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arianajbb · 3 years

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FIC RECS - 1

💕 Clueless by @justsomebucky

Movie AU. Inspired by Clueless - A high society boy and a do-gooder-type girl find love.

💕 as you wish, ma’am by @aescapisms

SOCIAL MEDIA AU || Bucky Barnes fucks up and sends you the wrong presentation file.

💕 A Lesson In Love by @buckyywiththegoodhair

(College!AU) In which you’re assigned to write a story about romance, a subject you know nothing about, and Bucky, a hopeless romantic, offers you his assistance.

. 💕 The End Of The War by @redgillan

Everyone knows you and Steve can’t stand each other, but after he runs into you after one of his fights, he starts to see you in a different light.

💕 Babies! Assemble by @honeyloverogers

On a mission involving time travel, as if they haven’t learned at all that it’s dangerous, the Avengers get turned into babies. Including your boyfriend.

💕 Have You Any Wool by @threeminutesoflife

Dinner with Ransom doesn’t go as planned.

💕 Peaches and Plums by @cptnbvcks

After escaping hydra, Bucky finds a pretty peach vendor to work out his troubled mind with.

💕 Stitches by @revengingbarnes

You’re just a clueless new medical student. You’re not equipped to deal with charming, witty, handsome doctors. Especially not ones with pretty blue eyes that make you weak in the knees.

💕 Saturdays by @sunmoonandbucky

Bucky Barnes has a new routine.

💕 Love Made Me Crazy by @sinner-as-saint

It was all strategic; a plan meticulously constructed by you and your business partner; against James Buchanan Barnes. Not to take him down, no. But just to surpass him in the business world by uncovering his secrets; to learn his ways and hope to be better than him in every way possible. The façade you put up – of being close to him and earning his trust was supposed to be short-lived, most importantly; harmless. But then as always, things got a tad bit more complex when feelings intervened…

💕 To Be So Lonely by @wlntrsldler

When Bucky and Y/N signed up for this online pen pal system, they never expected to grow attached to the other person behind the screen. In the pen pal system, they can only unlock the other person’s messages on the 25th of each month. They can write and send off their response as soon as they want but the other person is not able to see it until the 25th.

💕 eye candy by @angelwidow

Being Tony Stark’s receptionist was hard. Working alongside the most gorgeous salesman you’d ever seen was even harder. Actually talking to said salesman? Well, that was just insane.

💕 Strange Times by @beccaanne814

You have a certain type - smart, charming, and handsome as sin. For years you’ve been in love with the only man you thought possessed all of those traits, but a chance encounter with a Strange individual sends you and a certain ex-assassin on a journey of self-discovery. As you try to find a way back home, will you also be able to uncover the perfect man hidden beneath layers of guilt and self-loathing.

💕 Stuck Wit U by @slyyywriting

You and Bucky don’t get along. Your fights have become too destructive so Tony and Steve decide that enough is enough.

💕 Take Me Higher by @buckychrist

Who knew that the way into the big broody super soldier’s heart was through his unmet need for a good cuddle?

💕 x by @mcfreakin-bitch

💕 x by @thejamesoldier

💕 Betrayal by @midnightsunfae

Bucky catches you flirting with someone at a party and he doesn’t take to it very well.

💕 two paper airplanes flying by @feliciahardyn

ransom drysdale will always find you, no matter where you are. always.

💕 Dear Lover by @feliciahardyn

you dance with bucky barnes in the obscurity of your room as you recalled the first time you met and how three years later you ended up tangled in each other’s arms. (based on the song “lover” by taylor swift)

💕 Make You Love Me by @slyyywriting

You flirt with Bucky every single chance you get.

💕 The unseen one by @extremelyblackandwhite

The God of the Underworld falls in love with a mortal.

💕 Hellfire by @chamomilebottom

💕 Promised by @cherienymphe

when you start waking up with bruises you can’t explain, your nightmares turn into a reality.

💕 Everything by @trillian-anders

💕 tell me you own me by @darthstyles

mean daddy harry comes out to play

💕 The Chef’s Strike by @bucky-smiles

A contract went unfulfilled…

💕 Bittersweet Temptations by @revengingbarnes

Y/N Y/L/N loves coffee, always has, which is why she spent all her adult years creating the perfect coffee shop. Cutesy, homey and cozy, it’s the job of her dreams. So what if business has been a little slow lately? It’s her happy place, it would always be. But that was all until the flirty, witty and obnoxious Bucky Barnes opened up a rival coffee shop two blocks down the street. Business and profit are all Bucky cares about. He’s the exact opposite of everything Y/N stands for, and naturally, she can’t stand him. But what happens when Y/N is running the risk of losing her beloved shop and Bucky’s the only one lending her a helping hand?

💕 The Neighbor by @staymay5

💕 came in close by @buckyskorpion

what could possibly go wrong with a couple of good-natured pranks between sworn enemies?

💕 (1) New Message by @yikeswtfmate

One night Wanda and Nat dare Y/N to text her hottest ex. She complies, only to realise it’s not her ex she’s texting and this might be the most attractive man she’s actually laid eyes on.

💕 Eye For An Eye by @sinner-as-saint

Battered and bruising, Y/N is out to seek sweet revenge from a man, James Buchanan Barnes, who tore her family apart 10 years ago. Y/N’s plan was simple; infiltrate his life, mess with his head, toy with his heart and leave him broken. Headstrong, she will stop at nothing, not even when it comes down to her being the villain in her own story…

💕 Under Oath by @ugh-supersoldiers

The people called for justice, the state answered. The trial of State v. Barnes is set to begin, and the odds are most certainly not in favor of the not so beloved ex Winter Soldier. That’s where you come in, the quick, smart, and all too brave lawyer set on defending and saving one Bucky Barnes from legal prosecution. The only problem? He’s not so sure he’s worth saving at all.

. 💕 Hate To Love You by @revengingbarnes

While on her death bed, Y/N’s mother has just one wish; her daughter to be married and settled in her life. It’s something her mother has never stopped pestering her about. But up until now, Y/N had managed to not give into her family’s traditions of arranged marriage. And she might have continued to do so if weren’t her mother’s last desire. Unable to refuse her mother’s desperate plea, Y/N agrees to meet the man her parents have chosen for her. There’s just one tiny problem. Her soon-to-be husband is her ex. More tragically, he’s the one ex she never managed to get over.

💕 Everything by @hootyhoobuckaroo

. 💕 late night devils by @whistlingwillows

Bucky gets revenge on his ex with you, the girl he never got over no matter how much he thought he did.

💕 Safe with Me by @bitsandbobsandstuff

When an unknown threat enters your life, protection is offered at the highest level. As Bucky Barnes comes into your life, the game changes, and you realise falling for the man tasked with keeping you safe is the last thing you expected.

💕 Wildest Dreams by @hopesbarnes

Everyone said he was a bad guy, that he broke hearts. But maybe they were wrong about him.

💕 Things Bucky says during sex. by @steveodinsonbarnes

💕 charming by @venusbarnes

in which you’re a girl in need of protection, and Bucky’s the perfect man for the job.

💕 one stroke and you’ve consumed my waking days by @buckthegrump

Bucky has a pen pal.

💕 Just One Kiss by @sarahwroteathing

Bucky Barnes has been chasing after you since he was ten years old, but you’re determined not to give in. How long can you hold out when all he’s asking for is just one kiss? (40′s happy ending AU)

💕 Come Over by @moonstruckbucky

You’re new to New York City. Fresh out of post-grad and wanting a change of pace, and this change comes in more ways than one.

💕 Even In The Darkest Times by @justauthoring

Bucky x reader where they were together in the forties and when Steve goes back, he sends her into the future so she can be with Bucky while he stays in the past with Peggy.

💕 Hearts Don’t Lie by @daenyara

when y/n and her family have to leave Europe to escape the war, finding love in New York is the last thing she expects (and the last thing that interests her). Much to her annoyance, her parents set her up with the one person in all Brooklyn she cannot stand: the charming James Barnes, who’s decided to show her he’s not as bad as she thinks.

💕 A Bid on Bucky by @samingtonwilson

You spend thousands of dollars at a bachelor auction for Bucky when you could’ve had him for free this entire time.

💕 Helpless For You by @sgtjbuccky

A blind date has lead you and Bucky to the fourth date. Each one proving that you’ve got it bad more than prior and it doesn’t quite matter what will happen - you will keep on falling for that handsome devil and you don’t even mind.

💕 Lavender by @wkemeup

Not every nightmare is the same and Bucky doesn’t always wake up as the man you know.

💕 Fixed by @drawlfoy

draco has a teasing relationship with the reader–they playfully argue and go back and forth but never acknowledge the fact that there may be something more. draco notices her pulling back and becoming more reserved. he follows her out of the dining hall one day to find her having a breakdown over a dark secret.

💕 Anytime by @notimetoblog

Bucky is still cautious when it comes to touching people & vice versa. one day after a mission, the avengers are in the quinjet on their way home, Bucky sat down beside the reader & accidentally falling asleep on her & snuggling her. she doesn’t make it a big deal but all the other members are surprised. just fluff involving soft Bucky.

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where-theres-smoak-2 · 3 years

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I’ve days this before in another post The biggest fail in this trilogy is that Alina wanted to have an easy life by that I mean having none of the responsibilities and hardships the Darkling has had to deal with in order to make Grisha safe and respected.And initially you feel sorry because she’s so young,etc but then she doesn’t evolve during the course of the story and remains the same selfish and self centered character she was.I know you probably haven’t read R&R yet but when you do I would recommend reading SOC duology. I think one of the good things about these books I’d that they’re not directly connected to the trilogy. There are some cameos from some characters but otherwise it’s focused on their own plot and the hilarious thing is that at the same time it validates the Darkling’s points since nothing changes after the Fold is destroyed things actually get worse for the Grisha(if it’s even possible)and Rsvka’s in depth due to all the wars they’re fighting which makes Alina’s story absolutely meaningless and the characters ends up looking extremely selfish after die dung the trilogy constantly victimising herself instead if actually having agency.

I'm half way through R&R, I should have finished it by now but to be honest I'm not really enjoying it and it feels more like a chore reading it. But I did get spoilt on how it ends recently and that's made me even less eager to read the rest of the book lol. Just going to put a quick books spoiler alert in here for anyone who doesn't want to be spoilt.

I've seen a lot of people say that things just got worse after the fold is destroyed. I have spoken about this in another post but whilst I think aleks was wrong to expand the fold into novokribrisk and he was wrong to put the collar on alina, I think his desire to not destroy the fold is valid. It's the only thing that makes grisha useful to the king in a unique way, it requires nearly all the different types of grisha to cross the fold safely. Without it the grisha won't be useful anymore and how long until they are back to being hunted and kill within ravka on top of everywhere else. So I am actually a big supporter of let's keep the fold and instead have alina realise that her destiny isn't to destroy the fold that's just religious propaganda told to give hope to people when the fold was created. Her destiny is actually to protect the grisha. I never throughout the books got the sense that she ever really cared about the grisha. I mean sure she had a small group of grisha friends who she cared about but the grisha as a people not so much. It was more like oh are the grisha being prosecuted and killed merely for existing, burned on a stake, experimented on, kept as slaves? That's a shame, well I've destroyed the fold now so I'm going to merrily skip off to this farm with my childhood friend turned lover because naturally he's more important than an entire minority group who are suffering. Wait putting one person above an entire race of people that sounds familiar, oh right, baghra.

I just find alina's character arc very dissatisfing and was disappointed to find she ends the books series on the exact same place she started it. I personally think the more interesting story would have been for her to realise that things aren't as simple and black and white as she wants them to be and for the darkling to get a little bit of redemption and for him and alina to work together to better the lives of all grisha.

#darklina #aleksander morozova #Book complaint #answered

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lycanresistance · 3 years

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ptsdaaron ==> ancomaaron

Preface

One of the current objections to Communism and Socialism altogether, is that the idea is so old, and yet it could never be realized. Schemes of ideal States haunted the thinkers of Ancient Greece; later on, the early Christians joined in communist groups; centuries later, large communist brotherhoods came into existence during the Reform movement. Then, the same ideals were revived during the great English and French Revolutions; and finally, quite lately, in 1848, a revolution, inspired to a great extent with Socialist ideals, took place in France. “And yet, you see,” we are told, “how far away is still the realization of your schemes. Don’t you think that there is some fundamental error in your understanding of human nature and its needs?”

At first sight this objection seems very serious. However, the moment we consider human history more attentively, it loses its strength. We see, first, that hundreds of millions of men have succeeded in maintaining amongst themselves, in their village communities, for many hundreds of years, one of the main elements of Socialism the common ownership of the chief instrument of production, the land, and the apportionment of the same according to the labour capacities of the different families; and we learn that if the communal possession of the land has been destroyed in Western Europe, it was not from within, but from without, by the governments which created a land monopoly in favour of the nobility and the middle classes. We learn, moreover, that the mediæval cities succeeded in maintaining in their midst for several centuries in succession a certain socialized organization of production and trade; that these centuries were periods of a rapid intellectual, industrial, and artistic progress; and that the decay of these communal institutions came mainly from the incapacity of men of combining the village with the city, the peasant with the citizen, so as jointly to oppose the growth of the military states, which destroyed the free cities.

