about the first penal colony in australia and the convicts they send there like. eleven year old timmy stole a moldy piece of bread because despite his 19 hour daily shift at the arsenic factory he couldn't afford to buy one. he and the 17 other tennants of his tiny tin shack situated near an open sewage stream had to share the loot. initially sentence to death it was commuted to 14 years hard labour and transportation to australia. the journey took almost a year. 50 prisoners died of cholera

#txt.me #history #the fatal shore

[spockvarietyhour]

There have been several fates for Tom Riker

Was thinking abt a couple of fates that could have fallen Tom Riker (and some we saw, a la The Millennium Trilogy and the USS Opaka) and was wondering what others thought.

#Star Trek #TNG #DS9 #PIc #Thomas Riker #William T. Riker #polls #tumblr polls #trekposting

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"5 Hun Escape From Port Colborne," Sault Star. October 12, 1943. Page 1 & 6. ---- Taken From Toronto Camp to Work For Peat Company ----- PORT COLBORNE, Oct. 12 - All bridges on the Welland canal and border crossing points were under guard of police and military authorities today as a widespread search was launched for five Ger- man prisoners of war who escaped from the Erie Peat Co., Ltd., camp fire miles west of here. Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the men were among 50 German internees transferred to Port Colborne about two months ago. They were members of a "trusty gang."

The five are: J. Gerrard, 22; A. Kaehler, 22; G. Krause, 21; H. Hoffman and W. Sehlueter.

The prisoners of war were guarded by five civilian employees of the company. Camp guards said that because they were guarding trustees they were not allowed to carry fire-arms.

Police said it was believed men escaped either late Saturday night or early Sunday. All five were dressed in regulation prisoner-of-war uniforms, blue denim trousers with red stripes on the legs, and blue denim shirts with red patches on the back.

TORONTO, Oct. 12 - Officials of Military District No. 2 today said they have been notified that five prisoners of war have escaped from the Erie Peat Company at Port Colborne, Ont., where they have been working.

Officials said they did not know when the men escaped. An official left Toronto to investigate.

Officers said the men are believed to have been wearing prison garb but may have changed their clothes.

The five are J. Gerrard, 22-year-old German sailor; A. Kaehler, 22, described as a German seaman; G. Krause, 21, H. Hoffman and W. Schlueter.

Descriptions and pictures of the five men have been given to Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other police authorities.

Military officials said the five men failed to return to their quarters after a day's work.

Taken From Toronto The prisoners are among a number taken from a New Toronto prisoner-of-war camp about two months ago to work at the Port Colborne company.

Gerrard was described as weighing 157 pounds. He stands 5 feet 91/2 inches, has brown hair, fair complexion, blue eyes and speaks a little English.

Kaehler, 22, weighs 147 pounds, has a fair complexion, black hair parted in the middle, large teeth, quiet manner and speaks English.

#port colborne #prisoners of war #prisoner of war camp #penal labour #convict labour #internees #internment camp #peat company #digging peat #capitalism in canada #capitalism at war #canada during world war 2 #crime and punishment in canada #history of crime and punishment in canada #german sailors #german prisoners

[beautifulpersonpeach]

For the Anon who sent a follow up ask on Jimin’s vocals and how people talk about HYBE groups in general.

You linked to a malicious gallery I’d rather not share here. I’ve talked about this over and over so I only care to give an abridged reply.

When I say I personally don’t take k-pop stans seriously, I’m not saying that because I don’t care about the hate thrown at BTS and Jimin.

Here’s three key things I believe about k-pop stans in general after being in this space for a good decade and some change:

1. For most of them, what they don’t understand, they hate. It’s really that simple. And because k-pop has been dominated and shaped by the customs, music, and stylistic choices of the Big3 for decades, before BTS upended everything, a typical k-pop stan has been literally raised, (for lack of a better word), to consume certain types of music and in particular ways.

Even the culture of streaming and chart watching, believe it or not, didn’t start with ARMYs. ARMYs aren’t even the worst expression I’ve seen of it. It started with fans of Big3 groups. SM stans were notorious chart watchers and still are. They moved massive numbers in sales (mass bought) for that singular purpose as far back as 2009. YG stans perfected streaming on YouTube before BTS had their first win, and would lord those titles over any other group. And none of those behaviours have disappeared, they just stopped being loud about it after BTS had taken any record *they* considered important. It’s why so many of them are salivating at the thought of Fifty Fifty getting a Grammy nomination and win, regardless of the fact BTS is the reason k-pop is being considered for that calibre of American awards to begin with. It’s why I laugh when I see k-pop fans say ARMYs are obsessed with charts and that streaming is unpaid fan labour etc, because that’s clearly more indicative of the stan experience of those k-pop fans than anything ARMYs are doing given the absolute numbers in the fandom. ARMY as a fandom has more in common with Swifties than they do with Exols, Blinks or Carats for example, and would be pulling Taylor Swift numbers if the fandom weren’t penalized for doing the same things Swifties do. And better too.

