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1shirt2shirtredshirtdeadshirt · 2 years

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Early Jim Kirk: Why So Serious?

To the people who said that Paul Wesley's Captain Kirk was "too serious" or that it "wasn't our Jim Kirk":

Let's have a kiki, shall we? :)

A lot of folks seem to forget who Jim used to be before meeting him in TOS.

In an interview, Paul Wesley discussed how different Jim's early character and life was from TOS Kirk. Wesley's study of Jim and his early characterisation was in fact based on TOS descriptions and relevant lore surrounding it. I was not at all phased by the Jim we saw, as early Jim is described as quite a departure from our flirty, confident TOS Jim. Wesley did his homework.

From the chat that Kirk has with Gary Mitchell in TOS (Where No Man Has Gone Before 01x03) and Bones in Shore Leave (01x15) re: Finnegan, we learned in Jim's younger years, Kirk didn't always have that swagger. In fact, Jim used to be a rather serious nerd.

Kirk in the academy was described as "a stack of books with legs", "positively grim", and "watch out for Lieutenant Kirk. In his class, you either think or sink".

He also adhered to Starfleet rules far more in his early years a la Boimler. For example, he reported an error that older officer and very good friend of his Benjamin Finney made on the USS Republic, leading to Finney's demotion and later the events of Court Martial (01x20). He reported one of his own besties to HQ and got him demoted. Quite a departure from how often Kirk violates Starfleet orders and directives for Spock on TOS. Again, he is not the same Jim. Character growth.

I think folks get so wrapped up in Spock being the thinking guy and Kirk being the action guy that they forget: You kind of have to be a brilliant genius and thinker to even get a starship command, let alone the flagship. Jim is not dumb and never was; he is exceptionally smart. Spock is just a freaking GIGA GENIUS and anyone standing next to that might look less bright in contrast. But make no mistake, Jim is also brilliant as a military man and diplomat.

Jim is often stereotyped as a swaggering meathead when he is actually an intelligent and capable diplomat even from his earliest years with Starfleet. As a cadet, he was decorated by Starfleet with the Palm Leaf for his peace mission work on Axanar (Court Martial 01x20). As a Captain, Jim helped to complete just as many successful federation member recruitments as he did take names and kick ass.

Jim loves chess. He loves his dad's old books and classic literature. He memorizes quotes from those texts and references them constantly in TOS. How many jocks do you know out here memorizing classic literature to reference even now in our time? One of Jim's most precious, prized possessions is an old text copy of "A Tale of Two Cities" he got as a gift for his birthday from Spock.

There are still those glimpses of old Jim planted throughout TOS and the movies.

As you examine him and his past, every description of him as a young man in the original series was that he was a nerd. Kirk, as a character, shows how much we change as people from high school/uni to adulthood.

The early Jim Kirk is not the Kirk we knew and loved, and he often comes as a surprise to folks accustomed to the Jim he later becomes. He grows into his own over time and finds himself, like many of us. But Wesley's portrayal seemed surprisingly apt to me, considering early descriptions of James T. Kirk's character.

TLDR: Jim Kirk was described in his early years as "serious", "positively grim", "a stack of books with legs", top of his class, and would report you to HQ for a crumb. This is not the Captain Kirk you knew who took command of the Enterprise in 2265. Jim Kirk used to be a serious, passionate Starfleet nerd.

All in all, I thought Paul Wesley's character study with all this considered was

Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted X Talk about baby James Tiberius Kirk.

I'd love to hear from you folks, feel free to chip in, add to this or correct any errors. :) LLAP.🖖

EDIT: See Part 2 of this Jim Kirk SNW AU Analysis where I respond to an ask from @letteredlettered; we get into the importance of the Triumvirate for Kirk Prime, as well as the relevance of why Jim Kirk being assigned the Farragut would be a poor choice of command commission for him. It further solidifies that this is not “our Kirk”, but an AU where we see what would come of our Kirk if he did not get the flagship commission or meet his boays to form the Trek Trinity.

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crowhoonter · 4 months

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The Star Wars prequels are fascinating movies, especially when looking at them from the perspective of the story they tell. They are a commentary on contemporary American politics, and show the fragility of the idea of democracy. The Republic has been primed to collapse for a while even by the first movie, being incapable of stopping the Trade Federation from blockading Naboo. You see throughout the films everyone come to realize the position the Republic is in, and everyone comes to a different conclusion on what to do.

Palpatine notices first, and arranges its downfall to fulfill his ambitions. The Jedi notice it, but would rather keep to the Status Quo than make any meaningful change. As Mace Windu says, they're keepers of the peace, they don't get involved until absolutely necessary and indeed, too late. Anakin sees it and decides that the system is broken and needs a strong authority to rule over the masses. Padme tries to enact change through the system, an endeavor doomed to fail from the beginning. Dooku decides the system can only be changed by uprooting it entirely, leading to his fall to the dark side and authoritarianism.

We see everyone become more and more accepting of these extremes as well. Ideas and concepts that would once be scarcely entertained become frighteningly close to reality, such as the Jedi suggesting that they forcibly remove Palpatine from office and set up their own provisional government effectively. Of course this culminates in the establishment of The Empire, and as Padme says, democracy dies with thunderous applause.

The best part is that by the end of the second film, the Republic and Jedi have lost. The moment the Clones are accepted as the army of the Republic and the Jedi lead them, its over. An army of faceless drones, indoctrinated from birth, built solely to betray. The Clones only know loyalty to their nation and its commander, and will follow the will of said commander even if it goes against the ideals they are supposed to represent. Good soldiers follow orders after all.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the prequels is that they are terrible. These are not good films, the dialogue is atrocious, the quality of acting is all over the place, the pacing is strange, and the CGI is hideous. Revenge of the Sith comes close many times to being a good movie, but always just misses the mark. Somehow, these movies made a captivating story of a nation's and young man's slow fall to fascism, and managed to bury it under a mediocre romantic subplot and strange storytelling choices.

All that said, I love the prequels for what they try to say and what they could have been. These could have been generation defining films, easily surpassing the originals, but ended up a joke. They have a litany of problems (not even gonna touch on the... interesting accents) but under all that, there is an incredibly compelling story that is ever more relevant as time goes on.

#going off of what is presented in the movies here #so minimal references to the shows #mainly because of the clones #I hate the inhibitor chips and the concept behind them #it not only takes away the agency of the clones #but also gives them an out to say “it's not their fault guys”#maybe I'll write an overly long post about that sometime #star wars #star wars prequels #the prequels #revenge of the sith #attack of the clones #the phantom menace #text post

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playitagin · 10 months

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1976-Joachim Peiper

Joachim Peiper (30 January 1915 – 14 July 1976) was a German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer and war criminal convicted for the Malmedy massacre of U.S. Army prisoners of war (POWs). During the Second World War in Europe, Peiper served as personal adjutant to Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS, and as a tank commander in the Waffen-SS. Peiper personified Nazi ideology as a purportedly ruthless glory-hound commander who was indifferent to the combat casualties of Battle Group Peiper, and who encouraged, expected, and tolerated war crimes by his Waffen-SS soldiers.

As adjutant to Himmler, Peiper witnessed the SS implement the Holocaust with ethnic cleansing and genocide of Jews in Eastern Europe; facts that he obfuscated and denied in the post–War period. As a tank commander, Peiper served in the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH) in the Eastern Front and in the Western Front, first as a battalion commander and then as a regimental commander. Peiper fought in the Third Battle of Kharkov and in the Battle of the Bulge, from which battles his eponymous battle group – Kampfgruppe Peiper – became notorious for committing war crimes against civilians and PoWs.

In the Malmedy Massacre Trial, the U.S. military tribunal established Peiper's command responsibility for the Malmedy massacre (1944) and sentenced him to death, which later was commuted to life in prison, then 35 years. In Italy, Peiper was accused of having committed the Boves massacre (1943); that investigation ended for lack of war-crime evidence that Peiper ordered the summary killing of Italian civilians.

Upon release from prison, Peiper worked for the Porsche and Volkswagen automobile companies and later moved to France, where he worked as a freelance translator. Throughout his post-war life, Peiper was very active in the social network of ex–SS men centred upon the right-wing organisation HIAG (Mutual Aid Association of Former Members of the Waffen-SS).

In 1972, Joachim and Sigurd Peiper moved to Traves, Haute-Saône, in eastern France, where he owned a house. Under the pseudonym "Rainer Buschmann", Peiper worked as a self-employed English-to-German translator for the German publisher Stuttgarter MotorBuch Verlag, translating books of military history.[27] Despite his biography and working pseudonymously, they lived under his true, German name, "Joachim Peiper", and soon attracted the notice of anti-fascists.

The confirmation of Peiper's Nazi identity and presence in France attracted journalists to whom Peiper readily gave interviews, wherein he claimed that he was a victim of Communist harassment due to his role in the war. In an interview (J’ai payé "I Already Have Paid"), Peiper said he was an innocent man who had paid for his war crimes (referring to the Malmedy massacre) with twelve years of prison. He said he was innocent of the earlier Boves massacre war crime in Italy. He also said "In 1940, French people weren't brave, that's why I'm here". These insulting remarks angered the press and residents. It was reported that he and his wife left France and moved to the German Federal Republic due to ongoing death threats.

