Books book reviews History and Hauntings: Tall Is Her Body by Robert de la Chevotière Alex Brown reviews Robert de la Chevotière’s gorgeous magical realism story. By Alex Brown | Published on November 13, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share In his sophomore novel, Tall Is Her Body, Robert de la Chevotière examines the life of one man over the course of a few decades at the end of the 20th century. Fidel Rossi begins the story as a child and ends it as an adult approaching middle age. Throughout it, he is beset by brutality, death, grief, love, and spirits of the dead.  Told in first person, de la Chevotière weaves a stunning tale. Fidel recounts his life in a narrative style that is expressive yet easy to read. This feels like something being recalled out loud to a rapt audience rather than read off a page. Fidel is six-years-old when we meet him. Back then he lived with his mother on the island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean. They had a simple life, one of love and kindness. All that is ripped away from him one terrible night when she’s murdered in front of him. After, Fidel is passed around from family friends to relatives he barely remembers before ending up with an abusive aunt and a dying grandmother. Booms hates Fidel for reasons Fidel cannot fathom, and not even his grandmother’s admonishments of her daughter can stem the tide of her violence against him. Once he’s out of the rural village and into the city, he meets Lucy. For now she’s just a kid, but eventually she’ll become the woman who will define his adulthood in the way his mother defined his childhood and Booms his adolescence.  As shocking as his mother’s death was, it didn’t happen out of the blue. A gadèt-zafè, a local man who can see things other people can’t, warns her something bad is coming, but she doesn’t want to hear it. She wants nothing to do with Obeah, a Caribbean spiritual tradition brought over by enslaved Africans and melded with colonial religions and practices brought over by Muslim and South Asian laborers. That conflict—rejecting or refusing Obeah even when seeing it with your own eyes—forms the foundation of Fidel’s life going forward. No matter how much his mother wants to ignore Obeah, it’s already in her home because Fidel can see the dead.  The dead haunt him for most of his life. They follow him from house to house, they threaten, cajole, and care for him, and sometimes they even ignore him. Like his mother, he tries to drive Obeah away. He flees to Canada for college, seeking freedom in colonization. Fidel was first introduced into “becoming civilized” in a Catholic boarding school as a teen, and as an adult experiments with it again in Canada. Fidel literally sees the past, love and horror alike, and that past informs his present and his future. We cannot extricate ourselves from our heritage, not without killing what makes us who we are. Nor will white supremacy ever allow him—or any of us under the thumb of colonialism—to forget who and what he really is. I wish I could write a whole essay about Fidel’s experiences in Canada going from a majority Black place to one where they are few and far between, but I don’t want to spoil the novel. Black readers who live and work in predominately white spaces will see a lot of themselves in Fidel’s Canadian sojourn. I certainly did.  Buy the Book Tall Is Her Body Robert de la Chevotière Buy Book Tall Is Her Body Robert de la Chevotière Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget We also see the consequences of colonialism through some of the background economic events in the book. Fidel’s childhood homes, Guadeloupe and Dominica, are overrun with bananas at the beginning of the book. Bananas aren’t native to the Caribbean islands. They were brought by Portuguese invaders in the 15th century and spread rapidly from there. By the 20th century, whole economies in Central and South America as well as in the Caribbean were largely dependent on banana production. Companies like United Fruit Company and Standard Fruit Company intervened in politics to ensure their profits were high, even when the cost was paid by local laborers. (Standard Fruit, aka Dole, also had a hand in overthrowing the kingdom of Hawai’i in 1898, and staked their claim on the islands by dominating the production of another non-native plantation fruit: the pineapple.)  The book talks about the Lomé Convention, a deal established in the 1970s to facilitate trade between European countries and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States. The Lomé agreements collapsed in the 1990s with the consolidation of the European trade market. Fidel talks about how farmers poured everything they had into banana production, a thing forced on them long ago by colonizers and then taken away by those same colonizers when they were fully dependent on them, when their own traditions had been sidelined or beaten out of them. Colonizers escape unscathed while the people they oppressed are left struggling to pick up the pieces.  I’m making this book seem heady and dense, but it really isn’t. Robert de la Chevotière’s Tall Is Her Body is a gorgeous magical realism story about a boy becoming a man and reckoning with culture and identity, with generational trauma and parenthood, with past, present, and future. [end-mark] Tall Is Her Body is published by Erewhon Press. The post History and Hauntings: <i>Tall Is Her Body</i> by Robert de la Chevotière appeared first on Reactor.

