daily gratitude, prospects of civil war, extrajudicial killings, abuse of journalists, femininity and masculinity, some pictures
yesterday i was grateful for dinner with holly and marilyn at the barn...
today i am looking forward to braised short ribs and a fire in the fireplace...
we are ratcheting up to a moment of confrontation between blue states and red states... we are having the ground prepared for extrajudicial killings... we are breaking international law... the administration is moving us down the authoritarian road rapidly... what the administration is doing is wildly unpopular but they don't care because they don't plan to hold free and fair elections in 2026...
The U.S. strikes another Venezuelan boat.
I know there’s been a lot going on lately — bouts of political violence, ceasefire negotiations in Gaza, National Guard deployments, a Congressional hearing with the attorney general, a new Supreme Court term, the government shutdown — but a new, extraordinary use of military force to kill alleged drug traffickers outside of U.S. borders should probably be headline news everywhere. And the fact that it’s not — that the headlines have taken such a blasé tone of, “Oh, by the way, the U.S. sank another Venezuelan boat” — is making me feel a little crazy.
Federal agents have held journalists, who are now suing ICE and the Department of Homeland Security for the use of “extreme force” against them, and pummeled them with tear gas and pepper spray. As Last notes, local police chief Thomas Mills has testified that the “use of chemical agents by federal agents at the ICE facility in Broadview has often been arbitrary and indiscriminate. At times it is used when the crowd is as small as ten people.”
Yesterday, journalists observed members of the Texas National Guard at a U.S. Army Reserve Center in Elwood, Illinois, about 55 miles (89 kilometers) southwest of Chicago. This morning, the Defense Department announced the federal activation of about 200 soldiers from the Texas National Guard and about 300 from the Illinois National Guard, saying they would be protecting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and other federal agents “who are performing federal functions, including the enforcement of federal law, and to protect federal property.”
The statement said the National Guard soldiers “are under federal command and control in a Title 10 status.” The section of the legal code to which the announcement pointed was the one permitting the president to call into federal service members of the National Guard whenever the U.S. is invaded or in danger of invasion by a foreign nation, there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the U.S. government, or the president cannot execute the laws of the United States with the power of regular law enforcement.
a woman puts a project on Behance... exploring the space between femininity and masculinity, whereas i explore the space between masculine and feminine... the quote below could be reversed and be accurate to me...
I’ve never experienced womanhood as one thing: I see it as an amalgamation of hard/soft/fluid/severe/open/gentle/proud/humbling/every human trait in the world. In the interstices between traditional femininity and masculinity is where I’ve often dwelled, never quite woman, never quite non-woman. Feeling like everything and nothing, frequently at the same time. This series attempts to visualize a tiny portion of this liminality. What it feels like to exist in a state of in-betweeness.
Exhibited at the "Womanhood" exhibition in Cairo and Alexandria as part of the She Arts Festival in 2023.
some pictures from yesterday...
