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Infamous Hearts
Though I sometimes write erotica (to be found on the Literotica website) and erotic horror, my own writing isn't to be found at all in this dark romance anthology. I wish to promote it, nonetheless, in order to help out a friend and fellow writer, Emery LeeAnn, as well as help out all the other writers whose works grace this volume.
So if you like dark romance writing, you might be interested in the following:
#NewRelease #InfamousHearts
The Infamous Hearts Anthology is #LIVE!! One click your copy of this twisted historical anthology today!
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Amazon Universal Link: myBook.to/infamoushearts
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•••••Synopsis••••••
Thirteen authors come together to provide a glimpse at notorious couples through history. When finding love in the arms of Hades must be escaped before dawn. Where the secret of the outlaw's bride is found only in a place between heaven and hell. Where the wrath of Rosaline swings ominously like a pendulum and rapture can be found in the most iniquitous of times. When the secret of hieroglyphic hearts are drawn by daddy's toy to overcome the feeling of being a darling little pet. When the blonde bombshell thrives high above the world in a tower made up of wanton lust and lies. When becoming a Kray is the only way to survive the mean streets of London. Time becomes frozen in each moment and secrets are told in whispers only to the most coveted.
Infamous Hearts: A Match Made in History.
•••••All proceeds to benefit The Joyful Heart Foundation: http://www.joyfulheartfoundation.org/••••••
Author pages:
Ashleigh Giannoccaro: https://www.facebook.com/Colourmyugly/?ref=br_rs
Avery Reigns: https://www.facebook.com/Avery-Reigns-Author-552254841785731/
C.A. Bell: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorC.A.BELL/
Dani René: https://www.facebook.com/DaniReneAuthor/
Destiny Hawkins: https://www.facebook.com/authordhawkins/
Elizabeth Cash: https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethCashAuthor/
Ellie Midwood: https://www.facebook.com/EllieMidwood/
Emery LeeAnn: https://www.facebook.com/EmeryLeeAnn/
Julia Clare: https://www.facebook.com/authorjuliaclare/
Natalie Bennett: https://www.facebook.com/NatalieBennettWriter/
Rose Devereux: https://www.facebook.com/rosedevereuxbooks/
Virginia Johnson: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorVirginiaJohnson/
Yolanda Olson: https://www.facebook.com/yolandasendlesswords/
•••••What Early Readers Are Saying••••••
"Wow, this collection completely blew my mind away! Not only it combined my two favorite genres – historical romance and dark fiction – but each pair in each story was written absolutely incredibly!"
"A different take on famous or infamous characters that spin a different tale on romance. Each author propels the need to keep reading, a different way of thinking in every mini-story, a different level of consuming darkness."
So, go and check out this awesome collection of writing!
Mawr Gorshin literature, literature promotion, short story Leave a comment February 26, 2018 2 Minutes
[NOTE: please read the second and third paragraphs from this post before continuing. Important–don't skip reading them!]
We all grow up assuming our parents and family want only what's best for us. We assume that, just because they get mad at us from time to time and say nasty things to us because of those momentary blowups of rage, that doesn't mean they don't love us. Fighting occurs in even the best of families.
Well, millions of families fall far short of the best.
As for my own family, while–to be fair to them–they were and are far above the worst of all families, they were and are bad enough. To know why I judge them so, read this, this, this, this, this, and this.
A huge source of their problems, something my surviving siblings will never admit to, is our late mother's propensity for lying.
Everybody lies at least occasionally, of course–usually just to protect himself from getting into trouble; but my mother's lies were generally indulgent, unnecessary, manipulative…and malicious.
I as a child was routinely bullied, belittled, and subjected to verbal abuse–and even threats of physical violence, from time to time–by my siblings. While it is understandable that I, as the youngest in the family, would get subjected to some of this kind of treatment, it is also understandable that I would expect to be defended considerably more often than I was by my parents.
It's also understandable to think that my elder siblings should have had a more balanced attitude toward me when I was an awkward child and teen. The things that I did to frustrate them couldn't have been so bad as to deserve the abuse I was subjected to.
One of their main beefs against me, as I've explained elsewhere, was my childhood/adolescent habit of maladaptive daydreaming. Instead of trying to find a constructive solution to this problem, they stupidly assumed shaming me would make me break the habit. Actually, and predictably to anyone who has a modicum of common sense, the shaming just made me engage in the habit all the more.
The chief lie my mother told me to manipulate me was to claim that a number of psychiatrists had diagnosed me, when a child, with a severe case of autism, and my maladaptive daydreaming was assumed, in the family's collective ignorance, to be a manifestation of 'my autism'. None of them considered, for even a second, that my solitary fantasizing and dramatizing of those daydreams could have been the result of all that bullying in my childhood.
In fact, lots of research has been done not only on the long-term effects of school and family bullying (both of which I'd been mercilessly subjected to when little), but also on the effects of childhood stress and adversity. These effects include the victim isolating himself from his family and friends, spending time alone and lacking motivation; also, the victim may feel anxiety, depression, irritability, frustration, feelings of guilt and confusion, etc. Again, the family's shaming of me for having these problems only made them more pronounced, for their very shaming was a form of the kind of bullying that results in this kind of stress.
What I was doing as a child, i.e., my maladaptive daydreaming, can be described in the psychoanalytic language of object relations, too. WRD Fairbairn wrote of how children who are not given proper affirmation from their parents will develop internal object relations, that is, fantasied people to relate to–the endopsychic structure of Libidinal Ego/Object and Anti-libidinal Ego/Object–instead of having relationships with real people in the external world. Such ideas constitute the essence of my childhood world.
The family, in their refusal to empathize with me, insisted that my self-isolation was due to 'my autism', and in their mean-spirited attitude toward me, they linked this self-isolation to such fabricated ideas as my supposed lack of caring for others, as well as my generally being a 'loser'. My mother did nothing to curb this attitude: if anything, she encouraged it through all her acts of triangulation. I'll give a few examples:
Once, when I was in my teens, my brother R. came into the TV room in a rage at me. I tried, with a sad countenance, to explain my foibles as the result of loneliness and an inability to find something constructive to occupy myself with. He roared, "Make a friend!" I said, "It's beyond you." (That is, it was beyond R.'s understanding why I found it so difficult to make friends–see above.) He roared back, with especial cruelty, "It's beyond YOU!!" (That is, I'm too much of a loser to be able to get anyone to like me.)
Be assured, R., that after hearing you say that, I was filled with encouragement and resolve to go out and prove you wrong, and make an army of friends! (sarcasm)
…and what was this terrible crime I'd committed to deserve to hear his cruel words, all during my sensitive, identity-forming adolescence? I'd eaten all the cereal (for the fourth or fifth time, admittedly), so R. couldn't eat any…that evening.
And now, an example of the cruelty of my other brother, F.
When I was about nineteen or twenty, I was watching TV while F., visiting our home (for he'd already moved out, to my general relief), was in the kitchen. He noticed ants crawling about in the sugar container, and naturally, he was expressing his disgust loud enough for me to hear. Not knowing what to do about the problem, I didn't say or do anything: I just stayed in the TV room. He took offence to this.
He could have simply said, "Would you get your ass away from that boob tube and help me?" Such would have been an understandable expression of frustration with my not showing any concern, and hey, if he had dealt with the situation that way, I'd have gotten up and gone into the kitchen to help him…but he wanted to have more fun, of course, by blowing off some steam.
He shouted, "You don't care! You don't care! You'll probably only start caring when the ants crawl up your pants!"
I said, "Well, you're the one who 'cares' so much. You solve the problem."
He said, "I don't live here anymore." (As if that changes anything.) Then he stepped up his rant against me. "You don't care about anyone but yourself. No wonder you're such a hermit." He was now looking right at me with those contemptuous, beady little brown eyes of his.
So sick of hearing his verbal abuse, which I'd already been enduring from him for years, I said, "You don't care about anybody, either."
In feigned admiration at my 'insight', he said, "Oh, really?" in a challenging attitude.
I said, "Yeah. You wanna know why?"
He said, "Oh, do tell me," as if he were fascinated to learn.
I said, "You act like you care only to get attention!"
Egad…the cheek of me, such an Untermensch, to suggest that he had faults! (To be fair, I admit I was clutching at straws with this judgement of him; but given the collective narcissism of that family, and their superiority complex over me, maybe his rage at my words came more from their accuracy than their inaccuracy.)
Anyway, F. flipped. His hateful, piercing eyes cut right into mine. "Who the fuck are you?!" he growled at me. "Who the fuck are you, Mawr?! Why, I oughta smack you for saying that!"
Shaking, I finally followed him into the kitchen. I got a can of Raid, ready to spray the ants. "Never mind," he said, calmer now. "Wait till Mom gets home; she'll know what to do."
Then F., in his sweet generosity, offered an apology.
"Sorry about that, Mawr, but you're just so annoying."
(Translation: Sorry, not sorry.)
I don't suppose it ever occurred to that self-righteous prick that he could be really annoying, too. It surely never occurred to him, either, that maybe the real reason I stayed in the TV room was because I, too, figured the best thing to do was to leave it to Mom when she got home. I guess I should have said so.
His vicious accusations of my 'not caring' could border on the absurd and irrational: during those years, I used to cake sugar on my cereal (remember my petty larceny of cereal, which traumatized R. so much!); why would I not care about there being ants on it? Did F. imagine I was too stupid to realize ants in my cereal would be a bad thing?
A clue could be found in our mother's reaction to my complaints of his bullying at the time. "'I don't care about anyone', he said," I whined to her. "You don't care," she said, frowning at me and invalidating my complaint, a common family tactic. Really, Mother? So, I deserved his threats and verbal abuse, instead of just an angry demand to help?
