#they also campaigned against prison labour

[clove-pinks]

'La M. de la Corsets': c. 1832 lithograph showing a dressmaker or tailoress and client. The undergarments depicted include sleeve-plumpers.

1830s Thursday: Big sleeves, and even bigger dreams for women’s rights.

The growing vulnerability of working women in industrial society provoked a forceful response. In 1825 hundreds of them went out on strike against New York City clothing houses. In 1831 these same women organized themselves into a mass-membership United Tailoresses’ Society. At a time when journeymen were still devoting their political efforts to a defense of artisanal prerogatives in the master’s shop, these “tailoresses” (the appellation itself testified to an advanced degree of industrial consciousness, excluding as it did the more traditional dressmaking of the “sempstress”) already understood that in a capitalist economy no aspect of the work relationship remained non-negotiable. [...]

No one can help us but ourselves, Sarah Monroe, a leader of the United Tailoresses’ Society, declared. Tailoresses should consequently organize a trade union with a constitution, a plan of action, and a strike fund. Only then could we “come before the public in defense of our rights.” The Wollstonecraftian rhetoric was conscious. Lavinia Wright, the society’s secretary, argued that the tailoresses’ low wages and hard-pressed circumstances were a direct result of the way power was organized throughout society to ensure women’s subordination in all social relations.

— Michael Zakim, Ready-Made Democracy: A History of Men's Dress in the American Republic, 1760-1860

I was disappointed in my search for pictures of Sarah Munroe, Lavinia Wright, or really anything to do with the United Tailoresses’ Society. One online article outright stated, “We know very little about this speaker, Sarah Monroe, other than that she was a garment worker and president of the newly formed United Tailoress Society -- the first women-only union in the United States.” 

I am in awe of this working-class woman, Sarah Monroe, who is quoted by Michael Zakim as saying in 1831:

It needs no small share of courage for us, who have been used to impositions and oppression from our youth up to the present day, to come before the public in defense of our rights; but, my friends, if it is unfashionable for the men to bear oppression in silence, why should it not also become unfashionable with the women?

'The Tailor's Shop': 1838 lithograph by Carl Kunz and Johann Geiger

#1830s #fashion history #labor history #labour history #us history #sarah monroe #Eighteen-Thirties Thursday #united tailoresses' society #michael zakim #women's history #also i have been sleeping on michael zakim's book it's really good #there were many strikes by female garment workers in the time period #amazingly forward-thinking they were trying to get sick pay and retirement benefits #they also campaigned against prison labour #tailors #dress history #inequality #industrial relations #19th century

[ukrfeminism]

2 minute read

JK Rowling is founding and personally funding a new service for women survivors of sexual violence. Launched days before Nicola Sturgeon’s controversial Gender Recognition Reform Bill is expected to pass through the Scottish parliament, the Edinburgh-based centre, Beira’s Place, will be female-only.

The author, who has written about the sexual and domestic abuse she suffered in her twenties, believes there is an “unmet need” for Scottish women who want “women-centred and women-delivered care at such a vulnerable time”. She hopes Beira’s Place, which will employ professional staff to provide free one-to-one and group counselling, “will enable more women to process and recover from their trauma”.

Rowling’s board of directors are all vocal opponents of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which will permit anyone to change the legal sex on their birth certificate by making a simple statutory declaration, a process known as self-identification. Feminists, including Reem Alsalem, UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, have raised grave concerns it will open up women’s services and private spaces to abuse by male predators.

Beira’s board comprises Rhona Hotchkiss, a former prison governor, who has opposed the Scottish government’s policy of moving trans-identified male sex offenders to women’s jails; Johann Lamont, a former leader of the Scottish Labour Party and a lawyer; Dr Margaret McCartney, an academic, broadcaster and Glasgow GP; and Susan Smith, director of For Women Scotland, a grassroots feminist group founded to fight the gender reform bill. Beira’s chief executive is Isabelle Kerr, a former manager of Glasgow Rape Crisis who received an MBE in 2020 for her work supporting British citizens who had been raped overseas.

The provision of single-sex services has been a key battleground of the gender reform bill. Already in Scotland, most domestic violence refuges and rape support services are “trans inclusive” and accept referrals from both sexes. In recent years councils have removed grants from women-only refuges in favour of generic organisations. Monklands Women’s Aid in North Lanarkshire, which was set up more than 40 years ago, had its council funding withdrawn in favour of a social justice charity which also helps men.

Most controversial is Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre whose chief executive, Mridul Wadhwa, a trans woman, told the Guilty Feminist podcast that women sexual assault victims who request female-only care will be “challenged on your prejudices” and told to “reframe your trauma”.

Yet in her recent book Defending Women’s Spaces, veteran campaigner Karen Ingala Smith, the chief executive of Nia, a domestic abuse charity in London, describes how women traumatised by male violence fare better and feel safer in female therapeutic spaces.

Beira’s Place is legally permitted to exclude males under the exemptions of the 2010 Equality Act, which allows single-sex services if they are “a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate end”.

It is named after Beira, the Scottish goddess of winter. JK Rowling said: “Beira rules over the dark part of the year, handing over to her sister, Bride, when summer comes again. Beira represents female wisdom, power, and regeneration. Hers is a strength that endures during the difficult times, but her myth contains the promise that they will not last for ever.”

The service is not a charity, but privately funded by Rowling, a noted philanthropist. The amount she will donate to set up and run Beira’s Place has not been disclosed.

[prolekult]

Yesterday marked the death of Sylvia Pankhurst - one of the finest revolutionary communists to have ever graced Britain's shores. We have rarely seen such fighters on this earth.

Sylvia was the most tortured suffragette, targetted for her insistence on including working class women within the demands of women's suffrage (much to the disdain of her mother and sister). She did not balk against repeated forced feeding, hunger striking and sleep striking.

She was one of a handful of communists in Britain who opposed the first world war. Her criticism of the war was ceaseless. Practically isolated, she organised relief for working class people in London with cost-price restaurants, free child care for mothers, and more.

She broke with the Labour Party over this, and never returned despite the enormous pressure put upon her by the British labour movement and, later, the Third Internationale. Her arguments with Lenin remain a key debate in communist and British politics.

Pankhurst stood resolutely with the Bolshevik revolution at its outbreak, and was pivotal in organising the "Hands Off Russia" campaign in Britain - which culminated in dock workers across the country refusing to load any munitions to ships.

Pankhurst was an outspoken opponent of racism. Her newspaper - then the Worker's Dreadnought - was the first newspaper in Britain to hire black journalists. When articles written by the Jamaican journalist, Claude McKay, were viewed as seditious, she went to jail for him.

Her support for Irish independence never wavered. She supported Larkin, the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union and United Builders' Labourers Union during the Dublin lock-outs. She stood by the Irish Citizen Army during the Easter Rising.

She was one of the first in Britain to recognise the dangers of fascism, her warnings and agitation beginning as early as 1920. Through this struggle, she became deeply involved in Ethiopian national liberation, where she spent the last years of her life.

All of this is just the tip of the iceberg of the contributions Sylvia made in her life. She did all of this at great cost to herself, enduring her mother and sister denouncing her in the press repeatedly, endless slander, rejection by the mainstream communist movement and worse.

Sylvia also belongs to the great pantheon of disabled revolutionaries, being diagnosed with endometriosis whilst in prison. This, along with the damage done to her organs by forced feeding, left her with often crippling stomach problems.

"I am going to fight capitalism even if it kills me. It is wrong that people like you should be comfortable and well fed while all around you people are starving." She fought until she died, but capitalism didn't kill her. At aged 78, Sylvia passed on.

She was given a state funeral in Ethiopia, and remains the only foreigner buried in the front of Holy Trinity Cathedral. An Ethiopian migrant, cited anonymously in Rachel Holmes' biography of Pankhurst, summed up what she meant to him thus:

"After God, Sylvia Pankhurst".

To learn more about Sylvia, we highly recommend Rachel Holmes' biography, "Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel".

#sylvia pankhurst #communism #politics #marxism #philosophy #communist #anti imperialism #history #leftism #world history #working class #feminism #womens rights #smash the patriarchy #suffragette #suffragists #women's suffrage

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 18 July 1912, four suffragettes – Mary Leigh, Gladys Evans, Lizzie Baker and Mabel Capper – attempted to set fire to the Theatre Royal in Dublin during a packed lunchtime meeting due to be addressed by Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. They left a canister of gunpowder close to the stage and hurled petrol and lit matches into the projection booth, which contained highly combustible film reels. The previous day, Mary Leigh had hurled a hatchet (around which a text reading “This symbol of the extinction of the Liberal Party for evermore” was wrapped) into the carriage containing Asquith, which narrowly missed him and instead cut the Irish Nationalist MP John Redmond on the ear. Redmond's focus on the campaign for Home Rule had led to his refusal to insert a clause giving women the vote, assuring his status as a target. All four were remanded in prison during the trial and on August 7, Mary Leigh and Gladys Evans were sentenced to 5 years penal servitude, Jennie Baines (under the nom de guerre Lizzie Baker) was given seven months hard labour, and the charges against Mabel Capper were dropped. * Did you know that we also have an account on open source social media platform Mastodon? There we post all of our anniversaries each day, so give us a follow: https://mastodon.social/@workingclasshistory https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2037249906460149/?type=3

[coochiequeens]

Founding members of Killed Women, Carole Gould (left) and Julie Devey, whose daughters were murdered by men. Photograph: Anna Gordon/The Guardian

Alexandra ToppingWed 30 Nov 2022 13.30 EST

Carole Gould’s 17-year-old daughter Ellie was killed by another sixth-former the day after she ended their relationship in 2019. Julie Devey’s daughter Poppy Devey Waterhouse, 24, was stabbed 49 times by her ex-boyfriend in 2018. Emma Ambler’s twin, Kelly Fitzgibbons, 40, and her nieces, Ava, 4, and Lexi, 2 were shotby their husband and father in 2020. Bekhal Mahmod has been in hiding since testifying against her father and uncle, who killed her 20-year-old sister, Banaz, in 2006.

Until recently, all these women had in common was grief but now they have united to become a powerful force for change in the UK, where a woman is killed by a man every three days.

The families, 11 in total, have launched Killed Women, a campaigning organisation led by families of women killed by men, in an attempt to to force change.

The range of policy demands the group is fighting for is diverse – from stricter rules around buying firearms to better education about domestic abuse and coercive control – but they will speak as one voice. “We don’t want any more sympathy,” said Carole Gould. “We don’t want promises. We actually want change, we want action.”

Gould, along with Julie Devey, has been campaigning to change the minimum sentence for domestic homicide since 2020. A government review is under way looking at whether it is right a killer outside the home will face a decade more in prison than a murder committed in the home. Currently, if a killer uses a weapon found in the home the tariff is 15 years, while one who brings in a weapon will get 25 years.

“When you tell people there is this 10-year disparity in sentencing, everybody is shocked,” she said. “So let’s see the change. Let’s see these perpetrators properly monitored, let’s stop releasing dangerous perpetrators back into society, let’s stop allowing them to change their names. And let’s recognise that domestic violence and domestic homicide is serious, and it should never be treated as a lesser crime to anything else.”

Devey’s daughter, Poppy, a quantitative trading analyst, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend Joe Atkinson on 14 December 2018. Although Poppy had 49 knife wounds and more than 100 injuries, Atkinson’s tariff was fixed at 16 years – it was like, her mum said, she was being given 10 years’ worth of blame.

“I can’t change Atkinson’s sentencing, so I can’t focus on that,” she said. “But there will be people killed this week, next week. There will be other mothers who get that police officer coming to tell them the most hideous of things has just happened and now, from that moment, their lives are shattered. So we do it for them, so they get some sense of better justice.”

The collective voice of Killed Women will be difficult to ignore, says Emma Amble, who has been fighting for stricter laws around gun licences since her sister and her nieces were killed by their husband and father. “There’s power in numbers and in having other people who are behind you and understand what you’re fighting for,” she said.

Killed Women – whose founder members also include the families of Jan Mustafa, Mumtahina Jannat, Joanne Tulip, Gemma Lynne Marjoram, Letisha Precious Shakespeare, Tracey Kidd and Suzanne Van Hagen – is calling on other families who have lost female loved ones to violence to join their ranks and for public support in the form of a GoFundMe page to power their campaigning.

The new group has the backing of Refuge, the domestic abuse charity, Southall Black Sisters and Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse (AAFDA). “There is a lot to learn from this group’s collective experience,” said AAFDA’s chief executive, Frank Mullane.

The Labour MP Jess Phillips and the Conservative chair of the women and equalities select committee, Caroline Nokes, are also among the supporters. “The voices of those most affected by extreme male violence have too often been heard briefly, but far too rapidly forgotten – Killed Women will change that,” said Nokes. Phillips agreed: “This organisation could be a gamechanger and force politicians to act with the resolve this crisis deserves.”

Some families will have to campaign away from the public eye. Bekhal Mahmod has been in hiding since testifying against her father and uncle who killed her sister, Banaz16 years ago.

Speaking to the Guardian on a withheld number, Mahmod said she “hated” not being able to join the other families in the campaign physically but wanted to raise her voice to keep alive the memory of her sister and other killed women.

“Everyone’s got enemies but I wouldn’t want anybody else’s heart to go through this. It’s something you never heal from,” she said. “But what does help, is the hope that we can change things for other families – we can give them a chance to have a life.”

#UK #Killed Women #Domestic violence #Male violence #One women is killed every three days

[robinzombie]

Hashima Island, Japan

Ghost Town 03

Population: 5,259 (1959) - 0 (2016)

Country: Japan

Years active: 1887-1974

Why Was It Abandoned?

Hashima Island was known for its undersea coal mines during the industrialisation of Japan in 1887.

In 1974, the mines were closed due to the depletion of coal and the use of petroleum in place of coal, which led to many coal mines shutting down across the country. The residents of the island left soon after, and Hashima Island remained abandoned for the following three decades.

In the 2000s, Hashima Island attracted tourists and gained interest because of its untouched historic ruins. This led to Hashima Island being open to tourists on April 22, 2009 and being protected/restored.

Island Life

 Originally on Takashima island, an island that was not far from Hashima, the Fukahori family owned the property as feudal lords and took advantage of the profitable opportunities that coal on the island brought. Coal mining was the basis of the local economy and residents were only seen as workers on the island.  Due to the increasing demand of coal in the Western continents such as the UK and US for their steam ships in the 1850′s, Thomas B. Glover brought British equipment to the island coal reserves around Nagasaki, which advanced technology and mining practices in 1869 and introduced a new age of coal mining. Because of the success and increase in foreign currency, Fukahori decided to expand on neighboring islands, which is how Hashima Island became a coal mining island. 

