A Little Bit of What We Know about Semyon Varlamov's Domestic Abuse Case

A

while ago, I wrote a rather long post on Reddit regarding Colorado Avalanche goaltender Semyon Varlamov's domestic abuse case. It appeared in the thread, "Stolen from r/soccer: Persuade r/hockey that a popular opinion held here is wrong." Recently, Dario Ronzone expressed a desire to use that post to educate ignorant hockey fans, so it occurred to me that it would be better to move what I said on Reddit to a slightly more permanent location. Although the world's foremost expert on anything to do with Varlamov is vtcapsfan99, what I've pasted below still provides some truth on the matter. Presently, most people believe he got away with domestic abuse because he's a rich athlete.

In cooperation with Mile High Hockey's Cheryl Bradley, vtcapsfan99 is taking on the arduous task of presenting all the evidence she has accumulated on the case, which will do better than I have here to serve as a starting point for people looking to understand the true story.

What I wrote is pasted verbatim.

The Sunsets are Orange, and I Still Don't Care

I

stopped supporting the Denver Broncos when Josh McDaniels was fired, supported the St. Louis Rams when he coached for them, and now support the New England Patriots. I also wished for professional success for certain players (e.g. Kyle Orton, Knowshon Moreno, Brandon Lloyd), but only wished for team success when they went to new teams. My NFL philosophy, now, is more about rooting for individuals instead of teams. Consequently, I have the contradictory task of rooting for the Pats (McDaniels), Miami Dolphins (Moreno), and Buffalo Bills (Orton). (In other words, everyone but the Jets.)

I realise admitting I'm a McDaniels supporter makes me look crazy to many Broncos fans, or those who perceive him as a sleeper agent sent by Bill Belichick to destroy the Broncos. In the first year after his firing, I got into a fair amount of arguments with them, but then, I've resisted responding to thoughtless jabs at the former. Today, though, I was spurred into thinking about the events that led up to why I quit on the team I loved so much, and realised I've never written (in detail, anyway) about one of the catalysts. I thought today, with the 2014 NFL season officially underway, would be a good one to revisit the day I quit on the Broncos.

Jake Plummer

Jake Plummer was my favourite Bronco by far when he was their QB, and even though they lost the AFC Championship game in the 2005 season, I always felt that was a magical season. Not only was Champ Bailey the best defender in the world that year, but Jake the Snake epitomised the creativity and excitement that I loved about football. He was the opposite of the sterile Peyton Manning of the world, and lacked spoilt persona NFL QBs tend to have.

Following that 2005 season, however, Jay Cutler was drafted, and the inevitability of Plummer's departure was all but written in stone. When the 2006 season started with Cutler on the bench and Plummer still starter, I convinced myself that maybe things would be okay. As it should be, the rookie would learn under the veteran, and Jake the Snake would once again get to lead the Broncos to the playoffs. That wasn't meant to be.
Broncos fans have always had a weird relationship with QBs. When you have John Elway for two decades, it becomes hard to see any successor without Elway colouring your view. Plummer couldn't escape Elway's shadow. When Cutler was drafted (he with the arm stronger than Elway's... or so they say), Plummer had Elway hanging over him, and a cannon-armed rookie tugging at his jersey. And then, with every game—and most crucially after two games in a row were lost—Broncos fans and media started clutching that jersey harder and harder. People didn't want Plummer anymore. Mike Shanahan, for all his power in Denver, couldn't resist. He benched Plummer, and the season died with Jake the Snake's career.

The Video that Duped the News World

I

t was fixed just half an hour later, but one still finds it remarkable that no news outlet, however reputable, was free of the deception of a video whose footage was taken over a year ago. If you check the original article, you'll find it no longer exists, because the Telegraph already deleted it. The article was a posting of this video, claiming it was taken during the search for flight MH370 in the Indian Ocean:

It's a harrowing piece of footage, to be sure, but in its haste to share it, the Telegraph neglected to look at its title: "LPG/C Venere, Hurricane, 19/jan/2013". How vague. Perhaps they could have taken a second step to confirm its veracity, by looking at when it was published: "Jan 28, 2013". Instead, this video was miscast, first by one source (intentionally or otherwise), and then by dozens of other penguins looking to jump in:

The Post that Got Me Hellbanned on Hacker News

A Preface

Two mornings ago on Hacker News (HN), tokenadult linked to an article on the Wall Street Journal website by Bill and Melinda Gates, titled, "Three Myths on the World's Poor". Although I respect what the Gateses are trying to achieve, and agree with them that poverty reduction is not a lost cause, I felt the arguments stated in their article had a number of flaws. After reading it, I promptly spent around two hours writing a response. I didn't intend to writing something akin to a full-blown article; present circumstances merely elicited me to say more than I usually do on HN¹. On the case of poverty, I felt like I had something more substantive to add, if largely anecdotal (and therefore perhaps of little scientific value).