On Bastille Day 14 July 1976, French anti-Nazis attacked and torched Peiper's house in Traves. When the fire was extinguished, firefighters found the charred remains of a man holding a pistol and a .22 calibre rifle, as if defending himself.[128] The arson investigators determined that person had died from smoke inhalation. The anti-Nazi political group The Avengers claimed responsibility for the arson that killed Peiper; nonetheless, because of the destruction caused by the arson, the French police authorities remained unconvinced that Joachim Peiper was the person found.

#Jul.14.1976 #date of death #Joachim Peiper #German SS officer #history today

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 5 months

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Capitalism: trickling down bootstraps since the Industrial Revolution.

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 6, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

DEC 7, 2023

In the Washington Post today, Marianne LeVine, Isaac Arnsdorf, and Josh Dawsey reported that the Trump camp is eager to get people to stop focusing on Trump’s authoritarian talk, noting that Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) says the presidential candidate was just joking when he said he would be a dictator on the first day of a return to the White House. While the Republican base appears to like Trump’s threats against the people they have come to hate, two Trump advisers told the reporters that “recent stories about his plans for a second term are not viewed as helpful for the general election.”

Republicans have also moved quickly to cut ties with Florida Republican Party chair Christian Ziegler, who is under police investigation for rape. Ziegler’s wife, Bridget Ziegler, co-founded Moms for Liberty, an organization that has focused on removing from schools books that they find objectionable, generally books by or about racial or ethnic minorities or LGBTQ+ people. Often Moms for Liberty members have implied, or even claimed, that those trying to protect school libraries are sexual predators or “groomers.” Ziegler herself has been active in shaping anti-LGBTQ+ policies in the state.

But the police and court documents about the case revealed that the Zieglers and the woman Ziegler allegedly raped had participated in a three-way sexual relationship in the past. The rape allegedly occurred after they had set up another encounter that Bridget could not make. The woman then canceled, telling Ziegler “I was mainly in it for her.” He went to her home anyway.

The story of a key anti-LGBTQ+ activist engaging in same-sex activity as part of a threesome sent Moms for Liberty hurrying to say that Bridget Ziegler was no longer on their board (although both Zieglers were still on their advisory board) and purge her name from their website. And though no charges have yet been filed, Florida governor Ron DeSantis has called on Christian Ziegler to resign from his position at the head of the state Republican Party.

The Zieglers helped to tie the Republican Party to Moms for Liberty shortly after the organization formed in January 2021, and DeSantis was very much on board, apparently seeing their message of taking the war against “woke” to the schools as a political winner. But, as Amanda Marcotte pointed out in Salon, the 2022 midterms revealed that most voters did not like the extremism of that group and that it was a political liability.

The fact that DeSantis is dropping his former ally Ziegler so fast suggests that DeSantis is eager to divorce himself from both the story and from the extremism of Moms for Liberty.

The Trump Republicans took another hit today as well, when a grand jury in the state of Nevada charged six people who falsely posed as electors in 2020 in order to file fake electoral votes for Trump to replace the state’s real votes for now-President Joe Biden. The six Republicans charged with filing false documents include the chair and the vice chair of the Nevada Republican Party. If convicted, they face up to nine years in prison and $15,000 in fines.

Nevada is the third state to charge the fake electors with crimes. Georgia and Michigan have also done so.

Ten fake electors in Wisconsin today settled a civil lawsuit over their own participation in Trump’s false-elector scheme. The settlement involved correcting the historical record. The ten agreed to withdraw their paperwork with the false information, explain in writing to the federal offices that the filings had been “part of an attempt to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential election results,” and acknowledge that Biden won the 2020 election. Going forward, they agreed never again to serve as presidential electors in an election in which Trump is running.

But while there are signs that even leading Republicans recognize that the extremism of the Trump Republicans is unpopular in the country, Trump Republicans are tightening their hold on Congress. Today former House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced that he will resign from Congress at the end of this month. Far-right MAGA Republicans ousted McCarthy from the speaker’s chair in October.

Representative Patrick McHenry (R-NC), a McCarthy ally who took over as acting House speaker after McCarthy’s removal, announced yesterday that he had changed his plans from earlier this year and will not run for reelection.

While hardly moderates—both refused to work with Democrats either to pass legislation or to elect a speaker—they appear to be ceding ground to the MAGA Republicans.

Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone reported today that one of those MAGA Republicans, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), spoke freely Tuesday night at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., at a celebration for the National Association of Christian Lawmakers. Although the address was being livestreamed, Johnson apparently believed he was speaking privately. He told the audience that the Lord called him to be “a new Moses.”

Johnson, an evangelical Christian, told the audience that the U.S. is “engaged in a battle between worldviews” and “a great struggle for the future of the Republic.” He said he believed far-right Christians would prevail.

The influence of Trump is also evident in the Senate, where there is broad, bipartisan support for supplemental funding for Ukraine, but where Republicans are refusing to pass such a measure without attaching to it an immigration package that overrides current law, replacing it with Trump’s immigration plans. Such plans could not pass on their own, as Democrats would stop them in the Senate. But by attaching them to a bill that is imperative for national security, Republicans hope to force Biden into it.

Democrats have repeatedly called for new immigration legislation, but their refusal to remake immigration policy as the hard-right wants has made Republicans balk. Now Democrats are still offering to negotiate a reasonable package, but as Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) said earlier this week: “I think there’s a misunderstanding on the part of Senator Schumer and some of our Democratic friends…. This is not a traditional negotiation, where we expect to come up with a bipartisan compromise on the border. This is a price that has to be paid in order to get the supplemental.”

In a speech this afternoon—just a day after Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) finally permitted the Senate to fill 425 senior positions in the U.S. military and while he is still preventing 11 top-level positions from being filled—President Biden called it “stunning that we’ve gotten to this point…. Republicans in Congress…are willing to give [Russian president Vladimir] Putin the greatest gift he could hope for and abandon our global leadership not just to Ukraine, but beyond that.”

“If Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there,” Biden warned. “It’s important to see the long run here. He’s going to keep going. He’s made that pretty clear. If Putin attacks a NATO Ally—if he keeps going and then he attacks a NATO Ally—well, we’ve committed as a NATO member that we’d defend every inch of NATO territory. Then we’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops—American troops fighting Russian troops if he moves into other parts of NATO.

“Make no mistake: Today’s vote is going to be long remembered. And history is going to judge harshly those who turn their back on freedom’s cause.”

“Extreme Republicans are playing chicken with our national security, holding Ukraine’s funding hostage to their extreme partisan border policies,” he said.

Biden reiterated that he and the Democrats are eager to pass new immigration legislation, but “Republicans think they can get everything they want without any bipartisan compromise. That’s not the answer.... And now they’re willing to literally kneecap Ukraine on the battlefield and damage our national security in the process.” He begged Republicans to get past partisan divisions and step up to “our responsibilities as a leading nation in the world.”

Hours later, Senate Republicans voted against the supplemental aid package.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#U.S.Senate #political #Jesse Duquette #The Daily Don #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #authoritarianism #fascism #NATO #Extreme Republican #national security

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mariacallous · 5 months

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This article is from 2019

It’s dangerous for leaders to outlive their countries. Whether they move on or become obsessed with returning to power, they cannot escape their role as symbols of a vanished world—a condition fraught with both nostalgia and danger.

Nobody knows that burden like Mikhail Gorbachev, the final leader of the Soviet Union. Since his involuntary retirement, Gorbachev has raised money for worthy causes, attempted to make a comeback in Russian politics, and, notoriously, made an advertisement for Pizza Hut.

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The ad would have become a footnote were it not for its long second life online, where it’s rediscovered every few years. There’s an undeniable voyeuristic frisson of seeing a man who once commanded a superpower hawking pizza.

Each time it repeats, it leaves behind a new flood of clickbait—Time listing it among the “Top 10 Embarrassing Celebrity Commercials” in 2010, Mental Floss using Gorbachev’s birthday as a hook to link to it in 2012, Thrillist naming it the sixth-most bizarre celebrity endorsement of all time. Most of the facts dredged up in these deluges are recycled from a 1997 New York Times article.

More serious authors treat the commercial as a free-floating signifier to prove whatever thesis they are peddling, as when Jacobin cites it as another data point showing that Gorbachev was a sellout or David Foster Wallace uses it to prove the vacuity of popular culture.

But the conventional stories don’t really hold up. Gorbachev isn’t actually the star of the commercial. He doesn’t even speak. He’s a bystander to the commercial’s central drama, a fight over Gorbachev’s legacy between a fiery, pro-reform young man and a dour, anti-Gorbachev middle-aged man—possibly father and son. The two exchange charges and defenses of Gorbachev’s record—“Because of him, we have economic confusion!” “Because of him, we have opportunity!” “Complete chaos!” “Hope!”—before an older woman settles the argument: “Because of him, we have many things … like Pizza Hut!”

In a lot of ways, it’s a beautiful short film and a very weird advertisement: Who would have thought that a bunch of Muscovites bickering about the end of communism would be a natural pitch for pizza?

For the people who created the ad—the executives, the agents, the creatives—it was a professional landmark. But for Gorbachev himself, the story of the ad is a tragedy: one man’s attempt to find—and to fund—a place in a country that wanted nothing more to do with him.