Around 15.7 million tons of coal were mined and excavated between 1891 and 1974. Coal was used by many Japanese people to heat their homes. They called this “goheita” after the legend about a man who stumbled upon the use of coal by accident.

In 1916, Japan’s first large reinforced concrete building was built to home the workers of the mines. The material used to build the structures pedaled Japan into a new era of architecture. They used concrete as protection against typhoons.

Over the next 55 years, Hashima Island began to grow. Apartment blocks, schools, a hospital, town hall, community centre, clubhouse, cinema, communal bath, swimming pool, rooftop gardens, shops, and a pachinko parlour were built for the miners and their families who lived on the island.

The economy on Hashima Island can be best described as socialist. Housing, electricity, and water were all free for the workers as long as they contributed to public work and territory clean up. The residents of Hashima Island had to depend on the outer world for food, clothes, and other articles of commerce. Fresh water was also delivered to the island until 1957 when tubes connected Hashima Island with water reservoirs on the mainland. This was inconvenient for islanders because of the potential threat of storms preventing sailing to Hashima Island for more than a day.

Until 1963, Hashima Island was just mountains and rock. That was until the “green campaign”, where Hashima residents brought soil from the mainland to the island to create roof gardens where they could grow vegetables and flowers. This also temporarily brought more “life and energy” to the island to lessen its gloomy appearance.

During the 1930’s until the end of World War II, conscripted Koreans and Chinese prisoners of war were forced to work under brutal treatment at the Mitsubishi facility as forced labourers under Japanese wartime mobilization policies. Many labourers died on the island from underground accidents, exhaustion, and malnutrition.

Today Hashima Island attracts many locals from Japan to tour on the island. Hashima Island also eventually became a World Heritage center, but on the condition that the government acknowledges the history of Hashima’s forced labor of Koreans. This was agreed upon, but due to the understatements made about Hashima Island’s forced labor from the Japanese government and addressing it as “work” instead of “forced labor” and disregarding the islands history has made a lot of Koreans and Japanese citizens feel as though the government cares more about the country’s reputation rather than the events and impact it’s had on workers. This is also supported by the fact that the history of Hashima Island’s forced labor is not taught in Japanese schools, which leaves many Japanese citizens unaware of the island’s history and cruelty to conscripted Koreans and war prisoners.

Victims of forced labor have described their experiences on Hashima Island as “a living hell”. Victims mention of how they were forced to work 12 hours a day in the mines while suffering from hunger.

The Nagaski Peace Museum, established in 1995, was created by Japanese citizens to publicize the truth about Japan’s history and demand compensation and apology to the foreign victims of Japan during World War II. 

Pop Culture / Media Representation

Hashima, Japan documentary (2002)

History Channel’s Life After People (2009)

James Bond Film, Skyfall (2012)

live action Japanese films for Attack on Titan (2015)

Thai horror film Hashima Project (2013)

South Korean World War II film “Battleship Island” (2017)

Sources

Wikipedia

Why All The Islanders Left Hashima

The Truth About Hashima

[richmond-rex]

Did Margaret's father really kill himself? Would she have known about it, it would her mother have covered it up to protect her?

[content warning for discussions of suicide]

Hi, anon! I'm sorry, I received this ask some two months ago but it got buried in my inbox. All we know about John Beaufort (Margaret's father)'s death is that it happened suddenly. He had just come back from a campaign in France where he had performed less than nobly by committing war crimes against civilians, squandering the crown's funds to advance his own interests and even bizarrely attacking one of England's allies against France (Brittany). His actions deeply angered Henry VI; according to a contemporary chronicle (Ingulf's Chronicle), the Duke of Somerset was summoned to court upon his return and ‘being accused of treason there, was forbidden to appear in the king’s presence’. Disgraced, John Beaufort withdrew to his Dorset estates, and on the 27th of May 1444:

The noble heart of a man of such high rank upon hearing this most unhappy news, was moved to extreme indignation; and being unable to bear the stain of so great a disgrace, he accelerated his death by putting an end to his existence, it is generally said; preferring thus to cut short his sorrow, rather than pass a life of misery, labouring under so disgraceful a charge.

The Croyland Chronicle is the only chronicle to suggest John Beaufort died by suicide. Other chroniclers simply said John Beaufort died suddenly. Interestingly, Henry VI's uncle, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, would also die suddenly after being accused of treason and denied access to the king, but suicide was ruled out in his case — admittedly, Humphrey died whilst in the king's custody when John Beaufort did not, but there might be another explanation for the suicide allegations. The Croyland Chronicler was not exactly a fan of the Duke of Somerset. John Beaufort owned lands near the abbey, and the chronicler complained that ‘tolls were levied by his servants in the vills’ while ‘all the cattle were driven away’. There was a dispute between Croyland's Abbot and John Beaufort because the latter had declared that the abbey's monks were forbidden from using the embankment he had built to transport goods to and from the abbey. The Abbot protested to King Henry VI, which apparently only displeased the duke further. The result of their dispute is unknown.

It might be that the Croyland Chronicler was unhappy enough about John Beaufort to repeat the suicide rumour, but I wouldn't say the chronicler was the one who created it. Whatever the case, it's hard to believe in suicide considering Beaufort died intestate (without a will) and he had gone to extreme lengths before his French campaign to make sure his daughter (Margaret) would be well-provided for in the case of his death and his illegitimate daughter Tacine would be made an English citizen in his absence. In that regard, he seems to have been a careful man, but on the contrary, perhaps he deemed this earlier arrangement all that was sufficient for his children. His wife was pregnant again at the time, and we don't know if she miscarried upon his death or if the baby died very young but it wasn't talked about again.

Who can tell? Suicide is not always logical or follows a logical order of events. John Beaufort was the English nobleman who spent the longest time in captivity in France during the Hundred Years' War: he spent no less than 17 years as a prisoner from the time he was a teenager captured at the Battle of Baugé to the time he was ransomed for an astronomical sum that left him impoverished. I imagine that kind of situation must leave deep psychological scars. However, it should also be said that John's father had died around the same age John died (40), not as suddenly, but still, even younger (37-38). John Beaufort had taken a long time to depart to France and whilst that might be because he was expecting the birth of his daughter Margaret, it might be that he had been ill too. Being in the king's bad books might have added additional stress to his earlier condition.

Would Margaret have known about her father's alleged suicide? I don't know! Croyland was the only chronicle to mention it but he also claimed that the rumour was 'generally said' at the time of the duke's death. It might be that Margaret heard about it at some point as she grew up. She was evidently interested enough in her father's soul to order prayers for him at Cambridge and at Wimborne where she ordered a double tomb for him and her mother. The fact that she ordered prayers for his soul though doesn't tell us much because it was an established custom to order prayers for one's parents.

Considering no other chronicle repeated the rumours, I would say they had died by the time Henry VII became king. I'd imagine Richard III would also have used it against Henry at the time of his smear campaign if the rumour was still circulating by 1485. If Margaret ever heard about her father's alleged suicide, I imagine it would have been during her childhood and not later on. Would her mother have told her about it? Would the servants have gossiped about that? Now, that's some speculation that historical fiction could explore better.

Thanks for the ask! 🌹x

#ask #anon #margaret beaufort #john beaufort 1st duke of somerset #tw: suicide #suicide mention / #suicide mention tw

[beardedmrbean]

An MP has lost an appeal against her conviction for harassing a woman who was having a sexual relationship with her then partner.

Claudia Webbe, MP for Leicester East, was given a suspended prison sentence for harassing Michelle Merritt between September 2018 and April 2020.

Her appeal was dismissed at Southwark Crown Court on Thursday.

However the 10-week suspended sentence she received in November was reduced to community service.

Judge Deborah Taylor and two magistrates ruled this should amount to 80 hours - a reduction from the 200 hours she was originally ordered to complete.

A trial at Westminster Magistrates' Court heard Webbe was jealous of Ms Merritt's relationship with Lester Thomas.

The 57-year-old - who represents her constituency as an independent after being expelled from Labour - made numerous calls to Ms Merritt in a campaign of harassment over the course of 18 months.

Her trial heard on one occasion she made an "angry" call, used a derogatory term and added: "You should be acid."

'Amounted to harassment'

It also heard how Webbe threatened to send naked images of Ms Merritt to her family and a recording of a call in which she was heard shouting "get out of my relationship".

The appeal hearing heard Ms Merritt had reported being "threatened by a public figure with acid", but received 17 further phone calls lasting 14 seconds or less from Webbe after the MP was warned by police to stop contacting her.

The judge said the court found Webbe had not "made a threat to throw acid over" Ms Merritt but that a string of silent phone calls and threats to reveal naked pictures of her had been "a course of conduct which amounted to harassment".

The appeal heard since the trial, Ms Merritt's phone had been examined and downloaded by police, revealing sexual messages between her and Mr Thomas.

Webbe's barrister Helen Law suggested Ms Merritt had "lied" or "misled" the magistrates' court when she said she and Mr Thomas were just "good friends".

But prosecutor Susannah Stevens said: "What was going on between Michelle Merritt and Lester Thomas is actually unhelpful to the appellant's case because Claudia Webbe's suspicions as to all of that provide her not with a defence but with a motivation."

The MP said she had split up with Mr Thomas in March this year after learning of the messages he had shared with Ms Merritt.

#nunyas news

[colorfulcyclepeanut]

ASPI: forced labour hypocrites and academic fraudsters

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) published its dramatic allegations of Uyghur Muslim forced labour in a much-lauded 1 March 2020 report, Uyghurs for Sale. The report alleged “a new phase in China’s social re-engineering campaign targeting minority citizens”, claiming it had exposed “new evidence” that a number of factories were “using forced Uyghur labour under a state-sponsored labour transfer scheme that is tainting the global supply chain”. A 26 March 2020 Grayzone report nailed the agenda behind ASPI’s claims in its headline that charged forced labour allegations about Chinese Uyghurs are “brought to you by US, NATO, arms industry to drive Cold War PR blitz”.

ASPI’s dubious sources

Uyghurs for Sale lead author, ASPI researcher Vicky Xu, told the ABC on 2 March: “Officials and private brokers receive money for every Uyghur person they manage to transfer. The recipient companies receive a cash inducement for every Uyghur they take. … Everyone involved in this transfer scheme benefits except for Uyghur workers.”

Xu’s claims are repeated in ASPI’s report, which essentially alleges a bounty program to incentivise industrialscale forced labour. However, ASPI’s supporting reference doesn’t back up the allegations. In fact, it reveals the subsidy is paid primarily to cover expenses incurred by labour hire companies and job placement agencies, while Xu’s “cash inducement” is part of a regulated labour hire program, incentivised to significantly increase the workers’ income and achieve successful long-term employment.

This is a pattern. Tracing back ASPI’s references reveals that relevant information is ignored, and sources are interpreted in extreme bad faith, or are misrepresented in a manner so misleading it can only be described as academic fraud. References for some of ASPI’s most egregious allegations against the Chinese government come from dubious sources: the discredited far-right evangelical Adrian Zenz, a frequent ASPI source, who believes he is “led by God” on a “mission” against China; the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, an ASPI-like militaristic institution which is funded by the US and UK governments and arms manufacturers; or, conveniently, ASPI’s own staff, who are paid by Mike Pompeo’s US State Department to demonise China.

Uyghurs for Sale: academic fraud

ASPI claims that “[in] the name of combating ‘religious extremism’, Chinese authorities have been actively remoulding the Muslim population in the image of China’s Han ethnic majority”. The article referenced includes key information that ASPI completely ignores: no terrorist incidents have occurred in Xinjiang in three years due to the counter-terrorism and deradicalisation efforts (after 800 deaths from dozens of terrorist attacks in the ten years to 2017); and foreign officials, diplomats, journalists and religious officials have visited and commended the program, saying it met the United Nations’ purposes and principles on defeating terrorism and protecting basic human rights.

Contradicting ASPI’s claims that the Xinjiang Muslim population is being “actively [remoulded]”, the article describes education subsidies for poor families; universal free health check-ups; improved government social security systems including medical insurance and pension schemes; and subsidised housing built for 212,700 rural families in that year alone. The article also reports Xinjiang’s GDP was up 6.1 per cent year on year, and was the highest in its history; since 2014, more than 2.38 million Xinjiang residents have been lifted out of poverty.

According to ASPI, “Uyghur workers who have been able to leave China and speak out describe the constant fear of being sent back to a detention camp in Xinjiang or even a traditional prison while working at the factories”. ASPI claims that all workers of a Uyghur labour transfer program in Fujian were former “re-education camp” detainees and were “threatened with further detention if they disobeyed the government’s work assignments”; and that “police regularly search their dormitories and check their phones for any religious content. If a Quran is found, the owner will be sent back to the ‘re-education camp’ for 3-5 years”.

https://citizensparty.org.au/sites/default/files/bitter-winter.jpg

The source for these claims is an article published in Bitter Winter, an online publication of CESNUR, a high-profile lobbying group for controversial religions, which has defended groups including the Church of Scientology, Falun Gong, the Order of the Solar Temple (which was responsible for the mass murder-suicide of 75 members in 1994-97), and Aum Shinrikyo (responsible for the 1995 Tokyo sarin gas attack). Bitter Winter has defended Eastern Lightning (a.k.a. Church of Almighty God), an apocalyptic group regarded as a cult in China, which believes the Chinese Communist Party is Satan incarnate. Eastern Lightning members have been convicted of multiple counts of cult-motivated murder, and once kidnapped 34 members of a Christian group, holding them for two months in attempted forced conversion. Bitter Winter has published reams of articles alleging the Chinese government’s persecution of Uyghurs. On 24 June 2019 Bitter Winter co-hosted a conference campaigning for asylum rights of the Uyghur diaspora and Eastern Lightning, where representatives testified to the alleged torture and murder of their members by the Chinese government.

ASPI says, “Uyghur workers are often transported across China in special segregated trains, and in most cases are returned home by the same method after their contracts end a year or more later”; according to ASPI, this is isolation and a “relevant indicator” of forced labour. Yet ASPI’s referenced articles describe a poverty-alleviation program, where successful job applicants were travelling by train to a pre-job training course, with board, lodging and transportation expenses paid for. The apparent reference for ASPI’s “segregated trains” allegation is an article describing how, to accommodate peak travel periods, a railway company organised special additional trains for “returning workers to their hometowns” which had “also been upgraded from normal speed trains to fast trains, and they are replaced by green leather[-upholstered] cars. It is an air-conditioned car. Migrant workers can go home faster and have a more comfortable travel experience.”