The history of mankind, thus understood, does not offer, then, an argument against Communism. It appears, on the contrary, as a succession of endeavours to realize some sort of communist organization, endeavours which were crowned with a partial success of a certain duration; and all we are authorized to conclude is, that mankind has not yet found the proper form for combining, on communistic principles, agriculture with a suddenly developed industry and a rapidly growing international trade. The latter appears especially as a disturbing element, since it is no longer individuals only, or cities, that enrich themselves by distant commerce and export; but whole nations grow rich at the cost of those nations which lag behind in their industrial development.

These conditions, which began to appear by the end of the eighteenth century, took, however, their full swing in the nineteenth century only, after the Napoleonic wars came to an end. And modern Communism had to take them into account.

It is now known that the French Revolution apart from its political significance, was an attempt made by the French people, in 1793 and 1794, in three different directions more or less akin to Socialism. It was, first, the equalization of fortunes, by means of an income tax and succession duties, both heavily progressive, as also by a direct confiscation of the land in order to subdivide it, and by heavy war taxes levied upon the rich only. The second attempt was to introduce a wide national system of rationally established prices of all commodities, for which the real cost of production and moderate trade profits had to be taken into account. The Convention worked hard at this scheme, and had nearly completed its work, when reaction took the overhand. And the third was a sort of Municipal Communism as regards the consumption of some objects of first necessity, bought by the municipalities, and sold by them at cost price.

It was during this remarkable movement, which has never yet been properly studied, that modern Socialism was born — Fourierism with L’Ange, at Lyons, and authoritarian Communism with Buonarotti, Babeuf, and their comrades. And it was immediately after the Great Revolution that the three great theoretical founders of modern Socialism — Fourier, Saint Simon, and Robert Owen, as well as Godwin (the No-State Socialism) — came forward; while the secret communist societies, originated from those of Buonarotti and Babeuf, gave their stamp to militant Communism for the next fifty years.

To be correct, then, we must say that modern Socialism is not yet a hundred years old, and that, for the first half of these hundred years, two nations only, which stood at the head of the industrial movement, i.e. Britain and France, took part in its elaboration. Both — bleeding at that time from the terrible wounds inflicted upon them by fifteen years of Napoleonic wars, and both enveloped in the great European reaction that had come from the East.

In fact, it was only after the Revolution of July, 1830, in France, and the Reform movement of 1830–32, in England, had shaken off that terrible reaction, that the discussion of Socialism became possible for the next sixteen to eighteen years. And it was during those years that the aspirations of Fourier, Saint Simon, and Robert Owen, worked out by their followers, took a definite shape, and the different schools of Socialism which exist nowadays were defined.

In Britain, Robert Owen and his followers worked out their schemes of communist villages, agricultural and industrial at the same time; immense co-operative associations were started for creating with their dividends more communist colonies; and the Great Consolidated Trades’ Union was founded — the forerunner of the Labour Parties of our days and the International Workingmen’s Association.

In France, the Fourierist Considérant issued his remarkable manifesto, which contains, beautifully developed, all the theoretical considerations upon the growth of Capitalism, which are now described as “Scientific Socialism.” Proudhon worked out his idea of Anarchism, and Mutualism, without State interference. Louis Blanc published his Organization of Labour, which became later on the programme of Lassalle, in Germany. Vidal in France and Lorenz Stein in Germany further developed, in two remarkable works, published in 1846 and 1847 respectively, the theoretical conceptions of Considerant; and finally Vidal, and especially Pecqueur — the latter in a very elaborate work, as also in a series of Reports — developed in detail the system of Collectivism, which he wanted the Assembly of 1848 to vote in the shape of laws.

However, there is one feature, common to all Socialist schemes, of the period, which must be noted. The three great founders of Socialism who wrote at the dawn of the nineteenth century were so entranced by the wide horizons which it opened before them, that they looked upon it as a new revelation, and upon themselves as upon the founders of a new religion. Socialism had to be a religion, and they had to regulate its march, as the heads of a new church. Besides, writing during the period of reaction which had followed the French Revolution, and seeing more its failures than its successes, they did not trust the masses, and they did not appeal to them for bringing about the changes which they thought necessary. They put their faith, on the contrary, in some great ruler. He would understand the new revelation; he would be convinced of its desirability by the successful experiments of their phalansteries, or associations; and he would peacefully accomplish by the means of his own authority the revolution which would bring well-being and happiness to mankind. A military genius, Napoleon, had just been ruling Europe.... Why should not a social genius come forward and carry Europe with him and transfer the new Gospel into life?... That faith was rooted very deep, and it stood for a long time in the way of Socialism; its traces are ever seen amongst us, down to the present day.

It was only during the years 1840–48, when the approach of the Revolution was felt everywhere, and the proletarians were beginning to plant the banner of Socialism on the barricades, that faith in the people began to enter once more the hearts of the social schemers: faith, on the one side, in Republican Democracy, and on the other side in free association and the organizing powers of the working men themselves.

But then came the Revolution of February, 1848, the middle-class Republic, and — with it, broken hopes. Four months only after the proclamation of the Republic, the June insurrection of the Paris proletarians broke out, and it was crushed in blood. The wholesale shooting of the working-men, the mass deportations to New Guinea, and finally the Napoleonian coup d’état followed. The Socialists were prosecuted with fury, and the weeding out was so terrible and so thorough that for the next twelve or fifteen years the very traces of Socialism disappeared; its literature vanished so completely that even names, once so familiar before 1848, were entirely forgotten; ideas which were then current — the stock ideas of the Socialists before 1848 — were wiped out of the memories and were taken, later on, by the present generation, for new discoveries.

However, when a new revival came, about 1866, when Communism and Collectivism once more came forward, the conception as to the means of their realization had undergone a deep change. The old faith in Political Democracy was gone, and the first principles upon which the Paris working men agreed with the British trade-unionists and Owenites, when they met in 1866 at London, was that “the emancipation of the working-men must be accomplished by the working-men themselves.” Upon another point they also fell in. It was that the labour unions themselves would have to get hold of the instruments of production, and organize production themselves. The French idea of the Fourierist and Mutualist “Association” thus joined hands with Robert Owen’s idea of “The Great Consolidated Trades’ Union,” which was extended now, so as to become an International Working-men’s Association.

Again this new revival of Socialism lasted but a few years. Soon came the war of 1870–1871, the uprising of the Paris Commune — and again: the free development of Socialism was rendered impossible in France. But while Germany accepted now from the hands of its German teachers, Marx and Engels, the Socialism of the French “forty-eighters” — the Socialism of Considérant and Louis Blanc, and the Collectivism of Pecqueur, — France made a further step forward.

In March, 1871, Paris had proclaimed that hence forward it would not wait for the retardatory portions of France, and intended to start within its Commune its own social development.

The movement was too short-lived to give any positive result. It remained communalist only. But the working-classes of the old International saw at once its historical significance. They understood that the free commune would be henceforth the medium in which the ideas of modern Socialism may come to realization. The free agro-industrial communes, of which so much was spoken in 1848, need not be small phalansteries, or small communities of 2000 persons. They must be vast agglomerations, like Paris, or, still better, small territories. These communes would federate, even irrespectively of national frontiers (like the Cinque Ports, or the Hansa); and large labour associations might come into existence for the inter-communal service of the railways, the docks, and so on. Such were the ideas which began vaguely to circulate after 1871 amongst the thinking working-men, especially in the Latin countries. In some such organization, the details of which life itself would settle, the labour circles of these countries saw the medium through which Socialist forms of life could find a much easier realization than through the Collectivist system of the State Socialists.

These are the ideas to which I have endeavoured to give a more or less definite expression in this book.

Looking back now at the years that have passed since this book was written, I can say in full conscience that its leading ideas must have been correct. The State Socialism of the collectivist system has certainly made some progress. State railways, State banking, and State trade in spirits have been introduced here and there. But every step made in this direction, even though it resulted in the cheapening of a given commodity, was found to be a new obstacle in the struggle of the working-men for their emancipation. So that we find now amongst the working-men, especially in England, the idea that even the working of such a vast national property as a railway-net could be much better handled by a Federated Union of railway employés, than by a State organization.

On the other side, we see that countless attempts have been made all over Europe and America, the leading idea of which is, on the one side, to get into the hands of the working-men themselves wide branches of production, and, on the other side, always to widen in the cities the circles of the functions which the city performs in the interest of its inhabitants. Trade-unionism, with a growing tendency towards organizing the different trades internationally, and of being not only an instrument for improving the conditions of labour, but also to become an organization which might, at a given moment, take into its hands the management of production; Co-operativism, both for production and for distribution, both in industry and agriculture, and attempts at combining both sorts of co-operation in experimental colonies; and finally, the immensely varied field of the so-called Municipal Socialism — these are the three directions in which the greatest amount of creative power has been developed lately.

Of course, none of these may, in any degree, be taken as a substitute for Communism, or even for Socialism, both of which imply the common possession of the instruments of production. But we certainly must look at all the just-mentioned attempts as upon experiments — like those which Owen, Fourier, and Saint Simon tried in their colonies — experiments which prepare human thought to conceive some of the practical forms in which a communist society might find its expression. The synthesis of all these partial experiments will have to be made some day by the constructive genius of some one of the civilized nations, and it will be done. But samples of the bricks out of which the great synthetic building will have to be built, and even samples of some of its rooms, are being prepared by the immense effort of the constructive genius of man.

#my post

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warsofasoiaf · 4 years

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The Celtic Tiger: A Kaiserreich Ireland AAR Chapter 8: Not the World, But Our Place In It

8 January 1942 - Áras an Uachtaráin, Dublin, Ireland

The Internationale had been defeated, their leaders killed or captured, the exiles returned to their seats of power. The war was not over, not with Savinkov still in power in Russia; his aggression against Germany and Japan meant continued war. For Western Europe, however, the war was over, and it had been time for celebration. V-E Day it was dubbed, victory in Europe. In the Americas, Canada held grand parades, the United States threw a ticker-tape for MacArthur and Eisenhower, and Mexico lauded their great success from Baja to the Yucatan. In Europe, the west was abuzz with church bells, fireworks, and celebrations in the street. The hammer-and-torch had been defeated, it could no more tyrannize the people of the world.

For Ireland, this had been an even greater celebration. Before any of the other great powers had fought the syndicalists, they had stood alone against the red flood. One tiny island nation alone against the might of the Third Internationale, and they had fought like lions. Facing a foe that dwarfed them, they maintained their desire for freedom and backed their words with force. The author Winston Churchill had said: “Therefore, we should not say that the Irish fought like heroes, but heroes fought like the Irish.” Michael Collins, Richard Mulcahy, Tom Barry, and Dan McKenna had all been held up across the Entente as images of the successful stand against the syndicalist menace. None had expected Ireland to last more than a few months, but Michael Collins and the Irish Armed Forces had resisted them to the utmost, and had won. The courageous defense of the steadfast Irish soldier had shown the commitment to duty, and the hollowness of the syndicalist cause; that in the end they were just power-hungry ideologues bent on world subjugation.

Yet with celebration, there were sobering reminders of the costs and tragedies of the war. LIFE Magazine had snapped a picture of three celebrating in front of their destroyed home, a toddler on his father’s shoulders looking confused while his mother danced. While the Second Weltkrieg hadn’t been as long as the first, the worst days of the First were only average days in the second. Half a million French and British soldiers had become casualties simply attempting to invade Ireland in 1939. Between the European and Asian theaters, 1940 alone had seen almost 12 million dead, wounded, or missing, and 1941 almost 20, and that hadn’t counted the still-ongoing wars both in Russia and in the chaos borne out of the Deutsche-Mittelafrika collapse. Bombed out buildings and the rush of new cemeteries made that fact abundantly plain the terrible cost of the Second Weltkrieg. The United Kingdom and the restored French Republic had to rebuild their shattered countries, broken twice by both bombs and the misrule of their former syndicalist masters. Plenty of the young had been indoctrinated to believe that all who did not carry the hammer and torch were rapacious from the first, and now these young people had to watch as the monsters from across the sea landed on their shores, crushed their defenders, and took power in their new nations. Already the British and French had established wartime governing authorities to facilitate their return to power, to desyndicalize the population, decollectivize the property, and return their country to some sense of normalcy.

Collins kept quiet about his nation being used as a prop for the British and French after they had refused to help in 1939. He had no problem with Mosley and the Internationale being exposed for the evil bastards that they were, but that the great powers had held up the Irish dead to prop up their own regimes infuriated him. He had been prepared to work with the British and Germans who had abandoned Ireland. He had been prepared to swallow their inaction as they labored together for their common cause of defeating the syndicalists. Now that the war was over, however, it became a lot harder to stomach, and every speech filled with lies and empty platitudes came with it a fierce attack of heartburn. The talking heads in the Great Powers talked about taking heed of the stark lessons of 1939, without any recognition of what they did in 1939 and why they had done it. It was like Black Monday all over again; the world marvelled at Irish accomplishment without thinking, learning, or changing.

The aftermath had done what war could not; it made Michael Collins tired.

18 April 1942 - Internationale War Crimes Tribunals

1942 saw more than just a dawn of new governments, but the reckoning for the old. The newly restored French Republic and the United Kingdom had called for trials to prosecute the syndicalists who had taken over their countries in the 1920’s. The trials had promised to be far reaching; the senior leadership would be put on trial, as were the senior military commanders. That much was obvious, but the question of collaboration was an open one, and field-grade commanders, mayors, and political officers would all receive their own trial. The Entente were permitted one judge from any of their constituent member countries to accompany a French and British judge, while the Reichspakt were permitted to send two judges from any of their own countries along with a German judge. Ireland, in respect of their status as a non-aligned full belligerent power, was to sit as the seventh judge.

