From 542fe9c6940b6eda30fb243c9abc93a8d1b4d8fc Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: iOS Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2022 07:21:05 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] thurs commit --- .obsidian/graph.json | 2 +- .../obsidian-activity-history/data.json | 18 +- .obsidian/plugins/obsidian-commits/data.json | 179 +++++---- .../obsidian-reminder-plugin/data.json | 27 +- .obsidian/workspace-mobile.json | 57 ++- 00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-08-27.md | 2 +- 00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-18.md | 2 +- 00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-23.md | 5 +- 00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-24.md | 114 ++++++ 00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-25.md | 114 ++++++ 00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-26.md | 114 ++++++ 00.02 Inbox/Sérotonine.md | 1 + ...paid $2.4M over cheerleader allegations.md | 2 +- ...The man who saw too much - Deseret News.md | 163 ++++++++ ...ormed Money Laundering for Drug Cartels.md | 347 ++++++++++++++++++ ...atricia Dotson Was Killed by the Police.md | 277 ++++++++++++++ ...ce of China’s missing mega-influencer.md | 227 ++++++++++++ 00.03 News/What Happened to Maya.md | 185 ++++++++++ 01.02 Home/@Shopping list.md | 14 +- 01.02 Home/Household.md | 3 +- .../Empire of Pain.md | 4 +- .../There Will Be Blood (2007).md | 91 +++++ 22 files changed, 1827 insertions(+), 121 deletions(-) create mode 100644 00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-24.md create mode 100644 00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-25.md create mode 100644 00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-26.md create mode 100644 00.03 News/Cuban missile crisis The man who saw too much - Deseret News.md create mode 100644 00.03 News/How a Chinese American Gangster Transformed Money Laundering for Drug Cartels.md create mode 100644 00.03 News/Searching for Justice, 35 Years After Katricia Dotson Was Killed by the Police.md create mode 100644 00.03 News/The mysterious reappearance of China’s missing mega-influencer.md create mode 100644 00.03 News/What Happened to Maya.md rename {00.02 Inbox => 03.01 Reading list}/Empire of Pain.md (97%) create mode 100644 03.04 Cinematheque/There Will Be Blood (2007).md diff --git a/.obsidian/graph.json b/.obsidian/graph.json index bba0c0e4..c321beae 100644 --- a/.obsidian/graph.json +++ b/.obsidian/graph.json @@ -95,6 +95,6 @@ "repelStrength": 10, "linkStrength": 1, "linkDistance": 250, - "scale": 0.14517905261801817, + "scale": 0.1559139096623006, "close": true } \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-activity-history/data.json b/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-activity-history/data.json index e9551642..f460675f 100644 --- a/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-activity-history/data.json +++ b/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-activity-history/data.json @@ -12,8 +12,8 @@ "checkpointList": [ { "path": "/", - "date": "2022-10-23", - "size": 7942805 + "date": "2022-10-26", + "size": 8146882 } ], "activityHistory": [ @@ -1166,7 +1166,19 @@ }, { "date": "2022-10-23", - "value": 10167 + "value": 10244 + }, + { + "date": "2022-10-24", + "value": 202050 + }, + { + "date": "2022-10-25", + "value": 1122 + }, + { + "date": "2022-10-26", + "value": 3112 } ] } diff --git a/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-commits/data.json b/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-commits/data.json index d7495097..8820113f 100644 --- a/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-commits/data.json +++ b/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-commits/data.json @@ -2366,7 +2366,7 @@ }, "00.03 News/Cowboys paid $2.4M over cheerleader allegations.md": { "size": 28323, - "tags": 4, + "tags": 5, "links": 2 }, "00.03 News/If they could turn back time how tech billionaires are trying to reverse the ageing process.md": { @@ -6239,11 +6239,6 @@ "tags": 5, "links": 2 }, - "00.02 Inbox/Empire of Pain.md": { - "size": 2531, - "tags": 4, - "links": 1 - }, "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-11.md": { "size": 1212, "tags": 0, @@ -6385,9 +6380,9 @@ "links": 2 }, "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-23.md": { - "size": 1294, + "size": 1430, "tags": 0, - "links": 5 + "links": 6 }, "00.03 News/Strange new phase of matter created in quantum computer acts like it has two time dimensions.md": { "size": 8867, @@ -6398,14 +6393,64 @@ "size": 1261, "tags": 3, "links": 1 + }, + "03.01 Reading list/Empire of Pain.md": { + "size": 2531, + "tags": 4, + "links": 2 + }, + "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-24.md": { + "size": 1212, + "tags": 0, + "links": 4 + }, + "00.03 News/Cuban missile crisis The man who saw too much - Deseret News.md": { + "size": 24565, + "tags": 5, + "links": 1 + }, + "00.03 News/What Happened to Maya.md": { + "size": 39778, + "tags": 3, + "links": 1 + }, + "00.03 News/How a Chinese American Gangster Transformed Money Laundering for Drug Cartels.md": { + "size": 43013, + "tags": 5, + "links": 1 + }, + "00.03 News/The mysterious reappearance of China’s missing mega-influencer.md": { + "size": 33838, + "tags": 3, + "links": 1 + }, + "00.03 News/Searching for Justice, 35 Years After Katricia Dotson Was Killed by the Police.md": { + "size": 57710, + "tags": 4, + "links": 1 + }, + "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-25.md": { + "size": 1212, + "tags": 0, + "links": 4 + }, + "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-26.md": { + "size": 1212, + "tags": 0, + "links": 4 + }, + "03.04 Cinematheque/There Will Be Blood (2007).md": { + "size": 1963, + "tags": 1, + "links": 1 } }, "commitTypes": { "/": { - "Refactor": 1046, - "Create": 1031, - "Link": 2347, - "Expand": 975 + "Refactor": 1054, + "Create": 1041, + "Link": 2365, + "Expand": 976 } }, "dailyCommits": { @@ -6413,17 +6458,17 @@ "0": 69, "1": 29, "2": 21, - "3": 9, + "3": 11, "4": 16, "5": 9, "6": 57, - "7": 329, - "8": 494, - "9": 497, - "10": 378, + "7": 330, + "8": 496, + "9": 498, + "10": 380, "11": 273, "12": 204, - "13": 299, + "13": 322, "14": 282, "15": 253, "16": 248, @@ -6431,25 +6476,26 @@ "18": 426, "19": 297, "20": 228, - "21": 251, - "22": 335, - "23": 146 + "21": 252, + "22": 336, + "23": 150 } }, "weeklyCommits": { "/": { - "Mon": 843, - "Tue": 818, - "Wed": 644, + "Mon": 870, + "Tue": 820, + "Wed": 650, "Thu": 479, "Fri": 556, "Sat": 0, - "Sun": 2059 + "Sun": 2061 } }, "recentCommits": { "/": { "Expanded": [ + " 2022-10-23 ", " 2022-10-23 ", " 2023-05-20 Mariage JB & Camila ", " 2022-11-19 Fiançailles Marguerite & Arnold ", @@ -6499,10 +6545,19 @@ " Storage and Syncing ", " 2022-10-05 Conference on FinTech ", " 2022-10-05 Conference on FinTech ", - " Geneva ", " Geneva " ], "Created": [ + " There Will Be Blood (2007) ", + " 2022-10-26 ", + " 2022-10-25 ", + " Searching for Justice, 35 Years After Katricia Dotson Was Killed by the Police ", + " The mysterious reappearance of China’s missing mega-influencer ", + " How a Chinese American Gangster Transformed Money Laundering for Drug Cartels ", + " What Happened to Maya ", + " Cuban missile crisis The man who saw too much - Deseret News ", + " How a New Anti-Woke Bank Stumbled ", + " 2022-10-24 ", " Strange new phase of matter created in quantum computer acts like it has two time dimensions ", " 2022-10-23 ", " 2023-05-20 Mariage JB & Camila ", @@ -6543,19 +6598,16 @@ " The Genetic Freak” Taking Over the Premier League ", " Untitled ", " Untitled ", - " 2022-10-09 ", - " 2022-10-08 ", - " Why is a small Swedish automaker a decade ahead of the rest of the industry ", - " No Sex for You Lyta Gold ", - " Evrard d'Espinque’s Illuminations of De Proprietatibus Rerum (ca. 1480) ", - " 2022-10-07 ", - " Sleepless in Seattle (1993) ", - " 2022-10-05 Conference on FinTech ", - " 2022-10-23 Lunch w Mutti ", - " 2022-10-22 Tea Time, frère et soeurs ", - " 2022-10-15 Lunch w Marguerite & Arnold " + " 2022-10-09 " ], "Renamed": [ + " There Will Be Blood (2007) ", + " Searching for Justice, 35 Years After Katricia Dotson Was Killed by the Police ", + " The mysterious reappearance of China’s missing mega-influencer ", + " How a Chinese American Gangster Transformed Money Laundering for Drug Cartels ", + " What Happened to Maya ", + " Cuban missile crisis The man who saw too much - Deseret News ", + " Empire of Pain ", " Café Hugo ", " Strange new phase of matter created in quantum computer acts like it has two time dimensions ", " 36 Hours in Milan Things to Do and See ", @@ -6599,16 +6651,16 @@ " This developer sold pre-construction townhouses for $400,000. Three years later, they told their buyers to pay another $100K or lose their homes ", " Solomun, the D.J. Who Keeps Ibiza Dancing ", " ‘She Captured All Before Her’ Darryl Pinckney ", - " Liz Truss learns the hard way that Britain is not the US ", - " The family that built a ballpark nachos monopoly ", - " 2022-08-31 Toulouse - PSG (0-3) ", - " 2022-09-14 Maccabi Haifa - PSG (1-3) ", - " 2022-10-01 PSG - 0GC Nice (2-1) ", - " 2022-10-01 Paris SG - 0GC Nice (2-1) ", - " URL table ", - " Bookmarks - Work " + " Liz Truss learns the hard way that Britain is not the US " ], "Tagged": [ + " There Will Be Blood (2007) ", + " Cowboys paid $2.4M over cheerleader allegations ", + " Searching for Justice, 35 Years After Katricia Dotson Was Killed by the Police ", + " The mysterious reappearance of China’s missing mega-influencer ", + " What Happened to Maya ", + " How a Chinese American Gangster Transformed Money Laundering for Drug Cartels ", + " Cuban missile crisis The man who saw too much - Deseret News ", " Strange new phase of matter created in quantum computer acts like it has two time dimensions ", " Café Hugo ", " Café Hugo ", @@ -6652,14 +6704,7 @@ " Pia Bousquié ", " Louis Bédier ", " Eustache Bédier ", - " Armand de Villeneuve ", - " Charles Bédier ", - " Hortense Bédier ", - " Gabrielle Bédier ", - " Olympe Bédier ", - " Pierre Bédier ", - " Amaury de Villeneuve ", - " Elise Bédier " + " Armand de Villeneuve " ], "Refactored": [ " 2022-10-18 ", @@ -6715,6 +6760,7 @@ " How to Install and Configure Prometheus Alert Manager on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS " ], "Deleted": [ + " How a New Anti-Woke Bank Stumbled ", " Test note ", " Buttons 1.0 is Coming ", " Empire of Pain ", @@ -6764,10 +6810,20 @@ " Ytes ", " Test ", " with a title ", - " Untitled ", - " Test " + " Untitled " ], "Linked": [ + " There Will Be Blood (2007) ", + " 2022-10-26 ", + " 2022-10-25 ", + " Searching for Justice, 35 Years After Katricia Dotson Was Killed by the Police ", + " The mysterious reappearance of China’s missing mega-influencer ", + " What Happened to Maya ", + " How a Chinese American Gangster Transformed Money Laundering for Drug Cartels ", + " Cuban missile crisis The man who saw too much - Deseret News ", + " 2022-10-24 ", + " 2022-10-23 ", + " Empire of Pain ", " Strange new phase of matter created in quantum computer acts like it has two time dimensions ", "", " Strange new phase of matter created in quantum computer acts like it has two time dimensions ", @@ -6807,18 +6863,7 @@ " Gül ", " 2022-10-14 ", " Life - Practical infos ", - " 2022-10-13 ", - " 2022-10-12 ", - " 2022-10-12 ", - " A New Doorway to the Brain ", - " Black Holes May Hide a Mind-Bending Secret About Our Universe ", - " 2022-10-11 PSG - Benfica ", - " What Does Sustainable Living Look Like Maybe Like Uruguay ", - " The Instagram capital of the world is a terrible place to be ", - " @Personal projects ", - " Maison Agry ", - " 2022-07-14 ", - " 2022-10-11 " + " 2022-10-13 " ], "Removed Tags from": [ " A view from across the river ", diff --git a/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-reminder-plugin/data.json b/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-reminder-plugin/data.json index cf2ed664..3f57e02c 100644 --- a/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-reminder-plugin/data.json +++ b/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-reminder-plugin/data.json @@ -341,20 +341,15 @@ } ], "01.02 Home/Household.md": [ - { - "title": "♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection %%done_del%%", - "time": "2022-10-25", - "rowNumber": 75 - }, { "title": "🛎 🛍 REMINDER [[Household]]: Monthly shop in France %%done_del%%", "time": "2022-10-29", - "rowNumber": 90 + "rowNumber": 91 }, { "title": ":bed: [[Household]] Change bedsheets %%done_del%%", "time": "2022-10-29", - "rowNumber": 103 + "rowNumber": 104 }, { "title": ":bed: [[Household]]: Buy bed-side tables", @@ -364,12 +359,17 @@ { "title": "🛎 🧻 REMINDER [[Household]]: check need for toilet paper %%done_del%%", "time": "2022-10-31", - "rowNumber": 93 + "rowNumber": 94 }, { "title": "♻ [[Household]]: *Cardboard* recycling collection %%done_del%%", "time": "2022-11-01", - "rowNumber": 80 + "rowNumber": 81 + }, + { + "title": "♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection %%done_del%%", + "time": "2022-11-08", + "rowNumber": 75 }, { "title": ":coffee: [[Household]]: Buy a Cappuccino machine", @@ -536,13 +536,6 @@ "rowNumber": 90 } ], - "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-08-27.md": [ - { - "title": "18:52 :tokyo_tower: [[2022-08-27|Memo]], [[@Sport Paris|PSG]]: try and find tickets for Juve - PSG", - "time": "2022-10-25", - "rowNumber": 89 - } - ], "00.08 Bookmarks/Bookmarks - Media.md": [ { "title": ":label: [[Bookmarks - Media]]: review bookmarls", @@ -619,7 +612,7 @@ "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-18.md": [ { "title": "17:35 :shoe: [[@life admin]]: pick up shoes @Nick Schumacher   PAID  ", - "time": "2022-10-25", + "time": "2022-10-28", "rowNumber": 83 } ], diff --git a/.obsidian/workspace-mobile.json b/.obsidian/workspace-mobile.json index 9cadc9ef..27421782 100644 --- a/.obsidian/workspace-mobile.json +++ b/.obsidian/workspace-mobile.json @@ -16,12 +16,36 @@ } }, { - "id": "149fc3ed7faa053e", + "id": "39b552e8799bcf68", "type": "leaf", "state": { "type": "markdown", "state": { - "file": "01.02 Home/@Main Dashboard.md", + "file": "03.04 Cinematheque/@Cinematheque.md", + "mode": "preview", + "source": false + } + } + }, + { + "id": "da877def56210a62", + "type": "leaf", + "state": { + "type": "markdown", + "state": { + "file": "01.02 Home/@Shopping list.md", + "mode": "preview", + "source": false + } + } + }, + { + "id": "f7fdc0a8802fe560", + "type": "leaf", + "state": { + "type": "markdown", + "state": { + "file": "03.04 Cinematheque/@Cinematheque.md", "mode": "preview", "source": false } @@ -53,7 +77,7 @@ "state": { "type": "search", "state": { - "query": "tag:#-", + "query": "tag:#🍛", "matchingCase": false, "explainSearch": false, "collapseAll": true, @@ -86,7 +110,7 @@ "state": { "type": "backlink", "state": { - "file": "01.02 Home/@Main Dashboard.md", + "file": "03.04 Cinematheque/@Cinematheque.md", "collapseAll": false, "extraContext": false, "sortOrder": "alphabetical", @@ -103,7 +127,7 @@ "state": { "type": "outgoing-link", "state": { - "file": "01.02 Home/@Main Dashboard.md", + "file": "03.04 Cinematheque/@Cinematheque.md", "linksCollapsed": false, "unlinkedCollapsed": false } @@ -152,20 +176,17 @@ ], "currentTab": 5 }, - "ribbon": { - "mostRecentAction": "Open command palette" - }, - "active": "149fc3ed7faa053e", + "active": "39b552e8799bcf68", "lastOpenFiles": [ - "00.03 News/Strange new phase of matter created in quantum computer acts like it has two time dimensions.md", + "03.04 Cinematheque/TRON - Legacy (2010).md", + "03.04 Cinematheque/There Will Be Blood (2007).md", + "03.04 Cinematheque/Thunderball (1965).md", "01.02 Home/@Main Dashboard.md", - "00.03 News/First known map of night sky found hidden in Medieval parchment.md", - "02.02 Paris/Café Hugo.md", - "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-23.md", - "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-22.md", - "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-05-20 Mariage JB & Camila.md", - "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-02-11 Mariage Eloi & Zélie.md", - "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-11-19 Fiançailles Marguerite & Arnold.md", - "03.02 Travels/36 Hours in Milan Things to Do and See.md" + "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-26.md", + "01.02 Home/@Shopping list.md", + "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-25.md", + "00.03 News/What Happened to Maya.md", + "00.01 Admin/Templates/Template Place.md", + "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-24.md" ] } \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-08-27.md b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-08-27.md index c05452fd..626c824c 100644 --- a/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-08-27.md +++ b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-08-27.md @@ -87,7 +87,7 @@ This section does serve for quick memos. %% ### %%   -- [ ] 18:52 :tokyo_tower: [[2022-08-27|Memo]], [[@Sport Paris|PSG]]: try and find tickets for Juve - PSG 📅 2022-10-25 +- [x] 18:52 :tokyo_tower: [[2022-08-27|Memo]], [[@Sport Paris|PSG]]: try and find tickets for Juve - PSG 📅 2022-10-25 ✅ 2022-10-25 --- diff --git a/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-18.md b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-18.md index 77bcaa67..34ac4aa1 100644 --- a/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-18.md +++ b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-18.md @@ -81,7 +81,7 @@ style: number This section does serve for quick memos.   -- [ ] 17:35 :shoe: [[@life admin]]: pick up shoes @Nick Schumacher   PAID   📅 2022-10-25 +- [ ] 17:35 :shoe: [[@life admin]]: pick up shoes @Nick Schumacher   PAID   📅 2022-10-28 %% --- %% diff --git a/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-23.md b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-23.md index 58f20a1a..226ebdfc 100644 --- a/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-23.md +++ b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-23.md @@ -16,9 +16,9 @@ Stress: 25 FrontHeadBar: 5 EarHeadBar: 30 BackHeadBar: 20 -Water: 1.66 +Water: 2.66 Coffee: 4 -Steps: +Steps: 6198 Ski: Riding: Racket: @@ -84,6 +84,7 @@ This section does serve for quick memos. - [ ] 11:47 :hotel: [[@Life admin|Admin]]: book airbnb in Geneva for M&A's engagement party 📅2022-10-30 - [ ] 11:49 :hotel: [[@Life admin|Admin]]: book airbnb for M&A's wedding 📅2022-10-30 - [ ] 11:51 :snowflake: [[@Life admin|Admin]]: find chalet for a week's ski trip 📅 2022-10-30 +- 22:23 [[Empire of Pain]] finished %% --- %% diff --git a/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-24.md b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-24.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b3d0d7bd --- /dev/null +++ b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-24.md @@ -0,0 +1,114 @@ +--- + +title: "🗒 Daily Note" +allDay: true +date: 2022-10-24 +Date: 2022-10-24 +DocType: Note +Hierarchy: +TimeStamp: +location: +CollapseMetaTable: true +Sleep: 7.5 +Happiness: 90 +Gratefulness: 90 +Stress: 25 +FrontHeadBar: 5 +EarHeadBar: 30 +BackHeadBar: 20 +Water: 3 +Coffee: 6 +Steps: 11026 +Ski: +Riding: +Racket: +Football: +Swim: + +--- + +%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %% + +--- + +[[2022-10-23|<< 🗓 Previous ]]       [[@Main Dashboard|Back]]       [[2022-10-25|🗓 Next >>]] + +--- + +  + +```button +name Record today's health +type command +action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit +id EditMetaData +``` +^button-2022-10-24Edit + +```button +name Save +type command +action Save current file +id Save +``` +^button-2022-10-24NSave + +  + +# 2022-10-24 + +  + +> [!summary]+ +> Daily note for 2022-10-24 + +  + +```toc +style: number +``` + +  + +--- + +  + +### 📝 Memos + +  + +This section does serve for quick memos. + +  + + +%% --- %% +  + +--- + +  + +### 🗒 Notes + +  + +Loret ipsum + +  + +--- + +  + +### :link: Linked activity + +  + +```dataview +Table from [[2022-10-24]] +``` + +  +  \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-25.md b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-25.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ea27885a --- /dev/null +++ b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-25.md @@ -0,0 +1,114 @@ +--- + +title: "🗒 Daily Note" +allDay: true +date: 2022-10-25 +Date: 2022-10-25 +DocType: Note +Hierarchy: +TimeStamp: +location: +CollapseMetaTable: true +Sleep: 8 +Happiness: 90 +Gratefulness: 90 +Stress: 25 +FrontHeadBar: 5 +EarHeadBar: 30 +BackHeadBar: 20 +Water: 2.2 +Coffee: 4 +Steps: 20015 +Ski: +Riding: +Racket: +Football: +Swim: + +--- + +%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %% + +--- + +[[2022-10-24|<< 🗓 Previous ]]       [[@Main Dashboard|Back]]       [[2022-10-26|🗓 Next >>]] + +--- + +  + +```button +name Record today's health +type command +action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit +id EditMetaData +``` +^button-2022-10-25Edit + +```button +name Save +type command +action Save current file +id Save +``` +^button-2022-10-25NSave + +  + +# 2022-10-25 + +  + +> [!summary]+ +> Daily note for 2022-10-25 + +  + +```toc +style: number +``` + +  + +--- + +  + +### 📝 Memos + +  + +This section does serve for quick memos. + +  + + +%% --- %% +  + +--- + +  + +### 🗒 Notes + +  + +Loret ipsum + +  + +--- + +  + +### :link: Linked activity + +  + +```dataview +Table from [[2022-10-25]] +``` + +  +  \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-26.md b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-26.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f5e9af8a --- /dev/null +++ b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-26.md @@ -0,0 +1,114 @@ +--- + +title: "🗒 Daily Note" +allDay: true +date: 2022-10-26 +Date: 2022-10-26 +DocType: Note +Hierarchy: +TimeStamp: +location: +CollapseMetaTable: true +Sleep: 8 +Happiness: 90 +Gratefulness: 90 +Stress: 25 +FrontHeadBar: 5 +EarHeadBar: 30 +BackHeadBar: 20 +Water: 4.15 +Coffee: 5 +Steps: +Ski: +Riding: +Racket: +Football: +Swim: + +--- + +%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %% + +--- + +[[2022-10-25|<< 🗓 Previous ]]       [[@Main Dashboard|Back]]       [[2022-10-27|🗓 Next >>]] + +--- + +  + +```button +name Record today's health +type command +action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit +id EditMetaData +``` +^button-2022-10-26Edit + +```button +name Save +type command +action Save current file +id Save +``` +^button-2022-10-26NSave + +  + +# 2022-10-26 + +  + +> [!summary]+ +> Daily note for 2022-10-26 + +  + +```toc +style: number +``` + +  + +--- + +  + +### 📝 Memos + +  + +This section does serve for quick memos. + +  + + +%% --- %% +  + +--- + +  + +### 🗒 Notes + +  + +Loret ipsum + +  + +--- + +  + +### :link: Linked activity + +  + +```dataview +Table from [[2022-10-26]] +``` + +  +  \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/00.02 Inbox/Sérotonine.md b/00.02 Inbox/Sérotonine.md index c425218e..0c436add 100644 --- a/00.02 Inbox/Sérotonine.md +++ b/00.02 Inbox/Sérotonine.md @@ -18,6 +18,7 @@ CollapseMetaTable: true --- Parent:: [[@Reading master|Reading list]] +ReadingState:: In progress --- diff --git a/00.03 News/Cowboys paid $2.4M over cheerleader allegations.md b/00.03 News/Cowboys paid $2.4M over cheerleader allegations.md index 10518166..406ea3a2 100644 --- a/00.03 News/Cowboys paid $2.4M over cheerleader allegations.md +++ b/00.03 News/Cowboys paid $2.4M over cheerleader allegations.md @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@ --- Alias: [""] -Tag: ["🏈", "Crime", "🚺", "🇺🇸"] +Tag: ["🏈", "Crime", "🚺", "🇺🇸", "🚫"] Date: 2022-02-20 DocType: "WebClipping" Hierarchy: diff --git a/00.03 News/Cuban missile crisis The man who saw too much - Deseret News.md b/00.03 News/Cuban missile crisis The man who saw too much - Deseret News.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4ef6c2dd --- /dev/null +++ b/00.03 News/Cuban missile crisis The man who saw too much - Deseret News.md @@ -0,0 +1,163 @@ +--- + +Tag: ["Politics", "🪖", "🇺🇸", "🇨🇺", "🚀"] +Date: 2022-10-24 +DocType: "WebClipping" +Hierarchy: +TimeStamp: 2022-10-24 +Link: https://www.deseret.com/u-s-world/2022/10/14/23361485/cuban-missile-crisis-sixty-years-anniversary-don-duff-nuclear-weapons-russia-ukraine +location: +CollapseMetaTable: true + +--- + +Parent:: [[@News|News]] +Read:: No + +--- + +  + +```button +name Save +type command +action Save current file +id Save +``` +^button-CubanmissilecrisisThemanwhosawtoomuchNSave + +  + +# Cuban missile crisis: The man who saw too much + +Three stories beneath the ground, in a bunker equipped with a thick metal door like a bank vault, a young, blue-eyed Airman 1st Class reported for his usual midnight shift. + +He knew this night, October 15, 1962, could be consequential, though plenty of others had been, too. As a photo interpreter with the Strategic Air Command stationed at Offutt Air Force Base outside of Omaha, Nebraska, Don Duff had helped discover previously unknown missile sites in Siberia and Mongolia using images from the satellites that constituted America’s surveillance response to the Soviet Union’s Sputnik I — the first successful, Earth-orbiting satellite, which marked the beginning of the space race and a new era of the Cold War. + + ![Cuban_Missle_Crisis_1.jpg](data:image/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciIHZlcnNpb249IjEuMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSI1NjBweCIgd2lkdGg9Ijg0MHB4Ij48L3N2Zz4=) + +President John F. Kennedy amid the Cuban missile crises, in the fall of 1962. + +Bettmann via Getty Images + +Now, five years later, the U.S. remained deeply distrustful of the Soviets. Including the nation’s intelligence apparatus, which for several years had taken a particular interest in Cuba. The 1959 Cuban revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power had revealed its Communist character, and the spectacular failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 had entrenched not only Castro’s government but its alliance with Moscow. And Moscow, it had become clear, was prepared to exploit that partnership.  + +A since-declassified CIA report dated August 22, 1962, detailed a military buildup on the island starting in at least late July. Informants reported that Soviet ships were hauling in huge amounts of military equipment very quickly — a first outside the Soviet bloc. “Clearly,” the report concluded, “something new and different is taking place.” What exactly that something was, though, the U.S. government wasn’t sure.  + +To find out, it began deploying U-2 spy planes to conduct surveillance of Cuba. On the night of October 13, at 11:30 p.m., Pacific Time, U-2 pilot Richard Heyser took off from Edwards Air Force Base in California in a newly modified aircraft and flew over Arizona, New Mexico and Texas en route to western Cuba. With crystal-clear skies, he turned on his cameras as he darted in and out of Cuban airspace, hoping to avoid the deadly consequences of Soviet anti-aircraft missiles. Six minutes and 928 photos later, Heyser turned toward Florida and landed at McCoy Air Force Base. Representatives from the CIA, as well as Strategic Air Command’s director of intelligence, Lt. Gen. Robert Smith, awaited him. + +> The Cuban missile crisis has renewed relevance this year, with the war in Ukraine arguably bringing the world the closest it’s been to nuclear conflict since 1962. + +Duff admits this is where the history gets murky. Most textbooks and government reports skip over how what happened next unfolded. But 60 years after those fateful days brought the world to the brink of nuclear destruction, Duff,  now 83, with a few wispy strands of white hair jutting from his pink scalp and a slight shake in his hands, maintains his place in history.  + +That history has renewed relevance this year, with the war in Ukraine — and Russia not-so-subtly implying its potential use of nukes — arguably bringing the world the closest it’s been to nuclear conflict since 1962. Duff sighs at the prospect. He knows better than just about any living American how close we’ve come in the past, and remains very proud of what he did to prevent such a catastrophe back in ’62. With a navy-blue veteran cap commemorating his service in the Cuban missile crisis perched atop his head — a cap he custom-made himself — the longtime Utah resident repeats what he’s been repeating for decades. He repeats what’s been playing on loop in his mind all that time, something that the authors of history books on the crisis never acknowledge: Don Duff found the missiles. He identified them first.  + +--- + +Don Duff grew up in the shadow of World War II — the era of that unique species of hero, the American G.I. Duff was fixated on such heroism from the time he was five or six. “I used to be able to sing all the songs,” he says with pride. Perhaps it started with his older brother, who’d served in the Navy. Perhaps it started by reading American history texts. Or maybe he was inspired by his own family’s history, which he says goes back to the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Civil War. “I had a strong sense of patriotism,” he says, “so I figured it was my duty to enlist and serve my country.” + + ![Cuban_Missle_Crisis_2.jpg](data:image/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciIHZlcnNpb249IjEuMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxMjM5cHgiIHdpZHRoPSI4NDBweCI+PC9zdmc+) + +Don Duff in Salt Lake City, July 2022, nearly 60 years after he identified a Soviet missile in an image taken high above Cuba. + +Laura Seitz for the Deseret News + +He did so at 20 years old, opting for basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, outside of San Antonio. On the ride down, as far as he could tell, he was the only person in his batch of recruits who’d volunteered; everyone else had been drafted or forced into it by some other means. Perhaps that’s why his drill instructor made him the barracks chief, in charge of 40 soon-to-be soldiers. He didn’t love the idea; he was shy, he admits. But he agreed, and he can’t argue with the results. “The military made me speak out,” he says, “and stand by my values.” + +When the time came to pick a specialty, the drill instructors recommended he become one of them. But he liked photography, so he opted to specialize in aerial photo interpretation instead. That meant three months at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas.  + +Once, in the middle of a hot Texas summer, he was standing at the front of a line of stationary soldiers and felt something hit him in the back. The guy behind him had passed out from the heat. Duff tried to help him, but his instructor told him to get back into position. “No sir, I can’t do that,” he remembers saying. “I take care of my men.” Such moments made him confident that should the time arise to say something important — something his commanders, his country or even the world needed to know — he’d be prepared.  + +“That stuck with me. I didn’t think I could speak out like that,” he says. “But you learn.” + +--- + +Duff turned 24 years old on the day Heyser’s U-2 flight snapped the first photos of western Cuba. His birthday party was at a friend’s trailer house, off base, where he enjoyed a home-cooked dinner and a cake. “I guess I’ll head back to the base and get ready for my midnight shift,” he told his friends.  + +The facility where his unit processed photos was among the most secure in the country. To reach it, he needed to walk into the headquarters of Strategic Air Command and show identification to a watchful guard. That granted him access to an elevator, which he took three floors down into the earth. Another guard waited to perform another inspection, which granted him access to a hallway. Down that hallway, he took a left turn toward the Command Center. The photo interpretation lab was right beside it. To gain entrance, a person needed not only top-secret clearance, but access to a rotating code word. Duff knew this procedure well. One time, while on guard duty inside the bank vault-like door, he heard someone buzzing in from the outside. “Who’s there?” Duff called through a keyhole latch. “This is General Smith,” came the answer — Strategic Air Command’s director of intelligence.  + +“Oh, good morning general,” Duff called back. “What’s the password?”  + +“This is General Smith, I don’t need a password,” he answered, followed by a thunderstorm of expletives. “Who the hell do you think I am,” Duff remembers him saying, “Mickey Mouse?”  + +Duff didn’t budge, and Smith left fuming, promising punishment to come. Duff reported the incident to his commanding officer. “You probably would’ve caught some hell if you’d have let him in,” the colonel told him. “I’ll take care of it.” Duff never heard about it again.  + +> “That was actually a major motivator for guys like me. ‘If you work hard, you could be a hero like Don Duff.’” — Robert King, retired air force lieutenant colonel + +Luckily, no one would bother them as October 14 wore on into the next day. Using machines called “Iteks” — imagine a big-screen TV with a large hand-crank to roll the film through and various knobs and joysticks to zoom in and adjust — two crews pored over Heyser’s snapshots in a cramped darkroom.  + +Prior to Duff’s shift some lower-resolution film had been sent to Offutt, and one of Duff’s colleagues, a former roommate, had taken a look at the image during the day shift and identified missile trailers. Now Duff instructed the technicians to focus on that particular installation. At around 2 a.m., he noticed something. “Let’s zoom in on this picture,” he told a fellow interpreter. “You see this missile trailer? It looks like part of this missile is sticking out of the trailer. Maybe they’re unloading it.” The missile in question appeared to be covered with canvas, but his eyes were well trained; he could make out the exposed edge. And using knowledge of Soviet weaponry, he identified it as an SS-4 medium-range ballistic missile, capable of delivering a nuclear warhead from Washington, D.C., to San Antonio, and anywhere in between.  + +--- + +In the immediate aftermath, Duff had no way of knowing what was happening behind the scenes, at the highest levels of American government. He had no way of knowing that, at 8:45 in the morning on October 16 — at least according to the official history — national security adviser McGeorge Bundy informed President John F. Kennedy of the missiles, leading Kennedy to call an emergency meeting of his top advisers in the White House Cabinet Room at 11:45 that same morning. At that first “ExCom” meeting, featuring the secretaries of defense, treasury and state; the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff; and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, among others, President Kennedy decided that the missiles had to be removed, without question. Before long, the rest of the world would know that imperative, too.  + +On October 22, at 7 p.m. Eastern time, Kennedy [addressed the nation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYVPx3x3oCg) from the Oval Office. “Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island,” he told the country. “Upon receiving the first preliminary hard information of this nature last Tuesday morning at 9 a.m., I directed that our surveillance be stepped up.” + +Duff, watching from a TV in a barracks breakroom at Offutt, seized on “unmistakable evidence” and “preliminary hard information.” He’d spent the past week poring over more photographs from Cuba, identifying more potential missile sites. “We knew it was pretty tense, and we knew that what he (Kennedy) was saying — ‘We have discovered missile sites in Cuba’ — that was our work,” Duff says. In his head, he thought, “We’re the ones who gave him that.” + +Over the next seven days, Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev exchanged nine official letters while also sparring through [various backchannels](https://www.cfr.org/blog/twe-remembers-adlai-stevenson-dresses-down-soviet-ambassador-un-cuban-missile-crisis-day-ten). At Offutt and at military bases around the country, the U.S. prepared for war. Offutt had gone to DEFCON 3 on October 20 and to DEFCON 2 on October 24, meaning that nuclear war was near.  + +Planes were in the air at all times, heading toward Soviet territory, turning back near the border until the order was given to proceed with an attack. Offutt was home to a refueling squadron, and one morning, after Duff had finished his shift at 8 a.m. and was walking the quarter mile to the chow hall, he noticed one of those planes — a massive Boeing KC-135 — rumbling down the 10,000-foot runway. “It was really going,” he remembers. “You could hear the motors.” And it just barely made it off the ground, he recalls, given how heavily loaded it was with fuel. Nuclear war loomed as heavily as it ever had. The Strategic Air Command headquarters, he’d been assured, was very well-built; strong enough, in fact, to withstand a direct hit if you’re underground. “Yeah,” Duff thought, “but how do you get out from underground?”  + +> “(The CIA) claims credit for everything. The Air Force was never given credit for this stuff, and neither was our unit.” — Don Duff + +On October 27, Russian forces shot down Rudolf Anderson Jr.’s U-2 during another reconnaissance flight over Cuba, killing the pilot. To make matters worse, another U-2 flying a mission in Alaska got off course and ended up in Soviet territory, prompting the Soviets to scramble their fighters, and prompting the Americans to do the same. What followed became known as “Black Saturday” — in the words of Kennedy aide Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., “the most dangerous moment in human history.” Kennedy understood exactly what was happening; his experience as a veteran of World War II had taught him that regardless of a commander’s intentions, randomness — mistakes, misfires, disobeyed orders — were endemic to warfare. In this situation, though, the burden of that entropy could mean literal human extinction.  + +Duff, who believed an invasion of Cuba was imminent, made an unusual request of his commanding officer the following day. With the crisis spiraling out of control, he’d heard rumors that the invasion would take place around 9 a.m. “I know we’re supposed to get off at 8 o’clock,” he said, “but with the tenseness outside, can I stay in and clean the rooms for a couple hours?”  + +--- + +The Death of Anderson, the U-2 pilot, proved a turning point. Both Kennedy and Khrushchev realized the situation was evolving into something they couldn’t guide. On October 28, they [struck a deal](https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/cuban-missile-crisis): Kennedy pledged that the U.S. would not invade Cuba; in exchange, the Soviets would dismantle and remove the missiles. (The U.S. also agreed to remove its own missiles from Turkey at a later date, though that detail wasn’t revealed until decades later.) Duff personally breathed a sigh of relief in early November, as he continued reviewing surveillance footage from Cuba. “We could see,” he recalls, “that they were being dismantled.” + +Kennedy visited Offutt that December to thank the Air Force for its contributions during the Cuban missile crisis. “The amount of flights made during that period of time, the amount of men that were involved, was a record unparalleled by any country in the history of air power,” Kennedy said during [his public remarks](https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKWHA/1962/JFKWHA-146-006/JFKWHA-146-006). “There is no doubt that it contributed greatly to the maintenance of the peace and the security of the United States and those countries associated with us. … We are very much indebted to you all.” Duff couldn’t attend himself, but he did earn a special ribbon that he still keeps pinned to his Air Force Blues. And he also heard secondhand that in off-the-record remarks, Kennedy thanked the Air Force for discovering the missiles.  + +If Kennedy did believe the Air Force first spotted the missiles, that’s not what most history books recount. Most history books on the crisis say that the CIA, not Duff or his beloved Air Force unit, discovered the missiles. + + ![Cuban_Missle_Crisis_3.jpg](data:image/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciIHZlcnNpb249IjEuMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSI2MDhweCIgd2lkdGg9Ijg0MHB4Ij48L3N2Zz4=) + +Fidel Castro addresses his nation in 1962, warning Cuban citizens of the measures taken by the U.S. at the height of the missile crisis. + +Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images + + Phil Carradice’s book, “The Cuban Missile Crisis,” sums up the question of missile identification in one sentence: “The images were studied by experts at the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Centre.” A book of declassified documents related to the crisis, “The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962,” adds: “By the following afternoon photographic interpreters would notify top CIA officials that the mission had obtained definitive photographic evidence of Soviet medium-range ballistic missile bases.”  + +It frustrates Duff to no end that his role never became common knowledge. He’s spent decades combing through scholarship and research to find the evidence he needs to prove his place in history, but so far, he hasn’t found it. “(The CIA) claims credit for everything,” he says. “The Air Force was never given credit for this stuff, and neither was our unit.” + +Even [the Air Force’s own account](https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/dobbs/SAC_history.pdf) of the situation, “Strategic Air Command Operations in the Cuban Crisis of 1962,” notes that once Heyser landed in Florida, the film from his flight was “immediately unloaded and personally flown to Washington.” Duff doesn’t dispute that; he just insists that there’s more to the story. He insists that Heyser’s film also made its way to Offutt later that day, and that he quickly identified the missile. He insists that Kennedy must have known about them shortly thereafter, given that the CIA didn’t identify the weapons until some 14 hours later.  + +> It frustrates Duff to no end that his role never became common knowledge. + +In his own written recollections of the crisis, Duff said that the official timeline “doesn’t jibe with my recollection of (Strategic Air Command) communications to D.C., on October 14 and 15.” It’s possible that the U.S. intelligence apparatus waited to inform Kennedy until Duff’s finding was confirmed; the spirit of rivalry between the CIA and Air Force intelligence was well known in those days. Regardless, “The CIA and other people deny that it ever happened,” he explains.  + +“All I can tell you is that this sticks in your mind like anything in life that you remember. At 2 o’clock in the morning on October 15, I saw this missile,” he says. “I was there.” + +Since-declassified Air Force photos do [show](https://www.secretsdeclassified.af.mil/News/Photos/igphoto/2000593877/), without question, Strategic Air Command personnel examining reconnaissance photos during the Cuban missile crisis. And Duff’s discovery was at least well known by word of mouth. Robert King, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who served as a photo interpreter at Offutt in 1971 and ’72 and eventually moved to Salt Lake City, explains the potential discrepancy in the official narrative this way: “I can’t tell you who was first or not, because one of the things we did — that was very wise — was to create a competition between the CIA and Strategic Air Command,” he says. “That competition drove guys to want to be the first.” And even if he never got official credit, the airmen who followed Duff at Offutt knew his name and knew what he did. “That was actually a major motivator for guys like me,” says King. “‘If you work hard, you could be a hero like Don Duff.’” + +--- + +After retiring from the military, Duff enrolled at Utah State University and began a notable career in forestry and fisheries. Using his skills and Air Force connections, he managed to get U-2 pilots to conduct test flights over mountain ranges in Utah’s desert country; they had to do test flights anyway, he figured, so why not make them synergistic? Using images from those flights, he found isolated streams that he then tested for the presence of certain strains of fish that were thought to be extinct; he found two — Bonneville and Lahontan cutthroat trout. Eventually, his efforts were [recognized](https://www.deseret.com/1988/8/7/18774306/epa-recognizes-4-for-protection-efforts) by the Environmental Protection Agency, and he [won](https://www.makemycontest.com/pcsite/pic/mine/DonaldDuffPDF.pdf) numerous awards, including from the American Fisheries Society and Trout Unlimited. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [touted](https://www.facebook.com/USFWSFisheries/photos/a.119116710534/10159205134435535/?type=3) his achievements on its Facebook page just last year. But despite the notoriety gained via his career’s success, he’s never forgotten his role in the Cuban missile crisis. + +Richard Heyser, the pilot whose U-2 photos of Cuba sparked the crisis, feared he would be blamed for it. “I kind of felt like I was going to be looked at as the one who started the whole thing,” he [told](https://www.theledger.com/story/news/2005/10/10/pilot-i-was-afraid-id-be-blamed-for-world-war-iii/25906192007/) The Associated Press in 2005. “I wasn’t anxious to have that reputation.” Perhaps it’s because his name has largely been lost to history, but Duff never felt that way. He was — and still is — happy to have played a role. He did exactly what he was supposed to do, and in so doing helped keep the United States secure.  + + ![Cuban_Missle_Crisis_4.jpg](data:image/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciIHZlcnNpb249IjEuMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSI3MDRweCIgd2lkdGg9Ijg0MHB4Ij48L3N2Zz4=) + +Fidel Castro, left, with the USSR’s General Secretary, Nikita Khrushchev. + +Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images + +Sixty years since his discovery, he’s seated in a small room at a library in Salt Lake City. He splits his time between a home nearby and a cabin in Nevada. He still thinks about the missile crisis often. Still wears the baseball cap he had custom-made, commemorating his service. Still talks about his involvement in the affair. He was once invited to a panel on Kennedy at the University of Utah, where he gave a presentation about the Cold War. He was disappointed by how little the students knew of what happened, even though he could hardly blame them given their dates of birth. But he wants them to know. Especially now, with tensions so high in Ukraine and Russia.  + +“The younger generation … ought to realize what went on, and that it could happen again,” Duff says, pressing his brown hiking boot up against the foot of a Formica table. “We were this close to World War III.” He holds his trembling fingertips about an inch apart. Duff is not a man who startles easily, but now his blue eyes glance up at the fluorescent-lit ceiling, then back down to offer a warning: “It was scary,” he says. “It was scary.”  + +Duff doesn’t know how many more anniversaries he’ll be able to mark, but this year, he’ll be traveling to California in October for a 60-year reunion. Surrounded by U-2 pilots at the program’s Beale Air Force Base headquarters, he’s pretty sure he’ll be the only photo interpreter left. He’ll spend the weekend attending keynote breakfasts, presentations, speeches from pilots. Among his own unique species, you can bet he’ll have plenty of stories to share.  + +And you can bet, too, that he’ll be wearing his custom hat.   + +*This story appears in the October issue of* [*Deseret Magazine*](https://www.deseret.com/magazine)*.* [*Learn more about how to subscribe*](https://pages.deseret.com/subscribe?utm_source=deseret&utm_medium=deseret_com&utm_campaign=learn_more_subscribe_footers). + +  +  + +--- +`$= dv.el('center', 'Source: ' + dv.current().Link + ', ' + dv.current().Date.toLocaleString("fr-FR"))` \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/00.03 News/How a Chinese American Gangster Transformed Money Laundering for Drug Cartels.md b/00.03 News/How a Chinese American Gangster Transformed Money Laundering for Drug Cartels.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b5cc1c8c --- /dev/null +++ b/00.03 News/How a Chinese American Gangster Transformed Money Laundering for Drug Cartels.md @@ -0,0 +1,347 @@ +--- + +Tag: ["Crime", "🇺🇸", "🇨🇳", "💸", "💉"] +Date: 2022-10-24 +DocType: "WebClipping" +Hierarchy: +TimeStamp: 2022-10-24 +Link: https://www.propublica.org/article/china-cartels-xizhi-li-money-laundering +location: +CollapseMetaTable: true + +--- + +Parent:: [[@News|News]] +Read:: No + +--- + +  + +```button +name Save +type command +action Save current file +id Save +``` +^button-HowaGangsterTransformedMoneyLaunderingNSave + +  + +# How a Chinese American Gangster Transformed Money Laundering for Drug Cartels + +ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive [our biggest stories](https://www.propublica.org/newsletters/the-big-story?source=www.propublica.org&placement=top-note®ion=national) as soon as they’re published. + +This is part one of an investigation into a revolutionary money laundering system involving Chinese organized crime, Latin American drug cartels and Chinese officials, and how one major figure in the scheme managed to meet former President Donald Trump. Read part two: “[The Globetrotting Con Man and Suspected Spy Who Met With President Trump](https://www.propublica.org/article/liu-tao-trump-meeting-china-investigation).” + +In 2017, Drug Enforcement Administration agents following the money from cocaine deals in Memphis, Tennessee, identified a mysterious figure in Mexico entrusted by drug lords with their millions: a Chinese American gangster named Xizhi Li. + +As the agents tracked Li’s activity across the Americas and Asia, they realized he wasn’t just another money launderer. He was a pioneer. Operating with the acumen of a financier and the tradecraft of a spy, he had helped devise an innovative system that revolutionized the drug underworld and fortified the cartels. + +Li hit on a better way to address a problem that has long bedeviled the world’s drug lords: how to turn the mountains of grimy twenties and hundreds amassed on U.S. streets into legitimate fortunes they can spend on yachts, mansions, weapons, technology and bribes to police and politicians. + +For years, the Mexican cartels that supply the U.S. market with cocaine, heroin and fentanyl smuggled truckloads of bulk cash to Mexico, where they [used banks](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-probe/hsbc-to-pay-1-9-billion-u-s-fine-in-money-laundering-case-idUSBRE8BA05M20121211) and exchange houses to move the money into the financial system. And they also hired middlemen — often Colombian or [Lebanese](https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/manhattan-us-attorney-announces-102-million-settlement-civil-forfeiture-and-money) specialists who charged as much as 18 cents on the dollar — to launder their billions. + +Those methods were costly, took weeks or even months to complete and exposed the stockpiled cash to risks — damage, robbery, confiscation. + +Enter Li. About six years ago, federal antidrug agents in Chicago saw early signs of what would become a tectonic change. They trailed cartel operatives transporting drug cash to a new destination: Chinatown, an immigrant enclave in the flatlands about 2 miles south of the city’s rampart of lakefront skyscrapers. + +Agents on stakeout watched as cartel operatives delivered suitcases full of cash to Chinese couriers directed by Li. Furtive exchanges took place in motels and parking lots. The couriers didn’t have criminal records or carry guns; they were students, waiters, drivers. Neither side spoke much English, so they used a prearranged signal: a photo of a serial number on a dollar bill. + +After the handoff, the couriers alerted their Chinese bosses in Mexico, who quickly sent pesos to the bank accounts or safe houses of Mexican drug lords. Li then executed a chain of transactions through China, the United States and Latin America to launder the dollars. His powerful international connections made his service cheap, fast and efficient; he even guaranteed free replacement of cartel cash lost in transit. Li and his fellow Chinese money launderers married market forces: drug lords wanting to get rid of dollars and a Chinese elite desperate to acquire dollars. The new model blew away the competition. + +“At no time in the history of organized crime is there an example where a revenue stream has been taken over like this, and without a shot being fired,” said retired DEA agent Thomas Cindric, a veteran of the elite Special Operations Division. “This has enriched the Mexican cartels beyond their wildest dreams.” + +As they investigated Li’s tangled financial dealings, U.S. agents came across evidence indicating that his money laundering schemes involved Chinese government officials and the Communist Party elite. China’s omnipresent security forces tightly control and monitor its state-run economy. Yet Li and others moved tens of millions of dollars among Chinese banks and companies with seeming impunity, according to court documents and national security officials. The criminal rings exploited a landscape in which more than $3.8 trillion of capital has left China since 2006, making the country the world’s top “exporter of hot money,” said [John Cassara, a former U.S. Treasury Department investigator](https://ag-pssg-sharedservices-ex.objectstore.gov.bc.ca/ag-pssg-cc-exh-prod-bkt-ex/341%20-%20002%20J.%20Cassara%20-%20Final%20Statement%20to%20the%20Cullen%20Commission.pdf), in testimony to a Canadian commission of inquiry. + +Adm. Craig Faller, a senior U.S. military leader, told Congress last year that Chinese launderers had emerged as the “[No. 1 underwriter](https://www.southcom.mil/Media/Special-Coverage/SOUTHCOMs-2021-Posture-Statement-to-Congress/)” of drug trafficking in the Western Hemisphere. The Chinese government is “at least tacitly supporting” the laundering activity, testified Faller, who led the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees military activity in Latin America. + +In an interview with ProPublica, the now-retired Faller elaborated on his little-noticed testimony. He said China has “the world’s largest and most sophisticated state security apparatus. So there’s no doubt that they have the ability to stop things if they want to. They don’t have any desire to stop this. There’s a lot of theories as to why they don’t. But it is certainly aided and abetted by the attitude and way that the People’s Republic of China views the globe.” + +Some U.S. officials go further, arguing that Chinese authorities have decided as a matter of policy to foster the drug trade in the Americas in order to destabilize the region and spread corruption, addiction and death here. + +“We suspected a Chinese ideological and strategic motivation behind the drug and money activity,” said former senior FBI official Frank Montoya Jr., who served as a top counterintelligence official at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “To fan the flames of hate and division. The Chinese have seen the advantages of the drug trade. If fentanyl helps them and hurts this country, why not?” + +More than half a dozen national security veterans interviewed by ProPublica expressed similar views, most of them speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive subject. But they acknowledged that the alleged state complicity is difficult to prove. + +Beijing [rejects such accusations.](http://us.