Determined to present an impression of misery, ASPI says that “[in] factories far away from home” Uyghur workers “typically live in segregated dormitories”. This claim is cherry-picked from an article which describes a poverty alleviation program. In one example, in a program aimed at “employment for one person and poverty alleviation for the whole family”, there is a description of migrant employees’ study rooms, halal canteens and air-conditioned dormitories. ASPI ignores the reference’s description of governmentfunded health programs—a new local hospital and comprehensive screening for 40,000 children, which found a prevalence of congenital hand and foot disabilities, in response to which the government funded free surgery and rehabilitation for these children.

ASPI’s second reference documents a migrant vocational program where 1,300 graduates were accepted into new jobs at a company which manufactures high-tech hardware and semiconductors. Interviewees spoke of overcoming homesickness, adapting to their new environment and learning new skills. There are photos of birthday parties, social activities, company-organised excursions, and a new company-built canteen for Xinjiang migrant workers, where Xinjiang chefs were invited to cook. There is a photo of young female employees in their colourfully decorated dormitory, apparently ASPI’s evidence of “segregated dormitories”. (Does ASPI expect men and women, especially Muslims, to share dorm rooms?)

ASPI says that in these factories, migrant workers “undergo organised Mandarin and ideological training outside working hours”. Again ASPI misrepresents its references, which document poverty alleviation programs and the growing prosperity of local residents; applaud the achievements of factory workers-turned female entrepreneurs; profile mentorship programs; and describe a company which hired full-time language teachers to overcome communication barriers and hold language courses for their employees, which grew to be the largest national language training class in southern Xinjiang.

UK MPs press for punitive sanctions

ASPI claims its research is “rigorously peer reviewed—internally and externally”. Uyghurs for Sale was peer-reviewed by unnamed “labour specialists”, “anonymous reviewers”, and Darren Byler, a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Asian Studies at the University of Colorado, who is a member of the Washington DC-based Uighur Scholars Working Group, alongside Adrian Zenz and ASPI Senior Fellow James Leibold, a co-author of the report.

The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office funded ASPI with £10,000 for Uyghurs for Sale. The report featured as supporting material, along with reports from Adrian Zenz, a highly publicised petition which was debated in the UK Parliament on 12 October 2020. On 9 September 2020, UK MPs debated “Detention of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang”, overwhelmingly demanding stronger action against the Chinese government and for sanctions to be levelled against Chinese individuals and companies in retaliation for alleged human rights abuses and forced labour of Uyghurs.

Why the relentless push to justify sanctions specifically in the Xinjiang region? As a critical hub of the Chinese government’s “One Belt, One Road Initiative”, destroying Xinjiang’s industry and trade with sanctions furthers the Anglo-American agenda of economically damaging its strategic competitors: China and Russia. The misleading nature of Uyghurs for Sale, and ASPI’s own funding by benefactors that profit from forced prison labour in the USA and UK, reveals ASPI’s faux concern for human rights and its role as a government-funded propaganda outlet—forced labour hypocrites publishing academic fraud.

[njenjemedia]

The attention of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide has been drawn to a video clip that has gone viral, propagated by one Mallam Mahdi Shehu, a Katsina based activist, to the effect that a vote to Mr. Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party for the 2023 general election, is a vote for Biafra. In the video, he also alleged that a vote to Obi is synonymous with the destruction of the North. He asked his listeners what they stand to gain by voting Obi, a southerner, etc. https://youtu.be/Kv9AH2mhE1I Prophet Isa El-Buba Knocks Mandi Shehu, Calls Him Out For Lying To Northern Christians After listening to the video clip, I was shocked that such narrow minded ethnic bigot that holds tenaciously to the grudges of the past is still in our mist in this millennium. The uncivilized remarks by Mahdi Shehu are not only disingenuous but out-rightly, distasteful, mischievous, provocative, incendiary and capable of igniting ethno-religious tensions across the country. The rabidity, thoughtlessness and hollowness that characterized the video signpost the last wish of a fading and end of the rope propagandist. Persons that harbour such despicable thoughts and mindsets are the pernicious cancerous social incubus which have for long held Nigeria down. The Ohanaeze Ndigbo calls on the federal government of Nigeria to arrest, prosecute and ultimately confine Mallam Mahdi Shehu in a prison to serve as a deterrent to other ethnic inflammatory chauvinists. If such a deep ethnic jingoism is allowed to play out in the oncoming campaigns, then the fledgling wing of the eagle may be irredeemably broken. Mallam Shehu and his ilk should be made to know that the ethnic cards that were played in the past to the detriment of unity, progress and corporate existence of the country have become loathsome, unserviceable and anachronistic. Denis Waitley appeared to be speaking to the hearts of Nigerians when he posed: There are two primary choices in life, to accept the conditions as they exist or accept the responsibility for changing them. Evidently, there is no Nigerian, big or small, rich or poor, northerner or southerner, Christian or Muslim that is comfortable with the current state of affairs in the country. Therefore, the question is to be or not to be. To this end, Albert Einstein cautions that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Therefore, two major options are open to Nigeria in the 2023 general election: to continue with the abysmal tailspin of poverty, unemployment, rising inflation, banditry, kidnapping, general insecurity, epileptic power supply, mass strikes, etc, and in deed all the indices of a collapsing state on one hand or a productive, robust, visionary and combustive economic salvation on the other. https://youtu.be/zt7YLXyb_K4 Response To Mahdi Shehu, A Scam, Who Tells Northern Christains Not To Vote For A Christian President Mallam Shehu, in his unmitigated myopia, lacks the basic social reflections to recall that the Christian Southerners had in the past willingly voted President Shehu Shagari, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and President Muhammadu Buhari on account of the manifestoes they presented to the populace. The most recent being President Buhari when in our historical lethargy he promised change, vibrancy, ruthless fight against corruption and uprooting the nefarious Boko Haram insurgency. The uninitiated should know that Nigeria has witnessed a major ideological quantum leap or a paradigm shift. Perhaps, the social media and the present educational standards among Nigerians have created an awareness and mass enlightenment far beyond the narrow Mallam Shehu pigeon-hole vision. The youths of today share in the propensity to follow a leader in whom they perceive as means of meeting their own ends. This is the irrevocable present day reality. Instructively, the Igbo cosmopolitanism admits politicians of all persuasions to canvass for votes across

the entire Igbo space without let or hindrance, bearing in mind that what Nigeria needs now is a transformative persona, a visionary with ideologically based programs and a proven record of accomplishments. Dr. Chiedozie Alex Ogbonnia, National Publicity Secretary, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide

[39minormovements]

excerpts from “one year on, we must remember the essex 39 and fight for justice for migrants” (oct 23, 2020) by the remember the essex 39 campaign in gal-dem

“[T]he deaths of the Essex 39 were not some unavoidable tragedy, but a direct result of British state policies — like the deaths of Jimmy Mubenga, Joy Gardner, Abdulfatah Hamdallah, Mercy Baguma and countless others.”

“Two drivers are currently on trial for ‘conspiracy to assist unlawful migration,’ manslaughter, and other more minor offences. Regardless of the result of the legal case, we know that punishing individuals is simply a way for the government to provide the illusion that justice has been served, without having to interrogate its own complicity... [I]t is precisely tougher border enforcement that makes migration ever more deadly and creates the demand for smugglers. The only way to prevent death is to create safe and accessible routes of entry. Individual prosecutions and framings of tragic victimhood also obscure the structural reasons for these people’s deaths.”

“[T]he archetype of the Asian economic migrant, as opposed to the ‘genuine refugee,’ entrenches the distinction between the undeserving and the deserving migrant: those hoping to come to the UK to work in low-paid work are seen as preying on domestic jobs, which in turn jeopardises the rights of people fleeing persecution to enter Britain – ignoring the underlying context of global capitalism that pushes people to migrate in the first place.” 

“Indeed, many migrants to the UK, including these 39 Vietnamese migrants, come from places suffering ongoing extraction and exploitation in which the British state is and has been complicit, and from which it continues to reap the benefits. Global capitalism creates the conditions for labour migration, then marginalises and makes migrant workers vulnerable to exploitation and fundamentally disposable. We need to recognise this violent system is working exactly as it is supposed to.” 

“Even if the Essex 39 had survived their journeys here, they would have been subject to the slow violence of the border, which doesn’t make headlines at all: they would face exploitative and dangerous working conditions, in addition to the risk of immigration raids, detention and deportation.”

“This is why reform is not enough – our struggle must have a clear abolitionist horizon. We believe that people should be able to move without risking their lives. For this reason, we believe in a world without borders, without prisons, without police, without nation-states. We believe these structures, which were established as mechanisms of imperial control and extraction, must be dismantled, as part of a broader transformation of our political and economic system. In remembering lives brutally cut short by borders, racism, and capitalism, we resist against the conditions that lead to premature death.”

image: an artwork by kay stephens from the zine, remember the dead; justice for the living!

[image description: a graphic of a person with dark, long hair and tan skin holding a white pigeon in their hands. the pigeon holds a small banner on its peak that reads: “remember the essex 39.” in the background there are several birds flying toward the sky. on the top edge of the graphic says “no human,” and at the bottom it says “is illegal.”] 

[fannish-karmiya]

Who Knew the Truth About the Wen Remnants?

(finally cross-posting from Ao3)

In the story of Modao Zushi, we see a group of people being rounded up and placed in a restricted settlement, then shuffled to a prison labour camp, and eventually be massacred and thrown in a mass grave. The treatment of the Wen remnants by the sects and their eventual fate bear similarities to real ethnic cleansing/genocide attempts, and I find the way that fandom tries to mitigate and even ignore it deeply disturbing.

I think that part of it is because people like these characters. They don’t want to take a long hard look at them and admit that they were either complicit or active participants in such an atrocity. How could people who are supposed to be righteous, like Lan Xichen, Nie Mingjue and Lan Qiren, do such a monstrous thing?

People want to believe that they didn’t know. That the Jins were engaging in a massive smear campaign against Wei Wuxian and that the sects were deceived into thinking that the people in the Burial Mounds settlement were an army. But I don’t think the text backs that up, and am going to be going over it very closely to try to build a clear picture of what was known about the Wen remnants by the cultivation world, and who was involved in their massacre.

From the Ghetto to the Prison Camp

I’m going to say, I think Mo Xiang Tong Xiu knew exactly what she was doing when she wrote all of this. The remnants of the Wen clan, after the war, are described as being cordoned off into a small settlement in Qishan, with all the remaining territory being divvied up between the sects. After that, the remaining Wens (the ones who didn't participate in the war) who had initially been allowed to live there started being arrested on trumped up charges and sent to the prison camp at Qiongqi Path.

In general, this is the sort of pattern which real world ethnic cleansing or genocide attempts tend to follow. People are first confined to a ghetto, then start being arrested on spurious charges (see Wen Ning's arrest) and sent to prison labour camps, subjected to harsh treatment there with many dying 'accidentally', and eventually people may be massacred and their bodies thrown in a mass grave.

The Genocide Convention defines 'deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part' as an important hallmark of genocide. This was certainly the end result of the cultivation world's hate against the Wens. The Genocide Convention also defines genocide itself as 'intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group'. The sects in Modao Zushi are certainly religious sects, and as they all have their own unique cultures, I think we could argue that they bear at least some similarities to ethnic groups as well.

To me, the fact that the initial desire for retribution turned into a hateful fervour in which the cultivation world wanted to see the entire Wen clan exterminated, down to the conscientious objectors like Wen Qing and the infants like A-Yuan, drives this much closer to an ethnic cleansing or genocide attempt than simply a case of treating war prisoners inhumanely. And, as we will see soon when Wei Wuxian confronts everyone in Koi Tower, the cultivation world does not care that many of the people in prison now are innocent of war crimes.

Most of the descriptions of something similar happening are from chapter 72, where Wei Wuxian shows up at the banquet in Koi Tower to ask after Wen Ning.

Wei WuXian, “You definitely remember him. Last month, when you were night-hunting in the area of Ganquan, you chased an eight-winged bat king to the gathering place, or the detention camp, of the Wen Sect’s remnants and brought a group of the Wen Sect’s disciples. The one in the lead was him.”

After the Sunshot Campaign, the QishanWen Sect was destroyed. The territory that it was expanding was shared among the other sects. The Ganquan area was appointed to the LanlingJin Sect. As for the remnants of the Wen Sect, they were herded into a small corner of Qishan, not even a thousandth the territory it onced owned. They were crammed into the place and struggled to live.

(Chapter 72, Exiled Rebels translation)

As said, the wording of ‘detention camp’ and ‘crammed into the place and struggled to live’ is very reminiscent of a ghetto.

Wei Wuxian describes Jin Zixun’s ill-treatment of the Wen cultivators who were allowed to live ‘free’ after the war:

Wei WuXian, “Fine. I don’t mind explaining it in greater detail. You couldn’t catch the bat king and happened to run into a few of the Wen Sect’s disciples who were there to investigate the same thing. And so, you threatened them to carry spirit-attraction flags to be your bait. They didn’t dare do it. One person stepped out and tried to reason with you. That’s the Wen Ning I’m talking about. After some delay, the bat king got away. You beat up the Wen cultivators, took them away by force, and the group disappeared. Do I need to say any more details? They still haven’t returned yet. Apart from you, I don’t know who in the world I could possibly ask.”

(Chapter 72, Exiled Rebels translation)

It’s worth noting too that this behaviour is very reminiscent of Wen Chao’s, and yet no one in the room observing this is concerned at all. In general, Wei Wuxian describes a very concerning situation and no one cares; such is the negative sentiment against the Wens at this point.

Wei WuXian, “Did I say something wrong? Forcing living people to be bait and beating them up whenever they refused to obey—is this any different from what the QishanWen Sect does?”

Another guest cultivator stood up, “Of course it’s different. The Wen-dogs did all kinds of evil. To arrive at such an end is only karma for them. We only avenged a tooth for a tooth, letting them taste the fruit that they themselves had sown. What’s wrong with this?”

Wei WuXian, “Take revenge on the ones who bite you. Wen Ning’s branch doesn’t have much blood on their hands. Don’t tell me that you find them guilty by association?”