As stated in the post, I'm in southeast Asia. I'm visiting with friends and former clients (note the previously-mentioned editing detours), and with the help of local guidance, have managed to see more of this region than i would have cooped up in an expensive hotel in the city centre. I haven't seen the worst, to be sure, but I haven't had a blanket draped over my eyes, either. That's all I'll say on this.

I returned to HN in the evening to check whether there were any replies. To a combination of horror and dismay, the first comment was another user, aptwebapps, telling me, "[Y]ou've been hell-banned for over 500 days, apparently." Simply, I fell victim, without warning, to HN's policy of shunning unwanted users by making their posts go unread. Discovering this fact was a jolt to my senses.

What got me hellbanned follows.

Fool's Gold: A Perspective on the Bipolar Politics of the United States

Doug Ross posts, in an article titled, "Change! 1 in 2 new graduates are jobless or underemployed", a cartoon from TobyToons. If you don’t want to click those links, the image is of an elephant (symbolising a Republican) talking about sensible matters in a measured manner, followed by a donkey (symbolising a Democrat) raving about ludicrous matters in a crazed manner.

I will admit that I was initially shocked to see a Republican accusing a Democrat of infantilising political discourse, when Europeans are generally used to seeing it come from sources like Fox News, and then mocked by John Stewart and his ilk. It was a surprise, for that brief moment, that the Elephant would consider the Donkeys on the other side of the coin to be made up of raging maniacs¹, but I quickly got over it when I remembered that this incident is only further evidence of the aforementioned coin metaphor: Republicans and Democrats have become, if they weren't always, the Judean People's Front and People's Front of Judea, the opposing factions in Monty Python's Life of Brian who, while ostensibly having the same goal of expulsing the Romans, instead spend most of their time squabbling over minute and irrelevant ideological differences.

In the cartoon, there are screams of, "$ilver $poons! War on hoodies! War on dogs! War on contraception!" All exclamation marks accompanying the Democratic mascot, while the Republican has only periods and a single incident of ellipses; thus, the artist sees only what's wrong with that other faction, the "wars" they wage while ignoring the inconvenience of his own faction's idiocy. Things such as bombing another nation for reasons American intelligence analysts themselves refute^{2 3}. Or defending one's sponsorship of a bill that allows medical institutions to cite religious reasons⁴ for denying women certain medical services with: "My father's a veterinarian." Or the made-up controversy of Barack Obama's birth certificate Or the made-up controversy⁵ of Barack Obama’s socialist agenda. Or the made-up controversy of Barack Obama’s nonexistent Islamism. Or criticising John F. Kennedy for sharing a certain belief⁶ with Thomas Jefferson. Or, say, the famed death panels.

To their counterparts, it is the Elephant playing the role of comic foil, and so turns the wheel. How does neither side see that, regardless of sex, race, or any other superficial identifier, every person they vote into power is a mere variation of the Old White Guy prototype? For one, they are too close to see the big picture, but more importantly, it's because with that very myopia, the big picture is not what they perceive it to be.

The Problematic Ethics of ‘Alien vs. Predator’

In Alien vs. Predator, Sebastian de Rosa (Raoul Bova) says to Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan), “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”¹ The enemy in this film’s case is the titular Alien species, and the friend, therefore, is the Predator.

Alexa Woods, played by Sanaa Lathan, showing the mark of a successful hunt on her left cheek.

(via scifi-women.tumblr.com)

Why?

Later, Woods says, upon seeing the Queen, “You are one ugly mother...” (She trails off, but “fucker” would have been the next word.) It is said with clear hatred, but, again, why? As Alien vs. Predator’s main character, Woods takes on the task of fighting the xenomorphs alongside Scar (played by Ian Whyte), the main Predator. By the end of the film, they form a bond, of sorts, of the kind shared by two warriors (and from the looks they exchange after Scar unmasks, one imagines they would share much more in the pornographic remake), as well as sharing the acid-tinged symbols of a successful kill on their faces.