Like, I might as well be saying water is wet when I say *nobody* is more chart conscious than a k-pop stan. But these stans cannot understand why BTS exists, why BTS is at the top of a hierarchy *they* designed… why Jimin’s vocals which sounds nothing like their famed “SM vocals” is a key defining reason for the biggest k-pop group in the world being so. Till today, after all the studies, essays, thinkpieces, k-pop stans cannot understand why BTS is so successful they’ve single-handedly built the largest k-pop conglomerate in history to the point the capitalizations of the Big3 *combined* is only a fraction of HYBE. They can’t understand it, so they hate it.

Anything deviates from the norm is met with ridicule and hate. It’s like an immuno-response to anything they feel threatens their idea of k-pop as they’ve previously understood it. And like I keep saying, that very behavior is structurally supported by the companies.

*

2. Like many people on the internet, most k-pop stans have no idea what they’re talking about. As a general rule, by the time you’ve read something about BTS on Reddit, it’s been regurgitated previously by k-pop stans on Naver, Quora and Twitter. And before you’ve seen something on Tumblr, people have been overdoing it on Reddit. Nearly all the narratives about all the companies and most groups in this space, I’ve seen at least 20 times each. Each new wave of k-pop stans absorb these narratives perhaps without realizing it, and even the few who attempt to critically dissect them in *discourse*, rely very heavily on other narratives that do the same.

It’s how not too long ago I saw a blogger I later learned was known for her critical discourse, drawing connections between Jimin, Bang PD, and Scooter Braun for their poor treatment of women, without realizing the quotes she was attributing to Jimin, actually came from Taemin on a Korean radio show, and there was more substantial proof demonstrating Lee Sooman’s misogyny and religious ties, than anything a corporate relationship between Hybe, Jimin, and Scooter showed. But what she was saying, whether she realized it or not, came from a naver blog taken down in 2020 that made that initial mistranslation (or false attribution). Like, she just heard that shit somewhere and was doing discourse on it here like it was fact. But people already inclined to think HYBE = bad, BTS + women = weird, or Jimin = ????, will be inclined to believe that, *whether it makes sense or not*. For example, on another occasion where I saw two bloggers make a similar theory re: BTS must view women poorly because HYBE bought Scooter Braun’s company, to which I pointed out how ridiculous guilt by association was. To drive home that point, it was only after I asked how ridiculous that logic would be if they applied it to Taemin (who they biased and who has actually made worrying comments on women in interviews, though I don’t believe he holds those views now) and his relationship with Lee Sooman which has strengthened over the years by all appearances, it’s only then they saw a problem with guilt by association, though, even at the most basic level that argument never had any logical basis.

So like, most of the people in k-pop spaces frankly shitpost 24/7/365/6. Most of what counts for *Discourse* is essentially recycled theories indulged in by people frustrated with something/one else, presented in neutral academic language, proper punctuation or narrated in a monotone voice (in podcasts or video essays).

I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve seen a truly original idea in k-pop circles. And at the same time, this means I’ve seen what counts for hate too many times for it to have any bite.

3. BTS can take care of themselves. Let them receive the criticism. Let them be ridiculed. This might be harsh to hear, but I think it’s not our place to stop it, unless it’s abuse that makes *our own fan experience less pleasant*. Clean up your spaces for yourself first, not because you’re trying to save Yoongi, Jungkook, or Jimin from qrts on a tweet. Unless it’s abuse, then report and block the abuser on principle. BTS were hated from the jump, but were still celebrated by most k-pop stans until they became too big for the rules of this space to hurt them. I’m not being dramatic when I say the existence of BTS alone upsets the whole ordained balance in k-pop.

BTS have explicitly detailed their experience. And have said they’ve intentionally chosen to play the game their way. Listen to them.

Get used to the idea of what it means to be a fan of BTS. Make sure you understand it. The boys are talented, driven, virtuosic artists, and complicated people too with very human vices. The music they make is just plain good and deserves to be celebrated anywhere anytime. They’re also a group that’s unlikely to ever be fully accepted anywhere, if their track record so far is any indication and because they choose to go about things in ways a lot of people will never get.

Such as the manti who just walked into my inbox asking me why *HYBE doesn’t give RM and Jimin more than two MVs when NewJeans gets six. Aside from the fact that HYBE has nothing to do with how BigHit manages their artist, same with Ador, please remember who you claim to support.

The boys will be back in 2026, and they’ll be ready to shake things up even more than they’ve done in the last 10 years. I have no idea what that will look like, I don’t even know if I’ll like the changes/direction. What I will be doing though, is ready to have the time of my life with the music and performances they create for the people who value them.

#I know I said I’d write the abridged version but I hope this is exhaustive enough so I never have to go over this again #jimin #park jimin #BTS #Bangtan #kpop #kpop music #fandom behaviour #fandom discourse #bts army #BTS fandom #kpop stans

[historia-vitae-magistras]

If I remember correctly you said that baby Jack had to be held a lot because he was so clumsy. Would Matt have been big enough to do the same when he first meets him. You could get the family tradition of older siblings carrying their younger ones around everywhere. Let Matt get adorable little germlins to carry.