[...]

The person shook his head, the words ‘this man refuses to reason with me’ written all over his face. Someone else sneered, “Back then, when the Wen Sect slaughtered our people, it was thousands of times crueler than this! They didn’t treat us with justice and morality, so why should we treat them with such?”

Wei WuXian grinned, “Oh. The Wen-dogs did all kinds of evil, so anyone whose surname is Wen can be killed? That’s not it, is it? Many of the clans who defected from the Wen Sect are quite well-off right now, aren’t they? In this hall, isn’t there a few sect leaders from clans that used to be under the Wen Sect’s wing?”

As the sect leaders saw that he recognized them, their expressions changed at once. Wei WuXian continued, “Since anyone whose surname is Wen can be used an outlet of anger as one pleases, no matter if they’re innocent or not, does it mean that it’s fine even if I kill all of them right now?”

(Chaper 72, Exiled Rebels translation)

It’s worth noting that the ‘clans who defected’ are not Wens themselves, as some fans have suggested. Many smaller sects are subordinate to the great sects in their regions, such as the Laoling Qin who are loyal to the Lanling Jin. Wei Wuxian is just pointing out the hypocrisy of them being allowed to live free while the remaining Wens are so mistreated.

An interesting exchange happens after Wei Wuxian leaves:

Lan WangJi spoke coldly, “Was he wrong?”

Jin GuangYao paused almost unnoticeably. He immediately laughed, “Haha. Yes, he’s right. But it’s because he’s right that he can’t say it in front of them, correct?”

Lan XiChen seemed as if he was deep in thought, “Young Master Wei’s heart really has changed.”

(Chapter 72, Exiled Rebels translation)

I just find the fact that Jin Guangyao actually admits that Wei Wuxian was in the right here to be very, very interesting. He’s a terrible person who continually chooses to do evil, but every now and then he has these odd moments. I’d also point out that Lan Xichen seems entirely unswayed by the accusations of abuse which Wei Wuxian has made against the Jins.

From there, Wei Wuxian and Wen Qing head to Qiongqi Path, where the original reliefs carved by the Qishan Wen are being replaced.

Such a large-scale undertaking would need many laborers for sure. And, as for these laborers, of course there were no better candidates than the Wen Sect’s prisoners of war, who had become homeless dogs after the Sunshot Campaign.

[...]

Before the valley was a row of shacks built temporarily for the prisoners of war to spend their nights. Leading Wen Qing, Wei WuXian saw an old, bent-over figure from afar. Cloaked in rain, the figure walked slowly, carrying a large flag. When it walked nearer, it became clear that the person carrying the flag was a wobbly old woman. She carried on her back a young toddler who paid attention to nothing but nibbling his fingers, fixed into position by a few cloth rags.

[...]

A large sun, crest of the QishanWen Sect, was painted over the flag. However, it a blood-red cross was plastered on top of it. The flag itself was torn to bits as well. From when the Sunshot Campaign ended until now, countless people were labeled ‘leftover Wen-dogs’. Countless methods were used to torture them too, even called the euphemism ‘self reflection’. Wei WuXian knew it was likely because she was too old and couldn’t be a laborer like the others that the leader here came up with such a way to torment her. She had to carry the Wen Sect’s tattered flag and walk around in self humiliation.

[...]

Torches were set up on both sides of the valley. The flames flickered now and then within the faint strings of rain, but their blaze nonetheless illuminated the hundreds of heavy silhouettes on the path.

The prisoners were all ghastly pale, their steps dragging. They weren’t allowed to use spiritual powers or any other instruments, not only by the LanlingJin Sect’s precautions against them, but also because it had to be punishing. Over a dozen inspectors, bearing black umbrellas, rode on horseback through the rain as they scolded.

(Chapter 72, Exiled Rebels translation)

Wei Wuxian notices that the inspectors are carrying branding tools:

The young man bore handsome features, but his eyes were rather cold. He couldn’t help but shiver under the gaze. Soon, he realized that the young man wasn’t staring at him, but instead the iron brand that he brandished.

The iron brand within the inspector’s hand was the same kind as what the QishanWen Sect’s servants used. It was only that the shape of the brand at the top was changed from the sun crest to the peony crest.

(Chapter 72, Exiled Rebels translation)

At this point they begin to question the inspectors.

The people looked at one another. After some dawdling, an inspector who looked quite honest spoke up, his tone friendly, “All of the prisoners here are the Wen Sect’s cultivators. New ones are sent here every day.”

[...]

The inspector was round and chubby. He gave an obsequiously apologetic grin, “Maiden, don’t worry. Actually, it happens a lot that other sects come to us for cultivators. Maybe somebody else took him during the past few days? When we do roll calls, we’d sometimes find that someone ran away as well…”

(Chapter 72, Exiled Rebels translation)

May I just note how ominous it is that sects ‘come to [them] for cultivators’ regularly? What happens to those cultivators? We’ll never know.

When Wei Wuxian asks where the dead cultivators are, the guards claim:

The inspectors quickly replied, “That’s not the way to talk. Although it’s all Wen cultivator’s here, we’ve never dared do anything fatal.”

(Chapter 72, Exiled Rebels translation)

Naturally, he doesn’t believe this and uses Chenqing to raise the corpses:

Yelps of surprise suddenly came from the far side of the crowd. Scrambling, the people soon emptied out an area of the circle with which they surrounded him. In the area stood slantingly around a dozen tattered figures, tall and short, men and women. Some of them gave off the stench of rotting flesh. The one who stood at the front was Wen Ning, whose eyes were still open.

His face was as pale as wax and his pupils were dilated. The blood at the corner of his lips had already dried into a dark brown. Although his chest didn’t rise and fall at all, it was obvious to see that half of his ribcage had collapsed. Nobody who saw such a scene would think that he was still alive, but Wen Qing still didn’t give up, grabbing for his pulse with trembling hands.

(Chapter 72, Exiled Rebels translation)

This gives us an idea of just how brutally the prisoners are being killed. The inspectors, meanwhile, try to cover it up but clearly don’t consider what they’ve done wrong at all:

“Young Master Wei, you mustn’t say such a thing. We wouldn’t dare kill a single person here. He’s the one who wasn’t careful while working, fell off the valley walls and died.”

Wei WuXian, “Nobody would dare kill a single person? Is that true?”

The inspectors swore in unison, “Absolutely!”

“Not a single one!”

Wei WuXian smiled, “Oh. I understand.”

Immediately after, he continued calmly, “It’s because they’re Wen-dogs, and Wen-dogs aren’t people. So even if you killed them, it doesn’t count as having killed people. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

This was exactly what the lead inspector was thinking when he said it. With his thoughts read, his complexion paled. Wei WuXian added, “Or did you really think I wouldn’t know how someone died?”

(Chapter 72, Exiled Rebels translation)

Before Wei Wuxian takes them all from the camp, we get a little more insight into how people were treated there:

The prisoner’s voice quivered slightly as he pointed in a certain direction, “There’s… There’s a house on that side of the valley. They use it to… lock people inside and beat them up. Anyone who dies would be dragged outside and buried. Some of the people you’re looking for might be over there…”

Wei WuXian, “Thank you.”

He followed the direction that the person pointed and indeed saw a shed that seemed like it was only temporarily built. Holding Wen Qing in one hand, he kicked the door open. In a corner of the room sat around a dozen people, all of them bruised and bleeding.

(Chapter 72, Exiled Rebels translation)

I know I quoted a lot here, but I think it’s worth establishing in clear terms just how terrible Qiongqi Path was and how much it resembles a concentration camp.

The Reaction of the Sects

Immediately after Wei Wuxian takes the Wens from the prison camp to the Burial Mounds, the sects meet at Koi Tower to discuss it. Those who weren’t there are called in. The discussion that happens here gives us some very good clues as to how much the sect leaders either knew (or chose not to know) about the Wen remnants and how they were being abused.

Just about everyone was here at this meeting:

On that night, an extreme crisis flooded the cultivational world.

At midnight, in the Golden Pavilion on Koi Tower sat over fifty sect leaders from sects of all sizes. Jin GuangShan sat in the foremost seat. Jin ZiXuan was away, while Jin ZiXun didn’t have enough experience, so Jin GuangYao was the only one who stood beside him. In the front row sat sect leaders and famed cultivators like Nie MingJue, Jiang Cheng, Lan XiChen, and Lan WangJi. All of their expressions were solemn. The next row sat sect leaders of lesser importance.

(Chapter 73, Exiled Rebels translation)

Jin Guangyao starts us off:

“… Four inspectors were harmed. Around fifty of the remaining Wen Sect members escaped. After Wei WuXian led them into Burial Mound, he summoned hundreds of fierce corpses to patrol the base of the mountain. Our people still can’t get any further.”

[...]

What Jin GuangShan wanted, however, wasn’t his apology or his compensation, “Sect Leader Jiang, at first, for your sake, the LanlingJin Sect didn’t intend on saying anything. However, some of these inspectors weren’t from the Jin Sect. There were a few from other sects as well. This makes it…”

(Chapter 73, Exiled Rebels translation)

It’s worth noting, very loudly, that there were inspectors from multiple sects at the prison camp. This wasn’t something which the Jins were doing in secret; everyone was involved.

Jin Guangyao’s wording, ‘our people still can’t get any further’ also implies that Wei Wuxian and the Wens were pursued immediately. He would probably have had to take them to the Burial Mounds no matter what (where else would a necromancer with 50 civilians to protect go but corpse mountain?), but in particular he had no choice because it was closest and he needed a large force to repel their pursuers before they caught up to them.

Jiang Cheng, for the last time ever in his life, speaks up for Wei Wuxian:

“...Everyone, I’m afraid you don’t know that the Wen cultivator whom Wei WuXian wanted to save was called Wen Ning. We owe him and his sister Wen Qing gratitude for what happened during the Sunshot Campaign.”

(Chapter 73, Exiled Rebels translation)

Of course, that doesn’t last long:

Nie MingJue, “You owe them gratitude? Isn’t the QishanWen Sect the ones who caused the YunmengJiang Sect’s annihilation?”

Within these few years, Jiang Cheng insisted on working late into the night every day. That day, just as he decided to rest early, he had to rush to Koi Tower overnight because of the thundering news. He’d been suppressing some anger under his fatigue since the beginning. With his natural competitiveness, he was already quite agitated since he had to apologize to other people. When he heard Nie MingJue mention the incident of his sect again, hatred sprouted within him.

The hatred was directed at not only everyone who was seated in this room, but also Wei WuXian.

(Chapter 73, Exiled Rebels translation)

Nie Mingjue clearly has no idea what it’s like to live under a tyrannical dictator:

Lan XiChen responded a moment later, “I have heard of Wen Qing’s name a few of times. I do not remember her having participated in any of the Sunshot Campaign’s crimes.”

Nie MingJue, “But she’s never stopped them either.”

Lan XiChen, “Wen Qing was one of Wen RuoHan’s most trusted people. How could she have stopped them?”

Nie MingJue spoke coldly, “If she responded with only silence and not opposition when the Wen Sect was causing mayhem, it’s the same as indifference. She shouldn’t have been so disillusioned as to hope that she could be treated with respect when the Wen Sect was doing evil and be unwilling to suffer the consequences and pay the price when the Wen Sect was wiped out.”

Lan XiChen knew that because of what happened to his father, Nie MingJue abhorred Wen-dogs more than anything, especially with how intolerable he was toward evil. Lan XiChen didn’t say anything else.

(Chapter 73, Exiled Rebels translation)

Lan Xichen may well be one of the least prejudiced in his attitudes here, and he still drops the topic like a hot potato because he doesn’t care enough to risk upsetting Nie Mingjue or making a fuss. Quite frankly, the subtext here is that he just doesn’t care enough to pursue it.

It’s very clear in this chapter just how bad the sentiment against the Wens is: they’re all guilty by the very crime of their name, as far as the rest of society is concerned:

One of the sect leaders spoke up, “What Sect Leader Nie said is quite right. Besides, Wen Qing is one of Wen RuoHan’s most trusted people. You’re telling me she never participated? Well I don’t buy it. Is there any Wen-dog without a single drop of blood on their hands? Maybe it’s just that we haven’t found out about it yet!”

As soon as the Wen Sect’s past cruelties were mentioned, the crowd boiled over, surging and chattering.

(Chapter 73, Exiled Rebels translation)

Everyone happily disparages Wei Wuxian for a while before Mianmian steps in:

Suddenly, a careful voice interjected, “It’s not killing indiscriminately, is it?”

“...Let’s consider this as it stands. I really don’t think it’s right to say that he killed indiscriminately. After all, there is a reason. If the inspectors really abused the prisoners and killed Wen Ning, it wouldn’t be called killing indiscriminately anymore, but rather revenge…”

(Chapter 73, Exiled Rebels translation)

The men here all happily disparage her and dismiss the notion that there was any abuse going on at the prison camp:

Another one of them mocked, “We still don’t know whether or not the inspectors really did those things. It’s not like anybody saw it with their own eyes.”

“That’s right. All of the inspectors who lived said that they definitely didn’t abuse the prisoners. Wen Ning died because he himself accidentally fell from a cliff. They even went so far as to take back his corpse and bury him, yet they received such revenge. How disappointing!”

[...]

The woman said, “The other inspectors are scared that they’d be responsible for abusing the prisoners and killing people. Of course they’d insist that he fell off on his own…”

(Chapter 73, Exiled Rebels translation)

At this point they all disparage Mianmian, insisting that she’s a feeble-minded woman swayed by her supposed attraction to Wei Wuxian; I think these men would have gotten along very well with the Victorians. Only after Mianmian defects and Lan Wangji leaves to speak to her does Lan Xichen say anything:

After Lan XiChen understood what happened a few moments ago, hearing how the direction of their discussion worsened, he spoke up, “Everyone, she is gone already. Let us settle down.”

Now that ZeWu-Jun had spoken, of course the people had to give him some face. In Golden Pavilion, one after another, they began to denounce Wei WuXian and the Wen-dogs again. They all spoke with passionate hatred, letting their indiscriminate, irrefutable loathing dance in the air.

(Chapter 73, Exiled Rebels translation)

Nie Mingjue compliments her, but only in private with Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao, never speaking up for her publicly either:

Nie MingJue, “The woman has much more backbone than the mob of her sect.”