For the world, the death of the Soviet Union was a geopolitical earthquake. For Gorbachev, it was a forced retirement at the hands of his rival—and successor as Russian leader—Boris Yeltsin. According to the biographer William Taubman in Gorbachev: His Life and Times, Gorbachev reciprocated Yeltsin’s hatred, telling one journalist: “When they hang me, make sure that they don’t hang Yeltsin from the same birch tree.”

Initially, Yeltsin and Gorbachev avoided direct conflict. But within months of the Russian Federation’s establishment, Gorbachev began criticizing Yeltsin publicly. In retaliation, the Russian president ordered an audit into whether Gorbachev’s foundation was illegally using Communist Party funds. Then the Kremlin systematically removed the foundation’s sources of support, ginned up protests to harass the foundation, and finally cut its office space to a few thousand square feet.

Yeltsin’s final victory would come in the 1996 election. That year, Gorbachev challenged Yeltsin by launching his own bid for the presidency—scraping just 0.5 percent of the first-round vote. After that victory, Yeltsin left the foundation alone. Yet the years of presidential harassment had taken its toll on Gorbachev’s finances. In 1991, the heads of the former Soviet republics had voted to give Gorbachev a pension of 4,000 rubles per month—but it was not indexed to inflation. By 1994, according to Meduza, his pension was worth less than $2 a month.

Gorbachev had suffered the same fate as many Soviet retirees, who had looked forward to generous pensions only to find themselves forced to hustle and scrape to get by as the Russian economy collapsed around them—shrinking by 30 percent between 1991 and 1998. The foundation, too, was tottering, with even Gorbachev’s significant lecture fees unable to sustain both his family and the foundation and its staff, let alone any projects he might want to pursue to leave a legacy. Even generous donations from Ted Turner only went so far.

Gorbachev was determined to stay in Russia and fight for reform, not to take up a life of well-compensated exile abroad. To do that, he would need money to fund his center, his staff, and his activities—urgently. As Gorbachev later told France 24 when asked about the ad, “I needed to finish the building. The workers started to leave—I needed to pay them.”

To keep his vision going—and to stay relevant in a world moving beyond him—he would need a lot of money. More, even, than he could make by giving lectures. More than anyone in Russia could, or wanted to, give him.

As the Soviet Union shrank, Pizza Hut expanded.

The American firm had broken into the Soviet Union just before it died, thanks in part to Gorbachev’s policies of openness. That’s one reason why the commercial could exist in the first place: It was filmed on location in a Moscow Pizza Hut near Red Square, which had opened in 1990 as part of a Soviet-era deal with the chain’s then-parent company, PepsiCo. That arrangement, which had been hailed as the “deal of the century,” flopped when the Soviet Union collapsed, killing both the Russian economy and the restaurant’s supply chain. (Overnight, Lithuanian mozzarella became an expensive import from a foreign country.)

That connection helped provide the hook that Pizza Hut’s advertising creatives needed. For the advertising firm BBDO, Pizza Hut was a big client in a challenging category. Conveniently for BBDO, that translated into big-budget commercials. Pizza Hut ordered dozens of ads a year from BBDO, with a mixture of ordinary TV spots touting weekly specials and major campaigns featuring spokespeople like Dennis Rodman and Donald Trump.

Keeping such a big client happy was a priority for the firm. By 1997, Pizza Hut’s international arm was looking for new spokespeople. As a global brand, then-Pizza Hut advertising executive Scott Helbing recalled in an interview, the company “needed an idea that truly traveled across continents” for “a truly global campaign that would play in any country in the world.”

Former BBDO art director Ted Shaine, who helped create the ad with Tom Darbyshire, a young copywriter at the time, recalled that BBDO “heard that [Gorbachev] was willing to do something.” Others suggest that somebody at BBDO came up with the idea and sought Gorbachev out.

However it happened, the core idea of the ad remained stable throughout the monthslong process of negotiating and filming it. It would not focus on Gorbachev but on an ordinary Russian family eating at Pizza Hut. It would be shot on location, featuring as many visuals that screamed “Russia” as possible.

The concept obviously exploited the shock value of having a former world leader appear. But the ad played on the fact that Gorbachev was far more popular outside Russia than inside it. As late as October 1991, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed that 54 percent of Americans wanted to see Gorbachev as the head of the Soviet Union, compared with only 18 percent for Yeltsin. And warm feelings toward Gorbachev persisted in the West long after the Soviet Union dissolved. “In contrast to his unpopular standing at home,” the political scientist Andrew Cooper writes in Diplomatic Afterlives, “Gorbachev retained superstar standing abroad as a visionary statesman.” At home, Gorbachev was a pariah. Abroad, he was an elder statesman and celebrity, far more beloved than the buffoonish Yeltsin.

Actually brokering the deal took months. Katie O’Neill Bistrian, now chief marketing officer of the collaborative workspace firm Work Well Win, took on the role of representing Gorbachev. Then in her mid-20s and a firebrand executive at the sports and talent management company IMG who routinely brokered deals for stars like Derek Jeter, she viewed the Gorbachev deal as something that she could execute.

There was a hitch: IMG didn’t actually represent Gorbachev. Nobody did. O’Neill Bistrian’s first challenge, then, was to work through contacts, particularly IMG head Mark McCormack, to connect to people in Gorbachev’s circle to broker the deal.

The negotiations took months. Partly, this represented a negotiating tactic: The longer the negotiations drew out, the higher Gorbachev’s talent fee would be. But it also represented real hesitation on Gorbachev’s part.

Taubman argues that Gorbachev’s loss of station and purpose hit his wife, Raisa Gorbachev, hard, not least because it meant that the betrayals of 1991 were compounded by public criticism and even charges of treason. Raisa likely feared that the Pizza Hut ad could only further harm his reputation. On the other hand, only international sources could provide the funds that Gorbachev needed. (The exact amount that Gorbachev would receive for the commercial is secret, but it may have been one of the largest talent fees in history—an amount that would be easily in the seven figures today, adjusted for inflation.)

While Gorbachev’s circle prolonged the negotiations, O’Neill Bistrian told BBDO that another figure was available: Muhammad Ali. IMG had just begun to represent the once-polarizing figure, who, by the 1990s, had transformed into a beloved national icon. Pizza Hut and BBDO leapt at the chance. (Concluding both the Gorbachev and Ali deals would get O’Neill Bistrian her own endorsement deal, for Samsung monitors—the only trace of O’Neill Bistrian’s involvement in the deal until now.)

Gorbachev finally assented—with conditions. First, he would have final approval over the script. That was acceptable. Second, he would not eat pizza on film. That disappointed Pizza Hut. “We always wanted the hero of the ad to eat the pizza,” Helbing said.

Gorbachev held firm. “‘As the ex-leader, I just would not,’” Helbing recalled Gorbachev saying.

O’Neill Bistrian suggested a compromise: A family member would appear in the spot instead. Gorbachev’s granddaughter Anastasia Virganskaya ended up eating the slice. Pizza Hut accepted.

At last, filming could begin. Helbing, Shaine, Darbyshire, O’Neill Bistrian, the director Peter Smillie, and several others flew to Moscow in November 1997. Preproduction (casting, costuming, and location scouting) took several days before principal photography, which took place over two days—one for the exterior shots and one for the interior scenes.

BBDO Chairman Philip Dusenberry insisted that the agency’s advertisements be cinematic in their quality. The Gorbachev production lived up to that standard. Informed estimates put the commercial’s budget in the low millions of dollars. Darbyshire, who wrote the script in English, went through three translators to get the right level of idiomatic Russian. To capture the beautiful establishing shots of Red Square and its domed churches, the crew hefted the film cameras high atop the Kremlin itself. And somehow the production managed to get the whole square shut down for the entire shoot.

(Incidentally, Red Square seems to have been chosen more for cinematic needs than for veracity. The commercial shows a Pizza Hut storefront on Red Square itself, but that’s fake—the Russian signage behind several Pizza Hut logos establishes that the door Gorbachev and Virganskaya are filmed entering is actually a jewelry store.)

The team encountered challenges. “The weather was horrible,” Shaine recalled: low light, bitterly cold, and not even enough snow to make Red Square look as Americans felt it should—until a couple of inches fell on the day of the shoot itself. Worse, it wasn’t clear that the commercial would even happen. After months of reluctance to agree to the shoot, Gorbachev arrived late, the first of a few occasions when the BBDO team thought the agreement might collapse. (When the former leader arrived at Red Square, Shaine greeted Gorbachev by saying, “Well, this is a big production we’re involved in.” “I know,” Gorbachev replied through his interpreter. “I’ve been to many big productions in this place.”)

Filming the interior scenes took the better part of a day in a different location, inside a real Moscow Pizza Hut. (Even though the bulk of the commercial is just a conversation around a table, multiple sources stressed that filming such a scene—with its complicated sightlines—is enormously challenging.) Coincidentally, it also happened to be Thanksgiving Day in the United States. Since the commercial was being shot at a working Pizza Hut, the cast and crew—including Gorbachev—ate pizza, which was “one of the most interesting Thanksgiving dinners I’ve ever had,” said Shaine, who was seated with Gorbachev.

In b-roll shot during the production, Helbing interviewed Gorbachev on camera. Gorbachev justified his decision to do the commercial on two grounds. First, the former leader argued, “pizza is for everyone.” It was nicely communal: “It’s not only consumption. It’s also socializing.”