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/sgxw/202109/t20210903_9015585.htm) And the question of whether China actively supports money laundering and the flow of fentanyl and other drugs to the U.S. remains a matter of debate in the U.S. national security community. + +“There is so much corruption today in mainland China it becomes hard to distinguish a policy or campaign from generalized criminality,” said an Asian American former intelligence official with long experience on Chinese crime and espionage. + +The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a detailed request for comment for this story. + +The takeover of drug-related money laundering by Chinese organized crime has drawn global attention. In Australia, [authorities are investigating a Chinese syndicate](https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/police-probe-into-chinese-money-laundering-syndicate-headquartered-in-australia-20220608-p5as2t.html) that allegedly moved hundreds of millions of dollars around the world for clients, including a cousin of Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to news reports. (Xi’s cousin has not been charged with a crime, and the Chinese foreign ministry has dismissed reports about inquiries into his activities as “gossip.”) + +Europol has warned that Chinese money laundering groups “present a growing threat to Europe.” The U.S. State Department estimates that $154 billion in illicit funds a year passes through China, calling it “of great concern.” + +“We used to have a regular dialogue with the Chinese specifically on things like money laundering, counternarcotics policies,” Assistant Secretary Todd Robinson, who leads the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, said in an interview. “And since that has stopped, it has not been clear, we’ve not really been able to get a handle on how much of this is criminal organizations and how much of it is criminal organizations connected to or suborning Chinese government officials.” + +Xi has led a well-publicized crusade against corruption, [but it has been mainly a purge of rivals](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/xi-jinping-china-weakness-hubris-paranoia-threaten-future?utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=twofa&utm_campaign=The%20Weakness%20of%20Xi%20Jinping&utm_content=20220909&utm_term=FA%20This%20Week%20-%20112017), according to U.S. national security officials and Chinese dissidents. In fact, they said, Chinese intelligence services have quietly expanded their ties with Chinese mafias, known as triads, for mutual benefit. + +“There is no question there is interconnectivity between Chinese organized crime and the Chinese state,” said Montoya. “The party operates in organized crime-type fashion. There are parallels to Russia, where organized crime has been co-opted by the Russian government and Putin’s security services.” + +The Li case led federal agents in an unexpected direction: an investigation of a possible Chinese covert operation to penetrate American politics. The DEA agents stumbled across Li’s enigmatic associate, an expatriate Chinese businessman named Tao Liu. After moving from Mexico to New York, he launched a [high-rolling quest for political influence](https://www.propublica.org/article/liu-tao-trump-meeting-china-investigation) that included at least two meetings with President Donald Trump. + +![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%27%20width%3D%27400%27%20height%3D%27533%27%20style%3D%27background%3Argba%28127%2C127%2C127%2C0.07%29%27%2F%3E) + +Xizhi Li’s associate, Tao Liu (right), met twice with President Donald Trump in 2018. + +Both the DEA and FBI pursued Liu, suspecting he had ties to Chinese spy agencies. They wanted to know how and why a wanted Chinese criminal had gained access to the president of the United States. + +Although authorities convicted Li and Liu of money laundering and other crimes, the political and diplomatic aspects of the groundbreaking investigations of them are still largely secret. Citing open investigations, the DEA declined to discuss the case or even the general issue of how Chinese organized crime launders profits for the cartels. The Justice Department and FBI declined requests for comment. Lawyers who represented Li rejected requests for interviews with them or their client. + +To explore the full dimensions of the case, ProPublica interviewed more than two dozen current and former national security officials, as well as lawyers and others involved. ProPublica granted some of them anonymity, either because they were not authorized to talk publicly or because of concerns about their security. ProPublica also reviewed court files, social media, governmental reports and other material. Many details — about the suspected role of Chinese officials, the hunt across the globe, the links to U.S. politics — are being reported for the first time. + +### The Aura of Juan Lee + +In 2008, Rigo Polanco met a cocaine trafficker who called himself Juan Lee. It was one of 17 aliases that Xizhi Li accumulated in a criminal career that was just getting started. + +Polanco, a California anti-drug agent, had spent weeks undercover stalking Li, who was looking for a high-volume supplier. But the guy was a ghost. He used multiple phones. He hid behind intermediaries. Finally, he agreed to meet Polanco at a Denny’s by the Pomona Freeway in the suburban sprawl of the San Gabriel Valley. + +![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%27%20width%3D%27400%27%20height%3D%27225%27%20style%3D%27background%3Argba%28127%2C127%2C127%2C0.07%29%27%2F%3E) + +Credit: For ProPublica + +On June 24, Polanco’s Los Angeles County task force deployed surveillance around the diner. Polanco introduced himself as Alfredo, a corrupt Customs and Border Protection officer with access to cocaine. He sat down with Li, Li’s 25-year-old Mexican American wife and her brother. + +At 35, Li stood 5-foot-7 and weighed about 135 pounds. But he was imposing. He spoke fluent, Mexican-accented Spanish, wore a Rolex and emanated menace. + +“The aura of Juan Lee among the people around him was, ‘Don’t cross this guy,’” Polanco recalled in an interview. “There was some sense of fear of him among his associates.” + +Li grew up in a unique subculture where crime spoke many languages and crossed borders with ease. The experience served him well. + +He was born in a rural area of Guangdong province in 1973. About 10 years later, the family migrated to Mexicali, a Mexican city on the California border that is home to a large Chinese community. Chinese restaurants fill La Chinesca, the Chinatown. In the early 20th century, an underground tunnel complex was a refuge from the desert heat — and a site for gambling and cross-border crime schemes. + +Li attended school and worked long shifts in a family restaurant. But one of his close relatives smuggled migrants and contraband into the United States, former investigators say. When Li was about 16, his family migrated to Southern California. He slid into crime in the 1990s and with help from relatives became an associate of the 14K triad, a Chinese criminal organization, according to law enforcement documents and former investigators. + +Li obtained U.S. citizenship and had four children with a Chinese-born woman. In 2005, he opened the Lucky City Restaurant in the suburb of Monterey Park in Los Angeles County. The restaurant quickly became a den of drug trafficking and human smuggling, according to an affidavit written by a DEA investigator and sources familiar with the case. + +By then, Li’s triad and family connections had helped him cultivate relationships with Chinese officials with diplomatic status in the United States, according to former investigators. He also recruited a corrupt U.S. border inspector to help with smuggling, according to law enforcement documents and former investigators. + +Li’s hectic life bridged the Latino and Asian communities. He had two children with his Mexican American wife, whose family had useful cartel connections, according to interviews and court documents. + +At the same time, Li maintained ties to his birthplace. Around 2007, he took Chinese relatives to Guangdong for the Qingming Festival, when families clean the tombs of their ancestors. Basking in the role of benevolent immigrant, he “funded the renovation of our village, transforming the muddy land into streets,” his sister wrote to a federal judge years later. + +Back in the smoggy San Gabriel Valley, his prolific criminal activity drew investigations by the DEA and FBI. But Polanco’s team of Los Angeles County officers didn’t know about those open cases when they went after him in 2008. + +During a second meeting at a seafood restaurant, Li told Polanco that he was smuggling 30-kilogram loads of cocaine through Mexico to Hong Kong, making $60,000 a kilogram. He also sent cocaine to Canada. And he had a sideline smuggling Chinese migrants through Cuba. + +![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%27%20width%3D%27400%27%20height%3D%27225%27%20style%3D%27background%3Argba%28127%2C127%2C127%2C0.07%29%27%2F%3E) + +Credit: For ProPublica + +This is no run-of-the-mill thug, Polanco thought. Mexico was violent. Cuba was a police state. Canada and Hong Kong were hotbeds of Chinese organized crime. You needed well-placed allies to navigate among those cultures and countries. + +“It all added up to this picture of a very shrewd and cautious and sophisticated operator,” Polanco said. “There was a lot of sophistication in what he was doing, even then.” + +After negotiations with the undercover agent, Li agreed to buy an initial 20 kilograms of cocaine. On July 14, he sent a young Asian man in a Mercedes to a supermarket parking lot to deliver $200,000. Polanco’s team captured the bagman and other accomplices. The bagman and Li’s brother-in-law pleaded guilty to drug trafficking offenses, while charges against the wife were dropped. + +But Li fled south across the border. He soon proved Polanco’s instincts correct. + +### Chinaloa + +In Mexico City, Li rebounded fast. + +Qiyun Chen was from his hometown and worked in her family’s retail business. Only in her early 20s, she became his romantic and criminal partner, according to court documents and former investigators. Her charm and intelligence impressed gangsters and cops alike. (Chen could not be reached for comment.) + +Chen introduced Li to her own network in the Chinese Mexican community, including a formidable trafficker known as the Iron Lady. In her online communications, Chen called herself Chinaloa. The alias fused the words China and Sinaloa, the state that has spawned many drug lords. It baptized her as a player in a multilingual subculture that she and Li created. Their text messages combined Chinese and Spanish. Li used the online handles JL 007 and Organización Diplomática (Diplomatic Organization). + +The couple divided their time among luxurious homes in Mexico City, Cancun and Guatemala, making good money smuggling drugs and migrants. But they saw a new opportunity in money laundering. + +![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%27%20width%3D%27400%27%20height%3D%27600%27%20style%3D%27background%3Argba%28127%2C127%2C127%2C0.07%29%27%2F%3E) + +Credit: For ProPublica + +In 2011, Li went to Guatemala City to buy a casino. Located in a Holiday Inn, it had a ’90s-era decor that didn’t exactly conjure images of James Bond in Monte Carlo. + +Nonetheless, Li struck an all-inclusive deal with the owner. He bought his casino, his casino license — and his identity. The U.S. fugitive became a Guatemalan gambling entrepreneur, according to court documents. + +Along the way, Li had developed a complementary racket: selling fraudulent documents. Li himself had five passports from three countries. The fake papers were professionally done. Li infiltrated corrupt Latin American bureaucracies that sell real passports, identity cards, even birth certificates. He also had a government-connected source for passports in Hong Kong. Li charged about $15,000 per document, according to interviews and court files. + +The same year Li bought the casino, a cafe owner in Mexico City introduced him to a wealthy Chinese expatriate who wanted a Guatemalan passport. The new arrival was a portly, baggy-faced 35-year-old named Tao Liu. It proved a providential encounter. + +Li took his client in a private helicopter to the southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas. They landed in the jungle and trudged across the border into Guatemala. + +![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%27%20width%3D%27400%27%20height%3D%27225%27%20style%3D%27background%3Argba%28127%2C127%2C127%2C0.07%29%27%2F%3E) + +Credit: For ProPublica + +“Bodyguards with weapons and vehicles were waiting on the other side,” said Liu’s lawyer, Jonathan Simms. “They take them to Li’s mansion in Guatemala. Li leaves him there and goes to get the passports. Tao spent time in that mansion waiting with other Chinese clients for Li to bring back the documents. He got to know the other people there pretty well.” + +While at the safe house, Liu met a senior Chinese military officer who also bought a fraudulent document from Li, Simms said. Years later, Liu identified the officer in a photo shown to him by U.S. agents. + +Investigators say that episode contributed to evidence that Li provided fake papers, and other criminal services, to Chinese officials in Latin America, where China is an economic and diplomatic power. Foreign passports and multiple identities enable Chinese operatives overseas to engage in covert activity, launder money or take refuge from their government if accused of corruption. + +The national security threat posed by Li’s passport racket later caused the DEA to bring in the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service to conduct its own investigation, which continues today. + +After the Guatemala expedition, Liu and Li became friends. They gambled at the casino and took women to the Bahamas. Although Liu had access to money and power, he was also an admitted brazen lawbreaker. Sometimes his dubious immigration status forced him to enter Mexico by car or bus, and he bragged about bluffing or bribing border officers, according to court documents, his lawyer and law enforcement officials. + +The two men did not seem like kindred spirits. Li was thin; Liu was obese. Li was reserved; Liu was gregarious. It is hard to find photos of Li; Liu bombarded social media with scenes of his extravagant lifestyle. + +But they were both globetrotting outlaws. And Liu played a crucial early role in building Li’s empire, according to current and former law enforcement officials and other sources. A U.S. indictment later alleged: “TAO \[Liu\] worked with LI to begin money laundering in locations including Mexico and Guatemala.” + +In later conversations recorded by the DEA, Liu described himself as an influential mentor who taught Li how to launder money, according to court documents and interviews. Liu’s lawyer argued that his client’s admissions were exaggerations. But the investigators tended to believe Liu’s account. + +“The DEA thought that they were partners in the money laundering,” a former national security official said. “And they were definitely working closely together.” + +Investigators believe Liu used his connections in China and the diaspora to recruit rich people who needed U.S. dollars. A sign of Liu’s access to that underworld: he had another associate in Hong Kong, known as “the queen of underground banking,” who provided black market money services to the Chinese elite, according to Chinese court documents and press reports. + +Stocked with cash and guns, Li’s Guatemalan casino became a base of his emerging venture. He started bringing Chinese nationals to the casino: some of them politically connected, others corrupt officials, others expatriates, according to interviews and court documents. They mingled with Latin American drug traffickers, the second essential element in his scheme. The casino was a showcase to demonstrate to both sides that Li could deliver, court documents say. + +The wealthy Chinese “had a need,” Simms said. “The cartels had a need. Li put it together.” + +![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%27%20width%3D%27400%27%20height%3D%27225%27%20style%3D%27background%3Argba%28127%2C127%2C127%2C0.07%29%27%2F%3E) + +Credit: For ProPublica + +### Mirror Transactions + +Many ethnic diasporas have developed informal systems for moving money and funneling cash — earned honestly or illegally — into the legitimate international economy. + +For decades, underground banking systems served the elite of the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, especially after the totalitarian regime opened its command economy to global capitalism. Starting around 2013, Xi’s anti-corruption crusade pushed the elite to spirit more money overseas. A yearly limit of $50,000 on capital flight increased a demand for U.S. dollars. + +“The underground banking system in China was pretty much self-sufficient just dealing with Chinese criminal organizations and the Chinese diaspora,” said John Tobon, the Homeland Security Investigations special agent in charge in Honolulu, [who has written on the topic](https://ipdefenseforum.com/2022/03/black-market-foreign-exchange/). “And it was then when all of these restrictions came in, when the CCP members could no longer count on doing it the easy way ... that the supply of dollars became an issue.” + +Li and other enterprising criminals identified a seemingly limitless source of dollars: the Latin American drug trade. To amass the cash, Li offered the cartels unheard-of money laundering deals. + +“With the Colombians, it had been an 18% to 13% commission,” said Cindric, the retired DEA agent. “The Chinese are doing it for 1 to 2% on average. And the speed at which they do it is unbelievable. The Chinese absorbed the risk. You know it will get paid.” + +Li deployed dozens of couriers from Los Angeles to Atlanta. Just two couriers in Chicago picked up more than $10 million from cartel operatives in a seven-month period between 2016 and 2017, according to law enforcement documents. + +“We saw the Chinese enter the market,” said Daniel Morro, a former senior HSI official in Chicago. “It was super-intriguing. We had never seen it before.” + +If the couriers delivered, they collected a 1% fee. If not, they were on the hook with Li. + +On March 11, 2016, Nebraska state troopers stopped a rental car on a desolate highway. They confiscated $340,000 and released the two couriers, who were driving from Chicago to Los Angeles. A courier called Li, who called a cartel representative in Mexico and sent a bank transfer to replace the lost load. The courier and his relatives rapidly reimbursed Li by depositing money in U.S. bank accounts, court documents say. + +“He was a hard-ass,” said Michael Ciesliga, a former DEA investigator. “No nonsense. All business. Very strict, very hard even on his family.” + +Li’s system generally worked like this: Cartel operatives in the United States would arrange a “contract” with him, often to launder about $350,000, a quantity of cash that fit into a suitcase. + +Cartel transporters handed over the dollar loads to Li’s couriers, who sent Li or his lieutenants a photo confirming the handoff. Li then delivered the sums in Mexican pesos to drug lords from safe houses in Mexico stocked with that currency. The first stage, providing swift service to the cartels, was complete. + +Li’s profits came from other players in the scheme: rich Chinese willing to lose money in order to obtain dollars outside China and Latin American import/export firms needing Chinese currency to do business in China. + +Li’s couriers often drove loads of cash to New York or Los Angeles, which have large Chinese immigrant populations. Li “sold” the currency to wealthy Chinese clients or their expatriate relatives or representatives. As part of the deal, Li himself would sometimes turn the dollars into deposits in bank accounts or use front companies to issue cashier’s checks. + +But the Chinese clients often had their own options, such as small businesses that handled cash without questions. Another method was gambling at casinos, which readily turned cash into chips. Many clients bought homes or paid U.S. university tuition. + +In testimony to a Canadian commission of inquiry in 2020, Cassara, the former investigator at the U.S. Treasury Department, described the frequency of laundering in the U.S. real estate sector. + +“Almost 60% of purchases by international clients are made in cash,” Cassara said, citing a report by the National Association of Realtors. “Chinese buyers have been the top foreign buyers in the United States both in units and dollar volume of residential housing for six years straight. ... In the United States, there is little if any customer due diligence by real estate agents.” + +The next step in Li’s system took place beyond the sight and reach of U.S. authorities. He directed his wealthy clients to transfer equivalent sums from their Chinese bank accounts to accounts he controlled in China. Known as “mirror transactions,” these transfers enabled Li to “sell” the same money again — this time, as Chinese currency to the Latin American exporters. + +How Xizhi Li Used “Mirror Transactions” to Launder Millions of Dollars Across the World + +The transactions allowed Li to move millions among Mexico, the United States and China while evading law enforcement and charging steep commissions. + +Credit: Graphic by Lucas Waldron, ProPublica + +There were variations on the system. Li sometimes washed funds through companies owned by confederates in the United States and Latin America who sold seafood and other goods to China. Taking advantage of the $80 billion in trade between Mexico and China, launderers also sent goods from China to Mexican front companies connected to drug lords. Those companies would sell the products for pesos, creating a legitimate paper trail for money initially earned from the sale of drugs. + +Li’s network used Chinese banks including the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the Agricultural Bank of China, court documents say. Those state institutions were among the banks that moved millions around the world with little apparent scrutiny in this case and others, according to court documents and interviews. Prosecutors did not accuse any bankers of wrongdoing. But investigators suspect that some bankers looked the other way. (The banks did not respond to requests for comment.) + +“They had to know it was illegal,” Ciesliga said. “Just the sheer amount of money, and the volume and consistency and frequency, there’s no legitimate businesses that are moving that kind of money. Any alert anti-money laundering investigator would have detected this kind of activity.” + +In other cases, authorities have sanctioned Chinese banks for offenses related to money laundering. In 2016, New York state regulators [fined the Agricultural Bank of China](https://www.dfs.ny.gov/reports_and_publications/press_releases/pr1611041) $215 million for anti-money laundering violations. A [Spanish court in 2020 convicted four Madrid executives](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-icbc-spain-investigation/fines-short-jail-terms-for-four-ex-icbc-spain-employees-in-laundering-case-idUSKBN23N2Q6) of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China of a brazen setup in which they received tens of millions of euros in cash day and night, and moved the funds illegally back to China. The Bank of China has paid fines and endured criminal penalties in [Italy](https://www.reuters.com/article/bankofchina-italy/bank-of-china-pays-600000-euros-to-close-italy-money-laundering-case-idUSL8N1G25RB) and [France](https://complianceconcourse.willkie.com/articles/news-alerts-2020-01-january-20200130-france-sanctions-bank-of-china-for-aml) for the alleged illegal repatriation of proceeds from tax evasion and customs fraud. + +On the streets of the Americas, turf wars and rip-offs were rare among the money laundering crews. But for Li, reality intruded eventually. + +In 2016, gunmen ambushed Li near his casino in Guatemala City, shredding his armored Range Rover with more than 20 rounds. He survived unscathed. The attackers got away. Li suspected rival Asian gangsters, according to former investigators and others familiar with the case. + +He was deep in treacherous territory. + +![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%27%20width%3D%27400%27%20height%3D%27600%27%20style%3D%27background%3Argba%28127%2C127%2C127%2C0.07%29%27%2F%3E) + +Credit: For ProPublica + +### The Streets of Memphis + +By 2017, Li’s empire had grown to span four continents. It operated below the radar, with startling impunity. A Memphis-based U.S. drug agent was about to change that. + +Peter Maher was a sharp, voracious investigator who had only been with the DEA a few years, colleagues say. (Maher declined an interview request.) He teamed up with Ciesliga, a Tennessee state agent assigned to a federal task force. As they traced drugs on the streets of Memphis back to their source, they discovered that the Sinaloa cartel of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was supplying cocaine to a major Memphis drug crew. Markings on cocaine packets pointed at Marisela Flores-Torruco, now 52, a Mexican drug lord known as the Iron Lady. + +Maher’s team learned that, because Flores had a Chinese grandparent, her organization was known as “Los Chinos,” or the Chinese. Based in Chiapas, she imported tons of cocaine from Colombia for the Sinaloa cartel, interviews and court documents say. (Flores could not be reached for comment.) + +Soon, the agents identified a woman in Mexico who was one of the Iron Lady’s “principal coordinators of illicit money laundering operations,” court documents say. + +It was Chen, Li’s paramour, using the handle Chinaloa. The DEA Special Operations Division, which specializes in international cases, began intercepting her communications, according to court documents and interviews. The agents figured out that Chen had introduced Li to Flores, who encouraged other traffickers to launder their money with his organization. + +Chen’s communications led the DEA to Li, who was laundering for the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels. Tracking his U.S. couriers, agents picked off loads across the country. + +In May 2017, agents arrested one of Li’s trusted money managers, a Brooklyn-based mail carrier and Chinese immigrant who had lived in Belize. He recorded about $2 million in illicit transactions in a ledger and sometimes received cash deliveries in his U.S. postal uniform, court documents say. The mail carrier pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder money and got a 60-month sentence. + +![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%27%20width%3D%27400%27%20height%3D%27225%27%20style%3D%27background%3Argba%28127%2C127%2C127%2C0.07%29%27%2F%3E) + +Credit: For ProPublica + +The Memphis agents toggled between leads in the U.S. and Mexico as the Iron Lady’s ferocity kept them on alert. When Flores ordered her enforcers to kidnap the family of a man who owed her money, the agents warned Mexican counterparts. Later, she threatened to kill rivals with a bombing at a racetrack, Ciesliga said. DEA agents hurriedly obtained an Interpol warrant, and police arrested Flores in Colombia in July 2017. + +Later that month, the agents captured Chen during a visit to Los Angeles. They seized five phones from her, along with airline tickets to visit accomplices in Portland, Oregon, who oversaw more than 251 Chinese bank accounts, according to interviews and court documents. + +The next morning, Maher and Ciesliga drove to the Santa Monica Pier. Sitting in their rental car by the Pacific, they scoured Chen’s phones. They hurriedly took screenshots, worried that an accomplice could remotely erase the contents at any moment. + +Looking at Chen’s smartphones, the agents were able for the first time to read the suspects’ most sensitive conversations on WeChat, an application for messaging and commerce. WeChat is ubiquitous in China and the Chinese diaspora and impenetrable to U.S. law enforcement. Because it uses a form of partial encryption allowing the company access to content, WeChat is closely monitored by the Chinese state, according to U.S. national security veterans. + +U.S. officials view the brazen use of WeChat for money laundering as another suggestive piece of evidence that authorities in Beijing know what is going on. + +“It is all happening on WeChat,” Cindric said. “The Chinese government is clearly aware of it. The launderers are not concealing themselves on WeChat.” + +Chen’s arrest was a devastating blow to Li. Agents mapped out the structure of his organization and sifted through a global