Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has condemned a firebrand Hindu candidate from his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who called the assassin of independence icon Mahatma Gandhi a “patriot”.
Modi was forced to act on Friday after a backlash grew over the comments made 24 hours earlier by Pragya Singh Thakur, who separately faces charges in connection with a 2008 mosque bombing that killed six people.
Thakur issued an apology for her statement that Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse “was, is, and will remain a patriot”, but it failed to douse the controversy, and the Hindu nationalist BJP said it had launched an inquiry into the incident.
Gandhi was shot three times in January 1948 by Godse, a Hindu fanatic angered by what he considered to be Gandhi’s pandering to Muslims and by India’s partition after independence from Britain in 1947.
On Friday, Modi told India’s News 24 channel that Thakur’s “language and thoughts should be condemned and are unacceptable in a civilised society”.
‘I won’t forgive her’
“People with such beliefs must think one hundred times before saying such things … She apologised publicly for the comments, but I won’t forgive her at a personal level,” Modi added.
India’s main opposition Indian National Congress party, which Gandhi once led, said Modi’s words “mean nothing” and called on the 68-year-old to take “real action” over Thakur.
“Remove terror accused Pragya Thakur from your party. Her statements have not only brought disgrace but also hurt the sentiments of people in India & across the world,” Congress said in a statement posted on Facebook.
The BJP last month named Thakur as its parliamentary candidate in the state capital of India’s central Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal, prompting criticism from opponents who accused the party of using her candidacy in a bid to polarise voters along religious lines.
The 49-year-old candidate, commonly known as Sadhvi Pragya, has since emerged as a symbol of a Hindu nationalist movement showing increasing intolerance towards Muslims in Hindu-majority India.
Thakur’s run for office has been overshadowed, however, by an ongoing trial over her suspected involvement in a bomb blast near a mosque in Malegaon, Maharashtra state, in 2008 that killed six people and injured 100.
She has denied having had any role in the 2008 explosion in the Muslim-majority town. But, according to court filings cited by Reuters news agency, the motorcycle on which the explosives were strapped was Thakur’s, and she was among those who planned the attack to avenge so-called “jihadi activities”.
The trial started in December but a final verdict is not expected anytime soon.
‘This government should continue’
This week’s controversy erupted ahead of Sunday’s final round of India’s marathon election. Polls predict Modi will be re-elected but with a reduced majority after scooping up 282 of the 543 seats at stake in the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of parliament, in 2014.
At the national level, Modi’s primary rival is Congress party President Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty which has produced three prime ministers.
On Friday, the notoriously media-shy Modi left journalists disappointed as he declined to answer questions at what Indian reporters had dubbed his first-ever press conference as prime minister.
“The people have decided that this government should continue. Our government introduced a new culture of governance in India,” Modi told Friday’s event.
With 900 million registered voters and about a million polling stations spread throughout the country, the election is the world’s largest democratic exercise. Final results will be announced on May 23.
In 1988, then-mayor of Burlington, Vermont Bernie Sanders travelled to the Soviet Union to establish a “sister city” relationship with the city of Yaroslavl. | Alex Wong/Getty Images
Unseen by the public for three decades, a POLITICO reporter views hours of footage from his 1988 ‘honeymoon’ to the USSR.
It’s 1988 and newlywed Bernie Sanders is in the Soviet Union with his wife, Jane, handing out gifts to the mayor of a mid-sized city they’ve befriended. The mood is festive as the two bestow the items: A Beatles album, a red “Bernie for Burlington” button, “delicious Vermont candy,” and a tape of tunes Sanders recorded himself with fellow artists from Vermont, among other goodies.
“I have met many fine mayors in the United States,” Sanders proclaims, “but I want to say that one of the nicest mayors I’ve ever met is the mayor of Yaroslavl.”
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At another point,a member of Sanders’ delegationhands a Russian woman a small American flag.
“If you’re wondering what’s wrong with capitalism, it’s made in Hong Kong,” he jokes. “Sorry about that.”
