chicken mozzarella parma ham

News Reports

(1) Priebus made two public statements today. One is that the ban on Muslims will no longer be applied to green card holders. Notably absent from his statement was anything about people with other types of visa (including long-term ones), or anything about the DHS’ power to unilaterally revoke green cards in bulk.

The other was that the omission of Jews from the statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day was deliberate and is not regretted.

A point of note here is that Priebus is the one making these statements, which is not normally the Chief of Staff’s job. I’ll come back to that below.

(2) Rudy Giuliani told Fox News that the intent of yesterday’s order was very much a ban on Muslims, described in those words, and he was among the people Trump asked how they could find a way to do this legally.

(3) CNN has a detailed story (heavily sourced) about the process by which this ban was created and announced. Notable in this is that the DHS’ lawyers objected to the order, specifically its exclusion of green card holders, as illegal, and also pressed for there to be a grace period so that people currently out of the country wouldn’t be stranded — and they were personally overruled by Bannon and Stephen Miller. Also notable is that career DHS staff, up to and including the head of Customs & Border Patrol, were kept entirely out of the loop until the order was signed.

(4) The Guardian is reporting (heavily sourced) that the “mass resignations”of nearly all senior staff at the State Department on Thursday were not, in fact, resignations, but a purge ordered by the White House. As the diagram below (by Emily Roslin v Praze) shows, this leaves almost nobody in the entire senior staff of the State Department at this point.

As the Guardian points out, this has an important and likely not accidental effect: it leaves the State Department entirely unstaffed during these critical first weeks, when orders like the Muslim ban (which they would normally resist) are coming down.

The article points out another point worth highlighting: “In the past, the state department has been asked to set up early foreign contacts for an incoming administration. This time however it has been bypassed, and Trump’s immediate circle of Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, son-in-law Jared Kushner and Reince Priebus are making their own calls.”

(5) On Inauguration Day, Trump apparently filed his candidacy for 2020. Beyond being unusual, this opens up the ability for him to start accepting “campaign contributions” right away. Given that a sizable fraction of the campaign funds from the previous cycle were paid directly to the Trump organization in exchange for building leases, etc., at inflated rates, you can assume that those campaign coffers are a mechanism by which US nationals can easily give cash bribes directly to Trump. Non-US nationals can, of course, continue to use Trump’s hotels and other businesses as a way to funnel money to him.

(6) Finally, I want to highlight a story that many people haven’t noticed. On Wednesday, Reuters reported (in great detail) how 19.5% of Rosneft, Russia’s state oil company, has been sold to parties unknown. This was done through a dizzying array of shell companies, so that the most that can be said with certainty now is that the money “paying” for it was originally loaned out to the shell layers by VTB (the government’s official bank), even though it’s highly unclear who, if anyone, would be paying that loan back; and the recipients have been traced as far as some Cayman Islands shell companies.

Why is this interesting? Because the much-maligned Steele Dossier (the one with the golden showers in it) included the statement that Putin had offered Trump 19% of Rosneft if he became president and removed sanctions. The reason this is so interesting is that the dossier said this in July, and the sale didn’t happen until early December. And 19.5% sounds an awful lot like “19% plus a brokerage commission.”

Conclusive? No. But it raises some very interesting questions for journalists to investigate.

What does this all mean?

I see a few key patterns here. First, the decision to first block, and then allow, green card holders was meant to create chaos and pull out opposition; they never intended to hold it for too long. It wouldn’t surprise me if the goal is to create “resistance fatigue,” to get Americans to the point where they’re more likely to say “Oh, another protest? Don’t you guys ever stop?” relatively quickly.

However, the conspicuous absence of provisions preventing them from executing any of the “next steps” I outlined yesterday, such as bulk revocation of visas (including green cards) from nationals of various countries, and then pursuing them using mechanisms being set up for Latinos, highlights that this does not mean any sort of backing down on the part of the regime.

Note also the most frightening escalation last night was that the DHS made it fairly clear that they did not feel bound to obey any court orders. CBP continued to deny all access to counsel, detain people, and deport them in direct contravention to the court’s order, citing “upper management,” and the DHS made a formal (but confusing) statement that they would continue to follow the President’s orders. (See my updates from yesterday, and the various links there, for details) Significant in today’s updates is any lack of suggestion that the courts’ authority played a role in the decision.