The charges were grave: war crimes to include the wholesale massacre of civilian populations, crimes against peace for their aggressive attack on Ireland, and an entirely new set of crimes devised for committing acts against their own population entitled “crimes against the principles of humanity and universal morality.” Writing for the prosecution, Norman Birkett, the Canadian judge, stated: “No currently used term can be considered adequate to address the sheer depravity committed by the Third Internationale as articulated by the Totalist Charter, in their consistent and unequivocal exhortation for the dehumanization and forcible conversion of all peoples that do not practice their tenets, and the rationalization that those who do not submit are to be exterminated. It is therefore necessary to devise a new construction of language so that we might better condemn such actions, and to take all efforts to ensure that they are never repeated.” This new category of crimes included the actions taken by the syndicalist governments against their own populations, not just the Maximist and Jacobin purges but everything dating back to the revolutions themselves. Rural farmers who didn’t collectivize, members of the clergy, workers who didn’t reach their production quota, the hardliners within the prosecution considered all to be victims of the syndicalist cause, and their persecution was considered a failure of government and the institution of such punishments a crime against humanity; a new concept in international law with serious implications for international justice.

The defense attorneys for the syndicalist governments had been the most vocal about these implications. The lawyers attacked the court’s legitimacy, claiming that the abject poverty that the working classes had been subject to in the early 1920’s, before the syndicalist revolutions, would likewise condemn the British and French governments. Citing observations from coal miners of the brutal conditions suffered in the mines and abuses that had occurred in the British Empire’s far-flung colonies like Kenya and Burma, the Union of Britain’s lawyers argued that crimes against humanity were a selectively applied form of victor’s justice, an attempt to provide a legal fiction to apply the maximum possible sentence and de-legitimize the Internationale’s purpose for being and the conditions that “made it necessary to seek an unequivocal solution to the problems faced by the working class.”

Michael Collins had been far more interested in the trials that concerned the Internationale’s invasion of Ireland, even if the Irish judge had to recuse himself from the proceedings. The initial invasion had been considered a crime against peace and few contested the judgment, and with Mosley having committed suicide, the Union of Britain’s cabinet had become the principal defendants. Of greater significance was Thomas Wintringham, who had led the invasion. Wintringham had stated that he had simply followed his orders, and that the legality or illegality of those orders were the responsibility of the commanders-in-chief that had declared the war against Ireland. He had also claimed that he had not issued orders to kill civilians, that those actions had been taken unofficially on the ground by enlisted men and junior-grade officers. His executive staff office, Wintringham stated, was blameless as they had not committed or sanctioned such actions to be carried out against the Irish people. The Irish prosecutor, Joseph Alfred Sheridan, had argued that Wintringham had supported executing Irish civilians as a means to pacify the population, and had actively ordered the commission of war crimes as a means to intimidate any partisan activity; Wintringham knew the difficulties the British suffered in the Irish War of Independence and had hoped to avoid a guerilla war with the IRA. The judges found Wintringham’s defense of superior orders an insufficient defense, and that he had not taken active measures to prevent atrocities under his command as was found guilty. The Collins government had taken custody of Wintringham, and in a final insult, ordered that the general be sent to the gallows instead of the firing squad; his conduct had proven himself to be unsoldierly, he was not permitted a soldier’s death. The “Galway defense,” as it came to be known, established a firm precedent in international military law, that soldiers and commanders were obliged to disobey unlawful orders and could be held vicariously liable for war crimes committed under their command.

Collins would have loved to have seen the Lord Lieutenants of Ireland given a similar drubbing, but he had kept his tongue when asked about the implications of the ruling. “We thank the court for their interest in the cause of justice for the Irish people,” he gave in a public statement after Wintringham’s execution. In private, Collins spoke with Richard Mulcahy, and had been far less sanguine. “I have a feeling that few will care afterward. The verdict makes them feel good about themselves, but Germany and Canada didn’t care about us in ‘39. How long will it be before Albert needs to take the Six Counties back?”

25 May 1942 - Vladivostok, Republic of Transamur

The war with the syndicalists was over, but that did not mean that the Second Weltkrieg had been over. Savinkov still waged his war in the east, and the Vozhd believed that nothing would stop his idea, one Russia under the Nationalist Populist People’s Republican Party. One Russia had meant that the Kingdom of Ukraine and White Ruthenia were illegitimate national constructs foisted on Russia by a victorious Germany in the First Weltkrieg, and Kolchak’s government across the Amur River, propped up by Japan, had to be conquered and integrated back into the Russian State. The Entente had most of their divisions at home to assist in the military transitional state, but had permitted volunteer divisions to fight with the Reichspakt on the Ukrainian front as part of the stipulations on the Halifax Conference. Canada however, had sent volunteer divisions to aid Alexandsr Kolchak in distant Transamur. The Admiral-Dictator had had a long relationship with King George VI, and his sons had maintained strong connections with the distant admiral and his claims to Russia. That relationship had been strained by his regime’s dependence on Japanese protection, and when Japan and Canada went to war for control of India, that support had dried up. Canada was nervous about supporting Kolchak, but he was likely the most favorable candidate for the Entente to lead Russia. One other country had decided to return an old wartime favor. Dan McKenna rode out to fight again with the 12th Hohei Shidan in the distant corner of the world.

The Thunderbolts had landed their IV-1’s in Vladivostok, and quickly saw to integrating their signal corps with the Japanese and Transamurian forces for better communication. It was cold here, and while the Earth was round, this had to be one of the forgotten back corners of it. The Russian forces had welcomed the Irish personally, reminding McKenna of when Douglas MacArthur greeted the volunteer forces in the Second American War sailing into the Chesapeake. There had even been a slight party, with the Russian civilians serving their Irish guests black tea and soup made from pickled cucumbers and pork kidney. All to welcome them to defeat “the madman in Moscow,” they said; the stories of Savinkov in Russia had been truly frightening. Non-Russians had fled Savinkov’s forces rather than be arrested. Japanese civilians in Russia had been one who had expressed their fears early, but the Cossacks in the Don, the Kazakhs, any who had cleaved from Russia were subject to Savinkov’s aggression. Kolchak had seized on the opportunity to welcome Mongolians, Koreans, and Siberian people into his small country to bolster his ability to resist an invasion, but he was still significantly outmatched. Kolchak’s forces were small, most of his manpower had been devoted to his navy to maintain control of the Golden Horn Bay. The Japanese soldiers made up by far the bulk of the armed forces in the east, but the Japanese Army had also been suffering from war fatigue, having stalemated not once but twice, lost their puppet government in Manchuria, and had been unable to secure resources in Indonesia to alleviate their significant supply shortages for fuel, iron, and bauxite. They had taken the lessons of the Second American Civil War well, investing heavily in artillery production and close air support planes.

McKenna’s Japanese had been limited to just a few short words he had learned, half out of curiosity and half out of professional courtesy when he worked with the 12th in Pittsburgh. But the Open for Business Initiative and the immigration reforms had greatly enhanced the number of people within Ireland, and finding Russian and Japanese speakers in Ireland in 1942 was a lot easier than in 1936. He still greeted the Hohei Shidan’s major general and invited the old guard among the battalion leaders for a brief drink to reminisce about the Second American Civil War. It had been good to see his old wartime comrades, but he had been shocked to see that some of them had rejected the overture, hostile now to their one-time friends. Perhaps it had been hard feelings over the war with the Entente and the Reichspakt that had translated over to hostility to all Europeans. It hadn’t been total, but it had hurt to see some of his old friends no longer willing to share a drink with him.

“One more war, here’s hoping.” McKenna, sharing a glass of whiskey and a carafe of sake with Masakazu Kawabe.

“You and I both know there will never be simply ‘one more war.’” Kawabe mourned. “But it is nice to dream. Let the Sword and Thunder ride just as we had done half the world away.”

Kolchak’s war council had suggested that the Irish’s best use was in exploiting breakthroughs into the operational depth of Savinkov’s forces. Dubbed “Kolchakian Deep Battle,” the plan called for disrupting and impairing the Russian State’s ability to reinforce trouble spots on their line, attacking and retreating after causing such disorder was perfect for the rapidly-moving Irish infantry vehicles. Near Vladivostok, there was little worry, the Russian East Navy could use their guns to assist and the Imperial Japanese Navy was happy to use their carriers to provide ground support to the forces on shore. The true trouble would come after they began to move inland. Savinkov would undoubtedly destroy the Trans-Siberian rail line once Transamur began to advance, and there were no air bases this far west save the ones in Vladivostok, meaning that air support and aerial reconnaissance would be next-to-impossible. Perhaps one airfield existed in Amur that could be used, the next wouldn’t be until they reached Chita, and then perhaps all the way to Irktusk. The only mercy is that the terrain would be flat, but that was of little comfort to the mechanics that had to modify the chassis for the armored recon vehicles that the Irish battle doctrine had depended on to respond quickly to opportunities within the line.

McKenna had been more concerned with fuel. The supply lanes were open, but the Dutch East Indies had been reluctant to sell much of their fuel, as it was needed in the Netherlands to assist in rebuilding after repeated Union naval invasions. The United States could help send oil, but it was a long way to Vladivostok from the refineries at Standard Oil. The further they would push inland, the even harder it would be to keep the Ivies gassed up. Kolchak even had horse cavalry to help with reconnaissance duties when necessary, reminding McKenna when the Irish Gardai had used their horse police to move troops quickly to cut off the invaders at Clew Bay. The Japanese troops had even brought over bicycle troops to help alleviate the reconnaissance shortage.

“If it’s stupid, but it works, it isn’t stupid.” McKenna mouthed Murphy’s motto, and got to work.

---

4 July 1942 - Irish Embassy, London, United Kingdom

The rebuilding of England, northwestern Italy, and France had been slow work, and many issues had to be worked out.

Desyndicalization had not been an easy process. Many of the local officials had professed ignorance about the forced labor camps throughout the Commune and the Union for dissenters, unproductive workers, and enemies of the centralizing factions that took power in 1936. The Jacobins in particular had been quite extensive in purging members of the Travailleurs and Anarchistes in a way that reminded French historians of the Huguenots during the French wars of religion. The Maximists too, had been ruthless in their removal of orthodox syndicalists and moderate socialists just as the latter in turn had been in their purges following the British revolution. The British public were of two minds of the affair: the hardliners had taken the stance that they had been rewarded in kind with their own previous cruelty, while the moderates had advocated that such cruelty was an opportunity to reconcile the people that had remained on the British mainland and rebuild the United Kingdom into a stronger, more unified country that could not be subject to the divisions of the 1920’s. As long as the people were under investigation, they were unable to work, and that had been a drain on governmental money and food supplies, things that were desperately needed for rebuilding. The Entente had been donating supplies to support the rebuilding efforts, but even then, it had been a long process. Most of the British mainland was without power, and the French countryside had been torn up, including valuable foodstuffs and medical supplies which had exacerbated the suffering of people in the countryside. Starvation and disease had run rampant, and every day someone suffered was a crisis of legitimacy in the eyes of the returning old governments. Who and what had to be punished to ensure the most proper course of justice?

The anxiety had been palpable to any observer, with the fear of backsliding into open civil war if the trials had descended into kangaroo courts. The fear of what would happen to be left behind in the transition was on everyone’s lips, not helped by the returning aristocracy who openly celebrated the notion that those who had stolen their homes and property would now receive their just comeuppance. The Hackhand movement was the most popular of these, an exile movement using a severed hand as their insignia, which called for those who had benefited from the mass collectivization of property to have a medieval punishment: a hand removed so that at a glance, all the people might know them for traitors and thieves. The Hackhands lobbied extensively across France and the United Kingdom, calling for the harshest possible punishments not just for the syndicalists, but for the people that remained in the Commune or the Union. Former soldiers would not be allowed to enlist in the new armed forces, pensioners would have their stipends curtailed unless they participated in reconstruction work crews, long prison sentences for those who had benefited from the syndicalist seizure of property and execution of political and union leaders were plastered over posters and shouted on street corners. The reconciliation movement was a diverse range of people, from sympathetic members of the working class, evangelicals preaching forgiveness, and realpolitik practitioners who considered the loss of so much human capital to be a loss for the new world to come. Just as diverse as these movements were the measures prescribed. The most radical advocated for blanket amnesty for all non-political officials, while others advocated for lenient sentencing primarily served through serving on reconstruction work crews. The workload was hellish on the bureaucratic clerks who worked with little power or investigatory support. De-syndicalization certifications were sold on the black market, which caused repeat investigations and more than one major criminal slipped away.

The de-syndicalizing nations each ended up taking a different course. Italy, which had its territories divided up between Sardinia, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and the Italian Republic, had been largely lenient, punishing the Sindacalista leadership and major organizers, while lower-ranking members were given prison sentences ranging from three to ten years. France had pushed harshly, with significant prison sentences and executions for top-ranking members. France also labored to tear down Commune structures and edifices to erase them from their history. It rebuilt the Sacre-Coeur which had been destroyed by the Communards to be twice as large, and in recognition of the African colonial troops and conscripts that had contributed to the successful retaking, had ordered a grand mosque to be built and dedicated in the Metropole; the first of many steps toward the integration of the African colonial territories into a new French Union. Free unions were abolished with new religious and state-controlled secular unions instituted in their place, with severe restrictions placed on political activity. The only exception was Georgiy Zhukov, who had proven that he had conducted himself according to the laws of war. Thanks to a petition by Tom Barry, Zhukov was simply exiled from France. Barry had offered him a place in Ireland, where he spent his days writing on infantry tactics and fishing in the River Shannon. The United Kingdom, swayed by its foreign policy advisors, had severely punished the leaders of the Union, both the Maximists and the leaders of the others which had survived the purges, along with members of the Labour Party which could be linked to pro-Union activity, but the party itself was not abolished and permitted to run in free elections. The aristocracy largely had been compensated for the loss of their property, and most of that compensation had been placed into deferred payment schedules to facilitate further rebuilding. Many of the former syndicalists had been put to work rebuilding the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force to build the United Kingdom’s military, to get Canada to send its troops back home.