The scene is part of three-and-a-half hours of raw, never–publicly-seen footage of the trip Sanders took to the Soviet Union that year — his so-called “honeymoon.” POLITICO viewed the tapes this week, along with a forgotten hourlong episode of a TV show created by Sanders that featured the same trip, at the offices of a Vermont government access channel.
Earlier this year, two minutes of the long-lost videos went viral when a staffer at Chittenden County’s Channel 17 posted a compilation of the station’s archives online. They featured a shirtless Sanders and other Americans singing “This Land Is Your Land” to their hosts after relaxing in a sauna. A few minutes later, Sanders doled out the gifts to his Russian friends with a towel wrapped around his waist.
But that’s only the beginning. The hours of footage include a scene of Sanders sitting with his delegation at a table under a portrait of Vladimir Lenin. Sanders can also be heard extolling the virtues of Soviet life and culture, even as he also acknowledges some of its shortcomings. There are flashes of humor, too, such as his host warning the American guests not to cross the KGB, or else.
The video also paints a fuller picture of why Sanders ventured to the land of America’s No. 1 enemy in the midst of the Cold War, the anti-war idealism that fueled his journey, and what he found when he got there.
Over the course of 10 days, Sanders, who was then the mayor of Burlington, and his dozen-member delegation traveled to three cities: Moscow, Yaroslavl and Leningrad, which is now known as St. Petersburg. Their goal was to establish a “sister city” relationship with Yaroslavl, a community along the Volga River home to about 500,000 people. At the time, the Soviet Union was beginning to open itself to the world, if only slightly — and Sanders was a self-described socialist with an unusually large interest in foreign affairs for a mayor.
“It wasn’t as outlandish as it looks in the pictures,” William Pomeranz, the deputy director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, said after hearing a description of the footage. “It’s the height of Glasnost and Perestroika, where there are genuine efforts by Americans to reach out to Soviet cities and try to establish these relationships.”
At the time, Sanders was 46 and nearing the end of his eight years as Burlington mayor, which tracked precisely with Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Two years later, Sanders would be elected to Congress.
As mayor, Sanders worried frequently about a potential nuclear war and railed against the bloated military budgets of both the United States and the Soviet Union. A year before the trip, he laid out his vision for a sister-city relationship. “By encouraging citizen-to-citizen exchanges — of young people, artists and musicians, business people, public officials and just plain ordinary citizens,” he said in a speech, “we can break down the barriers and stereotypes which exist between the Soviet Union and the United States.”
Sanders’ opponents, though, will likely find much in the tapes to call outlandish. And in a campaign season in which Democrats are concerned about nothing more than defeating President Donald Trump, there’s plenty of material that Democratic voters might worry could be spun into a 30-second negative ad by the Republican Party.
Sanders is seen living it up with Russians. There are, naturally, shrines to Lenin everywhere. In one scene, Sanders and his wife, as well as other couples, boogie to live Russian music. “I brought my special dancing shoes!” Sanders exclaims.
Later, he tells a Russian man, “I’m not very happy about this, but there are not many people in the state of Vermont who speak Russian. In fact, one of the things that we want to do is to see if we can develop a Russian studies program in our high school.”
At another point, one of Sanders’ hosts jokingly warns the delegation to not upset the KGB: “Those who don’t behave move to Siberia from here.”
For now, many of the videos will remain available for viewing only in CCTV’s archives. POLITICO learned about the tapes after reporting on a TV show Sanders created while mayor called “Bernie Speaks With the Community.” The government-access channel is not planning to put the raw tapes documenting the Soviet Union trip online because they never aired, said executive director Lauren-Glenn Davitian. However, she does intend to post the lost episode of Sanders’ TV show on its website “soon.”
The tapes also reveal Sanders and his team being wooed by the Soviet Union: They eat nice-looking meals, tour a decorated subway station, take horse-and-buggy rides, and watch professional dancers. A cab driver serenades members of Sanders’ delegation — it’s not clear whether Sanders himself is in the car — with songs for minutes on end. When they return home, the Americans said the cabbie liked them so much that he didn’t charge a fare.