But the more important reason, Gorbachev confessed, was that he needed the money.

The Gorbachev commercial wasn’t just a piece of advertising ephemera. It was also a multimillion-dollar short film—and the creators were as concerned with artistic standards as selling pizza. Besides the expense and effort of the shoot and the postproduction (an original score recorded live!), the dialogue is entirely in Russian with English subtitles—even though Americans hate subtitles.

The aim of these choices was to show Pizza Hut as a global brand with, as Helbing calls it, a “gravitas” that Little Caesars or Domino’s couldn’t match. To do that, Darbyshire and Shaine tried to capture a story that would reflect Russian reality—not just American stereotypes.

Yuval Weber, the Bren chair of Russian military and political strategy at Marine Corps University’s Krulak Center, uses the commercial as a primary document in his classes in Russian history to illustrate the stresses of the transition from communism. Weber argues that Darbyshire and Shaine succeeded maybe even better than they knew at depicting Russian life at that moment. “You have the fundamental note of hope from the American side, that basically pizza or Western culture can solve the really intractable problems of Russian politics,” Weber said. “You have the Russians depicting a legitimate family—a stylized family dispute on something important. The actors themselves are portraying very real stereotypes about contemporary Moscow.”

“The disagreement about the big issues totally would have been plausible describing the Moscow intelligentsia that those actors are portraying in the commercial itself,” Weber said. “My guess, based on the clothes that the actors chose or that the costume designers chose, is that grandmother is clearly a philologist, some sort of drama teacher, literature teacher, foreign-language teacher. Dad? He’s an engineer of some type. The son is a businessman. And they represent the ’50s generation, the ’70s generation, and the ’90s generation. That would have been beyond an American audience, but … I’ve always thought the actors brought [those choices].”

You can also read the ad as a metatextual comment on itself. As Helbing observed: “If you see the spot and hear what they’re kind of saying about what he’s brought, that was truly what those actors were discussing. We would never have been sitting in that Pizza Hut with Gorbachev eating a pizza if it hadn’t been for what he had done.”

With filming concluded, the Americans flew back to the States. The footage went to Clayton Hemmert, an editor and co-founder of the firm Crew Cuts, who had the task of assembling a narrative from the raw footage. “When you get down to it,” Hemmert said, “you have hundreds of thousands, millions, of frames of film that could be juxtaposed in any order and put any sound behind it, so your options are tremendous.” His smooth cutting of music and dialogue gave the ad its chaotic, argumentative energy.

Hemmert played a key role in shaping the ending. “If you listen to that sound ‘Hail to Gorbachev,’ it sounds like the entire nation of Russia is chanting ‘Hail to Gorbachev,’” Hemmert said. The commercial closes with the cheers resounding throughout Red Square and then all of Moscow in progressively wider shots with celebratory music underneath. “It has this impression, you might say the illusion, that the entire nation feels this is a wonderful thing that happened.”

Of course, it is an illusion—in this case, taking the actor’s dialogue, adding reverb, and layering the chants over each other. But it’s also one that suited both the marketing needs of Pizza Hut and the myth-making needs of Gorbachev. Pizza Hut gets to be not only the avatar of global capitalism but also the restaurant that brings people together. In the commercial’s fiction, at least, Gorbachev gets the hero’s reception that Raisa always thought he deserved.

Yet the commercial itself is more open-ended than it might appear on first viewing. “At the very end, when everyone is saying ‘Za Gorbacheva,’ it resounds throughout Moscow and all the landmarks. But the last shot was an old lady, a babushka, dressed in black who basically looks into a great distance. And in a sense, it’s played for laughs. But that’s also her looking off into the future, which is still unclear,” Weber said.

The future turned out to be much dimmer than the ad anticipated. A little less than a year after the ad was filmed, in August 1998, the Russian financial system collapsed. The economic recovery that had begun to take hold was wiped out. As the Moscow Times wrote, “The whole Russian economy fell to pieces at a stroke.”

Weber reflected on what that might have meant for the fictional family in the commercial. “They would have been the ones crushed. The son, he’s exactly the sort of guy who would have been overleveraged. Dad isn’t in great shape. Grandmother hangs on but in worse shape because grandson probably can’t support her as much,” he said. Whatever optimism made the pro-Gorbachev slant of the ad even dimly plausible as a representative sampling of Muscovite opinion vanished. News reports suggest that the Pizza Hut location in which the commercial was filmed itself closed during the crash.

And that means that this fictional family, like most Russians, probably spent the early 2000s supporting the increasingly hard-line Vladimir Putin, seeing him as “the only person who can take them back to stability and potential for growth,” Weber said. Out with pizza, in with the vertical of power.

Everyone with whom I spoke about making the commercial remembers it fondly. They got to meet a world leader; they succeeded in drawing attention to the brand; and the commercial received a unexpected second life online, keeping their work alive in a profession where most product is disposable.

For Gorbachev, however, the ad’s legacy seems less bright—mostly because he never found the path he’d meant for it to fund. The commercial funded his foundation and loyal retainers for a while. Yet a year later, he told the Guardian that he had lost his own savings in the 1998 crash.

Raisa died of cancer in 1999. And despite Gorbachev’s ambitions that his post-presidency could push his country toward greater openness, Russia has slipped ever further along a much less free path than he once envisioned.

This year, Putin commemorated two decades in power. A tightening of laws on foreign support for nonprofits inside Russia squeezed the Gorbachev Foundation; many of his family members have reportedly moved to Germany. In a book released last month, Gorbachev even weakly offered praise for his successor on the grounds that Putin “inherited chaos” and that his moves could be justified if “the aim of authority is to create conditions for developing a strong modern democracy.”

For Russians, the debate about his legacy that the ad foregrounded has been conclusively resolved. In a 2018 poll by the respected Levada Center (another byproduct of Gorbachev’s reforms), 66 percent of Russians responded that they regretted the collapse of the Soviet Union. So, of course, does Gorbachev. His ambition was to perfect the country, not to end it.

Yet Russians seem to blame him for the catastrophe. A 2017 Levada poll found that only 1 percent of Russians expressed admiration for Gorbachev, 30 percent professed to dislike him, and 13 percent said their overall attitude was one of disgust or hatred. (Yeltsin, who died in 2007, received almost identical ratings.) As a leader, Russians rank Gorbachev well below Joseph Stalin.

No Russian crowd, in other words, is going to chant “Hail to Gorbachev!” anytime soon.

#Youtube

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merlyn-bane · 6 months

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Fic / Art Masterlist

Figured it was finally time to give in and make one of these. Links will all be under the cut with pared down summaries to prevent this thing from being a monster on people's dash. Probably just going to leave them in the order they were posted just to make it easier to update as I go.

Singles:

Traveling Song - Din Djarin/OC, fic Din Djarin gets to know his sometimes-ally a little better, and ends up a lot over his head. Jedi Lineage Shenanigan Collection - fic A collection of mostly unrelated and out of order one or two-shots revolving around Jedi, their families, and the nonsense they all get up to. Foelu - Obi-Wan/Cody/Waxer/Boil/Rex/Helix, fic As the only one of his kind in the Order and perhaps only the third in its history, almost all of what they know about Obi-Wan's people is limited what they've been able to observe as he's grown up. When his implant expires and wartime shortages make it impossible to get their hands on a replacement, Obi-Wan learns about something else his body can do--for better or worse.

Series:

Order 63 (2022) - Codywan

Monday - Middle Earth AU, art & fic Obi-Wan forgets about certain cultural traditions when she returns to the Shire with Cody after three years at war. She Plays Bass - Band AU, art & fic Up-and-coming rockstar Cody Fett is touring with well-established Obi-Wan Kenobi for the first time, and may have developed an extraordinarily predictable crush--much to the amusement of her bandmate, Fox. When the tour's booking agent messes up their hotel reservations, it leaves Cody in something of an interesting predicament--and in much closer quarters with Obi-Wan than intended. Wednesday - Star Trek AU, art Captain Obi-Wan Kenobi and her First Officer, Commander Cody, stumble upon strange flora on an away mission. This is nothing new, and neither is Obi-Wan's ill-advised urge to touch it. Cody fondly wonders if perhaps her Captain was not promoted to command simply to distance her from the scientific field where she started. Thursday - Sports / Roller Derby AU, art What's a little friendly competition between girlfriends, anyway? Friday - No O66 / Jedi!Cody AU A warm, cozy morning in the Jedi Temple, and a playful battle for the shared kettle.

Thank God You Introduced Me To Your Sister - RexObi

Thank God You Introduced Me To Your Sister - Sapphic Modern AU, fic Rex is feeling underappreciated in her relationship with her best-friends-with-benefits. Good thing his very attractive older sister's back in town on break from school, huh? Thank God For You - Sapphic AU, fic It's Rex's turn to take care of Obi-Wan.