Normalcy began to return to Europe. The Germans had provided a large financial package to help France rebuild, and Mitteleuropan member states had likewise contributed smaller amounts. The Entente had been vigorously donating to help rebuild the British Home Isles. There was a small sense of something optimistic returning, after so much death and destruction. Yet Michael Collins was still nervous. This sentiment did not last after the Second American Civil War, and it wouldn’t last here. Once the Russian State was defeated, where did that leave the rest of the world?

13 August 1942 - Chita, Siberia, Russian State

The Russian State was an exercise in fury. Savinkov was outnumbered and beaten, and he knew it, but the question was: how long would it take?

The sheer size of the Russian State had made the war long, and as supply shipments began to get more and more irregular, it became harder to maintain a high combat tempo. In the west, the Reichspakt had slowly but surely pushed the Russians back, retaking Kiev and Minsk before crossing the border into Russian territory. On the eastern front, the terrible roads in eastern Russia chewed through the front tires of the half-tracks and motorized artillery units. Air cover was sparse, the An tAerchór had designed their fighters and CAS aircraft to be light in order to maximize maneuverability in the air. When a plane was made lighter, it either sacrificed fuel capacity, or it sacrificed armor, and the Irish had opted for the former. The short ranges across the Irish Sea had made the decision simple, but in the vast expanses of Siberia, it meant that often, Dan McKenna and the 1st Thunderbolts advanced without the benefit of air superiority or close air support. This had become a significant problem, as the larger Russian aircraft flown by Savinkov’s pilots could make the trip from Irktusk to Chita and back.

Ireland had relied on its fighters to maintain air superiority, the nimble fighters made by Aer Lingus had developed a reputation for impressive dogfighting. Without them, McKenna had been forced to rely on nightfighting to advance, and reconnaissance often meant paying informants for intelligence that was frustratingly hard to confirm. When it was necessary, the field engineers had bent the mount on the Ivy to have the autocannon held at an upward angle. It had completely ruined the fighting potential of the IV-1 against ground forces, and after a few shots, the mount could warp, even potentially jamming the gunner against the rear of the seat.

It had made McKenna worried. Irish military doctrine prided itself on mobility and rapid response, but air power would always outspeed ground vehicles, and so without the ability to engage on the air in equal terms, their key advantage had been lost. Unlike the Union or the Commune, Savinkov had ensured a unified structure from the ground up; these were no militia units struggling to adjust to a professional command. Savinkov had devoted plenty of aircraft to ensure that he could fight with air superiority, but he could not devote the manpower to fighting in Siberia when the German Kaiserreich pressed the advantage in the west, threatening the more valuable western portions. Had it been in the western front, near Petrograd, the sheer numbers of Russian State forces would overwhelm the ineffective Ivies now hobbled by their improvised anti-air guns. The only thing that kept McKenna’s lines from being overrun was that there were other theaters that were more important.

“Push to Irktusk, Kolchak says. We move at a crawl out here. Tell Kolchak that if he wants Irktusk so badly he needs to bring us some damn diesel.” McKenna complained in his forward command post.

Kawabe sighed. “Most of our aircraft are operating under similar restrictions. We primarily built them for our carriers. I suppose it’s bitter irony that I was the one who had pushed for carrier designs over larger twin-engine designs.”

McKenna laughed. “Doesn’t do us any good now. We’ll have to stick to night raids, and just hope that the western front can collapse the defenses at Moscow before we have to push all the way to Ekaterinburg.”

21 August 1942 - Áras an Uachtaráin, Dublin, Ireland

“While the government has returned, there is no going back to what was done before; we must endeavor to learn what we can from the past and ensure we do not repeat our previous mistakes. These years of war and rebuilding have shown us many things. We have seen the rows upon rows of gravestones. We have seen the faces of the wounded and heard their cries. But we have also seen acts that define what it means to be a Briton. We have seen people come together and share the little food they have so that none may starve. We have seen men bravely continuing their work to help rebuild knowing that it gives one more family a good roof over their heads to sleep. We have seen volunteers delivering wood and fuel to the aged just to make sure that they are warm, even if it means they cannot start their own fires. And we have seen old enemies bury the hatchet of their grudges to work together toward something good. The small nation of Ireland had little reason to aid the exiles of Britain, our history and conduct toward them was shameful. Yet, when the time came to take the fight to Mosley and his Maximists, it was an Irish negotiator who helped bring cooperation between the Entente and the Reichspakt, there were Irish mechanics helping to service British bombers at the airfields in Derry, and there were Irish soldiers that fought alongside English ones. The Irish extended a hand because they saw who we were, our struggles, and saw some manner of kinship. We also saw, when it came time to look after the Anglicans in the North, it was the Michael Collins government that ensured that their rights were respected, even if it meant punishing his own citizens. It is only fitting and proper then, that we continue to uphold the peace with Ireland and recognize its contribution to our own success. I therefore maintain that the previous treaty fixing the borders and securing independence with the Irish Free State be extended and confirmed to the Federal Republic of Ireland. The Six Counties are, and forever shall be, Irish possessions. As we come to a new age, we raise a new flag, and declare that we are Great Britain.” -King Albert I

Michael Collins couldn’t believe it. If he hadn’t had dropped his book on his toe, he would have thought he had been dreaming. The English had surrendered their claim to the Six Counties.

Impromptu jubilant celebrations had broken out across the entire country of Ireland. The question of the North had finally been resolved, in Ireland’s favor. The Second Weltkrieg had done what no one ever thought possible, confirmed Ireland’s place in the world. The Celtic Tiger had reared and roared, and had defeated Black Monday and the Union of Britain. Ireland was truly the diamond of the world, there was nothing that seemed to be beyond Ireland’s grasp. She stood between both Entente and Reichspakt, enjoying favorable status with both power blocs. Her economy was booming, her people well-fed and happy. With this final confirmation of her territorial integrity being respected by her longtime foe, Ireland was finally free of the shackles of the past, into a bold future. Already, there had been talks for new Irish initiatives. The French Republic had looked to meet with Ireland to establish diplomatic clout to reform Mitteleuropa to be a more equitable organization, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and the ISAC had sought to improve research sharing opportunities with ESIC, perhaps even securing German and British relationships the way that Ireland had established one with the United States. Even Italy had hoped for Michael Collins to help mediate the idea of an Italian Federation to possibly fix the tensions between the Entente-allied Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont, the Austrian-allied, Italian Republic, and the Reichspakt-aligned Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. If the First Weltkrieg found the Germans their place in the sun, the Second was a time for Ireland to stand in the light.

This place in the sun had not been easy. There were many Irish dead, many more permanently wounded in the struggle. Galway had needed to be rebuilt after the extensive damage. All of that was manageable. There was one thing, however, that was not. The Irish Republic had been the dream of the IRA since the beginning, and for most every man, they could say that they achieved it. Collins knew better, and knew about the elections of 1937. What frightened him was not the conditions, but how easy it was to do it. With two glasses of Acushla on his table, he summoned his old friend Richard Mulcahy to an impromptu meeting.

“Richard…” Collins had said, his voice barely audible. “I think it’s time for me to retire. I don’t think I should run in ‘42.”

“Sir?” Mulcahy had been surprised for the first time in a long time.

“I’ve led Ireland for a quarter-century, I have a feeling that even if Jesus Christ himself ran for Fianna Fail, I’d probably get more of the vote.”

“They love you, Mick. You led us through the entire thing, and you’re leading us now.” Mulcahy, the color draining from his face, tried his best to laugh off what Collins was saying.

“I truly believed it, you know. I thought that there was no way in hell that they would abandon their claim to the Six Counties.” Collins took a small sip of his whiskey.

“No one blames you for that. It’s right to worry.”

“It’s certainly not presidential. I’m a dictator, Richard. I’m not Mosley, but the longer I stay here, the more that we’ll backslide once I do leave. We need to be a republic in every way, and I’m in the way of it. Ireland needs to be free. Even from me.”

---

Images

Successful Victory

War Crimes Tribunal

The 12th Hohei Shidan in Siberia

The Slow Advance

The UK Abandons Northern Ireland

It’s over. I was a bit sad in writing this. It was a lot of fun, and frustrating in parts, and I wanted Collins’s conclusion to reflect that. A happy ending, with a bit of sad parts, to reflect the triumph of the playthrough. I’ll be detailing an appendix to really flex some worldbuilding muscles, but I’m happy that you shared the journey with me. Have a good one everyone.

-SLAL

#kaiserreich #creative #celtic tiger

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dyedmaxiian · 4 years

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JAMIE ON THE FALLOUT 4 MAIN FACTIONS:

THE MINUTEMEN

THE INSTITUTE

THE BROTHERHOOD OF STEEL

THE RAILROAD

THE MINUTEMEN

Initially when Jamie arrived in the Commonwealth he didn’t really think much of the Minutemen considering their numbers were extremely scarce to the point where they couldn’t have possibly made a high impact seeing as they were small and didn’t have much power. Seeing as initially Jamie was running with the Brotherhood still he didn’t really tend to cross paths with them much, the only really notable interaction he had was with Preston Garvey, who he had a sort of respect for due to his drive to keep the Minutemen going. However as Elder Maxson arrives in the Commonwealth and the truth about Danse is revealed, Jamie’s tune changes significantly, and Jamie over time begins to look at the Minutemen as really the ONLY people who truly seemed to care about the Commonwealth and its well-being. After Maxson formally removes Danse from the Brotherhood’s ranks, Jamie lives in the listening post with Danse for few months before he and Danse approach Preston Garvey & the Minutemen General about joining the ranks of the Minutemen.

After the fact, Jamie’s time in the Minutemen comes from a place of sheer devotion. Though not a particularly strong leader, Jamie does have deep respect for their cause, generally bonding the MOST ( if at all ) with the Sole Survivor during his time as part of the Minutemen. Jamie fully devotes himself to the betterment of the Commonwealth through the Minutemen and eventually is named Lieutenant of the Minutemen and placed in charge of his own specialized operations unit called ‘The Lancers’. All in all, Jamie fully devotes himself to the cause of the Minutemen, aiding in any way possible and even taking part in a number of protective sieges by the Minutemen to keep the peace in the Commonwealth.

Jamie is also rather instrumental in the establishment of trade routes and the securing of settlements in Far Harbor & Nuka World, helping to try and ensure that both locations are secured and taken care of. After the General decides to siege Nuka World and remove the three Raider Gangs, Jamie and the Lancers along with the General, Colonel Garvey, and their allies lead the charge into Nuka World to face off with the Raider Gangs. At the end of the day when all is said and done, Jamie tends to ERR on the side of preferring to HELP the Minutemen be more of a force in the Commonwealth, protecting its citizens BUT making sure that the other factions don’t get TOO cocky with their existence. Sitting on a SORT of council with the General, Preston, and other officials affiliated with the Minutemen after he & Danse defect, Jamie tends to stand as the voice of gusto. Often pushing for the Minutemen to declare the full fledged removal of Brotherhood occupation in the Commonwealth.

THE BROTHERHOOD OF STEEL

The Truest disappointment in every sense of the word. Jamie, having served under the Brotherhood’s banner for an entire decade of his life following the wake up he experienced from Vault 112 with the aid of the Lone Wanderer, and then the subsequent recruitment into the Brotherhood’s ranks serving under Sarah Lyons, Jamie was proud to say he was part of the Brotherhood of Steel. They had their faults but he was proud that he was finally getting the CHOICE to be part of something greater than himself. He served happily with them for ten years, and in that time the joy and pride deteriorated as Owyn Lyons passed, and eventually Sarah Lyons was mysteriously lost during a crucial mission, leaving only young Arthur Maxson to take her place.

That’s when things turned inextricably dark. Maxson’s IRON FIST over the Capital Wastes left Jamie feeling progressively more and more sour about his time as a Brotherhood of Steel knight. Though he can somewhat respect Maxson’s gusto, he finds himself near CONSTANTLY at odds with Maxson’s line of thinking, consistently finding himself thinking mid-operation ‘Elder Lyons would be ashamed of us’. As the Brotherhood & the Outcast fighting continued to rage and Maxson’s grip on the Capital Wastes tightened, a new team was dispatched to the Commonwealth in order to get a lay of the land due to increasing rumors regarding SYNTHETIC humans being found all across the wasteland striking fear into the hearts of the Commonwealth Citizens.

Jamie willingly volunteers for the operation being top of his CLASS and serving under Paladin Danse. And with distance from the Brotherhood he felt his mind begin to waver and change. His loyalty, however remained, and with time spent in the Commonwealth under Danse’s command Jamie began to feel a semblance of renewed belief in the Brotherhood. Danse spoke so highly of their cause and it only served to inspire. Jamie feeling himself more and more willing to confide in his commanding officer and TEAM as they did their best to survive the wasteland.