labyrinth of transactions. + +“It made us realize how big Li really was,” Ciesliga said. “He was definitely one of the first. We were talking to 40 different agents around the country and around the world, and for them it was a new thing what he was doing.” + +### The Fall of the Boss + +The investigation gathered momentum as the DEA launched Project Sleeping Giant, a campaign against [China-connected drug activity](https://www.reuters.com/article/mexico-china-cartels-idLTAL8N2I34RV). + +The agents dug through phone data and old cases to find Li’s ties to the 14K triad. That all-important discovery helped explain his “sprawling spider web of connections” in Asia and the Americas, Ciesliga said. + +The 14K connection also pointed at the Chinese power structure. The triad’s former boss in Macao, Wan Kuok Koi, allegedly mixes crime, business and politics to advance China’s interests overseas, according to public allegations by the U.S. government. He is an influential member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference of the Communist Party, according to [Treasury Department anti-corruption sanctions](https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm1206) filed in 2020. A former senior State Department official, David Asher, described him as “an ambassador of organized crime.” + +Wan and a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson have denied the U.S. allegations. + +![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%27%20width%3D%27400%27%20height%3D%27600%27%20style%3D%27background%3Argba%28127%2C127%2C127%2C0.07%29%27%2F%3E) + +Credit: For ProPublica + +The alleged state-underworld alliance surfaces elsewhere. In [Hong Kong](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinas-backers-and-triad-gangs-have-history-of-common-foes-hong-kong-protesters-fear-they-are-next/2019/07/23/41445b88-ac68-11e9-9411-a608f9d0c2d3_story.html) and [Taiwan](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/18/nice-democracy-youve-got-there-be-a-shame-if-something-happened-to-it/), triads attack political rivals of Beijing. [Canadian national security chiefs](https://globalnews.ca/news/8922745/cullen-commission-findings-report-bc-money-laundering-inquiry/) have [warned for years about an alliance of Chinese spies](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/china-set-up-crime-web-in-canada-report-says/article4163320/), triads and oligarchs. U.S. gangsters assist the Communist Party’s overseas intelligence and influence arm, the United Front, according to national security experts. + +The party “uses organized crime-linked money laundering networks to get money to United Front actors and to help them fund their activities,” said Matthew Pottinger, who served as U.S. deputy national security adviser from 2019 to 2021. In return, triads gain “a sense of political security,” he said. + +In the Li case, agents learned that clients for his money-moving services included powerful figures in the party, the Chinese government and the diaspora, according to Ciesliga and other former law enforcement officials and people familiar with the case. But it was hard to gather evidence because, as prosecutors said in a court filing, “United States law enforcement rarely, if ever, obtains assistance from Chinese officials in criminal investigations.” + +Chinese authorities permit criminals like Li to operate because dark money benefits the elite, strengthens China’s economy and weakens the West, U.S. national security officials say. + +“There is a strategy; it’s not individuals acting on their own,” Tobon, the Honolulu HSI chief, said. “The amount of money coming out of China via the underground banking system is so significant that it would be virtually impossible for a government that has as much control of their people as the government of China to not be aware of how it's happening.” + +Some critics of Beijing say that analysis applies to another threat: fentanyl. China is the top producer of the lethal drug that has killed tens of thousands of Americans. Although pressure by the Trump administration caused Beijing to reduce the direct flow of the drug to the U.S. in 2019, China’s pharmaceutical sector still sells fentanyl precursors and analogues that reach Mexico, where cartels produce opioids — and work with Chinese money launderers. + +In late 2019, Li finally fell. Making him think he would meet an associate, the DEA lured him to Merida, Mexico. Mexican federal police captured him and delivered him to DEA agents at the Houston airport, court documents say. He spent four and a half hours answering questions in English, admitting to “financial transactions involving ‘bad money,’” prosecution documents say. + +Prosecutors charged him with leading a conspiracy that washed at least $30 million, a number backed by direct evidence. The full amount was likely in the hundreds of millions, according to law enforcement documents and interviews. + +![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%27%20width%3D%27400%27%20height%3D%27472%27%20style%3D%27background%3Argba%28127%2C127%2C127%2C0.07%29%27%2F%3E) + +Xizhi Li Credit: Alexandria (Virginia) Sheriff’s Office + +Li pleaded guilty and received a 15-year sentence, according to court records. Chen and half a dozen others also pleaded guilty and went to prison. Colombia extradited Flores, who pleaded guilty and got 16 years. + +Li’s high-powered connections put him at risk. His old friend Liu feared for his safety, Simms said, because Li “was involved in Chinese organized crime, in Mexican money laundering, in activity in China that goes to higher levels of the power structure.” + +And in this case, the fall of the boss was not the end of the story. + +Do You Have a Tip for ProPublica? Help Us Do Journalism. + +Got a story we should hear? Are you down to be a background source on a story about your community, your schools or your workplace? Get in touch. + +[Expand](https://www.propublica.org/article/china-cartels-xizhi-li-money-laundering#) + +[Jeff Kao](https://www.propublica.org/people/jeff-kao) and [Cezary Podkul](https://www.propublica.org/people/cezary-podkul) contributed reporting. + +  +  + +--- +`$= dv.el('center', 'Source: ' + dv.current().Link + ', ' + dv.current().Date.toLocaleString("fr-FR"))` \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/00.03 News/Searching for Justice, 35 Years After Katricia Dotson Was Killed by the Police.md b/00.03 News/Searching for Justice, 35 Years After Katricia Dotson Was Killed by the Police.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bcb7e9bd --- /dev/null +++ b/00.03 News/Searching for Justice, 35 Years After Katricia Dotson Was Killed by the Police.md @@ -0,0 +1,277 @@ +--- + +Tag: ["Crime", "🇺🇸", "🔫", "👨🏾‍🦱"] +Date: 2022-10-24 +DocType: "WebClipping" +Hierarchy: +TimeStamp: 2022-10-24 +Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/19/magazine/philadelphia-move-bombing-katricia-dotson.html?unlocked_article_code=KLC6RKFvBdEs92vxI14K20r57Hmr2rhkvSAJMQk3miR0u_wk35O9ORUZ8E63STAeqoVI05Sbj3C3ntpy0BJaHe3jzl2l22mEBkl7e26-Et9P4w76lZrNbDaqlZFfVtia-6N5jBBO1VsoF5rPr_72B1htYsGM2Q42_ksXGhg8rjOJsnK69YcpTdl7nf6lf9HSYP5DrdEOlit4qmjzFaZE0WNpedl4krJKXiyDBVl8E5YBB77MGYEcu7eDdwvqNa5-LCIN5LihGlG5g__Sf70IBTwAcw01zxkmid2F1uN4MHtH4WwMx8W5sUnveSIZfTN6JwGeIhtGcFTrSgRjrW8koYnEobUi3Xam_nVkDypWtQLv6ff8&smid=share-url +location: +CollapseMetaTable: true + +--- + +Parent:: [[@News|News]] +Read:: No + +--- + +  + +```button +name Save +type command +action Save current file +id Save +``` +^button-35YearsAfterKDotsonWasKilledbythePoliceNSave + +  + +# Searching for Justice, 35 Years After Katricia Dotson Was Killed by the Police + +![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2022/10/23/magazine/23mag-Bombing-images-04-copy/23mag-Bombing-images-04-copy-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) + +Credit... From The Philadelphia Inquirer + +## She Was Killed by the Police. Why Were Her Bones in a Museum? + +Katricia Dotson’s remains were studied, disputed, displayed and litigated. Lost in the controversy was the life of an American girl and her family. + +Credit... From The Philadelphia Inquirer + +- Oct. 19, 2022 + +### Listen to This Article + +Audio Recording by Audm + +*To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times,* [*download Audm for iPhone or Android*](https://www.audm.com/?utm_source=nytmag&utm_medium=embed&utm_campaign=who_was_katricia_dotson)*.* + +In early 2019, Janet Monge, then an associate curator at the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, filmed a class called “Real Bones: Adventures in Forensic Anthropology” for the online education platform Coursera. The goal of the course was to demonstrate how scientists can restore what she called “lost personhood” to the unidentified victims of crimes and natural disasters. “They’ve lost individual identity, so our function is actually to restore parts of that identity,” she explained. + +Though she was trained as a paleoanthropologist, Monge had consulted on several high-profile forensics cases over the years, including one of Philadelphia’s most notorious catastrophes: [the 1985 police bombing of the predominantly Black religious group known as MOVE](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/13/us/philadelphia-bombing-apology-move.html). Unprecedented in the history of U.S. police violence, that aerial attack on a residential home triggered an inferno that killed 11 people, five of them children, and devoured more than 60 homes in a close-knit African American neighborhood. All of this happened just one mile from where Monge grew up. + +“Let me just give a little show on these things so you have a sense of having to deal with lost personhood in the extreme,” Monge said, pointing to a monitor showing an image of the bomb site. The slide then switched to images of bones she said belonged to an unidentified bombing victim. In a later segment, Monge stood in a brightly lit classroom in the Penn Museum, where she and one of her undergraduate students began to examine the remains themselves. Monge held up a badly burned fragment of pelvic bone for the camera, then the top third of a right femur and a pubic bone. + +These items had been in Monge’s lab for roughly 35 years, she said. The femur still contained enough marrow to have a slick surface, which Monge described as “juicy.” “If you smell it, it doesn’t actually smell bad, but it smells just kind of greasy, like an older-style grease,” she said. A slight pause. “The bones, actually, are really very worthy in a study sense.” + +Image + +![The damage on either side of Osage Avenue in Philadelphia, after the confrontation between MOVE and the police in 1985.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2022/10/23/magazine/23mag-Bombing-images-02/23mag-Bombing-images-02-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) + +Credit...Bob Sherman/United Press International, via Getty Images + +Biological anthropologists like Monge will scrutinize thousands of human bones over the course of their careers, and noting their colors and textures is part of the job. “Greasy” is a common term among scientists who work with bones, and Monge, who declined to be interviewed for this article, would later call “juicy” an “anthropological term of art.” Visible over Monge’s shoulder were dozens of human skulls collected in the mid 19th century by a Philadelphia doctor named Samuel George Morton, who is now remembered as both a founder of American anthropology and an architect of American scientific racism. After measuring more human craniums than any researcher of his day — nearly 900 by the time he died in 1851 — Morton falsely believed he had evidence for an intellectual hierarchy of human groups loosely based on skin color and geographic origin, with white Europeans at the top and people of African descent in “the lowest grade of humanity.” + +This segment was filmed at Penn, but the class was distributed through Princeton University, where Monge taught as a visiting professor. More than a thousand people viewed it, with no recorded complaints. But in early 2021, as the Penn Museum faced ongoing public criticism about its use of the Morton skulls (more than 50 of which belonged to enslaved Africans), several people connected to Penn began to discuss the other remains in its storage rooms. One sent a tip about the open secret of the MOVE bones to Abdul-Aliy Muhammad, a community organizer from West Philadelphia. Muhammad called another source at Penn, who mentioned the Coursera video. + +“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” Muhammad, who identifies as nonbinary, told me. Here was a white instructor at an Ivy League university using the MOVE bones as teaching aids while standing in front of the Morton collection. To Muhammad, this was the “legacy of a kind of a colonial and white supremacist need to hold on to the bodies, the remains of the bodies of Black people, to prove or disprove some kind of scientific experiment.” They immediately began drafting a reported opinion piece. + +Maya Kassutto, a freelance writer who had worked for Monge as a Penn undergrad, was also writing an article about the bones — specifically the hazy details around their provenance. Some of the country’s most experienced forensic experts concluded in 1985 that the remains Monge handled in the video, which were labeled Body B-1 in the original MOVE files, belonged to a 14-year-old girl named Katricia Dotson. Katricia’s death certificate lists both her name and the words “Unknown Case B-1.” Her family believed she was buried in December of that year. How did her bones end up in a museum? And why did Monge say they were unidentified? + +[Kassutto’s reporting appeared on WHYY’s Billy Penn news site,](https://billypenn.com/2021/04/21/move-bombing-penn-museum-bones-remains-princeton-africa/) and [Muhammad’s op-ed ran in The Philadelphia Inquirer](https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/penn-museum-reparations-repatriation-move-bombing-20210421.html) on April 21, just one day after a [jury convicted the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin of murdering George Floyd](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/20/us/chauvin-guilty-murder-george-floyd.html). Coming at such a sensitive moment, the public response was instant. The American Board of Forensic Anthropology called Monge’s Coursera class “an egregious mistreatment of human remains.” Princeton removed the class from its online offerings. + +The museum arranged for the remains to be transferred to a local funeral home and issued a formal apology to the surviving members of MOVE. At a news conference in late April 2021, Katricia’s 67-year-old mother, [Consuewella Africa, told the university](https://billypenn.com/2021/04/26/move-remains-penn-museum-apology-africa-family-mann-monge/) to “go to hell with that \[expletive\].” Protesters gathered outside the gates of the Penn Museum, demanding justice for the dead. Yet key questions about how many MOVE bones went to Penn, and to whom they belonged, remained unsettled. Monge has long argued that the bones belong not to Katricia Dotson but to an older unknown woman, and that the work of identifying that woman — restoring her personhood — is a matter of grave significance. She is currently suing 39 parties (including Kassutto, Muhammad, the university and The New York Times) for defamation, citing numerous passages that, in her view, imply that her work is unprofessional or racially motivated and noting that she has spent her entire career working for social justice. + +In the 18 months after the news conference, I interviewed more than 70 people, including members of the Dotson family, current and former members of MOVE, students and faculty members at Penn and more than a dozen forensic experts, several of whom consulted on the original MOVE case. I also reviewed thousands of pages of archival documents, witness testimony, medical records and court filings. Four different law firms hired by Penn, Princeton and the city of Philadelphia also conducted lengthy investigations into what policies, if any, allowed human bones from a painful tragedy to be used in classes at two of the country’s most elite universities. The question of the remains circled around matters of institutional authority and the deepest structure of American racism. But in the furious debate over who did or did not have the right to restore this young girl’s identity, something — someone — went missing, and that was Katricia Dotson herself. + +Image + +Credit...Hannah Price for The New York Times + +## ‘Not Even Human Beings’ + +She was born Baby Girl Dotson at Pennsylvania Hospital — one of Penn’s teaching facilities — on Sept. 15, 1970. Her 17-year-old mother, Consuewella, named her Katricia. She weighed 6 pounds 5 ounces. She would barely know her 20-year-old father, Nathaniel Galloway. Her closest companion was her half sister, Zanetta, called Netta, born in August 1972. Consuewella recorded Galloway as Netta’s father, but investigators later determined that he was not her biological parent. + +Katricia and Netta were still toddlers when their mother followed her uncle Conrad Hampton into a West Philadelphia religious commune called the Christian Movement for Life, which was eventually shortened to MOVE. Its leader was Vincent Leaphart, a charismatic local handyman who renamed himself John Africa and believed that only a complete rejection of modern society — “the system” — could heal the immorality and inequality it produced. He revered “Mom Nature” and vowed to protect all life; death was merely a “cycling” of the natural order. The smart, idealistic young people who joined his revolution wore their hair in dreadlocks, renounced most technology and adopted the family name Africa as a sign of loyalty. MOVE would give Katricia her own nickname, Tree Tree, and later just Tree. + +The group lived without electricity in a ramshackle Victorian house one mile north of the Penn Museum in the Powelton Village neighborhood, where John Africa insisted that all children be raised free of “system-training.” Tree and Netta ran naked most of the time and weren’t allowed to eat cooked food or visit doctors. They never attended school or learned to read and write. Instead, they bathed in creeks and slept on the floor, waking up at dawn to run in place and do push-ups. Beyond their supervised visits to play in a local park, the girls’ main connection to modern life came by way of their aunt Zelma, who sometimes stopped by to sneak them out for candy. + +At first, MOVE’s bohemian neighbors admired the group’s passion for defending animal rights and protesting police brutality. Were they strange? Yes. But Powelton Village in the 1970s was full of strange people. “While the practices of MOVE may not be totally societally acceptable,” one investigator from the city’s Department of Public Welfare wrote in 1975, “it does not appear that the children are neglected.” But as the group expanded, its neighbors grew increasingly concerned. MOVE’s compost heaps swarmed with rats and roaches that infested other homes, and about two dozen unvaccinated dogs roamed the property. Social services began receiving reports about naked children shivering in the cold. + +The more the neighbors complained, the more defiant MOVE became, ultimately denying the city’s health inspectors access to its increasingly fortified compound. Using John Africa’s term for death, his partner, Alberta, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that MOVE would “cycle our children before we let them take the children away.” + +Consuewella’s third child, a son she named Lobo, was born amid these tensions in December 1976. His father was a MOVE member named Charles Morris, who went by the name Beawolf. Tree and Netta fought over who got to hold and feed the new baby, but they lived with their half brother for only a few months before MOVE’s leaders sent the girls to live in Richmond, Va., where two MOVE women were helping set up a second commune, the Seed of Wisdom. Consuewella and Lobo stayed behind. + +Back in Philadelphia, the city’s mayor, Frank Rizzo, vowed to evict the young Black revolutionaries, whom he derided as “not even human beings.” They brandished rifles and refused to go; the city responded by blockading their compound. The standoff, which lasted 15 months, ended on Aug. 8, 1978, when Rizzo ordered a police assault on the group’s Powelton Village headquarters. In an agonizing prelude to what would happen years later, women and children cowered in the basement as a bulldozer rammed through the fence and a water cannon gushed through a window in an effort to flood them out. In the ensuing gun battle, a police officer named James Ramp was killed. Nine MOVE members would be convicted of Ramp’s murder, while Consuewella went to prison on assault and conspiracy charges. (All maintained their innocence and considered themselves political prisoners.) + +The violence so disturbed federal officials that the U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city of Philadelphia for creating a culture of police brutality that “shocked the conscience.” Much of the suit was later dismissed. + +Consuewella’s family took custody of 19-month-old Lobo, but none of the Dotsons knew where to find Tree and Netta, who were still in Virginia. Their mother didn’t seem to want them found. She “pretty much disowned us as her biological family,” Consuewella’s brother, Isaac Dotson, told me. “We didn’t really have a chance.” The sisters stayed in Virginia another 16 months. + +In January 1980, Richmond authorities, acting on reports of naked, hungry children, removed more than a dozen children from the Seed of Wisdom house and charged two MOVE women with child neglect. Tree, now 9, seemed more delayed than the others. Her medical exam showed possible microcephaly and juvenile osteoporosis, possibly from the strict raw-food diet, and she had trouble with her motor skills. An occupational therapist assessed Tree’s development as that of a 5-year-old but added that she was “quickly at ease and responsive to trying a variety of activities.” + +The Dotson girls spent several weeks in foster care, after which their MOVE caretakers regained temporary custody of all the children while they worked on their appeal. The women piled the kids into the back of a U-Haul and drove them back to Philadelphia against court orders, but the Virginia authorities didn’t pursue them. “I’m not sure there’s any further action we can take,” the assistant commonwealth’s attorney told a UPI reporter. + +Tree, Netta and four other children went to live in 6221 Osage Avenue, a row home owned by one of John Africa’s sisters in Cobbs Creek, a quiet middle-class neighborhood roughly three miles west of Powelton Village. Over the next few years, Tree grew into a shy, lanky preteen, with neat pigtails, dimpled cheeks and delicate eyebrows that gave her a gently surprised expression. She never went anywhere without Netta, who clung to her after the Richmond raid. As the oldest, Tree was expected to help care for all the children who came through the Osage headquarters. + +Mike Africa Jr. was very young when he knew Tree, but he recalled two things: She helped others without being asked, and all the children deferred to her, even feisty Melissa Orr, the third girl at Osage. Two years younger than Tree and physically much smaller, Melissa went by the MOVE name Delisha Africa and made up for her tiny stature with a giant sense of mischief. She was particularly good at sneaking the adults’ cooked food. “Tree ain’t flashy; Tree ain’t got to show you her teeth,” Mike told me, smiling, “but you better believe she got a powerful bite, and Delisha knew it.” + +The same hostilities that roiled Powelton Village worsened in Cobbs Creek. Neighbors were frightened by MOVE’s rifles and late-night loudspeaker tirades, which were filled with expletives and violent threats. Charles Golden, whose mother-in-law lived directly across from MOVE, saw a man chase his own mother out of 6221 with a two-by-four. Others reported the sound of a child they believed to be Tree screaming “at all hours during the night,” according to a police memo. The residents begged the city’s leaders for help throughout 1983 and 1984, but no one, including the new mayor, Wilson Goode, knew how to evict an armed group that refused to leave. + +Tree once tried to run away with a boy named Michael Ward, who went by the MOVE name Birdie. In a 1995 interview, Ward recalled her cutting off their dreadlocks so they wouldn’t be recognized as they made their escape. They didn’t get far before the “big people” caught and punished them. “They said it was a family, but a family isn’t something where you are forced to stay when you don’t want to,” Ward said. “And none of us wanted to stay, none of the kids.” + +Soon it was too late. On May 13, 1985, shortly after MOVE’s neighbors held a news conference asking Pennsylvania’s governor to step in, the Philadelphia Police Department laid siege to the MOVE compound. With no attempt at formal negotiations, more than 500 police officers tried — and failed — to force MOVE out with smoke grenades, pepper foggers, small explosives and more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition. Fire trucks with mobile water towers blasted the house. Four MOVE men fired at the police from the upper floors of 6221 while three women and six children — Tree, Netta, Delisha, Birdie and two other boys — hid in the concrete basement, where they dunked blankets in buckets of water to protect themselves from tear gas. + +Twelve hours later, Philadelphia authorities signed off on a shocking last resort. A police lieutenant in a helicopter dropped a satchel charge of C-4 and the mining explosive Tovex onto MOVE’s flat tar paper roof, which was cluttered with lumber and cans of gasoline. Police Commissioner Gregore Sambor then told the Fire Department to “let the fire burn” so that his officers could gain a tactical advantage when MOVE inevitably fled the building. Within an hour, the blaze had collapsed the roof of 6221 and was swallowing the adjacent houses. A crowd gathered at the barricades. “My God,” one of them said. “They killed the children.” + +Huddled together under a wet blanket, Tree and Birdie didn’t know the house was on fire until the basement filled with smoke. Birdie later recalled men running downstairs in a panic, only to find the exits either blocked or sealed. Tree’s great-uncle Conrad wrenched open a hatch into the rear alley, which was surrounded by police officers. A woman named Ramona clawed her way to safety, the flames blistering her arms. Wires sparked and windows exploded. She screamed into the dark, “The kids are coming out!” + +Only one of them did. From his bed in the children’s hospital that night, 13-year-old Birdie told the police that he thought Tree scrambled through the hatch in front of him and bolted down the alley toward Pine Street. It would be the first of many confusing turns in the story of what happened to her. When dawn broke the next morning, 11 people from MOVE were missing, and 11 bodies lay crushed under the rubble. Almost nothing was left but their bones. + +Image + +Credit...Norman Y. Lono/Philadelphia Daily News, via The Philadelphia Inquirer. + +## ‘Body B-1’ + +The ruins of Osage Avenue were still smoldering when investigators from Philadelphia’s Police and Fire Departments descended on them. Because human casualties were likely, the city’s medical examiner should have been on the scene immediately. But the chief of that office, Marvin Aronson, didn’t send anyone to the bombing site until late the day after the conflagration, when a human leg was spotted in the maw of a clamshell-bucket crane. By then, recovery workers had dragged construction equipment through the rubble, tearing bodies apart. Philadelphia’s health commissioner removed Aronson from the case, leaving an assistant medical examiner, Robert Segal, in charge of the city’s death inquiry. + +Segal and his colleagues were overworked and underpaid, but they were still responsible for autopsying and identifying the victims, establishing each person’s cause and manner of death and signing death certificates after a cataclysm that was