(Chapter 73, Exiled Rebels translation)

The matter is settled, at least for now, when Jiang Cheng visits Wei Wuxian at the Burial Mounds. Jiang Cheng very clearly sees the people there and declares them:

Jiang Cheng mocked, “Those sect leaders thought you gathered some leftover forces and crowned yourself king of the hill. So it’s only the old, the weak, the women, and the children.”

(Chapter 73, Exiled Rebels translation)

He also sees A-Yuan, who is probably 2 at this point, and is completely unswayed:

As he was about to speak again, he felt something heavy on his leg. He looked down. He didn’t know when, but a child about one or two years old crept over and hugged his leg. Raising his chubby chin, he looked up at him with his dark, round eyes.

He was quite a fine, lovable child. Unfortunately, Jiang Cheng had no love in him at all. He turned to Wei WuXian, “Where did the kid come from? Get him away from me.”

(Chapter 73, Exiled Rebels translation)

After attacking Wen Ning’s sleeping fierce corpse, he demands that Wei Wuxian return the Wen remnants to the Jins:

Wei WuXian, “You said it already. I wouldn’t be in the right even if I am. What else could I do except for jailing myself here?”

Jiang Cheng, “What else? Of course there’s something.”

With Sandu, he pointed at Wen Ning who lay on the ground, “The only way of making up for things is for us to end things before they get the chance to!”

Wei WuXian, “End what?”

Jiang Cheng, “You burn this corpse right now and return to them all these leftovers of the Wen Sect. That’s the only way to make the subject die!” As he spoke, he raised his sword again, preparing to attack.

However, Wei WuXian clenched his wrist, “Are you joking?! If we return Wen Qing and the others to them, they’d meet nothing but a dead end!”

Jiang Cheng, “I doubt you’ll even return all of them. Why do you care what kind of end they meet? A dead end it is, then—what does it have to do with you?!”

[...]

Wei WuXian, “I don’t need anyone to speak for me.”

Jiang Cheng exploded, “Just what are you being so stubborn about? If you can’t do it then move over—I’ll do it!”

Wei WuXian gripped him even tighter, his fingers as tight as iron, “Jiang WanYin!”

[...]

Wei WuXian, “There’s no need to protect me. Just let go.”

Jiang Cheng’s face twisted.

Wei WuXian, “Just let go. Tell the world that I defected. From now on, no matter what Wei WuXian does, it’d have nothing to do with the YunmengJiang Sect.”

Jiang Cheng, “… All for the Wen Sect…? Wei WuXian, do you have a savior complex? Is it that you’ll die if you don’t stand up for someone and stir up some trouble?”

Wei WuXian stayed quiet. A while later, he answered, “So that’s why we should cut ties right now, in case anything I do affects the YunmengJiang Sect in the future.”

Or else, he really couldn’t make any guarantees on what he’d do in the future.

“…” Jiang Cheng murmured, “My mom said that you do nothing but bring our sect trouble. It’s true indeed.” He laughed coldly, talking to himself, “‘To attempt the impossible’? Fine. You understand the YunmengJiang Sect’s motto. Better than I do. Better than all of us do.”

He sheathed Sandu. The sword returned to its sheath with a clang. Jiang Cheng’s tone was indifferent, “Then let’s arrange for a duel.”

(Chapter 73, Exiled Rebels translation)

Without Wei Wuxian ever knowing, Jiang Cheng goes a step further, declaring that he betrayed Yunmeng Jiang and declared himself an enemy to the cultivation world:

After the fight, Jiang Cheng told the outside that Wei WuXian defected from the sect and was an enemy to the entire cultivation world. The YunmengJiang Sect had already cast him out. From then on, no ties remained between them—a clear line was drawn. Henceforth, no matter what he did, they’d have nothing to do with the YunmengJiang Sect!

(Chapter 73, Exiled Rebels translation)

This is also confirmed by Jin Guangyao over 13 years later. He refers to Wei Wuxian ‘betraying the sect’ while speaking to Lan Xichen:

Jin GuangYao, “Brother, during the fight with Sect Leader Jiang, when Wei WuXian betrayed the YunmengJiang Sect, how badly wounded was he? Didn’t he still return to command the corpses? Would anything in this world prove to be difficult to the YiLing Patriarch?”

(Chapter 65, Exiled Rebels translation)

In the radio drama, we actually get to hear Jiang Cheng’s public announcement. Since the radio drama was made in very close consultation with Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, I think that it’s not unreasonable to use these extra tidbits of dialogue as supplementary material. Here is what he says:

“Wei Wuxian has betrayed the sect, and publicly regards all cultivation sects as enemy! Yunmeng Jiang Sect hereby expels him, breaking all ties with him and drawing a clear line between us. Henceforth, no matter what this person does, it will have nothing to do with Yunmeng Jiang Sect!”

(Modao Zushi Radio Drama, Season 3 Episode 5, Suibian Subs)

This not only removes Wei Wuxian from the sect but from cultivation society as a whole, publicly discrediting and isolating him.

Public Perception of The Burial Mounds Settlement

Fandom has this idea that the whole cultivation world was convinced that Wei Wuxian was building an army in the Burial Mounds, but it’s not really supported by the text. The Burial Mounds settlement period was probably somewhere around two years. If people seriously thought that he was building an army, I highly doubt he would have been left alone to do so for that long.

In fact, it seems that most people believed Wei Wuxian was founding his own sect. Oddly enough, Jin Guangshan was actually the first to suggest it:

Using the atmosphere, Jin GuangShan turned to Jiang Cheng, “He’s been plotting for a while to go to Burial Mound, hasn’t he? After all, with his skills, it wouldn’t be too hard to set up a sect of his own. And so, he used this as a chance to leave the Jiang Sect, intending to do whatever he pleases in the bright skies outside.

(Chapter 73, Exiled Rebels translation)

He intended it to hit Jiang Cheng’s buttons and stoke his inferiority complex; Jiang Cheng knew that he only took back Lotus Pier thanks to Wei Wuxian’s cultivation, and that many disciples joined during and after the war precisely because of his presence in the sect. But clearly the allegation stuck:

Everyone was in shock: there would be no peace anymore! Wei WuXian would definitely make these fierce corpses on a large scale, in desire of founding his own sect to compete with the cultivational world! And the many young blood of today’s age would definitely be attracted by his evil, opportunist path as well, and go to him one after another. The righteous path of cultivation would have grim future—dark times ahead!

(Chapter 75, Exiled Rebels translation)

Here, people are more concerned with him founding a sect which can compete with the great sects and teach unorthodox cultivation; not that he’s planning on invading the other sects a la Wen Ruohan.

But nobody believed this. After he found himself in the limelight during a few night-hunts, there really were quite a few people who came for him, hoping that they could be accepted by the ‘patriarch’ and become one of his disciples. The mountains that used to be so deserted suddenly became crowded. None of the fierce corpses Wei WuXian set up on patrol down the mountain would attack on their own. At most, they’d send the person flying and roar their throats out. Nobody got hurt, and so more and more people gathered down Burial Mound.

(Chapter 75, Exiled Rebels translation)

This is telling, because it shows that these people, at least, really did know that Wei Wuxian wasn’t a threat. They even cottoned on to the fact that his corpses wouldn’t actually hurt anyone, just chase them away.

Even at Nightless City, someone suggests again that he had founded his own sect:

One of the cultivators who stood in the front rows of one of the arrays commented bitterly, “Wei Ying, you disappoint me so much. There used to be a time when I admired you and said that at least you were someone who founded your own sect. Now that I think about it, it’s almost repulsive. From this moment on, I’ll forever stand on the opposite side of you!”

(Chapter 78, Exiled Rebels translation)

This is what people thought Wei Wuxian was doing in the Burial Mounds, not forming an army. The closest to anything like an army being suggested comes up when Jiang Cheng visits Wei Wuxian at the Burial Mounds a few days after the prison breakout.

Jiang Cheng mocked, “Those sect leaders thought you gathered some leftover forces and crowned yourself king of the hill. So it’s only the old, the weak, the women, and the children.”

(Chapter 73, Exiled Rebels translation)

Even that is a little more vague than ‘people absolutely thought he was building an army of Wen cultivators’. When does anyone in canon seriously suggest that WWX was building an army during this period? They know he’s a threat because he’s a necromancer living on a mountain of corpses, but they don’t think he’s an active threat. Until the ambush at Qiongqi Path happens and the Jins are able to use that to turn the mobs against him, people are fairly willing to leave him alone.

It’s also worth noting that rumours of Wei Wuxian building an army are not mentioned in the prologue, which is all about giving us the public perception of Wei Wuxian which the novel will then slowly reveal to us to be false. This is the closest they come:

The head of the Jiang clan raised him as her own child, yet he defected them and became the enemy of the cultivation world, bringing shame upon the Jiang clan...

(Prologue, Exiled Rebels translation)

And that’s still not saying he’s building an army.

People hated Wei Wuxian because he practised heretical cultivation, protected the ‘Wen-dogs’ who they all hated, and because they viewed him as an uppity servant who had no business being as powerful as a great sect. Propaganda about an army wasn’t necessary in order to convince them to go massacre him and the people under his protection.

The First Siege of the Burial Mounds

In fact, the major justifications the sects give for the siege are the deaths at the ambush at Qiongqi Path and the deaths at Nightless City.

He lifted the bottom of his robe, revealing a prosthetic leg made of wood, “This leg of mine was destroyed by you, that night in the Nightless City. I’m showing this to you for you to understand that, among the people in the siege right now, there’s also the force of me, Yi WeiChun. With the works of karma, it’s never too late for revenge!”

[...]

“In the fight at Qiongqi Path, my son was strangled to death by your dog Wen Ning!”

[...]

Every face boiled with heated blood, every word spoken guiltlessly, every person heroic, passionate, filled with indignation and pride.

Everyone believed with no doubt that what they were doing was a feat of chivalry, a deed of honor.

It would go down history and receive millions of praise. It was a crusade of the ‘righteous’ against the ‘wrong’!

(Chapter 68, Exiled Rebels translation)

This was during the Second Siege, and sets the stage for the flashback to the past where we learn the truth. Let’s go back to Nightless City and see what they were saying then.

“Things were even worse for the GusuLan Sect! Over half of the thirty-or-so people were from their sect. They were clearly only there to help calm things down.”

“Good thing the Ghost General was finally burned. Or else, just thinking about how such a thing was roaming around outside, flipping out now and then, would be enough for me to have nightmares.”

Someone spat, “That’s the end all Wen-dogs should meet!”

(Chapter 77, Exiled Rebels translation)

This is a gathering of people Wei Wuxian stumbles across after visiting Lanling, where had gone hoping to retrieve Wen Ning and Wen Qing’s ashes from Koi Tower.

The longer Wei WuXian listened, the colder his expression grew.

He should’ve understood long ago. No matter what he did, not a single good word would come out of these people’s mouths. When he won, others feared; when he lost, others rejoiced.

He was cultivating the crooked path either way, so what exactly did the years of persistence mean? What exactly were they for?

[...]

One of the group gloated, as though he had made a great contribution to this, “Yeah, terrific! It’ll be fine if only he obediently huddles inside of that damn mountain from now on. If he dares show his face outside again? Ha, as soon as he’s out, I’ll…”

(Chapter 77, Exiled Rebels translation)

At Nightless City, Jin Guangshan says:

“Tonight, the ones whose ashes had been scattered were the two leaders of the Wen Sect’s remnants. And tomorrow! It will be the rest of the Wen-dogs and—the YiLing Patriarch, Wei Ying!”

(Chapter 78, Exiled Rebels translation)

Then Wei Wuxian shows up:

Wei WuXian, “Haven’t I always been arrogant? Sect Leader Jin, how does it feel, having slapped yourself in the face? Who was the one that said he’d let the matter go if the Wen siblings went to Koi Tower and gave themselves up? And who was the one that just said he’d scatter my ashes and the ashes of the rest of the Wen Sect’s remnants tomorrow?”

[...]

Wei WuXian, “Then let me ask you, Sect Leader Jin, at Qiongqi Path, who was the one being ambushed? And who was the one to kill? Who was the main schemer? And who was the one being schemed against? In the end, just who was the one that came to provoke me first?”

(Chapter 78, Exiled Rebels translation)

The matter of Qiongqi Path is brought up again:

Hidden among such a large crowd, the disciples inside of the arrays all felt rather safe. Bravening up, they shouted, “Even if Jin ZiXun was the one who schemed to ambush you first, you shouldn’t have been so heartless and kill so many lives!”

(Chapter 78, Exiled Rebels Translation)

Wei Wuxian points out that he was attacked first and was defending himself, but no one cares.

Sect Leader Yao raised his voice, “Fight back? Those over a hundred people and the thirty on Koi Tower were all innocent. If you were fighting back, why did you have to involve them?”

Wei WuXian, “The fifty cultivators on Burial Mound are also innocent, so why do you have to involve them?”

Someone else spat, “Just what great kindness has the Wen-dogs given you? To have you be on those scum’s side like this.”

“In my opinion, there isn’t any great kindness at all. It’s just that he thinks he’s a hero fighting against the entire world. He thinks he’s doing an act of justice, that he himself is quite an impressive person, risking everyone’s condemnation!”

(Chapter 78, Exiled Rebels translation)

This is so telling. Not only does he insist that the Wens he protects are innocent, some asshole straight-up says that Wei Wuxian ‘thinks he’s doing an act of justice’. This implies that they know the Wens are indeed innocent and just don’t care. We really can’t underestimate the level of hate against the Wens which exists in cultivation society after the war.

Chapter 79 returns to the present timeline, and sums it up thusly:

The bloodbath of Nightless City, legendarily, was a bloody battle in which the YiLing Patriarch, Wei WuXian, slaughtered over three thousand people during the night of the pledge conference on his own.

Some said that it was five thousand as well. No matter three or five, one thing was for sure—in that night, the ruins of Nightless City became a gory hell in Wei WuXian’s hands.

And the murderer, even under everyone’s attacks, managed to return to Burial Mound unscathed. Nobody knew how exactly he did it.

Due to this battle, the cultivation world was quite badly wounded. And since this was the case, after nearly three months of conserving energy and scheming plans, the Four Great Sects were finally able to successfully pull off a siege on the demon’s den, Burial Mound, returning the word ‘massacre’ to the Wen Sect’s remnants and the maddened YiLing Patriarch.

Wei WuXian looked at the cultivators before the Demon-Slaughtering Cave. Their expressions were the absolute same as those of the cultivators from the night of the pledge conference, pouring their wine on the ground as they took the pledge to scatter the ashes of the Wen Sect’s remnants and him. Some were the survivors of that night, others were the descendents of those cultivators, but even more were ‘persons of justice’ who held the same beliefs as them.