That is to say, the administration is testing the extent to which the DHS (and other executive agencies) can act and ignore orders from the other branches of government. This is as serious as it can possibly get: all of the arguments about whether order X or Y is unconstitutional mean nothing if elements of the government are executing them and the courts are being ignored.

Yesterday was the trial balloon for a coup d’état against the United States. It gave them useful information.

A second major theme is watching the set of people involved. There appears to be a very tight “inner circle,” containing at least Trump, Bannon, Miller, Priebus, Kushner, and possibly Flynn, which is making all of the decisions. Other departments and appointees have been deliberately hobbled, with key orders announced to them only after the fact, staff gutted, and so on. Yesterday’s reorganization of the National Security Council mirrors this: Bannon and Priebus now have permanent seats on the Principals’ Committee; the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have both been demoted to only attending meetings where they are told that their expertise is relevant; the Secretary of Energy and the US representative to the UN were kicked off the committee altogether (in defiance of the authorizing statute, incidentally).

I am reminded of Trump’s continued operation of a private personal security force, and his deep rift with the intelligence community. Last Sunday, Kellyanne Conway (likely another member of the inner circle) said that “It’s really time for [Trump] to put in his own security and intelligence community,” and this seems likely to be the case.

As per my analysis yesterday, Trump is likely to want his own intelligence service disjoint from existing ones and reporting directly to him; given the current staffing and roles of his inner circle, Bannon is the natural choice for them to report through. (Having neither a large existing staff, nor any Congressional or Constitutional restrictions on his role as most other Cabinet-level appointees do) Keith Schiller would continue to run the personal security force, which would take over an increasing fraction of the Secret Service’s job.

Especially if combined with the DHS and the FBI, which appear to have remained loyal to the President throughout the recent transition, this creates the armature of a shadow government: intelligence and police services which are not accountable through any of the normal means, answerable only to the President.

(Note, incidentally, that the DHS already has police authority within 100 miles of any border of the US; since that includes coastlines, this area includes over 60% of Americans, and eleven entire states. They also have a standing force of over 45,000 officers, and just received authorization to hire 15,000 more on Wednesday.)

The third theme is money. Trump’s decision to keep all his businesses (not bothering with any blind trusts or the like), and his fairly open diversion of campaign funds, made it fairly clear from the beginning that he was seeing this as a way to become rich in the way that only dedicated kleptocrats can, and this week’s updates definitely tally with that. Kushner looks increasingly likely to be the money-man, acting as the liaison between piles of cash and the president.

This gives us a pretty good guess as to what the exit strategy is: become tremendously, and untraceably, rich, by looting any coffers that come within reach.

Combining all of these facts, we have a fairly clear picture in play.

Trump was, indeed, perfectly honest during the campaign; he intends to do everything he said, and more. This should not be reassuring to you.

The regime’s main organizational goal right now is to transfer all effective power to a tight inner circle, eliminating any possible checks from either the Federal bureaucracy, Congress, or the Courts. Departments are being reorganized or purged to effect this.

The inner circle is actively probing the means by which they can seize unchallenged power; yesterday’s moves should be read as the first part of that.

The aims of crushing various groups — Muslims, Latinos, the black and trans communities, academics, the press — are very much primary aims of the regime, and are likely to be acted on with much greater speed than was earlier suspected. The secondary aim of personal enrichment is also very much in play, and clever people will find ways to play these two goals off each other.

This is terrifying, not necessarily for what has actually happened, but the fact that this is all very carefully planned out, has been planned for a while, and each little thing leads to a much larger thing - and so on.

“Just Hold On,” released on the Ultra Music label on December 10, 2016, was written by Louis Tomlinson, Steve Aoki, Eric Rosse, Sasha Sloan, and Sir Nolan. It was produced by Steve Aoki. The debut live performance was on the X Factor UK stage at the Wembley Arena in London on the same date. The song is in the key of B major. 