As the United States approaches some of its busiest travel days, the Trump administration is redoubling its efforts to improve the quality and safety of air travel in the wake of a government shutdown that risked making air travel unsafe. As a result of the Democrat-led government shutdown—the longest government shutdown in U.S. history—thousands of flights were delayed or canceled. The shutdown led to reduced FAA staffing levels, such as furloughed safety workers, and labor attrition. On Monday alone, more than 2,000 flights were canceled and more than 6,000 were delayed around the country. But travel risks are expected to subside for the upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays due to the passage of the Republican-led continuing resolution that reopened the government. The GOP bill will allow air traffic controllers to receive any pay compensation that they would have incurred during the shutdown, and they will also not have to worry about not being paid during some of the busiest travel times of the year. And perhaps just as importantly, the opening of the government will also permit government authorities to make much needed updates to American transportation systems. Rep. Jimmy Patronis, R-Fla., a member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and its Subcommittee on Aviation, explained to The Daily Signal that Congress had “put $15 billion in the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ to update air traffic control technology.” He highlighted the fact that the shutdown supported by the Democrats had delayed the deployment of that new technology. “Every day that we’re not allowing those innovations and investments to take place. That’s just more stress on a system that is overwhelmed and built on architecture that’s 40 years old,” Patronis told The Daily Signal. “Shame on the Senate Democrats for not allowing those dollars to be deployed out to help, start embracing these efficiencies as soon as possible,” the Florida congressman added at the time.  President Donald Trump has touted the improvements he says the updates to the air traffic system will bring.  “[Air travel] will be much better than normal because we’re buying the most sophisticated avionics and technology for our control towers—and we didn’t have that. We had a guy named [Buttigieg] … he spent billions of dollars trying to patch together our ATC system,” Trump stated in comments to the press this week. Top members of the Trump administration have likewise promised that the government shutdown will not lead to unsafe travel conditions. “My department has many responsibilities, but our number one job is safety. This isn’t about politics—it’s about assessing the data and alleviating building risk in the system as controllers continue to work without pay,” the Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy recently said. “It’s safe to fly today, and it will continue to be safe to fly next week because of the proactive actions we are taking.”  Federal Aviation Administrator Bryan Bedford added in a statement. “The FAA will continue to closely monitor operations, and we will not hesitate to take further action to make sure air travel remains safe.” During the shutdown, the FAA documented the scope of the problems, writing an emergency order on November 6 that acknowledged, “continued delays and unpredictable staffing shortages, which are driving fatigue.” The shutdown was jeopardizing the safety of travelers. The FAA memo claimed that “risk is further increasing, and the FAA is concerned with the system’s ability to maintain the current volume of operations.” To ensure passenger safety amidst the shutdown, the FAA announced a variety of measures, including reducing fights by 10 percent at 40 high traffic airports around the United States. It also said it would be ending some visual flight rule approaches, restricting commercial space launches and reentries, and prohibiting “parachute operations and photo missions near facilities with a staffing trigger.” With the shutdown now in the rearview, the Trump administration, the FAA, and the airlines remain optimistic not only about the holiday season in the near future but also long-term improvements to air travel in the United States. The Daily Signal reached out to the FAA for comment and was directed to the Trump administration officials’ statements. The post Trump Administration Redoubles Efforts to Make Air Travel Safe Post Government Shutdown appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. European authorities have finally unveiled the “European Democracy Shield,” we’ve been warning about for some time, a major initiative that consolidates and broadens existing programs of the European Commission to monitor and restrict digital information flows. Though branded as a safeguard against “foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI)” and “disinformation,” the initiative effectively gives EU institutions unprecedented authority over the online public sphere. At its core, the framework fuses a variety of mechanisms into a single structure, from AI-driven content detection and regulation of social media influencers to a state-endorsed web of “fact-checkers.” The presentation speaks of defending democracy, yet the