drawing international attention. Until that process was complete, their office had legal control of the bodies and, if necessary, the right to keep samples for future testing — even after the cases were closed. + +None of MOVE’s adult members would speak to investigators, so Segal didn’t yet know who was in the house or how many victims he should account for. He needed someone trained in skeletal analysis to sort the commingled bones as soon as possible, but in 1985, there were only 34 board-certified forensic anthropologists in the entire United States. In the past, the medical examiner’s office had worked with a respected paleoanthropologist at Penn named Alan Mann. Mann wasn’t trained in evidence handling or chain of custody, but he had donated his time before, and his office at the Penn Museum was within walking distance. + +Mann arrived on Thursday, May 16, with two of his graduate students in tow. One of them, Michael Speirs, decided that day that forensics wasn’t for him. Headless torsos and dismembered limbs were scattered across metal gurneys labeled A through K. When I spoke to him, Speirs, who now teaches anatomy at Salus University, recalled the smell of burned flesh and the sight of a mutilated foot still in its sneaker. “The minute I saw the scope of the task, I realized that Alan was not the right person for this,” he said. “This was not his field of expertise.” + +The other graduate student was Mann’s teaching assistant, Janet Monge, then 32, who had recently been named the Penn Museum’s keeper of skeletal collections. “Alan was extremely reliant upon Janet for everything,” Speirs remembered. Wearing medical aprons and latex gloves, Mann took notes on the charred corpses while Monge shuttled bones among the various gurneys. By the end of the week, they appeared to have the bodies of 11 victims and a tray of unmatched smaller parts. + +One gurney contained only half a female pelvis and the top of a right thigh, which were held together by scraps of Size 30 Levi’s jeans. Recovery workers first assumed that these fragments belonged to the victim next to her, Body B. When the examiners discovered that B already had a pelvis, they labeled this person Body B-1. Based in part on the fusion of her cartilaginous growth plates, Mann wrote in his notes that day that she was probably 20 years old. But by then Michael Ward had given the police the names of everyone with him on the day of the bombing, and the women he named were much older than 20. Mann’s estimate for Body G (female, 6 or 7) also didn’t comport with any of the house’s occupants. Tree was almost 15 when she died; her sister, Netta, and her friend Delisha were each 12. + +Segal performed his initial autopsies, leaving the space for names on several death certificates blank. When progress stalled in June, he packed the B-1 bones into a satchel gym bag and took them to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, where an anthropology research assistant named Stephanie Damadio examined them. Damadio agreed with Mann — B-1’s growth plates appeared to be fused, which would mean she had stopped growing — but no other women had been reported missing, and Katricia Dotson was still unaccounted for. “This is clearly the most difficult and frustrating case I’ve ever worked on,” Segal told a reporter afterward. + +Segal theorized that Katricia might have escaped the house (just as Michael Ward had said) and died in an adjacent building that wasn’t fully excavated. That raised the possibility of as-yet-unnamed additional victims. But investigators turned up no other evidence to support that theory, and the pressure was growing for the city to provide answers. + +At the end of June, the newly formed Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission, or MOVE Commission, hired a trio of highly skilled specialists to identify the remaining victims: Ali Hameli, a former president of the National Association of Medical Examiners; Ellis Kerley, a founding member of the American Board of Forensic Anthropology; and Lowell Levine, a forensic odontologist and a former president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. The team had recently returned from Brazil, where they [positively identified the remains of the Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele](https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/criminal-hrsp/legacy/2011/02/04/10-01-92mengele-rpt.pdf) on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice. + +The experts arrived in Philadelphia to find a medical examiner’s office in disarray. “A lot of things were done incorrectly at the beginning,” Hameli told me. Four MOVE victims were already buried or cremated, and the other seven were covered in mold because the morgue’s refrigerator had malfunctioned. Hameli asked that these remaining bodies be transferred to a locked unit where only he could access them. “I got the impression that Philadelphia M.E.O. was very unhappy that the commission brought in outside experts to review their investigation,” Lowell Levine wrote in an email. + +Several families of the victims, including the Dotsons, joined forces to hire their own expert, the forensic pathologist Michael Baden, who performed autopsies alongside the commission’s team and offered his own independent analysis. Baden recalled a distinct lack of sympathy for the MOVE victims among the city workers. “There was a feeling there that they got what they deserved,” he told me. + +The commission’s consultants testified in a televised hearing on Nov. 5, 1985. Hameli, Kerley and Levine had determined that there were 11 victims. Body B-1 and Body G — the remains Mann couldn’t match to the known victims — were 14-year-old Katricia and her 12-year-old friend Delisha. In Kerley’s opinion, B-1’s growth plates were still fusing. Hameli noted something else: the appearance of a metal fragment consistent with .00 buckshot in Delisha’s elbow. Her remains were too damaged for him to determine if she had been shot. (Both the Philadelphia police and MOVE fired shotguns that day.) Michael Baden concurred with the group’s findings. + +Segal, who missed the fragment in his autopsy, had marked the children’s deaths as “accidents” because he reasoned that both MOVE and the Philadelphia police “horribly misjudged the other and let the situation get totally out of control.” Hameli recommended they be deemed homicides; the children died because the police dropped an explosive. While the commissioners agreed with him, neither they nor their out-of-state consultants could legally make that important call; that was up to the medical examiner. The Philadelphia Inquirer summed up Hameli’s testimony the next day: “Commission Pathologist Cites a Litany of Errors by City.” On Oct. 12 of this year, the Pennsylvania Department of Health amended the causes of death to “homicidal violence.” + +## ‘It Simply Cannot Be Katricia’ + +When they learned that their consultant, Michael Baden, supported Hameli’s identifications, the Dotson family scheduled a joint funeral for Katricia and Netta for Nov. 15. All that was left was for Segal to complete Katricia’s death certificate and release the sisters’ remains to the funeral home. + +The day before the sisters’ service, though, Segal allowed Mann to re-examine Bodies B-1 and G once again, and Mann once again told Segal that Ellis Kerley’s age estimates were wrong. + +Segal has remained largely silent about what motivated his continued investigation, but in his later final report, he indicated some sympathy toward the theory that there was an unknown additional victim, noting that “there is no guarantee that there were no other people in the house at the time of the fire, and there is evidence that Katricia left the house at the same time as Ramona and Birdie.” (Segal did not respond to my multiple attempts to reach him.) + +Whatever his personal views, the city’s medical examiner was now caught between his own consultants (Mann and Monge) and the commission’s experts (Hameli, Kerley and Levine), as the families waited to claim their loved ones. After the examination was complete, Segal wrote a post-mortem memo for his own files. In it, he seemed to be carving a path between the two teams. The MOVE families, he wrote, “have made it quite clear that they believe that the MOVE Commission’s identifications are valid and have indicated verbally that they are willing to accept the MOVE Commission’s pathologist’s conclusions. Under those circumstances, we will request a signed written statement to the above effect and release the remains under those conditions.” But he also added at the end of his memo, “Continuing investigation and evaluation of materials retained in these cases will of course be carried on.” + +The process of obtaining signatures from the parents, three of whom were still in prison, would take time. Consuewella Africa’s siblings arrived at church on Nov. 15 to learn that they would have to hold their nieces’ funeral without their remains; the family wanted the girls buried together, so Netta would have to stay at the morgue as long as Katricia did. The Dotsons’ attorney, Michael Fenasci, told a reporter that the medical examiner’s office was “stonewalling” his clients because it was “embarrassed by the commission’s findings.” + +On Nov. 18, Katricia’s father, Nathaniel Galloway, signed the form accepting the commission’s identification. But for the next month, Isaac Dotson said, his family was kept on “pins and needles” over whether Katricia’s remains would be released. The documents in Segal’s MOVE file show a dizzying back-and-forth of contradictory decisions. On Nov. 19, Segal wrote on Katricia’s death certificate, “Unknown Case B-1 (identified as) Katricia J. Dotson,” and he marked her death as an accident, then authorized her release. But at some point that day, Mann again raised concerns, this time in a call to a lawyer for the MOVE Commission. The next day, he spoke to a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer. “It simply cannot be Katricia,” Mann said. “I think they made a mistake, and they’ll kick themselves when they see it.” + +The examinations continued. On Nov. 25, Segal took the B-1 and G remains back to Stephanie Damadio at the Smithsonian, who examined them and once again concurred with Mann. Hameli and Kerley, the commission’s experts, returned to Philadelphia in early December to take another look at B-1 and G. “Dr. Hameli expressed extreme displeasure with the fact that Dr. Mann publicly challenged his findings,” Segal wrote afterward in another memo for his files. “He did not believe that Dr. Mann’s public presentations was a professional way of conducting himself.” They declined to revise their findings. On Dec. 6, Segal completed the other death certificate, identifying Body G as Delisha Africa. + +It was time to return the remains to the families. As he had indicated he might do in his Nov. 14 memo, though, Segal first put aside some of the remains for continuing investigation and evaluation — in fact, all of Katricia’s bones and at least a few of Delisha’s. The only items left for Katricia’s family were her jeans and what Segal described in his notes as “mold-covered soft tissue.” + +Delisha’s parents were still in prison, and her remains would go unclaimed for almost another year. But on Dec. 14, 1985, a funeral director signed for the Dotson sisters’ remains and drove them to Eden Cemetery, a historic African American graveyard in nearby Collingdale. Consuewella’s family braced themselves against the wind as two children’s coffins, pale blue for Katricia and pearl white for Netta, were lowered into the same unmarked plot. The Dotsons didn’t know that most of Katricia’s remains were somewhere else. + +Segal continued to get information from specialists about the B-1 and G bones. Two of the country’s foremost forensic anthropologists, Judy Suchey and Clyde Snow, submitted reports in January 1986; they came up with estimates similar to those of the commission’s experts. Having learned from the papers that the identification dispute wasn’t over, the commission told Segal that the ongoing debate was causing “needless emotional trauma to the families” of the bombing victims. The city’s Health Department announced the closure of the medical examiner’s MOVE investigation on Jan. 28, 1986. + +The examinations did not stop, though. On March 6, Segal mailed “skeletal material” from Bodies B-1 and G to Stephanie Damadio, the Smithsonian research assistant he previously consulted on the case. This would be the third time he asked her to examine the same bones. This time, Damadio and two of her colleagues returned estimates that were closer to the commission’s finding than Alan Mann’s. That brought the consensus up to six forensic specialists: Body B-1 was most consistent with Katricia, and Body G was most consistent with Delisha. + +In mid-March 1986, Segal issued his final report on the MOVE investigation. He found that a presumptive identification could be made for Body G as Delisha, but “in my opinion ‘B-1’ remains unidentified.” He didn’t change either girl’s death certificate or notify her family. As far as their relatives knew, Katricia and Delisha had been identified for months. + +The “skeletal material” stayed in Washington until fall. On Sept. 23, Segal scrawled on a legal pad, “Bones arrived by mail from the Smithsonian and will be turned over to Alan Mann for his evaluation under an attached receipt.” He didn’t list the box’s contents, which would later raise troubling questions about whether Delisha’s remains (Body G) were still in it. Janet Monge signed for “various bones for anthropologic examination” the same day and delivered them to Mann at the Penn Museum. + +Over the next two years, two grand juries declined to indict anyone for the deaths of 11 people and the razing of a vibrant Black neighborhood. There were apologies and resignations, lawsuits and settlements, but the only person who went to prison in connection with the MOVE bombing was Ramona Africa, the sole adult survivor (on riot and conspiracy charges). Mann, for his part, continued to speak out about the identification controversy. “The MOVE Commission report was considered gospel, and it’s not,” he told The Pennsylvania Gazette in 1988. “It’s wrong.” + +Image + +Credit...Hannah Price for The New York Times + +## ‘MOVE Jane Doe’ + +When the bones from MOVE arrived at Penn in September 1986, they joined the remnants of countless Black and brown bodies that had circulated through the university’s laboratories since before the American Revolution. The success of Penn’s medical school, which was the Colonies’ first, depended on students’ reliable access to dissection cadavers, which could then be procured legally only from prison executioners. Medical students in Philadelphia were known to have acquired or stolen cadavers from almshouses, potter’s fields and African American cemeteries as late as the 1880s. + +The Penn Museum was built on property that once adjoined the Blockley Almshouse, right between a potter’s field and Penn Medical School. Dedicated in 1899, what was first a repository for ancient artifacts grew to include a staggering collection of historical human remains — an estimated 250,000 bones from more than 12,000 people — unearthed during archaeological digs or collected by physicians, including the Morton skulls. The MOVE bones were never formally added to the museum’s collections (a process known as accessioning), so they were never cataloged or formally exhibited. Mann stored them in a cabinet in his museum office. + +“My involvement with the bone fragments ended by early to mid 1986,” Mann said in a statement to Penn’s investigators. “After then, I do not recall opening the Penn Museum cabinet that safeguarded the fragments or reviewing the fragments.” Mann left Penn for Princeton in 2001. His departure left Monge in control of nearly all the museum’s human remains, including those from the MOVE bombing, and for years to come, little was heard about them. + +In 2014, [Philadelphia Magazine named Monge the year’s best museum curator](https://www.phillymag.com/things-to-do/2014/07/30/best-of-philly-snapshot-janet-monge-best-museum-curator/) and sent a young reporter named Malcolm Burnley to profile her. By then, Monge had two roles, one as associate curator in charge, overseeing the museum’s physical anthropology section, and another as an adjunct associate professor in the school’s anthropology department. The university never hired her in a tenure-track teaching position, but Monge — a warm, attentive instructor who encouraged younger women in a highly combative, predominantly male discipline — was well liked by her students and popular with museum donors. Burnley wrote a glowing profile of Penn’s “renowned bone collector” and returned to the museum months later to give Monge issues of the magazine. It was then, he told me, that Monge approached him with a more disturbing tale. She said that the 1985 MOVE Commission had engaged in a cover-up, he said, and that she and Mann had been “fired” from the case because they wouldn’t go along with it. + +Monge also had an idea. With DNA testing more widely available, she could now determine the true identity of this Jane Doe. She showed the box of MOVE bones to Burnley, who saw the potential for an important investigative story. One challenge would be to confirm that these were not the bones of Katricia Dotson, but doing so would require obtaining a DNA sample from one of her relatives. Burnley found Consuewella Africa’s name in old news clips and learned that she moved back to West Philadelphia after being released from prison in 1994. Monge didn’t seem to know anything about her, Burnley recalled. Katricia’s mother now lived in a rowhouse on South 57th Street. She sometimes ventured out to MOVE-related events or to a local bingo hall, but most often she stayed at home. At Monge’s urging, Burnley says, he called Consuewella that winter. She hung up on him before he could fully explain that Katricia’s bones might be at Penn. The DNA test never happened, and Burnley eventually backed away from the project. + +Monge pressed on. She showed the B-1 bones to students who worked in her lab and discussed the case in lectures at Penn, Princeton and Rutgers University. She included a photo of Consuewella in her PowerPoint presentation. In the spring of 2015, the museum’s leaders attended an event for high-level donors where Monge showed the remains as part of a presentation on her work. + +In all this time, little or nothing was said about Body G, the bones of Delisha Africa. Paul Wolff Mitchell, one of Monge’s former students, first saw the MOVE remains in 2015. He found the box while decluttering a cabinet in Monge’s lab, where he had worked off and on since 2010. He says he opened the box and saw a pelvic fragment, a partial femur and a small, cupped bone a bit larger than a playing card, which he recognized as an occipital bone from the back of a skull. “Be careful with that,” he remembers Monge telling him. “Those are from MOVE.” Mitchell, who then knew little about the 1985 disaster, much less about the distinctions between Body B-1 and Body G, closed the box and put it back. But he would later recall the occipital bone when he learned that B-1’s skull was never recovered. + +Mitchell was so close to Monge back then that he considered her almost a surrogate mother. No one in his professional life had ever been as generous or as inspiring. Over the next few years, however, his enthusiasm for studying human bones dwindled as he noticed a culture of metastatic secrecy around the Penn Museum’s skeletal collections. His students began asking him about the origins of the Morton skulls, which were displayed in a general-use classroom, and the more he told them, the more he noticed their discomfort. “I started to get the deep sense that if the history were known, this would not be acceptable,” he says. + +Monge connected Mitchell to a research group called the Penn & Slavery Project, and he began sharing information with them about the Morton collection. In 2019, the researchers put out a report about the remains of enslaved people in the Penn Museum. When Mitchell later met with Monge to discuss digitizing Samuel Morton’s correspondence, the meeting ended in an unusually heated argument. Several months later, Monge locked Mitchell out of her lab. She would later say in a court filing that this argument was the source of his “revengeful false reporting.” + +As this was happening, one of Monge’s undergraduate advisees, Jane Weiss (the student who appeared in the Coursera video), was finishing her senior honors thesis on the “MOVE Jane Doe.” Weiss wrote in the 2019 paper that she examined the bones of two MOVE victims, Body B-1 and “unidentified Body G,” and included an X-ray of an occipital bone from G that was scanned at Penn in 2018. Paul Mitchell would later come to believe it was the same occipital he remembered seeing in the MOVE box. + +In 2021, Maya Kassutto and Abdul-Aliy Muhammad, the freelance writers who later broke the MOVE bones story, separately reached out to Mitchell and asked what he knew. He told them. He also met with the museum’s leaders and expressed his concern that there were remains from two individuals in the MOVE box. That April, though, the museum sent an internal email saying that Alan Mann had been asked to examine just “one set of human remains obtained from the MOVE compound.” + +The path of Delisha’s bones has been uncertain on every front. The remains that Segal had designated for the family were buried with the two boys from MOVE in an unmarked grave in Eden Cemetery in September 1986. A few days later, however, it emerged that morgue attendants at the medical examiner’s office had instead mistakenly given the funeral home unidentified bones and human remains from the MOVE bombing. The city’s acting chief medical examiner said the correct bones had been identified and were now in the correct grave. As for the samples that Segal held back, Monge and Mann have repeatedly stated that they never received remains from Body G. Jane Weiss didn’t respond to multiple interview requests for this article. When lawyers retained by Penn asked her about the occipital bone, she told them she was “confused” and “simply made an error.” But the X-ray of the occipital is still on a museum hard drive, as are images of a scapula and several cervical vertebrae labeled as being from MOVE. These items — occipital, scapula, vertebrae — are the same types of bones mentioned by both Ellis Kerley and Alan Mann in their 1985 reports about Body G, whom Ellis Kerley identified as 12-year-old Delisha Africa. + +Image + +Credit...Hannah Price for The New York Times + +## ‘People’s Kids’ + +When I spoke to Christopher Woods, the Penn Museum’s new director, a few weeks after the MOVE news had broken, he seemed exhausted. A well-regarded Sumerologist, Woods is the first person of color to lead the museum, and within days of stepping into the role on April 1, 2021, he was faced with not one but two public controversies. On April 12, the museum announced its plans to begin repatriating the entire Morton collection. On April 16, Woods learned about the MOVE bones. Then came the George Floyd verdict, the April 21 articles by Kassutto and Muhammad and all the scorn that followed. + +The fury directed at Monge unnerved her supporters. An assistant medical examiner sent these bones to Penn when Monge was a graduate student. Her mentor, Alan Mann, had accepted them. The museum’s former director Julian Siggers and its deputy director, Steve Tinney, knew the bones were there. “This is not the nuclear catastrophe that it’s being made out to be,” says Jane Kauer, a lecturer in Penn’s anthropology department. “What was the catastrophe was what was done to MOVE, and much of the mishandling afterward. It really doesn’t have to do with Alan and Janet.” + +“I’m trying to be as transparent as I can, giving all the information I can,” Woods told me at the time, “because everyone’s trying to do the right thing here, at least on this side of things.” Was there a second set of MOVE remains at Penn? “That’s one of the things we need to get to the bottom of,” he said. + +Months went by as a firm hired by the university, the Tucker Law Group, known widely as TLG, investigated. When the firm released its findings that August, Paul Mitchell felt blindsided. The report claimed that the controversy was his doing; that he “instigated” the first news stories about the bones to “bring disapprobation on the museum” and “to personally discredit Monge.” It pointed out that Mitchell and Kassutto once dated (they met while working at the museum and broke up in 2019) and outlined the fracturing of Mitchell’s friendship with his former mentor, who claimed that Mitchell was out to ruin her. + +Monge stated that she tried several times to return the remains to MOVE, but the city’s investigators were unable to confirm that. She said that her findings in the MOVE case were confirmed by seven other experts, but none of the five living people she named remember seeing the bones, according to the city’s investigators. Neither Monge nor her attorney responded to my requests to clarify. She and Alan Mann still maintain that B-1 was not 14-year-old Katricia Dotson. + +Mitchell doesn’t regret coming forward with what he knew; he wishes he had asked more critical questions about all the human remains he studied at Penn. There was a numbing aspect of working with historical skeletal collections that he got used to after a while. “I was not only complicit with it, I was enthusiastically complicit with it,” he says. He denied orchestrating the news coverage, as did Kassutto and Muhammad; email, phone and text records support that. “This is not a matter about personal animus between anthropologists,” Mitchell says. “This is fundamentally a matter about people’s kids.” + +Both TLG and Ballard Spahr, the firm hired by Princeton, concluded that Mann and Monge did not violate any laws or university policies, but their actions demonstrated “extremely poor judgment, and a gross insensitivity to the human dignity as well as the social and political implications” of their conduct, TLG wrote. Mann retained his emeritus status at both Penn and Princeton; Monge’s teaching contract at Penn was not renewed. Robert Segal, the former assistant medical examiner, didn’t answer any questions from investigators. + +Questions remained about the presence of Body G bones at Penn. TLG reported that it found “no credible evidence that the remains of a second child were ever housed at the museum.” A firm hired by the city, Montgomery, McCracken, Walker & Rhoads, pushed back on that, writing, “There is some evidence suggesting that Drs. Mann and Monge may have taken possession of at least some remains belonging to Body G,” and added that only a trained skeletal expert could answer that question. In a supplementary report, TLG then consulted Ann Ross, a board-certified forensic anthropologist in North Carolina, who concluded that the bones in the 2018 X-rays belonged to two different individuals, but neither matched images of Body G from 1985. + +I asked nine other board-certified forensic anthropologists to review the same images; all of them disagreed with Ross’s findings. Dennis Dirkmaat, chair of the department of applied forensic sciences at Mercyhurst University, noted that two items in the 2018 X-rays, the C1 vertebra and the scapula, appear to have specific features mentioned by Ellis Kerley in his 1985 analysis of Body G. Whether they belonged to Delisha or some other person, the location of the bones in the 2018 X-rays is still unknown. + +But if Ross is correct, and the X-rayed bones could not have been Delisha Africa’s, then to whom did they belong? Why did Jane Weiss label them as “unidentified Body G” from MOVE? Neither Weiss nor Monge “could provide a satisfactory explanation,” TLG wrote in a follow-up. Still, the firm reasserted its initial opinion: Delisha’s bones were never at the museum. + +Image + +Credit...Hannah Price for The New York Times + +In late April 2021, Consuewella Africa and Janet Africa, the mother of Delisha Africa, held a news conference in West Philadelphia with two other women