“The Soviet Union always treated foreign guests very, very well,” said Pomeranz. “They always wanted to show off the best side of their country and that invariably included a big table with a lot of food.”
At times, though, Sanders’ team saw behind the curtain: The tapes showed people who appear to be waiting in line for food as well as the Soviet Union’s shabby housing stock. Inside one Russian’s apartment, Sanders addresses the poor conditions.
“It’s important to try to translate this,” he says. “In America, in general, the housing is better than in the Soviet Union.”
There are also mundane scenes of everyday life — cars rolling around traffic circles, townspeople walking down the street, athletes playing sports on TV — rendered fascinating because of the historical moment in which they occurred.
According to a newspaper account at the time, members of Sanders’ mayoral team paid for the trip, but also received their regular salary while they were abroad.
Throughout the videos, as well as in the final episode of “Bernie Speaks With the Community,” Sanders speaks at length about his dream of reducing conflict between the two nations by building relationships between ordinary citizens. While being interviewed by a Russian man on a bus, he says he would “love” for young people to participate in exchange programs between the two cities.
Sanders suggests a similar initiative for media outlets. He tells the man that a Vermont editor is coming to the Soviet Union soon, and that “I have asked her to drop in [to] your newspaper.”
Sanders’ wife also talks to teachers in the Soviet Union over tea. She asks them detailed questions about their work, and proposes a teacher and student exchange program.
“One thing we are very impressed with is the cultural life,” she tells them. “We strive in Burlington to enrich the cultural life as much as possible. But we have much further to go.”
Bruce Seifer, a top economic development aide to Sanders when he was mayor, said that 100 residents from Yaroslavl immigrated to Burlington after the trip, and tourists from the city visited.
“Over time, it had a positive impact on to the economy,” he said. “Businesses started doing exchanges between Burlington and Yaroslavl.”
Davitian, who lived in Burlington at the time, said that progressives were thrilled by Sanders’ trip to the Soviet Union, while everyday residents didn’t mind. “As long as the streets were getting paved, there wasn’t opposition to him as an activist mayor,” she said.
When Sanders’ delegation returns to Burlington, CCTV footage captures the group in a hopeful mood, applauding the Soviet Union’s after-school programs, low rent costs, and hospitality.
At the same time, they admit the poor choices of available food. Sanders said he was impressed by the beauty of the city, as well as the Soviet officials’ willingness “to acknowledge many of the problems that they had.”
“They’re proud of the fact that their health care system is free,” he said, but concede that the medical technology is far behind that of the United States.
Later that year, the relationship was officially established. Since then, “exchanges between the two cities have involved mayors, business people, firefighters, jazz musicians, youth orchestras, mural painters, high school students, medical students, nurses, librarians, and the Yaroslavl Torpedoes ice-hockey team,” according to Burlington’s city government. A delegation traveled there as recently as 2016.
“They were just as friendly as they could possibly be,” Sanders said at a press conference at the airport after returning from the trip. “The truth of the matter is they like Americans, and they respect Americans, and they admire Americans.”
Mashable, MashBash and Mashable House are among the federally registered trademarks of Ziff Davis, LLC and may not be used by third parties without explicit permission.
Mashable, MashBash and Mashable House are among the federally registered trademarks of Ziff Davis, LLC and may not be used by third parties without explicit permission.
It couldn’t be more fitting that the latest adaptation of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 finds its home on Hulu, proud purveyors of dystopia.
The six-episode miniseries has been marketed mostly as a comedy, but as anyone familiar with Heller’s 1961 novel knows, that’s just a way to cheat the system. Make no mistake, friends, this is a war epic, and a searing, caustic commentary from the men inside it.
Catch-22 is the story of John Yossarian (Christopher Abbott), a neurotic World War II bomb plane pilot whose only goal is to survive the war – by getting out of it. Yossarian and his unit have a mandatory flight requirement before they can be discharged, but their nefarious Colonel Cathcart (Kyle Chandler) keeps upping the number. Over the course of the series, we see it rising from 25 to 65, and Yossarian visibly unraveling with each incremental hike.