(Chapter 79, Exiled Rebels translation)

It’s worth noting that Jiang Cheng is credited with planning and leading the siege:

“The YiLing Patriarch has died? Who could have killed him?”

“Who other than his shidi, Jiang Cheng, putting an end to his own relative for the greater good. Jiang Cheng led the Four Clans of YunmengJiang, LanlingJin, GusuLan, and QingheNie to destroy his “den”—LuanZang Hill.”

[...]

“That’s merely hearsay. Although Jiang Cheng was one of the main forces, he did not give Wei WuXian the final blow. Because he cultivates the Demon Path, Wei WuXian’s powers had backfired and he was ripped to pieces.”

[...]

“But, if not for Jiang Cheng making a plan that aimed at Wei WuXian’s weaknesses, the siege might not have succeeded.

(Chapter 1, Exiled Rebels translation)

During the Second Siege, we get some information about who was at the First Siege:

Back then, during the first siege of Burial Mound, Jin GuangShan led the LanlingJin Sect, while Jiang Cheng led the YunmengJiang Sect; Lan QiRen led the GusuLan Sect, while Nie MingJue led the QingheNie Sect. The former two were the main forces, the latter two could’ve gone without.

(Chapter 68, Exiled Rebels translation)

May I just note that the fact that Gusu Lan and Qinghe Nie didn’t lend as many forces in no way absolves them of responsibility?

The cultivation world wanted to kill Wei Wuxian. They also wanted to massacre the remnants of the Wen clan. If Wei Wuxian had died at Nightless City, they would have gone to the Burial Mounds and killed them anyway, I guarantee you. At best, they might have all been put back in a concentration camp and consigned to a slow death instead, but the mob mentality at play shouldn’t be underestimated.

Covering Up the Evidence

I’ve seen people arguing that as the Jiang and Jin sects made up the main forces in charge of the First Siege, the other sects may not have been aware of who the Wen remnants were. I’ve even seen it be suggested that the Jins disposed of their bodies to cover up their crime...what, before the other sects all came up the mountain where they’d apparently been dilly-dallying and not actually taking part?

This is not supported by the text. For one thing, it would be ridiculously difficult to fool the sects into thinking that they were facing an army of cultivators; the Burial Mounds settlement is very clearly a peasant farming village.

Even 13 years later, it’s unmistakable:

The three continued upward. They came along a few run down shacks standing alongside the mountain path.

The houses varied in size. The structure was simple, even crude. Just one glance, it was obvious that they had been built rashly. Some were so burned that only bare frames were left, while some slumped entirely to one side. Even the most complete ones were half-destroyed.

[...]

Ever since they had gone up the mountain, Wen Ning’s footsteps had been especially heavy. Right now, standing before one of the houses, again, he couldn’t walk any longer.

This was one of the houses that he had built himself. Before he left, the house had still been fine. Although it was crude, it was a place to seek shelter from the weather, nonetheless holding the people he was familiar with; the people he treasured.

In the saying ‘the things remain but the people don’t’, at least ‘the things’ still remained. With such a scene in front of him, there wasn’t even anything to remind him of the people whom he missed.

(Chapter 68, Exiled Rebels translation)

13 years ago when it was still an active village, it is impossible to approach the settlement and not realise.

A few round stumps were beside the mountain path, a large one, like a table, and a few smaller ones, like chairs. A red-clothed woman sat with Wei WuXian on two of the stumps. A man who seemed to be honest and simple was turning over the soil of the field nearby.

Wei WuXian was shaking his leg, “How about potatoes?”

The woman’s tone was resolute, “Radishes. Radishes are easy to grow. They don’t die as often. Potatoes are hard to look after.”

[...]

Soon later, a group of men appeared beside the path, busying themselves before a rack made of wood. They were probably all cultivators of the Wen Sect. Yet, having taken off their robes of sun and flames and put on clothes made of coarse cloth with hammers and saws in their hands, timber and straws on their shoulders, they climbed up and down, worked inside and out; they were not at all different from ordinary farmers and hunters.

[...]

Jiang Cheng asked, “What are they doing?”

Wei WuXian, “Can’t you tell? Building houses.”

Jiang Cheng, “Building houses? Then what were the ones we saw turning over the dirt when we came up here doing? Don’t tell me you’re really going to start farming.”

Wei WuXian, “Didn’t you hear everything? We are farming.”

(Chapter 73, Exiled Rebels translation)

I think it’s pretty clear to anyone with eyes that this was a farming village, don’t you? And yet, during the Second Siege, no one is surprised to see the corpses of the Wen remnants except for the juniors. Take a look at chapter 82, when their blood corpses all come out of the Blood Pool:

... “Didn’t they say that all of the corpses on Burial Mound had been incinerated?!”

Sect Leader OuYang answered, protecting his son, “Some weren’t!”

Lan JingYi, “Which ones were not?!”

Sect Leader OuYang, “Those… Those…”

He couldn’t say it out loud. After those Wen Sect’s remnants on Burial Mound back then were killed by the people partaking in the siege, the fifty corpses were all thrown into the blood pool!

(Chapter 82, Exiled Rebels translation)

This is freaking Ouyang-zongzhu. I think we can all agree that he’s a bit useless and probably wasn’t part of the main force. But he knew about it!

Here’s a sad description of Wen-popo:

The corpse was abnormally small and bent-over. It seemed that somebody had smashed a hole into its skull. Its white hair was sparse, sticking tattered to its forehead after being soaked by the bloody water. Along with its rotting flesh, it was extremely repulsive. Anyone who saw it felt uncomfortable. After it crawled up, limping, it slowly walked toward Lan SiZhui. All of the juniors trembled with fear, immediately gathering over here.

[...]

One after another, the blood corpses began to gather at where Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi were.

The tall and the short, the men and the women, the old and the young—all of them were demons drenched in blood. But on these figures, Wei WuXian saw a few familiar shadows.

Wen Ning murmured, “Uncle Four… Granny…”

He said their names one by one, his voice wavering as he went. Wen Ning, “Have you been waiting here ever since??”

(Chapter 82, Exiled Rebels translation)

And a reminder that the whole crowd was there to see:

Fang MengChen paused in surprise. Wei WuXian, “Then what do you want? Nothing but my miserable death to soothe your own hatred?” He pointed at Yi WeiChun, who lay passed out among the crowd, “He’s missing a leg, while I was cut into pieces; you lost your parents, while my family had long since been gone. I’m a dog who was chased out of its home. I’ve never even seen the ashes of my parents.”

Wei WuXian, “Or do you hate the Wen Sect’s remnants? The Wen Sect remnants that you speak of already died once, thirteen years ago. And right now, just then, for my sake, for your sake, they died once again. This time, they’ve all become ashes.” He continued, “Let me ask you—just what else do you want me to do?”

(Chapter 82, Exiled Rebels translation)

Even the Headshaker was there in the cave to see:

After he went out, a voice asked, “No more corpses will come, right? We’re really safe this time, right?!”

(Chapter 82, Exiled Rebels translation)

No one there acts surprised to see the corpses, except for the juniors, Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji and Wen Ning. No, not even Lan Qiren. Even the people who might, possibly (if we’re being very generous), have been lower down the mountain and not actively killed any of the Wens still saw their bodies afterwards and threw them into the Blood Pool. Throwing them into such a mass grave was the final act of hatred against the ‘Wen-dogs’ who they had been so determined to slaughter.

In Conclusion

The fact of atrocities like this is that they require a huge number of people in power to be fully aware of it and either look aside or actively participate. The cultivation sects are not innocent. Not a single one. Everyone knew.

Honestly, one of the tragedies of Modao Zushi is that there is no justice. No one feels guilt for their part in slaughtering the Wen remnants, and Wei Wuxian is only ever exonerated in the public eye because Jin Guangyao took his place as public enemy number one.

The happy ending is only personal. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are reunited and happily married. Lan Sizhui (Wen Yuan) and Wen Ning are reunited and are able to create a memorial for their dead family. But there is no justice. Just the survivors finally being free to live their lives in peace.

-

Sources

Modao Zushi Exiled Rebels Translation (as I wrote this in mid 2021, it was the only complete English translation available to me)

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/ethnic-cleansing.shtml

#mdzs #modao zushi #wen remnants #fandom essay #mdzs meta #meta

[ukrfeminism]

3 minute read

A woman jailed for illegally obtaining abortion tablets to end her pregnancy during lockdown will be released from prison after the Court of Appeal reduced her sentence.

Carla Foster, 45, was handed a 28-month extended sentence after she admitted illegally procuring her own abortion when she was between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant.

Foster had lied that she was just seven weeks pregnant, to obtain the drug Mifepristone over the phone from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service.

She took the drug in May 2020, and delivered her stillborn daughter Lily later the same day.

Sentencing her last month, Mr Justice Pepperall said Foster would serve half her term in custody and the remainder on licence after release.

But at the Court of Appeal in London on Tuesday, three judges reduced her prison sentence.

Dame Victoria Sharp, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde and Mrs Justice Lambert, said Foster’s sentence would be reduced to 14 months and that it should be suspended.

“This is a very sad case,” Dame Victoria said.

“It is a case that calls for compassion, not punishment, and where no useful purpose is served by detaining Ms Foster in custody.”

The Court of Appeal decision was welcomed by women’s right campaigners, who described the law used to prosecute Foster as “cruel” and “antiquated”.

Clare Murphy, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said: “We...are delighted with the decision to release Carla Foster from prison.

“Now is the time to reform abortion law so that no more women are unjustly criminalised for taking desperate actions at a desperate time in their lives.

“Two women accused of illegally ending their own pregnancies are currently awaiting trial.

“We urge Parliament to take action and decriminalise abortion as a matter of urgency so that no more women have to endure the threat of prosecution and imprisonment.”

A spokesperson for campaign group Level Up added: “This case must bring renewed calls to fight the criminalisation of abortion - and of women and mothers more broadly.”

Labour MP Stella Creasy also called for reform, writing on Twitter: “The relief that this woman can go home to be with her children is tempered by the knowledge there are more cases to come where women in England being prosecuted and investigated for having abortions under this archaic legislation. That’s why we need decrim now.”

During her trial last month, Stoke crown court heard how Foster had been forced to move back in with her estranged partner at the start of the first Covid lockdown, while secretly pregnant with another man’s child.

Foster had conducted internet searches on inducing a miscarriage in February 2020, and her online research for “how to lose a baby at six months” proved she knew she was beyond the legal abortion limit.

Abortions are only legal before 24 weeks, and are carried out in clinics after 10 weeks of pregnancy. They can be carried out after 24 weeks in very limited circumstances, such as if the mother’s life is in danger or there are problems with the baby’s development. Under the Abortion Act 1967, abortions must be approved by two doctors in order to be legal.

Mifepristone was posted to Foster after she told lies over the phone about the stage of pregnancy she was in. She took it on May 11, 2020, and received emergency treatment later on when her daughter was stillborn.

Foster was initially charged with child destruction and pleaded not guilty.

She later pleaded guilty to an alternative charge of section 58 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, administering drugs or using instruments to procure abortion, which was accepted by the prosecution.

The sentencing judge concluded Foster had “deliberately lied” to get hold of the drug. But he also said: “This offence was committed against the backdrop of the first and most intense phase of lockdown at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Forced to stay at home, you moved back in with your long-term but estranged partner while carrying another man’s child.

“You were, I accept, in emotional turmoil as you sought to hide the pregnancy.”

He added: “I accept that you feel very deep and genuine remorse for your actions. You are wracked by guilt and have suffered depression.

“I also accept that you had a very deep emotional attachment to your unborn child and that you are plagued by nightmares and flashbacks to seeing your dead child’s face.

“I also take into account the fact that you are a good mother to three children who would suffer from your imprisonment.”

Following her sentencing, women’s human rights programme director at Amnesty International UK Chiara Capraro described the decision to prosecute over a law from 1861 as “shocking and quite frankly terrifying”.

[wingodex]

Sourcing Copley’s Sociogram

so this started out because i recognized some of the photographs and art on copley’s wall, and got curious about everything else. i know that the dates and locations of the original pictures don’t necessarily have anything to do with what they’re supposed to be in the movie but i thought it was interesting enough to share. plus i spent a not insignificant amount of time tracking down some of these images. the organization is a mixture between chronologically in the show and from a timeline perspective. the rest is under the cut

So we start out with this mosaic that you see when Andy looks at the sociogram for the first time while confronting Copley. This is a Roman mosaic found in Antioch, which is near modern-day Antakya, Turkey. It’s from the 4th century CE and shows an Amazon Warrior in mounted combat against a Greek soldier. Mosaics were found in both private and public buildings throughout the Roman empire. They’re made up of small cut pieces of marble, tile, glass, pottery, stone and shells called tesserae.

Here you have the title page of the 1668 edition of Andromaque, a play written by Jean Racine. It was first performed in November of 1667 for the court of Louis XIV by a company of actors called “les Grands Comédiens.” The play follows the story of Andromache after the Trojan War when her husband Hector has been killed and she has been taken prisoner.

The portrait of Andromache is from the book “Promptuarium Iconum Insigniorum” by Guillaume Rouillé. The book was published in Lyon, France, in 1553. The book is made up of portraits designed as medals, along with brief biographies for notable figures. The art was done using woodcut and there are 950 woodcut portraits in the book.

This is a fresco of Mycenaean woman bearing gifts. It’s from Thebes and was reconstructed by H. Reusch in 1956. The original fresco is from 1400-1200 BCE. Frescos were popular decoration, not just in palaces and tombs but in storerooms, kitchens and workshops. Fresco painting is a technique where the drawing is made on wet plaster. When the plaster dries, the image becomes a permanent part of the wall.

You also have a map by Bernardus Sylvanus (Bernardo Silvano) of Northern India and Central Asia. It’s one of the earliest obtainable maps of the area and the first printed in two colors. This map first appeared in Silvanus’ “Claudii Ptholemaei Alexandrini liber Geographicae” published in Venice in 1511.

This is a photograph of an ornamented, golden Minoan double-axe, or a “labrys.” In ancient Crete, the double axe was an important sacred symbol of the supposed Minoan religion. In Crete the double axe only accompanies female goddesses, never male gods. In Roman Crete, the labrys was often associated with the mythological Amazons.

