Ricochet

L + Ratio'd

"I am August. This is a video that I did not want to make. In a strange way one could also say that my entire career was leading into this."

"Before you start to question why this now and dig up my past and micro analyze everything for an agenda, I'd be the first one to admit that this should've been a lot sooner. It's a bit selfish. But I hope you will understand when I say not only my security was under threat, so was my sister's. I could risk something that might happen to me. But that was what kept me from it."

"No, these incidents didn't just happen back in the day. Recent incidents related to prison security has convinced me that this threat I was facing still remains."

"Twenty years ago, I along with ten other members of a now shut-down NGO submitted report to the government regarding the increase in the number of patients admitted to psychiatry wards and comatose patients during the period when this city was under rigorous laws and heightened surveillance as part of an anti-crime drive."

"This was a highly controversial report at the time. The government condemned this by an official press-release quote 'correlation not accounting to causation and pandering to criminality.' The government had clarified that while some misuse of power did happen, but measures were put in place to address them. The defense was that even if the reported figures were true, it constituted a tiny fraction of people who were detained."

"The spokesperson back then, had advised us to redirect our efforts to people who are in 'real need.' While they were reassuring that some of the actions carried out by the government in the past were 'regrettable', seeing their silence on current events, we as people have to be doubtful."

"The very people responsible for my silence are still holding on to power. Some are honorary members of the police, some are senators, some are defense contractors. Every day I wake up to these familiar faces on the news, I am reminded of the helplessness I felt as an adult who lived as a prisoner in her own home. I had to abandon my principles and purpose of choosing my career. "

"Recently, I was diagnosed with appendicitis and had my procedure in the general hospital. I was surprised when I saw the reports. It was a slight discomfort that I had felt the previous day which I thought I would mention the doctors as part of a routine checkup. They were surprised that I should be experiencing shooting pain by that time, but was not showing any signs of it."

"Except, I couldn't feel any of it. I have a low pain tolerance. There is no way I could've tolerated that. The doctor's I went to can attest to this. My medical records are linked in the description."

"You might wonder why I am embarrassing myself in front of the whole world. Over a decade of my life, I had been subjected to psychological trauma which I believe led to this condition. But this is not just about me."

"Months ago, we all saw what happened. In a press meet with a live audience, a prominent board member of a large corporation shot and killed a bunch of people. I've been thinking about that incident at large. I have to catch myself as a human rights advocate as I wonder whether that man was guilty."

"I've heard of incidents involving strange behavior in patients from accounts of health-care workers during the period we investigated. Some of them had an intense fear of light, some trauma related response, disturbed sleep, poor appetite and other things. The common anomaly seemed to be that the patients did not like interactions, avoided eye contact as much as possible."

"They preferred to keep their eyes closed most of the time. Therapists lamented the failure of the patients in socializing but agreed that their behavior could be a coping mechanism and generally reduced their stress levels."

"If a person could hinder my ability to feel pain through psychological conditioning, is it outside the realm of possibility for such a person to be able to make a man pull a trigger on live TV?"

"If my worst fears are true, there could be people out there, with abilities powerful enough that impede free-will and consent, the very rules that any society is based on."

"How we as a society address such a threat without going overboard keeping civil liberties intact is the question, we all need to ask ourselves."

"I'm doing this as I feel like I shouldn't regret not speaking out. Thanks."

The like to dislike ratio was twenty percent. So many people were owned and destroyed in the comments.

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