I've explained before (Part VII: Conclusion) of the difference between the family's legitimate right to complain of my faults, on the one hand, and the needlessness of the excesses of their verbal abuse and bullying (i.e., that it was way out of proportion to the wrongs I'd done). I've also pointed out elsewhere (Part 4: Abusing my Cousins) of how easy it is to link my mother's contempt and bad-mouthing of my youngest cousin G. with her claim that he has an autism spectrum disorder (i.e., Asperger's syndrome–AS). She claimed, fraudulently, that I have autism (and AS); she encouraged, directly or indirectly, my siblings' bullying of me; it's far easier to believe she'd been bad-mouthing me to them, through triangulation, than to disbelieve it.
On another occasion, when I was in my early twenties, I'd had to endure the snotty condescension of my sister J., day after day after day. She, in her narcissistic imagination as the family's #1 Golden Child, remembers those years of her relationship with me as one of pure love and affection; while any moments of friction between us were, conveniently for her, all my fault, of course.
Nothing proves love more surely than imputing all faults on the 'loved one', rather than on oneself. (To be clear, unlike J., I don't claim to love any of those people, so please, Dear Reader, don't imagine I'm being hypocritical in my judgement of them.)
During the time period I just mentioned, I'd gotten mad at her over some relatively trivial matter, and a day or two later, I felt bad about it and wanted to apologize to her (not something the family were ever in the habit of doing for me), so that evening, I did.
All J. had to do was say, "That's OK, Mawr. Forget about it."
But that's no fun, is it?
She'd had a habit of criticizing me for 'taking too long' to assert my feelings; she insisted that one should speak up right away, instead of bottling up one's feelings, which is so unhealthy!
Wow, I didn't know that assertiveness had such a quick deadline.
Furthermore, the notion–that speaking up too quickly, in the heat of anger, could result in the danger of saying mean things one would later regret–didn't occur to her…
…or was her real intention, in knowing I was too meek and timid to speak up right away, to shame me for taking too long, thus making me stay mute, to make me 'forever hold my peace'?
Can you see, Dear Reader, what a slimy little bitch J. is, underneath her fake smiles of love?
Anyway, back to my apology and her response to it, which was the by-now-typical, "Why did you take so long to get that off your chest?" horse-shit. Since I found it difficult to process my feelings, and therefore to talk about them, I explained myself in a very longwinded manner (which, by the way, is also why these blog posts are so long–sorry about that) that J. found irritating.
What must be remembered about her, and the entire family by extension, is that none of them ever wanted to listen to anything I had to say, not even for a few seconds. Their impatience in this matter, of course, made my difficulties in expressing myself all the worse, not that they ever cared.
So as I went on and on trying to explain to J. how I felt, my 'loving sister' ran out of patience as usual, and let out her anger in the usual mean way, shouting, "How much longer do I have to listen to this autobiography?!"
Naturally, I was losing patience, too, and what had started out as a simple apology transformed, in all absurdity, into yet another fight. She got petulant and said, "You always take forever to speak up! Go to Hell!" End of spat.
OK, J., I'm sure those words will encourage me to speak up immediately next time!
(Recall when I'd spoken up immediately at our grandmother's funeral [Part IV: Rationalizing Irrational Behaviour], and how willing she was to listen to my prompt assertiveness!)
Now, that was the end of my spat with J., but it wasn't the end of the emotional abuse I had to endure from the family; for our mother, sitting on the sofa in the TV room, overheard the argument between J. and me (J. was in the bathroom, at the mirror, and I was standing in the hall, near her). Mom decided J.'s verbal abuse wasn't enough, so she–who, recall, "gave [me] the most love", scolded me (I was in my early twenties, recall) as if I were a ten-year-old, for having irritated her Golden Child, who apparently was suffering from a cold (Cold? What cold? J. wasn't sniffling, or coughing, or anything like that! More fabrications, Mother dear?) Our blustering mother ended with, "Go to your room!"
And all of this had started with me trying to apologize to J.
What a wonderful family! I wouldn't trade them for the world!
Now, what must be focused on is not so much that 'R. once verbally abused me this way', or 'F. once bullied me that way', or 'J. played such-and-such a mind game on me on this or that occasion'; but rather, what did all of this abuse mean? What was the real reason for it? Were my behaviour, manner, and overall personality really all that infuriating? Or did they have the attitude problem?
To be sure, a child spending hours and hours in solitary play, every day, instead of going out and making friends, is and should be worrying to a caring family; but why would any reasonable family imagine that shaming him would cure him, instead of making matters worse?
A youth who eats all the cereal on several occasions, slams doors a lot, accidentally hurts the dog when playing with her, doesn't respond to an ant problem in the kitchen cupboards, or rambles on and on when trying to assert himself, is an irritating, frustrating person; but do such problems necessitate yelling that he's a "little shit!", and an "asshole!"? Is haranguing him the only cure (or any kind of cure) to his self-centredness? Does shouting at him to "Go to Hell!" or "Go to your room!" encourage him to be brief and prompt in his assertiveness? Does showing no empathy whatsoever for his adolescent loneliness, saying it's beyond his ability to make friends, help him to be comfortable in social situations, or does it make his antisocial aloofness even worse?
We all blow up from time to time, and say cruel things we shouldn't say; but kind families take the time to reflect on these blowups, then say sorry…and mean it.
What did the family's attitude toward me mean? F. said he was just "frustrated" with me. J. once 'apologized' about her and our brothers' "immature" treatment of me with a giggle that trivialized all the pain they caused me. This kind of talk isn't a real apology. They were either rationalizing their attitude, or minimizing its hurtful significance in their own minds. Invalidating the abuse-victim's experience is what emotional abuse is all about…and they judge me for not being considerate enough of others.
Being angry with a person, and abusing him or her, are two wildly different things.
Something other than just being angry with me was going on in that family. It wasn't just my foibles that were putting my siblings into such rages. I'm convinced that I was being portrayed as a worm to them, a despicable little loser that wasn't worth any consideration, whereas they, the 'superior ones', urgently demanded my consideration of them every step of the way. I could see the scorn in their eyes; I got sneers and scowls of contempt from R., F., and J. on a regular basis…and remember, I was just a kid at the time. Also, their attitude has persisted until the present day.
Who was responsible for painting such a lowly portrait of me?
It had to have been someone my siblings revered as a primal authority figure–not our father: for all his faults, he was relatively nice to me; besides, his grouchiness put my siblings off in a bad way, so they wouldn't have honoured his opinions all that much.
So, who does that break it down to?
Could it have been…the one who lied to me about having an autism spectrum disorder? Could it have been the one who largely stood by and let R., F., and J. bully me, with nary a word of reproach to them? Could it have been the one who defended them, and rationalized their attitude, while never telling them to be patient with me, a child/adolescent who–according to her–suffered from a mental disorder, thus making me especially vulnerable? The one who never spoke a kind word about my youngest cousin, G., even to the point of fabricating details in her smear campaigns against him, and claiming he, too, had Asperger's syndrome, thus in effect making G. into my double, as it were. The one who, as soon as she learned G.'s brother S. was mentally ill, instead of even trying to help him, she made him into a family pariah?
This was a pattern of behaviour in my mother. She and my siblings bad-mouthed me to my face on a regular basis: doing so behind my back would have been all the easier.
Mom would say, "[So-and-so] said this [or that] about you." Psychiatrists said, apparently, that I, a child, was retarded and suffering from early infantile autism. J. said that I have all those books on my bookshelf to look impressive to other people (<<<Part V: No Empathy Leading to Lots of Antipathy). My cousin S. yelled (<<<Part 5: More Elaborate Lies) on the phone one day about how I am a liar who constantly gossips about him to our former teacher friends in Taiwan. My aunt claimed I'd sent her a series of "over-the-top" emails to her, including content my uncle called "disgusting". My aunt claimed I must have been quite "a burden" to raise.
No, Mom, They didn't say those things. You did.
This is the essence of triangulation. Over the years that I have lived here in Taiwan, thankfully oh, so far away from the family in southern Ontario, I rarely engaged in email correspondence with R., F., F.'s family, or my cousins' family in Canada. I hardly needed to: Mom was communicating with them for me.
God knows what garbage she was telling them about me (which was surely a major factor in their virtually never emailing me, though Mom–in an email–blamed only me for the non-communication that was obviously a two-way street), but I do know that her words usually couldn't have been much better than smears against me. She smeared my aunt and S. against me and my siblings: what else am I supposed to think, other than that she smeared me, too?
I've written many times about the string of lies she told me about S. and my aunt the summer before Mom died. I'd like to go more into detail about that now.
Lie #1: As stated above, Mom claimed, in an email and telephone call (months after she'd complained of my never communicating with her, thus igniting her narcissistic rage and giving her a motive to spread rancour in order 'to get even' with me), that S. had flipped out on me again, making baseless accusation after baseless accusation. Since I had no independent corroboration of this alleged outburst (S. hadn't, and hasn't to my knowledge as of this post, attacked me online, on the phone, or anywhere in years), I can safely say this was another of Mom's fabrications. Still, I went along with it, out of a foolish hope that she'd be willing to help my cousin get psychiatric help.
Lie #2: After her continuing unwillingness to contact my aunt about her son's mental illness, Mom finally claimed she'd let me email my aunt, after checking to see if what I'd written would be sufficiently tactful. (See Lie #4 below to see why this was another lie.)
Lie #3: Mom gave me my aunt's new email address, which I believe is a fake one Mom made to prevent me from actually contacting my aunt (see Lie #4).
Lie #4: A day or two after I'd sent my email, Mom emailed me, claiming my aunt didn't want to read my email, since, apparently, I'd sent her a series of "over-the-top" emails with "disgusting" content that made reading anything I'd later sent her too upsetting even to risk reading. My aunt thus wanted us all to "forget about the whole thing", and Mom clearly agreed that that's what we should have done (which, of course, raises the question of why Mom brought up the whole issue in the first place). Now, as I've stated elsewhere, I never sent my aunt any such upsetting emails; I hadn't even emailed her at all, over a period of ten years (from about 2005 to 2015, when this incident occurred).