This is a picture of the Holyland Model of Jerusalem in the Israel Museum. It’s a 1:50 scale model of Jerusalem in the late Second Temple period. It was originally commissioned in 1966 by the owner of the Holyland Hotel and was eventually relocated to the Israel Museum in 2006.

The first image is the cover of the book “Heroines of the Crusades” by C. A. Bloss. I don’t know if this is the original cover, but it is certainly an older edition. The book was originally published in 1853 and contains biographies of notable women who were involved with the crusades, as well as a general overview of the first through to the eighth crusade.

And then hey, it’s The Hague Map of Jerusalem! This is one of the artworks that I knew before. The original map is from 1190-1200 CE. The map takes some liberties with the layout of the city, prioritizing aesthetics decisions like making it have the layout of a cruciform. Circular maps are also like a thing from this time. It also uhhhhh mislabels some things, such as the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque, but that’s maybe expected. At the bottom you can see some mounted crusaders chasing after Muslim fighters. It’s drawn on vellum.

I’m grouping these two images together for clarity, because they’re both by the same painter. From the moment I saw the paintings, I thought that this was kind of a weird pull for Copley, but not necessarily for us as viewers. These paintings were done by Italian painter Paolo Domenico Finoglia (known as Finoglio) and are from a series of large paintings based on the poem “Gerusalemme Liberata” (Jerusalem Delivered) published in 1581. These paintings are baroque in style and were commissioned in 1634. The first painting is “The Duel of Raymond of Toulouse and Argante” and the second painting is “The Duel of Tancred and Clorinda”. Now, when I say this choice of paintings makes sense to us, what I mean is that parts of the poem Jerusalem Delivered are about a Christian crusader falling in love with a Muslim defender who he then kills on the battlefield (that’s the second painting of Tancred and Clorinda). It’s a fun parallel, although Clorinda converts to Christianity before she dies. Sidenote, but Joe and Nicky probably hated Jerusalem Delivered if they ever read it

This motherfucking painting. Finding out where this painting came from was an absolute nightmare. Not the worst to find, but certainly frustrating. So this painting can be found in the Borodino Panorama museum, although it’s not part of the panorama. The artist is unknown. The year it was painted is unknown. For all we know fucking Joe painted it. This is such a deep dive, I don’t know how Copley found this image. This painting shows French soldiers in Moscow as it burned. It’s called “Французы в Москве” or “The French in Moscow”.

Did you think we were finished talking about Napoleon? Well, we’re not! Copley has a lot of paintings from Napoleon’s Russian campaign on his board. There might be more on his eastern Europe wall too, but unfortunately, I can’t see it well enough to identify any.

The counterfeits potentially made by Booker show the 40 franc gold coin, known informally as the double Napoleon. These coins were first issued by Napoleon in 1803 to replace the earlier Louis coins. They were originally minted in two denominations: 20 francs and 40 francs, although they were minted in denominations of 5, 10 and 50 at various other times. The coins were designed and engraved by Jean Pierre Droz, and Pierre-Joseph Tiolier respectively. In the particular image of the coin that I found, you can actually see Droz’s signature. Tiolier’s signature appears in full on the dies that he cut himself (these coins only have a monogram). From screenshots of the end credits, I can’t actually see the specific denomination, nor can I see the date clearly, however I do know that the coins were minted sometime between 1807 and 1808. There were many different issues of these coins during Napoleon’s reign, and the fact that Napoleon has a laurel crowned head and that the coin says République Française rather than Empire Français narrows the timeline a bit. I might revisit this topic at a later date so watch out for that.

The first painting is “The Battle of Borodino, 7 September 1812” by Louis-François Lejeune in 1822. It’s oil on canvas. This painting depicts the attack on the Shevardino Redoubt, seen from the French side. While it was a French victory, it was a costly battle for both sides. During the Russian Campaign, Lejeune was général de brigade, although he ended up abandoning his post because of frostbite during the retreat and got arrested. He actually kept his paintbrushes with him on the battlefield. This painting was his masterwork. Now, with regards to the actual content of the painting, Booker would have been in the Battle of Borodino, as he didn’t try to desert until after the Battle of Smolensk.

The second painting is “Die Schlacht bei Borodino” (The Battle of Borodino) by Peter von Hess. It was painted in 1843 and is oil on canvas. Von Hess was a German painter who specialized in historic paintings of the Napoleonic Wars and the Greek War of Independence. This painting depicts the same battle as the previous one, although the focus is on the Russian and Lithuanian soldiers, rather than the French. This also shows an event from later in the battle; the counterattack on the Rayevsky Battery.

The last image is “The Boasted Crossing of the Niemen at the Opening of the Campaign of 1812 by N. Bonaparte” by John Heaviside Clark and Matthew Dubourg. The painting was based on a sketch by an officer, then painted by Heaviside Clark and engraved by Dubourg. It’s a coloured aquatint and was published in 1816. The crossing of the Niemen marks the beginning of the Russian Campaign in June of 1812.

There are actually quite a few photos of ToG during the Crimean war (1853-1856). These are actually some of the first war photographs ever taken, which is kind of neat, I guess. These photos were taken by Roger Fenton, a British photographer. These photos would have all been taken in 1855, so the tags on the photos are anachronistic but we can let it slide. The first image with Joe and Nicky is of Croat labourers. The second image of Andy is of a vivandière, a French woman attached to military regiments as a sutler. The last image (also of Joe and Nicky) is of British soldiers and is on of the covers of the book Victorians at War by Ian Beckett.

The photograph from the American civil war was originally of Union Generals, including General Philip Sheridan. At the time of this picture, Sheridan lead the Cavalry Corps, and the flag that you see in the picture is cavalry, so ToG rode horses during the American Civil War, according to this picture. It was taken in 1864.

I find the pictures of Haiti to be very interesting. First off, (and unrelated to the photographs themselves) because there was literally a coup d’état about every two years during this period in Haiti and unlike some of the other photos, these ones don’t even try to pretend they were all taken at the same time, or that they’re related at all. They’re just some pictures of Haiti during the early 20th century and it’s funny. All of photographs were taken in Port-au-Prince in Haiti. The first picture (from the upper left corner) is of the Market Square between 1909-1920. The second image is a street scene, between 1890 and 1901. Now the third photograph is making me lose it because in the movie it’s all mysterious, with a figure circled and a question mark, but in the original image it’s just a little kid standing on a public fountain. He’s not a member of the old guard. He’s not even 10 years old. This picture was also taken between 1890 and 1901. The last photo is another street scene, taken in 1901. I have to say, I’m very glad that the people in charge of the sociogram didn’t edited any of the guards’ faces on to anyone in these photos considering every single person in them is Black.

Okay, so now we’re getting into the First World War photos. There are A Lot of WW1 photos. This photo of Andy is actually from Gallipoli and was taken in 1915 by Ernest Brooks, an official war photographer. The Gallipoli campaign was an attempt by the Entente to weaken the Ottoman Empire by taking control of the Turkish Straits. All invasion attempts were unsuccessful and eventually they evacuated the area at the end of 1915. Andy seems to be wearing an Anzac uniform.

As for the rest of the photos in this shot, they’re also all from the Gallipoli campaign. The first photo is from War Illustrated in June of 1915 and shows  Australians soldiers dragging an artillery piece into position at Anzac during the Battle of Gallipoli. The second image is also from 1915 and shows soldiers bringing supplies to the Australian camp. The last image is of Anzac cove shortly after the landing there in 1915.

Originally I didn’t notice that this was an edited picture, but since I was already looking, I decided to track this one down too, and turns out it is edited. I honestly can’t tell whether it’s Booker or Joe, but that kind of looks like Matthias Schoenaerts’ nose, so I’m gonna say that’s Booker. This photograph was taken in May 1917 by Lieutenant John Warwick Brooke in Arras, France. These are British troops at the Battle of Arras, which at the time achieved the honor of longest advance in trench warfare. The battle was very costly on both sides, with around 290,000 casualties total. Warwick Brooke was an official British war photographer.

On the very right-hand side, you can see two pictures. The first one is of infantry of the 1st Canadian Division having a meal in the trenches at Ploegsteert, March 1916. It was taken by another official British war photographer, Lieutenant Ernest Brooks.

The next photo is from a series of photos of a raiding party of the 10th Battalion. It’s of the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) waiting in nap for the signal to go. John Warwick Brooke, the photographer, followed them in the sap, where a shell fell short killing seven men. It was taken near Arras in March 1917. This photo takes place after the Battle of the Somme, during the German withdrawals to the Hindenburg line.

This fucking image. I’m so angry about this image. I spent hours going through World War 1 photo databases and then when I found the original source of the image it told me absolutely nothing!!! A waste of time!!! This is an image of a British soldier assisting two little French girls who had just escaped death but I knew that already, that’s how I found it in the first place. This photo was from the Haig “Official Photographs” series, which were from 1916 onwards. Edit: I found it again!!! This photo was taken in Bethune in May 1918. It was taken by war photographer Ernest Brooks. In April of 1918, the German Sixth Army tried to attack Bethune during the Battle of Lys (Fourth Battle of Ypres) but were repulsed. It was taken between offensives on the Western Front during the German spring offensive. The next major battle on this part of the Western Front began weeks after this picture was taken.

On the top of the screen there are two photographs. The first is a photo by Ernest Brooks from the Battle of Broodseinde (October 1917). The battle was part of a larger offensive - the third Battle of Ypres - engineered by Sir Douglas Haig to capture the Passchendaele ridge. This is an anti-aircraft gun in action during the battle. 

The next photograph is also from the German spring offensive, between the Battle of Lys and the Battle of the Third Battle of the Aisne. It shows a 12-inch gun (named "Bunty") of the Royal Garrison Artillery firing at Louez in May 1918. This is another photograph by John Warwick Brooke.

This image of Andy was also originally a photograph taken by Lieutenant John Warwick Brooke. This photo is of the 4th Battalion, Gordon Highlanders (51st Division) feeding a French refugee child in their improvised trench near Locon, France in 1918.

There are so many WW1 photos. The rest of these don’t have any of the characters in them as far as we know, so I’ll go over these quickly. The first picture is from the Western Front in France and was likely taken by John Warwick Brooke. This photograph was taken at night and shows two teams of machine gunners, strategically positioned behind some vegetation. The ground behind them looks sandy, suggesting they might be near the coast. Directly in front of the gunners a mine has just exploded, showering the men with debris. This picture was taken in sometime between 1916-18.

The next photo was also taken by John Warwick Brooke in 1917. This picture is of the Battle of Cambrai and shows a 'C' Battalion tank bringing in a captured 15 cm naval gun. Cambrai is an interesting battle because it was a tank/artillery fight mostly, and the British used a lot of new tank/infantry maneuvers. It also ended very badly for the British.

The third photograph was taken by Ernest Brooks. It shows soldiers of the 8th East Yorkshire Regiment moving to the front near Frezenberg in October 1917 prior to the assault (Battle of Broodseinde) the following morning. It was a victory for the British, which eventually led to the Germans withdrawing from the Belgian coast.

The last photograph was taken by Lieutenant William Ivor Castle, the Canadian official photographer in September 1916. It shows a shell being loaded into a 15 inch howitzer. This photograph is from the Battle of the Somme. The Somme was a Franco-British victory but of the 3 million men who fought in it, around 1 million were either injured or killed, making it one of the deadliest battles in human history.

So there’s actually photographic evidence of almost all of ToG being involved with the Spanish Civil War, but I’ll get to those in a second. The image that we see of Nicky in the credits places him at the Battle of Irún in 1936. He is with the Spanish Republican People’s Army. This was a major battle at the beginning of the war, as it allowed the Nationalist Army to capture the province of Gipuzkoa after Irún fell, which had been held by the Republic. It allowed the Nationalist Army to control supplies. The photographer is unknown.

Jumping forward a bit here, but I can’t believe I found this photo, like I wasn’t even looking for it and I found it, but still. Wow. So on the board, it’s shown that Nicky was in the Congo in 1964 during the Simba Rebellion. The original image is of mercenary Gerry Moggach, from Scotland, with self-made guns (Molotov cocktails lmaoo) in November 1964. The Congo Crisis was a period of political upheaval and conflict in the Republic of the Congo (which is now the DRC) and involved a bunch of civil wars that also served as a proxy conflict in the Cold War.

Now, back to Spain and the rest of the guard. From this BTS image of Copley’s sociogram we know that both Booker and Andy were involved in the Spanish Civil War as well. The first image, which Andy is apparently in, was taken in 1936 and shows her with a miliciana, which were battalions of woman who fought to defend the Republic. The photographer is unknown. The second image is of Republican soldiers and civilians. Booker is in this image. The original was taken in 1937 by an unknown photographer.

Now we get into the World War II photographs. This photo of Booker from WW2 was originally taken at Mount Tambu, New Guinea in July of 1943, by Gordon Short. The photo is of Leslie “Bull” Allen, an Australian soldier who was awarded the US Silver Star for rescuing 12 US soldiers while under fire. The battle was fought between Japanese and Allied forces. Australian forces eventually secured the area in August of that year.

This photo frustrates me. First, it doesn’t even look like they manipulated it, but also because “pacific” is written in the near the bottom right corner. Now, I’m not saying that Nicky wasn’t in the Pacific Theatre but now that I know where this image was actually taken it’s like. Ugh. This photo was not taken in the Pacific Theatre, it was taken of American soldiers at Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944.  Omaha was the codename given to one of the five sections during the Allied invasion of Normandy. D-Day is the largest seaborne invasion in history, and it eventually led to the liberation of France and the Allied victory on the Western Front. Now personally, I think Nicky being there is very interesting and the timeline meets up better with his other WW2 picture. If you’ve ever seen Saving Private Ryan (1998), that movie opens with the invasion of Omaha Beach.

This photo of Nicky excites me for several reasons but also brings up some important questions about what the fuck Nicky was up to in 1944. The original photograph shows Private G.R. MacDonald giving first aid to a French boy in Brionne on August of 1944. The interesting part for me is the uniform though. MacDonald was part of the Toronto Scottish Regiment (75th Battalion). The Toronto Scottish Regiment were actually part of Operation Jubilee, although they weren’t able to land because of the tide and only had one fatal casualty, which good for them considering what happened to everyone else at Dieppe. Although Nicky probably wasn’t a part of that considering he was with American soldiers earlier in 1944.