SubObi Week (2022) (also contains Obi-Wan Omegaverse)

Day One - Jangobi, Omegaverse AU, fic Obi-Wan Kenobi's suppressants fail for the first time in his life as he's en-route to Kamino to investigate the attempt on Senator Amidala's life. Fortunately for him, there happens to be an Alpha available in the facility. Unfortunately for him, that Alpha is Jango Fett. Day Three - ObiMaul, Sith AU, art Day Four - Codywan, Omegaverse AU, fic Jango Fetts's intelligence provides the Republic with better footing at the start of the war. It is not the only thing he's left Obi-Wan with. Day Five - Codywan, Omegaverse AU, fic Obi-Wan Kenobi's pussy saves the galaxy. It just…takes a roundabout sort of path to get there. Also known as Obi-Wan Kenobi Gets To Have The Beginnings Of His Happy Ending, As A Treat. Day Six - Codywan, Omegaverse AU, fic Obi-Wan Kenobi's happy ending continues, just with a brief intermission as an old acquaintance resurfaces. Day Seven - Jangobi, art Some Jetii just look so pretty with a hand around their throat. Day Eight - Bail/Obi/Breha, art Bail and Breha Organa are unable to conceive on their own. They approach their dear friend Obi-Wan for a specific kind of assistance. He is more than happy to help.

Year of the OTP - Spirk

On Social Maturity Across Species - fic The Enterprise crew are sent to negotiate a new planet joining the Federation. Unfortunately for the Captain and First Officer, the people of Ektros IV don’t consider unattached individuals to be full-fledged adults and will not meet with Jim at the negotiation table unless he can prove his marital status. On Automatic Adrenal Responses - fic The crew of the Enterprise are sent to investigate reports of a rogue scientist developing illegal chemical weapons. Commander Spock becomes an inadvertent test subject. Spending All Our Time (Trying To Get Back Home Again) - fic In which the events of Beyond never take place, and Jim takes the Admiralty job. He manages to survive behind a desk for about a year before the need to be out there once more becomes too much for him to bear. But how will his old crew take his return to his post as Captain of the Enterprise?

They Told Me I Couldn't Bag A Jedi (And I Took That Personally)

Like A Puzzle - Codywan, fic The beginning of Marshall Commander Cody's Slut Era [Affectionate]™ You Think I Wouldn't? - CodyQuin, fic Marshall Commander Cody's Slut Era [Affectionate]™ Continues. A Fast And Dedicated Learner - Cody/Luminara/Shaak/Depa, fic Cody is invited to give batting for the other team a try. Still Got It - Cody/Mace, fic Cody decides to take some initiative as part of his Slut Era, only sort of because his brother basically dared him. Expanding Horizons - Cody/Obi/Kit, fic Cody's Slut Era™ Is Equal Opportunity

Art:

(Art links not a part of a series will go to the tumblr posts, since I haven't started putting any of them on AO3 yet)

Fox Day

Merry Christmas Hardcase

Ides of March Padmé

Ari Sketch

Commander Cody Phase Knives

Awful Little Carnivore

Baby's Second Paleoart

Stewjoni Wooley Bird

Perserverence Window (Gift for @lttrsfrmlnrrgby)

Major Bent

ObiMaul Hockey AU

#masterlist #please let me know if something isn't working or if i put any of the wrong links in or something

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abnerkrill · 3 months

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Stoppen Sie den Faschisten Björn Höcke: Veranlassen Sie, dass die Bundesregierung beim Bundesverfassungsgericht einen Antrag auf Grundrechtsverwirkung nach Artikel 18 GG stellt.

Dieser Mann ist ein wahrhaft gefährlicher Feind der freiheitlichen Demokratie. Aber die Mütter und Väter des Grundgesetzes haben im Bewusstsein der Erfahrungen während der Weimarer Republik Instrumente bereit gelegt, um sich gegen Verfassungsfeinde zu wehren: Neben einem kompletten Parteiverbot auf Landes- oder Bundesebene ist die „Grundrechtsverwirkung“ nach Artikel 18 des Grundgesetzes eine gezielte Maßnahme gegen einzelne Verfassungsfeinde, jüngst thematisiert von der ehemaligen Bundesverfassungsrichterin und Verfassungsrechtlerin Gertrude Lübbe-Wolff sowie Heribert Prantl, ehemaliges Mitglied der Chefredaktion der Süddeutschen Zeitung, Kolumnist und Honorarprofessor für Rechtswissenschaft an der Universität Bielefeld [4], [5]. Die Grundrechtsverwirkung beinhaltet, dass demjenigen die Inanspruchnahme einzelner Grundrechte entzogen werden kann, der diese „zum Kampfe gegen die freiheitliche demokratische Grundordnung missbraucht“ [6]. Ein Antrag auf Verwirkung der Grundrechte kann vom Bundestag, von der Bundesregierung oder von einer Landesregierung gestellt werden. Das Bundesverfassungsgericht entscheidet in diesem Fall über Ausmaß und Dauer der Verwirkung.

Darüber hinaus kann im Zuge der Grundrechtsverwirkung für deren Dauer auch das Wahlrecht, die Wählbarkeit und die Fähigkeit zur Bekleidung öffentlicher Ämter aberkannt werden (§39 Absatz 2 des Bundesverfassungsgerichtsgesetzes, BVerfGG). Und genau dies muss passieren, damit Björn Höcke der freiheitlichen Demokratie keinen weiteren Schaden zufügen kann.

English:

Stop the fascist Björn Höcke: Have the federal government submit an application to the Federal Constitutional Court for the forfeiture of fundamental rights under Article 18 of the Basic Law. This man is a truly dangerous enemy of liberal democracy. But the mothers and fathers of the Basic Law, aware of the experiences during the Weimar Republic, have prepared instruments to defend themselves against enemies of the constitution: In addition to a complete ban on parties at state or federal level, the “forfeiture of fundamental rights” according to Article 18 of the Basic Law is a targeted measure against individual enemies of the constitution, recently discussed by the former federal constitutional judge and constitutional law expert Gertrude Lübbe-Wolff and Heribert Prantl, former member of the editor-in-chief of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, columnist and honorary professor of law at the University of Bielefeld [4], [5]. The forfeiture of fundamental rights means that the use of individual fundamental rights can be withdrawn from anyone who “abuses them to fight against the free, democratic basic order” [6]. An application for forfeiture of fundamental rights can be made by the Bundestag, the federal government or a state government. In this case, the Federal Constitutional Court decides on the extent and duration of the forfeiture. In addition, as part of the forfeiture of fundamental rights, the right to vote, eligibility and the ability to hold public office can also be revoked for its duration (Section 39 Paragraph 2 of the Federal Constitutional Court Act, BVerfGG). And this is exactly what has to happen so that Björn Höcke cannot cause any further damage to liberal democracy.

#german mutuals pspspsps

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maximumphilosopheranchor · 1 month

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By 1999, Yeltsin was visibly ill and frequently intoxicated, and the problem of succession became acute. Elections were needed to replace him; from the perspective of the oligarchs these needed to be managed and the outcome controlled. A successor was needed who would allow Yeltsin’s family (in both the normal sense of his relatives and in the Russian sense of friendly oligarchs) to stay alive and maintain their wealth. “Operation Successor,” as the challenge was known in the Kremlin, had two stages: finding a new man who was not a known associate of Yeltsin, and then inventing a fake problem that he could then appear to solve. To find his successor, Yeltsin’s entourage organized a public opinion poll about favorite heroes in popular entertainment. The winner was Max Stierlitz, the hero of a series of Soviet novels that were adapted into a number of films, most famously the television serial Seventeen Moments of Spring in 1973. The fictional Stierlitz was a Soviet plant in German military intelligence during the Second World War, a communist spy in Nazi uniform. Vladimir Putin, who had held a meaningless post in the East German provinces during his career in the KGB, was seen as the closest match to the fictional Stierlitz. Having enriched himself as the assistant to the mayor of St. Petersburg in the 1990s, Putin was known to the Kremlin and thought to be a team player. He had worked for Yeltsin in Moscow since 1998, chiefly as head of the Federal Security Service (FSB, the former KGB). When appointed Yeltsin’s prime minister in August 1999, Putin was unknown to the larger public, so not a plausible candidate for national elected office. His approval rating stood at 2%. And so it was time to generate a crisis that he could appear to solve. In September 1999, a series of bombs exploded in Russian cities, killing hundreds of Russian citizens. It seemed possible that the perpetrators were FSB officers. In the city of Ryazan, for example, FSB officers were apprehended by their local colleagues as suspects in the bombings. Though the possibility of self-terrorism was noticed at the time, the factual questions were overwhelmed by righteous patriotism as Putin ordered a new war against the part of Russia deemed to be responsible for the bombings: the Chechen republic of southwestern Russia, in the Caucasus region, which had declared independence in 1993 and then fought the Russian army to a standstill. There was no evidence that Chechens had anything to do with the bombings. Thanks to the Second Chechen War, Putin’s approval rating reached 45% in November. In December, Yeltsin announced his resignation and endorsed Putin as his successor. Thanks to unequal television coverage, manipulation of the vote tally, and the atmospherics of terrorism and war, Putin was accorded the absolute majority needed to win the presidential election of March 2000. The ink of political fiction is blood.

Timothy Snyder, The Road To Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

Think about Crocus City Hall.

#Timothy Snyder #non-fictional #Russia #Vladimir Putin #Boris Yeltsin #Chechens #self-terrorism #think about Crocus City Hall

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workersolidarity · 5 months

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[Russian Lancet strike targets a Ukrainian American-made artillery system]

🇷🇺🇺🇦 🚨

💥 UPDATE ON THE RUSSO-UKRAINIAN WAR, EVENTS OF DAY 630💥

In the General direction:

According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Operational-Tactical and Army aviation, unmanned aerial vehicles, Missile Troops and Artillery of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have neutralised manpower and military hardware in 145 areas.