design reveals a machinery oriented toward centralized control of speech, identity, and data. One of the more alarming integrations links the EU’s Digital Identity program with content filtering and labelling systems. The Commission has announced plans to “explore possible further measures with the Code’s signatories,” including “detection and labelling of AI-generated and manipulated content circulating on social media services” and “voluntary user-verification tools.” Officials describe the EU Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet as a means for “secure identification and authentication.” In real terms, tying verified identity to online activity risks normalizing surveillance and making anonymity in expression a thing of the past. The Democracy Shield also includes the creation of a “European Centre for Democratic Resilience,” led by Justice Commissioner Michael McGrath. Framed as a voluntary coordination hub, its mission is “building capacities to withstand foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) and disinformation,” involving EU institutions, Member States, and “neighboring countries and like-minded partners.” The Centre’s “Stakeholder Platform” is to unite “trusted stakeholders such as civil society organisations, researchers and academia, fact-checkers and media providers.” In practice, this structure ties policymaking, activism, and media oversight into one cooperative network, eroding the boundaries between government power and public discourse. Financial incentives reinforce the system. A “European Network of Fact-Checkers” will be funded through EU channels, positioned as independent yet operating within the same institutional framework that sets the rules. The network will coordinate “fact-checking” in every EU language, maintain a central database of verdicts, and introduce “a protection scheme for fact-checkers in the EU against threats and harassment.” Such an arrangement destroys the line between independent verification and state-aligned narrative enforcement. The Commission will also fund a “common research support framework,” giving select researchers privileged access to non-public platform data via the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Political Advertising Regulation. Officially, this aims to aid academic research, but it could also allow state-linked analysts to map, classify, and suppress online viewpoints deemed undesirable. Plans extend further into media law. The European Commission intends to revisit the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) to ensure “viewers – particularly younger ones – are adequately protected when they consume audiovisual content online.” While framed around youth protection, such language opens the door to broad filtering and regulation of online media. Another initiative seeks to enlist digital personalities through a “voluntary network of influencers to raise awareness about relevant EU rules, including the DSA.” Brussels will “consider the role of influencers” during its upcoming AVMSD review. Though presented as transparent outreach, the move effectively turns social media figures into de facto promoters of official EU messaging, reshaping public conversation under the guise of awareness. The Shield also introduces a “Digital Services Act incidents and crisis protocol” between the EU and signatories of the Code of Practice on Disinformation to “facilitate coordination among relevant authorities and ensure swift reactions to large-scale and potentially transnational information operations.” This could enable coordinated suppression of narratives across borders. Large platforms exceeding 45 million EU users face compliance audits, with penalties reaching 6% of global revenue or even platform bans, making voluntary cooperation more symbolic than real. A further layer comes with the forthcoming “Blueprint for countering FIMI and disinformation,” offering governments standardized guidance to “anticipate, detect and respond” to perceived information threats. Such protocols risk transforming free expression into a regulated domain managed under preemptive suspicion. Existing structures are being fortified, too. The European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), already central to “disinformation” monitoring, will receive expanded authority for election and crisis surveillance. This effectively deepens the fusion of state oversight and online communication control. Funding through the “Media Resilience Programme” will channel EU resources to preferred outlets, while regulators examine ways to “strengthen the prominence of media services of general interest.” This includes “impact investments in the news media sector” and efforts to build transnational platforms promoting mainstream narratives. Though described as supporting “independent and local journalism,” the model risks reinforcing state-aligned voices while sidelining dissenting ones. Education and culture are not exempt. The Commission plans “Guidelines for teachers and educators on tackling disinformation and promoting digital literacy through education and training,” along with new “media literacy” programs and an “independent network for media literacy.” While such initiatives appear benign, they often