Lie #5: In another email, Mom claimed that my aunt said I must have been such "a burden" to raise. My aunt hardly even knows me: she's seen me only in brief visits from time to time over the years, especially over the past twenty years. She'd have no reason to think of me as "a burden"; she's also too ladylike to say such a thing, and too meek besides–she'd be risking my wrath if Mom were to relay the message back to me. Besides, since I was born five years after J., the youngest (and, I suspect, last intended) of our parents' children born in a cluster of three with R. and F., I'd say there's a good chance I was the result of an unintended pregnancy; furthermore, there were virtually no baby photos of me in the family photo album or elsewhere in the house, as opposed to the many taken of babies R., F., and J.; and on top of that, there was my scapegoating as the identified patient, so in all likelihood, Mom, not my aunt, thought of me as a burden.
Lie #6: Mom's next email to me was a warning that S. might angrily confront me in Taiwan once he'd returned from his visit to Canada (during which, allegedly, he'd ranted on the phone to my Mom about me), on the assumption that he 'knew' I'd emailed his mother about his mental illness. (Well, Lie #4 shows how spurious this warning was.)
Lie #7: Mom emailed me about a month or so later, after I hadn't sent her any email replies, claiming she'd talked with my aunt about the email she'd refused to read, and now she was finally willing to talk about S.'s problems. Oh, really? WHY NOW? Why didn't Mom do this with my aunt immediately after her refusal to read an email my mom had checked to ensure a tactful choice of words? Why had Mom agreed with my aunt to "forget about the whole thing" then, but only now had changed her mind? Mom was obviously hoovering me.
When I replied, knowing this was an obvious mind game, and said we should just, indeed, forget about it, Mom agreed…but, wasn't my aunt finally willing to confront this issue with S.? After 'all that work talking with my aunt', we were just going to drop it because I said we should? Lies, lies, and more lies, Mother Dear.
What's more, during all of this lying, manipulating, gaslighting, and triangulating, she'd asked me to make a visit to Canada, because she'd "love to see me"! Sure, Mom! I'd love to have a vicious liar in the same room with my wife and me, squirting more of her poison in my ears! She'd asked, on the phone, when I could make another visit (in 2015, seven years after my last visit to Canada) between Lies #2 and #3; my cold, evasive silence should've made it clear to her that I didn't want to visit; then, in an email after Lie #7, she pressured me to visit again, even offering to pay my plane tickets, and I was forced to reply in the following way (pretty close to my actual words, as best as I can remember):
I don't need help paying for plane tickets; I wouldn't want to visit regardless of my money situation. You should already know why. Lies, lies, and more lies. Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about; you know perfectly well what I mean by that. You've been provoking me for the past 12-13 years.
I won't answer any of your phone calls or emails, because I'm so sick of all this manipulation. Please drop this. Take comfort in the fact that you have the love of R., F., J., and your grandchildren. If you love somebody, set him free.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that this was one hell of a blunt email reply; but let's face it–she was really asking for it.
What was her reaction, which I could predict, and which came true in an email from J. in November? Mom used a typical narcissist tactic–she played the victim. In J.'s email, she wrote of how my above email message "hurt" Mom; and like a typical flying monkey, J. took our Mom's side 100%, saying "Mom truly doesn't know what I meant by lying".
I was expected to reply with a confirmation of my address in Taiwan (another thing my sister wanted from me in her message), as well as, of course, an explanation of why I was mad at Mom; I answered only the former question, to which J. replied approvingly, saying it was "Short and sweet". (Recall how much my sister hates my long-windedness.) Since a longwinded reply was the only way I could discuss my falling-out with Mom, I didn't reply to J.'s reply; in fact, I didn't even read past these words of her question, "Are you mad at Mom because…?"
Supposedly, this was supposed to be my sister inviting me to offer my side of the story; but seriously…I know these people. They have never respected or validated my perspective on anything in my life, except on the rare occasion when it was convenient for them. J. had already demonstrated her absolute loyalty to Mom in believing her that she 'truly didn't know' what I was talking about in my accusation of her lying to me. So, why should I have even bothered trying to explain anything to J. in a following reply? She would have 'heard me out', then proceeded to relay my answer to Mom, who in all likelihood had a ready-made refutation of my accusation, and J. would have believed her.
Knowing what I do about triangulation, I can even visualize how Mom communicated her 'version' of what happened: she cried a deluge of sympathy tears to J., who probably played the role of consoling 'parent' to Mom; she sobbed copiously about how she 'only want[ed] to see [me]', that as my mother, she so 'deeply loved' me and missed me, and how I 'always hurt her and hurt her', a pure projection of her always having hurt me, including this recent triangulating tactic, all to vilify me to the family.
Here is what her real reaction to my email was, in all probability: she flew into a rage, saying (or thinking) something to the effect of, 'That ungrateful little brat!' (I, a brat in my late 40s.) 'After all I've done for him! I'll fix him! Everyone in the family's gonna hate him–I'll make sure of it!' Then she practiced sobbing in front of a mirror, so to speak.
On top of all this, her health had been declining; she was 77, after all. Her breast cancer metastasized, and I was contacted around April of 2016. While I was wrong to think this dying of cancer was a lie to manipulate me into visiting (she died the following month), it was a perfectly reasonable suspicion for me to have had at the time, given what had previously happened.
From the family's perspective, I was being monstrously unfilial; while she lay there in hospital on her deathbed, I was expected to do my part in honouring the great matriarch of the family. R. wanted me to be available to chat with her (her using his cellphone) as often as possible, but after not only her original lies about autism and Asperger's syndrome, her triangulating against me my whole life, but also with those seven lies the previous summer, which she wouldn't even admit to, chatting with her was the last thing I wanted to do, whether she was dying or not.
And oh, the way she played the victim card during that one phone call I did concede to have with her! She went on and on about how I'd hurt her, laying the guilt trip on so thick, while not even having the decency to admit to all that she had done to provoke me. When people are trying to be reconciled, it's generally good policy to be fair and admit one's own faults as well as complain of those on the other side.
She ended her whole J'accuse by mentioning how she, during my pre-teen years (which she'd also claimed were a time I'd made life especially trying for her…a time when, by the way, she was prating about how 'my autism' made her wonder if I'd "ever make a good garbageman", and that the psychiatrists said one should "lock [me] up in an asylum and throw away the key!"…projection), "gave me the most love"! Reaction formation…I was infuriated to hear those words.
I refused to call her after that. I even left my home phone unplugged, so R. couldn't contact me and pressure me into talking to her. She soon died. He discovered a YouTube video of me back in 2009, reciting Philip Larkin's 'This Be the Verse' with a bitter scowl. Naturally, he was enraged…though, in my defence, nobody forced him to watch it. In his snarky comment to the video, he claimed I was "a disturbed individual" (no doubt a judgement influenced by our mother's triangulating, to discredit any opinions I have that might have exposed her for the probable malignant narcissist that she was), and–no doubt influenced by Mom's "gave [me] the most love" self-congratulation–he said she'd loved me "more than anyone else on the planet".
Now, did he mean that she loved me more than she loved anyone else? A totally ridiculous thing to say (umm, more than she loved our Dad?), and one that can be defended only by acknowledging that he was grieving over her, and my rather nasty video enraged him beyond his ability to say anything rational.
Or, did he mean that she loved me more than anyone else has ever loved me? Another absurd generalization: he didn't consider my wife's love for me, she who–for all of her reservations and grievances against my faults–has loved me more than everyone in that Canadian family combined!
I suspect he meant the latter; if so, I wish he could understand that his implication that his, F.'s, and J.'s tepid-to-non-existent love for me, as well as a lack of love for me from the rest of the world, isn't so much a reproach of me, but a reproach against them as a family. As I explained at the beginning of this post, my faults are enough to provoke an understandable level of anger and frustration from them as a family, but they are nowhere near enough to provoke their abusive, contemptuous attitude.
I'm R.'s kid brother: he's supposed to love me, regardless of how trying I can be for him or anyone. He, as well as F. and J., have their sense of cause and effect all mixed up; it's not that I get a paucity of love from them because I do irritating things–I get a paucity of love from them, so I do irritating things.
To return to a discussion of Fairbairn and object relations, when children aren't given the love and affirmation they need from the real, external world (from their primary objects, their parents and primary caregivers), their Central Ego splits into fantasied, internal objects: a Libidinal Ego/Exciting Object configuration (pleasurable object relations), and an Anti-libidinal Ego (or Internal Saboteur)/Rejecting Object configuration (negative object relations).
In my childhood world, my Central Ego was torn apart by the family's constant bullying and emotional abuse, causing me to retreat into a world of maladaptive daydreaming, in which I created imaginary Exciting Objects (including characters in sex fantasies) for my broken-off Libidinal Ego; to protect myself from further hurt, my Anti-libidinal Ego made Rejecting Objects of my family and most people I knew in my neighbourhood and at school (for indeed, so many of them were such bullies that they really were Rejecting Objects).
So, the family's bullying of me caused me to develop a rejecting personality as a way to protect myself. I'm the youngest of all of them, so I didn't cause them, they caused me. I reacted to them, causing them to react to me, too, but they–as the older ones–were the first cause.
I wasn't the worst-behaved of our parents' kids: I was actually the best-behaved. R. dropped out of school and left home as a teen; F. crashed a T-bird into a telephone pole when he was a young adult; J. got caught shoplifting when she was a pre-teen (I believe F. influenced her in that direction); F. and J. smoked pot and drank beer during parties when our parents were away on vacation; J. (about 19) got caught in bed with her boyfriend when our parents suddenly came home one night; I, on the other hand, slammed doors, ate up all the cereal, and accidentally hurt our dog once or twice. Perspective.