In addition, one radar station of the S-300 surface-to-air missile system, as well as three control points of the 67th Mechanised Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the 31st Operational Brigade, and the 50th Regiment of the National Guard have been hit near Serebryanka (Donetsk People's Republic).

Air defence facilities have shot down one MiG-29 aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force near Pavlograd (Dnepropetrovsk region).

Seven HIMARS multiple-launch rocket system projectiles have also been intercepted.

In addition, 30 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles have been hit close to Tokarevka (Kharkov region), Svatovo, Kolomiychikha (Lugansk People's Republic), Vasilyovka, Belogorovka, Kirillovka (Donetsk People's Republic), and Romanovskoye (Zaporozhye region).

📊In total, 535 airplanes and 254 helicopters, 8,934 unmanned aerial vehicles, 441 air defence missile systems, 13,396 tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, 1,184 fighting vehicles equipped with MLRS, 7,105 field artillery cannons and mortars, as well as 15,273 special military motor vehicles have been destroyed during the special military operation.

In Kherson direction:

According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the enemy losses were over 60 servicemen and three motor vehicles.

In addition, during the counter-battery warfare, one Msta-B howitzer, two D-30 howitzers, as well as one Cobra counter-battery radar station have been destroyed.

Russian Forces continue clearing operations along the western outskirts of Krynky, targeting the Ukrainian foothold there while heavily bombing along the Kronka River [a waterway off the Dnipro leading to Krynky], a Ukrainian supply road used to support troops in Krynky and land troops in the area.

Ukrainian Forces published video showing the successful targeting of a wounded Russian soldier along the western outskirts of Ukrainian-controlled territory in Krynky.

#source1

Ukrainian Forces are said to have since taken positions in the area where the wounded Russian soldier was killed, and now Russian Forces heavily bomb the area according to geolocated video.

#source2

Heavy fog in the area in recent days is said to have given cover to Ukrainian Forces to land their troops and supplies in Krynky, in both the west and eastern parts of Ukrainian-controlled territory here.

However, Russian-held territory is only a few hundred yards from the eastern Ukrainian staging area in Krynky, and if Ukrainian Forces cannot expand their zone of control in the east of the village, Russian Forces will eventually be able to establish fire control over the area, and Russian Forces are currently attacking in the east/southeast of Krynky in order to just that.

The situation is tenuous for Ukrainian Forces at best.

To see what I mean, Ukrainian Forces of the 137th Marine Battalion of the 35th Marine Brigade published a report on the condition of their situation.

According to that report, Ukrainian Forces are sent to the staging areas in Krynky and as soon as they arrive, they are chewed up by Russian artillery fire before another unit is sent in its place. And according to these Ukrainian Marines, the high-ranking officers have no regard for their soldiers lives or there is a traitor in their midst.

#source3

Meanwhile, Russian Forces published geolocated video of a Lancet strike against a Ukrainian radar battery in Ochakiv, on the right bank of the Dnieper.

According to the source:

In the area of the village In Ochakov, an air defense radar station of the VFU, presumably P-18, was opened. The target was destroyed by the Lancet X-52 loitering ammunition.

#source4

And another Lancet strike in the vicinity of Lebedynske targeted a Ukrainian air-defense system.

According to the source:

Group of troops "Dnepr" . BG Energodar. n.p. Lebedinskoe.

Reconnaissance units engage the BUK M1 air defense system with the Lancet X-1 product

#source5

In Kupyansk direction:

According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, units of the Zapad Group of Forces, supported by aviation and artillery, have repelled two attacks by assault groups of the 57th Mechanised Brigade of the AFU close to Sinkovka (Kharkov region).

The enemy losses were up to 30 servicemen, one tank, two pickup trucks.

During the counter-battery warfare, one M777 artillery system and one M114 howitzer manufactured by the U.S., one Gvozdika self-propelled artillery system, one D-20 gun, as well as one U.S.-manufactured AN/TPQ-50 counter-battery radar.

One ammunition depot of the 1st Special Purpose Brigade of the AFU has been destroyed near Volchansk (Kharkov region).

Russian Forces destroyed a bridge in the vicinity of Kupiansk.

According to the source:

Russia has destroyed a bridge with an airstrike. There were no casualties within the civilians. ⚔️🔱

One of the most common tactics seen world wide through out the entire history is burning bridges. Nowadays it's hard to burn a bridge made of metal and concrete but it's easy to blow it up. 💥

Location: Kupyansk-Uzlovoy

#source14

In Krasny Liman direction:

According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, units of the Tsentr Group of Forces, helicopters, and artillery have repelled three attacks by assault groups of the 12th Special Purpose Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the 5th Brigade of the National Guard close to Grigorovka and Serebryanka (Donetsk People's Republic).

The enemy losses were up to 180 servicemen, two motor vehicles, Akatsiya and Gvozdika self-propelled artillery systems.

No other updates in this area.

In Zaporozhye direction:

According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, units of the Russian Group of Forces, aviation and artillery have repelled one attack of an assault group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and inflicted a fire damage on manpower and hardware concentration areas of the 33rd Mechanised Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near Rabotino (Zaporozhye region).

The enemy losses were over 40 servicemen, three pickup trucks, as well as one U.S.-manufactured M119 howitzer.

In the vicinity of Dmitrov, Zaporizhzhia region, according to Russian sources, Russian Forces launched a powerful strike on Ukrainian Forces of the "Sparta" Brigade.

According to the source:

The enemy confirms that today our Rocketeers repeated the attack on the city of Dmitrov, Zaporozhye region and again hit the enemy concentration. The NSU brigade "Sparta" came under attack. Many ambulances were spotted at the arrival site.

#source6

Russian Forces continue powerful operations in the direction of Piatykhatky, with video published of Russian artillery working on Ukrainian positions in the village, part of days of heavy shelling, bombing and MLRS assaults.

According to the source:

objective control from reconnaissance of the 392nd regiment to cover the air defense forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the village of Pyatikhatki in the Zaporozhye direction.

#source7

Further video from other sources shows very heavy fighting, clashes and bombing in the village of Piatykhatky.

According to the source:

Sniper work of artels and reconnaissance officers of a separate reconnaissance battalion against enemy air defense forces in Pyatikhatki.

#source8

In the Robotyne area, Russian Forces continue bombing and shelling Ukrainian positions on the west of Verbove as Ukrainian Forces launch successive waves of assaults on the western outskirts of the village.

Russian Forces published video showing heavy bombing of the area, suggesting some Ukrainian progress here.

According to the source:

Battle footage: how the landing forces repulse the enemy’s “meat assaults” near Verbovoy on the Zaporozhye Front

▪️In the Orekhovsky sector of the Zaporozhye Front, the enemy on the Rabotino-Verbovoe line again and again sends assault groups to attack our positions.

▪️At Verbovoy, the enemy is trying to advance along the landings, but the guards-paratroopers meet enemy units with fire.

▪️The enemy is suffering very significant losses. Pictures from the front from our comrades.

#source9

In South Donetsk direction:

According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, units of the Vostok Group of Forces, in cooperation with helicopters and artillery, have inflicted fire damage on manpower and hardware concentration areas of the 72nd Mechanised Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, 102nd and 127th territorial defence brigades near Ugledar, Rovnopol (Donetsk People's Republic) and Chervonoye (Zaporozhye region).

The enemy losses were up to 140 soldiers, two armoured fighting vehicles, three motor vehicles.

During the counter-battery warfare, one M109 Paladin self-propelled artillery system and one M777 artillery system manufactured by the U.S., one Giatsint-S self-propelled gun, two D-20 howitzers, as well as one MT-12 cannon have been destroyed.

Russian Forces continue artillery and drone preparation in the Vrymivka salient area, however few video updates from this area to get a good idea of exactly what happens on the ground here.

In the vacinity of Novomykhailivka, the bridge between Novomykhailivka and Kostiantynivka was damaged in a Russian strike, however is still somewhat usable.

#source10

In Donetsk direction:

According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, units of the Yug Group of Forces, in cooperation with aviation and artillery, have eliminated enemy manpower and hardware near Razdolovka, Andreevka, Kleshcheevka, Nikolayevka, and Kurdyumovka (Donetsk People's Republic).

The enemy losses were up to 220 military personnel, one tank, and seven motor vehicles.

In addition, during the counter-battery warfare, French-manufactured Caezar and Polish-manufactured Krab self-propelled artillery systems, two Msta-B howitzers, as well as one MT-12 cannon have been destroyed.

In the north of Avdiivka:

Russian Forces continue targeting supporting forces in the area north of Avdiivka, with Russian sources publishing video of a Lancet strike on an Ukrainian American-made howitzer supporting forces on the frontline in Ocheretyne.

According to the source:

🇷🇺 The IX leaders burned the 155 mm M777 howitzer!

Our comrades Black Hussars shared footage of their work on an American gun in the hands of wild boars and even though the Ukrainians tried to disguise the gun, it didn’t help them - as a result, the howitzer BURNED 🔥

#source11

While burning was witnessed a short distance east from the Lancet strike, the likely target of another strike.

According to the source:

The settlement of Ocheretino on the Avdeevsky direction. The fuel warehouse is on fire.