On the morning of December 9, 2026, Dan Deakin released a statement announcing the death of Louis’s mother, Johanna Deakin, on December 7, 2016. Johanna had passed away after treatment for an aggressive form of leukemia, first diagnosed in May 2016. The tragic news shocked One Direction fans. 

An announcement soon followed that Louis would perform a solo as a special guest on the X Factor Final. The performance had been scheduled “for some time,” according to Dan Deakin. “This was something Johanna had been looking forward to and it was her wish that this go ahead—Louis has therefore decided to proceed with this for her.” It was especially poignant that Louis returned as a solo artist to perform on the stage where he was discovered, on X Factor UK 2010. 

The song was released to digital media on the same day as the performance. Because of the circumstances of the release, I assume that the studio version had been written and recorded during the time of Johannah’s illness. The lyrics suggest that the song had been written for Johannah. Louis’s team had made no promotional announcements regarding the single. The only inkling of any solo music from Louis had been made only days earlier in The Sun. 

Like many fans, I was surprised by Louis’s foray into EDM (electronic dance music) and his collaboration with Aoki, a world renown EDM artist. One Direction’s last album, Made in the AM, had continued the exploration away from pure pop, toward musical genres and influences of the past, particularly stadium rock, jangle rock, acoustic folk, and alternative rock—first gloriously unveiled in Midnight Memories. Niall’s first single, “This Town,” was firmly acoustic rock in the singer-songwriter tradition. Liam’s solo music has been rumored to be R&B (with collaborators like Danny Boy Styles, Ben Billions, and Bibi Bourelly, and a track like this).  

EDM is a genre meant to be made quickly and consumed quickly. Where rock is about the rock star, and pop is about the feeling, EDM is about the medium—the synthetic noises and the beat. When done well, EDM is itself a kind of performance art, a creative brainchild of the DJ. Where EDM often falls short is on storytelling. 

In a telling interview with Nick Grimshaw, Calvin Harris described EDM as “little bit 2D” compared to rock and pop. He says (of his collaboration with Rihanna in “This is What You Came For”), “I try to fuse real feeling, emotion, and texture – the sort of thing you feel in rock and pop – and making that in dance [.]” EDM collaborations have become popular and lucrative to all parties. Radio stations playing mostly pop are now playing the collaborative tunes, and house tropical is now so common, it’ll be tired news by 2018. 

One Direction songs, on the other hand, have always been about storytelling, and more so with each album. As the boys learned and participated more in the songwriting, it became clear that they all have a particular set of stories they wanted to tell, that they are gifted songwriters, and that these stories reflected the complex, conflicted, and deeply experienced emotions in their journey. One reason that I became a 1D fan is because of the honesty and poetry of their stories—the fact that they were maturing in front of their audience, with all the growing pains, the unimaginable highs and the lows of their journey laid bare. Without honesty, pop songs are mere products of clichéd music factories—just listen to any top 50 list. 

Louis Tomlinson, in particular, has fascinated me as a songwriter. He is someone whom the other band members clearly admire and look up to, and one who has written some of the most beautiful 1D songs. I was intrigued by his collaboration with EDM—a genre that seems fleeting and fast—particularly for a song meant to commemorate something so personal. My favorite 1D songs are “surprising” on every listen—a beauty of inflection, a harmonic surprise, a gifted turn of songwriting, a serendipity of vocal textures—these unexpected things bring me back to the same tunes over and over. Would “Just Hold On”? 

The answer is definitively “yes.” 

What struck me first was the beauty of Louis’s voice, even when slightly distorted by electronics. Louis has a relatively higher vocal range compared to the other 1D singers, as a tenor. The song starts and is placed higher in range compared to most 1D songs. It is the perfect range for Louis’s “storytelling voice,” his ringing, pure, focused sound. More important than his tone is Louis’s expressiveness. Even though the song is light, upbeat, fast in tempo, with a percussive bass, Louis sounds as if he is between crying and laughing, his voice cracking in the turns of melody, a raspiness underlying the dulcet timbre. It’s as if he’s intimately whispering the song into the listener’s ear, saying a confession. And in the lyrics, he is: 

Wish that you could build a time machine  So you could see the things no one can see 

What kind of things can no one see? Maybe it’s a metaphor for The Future, but time passes, and eventually The Future becomes Now, and is experienced mundanely. Louis isn’t talking about the future. 