The only time I did anything significantly bad–from the family's perspective–was when I was so cold to Mom during the 2010s; but as I've explained so many times before, she provoked it. R., F., and J. know nothing of our mother's provocations, because, through triangulation, she made sure my siblings never knew my side of the story.
I'm sure their willful ignorance and cognitive dissonance will ensure that they never learn my side of the story, let alone validate it. If they ever find this blog and read it, their trolling comments below will prove, ironically, just how right I am about their attitude.
Further Reading: WRD Fairbairn, Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality, Routledge, London, 1952
Mawr Gorshin bullying, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, emotional abuse, gaslighting, narcissistic mothers, psychoanalysis 32 Comments February 25, 2018 October 16, 2021 24 Minutes
Analysis of 'Richard III'
Richard III, though called "The Tragedy of King Richard the third" in the First Quarto, is a history play written by William Shakespeare in the early 1590s. It's the last play in a tetralogy on British kings, the first three being parts I, II, and III of Henry VI, which are among the earliest plays the Bard is known to have written.
While Henry VI, Part I is considered one of Shakespeare's worst plays, and thus is also believed to be a collaboration (these same two assessments have been made of another early Shakespeare play, Titus Andronicus), Richard III is the Bard's first great play. It is also his second-longest play (after Hamlet).
Richard III is great literature, but it isn't good history: essentially a propaganda play, it vilifies its namesake in order to justify his usurpation by Henry VII, the first monarch of the House of Tudor (Elizabeth I, contemporaneous with Shakespeare, being the last Tudor monarch). While the theory–that Richard III was responsible for the deaths (or, rather, disappearance) of the princes in the Tower—seems the most probable one to explain the fate of the two boys, it is by no means proven; accordingly, the Ricardians are trying to rehabilitate Richard III's reputation.
Here are some famous quotes from Richard III, and from plays associated with it:
"Why, love forswore me in my mother's womb;/And, for I should not deal in her soft laws,/She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe/To shrink mine arm up like a wither'd shrub;/To make an envious mountain on my back,/Where sits deformity to mock my body;/To shape my legs of an unequal size;/To disproportion me in every part,/Like to a chaos, or an unlick'd bear-whelp/That carries no impression like the dam./And am I then a man to be belov'd?/O, monstrous fault, to harbour such a thought!/Then, since this earth affords no joy to me/But to command, to check, to o'erbear such/As are of better person than myself,/I'll make my heaven to dream upon the crown,/And, whiles I live, to account this world but hell/Until my mis-shap'd trunk that bear this head/Be round impaled with a glorious crown./And yet I know not how to get the crown,/For many lives stand between me and home,/And I, like one lost in a thorny wood,/That rends the thorns, and is rent with the thorns,/Seeking a way, and straying from the way,/Not knowing how to find the open air,/But toiling desperately to find it out,/Torment myself to catch the English crown;/And from that torment I will free myself,/Or hew my way out with a bloody axe./Why, I can smile, and murther while I smile,/And cry 'Content!' to that which grieves my heart,/And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,/And frame my face to all occasions./I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall,/I'll slay more gazers than the basilisk;/I'll play the orator as well as Nestor,/Deceive more slyly than Ulysses could,/And like a Sinon take another Troy./I can add colours to the chameleon,/Change shapes with Protheus for advantages,/And set the murtherous Machiavel to school./Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?/Tut, were it farther off, I'll pluck it down." –Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Henry VI, Part III, Act III, Scene ii, lines 153-195
"Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds, that lour'd upon our house,
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visag'd war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, — instead of mounting barbed steeds,
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,—
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, — that am not shap'd for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty,
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable,
That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them,—
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity.
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
And hate the idle pleasures of these days." –Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Richard III, Act I, Scene i, lines 1-31
"Was ever woman in this humour woo'd?
Was ever woman in this humour won?
I'll have her; — but I will not keep her long." –Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Richard III, Act I, Scene ii, lines 227-229
"I cannot tell: the world is grown so bad,
That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch:
Since every Jack became a gentleman,
There's many a gentle person made a Jack." –Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Richard III, Act I, Scene iii, lines 70-73
"But then I sigh, and, with a piece of scripture,
Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:
And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With odd old ends, stol'n out of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil." –Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Richard III, Act I, Scene iii, lines 334-338
"O momentary grace of mortal men,
Which we more hunt for than the grace of God!
Who builds his hope in air of your fair looks,
Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast,
Ready, with every nod, to tumble down
Into the fatal bowels of the deep." —Hastings, Richard III, Act III, Scene iv, lines 98-103
"O bloody Richard! —miserable England!
I prophesy the fearfull'st time to thee
That ever wretched age hath look'd upon. —
Come, lead me to the block; bear him my head:
They smile at me who shortly shall be dead." –Hastings, Richard III, Act III, Scene iv, lines 105-109
"I must be married to my brother's daughter,
Or else my kingdom stands on brittle glass: —
Murder her brothers, and then marry her!
Uncertain way of gain! But I am in
So far in blood, that sin will pluck on sin.
Tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye." –King Richard, Richard III, Act IV, Scene ii, lines 62-67
King Richard: I am not in the giving vein to-day.
Buckingham: Why, then resolve me whe'r you will or no.
King Richard: Tut, tut, thou troublest me; I am not in the vein. —Richard III, Act IV, Scene ii, lines 120-122
"The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham's bosom,
And Anne my wife hath bid the world good night." –King Richard, Richard III, Act IV, Scene iii, lines 38-39
"Is the chair empty? is the sword unsway'd?
Is the king dead? the empire unpossess'd?" –King Richard, Richard III, Act IV, Scene iv, lines 470-471
"Despair and die!" –The Ghosts of Edward, Prince of Wales; Henry VI; Clarence; Grey; Rivers; Vaughan; Hastings; the boy Princes; Anne and Buckingham, Richard III, Act V, repeatedly throughout Scene iii
"Give me another horse! — bind up my wounds!
Have mercy, Sweet Jesu!" –King Richard, Richard III, Act V, Scene iii, lines 177-178
"I have set my life upon a cast,
And I will stand the hazard of the die!
I think there be six Richmonds in the field;
Five have I slain to-day instead of him." –King Richard, Richard III, Act V, Scene iv, lines 9-12
"A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!" –King Richard, Richard III, Act V, Scene iv, line 7, then again at line 13
"Inter their bodies as becomes their births.
Proclaim a pardon to the soldiers fled,
That in submission will return to us;
And then, as we have ta'en the sacrament,
We will unite the white rose and the red: —
Smile heaven upon this fair conjunction,
That long have frown'd upon their enmity!" —Henry, Earl of Richmond, Richard III, Act V, Scene v, lines 15-21
"Off with his head; so much for Buckingham" –King Richard, Colley Cibber's 1699 adaptation of Richard III
"Richard's himself again!" –King Richard, Colley Cibber's adaptation of Richard III
Because Richard III is part four of a tetralogy, which Shakespeare assumed his audience had seen in its entirety, he makes allusions to the first three parts that would be lost on audiences who've only seen the last part. (Colley Cibber tried to solve this problem with his 1699 adaptation.) Hence, to understand Shakespeare's play, one must give a précis of the first three plays; I refer mostly to those parts relevant to understanding Richard III.
Henry VI, Part I
Henry V has passed away, way before his time, meaning his son, the child Henry VI, must be the new king. Squabbling and mismanagement of the kingdom under the Lord Protector and other nobles, as well as rebellions led by Joan of Arc, have lost England the French territory won under Henry V's rule. Factions in King Henry's court choose to side either with the White Rose of York or the Red Rose of Lancaster. Suffolk's plan is for Henry VI to marry Margaret of Anjou, as against the advice of the Lord Protector, so Suffolk can control the king through her.
Henry VI, Part II
The king marries Margaret. Bickering between the two factions leads, by the end of the play, to the Wars of the Roses. The Lord Protector; Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, has been imprisoned for treason and killed by hired murderers. The Duke of York, claiming the right to the throne, fights against Henry VI's Lancastrian faction. The king, too meek and pious to fight, will let his wife, Queen Margaret, lead the Lancastrians.
Henry VI, Part III
The Duke of York briefly gains the upper hand and is made king, but the Lancastrians regain power, put a paper crown on York to mock him, then kill him. Henry VI is king again, but not for long, as the Yorkists get the upper hand again, and York's eldest son is made King Edward IV. Hunchbacked Richard, Edward's youngest brother, is made Duke of Gloucester; he lusts for the crown, but in a soliloquy (see first quote above) speaks of how he doesn't know how to get to it; he compares his difficult quest for power to cutting through a "thorny wood" to get to a clearing. During the ongoing civil war, Warwick is killed by King Edward, as is (in the Battle of Tewkesbury) the Lancastrian Prince of Wales by all three of York's sons, Edward (the king), George, and Richard, the last of these three later killing imprisoned King Henry VI, who prophesies that the Earl of Richmond will be king after the future King Richard III's reign. The Yorkists win, Margaret is banished, and the Yorkists celebrate.
Only Richard, Duke of Gloucester, doesn't celebrate with the others, for he is still scheming to eliminate his rivals to the crown. In a soliloquy (see second quote above), he speaks of the great change that has just occurred: from war to peace, from "the winter of our discontent" to "glorious summer by this sun of York" (that is, the Yorkist badge of the sun, or, son of the Duke of York, Edward IV). Instead of making war, the people are making love.
This soliloquy introduces the theme of vicissitudes, or continually revolving changes in condition or fortune (especially from good to bad luck, for as we will see, Gloucester hates this shift from killing to copulating). The theme is established clearly by repeating, over and over again, how bellicosity has changed to such things as "the lascivious pleasing of a lute".