Thus enters Catch-22, a mind-bending loophole in the show’s military code that states any soldier wishing to be sent home must only ask – but that once he does ask, he’s proven his own sanity and is required to continue serving. Crazy men fly missions and sane men want to go home; crazy men don’t ask to go home and therefore must be made to stay and fly missions.
For all its humorous packaging and Martin Ruhe’s summer-sun cinematography, Catch-22 looks like a romantic Italian romp, but it is most surely not. Like the characters, you’ll float contentedly through most of an episode – beach trips, war flings, trips to Rome – while actively dreading the imminent flight scene where anyone could die at any moment. More often than not, episodes end in a gory stupor to which one can never quite desensitize.
Even though the entire series is streaming, it is best watched sporadically, with episodes spaced hours or days apart. It takes mere seconds for the show to swerve from tasting tomatoes for the mess hall to blood spattered over Yossarian’s windshield while another friend’s body falls from the sky, and that’s a toll you feel, even as a viewer.
But the humor, when it is there, is remarkable. It’s the only way to balance all that violence, death and burgeoning insanity. Chandler and the sporadically spotted Clooney (who directed two episodes) are absolute pros at this, a proverbial Colonel and General (respectively) among the cast itself.
Kyle Chandler plays a shrewd baddie as Coach – er, Colonel Cathcart in Hulu’s ‘Catch-22.’
Image: Philipe Antonello / Hulu
In that respect, Hulu’s series catches the novel’s spirit in the best way. Catch-22 on the page is extensive and exhaustive, bursting with characters and B-stories that can’t and shouldn’t all make it to the screen. Writers Luke Davies and David Michôd tweak the novel’s chronology and trim scenes and backstories, allowing the characters we do meet to have greater impact whether they’re in one episode or all six. One of the more surprising narrative decisions moves a pivotal character death from early in the novel to the end of the series to pack a heavier punch, but Davies and Michôd choose to escalate Yossarian’s suffering incrementally rather than at random, perhaps for our own sanity as viewers.
With each episode, the war’s cost increases – in lives lost and missions demanded. With each mission, Yossarian loses someone, and his chances of returning to peace and normalcy at war’s end diminish further. Hulu’s cast is significantly younger than that of the 1970 film, which drives the tragedy home even further. In Abbott’s hands, Yossarian is less sardonic than Alan Arkin, arguably sanded down from his tetchy persona in the novel, but easier to empathize with.
Catch-22 doesn’t dump on civilians’ unconditional support and respect of the troops, but it is a peek behind the curtain and encourages interrogating systems of power in which the troops have little to no agency. Of course soldiers aren’t unwaveringly chivalrous all the time; some are noble, some are trapped, and there’s a reason Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is widespread in the military – not only because of the witnessed violence, but because of deeply sown doubt about what happened and why it happened.
Elton John and Taron Egerton, who is playing Elton John in the movie Rocketman, performed a rendition of John’s iconic hit “Rocket Man” at the Cannes gala party Thursday night.
(Yes, the song title is two words. Yes, the movie title is one word. Yes, it’s confusing.)
With John on the keys and both on vocals, it’s a nice moment between the two and shows the respect that Egerton has for John and John has for Egerton.
Talks between Prime Minister Theresa May and opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn have collapsed, officials revealed on Friday.
Six weeks of negotiations had aimed to unlock the Brexit impasse which has crippled British politics and led to financial uncertainty in European and global markets.
While some compromise had been possible, “we have been unable to bridge important policy gaps between us”, Labour leader Corbyn wrote to May in a letter later posted on Twitter.
“Even more crucially, the increasing weakness and instability of your government means there cannot be confidence in securing whatever might be agreed between us,” Corbyn wrote.
Theresa May, who plans to make a fourth and likely final effort to win parliamentary approval for her Brexit deal, has been laying out potential timeframes for her resignation.
She had previously told vocal opponents within her own party that she would leave office if the withdrawal agreement her administration had reached with the European Union were agreed by the House of Commons. Such a step would complete the first stage of Britain’s divorce from the EU and set it on the path she had laid out.