operate on the assumption that government-approved information is inherently trustworthy, conditioning future generations to equate official consensus with truth. Viewed as a whole, the European Democracy Shield represents a major institutional step toward centralized narrative management in the European Union. Under the language of “protection,” Brussels is constructing a comprehensive apparatus for monitoring and shaping the flow of information. For a continent that once defined itself through open debate and free thought, this growing web of bureaucratic control signals a troubling shift. Efforts framed as defense against disinformation now risk becoming tools for suppressing dissent, a paradox that may leave European democracy less free in the name of making it “safe.” If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post EU’s “Democracy Shield” Centralizes Control Over Online Speech appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Ireland’s media regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, has opened a formal investigation into X, invoking the European Union’s censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), for the first time. The inquiry began after Ireland’s own Platform Supervision Team flagged concerns and received information from a user and the German organization HateAid, a group that previously sued X in 2023 for not deleting posts it labeled “hate speech.” That lawsuit, and HateAid’s involvement in this case, have fueled unease that activist groups are helping to steer government regulators toward tighter restrictions on digital expression under the banner of “safety.” “Today, we are taking an important step in ensuring a safer online experience for users across the European Union,” said Digital Services Commissioner John Evans. He continued, “We expect online platforms to meet their obligations under the DSA, and to operate with transparency in informing users of their rights to report and to appeal decisions.” Evans added, “If we suspect that any platform is failing in these obligations, we will not hesitate to intervene and where appropriate take enforcement action to protect the safety of users in Ireland, and across the European Union.” He also said that for the largest platforms, the regulator works closely with the European Commission to ensure the law “produces good outcomes for European citizens.” Under the DSA, Coimisiún na Meán can impose financial penalties of up to six percent of a company’s global turnover if violations are found, a level of punishment that gives regulators significant leverage over how platforms moderate content. Supporters of the law claim it promotes accountability, but opponents argue it risks giving bureaucrats and political actors a powerful tool to shape what opinions and information are allowed to circulate online. The case against X may therefore prove to be an early test of whether the DSA will erode people’s rights under a growing regime of government-mandated censorship. Officials are investigating issues such as the handling of “misinformation,” the adequacy of moderation systems, and the company’s overall transparency. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, initiated a formal probe in 2023 into how X managed allegedly harmful content. Because X qualifies as a “very large online platform” with more than 45 million users, it faces higher standards for accountability and disclosure under the DSA. The European Commission serves as the primary enforcer of the DSA for major platforms, yet certain parts of the law, including complaint and reporting procedures, are handled by the regulator in the country where a company’s European headquarters is located. This places oversight of firms such as X, Meta, and Google under Ireland’s Coimisiún na Meán, since all three operate from Dublin. Should Ireland’s regulator determine that X has failed to meet DSA requirements, it can impose a financial penalty reaching up to 6 percent of the company’s global annual revenue. Such a sanction would mark a significant use of regulatory power, reinforcing the growing concern over whether Europe’s digital rulebook is protecting users or tightening political control over online speech. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Ireland Takes the First Swing at X in Europe’s War on Words appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Korean President Lee Jae Myung has pledged to impose strict punishments for spreading what he calls “misinformation” and for engaging in discriminatory speech, warning that such behavior divides society and threatens democracy. “We can no longer overlook hate or disinformation disguised as opinion,” he said. “Acts that distort facts or violate human dignity are crimes that must be punished as such.” Yet the president’s vow, made during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, has also deepened unease among free expression advocates who fear that broad definitions of “false information” could open the door to government overreach. “Truly anachronistic discrimination and hatred based on race, origin, and nationality are rampant in some parts of society,” Lee said at the Yongsan presidential office in Seoul. “As our society becomes increasingly polarized, these