What is the one thing no one can see? It’s what we see after we die—what Shakespeare called “the undiscovered country.” No matter how we dream, no time machine can take us there. The juxtaposition of the EDM track and Louis’s voice sounds really great, but the isolation of this heartbreaking voice, amidst the machines, also makes him sound so alone and lonely, a boy lost in the modern world. No matter how he wishes, he can’t go with her. He can’t be there. It’s a journey we all take alone. 

The song’s harmonies also hover between heartbreak and affirmation. Louis wrote a song that shows the difficult balance of being on the border—between life and death, sadness and strength, heartbreak and courage. The song starts with a g#minor chord (vi chord in music theory), and vacillates between minor and major chords in the verse. A general rule is that minor chords sound “sad” and major chords “happy.” Unlike most pop songs, the song does not modulate toward a tonic (I or root), dominant (V) or subdominant (IV) chord, but toward a ii suspended chord (built on the second note of the scale). 

vi                                                  I  Wish that you could build a time machine  V                                                            iisusp4  So you could see the things no one can see 

The last chord, a suspended chord, is interesting. Songwriters use suspended chords for tension, when they want a slightly complex sound that isn’t either major or minor. It’s called “suspended” from classical music theory, where a “suspended” note is carried over from an unresolved harmony into the resolved harmony. In classical music the note is usually resolved, but in pop it can stay unresolved. A beautiful example is the beginning of Chopin’s Ballade #2, where the top, melodic note (D) stays the same, but the suspended harmonic modulation confers all the feeling. It’s useful for pop songs that want to give a wistful feeling. An example is the opening chords of Tom Petty’s “Free Falling.” 

“Just Hold On” plays with this feeling of being in between sadness and happiness. The structure of the melody is modal—it avoids the half tones of the scale, sounding almost pentatonic until the end of the verse. The pentatonic scale sounds dreamy, imagistic. You can get a feeling by listening here, to Debussy’s Dr. Gradus ad Parnassum. A song that starts on the sixth note and moves toward the tonic, like “Just Hold On,” but in a more drawn-out way, is George Gershwin’s “Someone to Watch Over Me.” The beginning of the song is genius—the chromatic modulations meander from minor to seventh chord to major tonic, wandering like the singer “seeking a certain” special someone (typical of vaudevillian jazz but with so much feeling and bravado). 

When Louis sings “so you can see what no one else can see,” the “you” is ambiguous. As above, “what no one else can see” could refer to death, but it also implies a point of view that is lost—Jay’s perspective as a mother attending her children’s graduations, birthdays, weddings, watching grandkids and great-grandkids grow up, witnessing all of their accomplishments. These accomplishments will still go on, but she will never see them. 

Looking at the stars  And wishing you were them 

The lyric turns the aphorism “wishing upon a star” around. We evolved from stars, and as Carl Sagan famously said, we are “star stuff”—we are composed of the same elements as the stars. To die and fade into earth means to rejoin the stars—“wishing you were them” can be a wish to rejoin the elements, to become carbon and nitrogen and oxygen, to have no more human pain, to stop suffering. It’s a longing to be in heaven. At the end of life, we no longer wish upon a star, having no more to wish for. We wish to join the stars. But the image is so simple and so viscerally clear, we all feel it without thinking about it. 

Instead of turning inward, however, the song turns outward, toward compassion, hope, life. 

What do you do when a chapter ends  Do you close the book, and never read it again  Where do you go when your story’s done  You can be who you were or who you’ll become 

When it all goes wrong  Darling, just hold on 

The intimate term of endearment, “Darling,” implies that the lyrics are from private conversation. As the lyrics turn outward, Louis’s voice changes (1:25 in the studio version). 