Eventually when the team came across the Sole Survivor, a fellow vault dweller, Jamie kept a safe distance but maintained a politeness, trying to MAINTAIN the anonymity of his own origins so as to ensure no one was the wiser, having grown close enough with Danse to have divulged the information but ENSURING the two of them keep it between themselves. It isn’t until the TRUTH about Danse comes out that Jamie’s tune changes completely. With the way Maxson speaks about Danse being a traitor SIMPLY for being a synth, Jamie sneaks off the Prydwen in the dead of night and tracks Danse down to the listening post, confronting him about not standing up for himself to Maxson. They argue but Jamie resolves that if Danse is to be exiled, HE TOO will enter exile as he refuses to be part of an organization that will turn so vehemently on their people.

Maxson’s entire demeanor during the ordeal leaves Jamie empty, raw, and most importantly VENGEFUL. With his newfound hatred for the Brotherhood for their treatment of Danse he’s sent into a tailspin. He’s without purpose once again after ten years of service, knowing only that his loyalty belongs to Danse and that he can’t go back to the Brotherhood knowing how they treated him. Since that point Jamie has been marked as a traitor and after he joins the ranks of the Minutemen he happily engages in operations that involve disrupting Brotherhood operations.

THE RAILROAD

This is a case of ‘THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS’ in Jamie’s mind. They mean well, and it counts for something, but the truth is, what distinguishes them from the Minutemen, or rather what MAKES them less appealing to Jamie is the fact that they don’t seem to care about the people CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE of their fights, and the fighting between the Institute & the B.O.S. as well. As such they ONLY seem to help Synths, which for Jamie doesn’t really hold as much as the every man goodness that the Minutemen seem to have regarding their desire to do good and REBUILD society. So Jamie doesn’t exactly DISLIKE them, but he does think Desdemona’s view on the Commonwealth as a whole is fundamentally flawed.

He respects their goal, but ultimately feels it’s TOO singular. However, despite personal disagreement with their beliefs & operations, he wouldn’t be opposed to helping them as in his mind AT LEAST they’re actually helping innocents, where the Brotherhood does not. Despite the fact that Jamie believes Synths should be given a chance to create a life of their own without the scrutiny of the Institute, he struggles to agree with the idea that the Railroad should ONLY help the Synths. With that being said, Jamie does occasionally ASSIST them if he comes across their agents, or is assigned to due so at the behest of the General.

In Jamie’s IDEAL Commonwealth set up, the Railroad & the Minutemen would work as a unit instead of being completely separated as he believes both parties stand to gain a GREAT DEAL from the alliance, especially given who both of them are respectively contending against. Seeing as Jamie would trust the Railroad to be able to handle SUBTERFUGE operations, he thinks their assistance to the Minutemen could be substantial, and in return the Railroad would benefit from having a LARGER MORE FIRE-POWER EQUIPPED group to watch their backs and over them various outposts in which to conduct their operations on a MORE SAFE level.

Ultimately, Jamie’s primary problem with the Railroad stems from Desdemona directly. He respects her prowess as a leader, and even her devotion to the cause they’ve laid forth for themselves but he cannot excuse her negligence of innocent people who need help. There’s a point where Desdemona EVEN says the people of the Commonwealth DON’T deserve the help of the Railroad because they’re not being prosecuted the way Synths are, which, to Jamie is a bitter view of a populace that is being crushed under the weight of a WAR waged around them.

While Jamie was in the Brotherhood, there were a number of operations he engaged in trying to figure out where the Railroad agents were conducting operations, and on the OFF CHANCE he ever encountered a Railroad agent he OFTEN if not ALWAYS let them go unscathed as he had no intentions of bringing an agent in ESPECIALLY considering the fact that he knew EXACTLY what kind of leader Maxson was, and he had NO desire to hold more on his conscience because of the horrible things Maxson believes in.

THE INSTITUTE

PERHAPS the most difficult pill to swallow for Jamie about the Institute is that they are a SHINING example of how humanity STILL hasn’t learned its lesson about playing god. The existence of Synths alone proves that, and to Jamie the very idea that scientists IN GOOD CONSCIENCE can hide their technology away from people who could truly benefit from it, disgusts him. Jamie’s heavy handed criticism of the Institute isn’t because he believes they’re ‘the boogeymen of the Commonwealth’ but because of the fact that they are EVERYTHING wrong with Science when given into the hands of people who would IGNORE the moral element that comes with Science & Scientific advancement. Make no mistake, Jamie doesn’t think the Institute is ENTIRELY bad, the things they’ve accomplished ARE amazing for sure, but Jamie also thinks they’re SELFISH.

Again, referencing Jurassic Park, the idea of the Institute basically GOING so far in their technological advancement, they get CAUGHT in it almost and get swallowed up in the grandeur of it but they don’t stop to think if they SHOULD or not. To him, once again, there is no greater example for him than in the form of the Synths. To Jamie, the synths are the EXACT reason the Institute is an example of the fact that they HAVEN’T learned their lesson.

Jamie watched his FATHER play god, he watched his father’s FRIENDS & COWORKERS all play god, and watched as it all came CRUMBLING down around them and resulted in a MASS NUCLEAR war that nearly made mankind extinct. He is disgusted by the fact that not only are the scientists of the Institute, PERHAPS some of the most brilliant humans still alive today, wasting their efforts on technology that may NEVER see the light of day, but they are ALSO defying NATURE and creating passable LIFE in the form of the synths. While Jamie doesn’t hold Synths in contempt for being a creation that has taken on a MIND & LIFE of their own, he does hold the Institute scientists in contempt for NOT stopping to think if THAT was something they SHOULD have done in the first place.

He believes that the Institute COULD be good OR COULD have been good depending on the choices of the Sole Survivor, but what they failed at was the fact that they were SELFISH, and not unlike the Railroad, believed that the innocent people of the Commonwealth DIDN’T deserve a second chance at REBUILDING a stable society. And to Jamie, that’s UNFORGIVABLE. As mentioned in my post about Jamie’s relationship with Science as a whole. He sees the great value of Science, but what he DOES NOT see is the reasoning or JUSTIFICATION behind hiding all the good that could be DONE behind a thin veil of SELFISHNESS.

#ⁱ ˡᵒᵛᵉ ᵗʰᵒˢᵉ ᵈᵉᵃʳ ʰᵉᵃʳᵗˢ & ᵍᵉⁿᵗˡᵉ ᵖᵉᵒᵖˡᵉ; ᵗʰᵃᵗ ˡⁱᵛᵉ & ˡᵒᵛᵉ ⁱⁿ ᵐʸ ʰᵒᵐᵉ ᵗᵒʷⁿ* ( study )

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arlingtonpark · 5 years

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Attack on Titan and the Myth that Won’t Die

Sigh, I really don’t want to be a rain cloud. I’m very caustic and critical in my posts and don’t want to come off as a sourpuss. Attack on Titan is a very political series in a time when the series’ politics is particularly relevant. It’s been fascinating to follow along, to say the least.

But I can’t really let this one go. This is a travesty. I can’t describe it any other way. If I learned I made a mistake as awful as Isayama’s made, I’d be crushed.

So it seems Isayama named, or even flat out based, Erwin’s character after Erwin Rommel.

Why?

And he made Erwin’s birthday the same day as when Rommel killed himself!

Goddamn it!

Damn it!

You know, people say SNK is Nazi propaganda, and they’re wrong, but Isayama himself isn’t helping.

Here are the facts: Rommel was an OP tactician. His tactics were cunning, clever, and he wasn’t like the others. He was a good man, not a Nazi.

He defied inhumane orders from his superiors, didn’t believe in Nazism, and, in fact, was directly involved in an assassination attempt on Hitler’s life.

LOL, not!

As World War II was coming to a close, the US military’s historical division began the work of creating an account of the war. Part of those efforts involved interviewing high-ranking members of the Nazi military. Those members did not have access to archival records (and neither did the historical division; those records were in the hands of war crimes prosecutors) and were speaking entirely from memory. As you can imagine, their accounts were rather rosy.

Not helping things was the person who oversaw the project: Franz Halder, a Nazi general who was thrown into a concentration camp after getting on Hitler’s bad side. When the camp was liberated, he proclaimed his desire to aid the Allies, which he did. Halder served as a star witness in the Nuremberg Trials. However, while he may have been willing to testify against members of the Nazi high command, he was also involved in white washing the actions of the Nazi military in general. Halder would use his position to help formulate this narrative of an apolitical Nazi military victimized by Hitler.

This would form the foundation.

After World War II and as the Cold War was beginning, Germany was split in two: an East, allied with the Soviet Union, and a West, allied with the United States. The West German government needed to remilitarize in order to deal with the threat of the Soviet Union and its allies, including East Germany, which was literally across the border from them.

To sell the public on remilitarization, Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of West Germany, directed a PR campaign to convince people that the German military of the Nazi era, the Wehrmacht, was clean of any Nazi taint.

To this end, the Adenauer government worked to influence how the history of the war was written to cast the Wehrmacht in as positive a light as possible. They even enlisted former Nazis to write autobiographies that fudged the facts and pushed the government’s narrative.

The United States was partly complicit in this, since Adenauer demanded that the Western powers stop “defaming” former Wehrmacht troops and that soldiers charged with war crimes be released. The western powers accepted this, though not completely.

The German people were also partly complicit in this. Many Germans either served in the Wehrmacht or knew someone who did, so to taint the Wehrmacht was to taint yourself or someone you knew. Thus, the German people were largely receptive to this narrative.

And thus, one of the most enduring myths of history was born: the Myth of the Clean Wehrmacht.

The Nazi military was separate from the Nazi government!

The Wehrmacht was OP as fuck! They lost because it was all Hitler’s fault!

Wehrmacht soldiers had nothing to do with the Holocaust!

Erwin Rommel was a brilliant general and a good man!

The truth is far less rosy.

When the Nazi’s invaded the Soviet Union, Wehrmacht soldiers were informed that if they committed rape, murder, theft, or any other war crime, they would not be prosecuted.

The Nazi’s saw the war with the Soviet Union in ideological terms. The Soviet Union was a communist country and in the Nazi ideology, communism and Judaism are the same. Thus, the USSR was a branch of the globalist Jewish conspiracy to destroy the Aryan race.

With this in mind, the Nazi high command issued the Commissar Order. In the Soviet Union, commissars were agents of the communist party who supervised the rank and file troops. Their job was to enforce the communist party line. To the Nazis, this made them targets; they were the enforcers of the globalist conspiracy. Wehrmacht troops were ordered to kill any and all Commissars on the spot.

Wehrmacht troops were also ordered to kill all Jews immediately upon capture.

The general policy towards Soviet POWs for the first year of the war was to corral them behind fencing and leave them to starve. That policy was changed and afterwards, captured Soviet troops were used as slave labor instead. Over 3 million Soviet troops died while in Wehrmacht hands.

The Wehrmacht actively aided and abetted the Final Solution. They helped transport Jews to the camps and even took part in killing them.

Captured Wehrmacht soldiers, while living in Allied POW camps, would talk about their actions amongst themselves when no one was listening.

Except people were listening and their conversations were recorded, so we actually have a good idea about how much the rank and file knew of the Nazi war crimes.

They all knew. They knew because many of them perpetrated it. And in general, they supported it.

People will do many awful things when they think their race’s existence is on the line.

So that’s the Clean Wehrmacht Myth in general. What about Rommel?

The Good Guy Rommel Thing is the product of both the German government and the other western powers, especially the British. The two strains are separate, but there’s a strong interplay between them.

The short of it is that Rommel was elevated because everyone needed a “good German” to contrast with the “bad Germans” like the ones on trial at Nuremberg.

West Germany was remilitarizing and would eventually join NATO, and there was a push by some elements of British society to make Rommel the face of the Wehrmacht to soothe any anxieties from the general public. Several bestselling books about Rommel by British historians, all of them gravely inaccurate, were published shortly after the war ended.

The same was true on the German side of things. Adenauer made Rommel a point of focus in his PR campaign to soften the Wehrmacht’s image in the public conscious.

By this point in time, Rommel had already garnered a reputation for being a brilliant general not just from the Nazi’s (duh, for propaganda reasons) but even from the Allies (who wanted to save face after suffering some embarrassing loses at Rommel’s hands).

Rommel also supposedly played a role in Operation Valkyrie, which if you remember the movie from 2006, was a plot by a group of Wehrmacht troops to kill Hitler and end the war. Rommel committed suicide and this was lionized as an honorable act of defiance, an act memorialized in SNK with Erwin’s birthday being the same day as Rommel’s suicide.

In reality, while Rommel was indeed a talented tactician, he was also heavily criticized for being a rash leader who’d sweat the details too much. In any event, Rommel was far from the best the Nazis had to offer. That would probably be Guderian or Manstein. He was a respectable general, but not particularly praiseworthy.

Rommel committed many war crimes throughout his career. The Afrika Corps that Rommel commanded was not chivalrous. Like, seriously, is that a joke? They committed pogroms against Jews and utilized Jewish slave labor.

But it didn’t stop with that. Rommel gave license to acts of brutality in general. His troops would execute enemy soldiers summarily, sometimes via hanging. Those that weren’t killed had a good chance at being enslaved.

Rommel was also directly involved in the Holocaust. He used Jewish slaves to build concentration camps, which those slaves were then sent to die in.

The most famous vehicle for how the Nazi’s implemented the Final Solution were the camps, but less well known are the kill squads the Nazis employed, the einsatzgruppen. Rommel worked closely with the einsatzgruppen and even said that when the Nazis captured Palestine, it would be the job of the einsatzgruppen to kill the Jews there.