Gloucester, however, is too ugly to be a lover. No woman would want this hunchback, who has been "Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,/Deform'd", with one leg longer than the other. So, since he "cannot prove a lover", his emotional rejection, combined with his ambition, has him "determined to prove a villain". He is determined by fate and by his resolve to become king.
Through Gloucester's scheming, his elder brother George, Duke of Clarence, is being sent by Brackenbury to the Tower because a prophecy says that "G" (George, apparently, but actually Gloucester) will kill King Edward's heirs. Thus we see the vicissitudes of Clarence's fortunes, traded with those of Hastings, who has just been freed from the Tower, a change to ill fortune only in the eyes of his enemies, Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan.
To help secure him on the throne, Gloucester must wed Anne Neville, who hates him for having murdered her father, Warwick, her husband, the Prince of Wales at Tewkesbury, and his father, Henry VI. Getting her to change her attitude to Gloucester will be a formidable task for him, but he succeeds within one scene of fiery dialogue with her: he feigns both repentance and love for her, even offering either to have her stab him with his sword or to kill himself. She agrees, amazingly, to marry him by the end of the scene. Vicissitudes follow each other so closely, they're like a pair of feet stepping on each other's toes.
Indeed, immediately after she leaves, Gloucester has gone from imagining himself too repellent to woo women, to being a "marv'llous proper man", and he wants to go out and buy himself some fashionable clothes and gaze on himself in a looking glass.
The nobles have changed from celebrating their victory to squabbling among each other. Elizabeth, Edward IV's queen, knows how dangerous Gloucester is to her family. He stirs up more rancour among the nobles by comparing the rise in power of her family to how "wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch". He claims that, in his opinion, lowly people like her family have become gentlemen, while truly noble people like himself have been abased. More vicissitudes, both real and imagined.
Speaking of abased nobles, Margaret of Anjou, former queen to Henry VI, has defied her banishment and walks among the, in her opinion, "every Jack [who] became a gentleman" and curses them for causing her ruinous vicissitudes. They all scoff at her curses (her curse at Gloucester seeming to be sent back to her by him–Act I, Scene iii, lines 216-234), but by the end of the play, they'll be weeping or dead, and she will be seen as a prophetess (Act I, Scene iii, lines 299-303–more on the theme of curses, i.e., self-inflicted ones, later).
Gloucester has hired two murderers to kill Clarence in the Tower. He warns them to be quick about it, for if they let his brother speak, his clever words will surely dissuade them from doing the murder. Indeed, his words almost do, and only one of the murderers actually kills Clarence by drowning him in a malmsey butt of wine, presaged in a dream Clarence has had of being knocked off a boat by falling Gloucester, and drowning in the sea while seeing the horrid ghosts of all those Lancastrians Clarence killed (Act I, Scene iv, lines 9-23, then lines 43-63).
Act II begins with ailing Edward IV pushing the squabbling nobles to be reconciled with each other, getting forced exchanges of love between Hastings and Rivers, Buckingham and Queen Elizabeth, etc. All would seem well in the eyes of the smiling king, until Gloucester shocks everyone with the announcement of Clarence's death. More vicissitudes come when the king dies of grief, causing, in turn, the mourning of the queen, Clarence's children, and the Duchess of York, the mother of the dead king, Clarence, and Gloucester (Act II, Scene ii).
Though preparations are being made for Edward IV's elder son, Prince Edward, to become King Edward V, Gloucester, as the Lord Protector, is making preparations to get rid of the twelve-year-old boy and his younger brother, Prince Richard of York.
Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan are to be executed on a trumped-up charge, causing lamentations in Elizabeth over "the ruin of [her] house" (Act II, Scene iv). As the three condemned men bemoan their vicissitudes, they remember Margaret's curses not only at them, but at their enemies, Gloucester, Buckingham, and…Hastings, too! Now they can go to their deaths with a kind of gloating solace (Act III, Scene iii).
Elizabeth has her nine-(ten?)-year-old son, Prince Richard, Duke of York, put in sanctuary for his protection from Gloucester and Buckingham. The boy's vicissitudes turn sour when Buckingham argues that he's too young to understand, and therefore merit, the Church's protection (Act III, Scene i, lines 44-56); so he's taken out of sanctuary and into Gloucester's 'protection' with his older brother, the boy who would be king…if not for Gloucester.
Though Lord Stanley warns Hastings of a bad dream he's had presaging Hastings's death at the hands of Gloucester (the boar), Hastings dismisses the danger, riding high on the news of the execution of his enemies, Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan (Act III, Scene ii). Catesby asks Hastings if he'll support Gloucester over the two boy princes as the next king; Hastings says he'll give up his own head before he'll allow that. Vicissitudes lead to his head, indeed, being chopped off, and what a dramatic swing in fortune do we see when Hastings's smile is so quickly changed to a frown, all from having said "If".
So soon after the two princes' rise in power do we see their vicissitudinous fall, first into the gaping mouth of the Tower, then to being slandered as bastard sons of lascivious Edward IV (Act III, Scene v, lines 72-94), then to their murder by men hired by Tyrell, who at first craves financial gain from just-crowned King Richard III (Act IV, Scene ii, lines 32-41), then quickly switches to remorse upon the sight of the smothered innocents in their bed (Act IV, Scene iii, lines 1-22).
The new king, fearing losing his power, is disappointed with Buckingham, who flinches at the idea of approving of the killing of the princes in the Tower. Buckingham has thus switched from being the king's loyal friend–who had until now been crucial in helping Richard's rise to power–to being his enemy. Irked at how the king "Repays…[Buckingham's] deep service/With such contempt", Buckingham changes his allegiance to Richmond.
Richard III has undergone vicissitudes, too: he's gone from being a gleeful villain, who "can smile, and murder while [he] smile[s]", to a paranoid tyrant who no longer has "that alacrity of spirit/Nor cheer of mind that [he] was wont to have", and who increasingly hates himself, knowing no one–not even his mother, the Duchess of York–loves him (Act V, Scene iii, lines 177-206).
He's had his queen, Anne, killed, and he feels the only way he can secure his kingdom is to marry the daughter of the former Queen Elizabeth, who naturally would abominate such a foul marriage, preferring an alliance of her daughter with Richmond. The king tries to charm Elizabeth into allowing the marriage as he did with Anne, but vicissitudes mean he hasn't the success he had with Anne (Act IV, Scene iv, lines 196-431).
Indeed, the only way Richard can get even the semblance of an agreement from Elizabeth for him to marry her daughter is to curse himself if he ever proves false to her (Act IV, Scene iv, lines 397-417). Since he's already proven false to that family (as well as to his own) so many times before, he doesn't need to prove himself false to his would-be bride; so his pretend curse on himself comes true.
This unwitting curse on oneself is not unique to Richard. Anne Neville has cursed any future wife of his, not knowing "his honey words" would make her that accursed future wife (Act IV, Scene i, lines 66-86). Richard Gloucester turns one of Margaret's curses on herself (Act I, Scene iii, lines 216-240), though this doesn't stop her curses from having effect on the Yorkists. Buckingham curses himself if he ever proves unfaithful to Queen Elizabeth, saying his own friends, Gloucester et al, should likewise prove untrue to him (Act II, Scene i, lines 32-40)…and this curse, as we know, comes true (Act V, Scene i, lines 12-29).
These self-inflicted curses are made because Anne, Buckingham, and Richard are overconfident, not provident enough to consider how quickly vicissitudes can turn good fortune into bad.
Indeed, with the rise in Richmond's power and decline in Richard's, we see a perfect illustration of this trade in fortune in their shared dream, that of Richard's victims (the Prince of Wales slain in Tewkesbury, Henry VI, Clarence, Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan, Hastings, the princes in the Tower, Anne, and Buckingham) cursing the tyrant to "Despair, and die", then wishing success to Richmond in the upcoming Battle of Bosworth Field (Act V, Scene iii, lines 118-176).
During that battle, Richard fights bravely, but before his death, he despairs so greatly that, limping on the grass, he would trade the kingdom that has meant everything to him…just for a horse, so he can escape from his enemies.
From craving rule of the kingdom, craving it so much that he would kill anyone standing in his way (family, his wife, even children), to achieving it; then willingly trading that coveted kingdom for a mere horse: such extremity of vicissitudes.
Mawr Gorshin educational aid, literature, literature analysis 5 Comments February 18, 2018 February 18, 2018 14 Minutes
The Ouroboros of Dialectical Materialism
Marxism is based on the idea of historical materialism, that everything in our world is properly understood in terms of its material basis. Any people in their history have had the kind of culture and belief systems they have because of the prevailing material conditions in their world (Eagleton, pages 128-159).
Are they a wealthy nation, prospering, and with most of their people doing well, as in the Scandinavian countries? Then it's likely they'll be mostly a gentle, tolerant people. Are they a poor people, oppressed by Western imperialism, like those in the Islamic world (peoples often much more liberal and modern before war and imperialism tear their worlds apart)? Their religion, for example, will probably have more militant members (though even with that, still a small minority of all believers) than there are in developed countries. Are they a First World country, but with terrible wealth inequality, as in the US or the UK? Well, there will be lots of discontent, plus lots of division over what is considered the hated establishment, as well as a lazy, complacent attitude towards revolution.
Another important factor in Marxism is dialectics, not the idealist version of Hegel and Zižek, but the materialist version of Marx and Lenin. As Mao said, everything is made up of conflicting contradictions; furthermore, there is a yin and yang-like unity with all contradictions. One cannot have one thing without contemplating or observing its opposite.