How does Woods come to this point? We can make our own reasons for siding with the Predators. Like the Aliens, they have two legs, two arms, a head, a mouth, and, presumably in the Aliens’ case, two eyes, so anthropomorphising is easy, but perhaps the Aliens are uglier, less methodical, more gruesome in nature, making it harder for her and us to identify with them. The Aliens appear to kill and capture without thought and feeling, while Scar appears to be intelligent and thoughtful. The Aliens are merciless; Scar spares the life of Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) - for a moment.

But it is here, that we encounter a problem the film itself seemingly attempts to avoid: that in anthropomorphising and siding with the Predators, they are choosing to ignore their past transgressions. There are examples of this occurring in history, such as Winston Churchill temporarily putting aside his problems with Joseph Stalin and communism to fight the advance of Adolf Hitler. In this case, however, one may argue that Churchill was, as the film says, making friends with the enemy of his enemy, with the sticking point being that the enemy alongside whom he was fighting was the lesser evil.

Can the same be said of Alien vs. Predator? Let us look at the facts, as stated by the characters themselves². In one scene, Sebastian de Rosa explains the film’s backstory to Woods, after (somewhat improbably) deciphering the “text” on the walls of the underground pyramid. First, the dialogue, and then a breakdown of what is being said actually means:

Sebastian de Rosa: Thousands of years ago, these hunters found a backwater planet. They taught humans how to build, and were worshiped as gods. Every hundred years, the gods would return. And when they did, they would expect a sacrifice. Humans were used to breed the ultimate prey. The hunters would battle with these great serpents to prove themselves worthy to carry the mark. But if the hunters lost, they made sure nothing survived. An entire civilisation wiped out overnight.

Alexa Woods: So, the humanoids³, the hunters, they brought those creatures here to hunt?

Sebastian de Rosa: And they use us like cattle. We're hosts for them to breed. The heat bloom was designed to lure us down here. This whole thing was a trap. Without us, there could be no hunt.

Okay, so, the Predators taught humans how to build (good), and for it, were worshipped as gods (bad). When they came to earth they expected, and were given, sacrifices (very bad); before ultimately using humans as tools to build themselves guinea pigs to hunt (really bad). Hunt, we will add, not for sustenance, but pride and glory (ego bad). And if they lost their game, what would they do? Destroy an entire civilisation (crazy bad). Finally, to bring the point home, we are told that, despite teaching humans to build (still good) and being treated as gods by them (still bad for humility), the Predators still used their home as a deadly playground (they don’t really care about humans bad), and used them as cattle for their own means (bad for humans; good for unintended vegetarian propaganda), right up to this very day, as evidenced by the fact that the characters of the film were purposely lured into the pyramid, so as to be impregnated and create the Aliens required for the Predators’ game (see, I told you they don’t really care about humans, so it’s still bad).

In this scene from the film, the Predators  are depicted as ruling over an

Aztec-like  civilization. (via avp.wikia.com)

What’s the one redeeming feature of the Predators’ time on Earth? They taught humans how to build. What did they do with those humans? They wiped them all out.

And what is the Alien species’ role in this? It is nothing but prey for the Predators, destined to be hunted down and slaughtered, endlessly, as long as glory is tied to murder.

Though the Aliens are merciless killing machines, as they were bred to be, how does the film legitimately justify its position in the end? Is the sentry gun that mindlessly shoots anything that moves as evil as the soldier who put it there? Evidently, the fact that the soldier is “humanoid” is enough.

Alien vs. Predator ultimately does a poor job of communicating its tagline, that “whichever wins... we lose”, but the point is nevertheless subtly made: the Aliens will inevitably appear elsewhere, and kill everything in their path until they themselves are eradicated; and when the time for another hunt arrives, humans will once again find themselves unknowingly manipulated for their one-time benefactors’ end. It is an analogy, but a fair one, that in watching this film, I was reminded of the ethics of big game hunting. Humans perceive animals like lions and tigers to be, much like the Aliens, mindless, voracious killing machines, whose sole purposes in life are to hunt and procreate. Some still attempt to hunt them for the thrill of it, and the justification for valuing a human life over theirs is that we are an intelligent species with the gift of self-consciousness, while they are thoughtless gunpowder-fodder, put here for our benefit by unknown, unseen gods.