I did! And I've actually thought about this. The little things that carry from person to person. If Australia is a consequence of the American revolution, he also saw the turn of Matt from younger brother to older brother. What Matt knows about any concept of family, he learned at Alfred's elbow. Peak indulgence for Matt is when it was cold and Matt was small, Alfred would heft him up and carry him places. So picking up Jack? Hell yeah. Jack was very sturdy even for a young child but Matt was in his early teens in the regency era. Wee Jack gave him anxiety. All children are little shits, bouncing off and into mischief and being clumsy but even by that standard Jack is chaotic. Where Matt was a very self contained child who could be put into the corner and given books or blocks or even nothing and he'd occupy himself, Jack is a curious wee thing. He always has questions, he always wants to hear music, he always wants to chat, and play and move. Baby's first labour strike was protesting until the turnspit dog gets friends. He liberated the chicken's Matt's in charge of, let the goats loose and set the parlour on fire because he got bored and tried to figure out how the oil lamps worked. He broke so many priceless antiques that Arthur may or may not have stolen.

In early 19th century Georgian society where childhood is newly important but Jack's still a third rate penal colony at the end of the world, he's kind of miserable and everyone would want to indulge him, stuck half the world away from everything and everyone he's ever known in the miserable libertine environment that is regency England, It's a strange thing, for Matt to be a brother again, much less with one that will be so briefly this wriggly and adorable before shooting up within a century to end up about 20 kilos bulkier than him.

The image of Matt as his anxious but fairly normal 1805 self popping Jack up onto a hip he doesn't have enough of to keep him there and then doing the same thing in 10 years when he's gone back to setting fire and committing war crimes against Americans is so fitting. Like it doesn't matter what anyone thinks, they're stuck together. Also its so goddamn funny to think of Matt like "I just set the White House on fire, I am not in the mood for children." And Jack and Zee don't give a flying fuck, they have a book for him to read and the aren't leaving him be until he fucken reads it. He's grumpy about it, even though he knows he'll prize those memories long after the relationships themselves have been resigned too history.

#the ask box || probis pateo #jack || a land of summer skies #matthew || my country is winter #zee || ahakoa he iti he pounamu #jack zee and matt || battered bonds once so strong #Jack Zee and Matt || battered bonds once so strong

[veillover19]

It had been a long six months stuck in the Kingdom under house arrest but the oil executive was confident he was about to beat the rap. Sure he was guilt as all sin of the corruption charges laid against him but he'd only been charged because those he was working with were just as bent and now he'd paid off the right people in a few hours he'd be out of here on his way back to London where proper cold, actual rain and his trophy wife awaited him.

Sure enough the case was laughable and whole piles of evidence had vanished now he'd paid the "fees" required so he wasn't worried until suddenly the prosecutor stood up and said they had one last witness. Now what? he wondered as the door to the court opened and someone was led in. It was a woman and what's more it was a woman wearing the orange burqa jumpsuit and niqab of the prisoners of the Secret police and who was being led in by the leash around her neck. His eyes widened slightly at the sight, not in any kind of recognition but because it was rare to see such a woman away from the "penal colonies" where they laboured as slaves for their masters. What was this creature doing here?

"State your designation," the prosecutor demanded and the Executive shuddered aware these women were even stripped of their names by their captors. He wasn't much for women's rights but still...

"20th Shawwal, 1410h" the woman replied in British accented English! It was a westerner and even muffled by the veil it almost seemed familiar! No it couldn't be? But as the woman began to spoke and in a dull monotone detailed evidence of his many crimes he felt ice in his veins.

"THAT'S MY WIFE!" he screamed "WHAT HAVE YOU-MMMPH!" he was cut off as a gag was slapped into his mouth (the usual punishment for courtroom outbursts) and he was forced to his knees and chained to his chair even as he caught a sad unhappy look in the veiled woman's eyes...

She still wasn't sure how she'd gotten here, she'd known her husband was in trouble but she'd assumed he'd just buy his way out. Assumed right up until she'd been captured in London, "rendered" to this country and placed in a hell hole prison. Having never even been spanked before and having lived an easy life as a secretary it was all to easy for them to break her will. Within a day she would do anything to stop the torment she was under, within a week she was gradually being conditioned to be an obedient veiled slave and within a month she was ready to parrot a script of made up charges for them. Now would come her reward, transfer from prison to the personal harem of a security chief.

She was disgusted with herself for betraying her husband, but then he hadn't been much of a husband and she had to think of herself now. Not to mention if he hadn't gotten involved with these monsters she'd be safe at home instead of here!

She finished her testimony and listened with half an ear as he was sentenced to five hundred years before meekly allowing herself to be escorted from the court by her leash. She would never see him again but she knew she would spend the rest of her life paying for his "crimes..."

(AI art made with Stable Diffusion)

#ai sexy #hijab #hijabfantasy #hijabfashion #aiart #burqa #hijabiselegant #hijabi #caricature #niqab #women in prison