Next to Nicky, on the right, you can see a picture of a plane and an explosion behind it. That picture is from Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The picture is taken at the Ford Island seaplane base and you can see the USS Shaw (DD-373) explode in the center background. USS Nevada (BB-36) is also visible in the middle background, with her bow headed toward the left. Several planes are in the foreground, a consolidated PBY, Vought OS2Us and Curtiss SOCs. The wrecked wing in the foreground is from a PBY.

This photograph is of French resistance fighters and was taken in September of 1944. The French resistance was a movement that fought against the occupation of Nazi Germany after 1940. The resistance engaged in guerilla warfare, published underground newspapers, acted as spies for the Allied forces and kept up escape networks for trapped soldiers and airmen. Although the woman in the original picture isn’t identified, there were many other women involved with the French resistance like Simone Segouin, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, Lucie Aubrac, and Marie-Hélène Lefaucheux.

The first image is of a Boeing B-29A-45-BN Superfortress 44-61784 6 Bombardment Group G 24 BS. It was taken in June of 1945 while it was firebombing Osaka, Japan.

The next two images are of the smoke from the atomic bombs. The first picture is of the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima and was taken by George R. Caron on August 6th, 1945. The second image shows the cloud over Nagasaki and was taken by Charles Levy on August 9th, 1945.

Okay, so this is my absolute fav manipulation in the whole movie, because it looks so good. Here we have Nicky, Joe and Booker as guerrillas during the Cuban Revolution. If you saw this image and thought “wait is that Fidel Castro?” you’d be right! The man gesturing to the ground with a stick is in fact Fidel Castro. Now, what you might have missed is the man next to Castro who has been edited to look like Booker... yeah I’m like 95% sure they put Booker’s face on Che Guevara.

This image of Nicky during the American Civil Rights Movement is from the March on Washington which happened in August of 1963. 250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to call for fair treatment and equal opportunity for Black Americans. This is where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a Dream” speech.

This picture of Andy, Joe and Nicky is of Martin Luther King Jr’s speech at UC Berkeley in May of 1967. The speech was attended by about 7000 students and he spoke against the Vietnam war. Photograph by Michael Ochs (?)

This photo was taken of US soldiers in Huế during the Vietnam War. The photo was taken in 1968 during the Tet Offensive. Booker is the one behind the medic. There’s a post it note that you can see fully in a BTS image of the sociogram that confirms it’s Booker. The Tet Offensive, which was launched in January of 1968, was one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, and the largest up to that point. It was a campaign of surprise attacks by the VC and PAVN against military and civilian command and control centers in South Vietnam (ARVN and the USA). The Battle of Huế lasted over a month and resulted in the destruction of the city and the massacre of thousands of civilians.

This photo of Andy helping with Operation Babylift was originally taken in 1975. Operation Babylift was an evacuation of orphans from Saigon in the face of a North Vietnamese Offensive. 3000 orphans were evacuated and at the end of April, Northern Vietnamese forces launched rockets at Saigon.

This image of Andy shows her on the Berlin Wall. The original photo was taken near the Brandenburger Tor in November of 1989. The photo shows West Berliners helping East Berliners climb the Berlin Wall after the opening of the wall was announced by the East German Communist government. The photo was taken by Jockel Finck.

tw ethnic cleansing, tw islamophobia, tw genocide. The photos of Booker in Bosnia and Herzegovina as a combat medic indicate that Booker was in Sarajevo for the Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War, however the original photo was taken of the Cheshire Regiment (1st Battalion) in Ahmići, in April of 1993. The Ahmići Massacre was committed by the Croats during the conflict and was part of a larger series of attacks called the Lašva Valley ethnic cleansing, and targeted Bosnian Muslim civilians. Around 120 people were murdered in Ahmići.

These last images are all from wars within the last 20 years. The first image was taken in Daychopan, Afghanistan by Sgt. Kyle Davis in September, 2003. The photo is of Company A, 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division. They were searching for Taliban fighters and weapon caches.

The next image is of two aerial photos of the ISIS command and control Centre in Syria, before and after it was bombed by a US F-22 fighter jet in September 2014.

The last image is of a US soldier assisting a wounded Iraqi civilian in Fallujah, Iraq in November, 2004. Photograph was taken by Cpl. Theresa M. Medina.

As for the rest of the photos, (Joe and Nicky saving the man in the cave, Joe in the DRC, some WW2 photos and some background photos in the BTS images and during the movie) I haven’t been able to find them because they’re not clear, I don’t want to look at historical archives anymore or I don’t even know where to start with searching for them. I might pick up searching again later if I decide to become even more like Copley than I already am. If you have any additional info about some of the missing photos let me know! Also if you want any of the original photos or resources just let me know and I can send them to you!

edit: I just want to make this very clear, but some of TOGs involvement here is suspicious as hell. Obviously we don’t know the exact circumstances, but things like Nicky being shown as a mercenary during the Simba rebellion, Booker as an American soldier during the Vietnam War and the images of US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have some incredibly negative and incriminating implications. I worry that in my excitement about finding some of these images I glossed over pretty horrific details and context. It’s important to be conscious of some of the very real tragedies and atrocities being shown here.

#the old guard #Andromache the Scythian #Yusuf al Kaysani #Nicolo di Genova #the old guard meta #tog meta #tog posts #Sebastien Le Livre #long post #tog history #also i will say #if anyone does want to track down the original joe in the congo pic #please look after yourself #i stopped trying to find it because going through pictures from the DRC can be very disturbing #i think it's also worth noting that in terms of the context of each image i decided to go for picture specific #while leaving the broader cultural context more vague #like i'm not about to explain the crimean war or the congo crisis on this post #this is just a jumping off point about certain events!! do your own research too!! #also lmaooo do you know who was also in the congo in the 1960s? fucking che guevara #i am also like 80% sure the cave rescue picture was staged #i simply cannot find it #anyway now that this is done comparative timeline drops soon

[ltwilliammowett]

Hell on Water- Prison Hulks

They were introduced in the early 1770s, when attempts were made to get rid of overcrowded prisons by switching to floating prisons, thus preventing the construction of expensive new prisons on land.

Convicts being rowed out to a prison hulk, by WH Harriot, 18th century

The prison hulks were decommissioned warships from which masts, rigging and sails were removed. They housed all those who had more than 7 years to serve and were therefore allowed to be deported according to the law of 1718. In 1775, however, the outbreak of the American Revolution stopped the transport of serious criminals to the American colonies. As a result, the convicts were replaced by prisoners of war and sent back to the prisons. One year later, when the prisons were overcrowded, the Criminal Justice Act - also known as the "Hulks Act" - was passed. Condemned men who were now (since 1787) awaiting transport to Australia were now assigned to hard labour on the banks of the Thames and reinstated in the Hulks.

Prison Hulk ca.1810, by unkown

They were moored along the Thames and the Medway estuary as well as in Portsmouth, Bermuda, Australia and Gibraltar. In these places the work of the convicts increased the efficiency of the dockyards. The shipyards were in a constant state of development and had to keep up with the latest technologies, such as the advent of steam power and iron-hulled ships. The convicts provided cheap and efficient labour, and instead of building new barracks to house the men, prison hulls could be purchased at low cost and towed from place to place.

Prison hulks in Portsmouth Harbour, by Ambrose Louis Garneray 1812-1814

Life on board was not easy, many called it "hell on water". Just like the prisons on land, the hulks were quickly overcrowded.In general there were on average 300 prisoners and 20 officers on a ship. It had been calculated that in 1776 and 1795, nearly 2000 out of almost 6000 convicts serving their sentence on board the hulks died. One reason for this was the rapid spread of diseases like typhoid and cholera. Another reason for this high death toll was poor nutrition. One inmate received ox-cheek, either boiled or made into soup, pease, bread or biscuit, daily. Often the food was rotten, vegetables were very rare and even if they were, they were only scrap from the local dockyards.

View near Woolwich in Kent shewing.... the employment of the convicts from the hulks, c. 1800. by Bowles & Carver

But also the hardest work up to 12 hours a day did its part. In the end there was no reasonable accommodation on board. The men wore the same clothes every day and were put in irons.

Washing- Room aboard of a Hulk, Illustration from Illustrated London News, 21 February 1846, page 125.

They slept in a bunk bed if they were lucky, if not then on the bare floor. Sick people simply lay between the healthy ones, only later they were separated and were also allowed to lie in a bed or on straw mattresses.

Death of a convict on the hulk Justitia,by unkown 183?

The use of the hulks was considered a temporary measure and was therefore only approved by parliament for two years. But despite the concerns of some members who complained about its inhumanity, the law of 1776, lasted 80 years. It was regularly renewed and its scope was extended "for the more severe and effective punishment of cruel and daring offenders".

Convict hulk Discovery, at Deptford. Engraving c. 1829

When the Act of 1776, 1779 was renewed, prison reformer John Howard (inspirer of the Howard League for Penal Reform) began a long campaign against the Hulks, but despite all his efforts and support, there was no end to them.

The era of the hulks was finally brought to a close after the hulk Defense burned off Woolwich Docks in 1857.The new jails followed a version of the colonial labour regimes and the transportation system was changed to incorporate the notion of exile. From then on, prisoners would serve a probationary period in one of the new jails before they were pardoned on condition of being deported.

#naval history #prison hulks #an old post rewritten #18th century 19th century #age of sail

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“...[Thatcher’s reactionary prison reform] took place against a background of a prison system in crisis. From the perspective of both the Labour government and their Conservative opponents, the institution was abjectly failing to deter the criminal, reform the offender and protect and defend the wider society from their forbidding ravages. Central to the sense of crisis was the apparent unwillingness of a group of state servants – prison officers – to act reasonably and responsibly with respect to managing offenders, ensuring order and maintaining security. From the mid-1970s, prison officers began a series of campaigns that undermined the basis of hierarchical authority which a militarized service such as the prison system relied on to function efficiently and effectively. The militancy of prison staff was one element in a series of interlocking crises that gripped the system during this period (Fitzgerald and Sim, 1982). The crisis generated by this militancy was so severe that, in November 1978, prison governors forebodingly warned that there could ‘be a serious loss of control’, which might have to be ‘quelled by armed interventions with the probability of both staff and prisoners being killed’ (1982: 3).

The crisis also cut across several other dimensions over and above the militancy of the prison officers which, taken together, undermined the legitimacy of the institution in the eyes of politicians, public and prisoners themselves (1982: 23–24). Appalling conditions and severe overcrowding in local prisons  were the most obvious manifestations of the deeply embedded problems confronting the institution. Additionally, the challenges to penal ‘truth’ mounted by radical prisoners’ rights organizations to the hegemony of official accounts of life inside (Fitzgerald, 1977; Ryan 1978) – what Foucault termed ‘the insurrection of subjugated knowledges’ (Foucault, 2004: 7) – were crucial in highlighting the fact that for all the ‘state talk’ (Corrigan and Sayer, 1985) (and indeed much of criminology’s ‘talk’) about rehabilitation, reform and progress since the end of the nineteenth century, prison life for many of the confined remained bleak, brutal and bewildering.

The state’s attempt to maintain the fragile order of the prison brought these issues into sharp focus as a number of strategies and policies were pursued which, paradoxically, often generated further, negative, unintended consequences for the system. These strategies included: the introduction, in secret, of psychologically withering Control Units, which were used against those labelled as recalcitrant; the militarization of the state’s response to disorder through training every prison officer in techniques of riot control, which was allied with the use of special squads such as the Minimum Use of Force Tactical Intervention Squad (MUFTI); the use of segregation within, and the ‘ghosting’ of prisoners between, different institutions; the mobilization of brutal violence against demonstrating prisoners at Hull in 1976 (especially towards Irish and black prisoners) and at Wormwood Scrubs in 1979 (the inquiry into which was described as ‘Whitelaw’s Whitewash’ by the radical prisoners’ rights group, PROP (Coggan, 1982: 3); and the use of drugs to control those labelled as ‘difficult’ (Warren, 1982) or against those deemed ‘unable to cope’, especially women (Sim, 1990). These strategies provided a clear, unambiguous indication that the state’s unnerving capacity for drastic interventions into the lives of the confined had not been eliminated in the ideological drive to construct the prison as a place of munificent and benevolent reform.

The Labour government’s response to the crisis was predictable: the establishment of an inquiry under Mr Justice May. May’s findings and recommendations were also predictable given the baleful and nefarious control exerted by the Home Office over the terms of reference and the final report. They were built on a poorly conceived managerial explanation for the crisis while propounding an equally naive managerial solution to the same crisis (Fitzgerald and Sim, 1980). Crucially, the inquiry failed to confront one of the key issues and dimensions underpinning the crisis, namely the discretionary and non-accountable use of prison officer power, a failure which was to reverberate through the coming decades. As was noted at the time:

The May Report was an opportunity not simply to review but to change fundamentally the 100-year-old recipe of more prisons and more prisoners. In the event, it passed up that opportunity, preferring, like so many Inquiries before it, to represent the recipe for prison crisis as a recipe for prison salvation. It simply won’t work (1980: 84).

The crisis in the prisons, particularly the ‘crisis of legitimacy’ (Fitzgerald and Sim, 1982: 23), symbolized the broader social crisis of legitimacy and hegemony in the wider society (Hall et al., 1978). Again, as was noted at the time, 

the crisis of the British prison system thus reflects not simply a concern about the state of the prisons, but a more widespread belief that the prisons of the State are not making a contribution to the maintenance of social order (Fitzgerald and Sim, 1982: 23–24).

The Labour government’s tired, and indeed shambolic, response to the prison crisis, appeared to perfectly symbolize the fact that ministers had little to offer by way of political solutions, either to this crisis or to the crisis gripping the wider society. With Labour defeated at the General Election in May 1979, and the government of Margaret Thatcher in power, the apocalyptic concerns articulated by Joseph over the previous five years, while not achieving complete hegemony (as no ideas ever do), nonetheless began to work their way into her government’s programme for law and order. Ominously, for a range of already economically and politically powerless groups, it was a programme increasingly based on the principles of the free market and the strong state (Gamble, 1988).”

- Joe Sim, Punishment and Prisons: Power and the Carceral State. London: SAGE, 2009. pp. 23-25.

#crisis of imprisonment #uk prisons #mufti squad #control unit #reactionary reform #penal reform #conservative party of great britain #thatcherism #margaret thatcher #social order #social control #prison administration #prisoner resistance #prisoner revolt #hmp hull #hm prison wormwood scrubs #joe sim #academic research #academic quote #crime and punishment #history of crime and punishment #her majesty's prison service #home office