(A major reason why Rommel is so fondly remembered is because the first major biography of him was written by David Irving, who we now know to be a neo-Nazi and a holocaust denier.)

And as for Operation Valkyrie?

Rommel was charged with aiding the conspiracy but there is no proof that he did. None. At all.

Rommel’s suicide was sacrificial, but it was not an act of defiance. The Nazi’s had previously praised Rommel for propaganda purposes and that left them unable to put on a show trial and execute him. So instead they coerced him into killing himself lest his wife and kids be punished.

Rommel was a Nazi. He believed in the Nazi ideology. This was attested to by Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, who literally wrote that Rommel “…[I]s a national socialist.” Read: Nazi.

In fact, Rommel wrote to his wife saying he was shocked about the assassination attempt and was happy Hitler survived.

You see, he was a close personal friend of Hitler’s.

Soooooooooooooooooo………..

I knew the Good Guy Rommel Thing was popular, but God, wading through posts online about it was unbearable. I almost wanted to throw up.

Forget teaching financial literacy to high schoolers. We need to make information literacy a part of the curriculum. People need to learn how to gather information and evaluate its authenticity.

And maybe some education on logic would help. People admit Rommel fought for the Nazis but say he only did it out of loyalty to his country as if that makes him a good guy!! I am embarrassed for these people for saying something so ridiculous!

If there is an institution whose existence is unambiguously a problem and you are part of that institution, then you are part of the problem. If you are being coerced then that’s potentially exculpatory, but that’s a moot point because Rommel wasn’t coerced.

He. Believed. In Hitler.

I am completely dumbfounded by this! Rommel fought with full faith and conviction for the Third Reich. Does it matter that he loved his wife and kids?

No.

Loving your family is a given; you don’t get credit for that.

The Rommel Thing is a lot like how it is with Robert E. Lee in the United States.

For any non-American readers out there, the US once allowed slavery within its borders. But a movement to abolish slavery increasingly gained momentum and in the 1860s several states, wanting to preserve slavery, basically conspired with each other to destroy the country. War broke out and the rebellion was crushed.

The American Civil War was a momentous occasion in human history because it marked the first time a government was founded specifically on the ideology of racism. The Confederate States of America was an abomination. It was unlike anything that had ever come before. The people who gave their lives to defeat it truly are heroes.

Robert E. Lee was no such hero. He fought for the Confederacy. For slavery. For racism. Like Rommel, Lee is mythologized as a brilliant tactician who had an aura of nobility to him. It’s all bullshit.

And just like Lee, Rommel. Fought. For racism. Isayama, in his ignorance, has chosen to honor this man.

Let’s just take a moment to appreciate how incredible this is. A bestselling manga has a character based on a Nazi because the author cares enough about history to pepper his story with references, but not enough to do actual research! This can’t be happening!

If Isayama weren’t successful, famous, and popular, I’d feel bad for him.

I mean, it’s like, “Hey, check out this character I created. He’s a brilliant general who fights for his people over his government. I based him on Erwin Rommel.”

“Didn’t Rommel use Jewish slave labor?”

“...”

*cue sad trombone*

It’s not as if Isayama thought to himself “I want to name this brilliant general-type character after a similarly brilliant general from Germany” and just settled on Rommel because that the first person he thought of.

No.

Erwin’s birthday is the anniversary of Rommel’s suicide. Isayama is specifically choosing to honor the memory of this man. He could have chosen other generals to honor. Helmuth von Moltke. Carl von Clausewitz. Frederick the Great.

Or hell, it didn’t have to be a Germanic general. The Germanic setting isn’t a hard rule. He could have chosen Charles De Gaulle. Or Bernard Montgomery. The Duke of Wellington. Or maybe Horatio Nelson.

But no, it just had to be Rommel. Why?

My guess is that Isayama saw something in the Good Guy Rommel Thing that lined up with the story he wanted to tell. In the myth, Rommel is something of a freedom fighter. He was a good man who tried to do good in spite of the bad system he was embedded in, and ultimately died trying to overthrow that bad system.

If SNK in any way reflects Isayama’s own values, then it makes sense he would be enraptured by that accursed myth. There are elements of it all over SNK.

SNK is all about people living under oppression and trying to either overthrow it or work within it. There’s the oppression of the titans, of King Fritz and the Reisses, the oppression of the Marleyans, and hanging over all of this is the oppression of Ymir’s curse.

In the myth, Rommel is a good guy in a bad place who dies trying to change the world for the better. No wonder Isayama loves this tale so much.

But shit like this reeks of an annoying thing I see sometimes. One thing I’ve feared about SNK is that the author is the kind of guy who thinks he’s a Civil War buff because he read Shelby Foote. By that, I mean I fear Isayama only cares about history in a superficial way.

Attack on Titan is about freedom and what’s so cool about it is that it’s not about any one particular kind of freedom, but just freedom in general. SNK’s conception of freedom is very well developed.

Attack on Titan embraces a pluralistic view of freedom. Freedom means different things to different people, but at its core is self-actualization. Achieving some level of happiness or accessing the potential to be happy.

Having a loving family. Seeing the ocean. Being able to say you saw the ocean. All of these things mean freedom in some way to some one. They are each of them a different path up the same mountain.

The problems start to arise when the series tries to be more than a story with an interesting theme. Whenever the story pointedly tries to impart wisdom to the reader, it fails.

I can think of a number of examples of SNK trying to be smart and failing miserably.

Like when Armin said the people “have a screw loose” for thinking the titans won’t breach the wall after 100 years of trying.

Or when Armin said that Erwin being a bad person was a good thing.

Or when Armin said good people are just people who do things you like.

(Armin is supposed to be the smart one, which unfortunately means he ends up saying a lot of silly stuff whenever the author uses him as a mouthpiece.)

There have been some exceptions to this. Return to Shighanshina tackled themes of rising above nihilism well. I’m not sure it stuck the landing, but it handled things well enough.

And things are a bit interesting now that the story is tackling the theme of nationalism more explicitly. The way the series deals with nationalism is actually kind of nuanced and that’s appreciated. I guess.

My sense is that the Good Guy Rommel Thing is an example of this. He didn’t just base Erwin on Rommel. He apparently also based Pixis on a Japanese general. Mikasa is apparently named for a Japanese warship from the imperial era. Isayama clearly has a passion for history.

But if you’re ignorant enough to buy the Rommel Thing, then do you really care enough?

Isayama cared enough about Rommel that he knew the day of his suicide and he cared enough to mark that day in his story. But he doesn’t care enough to look deeper and see the myth for what it is. And if you haven’t reached that threshold, you can’t really call yourself a history buff; you’re just reading Shelby Foote.

It’s the difference between pop history and real history.

Pop history is history that’s been crafted for mass consumption. It is simplified, often times to the point of being misleading, and it’s not particularly rigorous with the facts, again often times to the point of being misleading. Pop history is often tempted to go with the more dramatic interpretation of events just to get more viewers. It’s history as reality tv.

Real history is both much more rigorous and much more messier. It involves work with primary sources and it involves heavy analysis of those sources. And if no definitive answer can be drawn from those sources, then so be it. Most people don’t think of history in this way, and that’s a shame, but the truth is that a lot of the historical record is murky or even completely blank. There’s a lot we don’t know.

But from a pop history perspective, that’s a problem. People pick up history books to learn about history, usually by being told a story; history is taught to people with a storytelling format. They don’t want to hear shit like “We don’t know what happened.” It’s bad storytelling, which is why you don’t see stuff like that in most pop history. In the world of pop history, it’s style over substance.

The Good Guy Rommel Thing is (bad) pop history, not real history. It’s awful that so many people believe in it.

I don’t want people who like reading pop history to feel diminished though. There’s good pop history out there. The Oxford History of the United States is excellent. Anything by David McCullough, Ron Chernow, Eric Foner, and Robert Caro is great.

Basically everything on the r/AskHistorians book list is worth seeing, if you’re into the subject matter. Those are real historians overseeing that sub. They’re professionals. You can trust them.

There’s nothing wrong with preferring pop history over real history. *I* prefer it over real history.

Have you ever seen what historians do? They wade through mountains and mountains of firsthand accounts and try to make sense of what’s happening. There’s a certain sherlockian aspect to it all, trying to piece together what happened from what clues we have left, but mostly it seems like trying to draw meaning out of a lot of noise; I’d rather read the final report.

Isayama may have a thing for history, but he seems almost glib about it. You’d have to be to buy into the Good Guy Rommel Thing. I mean, yeah, Japanese schools don’t go into detail about the European theater of World War II, but you’d think if a man cared enough about Rommel to base a character after him, he’d care enough to read a book about him.

So in closing:

One of the most important things about Erwin’s character is the fate of his father, who died for rejecting the government’s official account of history. It’s an important little side story, because it’s true. Governments can and do try to push certain narratives. It’s usually not for nefarious purposes, but it does happen, and it’s great that SNK highlights this fact.

Ironically, Isayama himself seems to have fallen hook, line, and sinker for just that sort of thing.

#shingeki no kyojin #attack on titan #erwin smith #hajime isayama

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violsva · 7 years

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Notes on Devices and Desires: A History of Contraception in America by Andrea Tone

Part Two: From Smut to Science (Part One)

America was the only country in WWI which did not supply its soldiers with condoms. Instead they got education on moral hygiene and post-exposure chemical prophylaxis, which didn’t work (and was also extremely painful).

That said, about 5.6% of drafted men entering the Army had VD. Before the war this would have disqualified them; once they started drafting people and realized the disease rates that rule was quietly discarded. The propaganda, of course, still blamed licentious European prostitutes.

Soldiers were required to seek prophylaxis after exposure, so contracting VD was punishable by court martial. As a result, most of them just used condoms anyway. (They could get them from the rest of the Allies ... who were buying from American manufacturers.)

The Bureau of Medicine and Surgery claimed until the 30s that chemical prophylaxis had a nearly 100% success rate - this and the inaccurate gynecological knowledge from earlier make you wonder what modern doctors are getting horribly terribly wrong.

What I’m getting from this book is that abstinence-only sex ed is a specifically American idea, and a very old one. I guess because everyone else exported their Puritans there. (Not saying that other countries don’t discourage nonmarital sex; just that they are willing to acknowledge it happens.)

Tone argues that the fact that WWI made people actually talk about VD led to greater acceptance of (male) sexuality, and in 1918 physician-prescribed birth control was legalized for the prevention of disease (and life-threatening pregnancies) only. This was in the trial of Margaret Sanger’s first clinic; she tried to argue that women had a right to have nonprocreative sex but this was ignored (there was also an earlyish example of eugenic thought).

Anyway, the immediate result was a whole bunch of condoms for sale (to men) everywhere, labelled “for the prevention of disease only,” which V. F. Calverton called “an intelligent adaptation to an unintelligent morality.” (108)

And eventually in the 1930s the army started distributing condoms to soldiers, having changed its sex ed philosophy from “Real Men are chaste and continent” to “Obviously Real Men cannot be expected to control their sex drives.” As of 1937, the FDA started quality testing them.

I found out why Dutch caps were called Dutch caps! Dutch physician Aletta Jacobs’s work promoting the made-in-Holland Mensinga diaphragm. I still don’t know why condoms were “French”, except of course that everything to do with sex was French.

Wow, you can just watch Margaret Sanger and other medical professionals (in this area mostly female) building up the authority of the mainstream medical profession. I’m not saying it’s necessarily a bad thing, but it’s certainly a thing.

“Feminine hygiene” was a term coined by advertisers who still couldn’t legally say “birth control.” And it made up 85% of American contraception sales in 1938. Tone seems to assume that “feminine hygiene” always mean birth control in this period, and does show that the idea that it was needed comes from Victorian and later reframing of sperm as germs to get past the censors, but lots of people today use douches for “hygiene” and I don’t think that’s entirely an invented desire.

In the 1930s 70% of Americans supported medical birth control.

But birth control clinics were understaffed, concentrated in urban areas, and completely incapable of keeping up with the demand. And also lots of women were uncomfortable discussing it with doctors, but mail order was discreet and Lysol had lots of non-contraceptive uses. (Also, doctors were frequently untrained in contraception and unlikely to help unmarried women.)

That said, advertisers were totally happy to use spurious medical authority. Door-to-door saleswomen claimed to be nurses, and Lysol published a series of “Frank Talks with [Nonexistent] Eminent Female Physicians.” Again, respectable periodicals refused to publish advertisements for actual birth control, but “feminine hygiene” was okay, even if the ad copy was not at all subtle about its purpose.

And, this being the mid-20thc, the hypothetical tormented wives in the ads weren’t worried about economics, or careers, or their physical health. No, it was how will you appeal to your husband, once the “natural strains of marriage” take their toll on your appearance? And if you’re worried and irritable all the time, well, no wonder if he leaves you.

And since the manufacturers never actually said they were selling birth control, once it failed or caused horrible chemical burns you couldn’t sue them. At least, you couldn’t sue the huge companies, but regulators were happy to shut down small businesses.

Both the AMA and the FDA refused to condemn Lysol etc., even after the FDA started testing condoms. Pregnancy wasn’t a disease, so prevention of it wasn’t the FDA’s business. The AMA told women who asked them about birth control to talk to their family physicians, because they couldn’t discuss it through the mail.

“It is a common saying in the drug trade that the sale of condoms pays the store rent.” (Norman Himes, 1936, qtd. on pg. 190)

In 1882 Julius Schmidt was a homeless disabled German Jewish immigrant. In 1890 he was prosecuted by Anthony Comstock for selling condoms. In 1940 he was one of the largest condom manufacturers in the country and his products were endorsed by the US Army.