who lost children in the MOVE bombing. The news of the MOVE bones had just broken, and they didn’t yet know whose remains Penn had, only that the bones came from Osage Avenue. The women wanted nothing from the university, they said; instead they asked for the release of one of their most well-known supporters, Mumia Abu Jamal, from prison. Delisha’s mother spoke first. “I never got to be a mother,” Janet Africa said quietly. “I never got to be a mother because of this system.” Delisha’s father, Delbert Orr Africa, died in 2020. + +The Penn Museum issued a public apology to MOVE ahead of the event. It meant little to Consuewella. “We will never get a chance to embrace our children, hug them and kiss them,” she said. “We will never have that feeling of love, to put them to our breast, because they’re not here” — her voice tightened — “because this government took them.” She fled the room in tears. + +At that moment, the box of MOVE remains was in Alan Mann’s basement in Princeton, N.J. The museum’s leaders had asked Monge to return it to Mann because the city wouldn’t take the bones back (the case was closed, and none of the original investigators still worked at the medical examiner’s office). When a West Philadelphia funeral home picked up the box from Mann later that week, there were only three bones inside, all from Body B-1: the pelvic bone, the femur and the pubic bone. Penn paid for a white infant coffin, and the funeral home kept the remains inside it until MOVE decided what to do. + +Consuewella never made that decision. Right before our first interview in May 2021, she contracted the coronavirus. She died in Penn’s hospital on June 16. Her last remaining child, Lionell Dotson, drove to Philadelphia in a haze the next day. No one has called him Lobo since 1978, when he was a 19-month-old baby who survived the siege in Powelton Village. Now he was 44, with a wife and four children in North Carolina, where he worked as a weapons mechanic in the U.S. Army until an injury forced him out. Weeks earlier, he learned that bones that most likely belonged to his half sister Katricia weren’t buried when they should have been. All he wanted was to get them back so that he could grieve for his mother and sister together. + +Lionell says that the Terry Funeral Home asked him to sign cremation paperwork for his mother’s body and for the contents of the infant coffin. When Lionell returned to pick up their ashes, however, he was told that all the remains had been returned to MOVE. Members of the group, who declined to be interviewed for this article, told WHYY that they buried everything in Bartram’s Garden, a West Philadelphia park, in early July 2021. (The Terry Funeral Home did not respond to requests for comment.) + +To many, this made sense. The story of the MOVE bones was a story about MOVE. After all that had been taken from them over the years, MOVE should decide how that story ended. But to Lionell, who was not in MOVE, this was a nightmare. The story of these bones was a story about his family. How, after a national scandal about the handling of human remains, did no one consult Katricia’s next of kin about how her remains should be handled? When he tried to contact the Penn Museum’s director, Christopher Woods, he was directed to the Tucker Law Group. He retained two attorneys and spent the next year finding out everything he could about the half sisters he never knew. He found me by way of the business card I left months earlier at Eden Cemetery. + +In mid-July, nearly a dozen [former MOVE members and supporters announced that they were cutting ties with the group](https://billypenn.com/2021/08/04/move-philadelphia-abusive-behavior-child-marriage-leaving-members/) after what they said were decades of abuse at the hands of MOVE’s leaders, who haven’t yet responded to the allegations. That strengthened Lionell’s resolve to have his sisters seen as individuals. Whenever he talked about them, he used their full names, Katricia and Zanetta, not their nicknames. He never used the last name Africa. Parts of their bodies were ground into the dust of Osage Avenue in 1985. He didn’t want their memories trapped there, too. “I have to set my sisters free,” he told me. + +Lionell was unprepared for an email he received in September 2021. It came from a lawyer the city had hired to investigate the mishandling of the MOVE bones. “The medical examiner’s office currently has some remains that were identified as Katricia and Zanetta Dotson back in 1985,” she wrote. “These items have been in the medical examiner’s office since that time.” + +The bewildering details soon began to emerge. In 2017, a staff member at the Philadelphia medical examiner’s office found a box of jumbled bone fragments and specimen jars from MOVE in the medical examiner’s personal effects room. They seemed to be medical samples. Because that case was closed, the city’s health commissioner, [Thomas Farley, ordered a supervisor to cremate the box’s contents as medical waste.](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/us/philadelphia-move-bombing-cremation.html) For unknown reasons, the supervisor did not, and the box stayed at the medical examiner’s until May 2021, when the controversy at the Penn Museum prompted Farley to tell the mayor about it. Farley promptly resigned. + +The supervisor’s failure to follow directions meant that Lionell would at last receive small pieces of his sisters to lay to rest. On a bright Wednesday morning this past August, he and his family arrived at the Philadelphia medical examiner’s office to gather them. One of the city’s medical examiners, Constance DiAngelo, offered them a personal apology. Then two small cream-colored boxes were driven across the city to the Ivy Hill Cemetery & Crematorium, where the cemetery’s staff unwrapped the remains from their white tissue paper and laid them out in the chapel before they were cremated. + +From Zanetta, there was a slim rope of dried muscle; from her sister, a sliver of muscle and part of a mandible. On the box next to the bone was a neatly printed name. She was no longer a number; she was Katricia Dotson. Lionell dropped to his knees and cried. + +If Katricia had survived the bombing, she would be 52 today. Zanetta would have just turned 50. Who would they have been if they had been able to make their own choices? “They tried to get out,” Lionell once told me, “but nobody wanted to hear their story.” Now, after almost 40 years, Katricia Dotson rejoined the sister she never would have left and the brother she never got to know. Their story was his story now. Lionell hugged the plastic bags of ashes. “I got y’all,” he said. + +--- + +Bronwen Dickey is a writer in North Carolina and the author of “Pit Bull: The Battle Over an American Icon.” She teaches journalism at Duke University. + +  +  + +--- +`$= dv.el('center', 'Source: ' + dv.current().Link + ', ' + dv.current().Date.toLocaleString("fr-FR"))` \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/00.03 News/The mysterious reappearance of China’s missing mega-influencer.md b/00.03 News/The mysterious reappearance of China’s missing mega-influencer.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..6b4a93dc --- /dev/null +++ b/00.03 News/The mysterious reappearance of China’s missing mega-influencer.md @@ -0,0 +1,227 @@ +--- + +Tag: ["Society", "🌐", "🇨🇳"] +Date: 2022-10-24 +DocType: "WebClipping" +Hierarchy: +TimeStamp: 2022-10-24 +Link: https://restofworld.org/2022/the-return-of-austin-li/ +location: +CollapseMetaTable: true + +--- + +Parent:: [[@News|News]] +Read:: No + +--- + +  + +```button +name Save +type command +action Save current file +id Save +``` +^button-ThemysteriousreappearanceofChinainfluencerNSave + +  + +# The mysterious reappearance of China’s missing mega-influencer + +Everything reminds Little Tiger of Austin Li. All of her daily necessities — dress, toothpaste, detergent, umbrella — were purchased at the recommendation of the Chinese e-commerce influencer. She even thought of Li during her latest period: she had bought her sanitary pads from one of his livestreams, too. + +Until this June, Little Tiger, a 28-year-old school teacher in the eastern province of Anhui (she requested to use a pseudonym over privacy concerns), had watched Li’s livestreams almost every evening for three years. Often, she’d watch him while lying on her couch at the end of an exhausting day. The livestreams, which took place on the shopping platform Taobao, typically lasted hours at a time, during which Li made one sales pitch after another, selling discounted food, cosmetics, and homeware to his fans, whom he addressed as “all the girls.” + +“You must, must, must, must, *must* try this,” Li, known as Li Jiaqi in Chinese, said about a bottled milk tea in an April show, before taking a sip.  + +“Look at my skin, isn’t it like I’ve put on a soft focus filter?” he crooned as he applied a foundation on his face in a May livestream. “Believe in Jiaqi. Go for it … 3, 2, 1. Only 10,000 items. Go for it!”  + +Whenever Li told a joke, Little Tiger typed “HAHAHA” in the comment section. When something she wanted was sold out before she had a chance to buy it, which happened often, she joined the chorus of viewers demanding more of the product. + +> “He is making money from us, but we are happy with it.” + +For those outside China, it’s difficult to overstate Li’s level of fame and ubiquity in the country. With some 150 million followers across numerous platforms, he was the country’s most powerful salesman, hawking millions of dollars’ worth of products every night. His life story has been adapted into multiple documentaries; a reality TV series called *All the Girls’ Offer* shows how he bargains with global brands like LVMH and Shiseido on behalf of consumers; even his five bichon frisés — the oldest of whom is named Never — have their own brand, Never’s Family. A popular GPS app in China offers a navigation service [featuring his voice](https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1AJ411C79o). “All the girls, navigation starts now,” Li sings at the beginning of your journey. “This way, this way, this way!” + +![](https://149346090.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/GettyImages-1315136316-40x27.jpg) + +VCG/Getty Images + +For years, Li’s online critics [decried](https://www.huxiu.com/article/389254.html) him as a consumerist cult leader who indoctrinated people into spending more and more with his boisterous, toxic, dystopian sales talk. But, to his fans, Li was more than a salesperson offering exclusive discounts — he was a companion. “He is making money from us, but we are happy with it,” Little Tiger told *Rest of World*. “He is like a friend I’ve never met.”  + +Then, on June 3, Austin Li disappeared. During his regular livestream, at about 9 p.m., Li began presenting a segment featuring a Viennetta ice cream cake, [known](https://www.foodandwine.com/news/viennetta-ice-cream-dessert-returns-good-humor) for its contrasting layers of ice cream and chocolate. Li’s assistant held up the cake, which had been decorated with biscuit wheels and a wafer-roll — it appeared to be shaped like a military tank. Almost immediately, the livestream cut out.  + +The ice cream cake touched a deep political taboo in China. Li’s livestream had aired ahead of June 4, the anniversary of the Chinese government’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square. On that day in 1989, the Chinese military sent tanks to central Beijing and opened fire, killing at least hundreds of civilians. Outside China, the image of a lone man confronting a line of tanks became synonymous with government repression. But, within the country, the government has downplayed and suppressed discussion of the incident ever since.  + +That evening, when Little Tiger tuned in to Li’s channel like she always did, she was surprised to find the show had ended prematurely. “I felt so sad that he just vanished into thin air,” Little Tiger said. “If I had known he would be gone that day, I would have bought more.”  + +Immediately after the cutoff, Li posted to social media platform Weibo that his team was fixing a “technical glitch.” Two hours later, he said that the show would not resume that night. Then, he went quiet. + +Fans like Little Tiger, who were used to near-daily activity from Li’s accounts, waited for weeks, then months. Rumors of his return sporadically cropped up on Weibo, only to be censored. Li was nowhere to be seen. Businesses he worked with turned to other livestreamers to hawk their wares. Many assumed he’d been silenced for good. + +Li’s disappearance highlighted the risk that comes with popularity and influence in China. Livestreamers like Li are big business in the country. Since 2016, livestreaming e-commerce has grown from a novel experiment to a $100 billion industry, led by influencers uniquely talented at keeping their fans buying more: more underwear, more treadmills, more durians, and, in the case of the “livestreaming queen” Viya, even more cars and apartments.  + +But, no matter how much they sell, livestreamers’ enduring success hinges on absolute compliance with the Chinese Communist Party’s rules on ideology and morality. Just like the country’s [movie stars](https://www.wsj.com/articles/zhao-wei-china-biggest-movie-star-erased-from-internet-11631713293) and even [billionaire tycoons](https://www.wsj.com/articles/jack-mas-costliest-business-lesson-china-has-only-one-leader-11629473637), their position in the public eye is precarious, their future depending on unpredictable decisions made by the government.  + +Li was just the latest celebrity silenced online for his transgressions. His abrupt disappearance upended the daily shopping of millions of Chinese consumers, and underscored the fragility of fame in China.  + +Until one day in September when, as suddenly as he left, Li came back. + +![](https://149346090.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/800-40x24.jpeg) + +--- + +**For fans, Li’s** genesis has become a well-known story: Born to a middle-class family in Hunan province in 1992, he is part of a generation whose entrepreneurship stories often start on social media. After studying dance in the eastern city of Nanchang, Li found work at a Maybelline beauty counter in a shopping center. [Thanks to his looks and talent](https://www.pingwest.com/a/197232), he soon became a top salesperson. + +In 2016, Li participated in a contest organized by Maybelline’s parent company, L’Oréal, and Alibaba-backed influencer agency MeiOne, aimed at identifying salespeople to participate in a new form of online shopping that was just taking off: livestreaming. Alibaba’s shopping site, Taobao, had launched its livestreaming service earlier that year. Li was a stand-out contestant. He started hosting daily live shopping shows that could last as long as [six hours](https://youtu.be/sOGj5yFzHBo?t=517), gathering viewers and fans along the way. He promoted a wide range of cosmetics, but traffic peaked when he sold lipstick.  + +“A man selling cosmetics is a topic in itself,” Li explained in a 2020 [interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrjFgyZihME). “It’s easiest to impress consumers with lipstick. Many girls have lipsticks as their first pieces of cosmetics.” + +Trying out lipstick became a key part of Li’s online persona. Sitting in front of a wall of lipsticks, he would lean forward to showcase his newly adorned lips, and describe the products with exaggerated metaphors. “This is where people would say ‘there are little elves dancing on them,’” he [said](https://youtu.be/KueuUjRWVOE?t=81) in a 2019 livestream, after putting on a YSL lip gloss. “There is the starry sky and starlight in it.”  + +Li became known as the “lipstick king” and the “iron lipstick bro.” He once tried 380 different lipsticks in a single show, and was able to sell 15,000 sticks in five minutes. In a 2018 stunt with Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, Li sold 1,000 sticks while Ma only sold 10. Lipstick sellers online labeled their products “recommended by Li Jiaqi” to boost sales. + +![](https://149346090.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/AP_18315093339281-40x27.jpg) + +Imaginechina/AP Images + +A man wearing lipstick was both novel and revolutionary in China at the time: It challenged gender norms and honed Li’s image as an intimate “gay friend” for Chinese women, according to observers. “In that sense, he really was very ballsy,” Chris Tan, an independent academic who has studied gender representations in China’s livestreaming industry, told *Rest of World*. “He had the courage to actually break the gender stereotypes and he did it and he became famous for it.” + +The image also came with risk. In an effort to promote traditional ideas of masculinity in society, Chinese censors have [banned male influencers](https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1008389/chinas-ongoing-struggle-against-sissy-young-men) deemed too effeminate. Li appeared to have found a delicate balance: Although he tested cosmetics, his outfits never went far beyond plain-colored suits or T-shirts; he did not advocate for diverse gender representations. “Li Jiaqi actually walked a very, very tight fine line between portraying himself as a gaymi \[gay friend\] who is sensitive to women’s needs, but is straight,” Tan said. “It’s a very difficult role to play.”  + +Li’s fame grew in lockstep with the boom in livestream shopping that was transforming Chinese retail. From 2017 to 2019, the value of goods sold on Taobao Live grew 150% each year. Short-video apps Kuaishou and Douyin also rolled out livestreaming shopping services. In 2020, as prolonged Covid-19 lockdowns brought more shoppers online, livestreaming apps became virtual shopping malls, wet markets, grocery stores, and more. By the middle of 2021, the number of livestream shoppers in China crossed 638 million people. That year, the livestreaming market was valued at $327 billion.  + +> “He had the courage to actually break the gender stereotypes and he did it and he became famous for it.” + +At the top of this booming industry were two people: Viya, the livestreaming queen known for selling household goods, and lipstick king Li, loved by well-off young urbanites. Li’s wares had quickly expanded to include not only makeup and skincare products but also instant noodles, smartphones, and toilet seats. Li and Viya became models for an entirely new class of sales-related celebrity in China, known in the e-commerce industry by the shorthand “KOLs” — key opinion leaders. E-commerce marketing agency Azoya, which previously worked with Li, reported survey results from September 2021 that found the sales of the top two KOLs — Viya and Li — dwarfed the next 28 influencers combined.  + +Li wasn’t just good — he was magnetic. His sales tactics were evocative. On livestreams, Li created vivid scenarios for everything he sold: This perfume could make you smell like Elsa from *Frozen*. That dress would look good at picnics. This tea set would make just the perfect gift for in-laws. + +![](https://149346090.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Austin-Li-before-9-40x87.png) + +A Chinese journalist who interviewed Li in 2019 and 2020 described him as an expressive, charming man and a born storyteller — she remembered Li keeping guests at a private dinner party hooked on the details of his skydiving experience. “The way he talked was so sincere, exactly the same as how he acted on live,” she told *Rest of World*. She requested anonymity because she was not allowed to discuss her reporting for a previous employer. “It felt like he was always thinking for your sake.” After meeting him in person, the journalist also started purchasing from Li’s livestreams regularly.  + +For retailers, getting a slot in Li’s show — even just a few minutes long — was the fastest way to success. French businessman Laurent Cibot told *Rest of World* that when he took charge of the Chinese operations of skincare firm Inderma in 2019, he needed Li’s blessing to raise the brand’s profile. To secure a slot in Li’s show, Cibot, along with other vendors, waited for hours at Li’s office building in downtown Shanghai. The first few visits only got him as far as Li’s managers, but eventually, Cibot met the man himself.  + +Cibot remembers Li as a friendly and smart businessman. Li was so invested in his listings that he would test the products himself and give suggestions to the manufacturers, Cibot said. But that care came with a cost.  + +Besides asking for a flat “slot fee” of about 200,000 yuan ($28,500), Li’s team demanded heavy discounts of as much as 40% on featured products, according to Cibot. Li’s team also asked for about 30% of the revenue from livestream sales as commission. “It was very hard, because they wanted cheaper than cheap,” said Cibot, who also collaborated with other top livestreamers like Viya, and fashion and beauty influencer Cherie. “These top KOLs, they got everything they wanted in terms of margin and pricing.”  + +But fans say that Li offered an invaluable service by sparing them the trouble of choosing between an ocean of products online. Yan Wenwen, a 20-year-old kindergarten teacher in the central province of Henan, told *Rest of World* she had shopped almost exclusively from Li after she began watching his livestreams. “He has some kind of magic that makes you want to watch his live every day,” Yan said, “because the products he picks were always better than what we found ourselves.” + +That trust fed a self-reinforcing cycle: Li and other top livestreamers used their loyal followings to obtain deeper discounts, and those discounts strengthened their popularity. The top influencers commanded the buying power of millions of shoppers. Shuyi Han, who analyzes e-commerce trends at China-based market research firm Daxue Consulting, told *Rest of World* that the KOLs’ influence could even make brands uncomfortable: Shoppers weren’t loyal fans of the brands, they were fans of the influencers.  + +From 2020 to 2021, Cibot managed to get Inderma products featured on Li’s show about four times a year. Cibot says that the revenues from products sold during a minutes-long slot usually exceeded $1 million, and that Li and other livestreamers accounted for half of the company’s sales in China. + +![](https://149346090.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/GettyImages-1248796582-40x27.jpg) + +Chen Zhongqiu/VCG/Getty Images + +--- + +**As the top** livestreamers became bigger and bigger celebrities, they began to attract more political attention. Since 2020, the Chinese government has conducted [a series of crackdowns](https://www.reuters.com/world/china/education-bitcoin-chinas-season-regulatory-crackdown-2021-07-27/) on private businesses, attempting to curtail the influence of the country’s giant tech companies and billionaire tycoons like Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma. The once-freewheeling livestreaming industry suddenly also faced scrutiny.  + +Towards the end of 2021, the government [fined several top livestreamers](https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3160579/how-chinas-punishment-viya-has-far-reaching-consequences-live) for tax evasion — the same accusation previously levied against several pop stars who then disappeared from the internet. Viya, Li’s chief rival, was blocked from all social and e-commerce platforms after regulators slapped her with a $210 million fine. Cherie, another top livestreamer who was fined $10.2 million, disappeared as well.  + +Pop stars and influencers have also been targeted for perceived moral or political breaches, such as vulgarities, sexual misconduct, or reasons that are not [publicized](https://www.wsj.com/articles/zhao-wei-china-biggest-movie-star-erased-from-internet-11631713293).  + +Against the political backdrop, Li repeatedly showcased his loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party: He [promoted agricultural products](https://www.bjnews.com.cn/detail/159939524615509.html) for free to support the party’s poverty alleviation program; his team [blocked](https://export.shobserver.com/toutiao/html/265969.html) certain snacks from appearing on the show because their packaging read “made in Taiwan” rather than “made in Taiwan, China.” In March 2021, when Chinese consumers boycotted Western brands for distancing themselves from products made in the Xinjiang region over human rights allegations relating to the treatment of Uyghurs, Li [devoted airtime](https://www.sohu.com/a/458251012_161795) to cotton, dates, and milk from the area. + +### China’s missing celebrities + +### Li Yifeng + +The actor, who played Chairman Mao in a 2021 film, was removed from Chinese social media after he was arrested and accused of soliciting prostitutes in [September](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-62874773) 2022. + +### Deng Lun + +The star of popular romances had his accounts deleted from social media in China after he was fined $16.7 million for tax evasion in [March](https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/china-personalities/article/3170685/chinese-heartthrob-deng-luns-career-limbo) 2022. + +### Huang Wei + +Better known as Viya, the [most-followed](https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/06/10/1053598/austin-li-jiaqi-china-biggest-online-influencers-fell/) livestreamer on Taobao was removed from Chinese platforms after being fined $210 million for tax evasion in [December](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fined-210-million-livestreaming-star-090613203.html) 2021. + +### Zhao Wei + +In [August](https://www.wsj.com/articles/zhao-wei-china-biggest-movie-star-erased-from-internet-11631713293) 2021, works by the award-winning pop star, actor and director were removed from streaming sites in China, and her Weibo fan page deleted for unknown reasons. + +### Zheng Shuang + +After a 2021 scandal over allegedly abandoning the children she had by surrogacy, and a $46 million [fine](https://www.straitstimes.com/life/entertainment/actress-zheng-shuang-fined-62m-for-tax-evasion-vicki-zhaos-name-removed-from-tv) for tax evasion, the TV star’s social media accounts disappeared. + +### Zhang Zhehan + +The TV star was banned from social media after photos surfaced in 2021 of him at Yasukuni Shrine, which commemorates Japanese war dead, including war criminals. + +### Kris Wu + +The pop star vanished from social media after being accused of sexual assault in 2021, which he publicly [denied](https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210719-chinese-popstar-kris-wu-denies-sexual-assault-allegation). Formally charged with rape, he was tried this past June. + +### Fan Bingbing + +Formerly China’s highest-paid actor, the star took a [hiatus](https://variety.com/2018/film/news/fan-bingbing-rumor-acting-ban-tax-evasion-scandal-1202902939/) from acting after being ordered to settle $129 million in taxes in [2018](https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/entertainment/fan-bingbing-billed-177m-for-tax-evasion). She still posts on Weibo, however. + +Out of an apparent effort to distance himself from excessive consumption, he also [told state media](http://news.cyol.com/app/2021-02/13/content_18951232.htm) that he had toned down his signature tagline “buy it” to emphasize “rational shopping.” But these efforts did not save Li from the fallout after the ice cream cake episode, which could have been perceived as a reference to the most sensitive date on the party’s political calendar. For some, the tank-shaped cake served as an acute reminder of a bloody history that the party has worked hard to try to make people forget.  + +It’s unclear whether or not Li consciously made a reference to the Tiananmen Square crackdown when he displayed the tank-shaped cake on his show, or whether he was even aware of the event and its anniversary. Censorship watchers have speculated that the transgression may have been accidental, possibly arising due to Li and his young staff’s unfamiliarity with the country’s sensitive history — a byproduct of living in a heavily censored society.  + +Observers started calling this idea “the Austin Li paradox.” They suggest that the event underscores how aware influencers need to be of the ever-shifting list of banned topics and historical controversies in order to avoid making the same mistake. “The paradox is that the censorship apparatus wants people to forget about June 4,” Eric Liu, a former Weibo censor and currently a U.S.-based researcher with *China Digital Times*, told *Rest of World*. “But if people don’t know about it, they would keep stepping onto these sensitivities.”  + +Neither Li’s agency, MeiOne, nor Taobao’s parent company, Alibaba, responded to requests for comment for this piece. + +Some of Li’s younger fans, including Little Tiger, were puzzled by his disappearance. Many of them were unaware of the Tiananmen history — a taboo topic banned from books, TV, and the internet in China. For them, it was not obvious why the ice cream cake could cause offense. As curious fans searched for an answer, some wrote on social media that they had learned about the history [for the first time](https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-influencers-ice-cream-pitch-inadvertently-introduces-fans-to-tiananmen-square-massacre-11654442707). Some had asked older family members for information, or circumvented the Great Firewall in an effort to find out what had happened to Li. Others said their accounts or chat groups were shut down after they shared their findings online. “I didn’t usually like to gossip,” said Little Tiger, who learned about the censorship from veiled writing on Weibo. “But this thing prevented him from coming back, and affected my own shopping.” + +> “I didn’t usually like to gossip, but this thing prevented him from coming back, and affected my own shopping.”  + +In the wake of the cake snafu, Beijing’s critics quickly turned the lipstick king into a meme — a personification of China’s crackdown on free speech. Some made [satirical cartoons](https://twitter.com/remonwangxt/status/1534975183563407361?s=20&t=3E37rbqUiX-Hag37l-LXTA) showing Li as a pro-democracy protester. Others [joked](https://twitter.com/RiverKogami/status/1533296881878671360) that the Tiananmen history would be the last product Li would sell on his channel. + +After Li’s stream was cut, the livestreamer went silent on all platforms. In Li’s fan forum on Weibo, devastated followers posted thousands of messages appealing for his return. Many wrote that they were barely shopping online anymore because of his absence. Yan, the fan in Henan, said she missed Li so much that he had appeared in her dreams. + +Smaller players tried to step into Li’s shoes. Former English-language teachers, who lost their jobs thanks to a [July 2021](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-24/china-bans-school-curriculum-tutoring-firms-from-going-public) crackdown on [for-profit tutoring](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-larger-meaning-of-chinas-crackdown-on-school-tutoring), started [peddling groceries](https://www.wsj.com/articles/targeted-by-beijing-one-chinese-tutoring-company-reinvents-itself-with-live-streams-selling-groceries-11657704780) on Douyin, TikTok’s sister app in China. [Singers and soap opera stars](https://restofworld.org/2022/china-aging-celebrity-streamers/) capitalized on their past fame to sell detergent, sneakers, and toilet paper. Some [younger livestreamers](https://www.douyin.com/user/MS4wLjABAAAAgGyF-zkfjxZmlWN8Adit3kYh7TyfgYPkb1n8RLD1AlQfCOTJJELdY3OSR_BTtfkg) took pages from Li’s playbook: Male beauty influencers emerged, trying to win the trust of female consumers. But none of the smaller influencers commanded the scale of buying power that Li did. + +Many of Little Tiger’s friends moved on to other livestreamers, but she refused out of a sense of loyalty. “To be honest, I don’t have much hope left \[about his return\],” she told *Rest of World* in September. But, she said, she wanted to wait just a bit longer. “If he comes back, he will definitely be selling a lot of stuff. I will be saving money, ready for some binge-shopping.” She had made a long wish list: a vacuum cleaner, toothpaste, detergent, tissues, pajamas, and a couch and bed frame for her new apartment. + +![](https://149346090.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/GettyImages-1237406648-40x27.jpg) + +Xing Yun/Costfoto/Future Publishing/Getty Images + +--- + +**When *Rest of World*** spoke to researchers in August, they were doubtful that Li would return to livestreaming, since regulators would want to avoid the risk of renewed discussions on Tiananmen. But analysts say it was precisely the scale of Li’s public stature and the deeply taboo nature of his mistake that may have saved him from public condemnation and made a comeback possible: The hole he left at the top of the e-commerce industry was too big to ignore, and the mystery of his disappearance drew more attention to Tiananmen, not less.  + +Throughout his absence, rumblings of Li’s impending return made rounds among fans every few days, sparking a cycle of excitement and then disappointment when he consistently failed to reappear. Then, on September 20, the rumor mill reached fever pitch. Well-connected internet users shared a last-minute notice from Li’s suppliers about his comeback. At about 7 p.m., as if nothing had happened, Li reappeared on his livestreaming channel. He hadn’t advertised the show on Weibo in advance or shared a preview of the products being sold, like he had previously done. But word got out quickly, and, soon, the channel had millions of viewers. + +> “I wanted to buy everything to support him, but I couldn’t beat the others to it.” + +Wearing makeup and a black sweater vest, Li made his pitches as if he had never left. “When you wear this, it feels as if you were stepping into a cloud,” he said, as a co-host brought forward sneakers in different colors. “270 yuan for a pair. Good deal, right?” He promoted trash bags, socks, and drain cleaners — almost all of the items sold out within seconds. More than 60 million viewers had tuned in. He made no reference to the fact that he’d been missing for more than three months.  + +Exhilarated fans flooded the stream with comments like “AHHHHHHH” and “I missed you.” “He is back!!!!” Little Tiger messaged *Rest of World*. She said she cried out of happiness, and purchased disinfectant and drain cleaner from his livestream. “I wanted to buy everything to support him, but I couldn’t beat the others to it,” she said. She noticed Li’s eyes welling up at the end of the night. + +Li’s reappearance was just as mysterious as his disappearance. Speculation over the reason for his return ranged from Li’s strong relationship with authorities to the government’s urgent need to [boost](https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-speed-up-fund-injections-start-projects-soon-possible-2022-09-19/) consumer demand in an economy hit by strict [Covid-19 restrictions](https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/10/economy/china-golden-week-spending-plunge-covid-intl-hnk-mic/index.html). Fang Kecheng, a communications professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told *Rest of World* he suspected the government may have been concerned that Li’s disappearance was leading to job losses in his supply chain, and hurting morale in the broader e-commerce industry. Fang said authorities might have also decided that instead of hiding him from fans, bringing Li back would be a better way to stop the online chatter about Tiananmen.  + +That strategy seems to be working. Amid the celebrations on social media surrounding Li’s return, only a few voices continue to speculate about the reason for his disappearance. Fans often summarize these conversations as “zz,” meaning simply “politics.” Others stay silent about his absence, perhaps out of self-censorship, a desire to protect Li, or genuine indifference.  + +Bin Xu, a sociology professor with Emory University who has studied collective memory in China, told *Rest of World* that, for Li’s young fans who have grown up under extreme censorship, the ability to keep shopping and the well-being of their idol are more pressing concerns than reckoning with China’s violent past. “I don’t think Li’s fans saw the relevance of an anti-corruption, pro-democracy movement 30-something years ago, even if they began to know \[about\] it when Li was banned,” Xu said. + +But the mistake that almost wiped Li from the internet at the pinnacle of his career will linger in the mind of regulators, e-commerce platforms, and Li himself, researchers say. A little more than two weeks after the tank cake, China’s broadcasting regulator [ordered](https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3182767/china-bans-over-30-live-streaming-behaviours-demands-qualifications) platforms to watch livestreamers more closely for any misbehavior. Another new [draft regulation](https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3193960/chinese-regulator-pushes-broadcast-delay-all-online-concerts-and), released in September, is set to require a broadcast delay for all livestreamed entertainment shows, so problematic content can be identified and taken down before it reaches viewers. Weibo blocked hashtags related to Li’s return. “The innocent time will never come back,” said Liu, the censorship analyst.  + +![](https://149346090.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Austin-Li-after-lipstick2-40x87.png) + +For brands, the incident may have accelerated a shift in marketing strategy. “I think the biggest takeaway is to not put all the eggs in one basket,” York Lee, a Beijing-based digital marketing specialist, told *Rest of World*. Following Li’s incident, e-commerce platforms and influencer agencies will focus on building brands that don’t depend so much on the day-to-day performances of individual livestreamers, Lee said. Five of Viya’s former assistants, for example, have formed their own livestreaming team.  + +Li’s unexplained hiatus underlines the influence of politics and ideology over any business in China, no matter how successful it is. “Li’s return to Taobao not only speaks to the volatility of Chinese cultural policy, but more importantly, the vulnerability of cultural entrepreneurship in China,” Sheng Zou, a Hong Kong Baptist University professor who studies Chinese media and politics, told *Rest of World*. “However web-traffic-oriented livestreaming businesses may be, their survival and growth hinge heavily on their alignment with the official ideology and compatible political and moral values.”  + +In the future, Zou said, Li will need to be extremely cautious about not making any more mistakes and work extra hard to propagate the state’s “core values.” Li made his first Weibo post since the tank cake incident on October 1, China’s National Day. “I wish the motherland prosperity and strength,” it read, with a link to a state television poster that said, “I love you, China!” Fans have also noticed Li adopting a toned-down style in his relaunched live channel, presenting in a softer voice against modest backdrops. He has even redyed his brown hair back to black — considered a more conservative style in China.  + +But one thing that Li is still able to do is sell things. In the [hundreds of fan groups](https://restofworld.org/2022/china-wechat-private-traffic/) run by his company on WeChat, employees have broken their three-month silence and are back to publishing daily product previews. Global brands like Tom Ford, Jo Malone, and Maybelline are coming back. “It’s like a telenovela,” said Cibot, who shared news about Li’s surprise comeback with his LinkedIn followers. + +If anything, the tank cake drama introduced Li to a wider audience abroad. Now a global agent for Barrio Perfume, Cibot said he would still be open to working with Li in the future: “The guy is coming back. People are behind their screens. They are buying. He has actually never been so famous.”  + +On the third night of his return, Li put on lipstick again for his millions of viewers. As the camera zoomed into his face, Li, holding a pocket makeup mirror, skillfully applied a light layer of a red shade, Guerlain 214, spreading it evenly with a fingertip. “It’s the feeling of having a crush,” he said, leaning forward to showcase his lips. “When you go out for a walk, get afternoon tea with your girlfriends, or go to work, a light layer would do.” He tried five different colors in a row. After the stream, fans complained — although Li had 60,000 sticks of various lipsticks on offer, they couldn’t get to them fast enough. He’d already sold out. + +  +  + +--- +`$= dv.el('center', 'Source: ' + dv.current().Link + ', ' + dv.current().Date.toLocaleString("fr-FR"))` \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/00.03 News/What Happened to Maya.md b/00.03 News/What Happened to Maya.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0651837e --- /dev/null +++ b/00.03 News/What Happened to Maya.md @@ -0,0 +1,185 @@ +--- + +Tag: ["Society", "🚫", "👶🏻"] +Date: 2022-10-24 +DocType: "WebClipping" +Hierarchy: +TimeStamp: 2022-10-24 +Link: https://www.thecut.com/2022/10/child-abuse-munchausen-syndrome-by-proxy.html +location: +CollapseMetaTable: true + +--- + +Parent:: [[@News|News]] +Read:: No + +--- + +  + +```button +name Save +type command +action Save current file +id Save +``` +^button-WhatHappenedtoMayaNSave + +  + +# What Happened to Maya + +## When a 10-year-old girl complained of mysterious pain, a doctor suspected child abuse. How far would she go to prove it? + +Maya Kowalski. Photo: Mikaela Martin + +![](https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/a20/f89/2a5dc6c38e6b0e518323e4b9e41e74fb21-MayaK-high1.rvertical.w570.jpg) + +Maya Kowalski. Photo: Mikaela Martin + +This article was featured in [One Great Story](http://nymag.com/tags/one-great-story/), *New York*’s reading recommendation newsletter. [Sign up here](https://nymag.com/promo/sign-up-for-one-great-story.html?itm_source=csitepromo&itm_medium=articlelink&itm_campaign=ogs_tertiary_zone) to get it nightly. + +One Saturday afternoon in the fall of 2016, Dr. Sally Smith received a call from the pediatric emergency room at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida. Smith was the medical director of the child-protection team for Pinellas County, and she grabbed a piece of paper to take notes. *Maya Kowalski*, she wrote. The name belonged to a 10-year-old girl who had just been admitted for abdominal pain. + +Smith listened as a doctor detailed the case. The girl’s parents, Beata and Jack Kowalski, had told the hospital that Maya suffered from a neurological disorder called complex regional pain syndrome, or CRPS. They said that she was acutely sensitive to stimuli of all kinds and that disabling pain radiated through her legs and feet, requiring the use of a wheelchair. Maya spent 24 hours in the intensive-care unit at All Children’s, screaming and writhing. When a nurse attempted to conduct an ultrasound, her mother insisted that the only way Maya could tolerate the contact was if she received an infusion of ketamine. + +The nurse, concerned by the demand for such a powerful drug, asked a social worker named Debra Hansen to meet with the Kowalskis. “They were very distressed,” Hansen later recalled. “There was a lot going on, and Maya was” — she widened her eyes at the memory — “captivating. Maya was also thrashing about.” Hansen agreed that it was strange for Beata to demand pain medication before allowing a routine test. A parent being uncooperative or failing to heed a medical professional’s suggestions is considered a red flag for neglect, and Hansen filed a formal notice with the state. + +By the next morning, Florida’s Department of Children and Families had discarded her report for lack of evidence. But some at the hospital remained concerned about Maya’s case, and a pediatric ICU physician named Beatriz Teppa Sanchez placed the Saturday-afternoon phone call to Smith, seeking her expert opinion. Smith is a doctor with more than 30 years of experience in child-abuse pediatrics. Virtually everyone at All Children’s — maybe even most medical providers in Pinellas County — regarded her as the doyenne of the field. She had spent so much time at the hospital that physicians knew to call her at the first indication of abuse or neglect, and they nearly always deferred to her judgment. + +Teppa Sanchez told Smith several disquieting things about Beata Kowalski. She described Kowalski as pushy and said that she had asked for her daughter to be given 1,500 milligrams of ketamine, which seemed like a huge dose. Maya appeared to shake, squirm, and cry out in pain less often when her mother was out of the room. Smith was particularly concerned to learn that Maya was already receiving regular ketamine infusions and agreed with Teppa Sanchez that it seemed unorthodox as a way of treating CRPS in a child. After hanging up, Smith logged on to an internal All Children’s portal and began to read through Maya’s medical records. The next day, a social worker filed a second report with the state. This time, the suspicion was no longer parental neglect but rather overtreatment. Beata Kowalski “is believed to have mental issues,” the report said. “It was stated that Maya is not in pain. Mom insists that Maya is in pain.” DCF accepted the second report and formally asked Smith to investigate. She was, of course, already on the case. + +Smith discovered that Maya’s parents had once taken her to Hospital San José Tecnologico in Monterrey, Mexico, for a five-day procedure that required her to be sedated and intubated to receive high-dose infusions of ketamine. “I got medical records on that child, going back to when she was a toddler, that were from probably 30 different medical providers,” Smith told me. To her, the activity looked like doctor shopping, and it deepened her suspicion that there was another explanation for Maya’s strange pain. Smith began to develop a theory: that she was a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, an exotic condition made famous by movies and TV shows like *The Act*, *The Sixth Sense,* and *Sharp Objects*, in which a parent deliberately makes a child ill in order to reap sympathy and gratitude. + +As Smith investigated, Beata and Jack Kowalski grew restless. On Monday, October 10, two days after Smith had been called, they told an attending physician that they wanted Maya discharged. Hospital staff wanted Smith to complete her evaluation first, and they told the Kowalskis that leaving the hospital would be AMA — against medical advice. If the parents attempted to take Maya home, they said, they would be arrested. + +Smith knew the data: In four out of five instances of child abuse, the culprits are the child’s own parents. “Mom’s boyfriend is actually ten times less likely to be the perpetrator than Mom,” she said once in a lecture at All Children’s, where she regularly educated the staff. Smith had the power to recommend that the state separate abusive parents from their children — a decision of the gravest consequence. Make the wrong call, and a family might be broken up needlessly. Ignore a warning sign, and a child might end up dead. + +Smith, who retired this summer, tended to interpret cases aggressively. Children in Pinellas are removed from their homes at one of the highest rates of Florida’s 67 counties, and Smith said this is because the child-protection team she directed does “a more thorough, higher-quality job.” For one of her lectures, she prepared a slideshow of several dozen photographs of child-abuse victims admitted to All Children’s. Wearing a leopard-print top, with her dark hair pulled back and a grave expression on her face, she narrated a grisly tableau of burns and deep red gashes; lacerations caused by hangers, ropes, and hairbrushes; severe bruise patterns that indicate knuckles, belt buckles, and Hot Wheels tracks — all of it on little body parts. + +Early on Thursday, October 13, 2016, Smith filed a report chronicling Maya’s extensive medical history. Her formal diagnosis was Munchausen syndrome by proxy. The state quickly issued what is known as a shelter order, directing that Maya be kept in the hospital and forbidding her parents from seeing her. When a nurse entered Maya’s room to inform the family, Beata had already left for work and Jack was on the floor, cleaning up feces, because Maya was no longer in control of her bowels. “You have to leave now,” the nurse said, looking squarely at Jack. “Your daughter is in state custody.” As he walked out, Maya sat up in bed, calling out for her father. + +The Kowalski family. Photo: Mikaela Martin + +Beata Kowalski could pinpoint when it all started: the Fourth of July weekend, 2015. Maya and her younger brother, Kyle, were playing with sparklers near their home in Venice, Florida, when she had a severe asthma attack. Beata took Maya to Sarasota Memorial Hospital, where she began to complain of a burning sensation in her legs and feet. Within weeks, she could barely walk. Her feet turned inward, she developed lesions, and her legs could no longer support her body. At night, Beata could hear Maya’s cries from her bedroom on the other side of the house. She worked as a home-care nurse and had seen many kinds of suffering, but Maya’s symptoms were like nothing she had ever encountered. + +The pain baffled everyone. The Kowalskis took Maya to All Children’s, but the staff was unable to come up with a diagnosis. Doctors at yet another hospital, Tampa General, thought that Maya’s muscle weakness could be explained by an oral steroid she’d been prescribed for her asthma. Then one of Beata’s patients, whose child suffered from an acute pain condition, recommended that they consult a local anesthesiologist named Anthony Kirkpatrick, who ran a center in Tampa that studied CRPS. + +CRPS is a real but poorly understood disorder. It typically begins after an injury or impact to a limb, causing chronic pain, sensitivity, stiffness, and muscle atrophy that can last for years. CRPS ranks No. 1 on the McGill Pain Index, a commonly accepted measure of physical suffering, and it is sometimes called [“the suicide disease”](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3942549/) for its lack of viable treatments. Kirkpatrick diagnosed Maya with the disease and told her parents about a novel treatment that could bring her some relief: ketamine infusions. + +At the time, the substance was probably best known to the general public as a club drug, one that dramatically alters sensory perception. But ketamine is widely used in emergency rooms as an FDA-approved anesthetic, among other applications. Kirkpatrick told the Kowalskis that CRPS patients typically have elevated levels of the amino acid glutamate and that ketamine inhibits its effects on the nervous system. “The way he explained it, it’s like rebooting a computer,” Jack told me, “and trying to stop the brain from giving false signals of pain to the extremities.” Beata agreed they should try the treatment, but only after spending days researching it. + +That was characteristic. Beata could be intense, even exhausting. (Maya describes her as “powerful.”) At 43, she was short and blonde with a thick Polish accent and dark-brown eyes that peeked out from rectangular black frames. Jack, who was 57 and a retired deputy fire chief, was more passive. He usually let Beata take the lead on matters involving the kids. + +Over the next year, the Kowalskis took Maya for ketamine infusions every three to four weeks. Kirkpatrick charged $10,000 per four-day session, which was not covered by health insurance. Beata worked extra shifts and the Kowalskis sold a rental property to cover the cost, and eventually they shifted Maya’s treatment to a second specialist, Dr. Ashraf Hanna of the Florida Spine Institute, whose rates were lower. Maya still required a wheelchair, but the ketamine led to “huge progress,” Jack says. Maya’s feet straightened, the lesions healed, and there were periods when her distress seemed manageable. + +On October 6, 2016, Beata drove Maya the hour from Venice to Hanna’s clinic in St. Petersburg for an appointment. Jack relieved her that evening, and in the middle of the night, Maya woke up complaining of severe abdominal pain. Jack took Maya to All Children’s. Beata rejoined them after getting off work, and soon she was arguing with a nurse about ultrasounds and ketamine. + +Beata, an immigrant from Poland, knew how she came across to the doctors. English was not her first language, and she found it difficult to take the edge off her high-strung inquiries. Still, when Sally Smith started asking questions about Maya’s case history, Beata hoped that she might be sympathetic. She told Smith and others at the hospital how hard things had been on the family — how for three nights before Jack brought Maya to All Children’s, Maya was sleeping for only moments at a time. Light, noise, even showers had become distressing, the droplets of water making her feel like her skin was on fire. Beata told Smith about wheeling Maya out of church because even the pealing of bells had become unbearable. They were willing to do anything to treat Maya’s condition. To the Kowalskis, ketamine wasn’t alarming. What was alarming was their daughter’s pain. + +Smith found the stories unconvincing. In her report to DCF, she wrote that Beata “veered off regarding herself getting ‘no sleep for weeks’ and the struggles of ‘working to maintain insurance.’” On October 11, Kirkpatrick’s office received a request for Maya’s medical records, and he asked to speak to the person conducting the investigation. When Smith called him back, she told him that she believed Maya was a victim of child abuse. The doctor reminded Smith that he had been the one to first diagnose Maya with CRPS; he’d also recommended the procedure in Mexico. + +That evening, Kirkpatrick sent a memo to a colleague. “I cautioned Dr. Smith about accusing a family member of criminal conduct as she moves forward with her investigation,” he wrote, noting that doing so “could result in needless and permanent harm to the child and family.” Separately, Hanna advised Smith that Munchausen by proxy was a common misdiagnosis in CRPS cases. (According to the Cleveland Clinic, there are “no reliable statistics” on the disorder, but one estimate is that 0.04 percent of child abuse cases reported annually are “related” to it.) The doctors’ warnings were not included in Smith’s report to the state, which urged that Maya be protected from her parents. + +One method of supporting a Munchausen-by-proxy diagnosis is a separation test: Remove the child from the offending parent and see if her health dramatically improves. But as weeks went by with Maya isolated, she continued to report extreme pain. Smith, still not buying the CRPS story, began to wonder if something besides Munchausen by proxy could explain what was happening. She instructed doctors to secretly videotape Maya and asked nurses to try to catch the girl moving her legs. “I just went to see Maya,” one hospital employee texted Smith. “I watched her use her feet to push herself several feet in her wheelchair … She was distracted and I’m not even sure she realized she did it bc i didn’t call attention to it.” Smith replied, “Fortunately at 10 years old she can’t perform the charade effectively 24/7. And doesn’t even know if she’s making ‘physiological’ mistakes. I’m coming to take some pictures of her ‘affected’ legs.” + +By December, a hospital pediatrician had changed Maya’s diagnosis from Munchausen by proxy to factitious disorder. It meant that Smith and the doctors no longer suspected that her parents were causing her illness. It was an accusation that Maya was making everything up. + +Smith has acknowledged that she sees abuse and subterfuge when others don’t. “The reason I end up determining that children have been abused when others aren’t sure about it is because I just keep asking more and more and more and more questions,” she said once in a lecture at All Children’s. In another talk, she added, “The primary problem with child abuse is that the person who has abused the child is full-on lying, and we have to remember that what we’re being told is the history is a bunch of baloney and it’s our job to figure that out.” Smith said that in court she has often “come under