Similarly, do the Predators view the Aliens and other inhabitants of Earth, and similarly, must we view Alien vs. Predator’s problematic ethics: while, once upon a time, Churchill made peace with a fiend to fight a force that believed it could stand dominion over the rest of the world, in this war, we are on that force’s side.

Notes:

¹ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0370263/quotes?qt=qt0322815
² http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0370263/quotes?qt=qt0322794 
³ As an aside, note that Woods uses the word “humanoid” to identify the Predators.
⁴ I acknowledge that Alien vs. Predator isn't a particularly good film.  In fact, the only reason I watched it was because, a) I'm a Lance Henriksen fanboy, and, b) I was on an Alien marathon and, naturally, had to watch the two crossover sequels.  Nevertheless, I believe that, despite the film's various problems, it is telling, in an age where major films have to pass through a test audience, that we can find the kind of problem encountered in this article.  Did the writers not see it?  Was it ignored for the sake of plot?  Am I seeing things that aren't really there?  It's all very possible, and a fascinating study in human nature.

How Much Did Your Bacon Cost? Or: Watch the Video at Your Own Peril

I'm just going to come out and say it: if you're squeamish, faint-hearted, love animals, or have at least one testicle, consider not watching the below video.  Many will not have a problem with it, but it's disturbing enough that if you going into it unprepared and without forewarning, you may be unexpectedly traumatised.

Of course, being shocked into action is the very point of videos like this.  By preparing you for it, I may be subverting the filmmaker's intentions, and undoing what they're trying to achieve. Nevertheless, I don't think it's fair to one's psyche to bowl a bouncer when no one's been hammering down cover drives.  Rather you know what you're getting yourself into.

My grandfather, a farmer, owns a small number of cattle, chickens, and pigs.  Growing up in that world of self-sustainability, I am not a stranger to the slaughter of livestock, having personally witnessed and been involved in it multiple times.  It's not pleasant.  Once you've seen life drain from a living thing's eyes, your mind's eye can't really ever escape it.  In fact, I have documented those events before to shed light on the suffering and trauma these animals experience before dying.

But we have to understand this in context.  As with many rural farmers, my grandfather is poor.  He is not a commercial rancher.  He cannot afford specialised means with which to kill them; the methods he uses are the most efficient and humane available to him, though they are not perfect.  The blood stains his clothes and the stench of it does not easily escape his home, but I am heartened when I see the respect with which he treats them, before and after death.  Although he has the characteristic, dour demeanour of his generation, I have not once seen him mistreat them.  Within his limited abilities to do so, he gives them a good life and cares about them as well as for them.

In killing his own animals (which he does only for special and specific occasions), he is eschewing the cheaper alternatives, and, more importantly, taking responsibility for the food he eats.  To him, the blood is on no one's hands but his*.  At the very least, he understands the realities of his actions, which, beyond the ethics of it, have logistical repercussions relating to maintaining one's finite food supply.

The things you see in the video are abhorrent.  There is no excuse for them.  How rich is my grandfather that he, whose home is in such disrepair that it has been defined as a shack, has the wealth to let his animals receive a modicum of respect?  How do the purveyors justify the torture wrought by their employees?  As my grandfather needs to eat, do they need to manually castrate piglets without anaesthesia for their own sustainability?

And, more importantly, is the bacon that accompanies our eggs tasty enough to justify the actions of our feeders?  I did not sit well when I ate the animal in whose death I had a hand.  I wondered whether I enjoyed the spices in this meal more than any other, and whether I was no better than anyone else if I did.  Even if we cannot afford better, we must know that we can do better.  We have to do better.  We just have to.

This is not an argument against eating meat.  It's an appeal for you to think about the food you eat.  I have brought you to the watering hole.  Whether you drink is up to you.



Source: "Undercover Investigation on Oklahoma Pig Farms Reveals Systemic Cruelty of Factory Farming"

* Although, in fairness, in this case as well as store-bought meat, the blood stains all those who endorse the process by (purchasing and) eating the product.  It is certainly on mine, too, as killing the animal requires more than one person and I have assisted.