Youngs Rubber (Trojan) emphasized their reputability by saying they sold only to drugstores (as opposed to other condoms, which were offered by shoeshiners and bellhops and street peddlers) and tested all of their products. However, they had all this merchandise hanging around that had failed the tests ... so they sold those to whoever wanted them as manufacturer’s seconds.

And a lot of customers didn’t bother paying extra for first quality manufacturer-tested condoms, and just tested them themselves at home.

All of these companies employed large numbers of women. The factory workers, and especially the saleswomen pretending to be nurses - and thus middle class - who were they? How did their jobs fit with the expectations that “nice” girls didn’t know anything about sex?

#contraception #birth control #condoms #devices and desires #andrea tone #books #reading log #medical #history

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offtosavetheearth · 5 years

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June 25th 2018 My cough is getting worse, and I’m not sure if I should go back to the doctor to get antibiotics or not. Every time I cough for a continued period of time, Rina and Abuela come into my room and give me tea or cinnamon milk. I think it is also keeping Rina up at night because she will come into my room really late and give me medicine to rub on my chest or ask if I am okay. I feel really guilty about this, but it often reminds me that they are a shoulder to cry on, even if that shoulder doesn’t understand what I am saying. Their worry makes me feel like I can openly communicate my issues with them, big or small, and they will sincerely care about my well-being and do their best to make it better. In class we had a lecture by Greg after we reviewed our papers over water or smallholder agriculture. Today he is talking about his research, looking at traditional smallholder farming tactics and modernization. Most geographers think that farmers and mountains do not belong together, so the ultimate question is: Is mountain agriculture doomed? There are a number of downfalls to this industry -It has bad soil (steep slopes, erosion) - climate change - poor access to markets. Part of this diminishment of mountain farming is nontraditional exports, made possible by free trade agreements and low transportation costs. We now see broccoli, asparagus, artichokes, cut flowers, and quinoa from the central and high Andes. Later the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act was founded. The people of the Andes agreed to help them with the drug war, and in return free trade markets would be opened to them from the United States. This was done with individual countries throughout South America; Peru was approved in 2007, Colombia in 2011, and Ecuador was pursing one but renounced in 2013 because of the Snowden case. It was rumored that Ecuador was housing Snowden, and when Joe Biden called Correra and demanded that he follow the U.S. orders and allow them to prosecute the fugitive, Correra, being the socialist-liberal that he is, abruptly ended the trade agreement. This angered Ecuadorians involved in the nontraditional export business because it raised export tariffs. While Dr. Knapp was researching the agriculture of the mountains, he discovered extremely high value flower farming, in the greenhouses that popped up around Andes landscapes. They were surrounded by chain-linked fences, and a guard with a semi-automatic weapons. He went to the mayor to get access to these plantations for his research, and they eventually allowed him to view the houses. This floriculture started in Colombia in the late 1960s, and spread to Ecuador in 1983. It was born from a local, grassroots innovation that is now a multi-billion dollar industry. ATPDEA took off in 2001, so now Ecuador could ship and sell to the United States. 2014 was the Snowden shock and end of ATPDEA, but today it is still growing. Presently, there are 700 plantations, with 4200 hectares in 2017, making a billion in exports a year. There are about 60,000 people employed by the industry, usually women in the countryside that are now getting paid minimum wage. Local employment is an amazing opportunity for them. Previous fates for these women included employment as maids in Quito or hitchhiking to America on trains, which came with harsh mistreatment. Flower plantations do not practice land alienation, and it use local smallholder labor, encouraging pluractivity. Consisting of a wide diversity of cultivars, continuous selective breeding, and pluraculture. Water access is negotiated, and this product lacks scalability, unlike monoculture farms. Today, capitalism co-exists with smallholder farming, inserting itself with opportunities for transformative encounters, and local smallholders retain pluractivity. Their agrobiodiversity can deploy aspects of new technology An example of a portion of the flower industry is Babies Breath. Ecuador is the #1 exporter of Babies Breath to the United States. They employ 12-15 people per hectare, and in contrast to capitalism it absorbs labor, but are still capitalist plantations. A local Babies Breath plantation owner practices charity to his customers by donating flowers to United States veterans killed in combat for Memorial Day. Flower farm owners, in terms of labor, try to stay between 7 to 40 hectares, because over 40 it is not scalable or expandable. Several years ago, the American company, Dole, tried to take over flowers farms, but it was a disaster. They did not know how to deal with the Ecuadorian government, labor union, or strikes so they gave up and left. In Ecuador they have many employment problems because it is illegal to fire anyone. This rule is actually very common outside of the U.S., and as a result the informal economy is hesitant to hire people. Age discrimination is the result; young women are desirable because when they have children they usually quit the job, and free up the company to hire another young woman. Typically, older woman over 40 are not hired because they want it for the rest of their life. Before Ecuador established agricultural regulations, plantations were self-policing to make sure child labor and health laws weren’t violated. Big industries actually prefer to be regulated, because it prevents them from doing something that will ultimately hurt their market, for they do not want to attract unwanted attention. Eventually they had county-level regulations, which included the requirement of Environmental impact statements. Recently, Correra has started to regulate the industry. Now they are only allowed to have green and blue pesticides, color coded by severity in impact, and plastic recycling by factories is required. These requirements have been a result of public pressure. In terms of marketing, rose breeders have relocated to Ecuador. Free trade agreement with European reunion starting in January 2017. For every market, there is a different style of favored flower. For example, Russia prefers red roses with very long stems, while China prefers roses that have painted edges. One could compare this industry to the world of fashion. After class a group of us met up to talk about making ceramics on our last day in Cuenca, and going to Piedra de Agua Fuente Termal & Spa around 2pm. I got a taxi with Allie, Griffin, and Ginger and we arrived at about 3pm. This spa is built almost entirely from limestone rock of volcanic origin. Their main attraction is the thermal water coming from the volcano, but our group did the spa circuit, which included two different types of volcanic mud treatments, a sauna, steam baths, contrast baths, and box steam baths. The water is said to have medicinal and healing properties designed to relieve stress and find serenity. They provided us with these cute, yellow robes, and we spent about 5 hours here. During our circuit we met a couple groups of U.S. students, and a couple traveling South America, so this was definitely a very touristy activity. The student group is doing a two-month social entrepreneur internship in Ecuador, and they stayed in various rural houses around the country. They also showed up all their bedbug bites, and lowkey I think I have bedbugs too and am kind of worried about it (!!!). We had drinks at the spa’s restaurant after and I got a REALLY good frozen strawberry daiquiri. Soon I got another cab home with Ginger, Sylvia, and Whitney. Ginger and I got dropped off second at CEDEI and I got home to eat dinner with Abuela and Freddy. Our meal consisted of dates, rice and chicken…I think? Not sure what type of meat it was. Rina was at her Monday night therapy class, so Abuela came into my room and wanted me to help her pick out colors for her coloring book. She said I was getting a lot better and understanding Spanish! I even was able to know that she wanted to color a sunflower!! I didn’t realize this till the end of our stay in Cuenca, but if I leave my door open to my room, Rina and Abuela come in all the time and visit. Even though Rina has been very kind to me, I feel like I have connected with Abuela more. She is super funny, and even gets annoyed about me about things she thinks I should not do, in a kind of “grandmotherly” way. For example I have been sick and I was drinking coke, so she came over and told me that it’s bad for my throat and to not drink it. Also whenever I wake up she tells me to wrap my neck in a scarf, and put gloves on. I think her favorite word is “chi chi” because she always repeats it to me and then laughs. I don’t know if it means that she is cold or she is dancing lol, but I assume the former. She went to bed after coloring, and Rina arrived home shortly after. We had our quick nightly conversation, and she went to sleep as well. I am still coughing a lot and it woke up Abuela. She came into my room three separate times: once to check on me, the second time to put this minty stuff on my lymph nodes and nose, and a third time to give me this breathing mechanism where the goal was to breathe through a tube until all three of the balls were at the top. I have no idea what the purpose of it was, but I had to do it like fifteen times before she went back to bed. I ended up staying up till about 12:30am, paranoid about if bed bugs were biting my ankles, but also grateful that I have the opportunity to get bites in ECUADOR.

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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Nkurunziza set to become ‘supreme guide’

Burundis incumbent president Pierre Nkurunziza (C) reacts to supporters as he arrives to the opening of the campaign of the ruling party

Burundi is about to lose its president of 15 years but gain a “supreme guide to patriotism”, according to the official title that will be given to Pierre Nkurunziza once he steps down after Wednesday’s election.

He will also receive a $540,000 (£440,000) retirement pay-out and a luxury villa. But it is not clear if he is going to step out of the limelight and spend more of his time on other things, like his beloved football.

The build up to the poll – in which seven candidates are vying to replace the president – has been marred by violence and accusations that the vote will not be free and fair.

But whoever wins will be required by law to consult Mr Nkurunziza on matters of national security and national unity. Whether they have to follow his advice is not clear.

There were widespread protests when Pierre Nkurunziza said he would seek a third term in 2015

Five years ago, Mr Nkurunziza’s third term began amid political turmoil. His announcement that he would run for a further five years in power had sparked anger as some questioned its legality.

There was a failed coup attempt, hundreds of people died in clashes and tens of thousands fled the country. His election in July 2015, with nearly 70% of the vote, was described as a “joke” by opposition leader Agathon Rwasa, who boycotted the poll.

This time around, Mr Nkurunziza was allowed, after a change in the constitution, to run again, however he appears to have opted for a quieter life.

Voting amid the virus

Wednesday’s election has also been criticised for taking place during the time of coronavirus.

The country has only recorded 15 cases of the virus, with one death, but the wisdom of holding mass rallies has been questioned.

A government spokesman said in March, when no cases had been recorded, that the country had been protected by God.

Burundi has resisted imposing tough restrictions, with the government only advising the population to stick to strict hygiene rules and avoiding crowds wherever possible – except of course in campaign rallies.

The opposition has also been holding mass rallies, like this one

But the government did insist that foreign election observers be quarantined for 14 days from arrival in the country, which some saw as a way of discouraging them from going at all.

Story continues

‘Election highly questionable’

“https://ift.tt/2X4OEOO we’ve seen in the last few months is that the political space in Burundi is fairly limited,” Nelleke van de Walle, who works on Central Africa for the Crisis Group think-tank, told the BBC.

“So it’s highly questionable that the elections will be free and fair.

“The fact that no election observers will be allowed in the country to see what’s going on – I think that increases the risk for election fraud, corruption and human rights violations in the run-up to the elections as well.”

The government insists that it warned would-be observers about the quarantine in April, giving them ample notice.

Diplomats have also expressed concern over the poll.

Facts about Burundi. [ Gained independence from Belgium in 1962 ],[ Population 11 million ],[ Average income $272 per person ],[ Life expectancy 61 ],[ Main exports coffee, gold and tea ], Source: Source: World Bank, Image: People cycling

But for the past five years, Burundi has found a way to deal with its international critics either by completely denying allegations of abuse or simply ignoring them. And so far it has worked for the government and the ruling party.

The country has managed with little donor support, much of which disappeared after the 2015 turmoil. As a result, these elections have been entirely funded by the government – a first in the history of Burundi and rare on the continent.

All this has made the authorities there confident to push ahead.

Evariste Ndayishimiye. Candidate for governing CNDD-FDD party [ Born in 1968 ],[ Left university to join FDD rebel group in 1995 ],[ Acted as spokesman for FDD high command ],[ Served as interior minister from 2006-2007 ],[ Made chief of staff to the presidency in 2015 ],[ Elected leader of CNDD-FDD in 2016 ], Source: Source: BBC Monitoring, Image: Evariste Ndayishimiye

From the seven candidates in the presidential race, only two are seen as real contenders.

Mr Nkurunziza is backing the governing CNDD-FDD party candidate, Evariste Ndayishimiye, who has been feted at huge rallies.

He is the party’s secretary general, former interior minister and was a rebel commander, alongside Mr Nkurunziza, in the FDD during the civil war, which ended in 2003.

Opponents ‘tortured and killed’

Mr Rwasa, the former leader of another rebel group, the FNL, has called for a “profound change in all sectors of national life”, when he spoke to supporters of his National Congress for Liberty (CNL), which was formed last year.

Despite pulling out of the 2015 race, when he was the candidate for another opposition party, he still garnered 19% of the votes as his name remained on the ballot paper.

Both men are confident they have the support base to win, but it has been an uphill battle for Mr Rwasa. Human rights organisations say the government has used its might to intimidate and repress the opposition and its supporters.

Agathon Rwasa. Leading opposition candidate [ Born in 1964 ],[ Led rebel group the National Liberation Forces (FNL) ],[ Lived in exile from 1988 to 2008, returning after peace deal ],[ Runner-up in 2015 despite boycotting poll after ballots were printed ],[ Voted deputy speaker of parliament in 2015 ],[ Formed new party National Congress for Liberty (CNL) in 2019 ], Source: Source: BBC Monitoring, Image: Agathon Rwasa

According to Human Rights Watch, there have been at least 67 documented killings, including 14 extrajudicial executions, in the last six months. There have also been disappearances, cases of torture and over 200 arrests against real or perceived political opponents.

The security forces have been accused of using excessive force to shut down opposition activity.

Hopes for a new beginning

Since gaining independence from Belgium in 1962, Burundi has seen wave after wave of violence between an ethnic Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority, which dominated the country.