extreme expressions continue to exacerbate social unrest.” https://video.reclaimthenet.org/articles/071331.mp4 The remarks come as groups hold anti-China protests in downtown Seoul, and after reports that the head of the Korean Red Cross made racist comments toward foreign diplomats. Lee described such actions as “crimes” that threaten daily life and must be “eliminated.” He added that hate speech and falsehoods were “spreading indiscriminately” online and declared, “We can no longer tolerate this.” He urged political leaders to help “eradicate these hate crimes and fabricated information.” But that phrase, “fabricated information,” has caused worry that the government could classify dissenting political views or unpopular opinions as punishable offenses. In recent months, activists, including supporters of impeached former President Yoon Suk Yeol, have staged demonstrations in areas like Myeong-dong and Daerim-dong, waving banners that read “China Out” and tearing down images of President Xi Jinping. Their rallies have intensified following the restoration of visa-free entry for Chinese tour groups and Xi’s visit to the APEC summit in Gyeongju. The animosity toward Beijing also reflects domestic political divides that widened after Yoon’s short-lived martial law order. His supporters accuse China of meddling in South Korean elections and claim the current government’s engagement with North Korea risks Communist influence. Lee, in previous meetings, has condemned these anti-China protests as acts of “destruction” and directed officials to prevent further unrest. However, such rhetoric has left some questioning whether the state is using the language of harmony to justify expanded control over public speech. While Lee frames these initiatives as safeguards for democracy, they place the government in the role of deciding what speech crosses the line, a dangerous position in any democracy. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Korean President Vows Harsh Penalties for “Hate Speech” and “Misinformation” appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

More on the Affordability Crisis and the Midterms

Former CBS and NBC anchor Katie Couric unsuccessfully tried not once, not twice, but three times to get Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman to label President Trump as anti-democratic on Thursday’s episode of her Next Question podcast. It was just another example of former broadcast anchors and reporters confirming that they were not the down-the-middle reporters they claimed to be. Couric’s first swing came when she wondered, “You've said that Donald Trump, in your view, is not an autocrat because his presidency is quote, ‘the product of a democratic election.’ But history has shown that even leaders who come to power through elections can still govern in anti-democratic ways. So, I have to ask, when you consider some of Donald Trump's behaviors and policies, like deploying federal forces to US cities, undermining the Department of Justice's independence, attempting to overturn the 2020 election. Does that not trouble you deeply?     After Fetterman insisted that he can still be a good Democrat and not believe that trying to convince people that democracy is in peril is not the best hill “to die on” because the recent government shutdown proves that such fearmongering is silly, Couric swung at strike two, “Do you think that Donald Trump is not conducting himself or not pushing policies though that you would consider to be anti-democratic?” As Fetterman repeated himself about still being a good Democrat, Couric tried one more time, “No, I'm talking about Donald Trump's some of the things that he's doing. If you don't believe we're living in an autocracy, would you concede that some of the things that he is doing are clearly anti-democratic and also are potentially even unconstitutional.” If doing unconstitutional things is anti-democratic then that is bad news for former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, who were rebuked by the Supreme Court several times during their tenures. As for Fetterman, he refused to bite, replying in part: I don't call people fascists or Nazis or compare people to Hitler. And I think that's part of why we lost our election last year. You know, if you call the person that you might vote for, that implies that you must be a fascist or you're trying to destroy, you know, our nation, and I know and I love some of those people, and they're not doing any of those things. So that's really the thing. So and, and the vast majority of Americans chose that—an option that I did not choose and actually campaigned the entire, effectively the year for Harris and Biden after he—before he dropped out. So that's exactly where we are. Strike three. Couric is out.     