June departure
But discontent on Conservative backbenches forced May on Thursday to agree to set out her departure timetable in early June.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay blamed Labour for the breakdown of talks, saying the Conservative government had been willing to make concessions.
“There has been movement in terms of workers’ rights, there has been movement in terms of commitments on environmental standards,” he said during a visit to the Irish border.
But with the government in disarray, the issue for Labour was that any new administration would not feel obliged to stick to any agreements reached during talks with May.
“Cabinet ministers are competing to succeed you, the position of the government has become ever more unstable and its authority eroded,” Corbyn wrote to May on Friday. “Not infrequently, proposals by your negotiating team have been publicly contradicted by statements from other members of the Cabinet.”
Competition to replace Theresa May at this early stage ranges from the centre-right Jeremy Hunt to the hard-right Jacob Rees-Mogg. Yet while replacing the prime minister may ease anger among Conservative activists, the next administration will likely face the same challenges.
“Theresa May won’t look quite so hopeless once whoever takes over confronts the same Parliamentary arithmetic, EU realities and sour national mood,” tweeted Rupert Harrison, a former chair of the UK Council of Economic Advisers.
“The Brexiteer candidates (ie Boris [Johnson] and Dominic Raab) in particular should be very careful what they say during the campaign – temptation clearly to talk tough, but probably odds on that their first action will have to be requesting another extension from the EU.”
Widespread opposition
May’s Brexit deal had met widespread opposition. Hardline right-wing Conservative Eurosceptics say it largely leaves the United Kingdom within EU structures, such as the Customs Union.
Northern Ireland’s DUP, on whose support May depends to command a majority in parliament, says efforts to avoid a “hard border” between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland – keeping Northern Ireland largely aligned with the EU until a new trade deal can be agreed, also known as the “backstop” position – undermines the integrity of the UK, creating a trade border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
And Corbyn’s Labour, the principal opposition party, while politically committed to leaving the EU, also opposes the deal over issues of workers’ rights and those of EU nationals living in Britain and British nationals living within the EU.
The Green Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru, meanwhile, all oppose Brexit outright.
Without the full support of her own party and the DUP, May was relying on assistance from the opposition. If Labour were to abstain in the vote scheduled for the first week of June, there remained a glimmer of hope that May’s deal could pass. That glimmer has now been extinguished.
“Without significant changes, we will continue to oppose the government’s deal as we do not believe it safeguards jobs, living standards and the manufacturing industry in Britain,” Corbyn concluded.
Do whatever it takes, do it fast, find common ground and reach a solution
Carolyn Fairbairn, CBI
European Union negotiators have said repeatedly that the exit deal agreed with May’s administration was the only deal on the table, and so British politicians again face a series of options on which they have previously been unable to find common ground: a “no-deal” exit, a fresh election, or a second referendum.
Another series of “indicative votes” are planned in the House of Commons in the coming weeks to see if any consensus can be reached.
“I think it is an incomprehensible error on my part that I did not intervene in the Brexit campaign owing to British wishes,” Jean-Claude Juncker, European Commission president, told reporters. “So many lies were told, so many of the consequences of a ‘no’ were misrepresented, we as a commission should have spoken up.”
Carolyn Fairbairn, the director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, made a direct appeal to the government: “Do whatever it takes, do it fast, find common ground and reach a solution. If the cross-party talks fail, move on to the next stage. If that fails, move on to something else.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will head to the White House with their Republican counterparts to discuss a budget caps deal. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Top Democrats and Republicans will meet with White House officials next week.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy have agreed to begin negotiations on a two-year deal to lift stiff budget caps, according to multiple sources familiar with the talks.
The “Big 4” congressional leaders will meet with top White House officials next week to formally kick off the discussions, which have the support of President Donald Trump, said the sources.
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The GOP leaders are also pushing for an increase in the debt limit but do not want to formally link it to a budget caps deal. The issue is sure to be part of next week’s session.
Democrats have wanted to link the debt ceiling increase with the budget caps, believing that would increase their leverage in the negotiations. But McConnell, McCarthy and the White House do not want to handle them together. The federal government will hit the debt limit sometime this fall, according to Treasury Department projections.
Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Acting Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will take the lead for the Trump administration in the negotiations, the sources added.
Trump’s decision to support the talks comes after heavy lobbying from McConnell and McCarthy, who warned the president that failure to reach a spending caps agreement could jeopardize Pentagon spending increases that Republicans have fought to obtain. Without action by Congress and the White House, the Pentagon alone would face a cut of $71 billion under current law. Domestic programs would be slashed $55 billion.
Especially for McConnell — who faces a tough Senate map in 2020 — a deal to steer clear of another government shutdown this fall is critical. McConnell worked hard to avoid the partial government shutdown last December, only to see conservatives successfully lobby Trump to reject a stopgap bill that didn’t include funding for his border wall and trigger the 35-day crisis.
Within the White House, officials have debated whether to pursue a budget deal with Democrats or seek to cut spending in an appeal to conservatives, who are alarmed at the $2 trillion-plus increase in federal debt under Trump. Mulvaney and Vought — who have ties to the hardline House Freedom Caucus — opposed a budget boost.
But McConnell and McCarthy have privately pressed Trump to allow them to explore a budget caps agreement with Democrats, saying this is the only way to avoid another lengthy shutdown.
Pelosi and Schumer held Democrats together during that fight and ultimately denied Trump the billions of dollars in new funding for his wall. After Trump folded and reopened the government, he declared a national emergency and diverted already-appropriated Pentagon funds for the wall project, a move that infuriated Democrats who have challenged it in federal court.
The concerted effort by Republicans to begin talks is a relief to Democrats in both chambers, who have been privately worried about the possibility of a disastrous fiscal cliff this fall.
Congress and the White House need to stave off more than $100 billion in across-the-board cuts, a lingering effect of the Obama-era sequester law.
Separately, they must also reach an accord to lift the nation’s debt limit or risk a full-scale credit crisis.
Both deadlines will reach a boiling point around the same time that Congress must pass its annual spending bills in the fall — risking yet another government shutdown over the wall.
The White House had initially resisted talk of another massive deal to lift Congress’ spending caps, a move that could cost as much as $350 billion over two years.
A group of conservatives, led by members of the House Freedom Caucus, have already begun urging the Trump administration to reject any kind of budget deal.
In a letter to Pelosi this week, a group of 30 House Republicans called to keep the spending limits in place.
“Congress should hold overall spending to the caps levels already in place,” they wrote. “Hold to the caps, budget like American families do every day, and let’s work on a bipartisan basis to ensure a bright future for our sons and daughters.”
Yet Trump himself appeared open to a deal earlier this week. Trump left a meeting with McConnell on Tuesday seemingly open to a deal with Democrats, after McConnell again laid out the case for averting the budget cuts.
McConnell also met privately with Mulvaney and Mnuchin on the matter on Thursday.
Game of Thrones might be coming to an end but don’t fret, there’s just as much drama unfolding on YouTube.
Tati Westbrook has uploaded a follow up video to her scathing 43-minute “BYE SISTER…” rant surrounding fellow beauty YouTuber James Charles, which has been viewed over 47 million times. The new vid, titled, “Why I did it…” features a more somber Westbrook, dressed in all black.
“I’m not back, I needed to hop on, answers some questions,” Westbrook explains. The beauty guru goes on to confess that she never thought her feud with Charles would reach the “magnitude” that it has. She also admits that she thought she would be the one to lose subscribers. “I do really want the hate to stop,” she pleads. “I just want you guys to know that there is no celebration in what’s happening. If I could give all of the new success back, and the new subscribers back, I would.”
Westbrook has gained about 4 million subscribers since the original video came out, while Charles has lost millions, according to Social Blade. Westbrook doesn’t apologize for her video, though, saying, “I think people deserve a wake up call and I think people need to be called out for their actions and I think someone’s gotta do it.”
Westbrook says that both her and her family have been approached for interviews. “If I really wanted to to take him down, and ruin him, and cancel James Charles, I would’ve been at every studio and I would’ve been sharing every little detail that I could. And just know that I didn’t.”