How can we interpret the relationship between one opposite and the other? In 'On Contradiction,' Mao gave some good examples of that relationship. For example: "…at every stage in the development of a process, there is only one principal contradiction which plays the leading role." (Mao, page 157) Also, 'Why is it that "the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another"? Because that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living, conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite. Reflected in man's thinking, this becomes the Marxist world outlook of materialist dialectics.' (Mao, page 166)
I would like to offer my own ideas of how all contradictions relate to each other, as well as give examples from history as to how my ideas have manifested themselves. I mean the below ideas as only a guideline as to how the events of history can be seen, though, not as a prescription of how these things must be seen every time. The following is only a contribution to dialectical materialism; it's not meant as any kind of dogma. Anyway, here's my idea: I see opposites as on the ends of a continuum that is coiled into a circle, like the ouroboros, normally a symbol of eternity. For me, it symbolizes the dialectic.
Imagine, at the top of this coiled continuum, the snake's head biting its tail. There we have the two extreme opposites meeting. At the bottom, the middle of the snake's body, is the moderate, middle point between the extremes; and of course, everywhere on the snakes's body approaching the head is a movement toward the one extreme, and movement toward the tail is an approaching of the other extreme.
To give a simple example, imagine the ouroboros as the political spectrum, the head as Fascism and the tail as Communism. Do not confuse this with the horseshoe theory: the biting head and bitten tail are not to be understood as similar, but as one opposite phasing into the other as a result of the aggravation of class struggle.
When the Russian Revolution shook up the world, and (failed) attempts at Communist revolution happened in Germany, Hungary, and Italy from about 1918 to the early 1920s, the capitalist class got nervous, and Fascism arose to divert the working class's attention from class issues to scapegoating such targets as foreigners, Jews, Communists, etc. Hence, broadly speaking, Communism led to a Fascist reaction–the serpent's bitten tail to its biting head.
In the particular case of Germany during the 1920s, though, the move from an attempt at Communism to the rise of Naziism went in the other direction, since the progressive policies of the Weimar Republic, though irritatingly insufficient for the far left, were enough to bring Germany from the tail to the bottom middle of the ouroboros's body. Then, the Nazis manipulated their way into power through the very democratic process they would soon destroy from within. From the bottom middle, Germany slid up to the serpent's head.
Then, the rise of Fascism in Italy, Naziism in Germany, and imperialism in Japan led to the USSR's crushing of Naziism and the defeat of imperial Japan by such efforts as the protracted war in China, the victors there being a coalition of Chiang Kai Shek's Nationalists and Mao Zedong's Communists, the latter ultimately ousting the former from China in 1949 and establishing Communist China. Similarly in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany led to the creation of the Eastern Bloc. Fascism led to a Communist reaction–head to tail.
Now, consider the middle of the tail, to which most 'liberal democracies' gravitate. Here, we've usually seen a moderate level of social liberalism mixed with a 'free market': in other words, the class structure of the bourgeoisie is firmly intact, while lip service–and usually not much more than that–is paid to acknowledging the rights and needs of people of colour, LGBT people, and to attaining equality of the sexes (hence, the 'ideal' of being 'socially liberal' and 'fiscally conservative'). The swaying between Democrats and Republicans in US elections reflect this swinging of the pendulum from 'moderate left' to 'moderate right'. This is a sliding back and forth along the middle of the serpent's body at the coil's bottom…indeed, it is the lowest of the low, for it is a terrible state of affairs where little substantive change ever happens. As awful as the threat of Fascism is, at least–theoretically–it could prompt real change, one hopes, in the form of a socialist reaction to it, as it did in the bloody aftermath of WWII.
Most people prefer the moderatism of that middle of the serpent's body, where things are 'stable'. People are scared of instability, and thus are willing to endure a number of injustices as long as their whole familiar world doesn't get torn apart before their horrified eyes. The capitalist class thrives on our complacency.
The Cold War era brought about an interesting development, though, where we found ourselves in the area of the back half of the serpent's body: not quite at the bitten tail, but in that hind area, approaching the bitten end. The Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, Mao's China, Castro's Cuba, North Korea, and North Vietnam together posed a formidable threat to the capitalist West, so much so that even they made a number of left-leaning concessions to their citizens–higher taxes for the rich (high enough, at least, to curb greed), a welfare state, strong unions, and the like, coupled with Keynesian economics–in spite of their long-standing imperialism.
The ruling class soon grew weary of all this growing social justice, and they recruited the aid of right-wing economists like Milton Friedman, who advocated a return to classical liberalism and the 'virtues' of the so-called 'free market'. The seductive appeal of that hack writer, Ayn Rand, was also used. (The Canadian rock band, Rush, whose otherwise brilliant music was progressive only in the musical sense, fell under her Siren song back in the 1970s; to be fair to drummer/lyricist Neil Peart, though, he later saw the error of his youth, and has since renounced Rand's 'virtue of selfishness'.)
When even Keynesian economics couldn't fix the economic crises of the mid-1970s, the stage was set to 'relax' government influence over the market economies of the West, starting with Carter. Then, Reagan and Thatcher came along with their talk of 'smaller' government (translation: a strengthening of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, through a weakening of unions, plotting–if not yet succeeding–to cut social welfare, and cutting the taxes of the 1%). We began moving from the hind half of the serpent to the front half…and we've been inching closer to the head ever since.
Right-libertarians, imagining they understand economics far better than they actually do, are living in a fool's paradise if they think that unfettered capitalism will lead to a horn of plenty for everyone. Unregulated capitalism produces less growth, it rarely makes poor countries rich (Chang, pages 62-73), and it doesn't reduce government interference in the world (consider the bloated US military budget, all in the service of capitalist imperialism); it merely gives the rich more power over everyone, by allowing them to keep the money (profits) that they steal from their overworked, underpaid workers, who increasingly have been in outsourced operations in Third World countries.
The notion of the 'free market' as creating a level playing field, where all businesses, big or small, can compete fairly, is a chimera. Capitalists eat each other up all the time, without apology. As Karl Marx said, "…as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, the further socialization of labour and the further transformation of the soil and other means of production into socially exploited and therefore communal means of production takes on a new form. What is now to be expropriated is not the self-employed worker, but the capitalist who exploits a large number of workers.
"This expropriation is accomplished through the action of the immanent laws of capitalist production itself, through the centralization of capitals. One capitalist always strikes down many others." (Marx, Capital, Volume One, pages 928-929).
Capitalism is competition, but it isn't a sport: there are no rules, and regulation-hating right-libertarians should know this better than everyone else. The purpose of rules is to create fairness, and to keep monopolistic capitalism from destroying itself via its own contradictions; capitalists hate regulations, because they hate fairness, and they refuse to contemplate the consequences of their own rapaciousness. Capitalists cheat all the time.
The only law in capitalism is the need for endless accumulation. Regulations limit profits and accumulation, hence right-libertarians feel 'fettered' by rules. They speak of the 'freedom' that capitalism supposedly brings, but their 'freedom' is really just licence, and it's used for selfish ends. Talk to the labourers in sweatshops in Third World countries, people who slave away for minuscule amounts of money, about the 'freedom' of capitalism.
The whole point of capitalist competition is that somebody wins, and everyone else loses. In capitalism, the winners keep a maximum of wealth and profits (thanks to all those tax cuts), and this extra money is used to buy political power. It is naïve to assume that most of this wealth will be reinvested to grow their businesses and strengthen the economy. We know from such scandals as the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers that huge amounts of this wealth is put into offshore bank accounts, not that many of us didn't already know about that.
Much of the money is also used to buy political influence: just watch how those two 'libertarians', the Koch brothers, have been wooing (and bankrolling) right-wing causes for decades. It's not about 'less' government; it's about more bourgeois government. The 'less' government myth is a lie to suck in the petite bourgeoisie.
Right-libertarians' fantasy about a return to the simpler capitalism of 19th century laissez-faire, without all these foreign wars, the cronyism, and government favouritism to the multinational corporations, is also anachronistic. The deregulation of the 1990s and 2000s, ironically (and dialectically), led to the cronyism of today–the bitten tail of the 'free market' leading to the biting head of the Big Government that we now have. There will be no movement back in the other direction.
Imperialism, with its monopolies, finance capital, and corrupt banks, is a natural outgrowth of its opposite, the free competition of the 19th century, a move from the serpent's tail to its head. Imperialism is not only the ineluctable reality of today's late-stage capitalism, but has been that reality for the past one hundred years or so. Lenin wrote about it, and he would be horrified to see how much imperialism (i.e., US imperialism) has metastasized by now.
Other examples of the ouroboros of dialectical, historical materialism can be seen in the shifting from feudalism to capitalism, then from the latter into socialism. Consider the terrible state of poverty in late feudal France and China, which was one of the factors that led to their bourgeois revolutions in 1789 and 1911 respectively. Extreme want and powerlessness (the bitten tail), as well as the contradiction between the aristocracy and the rising bourgeoisie, led to a seizing of power (the biting head).
Similarly, the want of the Parisian workers at the end of the Franco-Prussian War led to the proletariat protecting themselves with cannons and declaring the Paris Commune (Marx/Lenin, pages 47-48). The threat that this thrilling proletarian experiment posed to the European bourgeoisie led, in turn, to a brutal suppression two months later. From tail to head, then back to tail again.
Decades later, the repressive tsarist autocracy was pushing the Russian proletariat ever closer to the biting head of the serpent; then a kind of reprieve happened with the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and the creation of the Provisional Government in early 1917. But the new state's refusal to pull out of the most-unpopular First World War pushed things along the length of the tail all the way back to the head again, with angry demonstrations that summer, and the seizing of power by Lenin and the Soviets in November (New Style). From biting head to bitten tail.
The capitalist class never tolerates a communist revolution, regardless of whether the ruling class is in the form of the relatively progressive Weimar Republic, Mussolini's Fascists, or the White Army, the last of these having invaded Russia in 1918 and starting the Russian Civil War. The pressure this put on the Bolsheviks forced them to go to the authoritarian measures they went to (i.e., top-down decision-making, instead of Soviet egalitarianism).