It’s not over until it’s all been said  It’s not over until your dying breath  So what do you want them to say when you’re gone  That you gave up, or you kept going on 

The voice is confident, hopeful, encouraging. It no longer has the tentative, grieving quality as in the beginning. The octave leaps are right on pitch (though processed through electronics) and secure, and there’s a spectacular, and spectacularly subtle, tenth-interval leap from “so” to “what” that is notoriously difficult for singers, that Louis sings like it’s nothing. That he was able to write and sing a song so full of hope shows the kind of person Louis is. Even in deepest grief, he made something joyful and consoling, as much for his family as for fans. Louis and Jay knew, near the end, that she wouldn’t survive. Yet she refused to let her spirit down. She lived to the last, and wanted Louis to do the same—to thrive. 

A few end notes about Louis’s voice, since this is his first solo. Like many fans, I was surprised that Niall was the first to release solo material after the hiatus, and Louis was the second. I had expected Liam. For months, I had to read about Louis being content being a behind-the-scenes music producer and songwriter because he wasn’t interested in a solo career, or he didn’t have the voice for a solo career. I knew this was ludicrous because Louis had personally said in the past, on record, that he wanted to be a singer. 

So it’s not without some vindictive satisfaction that I say, how does that cold dish taste now, haters? 

Do you like how he sings that tenth interval? 

Do you like the fact that the chorus of “Just Hold On” hits highs (B4) so easily, like cake really, that are as high or higher than the heights of: 

Love You Goodbye (also Louis, A-flat4) 

End of the Day (Louis and Harry, B4) 

Truly Madly Deeply (G4) 

Where Do Broken Hearts Go (A4) 

No Control (A4) 

Do you like the fact that these are all sung in his chest voice? 

Do you like the fact that Louis can hit notes just four semi-tones lower than Ariana Grande in “One Last Time”? 

Do you like the fact the Louis could make EDM sound heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time? 

Or that the song is dominating dance charts? 

Or that it was no. 2 in the U.K. in its first week of release (thank you, #ProjectJustHoldOn)? 

I rest my case. Going to eat some breakfast now. 

As always, thanks for reading. Come say hi!

The Syrian government has taken control of at least 97 percent of east Aleppo after intense bombardments overnight and today, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based monitoring group. Seizing the remaining territories would grant President Bashar al-Assad a strategic victory, returning all urban centers in the country to his control. 

Airstrikes continue to pound the collapsing rebel-held areas, where tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped, the observatory said. Today, Syrian government troops entered one of the last remaining medical clinics there, said Mohammad Abu Rajab, a nurse and radiologist who works at the clinic and sought shelter with the other staff members.

the Syrian dictator Assad, along with Putin, are about to completely massacre an entire city - Aleppo. the Syrian army has taken over 98% of the city. families are sitting together, praying, knowing any minute will be their last minute on earth. civilians are tweeting their last goodbyes, sending out last minute pleas for someone, anyone, to help.

imagine that. sitting with the people you love, holding each other, hearing nothing but their harsh breathing and the clash of bombs completely destroying your home, killing your neighbors, your friends, you. just imagine that. i cant, i really cannot.

the U.N. has already called Syria the worst humanitarian crisis in this century. experts are saying this massacre rivals that of WW2 (not to take away from the holocaust) in terms of how heinous and completely disgusting it is.

Hey 1D fans

Remember when this happened? 

Remember how Louis especially loved it? 

What if we do it again, but this time in support of Louis and the entire Tomlinson-Deakin family?

Louis and his family is going to need so much support not just this week, but in the months to come. My idea is to take out a full-page ad somewhere — either in Billboard again or in a British paper — to show the Tomlinson-Deakins how much we as fans loved Jay and how much we are all there in any capacity possible to support them through this unthinkable loss.

I don’t know the specifics of what exactly to do, but I’m thinking maybe some of the artists in this fandom can come up with an image for the ad and we can think of a short message to the family to put in it. Maybe we could also list some charitable organizations on the ad so that it not only shows support for Louis’s family but also helps raise awareness and funds for leukemia research.

Then in the coming weeks, we can take out an ad displaying this for the family. If we raise the money to do this by Christmas/Louis’s birthday, that would be cool, but that’s kind of a short timeline, so perhaps we could get this done by the one month anniversary of Jay’s death (Jan. 7).

This is a very preliminary idea, so all suggestions and ideas are welcome. Let me know what you think!