“I think that we owe it to James to let him figure it out and heal and I hope that he does that,” she continues.
Westbrook fights tears throughout the video. “I really, really hope you guys see that this is a cut that is much deeper than vitamins,” she says with watering eyes.
“Wow, the internet is the only place where if you cry too much, you’re a victim, and if suck it up and power through, you’re a bitch. And I’m just trying to find the middle,” Westbrook sobs.
Westbrook’s tearful message might have helped Charles, who appears to be regaining some of his lost subscribers. According to Social Blade, the embattled ex-Cover Boy has gained 26,000 subscribers since Thursday night, when Westbrook’s video went up.
Honesty, who needs dragons in Westeros when career damaging hair vitamins exist?
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May is National Masturbation Month, and we’re celebrating with Feeling Yourself, a series exploring the finer points of self-pleasure.
So you’ve decided to masturbate. Congrats!
If you’re new to masturbation or haven’t enjoyed it in the past, creating comfortable conditions for self-pleasure can be daunting. Should you put music on or keep the room quiet? What about lighting? Should you use toys or no? It’s understandable to have a lot of questions or to be unsure where to begin.
The great news: You can basically do whatever you want, because this is all about you. “The best thing about masturbation is that you don’t have to be concerned about anything other than pleasing yourself,” says Lisa Finn, brand manager and sex educator at the sex toy boutique Babeland. “Since it’s only you and your body, there’s no pressure to please someone else, to worry about what you may look or sound like, or to navigate if trying something new may not work.” The world is your oyster; you just have to find out what feels good for you.
Finn does recommend that, no matter what, you silence your phone before you get started. “Getting inundated with Slack notifications right as you’re getting hot and heavy is a very easy way to kill the mood,” she says.
If you live with other people, creating a space free of distractions can be a bit more complicated. If your door has a lock you should lock it, obviously, but if your housemates are a little too comfortable walking into your room, it’s worth having a conversation about respecting personal space when your bedroom door is closed. If you want, you can even tell them you’ve taken up meditation. (Also a great pursuit!) And it’s important that you respect your roommates’ space, too: If you’ll be watching porn or listening to audio erotica, use headphones.
Elsewhere in the room, it really depends on what turns you on in particular — and Finn emphasizes that you should give yourself space to discover your preferences down to the tiny details. Is there a song you always find arousing when it comes up on shuffle? Try playing a Spotify radio station based on that track. Does bright overhead lighting remind you of your extremely unsexy workday? Consider turning off the lights and opting for soothing candles instead. There are even candles that double as (not-too-hot) massage wax.
‘You don’t have to be concerned about anything other than pleasing yourself.’
Finn also notes that you might find it easier to reach orgasm if you’re warm. “Try touching yourself under the covers, or even in a warm bath or shower,” she says. You can also take warmth into account when deciding what (if anything) to wear, but it’s worth considering what kind of clothing makes you feel sexy, too. “If you’re playing with fantasy, throw on some lingerie or even a costume,” Finn says. “If you just want to focus on being comfortable, break out those cozy boxer shorts or wear nothing at all.”
Then there’s the matter of accessories. Above all, Finn recommends using lube. “Whether you’re using hands or a toy, lube is going to add sensation and make everything slicker and more pleasurable,” she says.
I bought batteries for my toothbrush but put them in my vibrator instead because priorities.
As far as sex toys go, the right one for you depends — once again — on your personal needs. If you’re worried about your hands getting tired or if you already know you need a lot of stimulation, Finn recommends using a powerful, wand-style vibrator like the iconic Hitachi Magic Wand Plus. If you’re interested in internal stimulation, she suggests a “firm dildo for finding or hitting the G-spot or prostate,” like the NJoy Fun Wand.
Of course, while orgasms are good (lol), Finn stresses that they’re not the only good thing about touching yourself. “Masturbating is a great way to explore the body and learn what works and what doesn’t for you,” Finn says. “Instead of focusing on a ‘finish line,’ enjoy all of the wonderful sensations that your body can feel, and enjoy taking time to get in touch with your physical self.”
Daily Trends Hunter 