Let's superimpose the ouroboros–with the biting head to the right of the bitten tail, and both extremes at the top, as we conceived of it earlier in this essay–on top of the four-way political compass, not only with the self-explanatory left and right, but with the top representing authoritarianism and bottom indicating libertarianism. Thus, the top left box would be for the Marxist-Leninists, the bottom left the anarchists, the bottom right the 'free market' fetishists (including the 'anarcho'-capitalists), and the top right everything from the Trump-lovers to the idolizers of the likes of Pinochet, Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler. The neo-con, neoliberal Clintons, Obamas, and Bushes would be near the bottom-middle-right.
Another reality must be considered before we go on: there is a natural tendency to slide counter-clockwise, from the tail, along the middle of the body, and up towards the head of the serpent. We saw how free competition led to imperialism a century ago (then to the rise of Fascism); then how the post-war combination of Keynesian economics with a strong welfare state gave way to the 'free market' and deregulation, which in turn has led to the aggravated imperialism of the 'war on terror', as well as to Trump and the rise of the alt-right. It all goes round and round, a cycle of increasing suffering.
Capitalist accumulation leads to exacerbated class conflict and internal crises, which in turn lead to more right-wing authoritarianism and imperialism, as noted above. This problem, exacerbated by the capitalist class's machinations (i.e., their attempted or successful coups of socialist states, or of those otherwise opposed to US interests; their sabotage, spying, and propagandizing against leftist governments, too), means that countries like the USSR, the Eastern Bloc, Mao's China, and the DPRK were and are forced to take a hard line against reactionaries and revisionists.
In the language of the ouroboros, this means one must aggressively counteract that tendency to slide counter-clockwise from the tail around to the head, a kind of vomiting up of the snake's past. Revisionism is regurgitation of capitalist hegemony. To keep socialist society on the left side, one must push back clockwise and keep it in the top left, to be safe, for as long as capitalism continues to exist.
Such is the true meaning of the aggravation of class struggle under socialism; such was the real intention of Stalin, Mao, and the Kim dynasty. Doing things the left-libertarian way would have resulted in a swaying to the right, and thus a wasted communist revolution. Stalin's and Mao's 'excesses', on the other hand, meant a swaying from the tail to the bottom left corner–in other words, a success.
Only once all capitalism has been wiped off the face of the earth can the Marxist-Leninist states relax their control over everything. Then the state can wither away, and we'll naturally incline toward the middle-to-hind area of the serpent, the libertarian bottom left.
To create a world where all production is for the sake of providing for everyone, we have to do more than just remove the political and economic obstacles (the ruling class and their bourgeois state): we also have to wean ourselves from old, bad habits, i.e., production for profit, exploiting labourers, hoarding food, etc. If these bad habits aren't broken, the libertarian left of the hind half of the serpent will slide towards the 'libertarian' right of unfettered capitalism, the front half of the serpent.
Stalin's push for rapid industrialization, collectivization, ruthless punishing of grain-hoarding kulaks, execution of traitors, spies, and other enemies within the USSR, as well as defeating the Nazis and building up of a nuclear arsenal, were all needed measures to keep the USSR from slipping from the hind area of the ouroboros to the front half. The same can be said of Mao's Cultural Revolution and the DPRK's development of nukes, a perfectly reasonable reaction to the US bombing of the Korean Peninsula, Iraq, and Libya.
The fact that, ultimately, both Russia and China backslid into capitalism doesn't invalidate Stalin's and Mao's efforts: it proves, all the more, the urgent necessity of those efforts. More of that effort was needed, not less.
The error of liberalism is assuming that an easy-going acceptance of the moderate bottom middle of the ouroboros will result in the world staying there. Nothing stands still forever; all things flow. Our material conditions won't stay in the bottom middle: they will slide from there to the front half of the serpent, and continue to slide up to the head, as they have for the past forty years. It's easy to see how Reagan, the Bushes, and Trump have contributed to this trend, but many remain willfully ignorant as to how Carter, the Clintons, and Obama have contributed to it.
The 'free market' policies began under Carter, who–under Brzezinski's influence–also provoked the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which was a major factor leading to the USSR's weakening and collapse (to say nothing of the provocation of contemporary Islamic terrorism). I have, in previous posts, gone over many of the egregious things the Clintons did: NAFTA, the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, repealing the Glass-Steagall legislation, the Telecommunications Act (and its consequences), etc., and right-wingers claim the Clintons are 'left-leaning'! That 'socialist' Obama not only continued Dubya's evils, but expanded them; small wonder liberals are nostalgic about Bush Jr. these days.
And look at our world today, with Fascist tendencies taking root again, and Trump's excesses are just the tip of the iceberg. Consider the UKIP's influence on Brexit, the neo-Nazis in the Ukraine, Fascism in Austria, the Front national almost winning in the French elections, Golden Dawn in Greece, nostalgia for Franco in Spain, and the far-right marching in Poland.
We can go in either of two directions to fix these evils, and neither will be pleasant. We could go insane with accelerationism to the right, leading to a violent reaction against extreme Fascism, which–assuming a left-wing victory–we would hope in turn will lead to Marxism-Leninism (from the serpent's head to its tail); but will we be able to live with the horrors we'll have allowed to happen? Or we could engage in a kind of protracted war against the bourgeoisie, an adapting of Mao's tactics (those against imperial Japan in the 1930s) to our present struggle against neoliberalism (go along the length of the ouroboros from its head to its tail); but will we have the stomach and the patience to see it through?
We have a tough choice ahead of us, don't we?
Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2011
Mao Zedong, Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, 2014
Karl Marx [Ben Fowkes (Translator)], Capital, Volume I, Penguin Classics, London, 1990
Ha-Joon Chang, 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, Penguin Books, London, 2010
Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, The Civil War in France: The Paris Commune, International Publishers, New York, 2008
Mawr Gorshin capitalism, communism, fascism, leftism, politics, Third World 66 Comments February 8, 2018 November 27, 2019 14 Minutes


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A musician friend has been augmenting her busy performing and traveling schedule with visits to a prison to perform for the inmates. She plays classical music for these men, some of whom have never listened to this music in their lives. They are more than just receptive to this special treat of live classical music performances– they become hungry and eager for it, and in some cases they quickly develop a deep appreciation and passion for this music.
Last week, I had the pleasure of spending several days in Austin, Texas helping KMFA radio station celebrate its 50th anniversary. That's a rare and wonderful milestone for any radio station, and it's extraordinary for one with a classical music format.


Bali Trekking 6 days/5 nights is a program of trekking which is done every day within 6 days continuously.
Pick up at 07.30 am from Hotel in the morning then drive to Tanah Lot temple to see the most beautiful temple located on the the south of southern peninsula of the Island. The temple is stand on the small rock away from the main Island .This is the most popular site for sun set in the afternoon. after visiting the temple, we drive through the southern part of the Island passing the most beautiful of rice paddy fields lead to Belimbing village.Then direct walking in the rice terraces about 2,5 – 3 hours through rice paddy, cacao, clove tree and coffee plantation. After trekking, enjoy lunch time at local restaurant. In the afternoon drive to Munduk to overnight (overnight at hotel).Late afternoon we arrive at Munduk.
Breakfast at hotel, then begin your trekking around the village of Munduk, through clove tree, and coffee and another plantation. Lunch at local restaurant. Afternoon back to hotel for relaxing .Afternoon take a guided village tour around the village of Munduk to visit waterfall,coffee processing,clove trees, old houses built by Dutch colony.Return back to hotel for overnight at hotel.Overnight at hotel in Munduk.
After breakfast, drive up to Tamblingan for jungle trek. This is really love with the forest which is covered by many huge trees and plantation. The forest is very rich of flora and fauna. You will be impressed by the plantation that grow for hundred years that make it green all year around.The trek takes about 3 hours and followed by traditional wooden canoe for about 45 minutes paddling on fresh cool emerald green water used by the the fisherman from ancient time . Lunch at local restaurant. Overnight at Hotel in Munduk.
After breakfast, drive up to Wanagiri village for begin your waterfall trekking. The track takes about 4 – 5 hours, through coffee, jungle, waterfall, rice paddy field, clove tree and cacao. Lunch at local restaurant . Enjoy swimming at blue lagoon waterfall. In this trek, you will see many different beautiful waterfall .Late afternoon drive about 1,5 hours to Kintamani area where we will overnight.Overnight at hotel in kintamani overlooking the beautiful view of mount Batur and the lake.The view is really amazing.Dinner will be served at hotel or local restaurant.
Get up at 03.30 am. Begin your Mt. Batur climbing (1717 M) for morning sunrise. This is the most active volcano on the Island of Bali that was erupted many time since 1814 up to 2000 .After 1,5 hours hiking , you will reach the peak of the mountain and see the beautiful scenery of the lake,mountain , and surrounding .Then walking down to the foot of the mountain and going to the hot spring for soaking and relaxing after hard trekking, enjoy swimming at hot spring.Then drive up to the local restaurant for buffet lunch while you enjoy the mountain that you have already hike.Proceed to Sidemen for overnight .
After breakfast at hotel,begin walking from Sidemen village through rice field, river, village up to Muncan. The trek take about 3 hours on a real rice paddy trek .On the trek you will see various cultivation and the people work hard in the rice fields. Lunch will be served at local restaurant overlooking the beautiful panorama of Mount Agung and the rice fields below.After lunch, we drive to Klungkung to visit Court of Justice.Here you will see collection of Wayang that describe of human punishment.Then drive back to your next hotel.