Later in the show, Fetterman was discussing the need to turn down the rhetoric in the context of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, but Couric wondered if that concern about rhetoric could also be applied to Kirk himself, “I think some people might say Charlie Kirk's rhetoric was extreme. You know, I think that's the conversation that happened. People condemned political violence, but they also felt a great deal of discomfort with his language, suggesting that these kinds of words lead to violence. I don't know, I'm just kind of sharing my observations as I saw the conversations unfold.” Like a broken record, Fetterman insisted he is still a man of the left, but that doesn’t mean that rhetoric should lead to violence, “Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think we agree that we probably didn't agree with much of what he said, but, and I think we, I'm sure we both agree that you shouldn't shoot people, you know, and you shouldn't execute them in public. And that's, I think that's two things must be true. That free speech—I'm an absolute free speech guy, and you have the right to say these things, and you definitely also have the right not to get shot by sharing your views.” Fetterman is a Democrat who votes with his party around 90 percent of the time, but there are some in the media who keep trying to portray him as some sort of DINO. If the former broadcast anchors think that is insufficient, then how are they any different from MSNBC’s primetime hosts? H/T to Jason Cohen of The Daily Caller. Here is a transcript for the November 13 show: Next Question with Katie Couric 11/13/2025 KATIE COURIC: You've said that Donald Trump, in your view, is not an autocrat because his presidency is quote, “the product of a democratic election.” But history has shown that even leaders who come to power through elections can still govern in anti-democratic ways. So, I have to ask, when you consider some of Donald Trump's behaviors and policies, like deploying federal forces to US cities, undermining the Department of Justice's independence, attempting to overturn the 2020 election. Does that not trouble you deeply? JOHN FETTERMAN: Well, of course, I was really the tip of the spear in the 2020 election in Pennsylvania, where he claimed that it wasn't, like, a fair, safe election. Absolutely. I pushed back violently on that, and I don't support many of these things that are happening right now. I don't. I don't ever vote for those things, but now for me it's, it's like, you know, here, here we are, but I think at this point right now we are not in an autocracy, you know, we're in a democracy, and that's why they were able to shut our government down, and that doesn't mean that we appreciate what's happening and that expression, “It's not normal.” It's like, yes, it isn't normal, but that doesn't mean this is an autocracy right now and what it does mean that we have a lot of hills that we can choose to die on, but I think for me I've just been choosing some of the most difficult ones, and that's where I've been and not supporting, you know, many of these things that are happening. COURIC: Do you think that Donald Trump is not conducting himself or not pushing policies though that you would consider to be anti-democratic? FETTERMAN: What I'm saying is a Democrat with a 90 percent record voting Democrat. That's a fact. That's not my opinion. That's my number. COURIC: No, I'm talking about Donald Trump's some of the things that he's doing. If you don't believe we're living in an autocracy, would you concede that some of the things that he is doing are clearly anti-democratic and also are potentially even unconstitutional. FETTERMAN: I guess, so for me it's like, you know, we have a difference here. It's like if you believe we live in an autocracy and I don't, and I think we can both agree that we've asked, we don't agree with the vast majority of those things that's happened here right now, and I wouldn't do those things. I wouldn't have made those same kinds of decisions for that. And, and that's fine where we are right now, a committed Democrat and we happen to have a different view of these things, you know, it's like I don't call people fascists or Nazis or compare people to Hitler. And I think that's part of why we lost our election last year. You know, if you call the person that you might vote for, that implies that you must be a fascist or you're trying to destroy, you know, our nation, and I know and I love some of those people, and they're not doing any of those things. So that's really the thing. So and, and the vast majority of Americans chose that—an option that I did not choose and actually campaigned the entire, effectively the year for Harris and Biden after he—before he dropped out. So that's exactly where we are. … COURIC: I think some people might say Charlie Kirk's rhetoric was extreme. You know, I think that's the conversation that happened. People condemned political violence, but they also felt a great deal of discomfort with his language, suggesting that these kinds of words lead to violence. I don't know, I'm just kind of sharing my observations as I saw the conversations unfold. FETTERMAN: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think we agree that we probably didn't agree with much of what he said, but, and I think we, I'm sure we both agree that you shouldn't shoot people, you know, and you shouldn't execute them in public. And that's, I think that's two things must be true. That free speech—I'm an absolute free speech guy, and you have the right to say these things, and you definitely also have the right not to get shot by sharing your views.

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