#source12

According to some sources, Ukrainian Forces wiped out a unit in the Stepove area, however I could not find evidence of this.

In the area between Toretsk and Horlivka, reports of a Ukrainian attack from the village of Shumy, southeast of Toretsk towards Horlivka.

While Russian Forces are counter-attacking just north to re-engage forces.

According to the source:

Gorlovka north-west.

The enemy managed to capture one of the waste heaps south of the village. Noises.

Now our fighters are storming the village of Shumy in order to bypass the waste heap and get behind the enemy’s rear. The enemy has transferred the 47th brigade to Gorlovka and is trying to force our army to withdraw some of its reserves from Avdeevka.

At the moment, nothing critical has happened, the usual tactics from the enemy. The only ones who suffer greatly are the civilians of Gorlovka. The enemy has been shelling peaceful areas of Gorlovka all day...

#source13

In the Artmevosk area:

Russian Forces launched ground operations in the direction of Andriivka, to its northeast, returning control of some positions from Ukrainian Forces.

Lots of back and forth in recent days in Artmevosk direction, it's not entirely clear what exactly is happening or who is gaining the upper hand and where.

@WorkerSolidarityNews

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ospreyeamon · 1 year

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palpatine’s xanatos gambit

For a long time it confused me why Palpatine revealed himself as the Sith Master to Anakin in the opera scene of Revenge of the Sith. It seemed contrived. Palpatine has proven himself capable of hiding in plain sight indefinitely. He spent years meeting with the Jedi Council without any of them gleaning an inkling of his true nature. Why would he suddenly give up the advantage of secrecy? But now I think I understand.

Palpatine is a consummate politician. His methods in the pursuit of power are primarily legal political ones, with his work as Darth Sidious serving to provide leverage for them. Any good politician knows you should never let a crisis go to waste, but it takes a special kind of politician to be able to generate crises on demand.

Senator Palpatine would like to be elected Supreme Chancellor; Darth Sidious baits the Trade Federation into blockading Naboo and Palpatine plants the idea that the only way to force the Republic Senate to act is calling for a vote of no confidence in the current Supreme Chancellor. Chancellor Palpatine would remain in office beyond the end of his term limit; there is a string of unfortunate destabilising incidents that make keeping the Republic's current head of state rather than calling an election more attractive, none of which are ever linked back to the Sith. Chancellor Palpatine would like more power and also not to have to deal with the fact that he has now repeatedly overstayed his term of office; oh look, it’s a war.

But now the Clone Wars are all but over. The Delegation of Two Thousand is pushing for him to relinquish his emergency powers. Palpatine needs another crisis – and he has just the crisis in mind. The Jedi Order is going to attempt a coup to seize control of the Republic.

There are two ways the plan could go after Palpatine admits to Anakin he is a Sith. The safer one for Palpatine is if Anakin willingly embraces him as his evil mentor and agrees to go along with the plot. Anakin can use his position on the Jedi Council to "discover" the other members of the Council are plotting to launch a coup, giving Palpatine cover to move against the Jedi. Alternately, if the rest of the Council isn’t careful enough Anakin might learn of the real discussion they’ve had about the possibility of removing the Supreme Chancellor by Force – unlikely since Yoda and Windu are already concerned that Anakin is effectively Palpatine’s spy on the Council.

Instead, Anakin – freaked out – runs to the Council to share what Palpatine has just told him. However, that still serves Palpatine’s plan. While the Jedi know he is a Sith and can deduce he must have been playing both sides of the war, they don’t have hard evidence of either of those things – just Anakin’s word that Palpatine told him, which Palpatine can easily deny. So, the Jedi Council doesn’t take the accusation to the Courts or the Senate or the Press because all those groups would want evidence that the Jedi can’t give them and because they believe Palpatine has sunk his claws too far into those institutions.

What Palpatine succeeds in doing by spilling the beans to Anakin is provoking the Jedi into coming after him half-cocked, before they place his office and associates under heavy surveillance that might reveal communications with the Separatists and before the Delegation of Two Thousand can raise their petition in the Senate. It makes the Jedi look guilty as hell. I think that, because they lack credible evidence for their charges, it might technically be an actual attempted coup.

So Palpatine has his crisis. It’s dicier than he might have liked; I think he underestimated Mace Windu and coming up against a duellist better than himself was a nasty surprise. He still has what he wanted though; the security footage that shows the Jedi subduing his guards and entering his office, and the eye-witness testimony of the people who saw them come to the Senate Rotunda. That’s all he needs to justify activating Order 66 and "reforming" the Republic into the Empire.

The timing of the gambit is interesting because I wouldn’t have picked that it was significantly worse for the Jedi to act against Palpatine immediately rather than to bide their planning and waiting for an opening or more information if Palpatine hadn’t thought it necessary to trick them into striking at him. It must be because of the approaching threat posed by the Delegation of Two Thousand. If the Delegation lodges their petition and Palpatine doesn’t relinquish his emergency powers and call an election then that gives the Jedi Order a legitimate reason to charge him with, say, breach of the Constitution. It’s extremely likely they would do that, too; the Council has woken up to the fact that Palpatine is a threat to democracy, and if they can’t identify the Sith Lord in the Chancellor’s office then forcing out the Chancellor should draw the Sith into the open as he tries to keep hold of that position of power.

Mace Windu is probably aware of this. Being aware that there is a threat to the Sith Master looming in the near future means being aware that the Sith Master has a pressing motive to cement the Supreme Chancellor’s grip on power by any means necessary. When Anakin comes to him with the information that Palpatine just tried to recruit him as his new apprentice, Mace concludes that Palpatine would have only make such a risky move if he were on the verge of enacting a plot to destroy the Jedi. That means the Jedi have to go after Palpatine right now; no time to gather evidence, no time to contact potential allies in the Senate, no time to think of a job to give Anakin so he has something to distract him from stewing in his turmoil like waiting until Mace’s team has reached the Senate Rotunda then relaying a warning that Palpatine is the Sith Master to the Jedi in the field.

It’s not that Mace Windu doesn’t understand that bursting into Palpatine’s office on mass is a bad idea that could go horribly wrong. It’s that, by this point, the Jedi Council only has bad options. There is no safe path, no optimal third option, no neat legal solution. The Council has made unforced errors in earlier instalments – hiding the fact they had only just discovered the clone army from the Senate and the public at the end of Attack of the Clones was stupid, Yoda, as was letting the investigation into the origins of the army fall by the wayside – but not in Revenge of the Sith. After all, Mace is right in assuming that Palpatine is in the process of enacting his plan to destroy the Jedi Order. His failure is only the failure to divine what that plan is.

#Meanwhile in a Galaxy Far Far Away #star wars meta #Darth Sidious #Sheev Palpatine #Mace Windu #Order 66 #revenge of the sith #Palpatine | Darth Sidious #star wars prequels

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sneakerguybln · 11 months

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Prison life in the Federal Republic of Dystopia

Luiz (23) is in prison in the "Black Area" where convicts are held who have been convicted of financial crimes or other money-related crimes. He has his own company and is the son of rich parents. So the judge put him in compulsory custody after he refused to pay child support for his two extramarital children when he actually has the money. He and his parents believe that the $3,000 severance pay they paid each mother was enough. But another investigator has ruled that he faces a vasectomy under the Criminal Code, which provides for a vasectomy if a man fails to pay for his children for at least a year. He is unaware of this decision and is currently waiting for an "extraordinary medical examination". He doesn't know yet that in 30 minutes he will already be sterilized. He was also sentenced to one year in prison.

Brandon (left, 20) manipulated slot machines, was caught and was sentenced to prison for 10 years. Martin (right, 21) manipulated two ATMs, spied user data that way. He was sentenced to 10 years too. Both are incarcerated in the "Black Area" as Luiz is. As each prisoner is examined from head to toe the prison facility qualified them as extreme healthy. Both accepted an invitation into the "Donation Squad". In the Donation Squad are prisoners who are obliged to donate blood, blood plasma and sperm. Members of the Donation Squad sign to donate per year up to 10 times blood, 25 times blood plasma and up to 150 times sperm (as long as they are healthy). They get better food, better entertainment, regular access to gym and yard and the biggest benefit: They aren't in an underground prison but in an daylight prison with a *real* yard under sun and clouds. Each year of donations reduces their punishment by one year. So in the best case they can go free after 5 years despite being sentenced to 10 years.

Marlon (left, 24) and Jacob (right, 21) are incarcerated in an army prison. Both refused orders of their officer and are punished with 6 strokes of the cane and 1 month prison. Marlon is just a few minutes away from getting the cane. Each soldier gets a mandatory health check before the procedure. Jacob is on his last day of his 1 month incarceration. He coped well with the cane four weeks ago but he'll wear the scars for the rest of his life.

#Federal Republic of Dystopia #AI image #AI images

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buriedabove · 4 months

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❯ 1998

After finishing the police academy earlier that year, fuelled by his morbid curiosity surrounding the Arklay murders, Leon asks to be assigned to the Raccoon City Police Department. September 29, his first day at work, doesn’t go as planned. Eventually, the rookie cop makes it to the zombie-infested police station. On the morning of September 30, he escapes the city, which later gets destroyed to the ground by the government.