IDEAS FOR HOW PEOPLE CAN HELP:

SHARE SHARE SHARE! If you like this idea, please reblog instead of liking the post. That way it is exposed to the maximum amount of people possible. I am but a small blog, so if you are friendly with bigger blogs or want to send this post to a bigger blog, please feel free to do so. That in itself would be a huge way to help. And if you are a big blog, please REBLOG this instead of liking it. 

FINANCIAL/ORGANIZATIONAL: This will require a decent amount of organization. We’ll need to decide on a publication for the ad, call that publication, find out how much it will cost and figure out the best way to collect money from donors that is safe and guarantees that money will go to the right place. If the idea takes off, I’d also like to set up a small website for the project so that people can get updates/donate/give feedback easily. If there is anyone who has experience in this or is interested in helping out with this aspect, please message me ASAP and we can talk further about how to coordinate. 

ARTISTIC: Calling on all fan artists or people who are friends with fan artists – we need an image to use. If you can draw one up and are willing to submit it, perhaps we could display all the artwork on the potential project website and have people vote on which image to use. Or we could do a giant collab? Again, if you have interest in this, please message me ASAP

I want to let the fandom grieve, but I have to speak out because I hate the thought that this fandom’s disrespect for Louis’s family may have made this past year any more difficult than it already was. Dan mentioned Freddie in Jay’s obituary. People denying that he is Louis’s son absolutely need to stop. Please. Now is the time to respect what Louis’s family have chosen to share with us, to stop speculating about private matters.

It’s so clear at this point that any secret knowledge people claim to have cannot reflect a true understanding of a private situation, that things we don’t understand probably have explanations that we are not entitled to. But even if you continue to insist that you know the private realities of Louis or any of the boys’ lives, please stop denying that Freddie is Louis’s son. 

These sad events show how important it is to be respectful of what we are shown, since we have no way of knowing what else might be happening. Jay wasn’t able to share photos of her grandson without being attacked by part of the fandom. Look at the responses she got when she requested a drawing of Freddie. People feel empowered to do that because rejecting what we are told, even about something as extreme as Louis’s own child, is normalized in this fandom. People say these things because they are told people KNOW what is happening behind the scenes. But we obviously don’t know, so we should not talk about these intimate, private situations in a way that encourages this type of invasive, disrespectful, appalling behavior.

Danielle came with Louis to visit his family over Thanksgiving. Even if you somehow can’t fully accept that they are dating, please at the very least accept that she is an important person in Louis’s life. She is not someone he hates. She is not someone who is just forcing him to be seen with her. She’s the person who supports Louis in difficult times. Do not demean her, do not belittle that. Do not assume you know how Louis feels and use it as an excuse to spread hatred and negativity.

I desperately want people to be able to accept that Freddie is Louis’s son. I want it to be as easy as possible for people to do that. I know there’s a lot of confusion about Briana’s pregnancy, and I am happy to point people to information and explanations. However, even if you still have questions, we need to accept that Briana is involved in this private, important part of Louis’s life and that nothing positive will come from stalking (cyber or otherwise), insulting, and encouraging hatred against her. We do not, and should not, know the details of their relationship or their custody arrangement. Co-parenting is complicated and difficult, and fans cannot possibly understand a situation from the outside. People mocked Briana (and Louis) for possibly flying Freddie to the UK in economy class. Now it turns out it was a genuine emergency and that there might be limited infant seating available. Presumably there are also reasons we don’t understand behind the choices about where to swap custody of Freddie or what Freddie is photographed wearing and all of the million other things that Larries have attacked Briana and Louis over.

Even if you do not feel confident that what we see of Louis’s life is the “full story,” even if you think we’re being manipulated, even if you don’t fully believe what we are shown, please do not think you can come up with a version that is more likely to be real. Insisting that Danielle is not Louis’s girlfriend or that Briana is not the mother of Louis’s child can only be based on speculation about what is happening behind the scenes. It should be more clear than ever that we do not have enough information to do that. We can’t insist on some made up version of Louis’s private life. We need to think about if we’re being respectful based on what we are told is happening, because that is all we know.