attack, with people saying I’m a zealot,” but she believes these accusations are unfair. She said she can’t recall a single time that her fellow experts at the state or national level have disagreed with one of her assessments. + +At All Children’s, Smith wore an ID badge bearing the hospital’s logo and, during the pandemic, sometimes sported a white lab coat. Families often assumed that she was a doctor on staff and that what they told her was protected by doctor-patient confidentiality. In reality, she didn’t work for All Children’s, and her primary employer was not the state. Florida privatized its child-welfare system in 2004, and the work in Pinellas County is outsourced to a company called Suncoast Center Inc. Smith was one of its 117 employees. Suncoast and similar entities across the state are funded by more than $3 billion of public money, yet there is little oversight of how effective they are in stopping child abuse — or of how often they allege wrongdoing where none exists. In Pinellas County, children are almost two and a half times more likely to be removed from their families than the state average. + +Smith operated within a system that has been designed on multiple levels to aggressively identify child abuse. Florida law mandates that all citizens are “mandatory reporters”: Anyone who suspects a child is being harmed must notify the authorities, and failing to do so can lead to a third-degree felony conviction. The state also requires that nearly all suspected cases be evaluated by a child-abuse pediatrician — a subspecialty that was codified in 2009. (Smith was one of just 275 doctors nationwide to be certified in the field that year by the American Board of Pediatrics.) Trained to look for abuse and neglect, they found it. From 2009 to 2018, there have been 55 percent more child-abuse reports filed by medical professionals, according to an [analysis by The Marshall Project](https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/08/20/two-families-two-fates-when-the-misdiagnosis-is-child-abuse). + +The biggest change to the system came in 2014. That year, the Miami *Herald* investigated a DCF policy known as “family preservation,” which prioritized keeping troubled families together as a way of reducing the number of children entering foster care. The newspaper found that under this policy, over a six-year period, 477 children died after the state was alerted to signs of mistreatment. In response, the government enacted a major overhaul of Florida’s child-welfare protocols, explicitly placing emphasis on child safety above the interest of parents. When the Kowalskis took Maya to All Children’s two years later, they had no idea they were about to become nearly powerless. + +Even when All Children’s accepted Smith’s finding that Maya was faking her condition — going so far as to say that the strange bumps and lesions that continued to appear on her arms, legs, and forehead were self-inflicted — it did not alter her custody status, and she remained separated from her parents. That was lucrative for the hospital. In the months that Maya was forced to remain there, All Children’s billed her insurer more than $650,000 for her treatments, including 174 entries for CRPS, the malady Maya supposedly didn’t have. + +The state’s shelter order was revised to allow Jack some visitation rights and permit Beata to contact Maya by phone and video. But by December, hospital staff were imposing additional restrictions at their own discretion. Maya’s social worker, Cathi Bedy, declined several of Beata’s FaceTime calls, which went from daily to once a week. Several aunts and uncles offered to supervise Jack’s appearances, but they were all rejected by All Children’s for appearing to be “emotionally vested in the family,” as administrators later said. Two teachers who had been making the drive from Venice to St. Petersburg to tutor Maya were barred, and she stopped receiving educational instruction. Even the family priest was denied access to her floor. + +The Kowalskis hired a lawyer to represent them in family-dependency court, and at a custody hearing that month, the judge, Lee Haworth, seemed somewhat skeptical about Maya’s handling. “If the hospital is prohibiting contact without solid medical reasons between the family and the child, that’s a serious issue,” he said. Beata offered to move out of the family home if it meant Maya could return. Yet in child-abuse cases in Florida, judges almost always side with medical professionals over families. Armed with reports from Smith, hospital attorneys argued that sending Maya home could expose her to harm, and Haworth issued a series of continuances that kept her confined to All Children’s. She was not allowed to visit with her mother for Christmas. + +A week later, in January 2017, just before Maya was to travel from the hospital to another hearing, Bedy and a nurse entered her room and told her to take her clothes off. The hospital’s risk-management department wanted photos of her taken before the proceeding. Maya refused to cooperate, even when Bedy told her that if she didn’t, she wouldn’t be allowed to go to the courthouse and see her mother. Bedy began to forcibly remove her pants and shirt; Maya wrote an account of it that was later included in a legal filing. “I was crying and saying, ‘No, stop,’” Maya wrote. “But she wouldn’t stop. Bedy pinned me face down and either she or the nurse took photos of me in my training bra and shorts.” (The Kowalskis later learned that Bedy had been fired from a previous position managing foster-care children for Suncoast when she was arrested and charged with child abuse. Four fellow Suncoast employees called the police after they watched Bedy pin a 10-year-old boy to the ground with her knees and cover his face with a blanket as he cried out that he couldn’t breathe. In a deposition, Bedy denied using her knees on the child. She declined to comment for this article.) + +Afterward, Maya got dressed and met her uncle outside the hospital. With the exception of afternoon walks on hospital grounds escorted by Bedy, it was the first time in months that she had been outside a fluorescent-lit hospital room. She had spent Halloween, Christmas, New Year’s, and her 11th birthday in the hospital. She wanted to go back to school; she wanted to play *Mario Kart* with her brother and watch figure skating with her mom. At the courthouse, Maya waited in a holding room while the family attorney told the judge that Maya had two requests: to speak to him and to hug her mother. + +“No, not today,” Haworth said. + +“Is there any way that even just momentarily she can just see her mom, just to hug her mother and —” + +“No,” Haworth said. “I’m afraid not. From what I’ve heard from the doctors, the status is uncertain at the moment, so we’ll have to do without that today.” + +Beata and Jack Kowalski returned to Venice. Beata was listless and could not stop crying. Jack worried about how much weight she’d shed, how pale she looked. At their house, Beata picked up her car keys and told Jack she was going to CVS. She didn’t return until after midnight. When she finally stumbled in, Jack was startled: It was the first time in 13 years of marriage he had ever seen his wife drunk. + +The next day, the family had plans to attend a birthday celebration in the neighborhood, but Beata said she had a terrible headache. Later, when Jack returned from the party, their son Kyle’s bedroom door was closed. Jack figured Beata was asleep inside, as had become her custom on most nights. “It was like her security blanket,” Jack says. “You know, that’s all she had — Kyle.” Jack and Kyle watched TV until the boy fell asleep on the couch. + +The next morning, Jack bolted out of bed when he heard a scream. A relative visiting the house was yelling from the garage. Kyle was fast behind, but Jack held his son back and told him to wait in the other room. Inside the garage, Beata was hanging motionless from the ceiling. “I’m sorry,” her suicide note read, “but I no longer can take the pain being away from Maya and being treated like a criminal. I cannot watch my daughter suffer in pain and keep getting worse while my hands are tied by the state of FL and the judge!” + +The Kowalskis are far from the only family whose lives became a nightmare after facing an accusation of child abuse from Sally Smith. In October 2015, Vivianna Graham, a 36-year-old elementary-school teacher in Pinellas County, had just started some yard work when her husband, Jeremy, yelled for her to call 911: Their 4-month-old son was having a seizure. Paramedics arrived and said the baby seemed stable, but the Grahams insisted on going to the emergency room at All Children’s, where a CT scan revealed two brain bleeds. Someone at the hospital, likely a social worker, called in Smith. + +When Smith entered the room, Vivianna assumed she was another All Children’s physician, and they spoke for ten minutes. In her recollection, Vivianna mentioned that Jeremy had been able to remain calm when EMTs were first examining the baby, and Smith grew suspicious. She asked why Jeremy had not been frantic, and Vivianna explained that Jeremy was a paramedic himself and was accustomed to emergencies. Smith decided that Jeremy was an abuser. Although the baby had no bruises anywhere on his body, Smith concluded that he had been “slammed on a soft surface” and that the head trauma was “inflicted.” Two days after she sent her evaluation to DCF, Jeremy was charged with aggravated child abuse, a felony punishable by up to 30 years in prison. (Smith disputes Vivianna’s account.) + +Vivianna hired an attorney and had the baby assessed by a neurologist and a radiologist, who noticed that his brain bleeds continued to originate even though his father was nowhere around. Such hemorrhages are not unusual and can be spontaneous, they told Vivianna, especially in very large-headed babies like her own. It took eight months for Jeremy to be cleared of wrongdoing and permitted to move back into the family home. By then, their baby, Tristan, was a year old and learning to walk. Vivianna moderates a Facebook group that connects caretakers wrongly accused of abuse, and its members now total nearly 1,000. She says that in the last six years, at least 19 families in Pinellas County have told her about their experiences with Smith, alleging that she falsely accused them of child abuse. + +Recently, one of Smith’s cases collapsed publicly. In early 2021, Syesha Mercado, who finished in third place on season seven of *American Idol*, took her baby to All Children’s seeking help for feeding issues. Smith deemed the malnutrition the result of neglect, and the boy was removed from Mercado’s custody. That August, police stopped Mercado’s SUV and removed her newborn daughter after a family-court judge issued a pickup order for the infant to receive a hospital checkup. (Mercado said she had paperwork proving she had taken her daughter for a checkup the day before.) A video of the incident drew 3.5 million views on Instagram, and Kim Kardashian encouraged [her 70 million Twitter followers](https://twitter.com/KimKardashian/status/1426669962735677442?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1426669962735677442%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.blackenterprise.com%2Fkim-kardashian-weighs-in-as-american-idol-alum-seeks-help-in-regaining-custody-of-her-children%2F) to share the “absolutely heartbreaking” story. Mercado retained a team of attorneys including Ben Crump, who has represented the families of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Jacob Blake. By October, both of Mercado’s children had been returned to her. + +There are at least 12 documented cases in which Smith identified abuse only for the children to be returned to their parents, charges dropped, or DCF to reverse its separation order. There’s no way to know how many other families might have been incorrectly accused but lacked the resources to fight it. Smith has been named in at least four decisions by Florida’s Second District Court of Appeals; in one, the court found that “there was no medical evidence of child abuse, only … Smith’s speculation and personal character opinions.” + +Smith estimated that she has evaluated 3,000 cases in her career. “So 12 cases,” she told me, “is a pretty small percentage.” We spoke several times, though never in person. She would address some aspects of the Kowalski case but not others. She was guarded and answered in carefully constructed paragraphs, a manner that I recognized from videos of her legal depositions. Always, she maintained an unshakable conviction that she has never erred. “My job is not to make mistakes,” she said. “To my knowledge, I don’t have any cases where I’ve made an incorrect conclusion.” + +Smith said that in some of her reversed cases, child abuse had in fact occurred; it was only that other authorities couldn’t conclusively determine who was responsible. She added, “We have children that come to see us that have less serious injuries, where a recommendation is made for a child to be removed for their safety. And the next day, the judge declines that request. Just because they determine they’re not going to proceed with criminal charges doesn’t mean that there wasn’t child abuse or that I quote-unquote made a mistake.” + +Her refusal to second-guess herself seemed to invite its own kind of diagnosis. One reading is that it is psychologically necessary, given the gruesome nature of what she’s seen — the gashes, the burns. To imagine misreading a case in either direction, as a false negative or a false positive, could just be too painful. Smith functioned in a world where children’s suffering is common and conditions as outré as Munchausen are real. She told me about another such case from years ago. “I actually got a letter from that child as an adult,” she said, “thanking me for trying my best to help him and talking about what egregious abuse he had suffered.” + +The closest I saw Smith come to betraying doubt was in the Graham case, and that is perhaps because she has been forced to watch Tristan grow up. Every year at Christmas, the family sends Smith a card with a new family photo and a note from Vivianna: “This is what you tried to destroy.” Eventually, Smith sent one in return. + +> *Dear Mr. and Mrs. Graham,* +> +> *I received your card again this year and just wanted to say I’m sorry you’re still so angry about my part in the investigation regarding your son. As you both know from your work, there are definitely a disturbing number of abused and neglected children in Pinellas County. I understand you feel very strongly that your son wasn’t one of them. I try very hard to be thorough and “get it right,” but perhaps I need to be more careful to consider gray areas. You mentioned in your note that Tristan was found to have another diagnosis and if you have a chance, I would very much like to hear what that was so I can consider it appropriately next time. You could contact me at the Child Protection Team office on this envelope.*  +> +> *I wish you peace in 2018 and many wonderful years of enjoyment of your adorable son.*  +> +> *Sincerely,*  +> +> *Sally Smith* + +I asked Smith in our interviews whether her career had taken an emotional toll, and she didn’t get into specifics. Later, though, in response to questions from a fact-checker about her decision to retire in July, she began to elaborate. “I saw dozens of children who were literally beaten to death,” she wrote. “I saw hundreds of babies and children who were killed or maimed by Abusive Head Trauma. I saw hundreds more babies and children who had multiple broken bones from abuse including young infants with more than 20 fractures in different stages of healing. I saw numerous children with ruptured intestines and internal organs from abusive abdominal trauma, some of whom died.” Other factors leading to her retirement, she added, included biased news coverage and threats by phone and social media to kill her and burn down her home. + +“I am not a horrible person whose goal in life is to disrupt families,” Smith continued. “I have spent my adult life attempting to serve children in my community to ameliorate conditions of abuse and neglect. I wish our society did more to help struggling families to provide safe, nurturing homes to their children. I’m not a big proponent of punitive approaches for such families contrary to media portrayals about me.” And she said, about her subspecialty, “I wish that people who seek to vilify child abuse pediatricians would somehow find the critical knowledge, tools and framework to better understand and represent the tremendous challenges these children and their families and caretakers present for our society and for physicians.“ + +At All Children’s, Maya was taken to a small, private room, where she found her father, her brother, and their priest. Jack told Maya that her mother had died. They cried together, and after an hour, Jack was told he had to leave. + +Laura Vose, a doctor at the hospital, texted her colleague Beatriz Teppa Sanchez. “Ketamine girl’s mom committed suicide yesterday. Sorry to say my prediction was correct.” She appears to have meant that Beata was mentally ill. + +“Omg,” Teppa Sanchez wrote back. “This is terrible … I know we did the right thing. But this is really fucked up. I feel bad.” + +“Don’t know all the details but I think the courts and psychiatrists finally called it what it was,” Vose typed.  “I had another mother do this same thing.” + +In a separate exchange, Smith texted a co-worker: “Craziest case ever!!!” + +Contrary to the hospital’s suspicions, Beata had never been diagnosed with a mental illness, and prior to the DCF investigation, Jack says, she’d never suffered from depression. She had even undergone a court-ordered evaluation by a licensed psychologist who found “no evidence that would support the conclusion that Beata has falsified her daughter’s medical condition for any psychological purpose” and who concluded that “factitious disorder by proxy may safely be ruled out.” The psychologist did note that Beata may have been suffering from an “adjustment disorder” resulting from Maya’s illness and removal from their home. (Another report, written by Teppa Sanchez, observed: “Mother states that she is extremely tired and is very stressed and at times feels like she ‘wants to die.’”) + +At the Kowalskis’ next family court hearing, All Children’s attorneys continued to argue that Maya needed to be kept away from her family and transferred to long-term inpatient medical foster care. The Kowalskis’ attorney handed Judge Haworth a letter Beata had addressed to him before taking her life. “Your heart is made out of iceberg!” it began, in her imperfect English. “ACH, DCF have destroyed my daughter physically and mentally … My daughter will never be who she was before October 13, 2016.” Haworth read the note, folded it, and put it away. He ruled that Jack could take Maya to Rhode Island to be evaluated by Pradeep Chopra, a professor at Brown University’s medical school who studies CRPS. Later, after Chopra wrote that Maya’s symptoms and response to treatments were consistent with CRPS, and that the diagnoses of Munchausen by proxy and factitious disorder were “incorrect,” Haworth remanded Maya back to Jack’s custody. + +When Maya left All Children’s Hospital in January 2017, she weighed less than she did when she was admitted — a dark verdict on the separation test meant to detect Munchausen by proxy. She was so weak that it was difficult for her to sit up on her own, and Jack remembers having to put stuffed animals in the back seat of the car to support her body. At home, he says, Maya cried nonstop. Jack took her to physical therapy, installed solar panels to heat their pool for aquatherapy, and bought her a teacup Yorkie puppy. CRPS abates over time in most patients. A year and a half later, as Jack watched, astonished, Maya stood up out of her wheelchair, picked up her crutches, and slowly made her way across the room. After 12 more months of swimming, yoga, and exercise, Maya took her first unassisted steps in four years. “I bawled,” Jack said. + +Maya is now 16. Mature and well spoken, with wide brown eyes and blonde hair that falls just below her shoulders, she is as academically ambitious as ever, taking part in Duke University’s Talent Identification Program for gifted children. She manages her pain with a daily regimen of intensive exercise. “I still have pain, but it’s not as severe as it once was,” she says, “and I’m forever grateful for that.” In March, competing in her first figure-skating tournament in five years, she took first place. + +Much of what happened to the Kowalskis at All Children’s should not have occurred. It was not true that the parents could have been legally arrested if they had taken Maya home on her second day at the hospital. “Against medical advice” discharges are legal and occur every day in the United States; a 2007 [study](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24101542/) shows that one to 2 percent of all hospital admissions result in one. Also, Smith’s decision to access Maya’s confidential medical records through the All Children’s portal on October 8, 2016, appears to have violated the privacy law known as HIPAA, according to Blaise Wabo, a health-care-compliance expert at a cybersecurity audit firm. Only treating physicians are allowed to access patient records unless a parent gives written consent for another party to do so. Smith was never one of Maya’s treating doctors, and on the day she opened her confidential records, there was no active DCF investigation. HIPAA violations are punishable by significant fines and up to ten years in prison. When I asked All Children’s about how child-abuse pediatricians like Smith are able to access patient records, the hospital did not answer. (Smith disputed that any HIPAA violation occurred.) + +The Kowalskis sued All Children’s, DCF, Suncoast, Smith, and Bedy in October 2018, and a judge determined that there was sufficient evidence for punitive damages to be awarded for the charges of battery and false imprisonment. Early this year, Smith and Suncoast settled their portion of the lawsuit for $2.5 million. (I obtained the agreement through a public-records request.) The case against All Children’s and Bedy continues. In March, on the eve of jury selection, a judge delayed the trial indefinitely, but Jack says he is intent on deterring the hospital from needlessly separating children from their families. + +“Psychologically, it destroyed all of us,” Jack says. “When somebody knocks on our door, now you don’t want to answer it because you’re worried it’s somebody from Children and Families. You don’t want your child to play sports because if they get hurt, where am I going to take them?” For a long time, none of the Kowalskis would enter the garage. + +In his firefighting days, Jack saw his share of child abuse. Once, he had his suspicions and reported a family. The case was thrown out. A week later, the parents barricaded their child in a bedroom, blocking the door with dressers, then set the room on fire. “So I believe that there should be a system,” Jack says. “I just think it’s got to be done a different way.” + +*This article was reported with the support of the Florida Center for Government Accountability.* + +What Happened to Maya + +  +  + +--- +`$= dv.el('center', 'Source: ' + dv.current().Link + ', ' + dv.current().Date.toLocaleString("fr-FR"))` \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/01.02 Home/@Shopping list.md b/01.02 Home/@Shopping list.md index c45a76ac..cfa7e533 100644 --- a/01.02 Home/@Shopping list.md +++ b/01.02 Home/@Shopping list.md @@ -75,7 +75,7 @@ hide task count - [x] ☕ Coffee ✅ 2022-03-01 - [x] 🍶 Coke 0 ✅ 2022-03-14 - [x] 🧃 Apfelschorle ✅ 2022-05-07 -- [ ] 🍊 Morning juice +- [x] 🍊 Morning juice ✅ 2022-10-24 - [x] 🍺 Beer ✅ 2022-02-06 - [x] 🍷 Wine ✅ 2022-08-05 @@ -98,7 +98,7 @@ hide task count #### Breakfast -- [ ] 🥯 Bread +- [x] 🥯 Bread ✅ 2022-10-24 - [x] 🍯 Honey/Jam ✅ 2022-03-31 - [x] 🍫 Nutella ✅ 2022-02-15 - [x] 🥚 Eggs ✅ 2022-09-18 @@ -107,9 +107,9 @@ hide task count #### Fresh -- [ ] 🍐 Fruit +- [x] 🍐 Fruit ✅ 2022-10-24 - [x] 🍌 Bananas ✅ 2022-09-05 -- [ ] 🍅 vegetables +- [x] 🍅 vegetables ✅ 2022-10-24 - [x] 🧅 onions ✅ 2022-03-31 - [x] 🧄 garlic ✅ 2022-09-18 @@ -117,16 +117,16 @@ hide task count #### Meat & Fish -- [ ] 🥩 Cured meat +- [x] 🥩 Cured meat ✅ 2022-10-24 - [ ] 🍖 Fresh meat   #### Bases -- [ ] 🍝 Pasta +- [x] 🍝 Pasta ✅ 2022-10-24 - [x] 🍚 Rice ✅ 2022-03-31 -- [ ] 🥔 Potatoes +- [x] 🥔 Potatoes ✅ 2022-10-24   diff --git a/01.02 Home/Household.md b/01.02 Home/Household.md index ec076aa3..d810f966 100644 --- a/01.02 Home/Household.md +++ b/01.02 Home/Household.md @@ -73,7 +73,8 @@ style: number #### 🚮 Garbage collection -- [ ] ♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection %%done_del%% 🔁 every 2 weeks on Tuesday 📅 2022-10-25 +- [ ] ♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection %%done_del%% 🔁 every 2 weeks on Tuesday 📅 2022-11-08 +- [x] ♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection %%done_del%% 🔁 every 2 weeks on Tuesday 📅 2022-10-25 ✅ 2022-10-24 - [x] ♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection %%done_del%% 🔁 every 2 weeks on Tuesday 📅 2022-10-11 ✅ 2022-10-11 - [x] ♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection %%done_del%% 🔁 every 2 weeks on Tuesday 📅 2022-09-27 ✅ 2022-09-25 - [x] ♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection %%done_del%% 🔁 every 2 weeks on Tuesday 📅 2022-09-13 ✅ 2022-09-12 diff --git a/00.02 Inbox/Empire of Pain.md b/03.01 Reading list/Empire of Pain.md similarity index 97% rename from 00.02 Inbox/Empire of Pain.md rename to 03.01 Reading list/Empire of Pain.md index e58bc892..6bc527df 100644 --- a/00.02 Inbox/Empire of Pain.md +++ b/03.01 Reading list/Empire of Pain.md @@ -12,14 +12,14 @@ Source: Language: EN Published: 2021-05-13 Link: "https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/patrick-radden-keefe/empire-of-pain/9781529062489" - Read: + Read: 2022-10-23 Cover: "https://www.greatescapebooks.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Empire-of-Pain-510x785.jpeg" CollapseMetaTable: true --- Parent:: [[@Reading master|Reading list]] -ReadingState:: In progress +ReadingState:: [[2022-10-23]] --- diff --git a/03.04 Cinematheque/There Will Be Blood (2007).md b/03.04 Cinematheque/There Will Be Blood (2007).md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9eab1c9e --- /dev/null +++ b/03.04 Cinematheque/There Will Be Blood (2007).md @@ -0,0 +1,91 @@ +--- +type: "movie" +subType: null +title: "There Will Be Blood" +englishTitle: "There Will Be Blood" +year: "2007" +dataSource: "OMDbAPI" +url: "https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0469494/" +id: "tt0469494" +genres: + - "Drama" +producer: "Paul Thomas Anderson" +duration: "158 min" +onlineRating: 8.2 +image: "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjAxODQ4MDU5NV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDU4MjU1MQ@@._V1_SX300.jpg" +released: true +premiere: "25/01/2008" +watched: true +lastWatched: "2022/10/26" +personalRating: 0 +tags: "mediaDB/tv/movie" +CollapseMetaTable: true +--- + +Parent:: [[@Cinematheque]] + +--- + +```dataviewjs +dv.paragraph(`> [!${dv.current().watched ? 'SUCCESS' : 'WARNING'}] ${dv.current().watched ? 'last watched on ' + dv.current().lastWatched : 'not yet watched'}`) +``` + +  + +# `$= dv.current().title` + +  + +`$= dv.current().watched ? '**Rating**: ' + dv.current().personalRating + ' out of 10' : ''` + +```toc +``` + +  + +### Details + +  + +**Genres**: +`$= dv.current().genres.length === 0 ? ' - none' : dv.list(dv.current().genres)` + +`$= !dv.current().released ? '**Not released** The movie is not yet released.' : ''` + +  + +```dataview +list without id + "" + + + "" ++ + "" + + + "" + + + "" + + + "" + + + "" + + + "" + + + "" + + + "
Type" + this.type + "
Online Rating" + this.onlineRating + "
Duration" + this.duration + "
Premiered" + this.premiere + "
Producer" + this.producer + "
" +FROM "03.04 Cinematheque/There Will Be Blood (2007)" +``` + +  + +--- + +  + +### Poster + +  + +`$= '![Image|360](' + dv.current().image + ')'` \ No newline at end of file