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Never before has it been so easy to stay connected. I know this sounds cliché and overused, but it's absolutely true and I like to remind myself of this fact often. It's so easy to get caught up in oneself, and to look at things with a negative attitude. Life is hard - this is also a true and seemingly overused statement. Rather than looking at how hard life seems, I find it important to keep my perspective in check. Instead of falling into the negative mentality trap, just think how much easier and convenient life has progressed in the past decade. There are times where I feel so fortunate to be living in this era, right here (wherever that may be), today.
Ever since undertaking an infinitely long road trip with my boyfriend earlier this year, I am hit with this sense of wonder at how lucky I am to be living in the 21st century. I am able to use technology to my advantage to make a livable wage from my spotty internet connections, stay in touch with friends and family, find my way around the gigantic and seemingly endless intersection of roads, highways and byways of the U.S., and most importantly, stay on top of bill paying.
The ability for automatic payments has probably been one of the greatest inventions for peace of mind. All I have to do now is check my bank statement periodically to make sure there were no glitches in the system and all my bills did indeed get paid. I have had a smartphone for about three years now, and during that time have never ONCE had an issue arise with automatic bill pay.
Living on the road has definitely minimized costs in some areas: no gym memberships, no apartment rent, no electricity bills, etc. The few remaining recurring bills I do pay for are in my opinion, indispensable: health and car insurance premiums, and self storage payments. I feel fortunate enough to really never worry about missing a payment and thus either lose an essential element of protection, or be penalized with extra costs.
It took me a while to come around to the automatic bill pay party. In the past, I liked to write checks and send them off. I then eventually progressed to paying online once I realized how much that would save me in postage and checks (about one extra latte per year, but for someone who's a coffee addict like me, that's worth it). I would set a recurring alarm on my phone for when my payment date approached. I liked that system well enough, but if I had known how easy automatic payments would be, I would have been using them for a much longer time.
Another thing that brings me peace of mind is knowing that my belongings back in San Diego are indeed, safe. I have the number of our self storage facility manager saved into my phone, more for good measure than anything. I also have emails coming to my inbox alerting me of any payment updates and general news from the self storage facility. Though I may not be able to check my emails daily, the few emails I do receive from our self storage facility are always informative and reassuring. It feels good knowing I can connect with a real human who's watching over the safety of our belongings with ease.
I'd argue that the most important aspect of managing stress on road is dealing with monetary issues. My income is considerably less now that I work remotely, and part time at that. Our expenses on the road are minimal; we did a great deal of preparation prior to leaving San Diego. We live comfortably on our smaller income, and are doing so without causing much damage to our bank accounts. When it comes to paying the bills, the ease of online transactions is downright expedient.
Besides handling monetary and financial burdens, the second biggest thing in acquiring peace of mind on the road was changing our address. I have been fortunate enough to use my parents' address, as they live on the same farm on which I was raised and have no intention of moving any time soon. If I didn't use their address as my temporary one, I would have looked into a larger sized post office box (though much of my pre-trip research suggested using a friend or family member's address rather than a P.O. Box). Though I'm fairly certain all correspondences between myself and my storage facility are done via email, I of course informed them as well of the address change in case anything needs to be mailed physically.
As I mentioned earlier, we, residents of the 21st century United States, are living in a marvelous time. Though recent years have been described as "tumultuous" and "difficult", I hope that we can all seek the good through the bad, find the positives amidst a sea of negativity. Stress, in my opinion, is an unnecessary aspect of life, and with hard work and thoughtful practice, we can seek to alleviate it. Moving, storing your items, and going on road trips should all be seen as opportunities for fresh beginnings, and approached as such with minimal stress.
Today's blog post is a guest post by Michelle. Michelle is a self-storage enthusiast and freelance writer who enjoys traveling the world. An expert at getting the most out of the self-storage experience, please check back regularly for more about Michelle's adventure and how self-storage helped her dream of travel come true.


Today's post is a little late in wishing you a Happy Valentine's Day but appropriately enough it's due to enjoying what the contents of today's post were due to be about, Haagen-Dazs ice-cream. The lovely people at Haagen-Dazs heard that sometimes a single girl needs a Valentine's treat and sent over a tub of Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream.
I know that as a single girl I should be cursing such a day but let me tell you I've throughly enjoyed pottering at home, making my way through Series 3 of The Walking Dead (I'm obsessed!) whilst eating far too much of my Hagaan-Dazs ice cream.
I know it's not quite ice cream weather but there's something about Hagaan-Dazs Strawberry Cheesecake* which marries ice cream and dessert perfectly. In fact I had put the tub away whilst I typed this post and I think it's time for me to enjoy another couple of spoonfuls before bed.
I hope you've had a fabulous day with your loved ones, whether that's a significant other or a tub of ice cream like me!
Happy Belated Valentine's Day to you also!!


text:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/activist-takes-big-stake-in-salesforce-11674432531
WSJ News Exclusive
Elliott Management Takes Big Stake in Salesforce
Activist investor makes a multibillion-dollar investment in the business-software provider
Salesforce recently announced layoffs and reduced its office space in some markets.Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News
By Lauren Thomas
and Laura Cooper
Updated Jan. 23, 2023 9:48 am ET
(1 minute)
Activist investor Elliott Management Corp. has made a multibillion-dollar investment in Salesforce Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, adding to the pressures facing the business-software provider.
While details of the campaign couldn't be learned, Elliott, one of the biggest and most prolific activists, often seeks board representation and pushes for companies to make operational improvements and other changes.
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Opinion: The Man Who Tried to Stop the Space Shuttle Challenger's Launch

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If you lose your job, your tax bill probably isn't going to be the first thing on your mind. But when you file for unemployment, you'll need to pay attention to your state's tax laws.
I live in California, which doesn't tax unemployment benefits, so I was surprised to find that the majority of states with state income tax do tax some or all of your benefits. You can look up your state on this table at the Tax Foundation's website.
Regardless of how your state treats your unemployment benefits, be aware that the IRS taxes them 100 percent.
People who are unemployed for the first time are often shocked when they learn that they must include their unemployment benefits on their tax return. If they've moved and don't receive a letter from their state's unemployment office, they may even forget they received this income altogether. But if unemployment income is omitted from tax returns, the IRS will take notice—and it will expect you to pay what's owed.
It's important to be proactive so you don't get caught short of funds at tax time. When you enroll for unemployment, try to arrange to have IRS and state taxes withheld from your benefits. Sure, it's difficult to lose that money from your check when funds are so tight, but you'll need it when it comes time to pay taxes in April.
If you haven't been withholding taxes from your unemployment benefits, talk to a tax professional or use your favorite online tax software for a projection of your IRS and state tax liability right now. Be sure to include all sources of income, both taxable and tax-free, and any withholding that was taken from wages, investment accounts, and retirement withdrawals.
Once you know how much you expect to owe to the IRS and your state, make a plan to pay your taxes, either by saving the money or finding a way to borrow it.
Sometimes, people who are unemployed will draw money from their retirement plans to cover expenses while their income is reduced. If you do this, you will face taxes on those funds, and if you are under age 59 ½, you are apt to also face a 10 percent early withdrawal penalty from the IRS, plus whatever your state charges.
You can find the list of all exceptions to the penalties on the IRS website.


DALLAS, TX / ACCESSWIRE / December 8, 2016 / Puration Inc, (OTC PINK: PURA) is pleased to announce that its EVERx brand's logo and label design are now complete and plans are underway for its first U.S. production run of the EVERx CBD infused bottled water anticipated to generate $1 million in sales in 2017. After releasing a preliminary design on October 27, the logo included here today is the final, production ready product.
Working with Alkame Holdings' (OTC PINK: ALKM) wholly owned subsidiary Xtreme Technologies, Puration is now ready for its first U.S. production run of the EVERx Beverage Sports Drink. The initial run will be for the original flavor enhanced with 10 mg of CBD and available in a 16.9 oz bottle. The introduction of two additional flavors can be expected shortly thereafter. EVERx will not only be enhanced with CBD but will utilize Alkame's patented water technology, which micro-clusters that oxygenate the water, allowing for the CBD to permeate the body's cells more efficiently.
After several months of working with the Alkame team, Alkame was able to perfect Puration's yet to be announced future flavors. The Company plans on manufacturing the first line within the first quarter of 2017 to begin distribution immediately thereafter.
CBD is an ideal component of a pre and post workout regime. CBD works as an anti-inflammatory and relieves muscle spasms. CBD also works to relieve pain. CBD protects the heart, lungs and brain. Often essential when it comes to high intensity and competitive training, CBD reduces nausea, increases appetite and aides sleep. Ongoing research continues in regard to CBD as a treatment for sports related head trauma. CBD is not just a good addition to an athletes training regime; It can be the foundation of a healthy wellness routine for everyone (CBD Athletic Recovery).
Market Research). Given the magnitude of the bottled water market, management plans to review first quarter performance and potentially increase the first year target at that time.
Alkame Holdings, Inc. is a publicly traded health and wellness technology holding company, with a focus on patentable, innovative, and eco-friendly consumer products. The Company's wholly-owned subsidiaries market and distribute enhanced waters utilizing an exclusive patented formula and technology to create water with several unique properties. The organization is diligently building a strong foundation through the launch and acquisition of appropriate business assets, and by pursuing multiple applications to utilize its Intellectual Property by placement into several emerging business sectors, such as the growing aqua-culture industry, consumer bottled water and RTD products, household pet products, horticulture and agriculture applications, as well as many other various water treatment solutions to both new and existing business platforms.
For more information, visit alkameholdingsinc.com.
Disclaimer/Safe Harbor: This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Litigation Reform Act. The statements reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events that involve risks and uncertainties. Among others, these risks include the expectation that Alkame will achieve significant sales, the failure to meet schedule or performance requirements of the Company's contracts, the Company's liquidity position, the Company's ability to obtain new contracts, the emergence of competitors with greater financial resources and the impact of competitive pricing. In the light of these uncertainties, the forward-looking events referred to in this release might not occur. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.