❯ 1998-2003

Because of the confidential information Leon acquired during the outbreak, he gets interrogated and threatened into joining the secret anti-Umbrella program. He becomes a part of STRATCOM. He spends most of this time being trained as a federal agent under Krauser’s eye. In 2002, along with his mentor and other members of the team, Leon is sent on a mission to eliminate a cartel in South America; it’s known as Operation Javier. The entire squad dies, except for Leon and Krauser.

❯ 2004

Due to the abduction of President Graham’s daughter, Leon finds himself in a village in Spain. Initially, the local cops are supposed to help him with the assignment, but things soon go downhill, when both officers end up dead. Now left on his own, he faces up to the ghosts from the past and pushes through the mission, which ultimately ends successfully. Leon returns home, writes up an extensive report regarding Las Plagas and holes up in his apartment for the upcoming months, not staying in contact with anybody while still reeling from the events.

❯ 2005

With the T-Virus outbreak taking place at the Harvardville Airport, once again President Graham appoints Leon as the one to oversee the proceedings at the WP Corporation, considering his broad experience. The dire situation quickly develops, revealing more secrets and dangers lying ahead. Finally, it’s under control, and Kennedy is delegated to subsequent operations.

❯ 2006

Suspecting a connection between his last mission and the recent explosion in a museum in Pittsburg, Leon is asked to review the footage. Handling yet another outbreak, not too long after that, the White House becomes his next urgent destination. Supposed to join a team of chosen federal agents to investigate the hacker attack, Kennedy arrives right in the middle of a zombie incident. Joining three other agents ( Shenmei, Patrick and Jason ), the team travels to Shanghai. In no time, Jason discloses plans to expose a government conspiracy to which Leon does not comply.

❯ 2007-2010

Carrying on with his life and jumping into whatever missions STRATCOM throws his way, at a certain point Leon is put on furlough. The majority of these years go to waiting around for a call or any other sign that he can break away from this stagnancy.

❯ 2011-2012

No longer an agent for STRATCOM, in 2011 Leon becomes a part of the newly founded Department of Security Operations ( DSO ). The same year, with the rising risks of B.O.W.s utilised in the civil war happening in the Eastern Slav Republic, he doesn’t get to enjoy his vacation. Upon discovering how bad things are looking, Leon is ordered to retreat, but he refuses to give in to his superior’s commands and fights to destroy the bioweapons. He grows more and more disapproving of the US government's intentions and actions. Nonetheless, he keeps working for them, haunted by the threat from years ago.

❯ 2013

He meets up with President Benford, who plans on exposing that the Raccoon City Incident was an inside job. Later, Benford turns out to be infected with the Chrysalid Virus and therefore, Leon has to shoot him to stop him from attacking a secret service agent, Helena Harper. Fleeing to Tall Oaks afterwards, news about the Neo-Umbrella reaches Kennedy and he flies to Lanshiang, China. Once there, eliminating the organisation’s lab makes it to the top of his to-do list while also trying to track down Simmons, and later on, other people with ties to The Family.

❯ 2014

In Washington D.C., on a mission, a whistleblower gives away their location and Leon loses his entire unit to a bombing that infects everyone but him with a virus. Paying one last visit to his colleagues in the morgue, one of them wakes up as a zombie and Kennedy shoots him, therefore causing the rest to arise. The situation forces him to kill his infected squad and right after that, he travels to Colorado, where all he does is drown his worries and feelings in alcohol. Until Chris Redfield and Rebecca Chambers come along. With them, he goes to New York to deal with an outbreak and bring down Glenn Arias, a bioweapons dealer.

❯ 2015

Tasked with the search for Dr. Antonio Taylor, he lands in San Francisco, California. He continues his investigation on Alcatraz Island, where he crosses paths with Jill Valentine, Claire Redfield, Chris Redfield and Rebecca Chambers. Altogether, despite other interruptions and bumps encountered, the group fights a former Umbrella operative, Dylan Blake.

❯ 2016-PRESENT

Still working under the DSO emblem, outside of the organisation he happens to get involved in businesses that he shouldn’t.

#timeline.

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thenuclearmallard · 1 year

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Violations of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) During Partial Military Mobilization

By Anonymous

On September 21, 2022, the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, announced the partial mobilization of the 18-49-year-old male population in Russia to participate in the war with Ukraine. On the same day, an order of the military commissar No. 182, "On the Announcement of Mobilization," was issued in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Unfortunately, partial mobilization activities in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) involve numerous human and Indigenous rights violations and violations of the provisions of federal Russian legislation on deferral and exemption from military service.

For example, as the Russian Ministry of Defense argues, there are no set quotas for mobilization. Instead, each region and ethnic republic have a separate mobilization task, which depends on the number of citizens registered in the military. However, in reality, mobilization is carried out indiscriminately in both large and small rural villages, without regard to the size of the ethnic and male population, and without considering the rights of Indigenous Peoples. Thus, in addition to the people eligible for military service, many people who are not eligible for military service were mobilized in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) – those, who did not serve before, students, elders, people with disabilities, and heads of families with many children (Source: Open letter to Putin from the chairman of the Sakha Shamaev Congress). Summonses were handed out late at night (1:00 - 2:00 am) with a minimum time for gathering of their belongings (2-3 hours) and with the threat of imprisonment for five years in case of refusal to mobilize. In the early morning (5:00 - 6:00 am), the mobilized men were taken by bus or planes to the assembly point in the city of Yakutsk, where there were sometimes not enough places for accommodation. There were not enough blankets, linen, or basic shelter. At temperatures below 0°C (less than 32°F), mobilized people from uluses (districts) were forced to spend the night in tents without heating, covered with mattresses.

There are cases when subpoenas were served during calls to the enlistment office for reasons not related to mobilization. Some men were taken from their working places even without returning to their homes first.

While the official Russian authorities conceal the real statistics, an analysis of the first days of mobilization in the Russian Federation from September 22 to September 25, 2022, conducted by anti-war activists in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), the Republic of Buryatia, the Republic of Tyva, and the Republic of Kalmykia, as well as independent Russian media shows ethnic selectivity and a blatantly disproportionate number mobilized from ethnic regions compared to the central regions and cities of the Russian Federation. Thus, from the small settlements of the Far North, almost the entire able-bodied young male population has been mobilized. In the Olenek Evenki national region, where the total number of people is 4,324 people, and the number of young men aged 18-35 is only 128 people, 50 people are subject to mobilization. This is 39.07% of all young Evenk men in the region. In the Kobyaysky ulus (district), where Evenk Peoples (a small numbered Indigenous Peoples with a population around 22,000 people) live, men have been taken from their reindeer herds by helicopters.

At the same time, according to eyewitnesses, there was practically no mobilization among the Moscow and St. Petersburg residents. This mobilization is taking place just ahead of the cold Arctic winter, which requires serious preparation and efforts. Despite this, men working as stokers, electricians, drivers, as well as men engaged in traditional economic activities - horse breeders and reindeer herders - are taken away from communities that need them. Who will complete tasks that require physical strength - heat and repair houses, take care of horses and reindeer during long and cold Arctic winter? (Source: A post from Vinokurova, U.A., a member of the Supreme Council of Elders of the Republic of Sakha). Hunters and fishermen have also been mobilized. Who will provide food for people in the Far North?

The Arctic regions, comprising two-thirds of the territory of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) are already suffering from the harsh effects of climate change. Devastating tundra and forest fires over the last few years and extensive floods, the consequences of which people are still coping with, have shaken the foundations of the traditional economy of the Indigenous Peoples. The current situation, in which the most vital men are drafted into hostilities, undermines the very possibility of normal life in these regions.

In Yakutsk, the capital of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), several hundred women protested against the mobilization on September 25, 2022. Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, which took the form of a ritual dance and prayer of the Sakha people, the police arrested 24 women.

Arrest of Sakha woman in Yakutsk.

Under pressure from the public, Il Darkhan of the Republic of Sakha, Aisen Nikolaev finally admitted violations in the process of mobilization and said that work was underway to return back to the republic some men mobilized by mistake. However, identification of violations requires a personal approach and a great deal of time. This may not be possible due to the hasty dispatch of those mobilized to the West. According to eyewitnesses, the training of the newly recruited in Khabarovsk lasts only a few days, after which they are sent to the Ukrainian border. Even if all the men who were mistakenly mobilized return home, there are thousands of Indigenous men who will be sent to war with Ukraine. How many of them will die and never return?

Also, in order to avoid mobilization, some men are fleeing the country hastily. Mobilization and this situation are real tragedies that will entail irreparable losses for the Peoples of Sakha, whose total number does not exceed 500,000. It is also true for other Indigenous Peoples of Siberia whose populations are even smaller.

The long history of discriminatory policies in Russia, starting from the time of early colonization, has already led to the loss, partial and sometimes complete, of the traditions and languages of the Siberian Indigenous Peoples. The loss of such a huge number of men in the current conflict with Ukraine will lead to even greater negative and irreversible consequences for the ethnic minorities of Russia. The Peoples of Siberia are under a real threat of losing their genetic heritage, numbers, integrity, languages, culture and traditions.

Military mobilization grossly violates not only human rights, but also the rights of Indigenous Peoples - Articles 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 11, 21, 22, 24 and other articles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. However, the problems of Indigenous Peoples of Siberia - large and small numbered, still remain invisible to the world community. We strongly urge the attention of the world community to the gross violations of the international rights of Indigenous Peoples in the Russian North.

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