It has never had a sustained period of peace after a change of leader.

Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, was elected president in the country’s first democratic election in 1993.

But hopes of democracy taking root were dashed just three months into his presidency, when a group of soldiers from the Tutsi-led army mutinied and assassinated him, together with a number of his cabinet members and political allies.

Hutu rebel groups, including the FDD and Mr Rwasa’s FNL, then took up arms in a decade-long civil war, which saw some 300,000 deaths.

The tumult of 2015 ended another period of relative peace. But the question is whether the next president can restore the country’s reputation in the eyes of international observers.

Mr Nkurunziza, armed with his title of “supreme guide to patriotism”, may hope to continue to maintain some influence.

But even if his party’s candidate does win, that is no guarantee that he will be able to pulling the strings should he so desire.

In Angola, long-serving President Jose Eduardo dos Santos expected to continue to have a say in government after João Lourenço was elected to replace him in 2017. But his hand-picked successor turned against him, sacking and even prosecuting some of Mr Dos Santos’ children and close allies.

Party wrangling and jockeying for position however should not detract from the main task of the next head of state.

The World Bank estimates that seven out of 10 Burundians live below the poverty line, and the country’s 11 million people will hope that whoever ends up president will make their lives better.

Additional reporting by the BBC Great Lakes service.

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networkingdefinition · 4 years

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Military Operations Quotes

Official Website: Military Operations Quotes

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• A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective. – Sun Tzu • Climate Change is a national security issue. We found that climate instability will lead to instability in geopolitics and impact American military operations around the world. People are saying they want to be perfectly convinced about climate science projections. But speaking as a soldier, we never have 100 percent certainty. If you wait until you have 100 percent certainty, something bad is going to happen on the battlefield. – Gordon R. Sullivan • Dominicus Corea had a posthumous son, Lewis Corea who became the Dissawe of Uva. Sir Paul Peiris wrote that `With the disappearance of Dominicus Corea, came a short lull in military operations of which the Portuguese officials availed themselves to give free rein to that rapacity which so frequently disgraced their careers in the East’. Dominicus Corea was succeeded by his brother Simon, as Dissawe of the Sat Korale, Kotte and Sitawaka. – Dominicus Corea

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• I had a terrible dream yesterday with military helicopters and the Taliban. I have had such dreams since the launch of the military operation in Swat. My mother made me breakfast and I went off to school. I was afraid going to school because the Taliban had issued an edict banning all girls from attending schools. – Malala Yousafzai • I had an opportunity to express my views, yes. I agreed with the approach which we took, namely, to make a distinction between the loss of life of the Chinese pilot and our military operations outside territorial waters or territorial limits. – Henry A. Kissinger • If I had undertaken the practical direction of military operations, and anything went amiss, I feared that my conscience would torture me, as guilty of the fall of my country, as I had not been familiar with military tactics. – Lajos Kossuth • I’m just very wary that once you start military operations in any country, it’s very difficult to predict what the outcome is. – Abdallah II • In a military operation, the command and control elements are a legitimate target. – Stephen Hadley • It is hard as an American to support the failure of American military operations in Iraq. Such failure will bring with it the death and wounding of many American service members, and many more Iraqis. – Scott Ritter • It’s perfectly natural to desire more troops when engaged in a military operation facing serious obstacles, and the more troops you have, probably, the [lower the] risk of causalities. – Zbigniew Brzezinski • Look what happened with regard to our invasion into Afghanistan, how we apparently intentionally let bin Laden get away. That was done by the previous administration because they knew very well that if they would capture al Qaeda, there would be no justification for an invasion in Iraq. There’s no question that the leader of the military operations of the U.S. called back our military, called them back from going after the head of al Qaeda. – Maurice Hinchey • Military metaphors have more and more come to infuse all aspects of the description of the medical situation. Disease is seen as an invasion of alien organisms, to which the body responds by its own military operations, such as the mobilizing of immunological “defenses”, and medicine is “aggressive” as in the language of most chemotherapies. – Susan Sontag • Military operations cannot be tidy or free of friction – particularly in a coalition whose contributing nations see the campaign through national prisms. – Mike Jackson • Odyssey Dawn? That’s not a military operation. That’s a Carnival Cruise ship. – Stephen Colbert • Oil is also essential for military operations. No other substance, no other raw material, is so vital for the prosecution of warfare, than petroleum. And the United States being the world’s only global power, is totally dependent on petroleum. – Michael Klare • OK, so $1 trillion is what it costs to run the federal government for one year. So this money’s going to run through September of 2016. Half of the trillion dollars goes to defense spending and the Pentagon. The other half goes to domestic spending – everything from prisons to parks. So there’s also about 74 billion in there that goes to the military operations that we have ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria. – Susan Davis • Our task was not to conduct a full-fledged military operation there [in Crimea], but it was to ensure people’s safety and security and a comfortable environment to express their will. We did that. But it would not have been possible without the Crimeans’ own strong resolution. – Vladimir Putin • Out of my desire to complete Iraq’s independence and to finish the withdrawal of the occupation forces from our holy lands, I am obliged to halt military operations of the honest Iraqi resistance until the withdrawal of the occupation forces is complete. – Muqtada al Sadr • So the important thing in a military operation is victory, not persistence. – Sun Tzu • The Air Force is pulling nine cargo aircraft from military operations to support President Obama’s stepped-up visits to campaign events. Good, now he can carry his entire ego with him on the trail. – Fred Thompson • The British were indeed very far superior to the Americans in every respect necessary to military operations, except the revivified courage and resolution, the result of sudden success after despair. – Mercy Otis Warren • The Defense Department’s plan to ban newspaper reporters from pool coverage of military operations is incredible. It reveals the administration to be out of touch with journalism, reality and the First Amendment. – Arthur Ochs Sulzberger • The Halifax area has long played a major role in Canada’s military operations, being the port of departure for convoys, naval task forces and army units over the past 100 years or so. – Willie Morris • The logistic requirements for a large, elaborate mission to Mars are no greater that those for a minor military operation extending over a limited theatre of war. – Wernher von Braun • The military operation in Lebanon was the most successful military operation in recent Israeli history. Many in Israel don’t recognise that. – Ehud Olmert • The reality of Canadian history is that we’ve been willing to do the important things the world demanded of us: fighting in World War II, in Korea, in the Balkans, where we were involved in offensive military operations, and in Afghanistan, where we have made disproportionate contributions. – Chris Alexander • The struggle to maintain peace is immeasurably more difficult than any military operation. – Anne O’Hare McCormick • There are markets extending from Mali, Indonesia, way outside the purview of any one government which operated under civil laws, so contracts weren’t, except on trust. So they have this free market ideology the moment they have markets operating outside the purview of the states, as prior to that markets had really mainly existed as a side effect of military operations. – David Graeber • There are three ways that men get what they want; by planning, by working, and by praying. Any great military operation takes careful planning, or thinking. Then you must have well-trained troops to carry it out: that’s working. But between the plan and the operation there is always an unknown. That unknown spells defeat or victory, success or failure. It is the reaction of the actors to the ordeal when it actually comes. Some people call that getting the breaks; I call it God. God has His part, or margin in everything, That’s where prayer comes in. – George S. Patton • There has never been a military operation remotely approaching the scale and the complexity of D-Day. It involved 176,000 troops, more than 12,000 airplanes, almost 10,000 ships, boats, landing craft, frigates, sloops, and other special combat vessels–all involved in a surprise attack on the heavily fortified north coast of France, to secure a beachhead in the heart of enemy-held territory so that the march to Germany and victory could begin. It was daring, risky, confusing, bloody, and ultimately glorious [p.25] – Tom Brokaw • There is a great inertia about all military operations of any size. But once this inertia has been overcome and underway they are almost as hard to arrest as to initiate. – Ernest Hemingway • Thus, though I have heard of successful military operations that were clumsy but swift, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays. – Sun Tzu • War on terror is far less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement operation. – John F. Kerry • We citizens don’t need to know every detail of every military operation in this new kind of war. Nor should the media tell us and hence our enemy. – David Hackworth • When you decide to get involved in a military operation in a place like Syria, you’ve got to be prepared, as we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, to become the government, and I’m not sure any country, either the United States or I don’t hear of anyone else, who’s willing to take on that responsibility. – Colin Powell • You know as well as I do that counterinsurgency is a very nuanced type of military operation. – John Abizaid • You must all be aware that modern war is not a mere matter of military operations. It involves the whole strength and all the resources of the nation. Not only soldiers, but also all citizens without exception, take part. – Chiang Kai-shek

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equitiesstocks · 4 years

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Military Operations Quotes

Official Website: Military Operations Quotes

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yahoonews7 · 5 years

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GettyAfter U.S. special operations forces dealt a violent end to the leader of the premier jihadist group in Iraq, the president hailed the importance of the moment. The man was a monster, the president declared, responsible for a regional campaign of devastation, even the beheadings of American hostages. True, the killing would not mean the end of the broader war, the president noted, but the U.S. had dealt “a severe blow” to the jihadists. George W. Bush said this in 2006, following the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. After U.S. special operations forces dealt a violent end to the leader of the global jihadist movement, the president hailed the importance of the moment. The man was a monster, the president declared, responsible for a global campaign of devastation, and particularly the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 Americans. True, the killing would not mean the end of the broader war, the president noted, but the U.S. had reaped “the most significant achievement to date” against the jihadists. Barack Obama said this in 2011, following the killing of Osama bin Laden. After U.S. special operations forces ensured a violent end for the leader of a new global jihadist movement, the president hailed the importance of the moment. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was a monster, the president declared, responsible for a global campaign of devastation, even the beheadings of American hostages. True, the killing would not mean the end of the broader war, the president noted, but it showed that “these savage monsters will never escape their fate.” Donald Trump said this on Sunday, following the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.Trump Turns Baghdadi’s Killing Into a Reality ShowThese three fatal milestones all point to the strategic incoherence within a global war that has now lasted an entire generation. No one, neither the Trump administration nor its critics, believes that the so-called Islamic State is finished because al-Baghdadi is dead. As proficient as U.S. special operators have become at manhunting these past 18 years, and as central as manhunting has been during that time, there is no campaign plan, not even a theory, by which the killings of jihadist leaders knit up into a lasting victory. Asking for one would require reckoning with the catastrophic failure represented by a war that only perpetuates itself. There would be no Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had Bush not invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003. That war created an opportunity for a mass murderer, Zarqawi, to construct an al-Qaeda franchise more bloodthirsty than even the one bin Laden created. Even after Zarqawi’s 2006 death, Bin Laden could never rein in al-Qaeda in Iraq, documents recovered after the 2011 raid on his Abbottabad compound showed, and he grew particularly dyspeptic over the offshoot’s clear desire to declare a caliphate. Some believe bin Laden is the real victor of the war on terrorism, since he succeeded at provoking the U.S. into endless war in unfamiliar terrain. But the rise of ISIS showed bin Laden lost control of the movement he started. Bin Laden did not believe the time was right for a caliphate. Baghdadi took advantage of both the Syrian civil war and Obama’s 2011 withdrawal from Iraq to make the caliphate a brutal fascist reality, complete with misogynist enslavement and opportunities for men to find meaning through sanctified violence. When al-Qaeda and the elder generation of jihadist theorists opposed ISIS, Baghdadi’s organization—now an actual state, complete with an army, and a flag—had no problem attacking them. Baghdadi was less visible than bin Laden, rebuking the leadership style of a previous generation and signaling that the caliphate was more important than he was. The caliphate was ISIS’ triumph over bin Laden, whose children ate his revolution. This history matters because it shows that the expansive war the U.S. launched does not fight against a static enemy. It generates enemies – the slain al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki is another example – and provides opportunities for new ones to arise. Baghdadi himself experienced four years of captivity in the U.S. detention facility at Camp Bucca in Iraq before his 2009 release. Trump on Sunday recalled the horror of seeing American detainees dressed in orange jumpsuits without recalling that ISIS chose the orange jumpsuits to evoke the ones worn by detainees at Guantanamo Bay.No one should think the fall of the caliphate, let alone Baghdadi’s death, means that U.S.’ jihadist adversaries have achieved their final form. Whatever else the war on terrorism is, its history shows it yielding further generations of jihadists as long as there are American forces hunting, surveilling, and killing Muslims worldwide. Part of that dynamic involves those newer generations emerging when U.S. forces pull back but leave intact the apparatus of the war on terrorism—the drone strikes, the surveillance dragnets, the lethal raids—as happened in Iraq in 2011 and, very likely, now in Syria in 2019. Maintaining that apparatus is supposed to hedge against withdrawals from agonizing ground conflicts. Yet at each turn of the war’s ratchet, the jihadists have only come back in more violent form and greater mass, the exact opposite of what any war is supposed to achieve. Trump Says U.S. Troops Have Quit Syria. It’s Not True.Trump’s pullback from northeastern Syria, like from the Forever War more broadly, was never total. Like Obama before him, Trump’s rhetoric about wishing to be done with endless wars obscures the reality of how he prosecutes them. Trump escalated drone strikes in the undeclared regions of the war on terrorism and, in Afghanistan, escalated air strikes, with a commensurate rise in civilian deaths. Syria has long displayed the decadence of a strategically exhausted war on terrorism: Obama invaded without congressional approval—to no real congressional outrage—and Trump has made the residual mission one of plundering oil and, in the background, threatening Iran. Trump made clear last week that he expects “Turkey, Syria and others in the region” to do the work of preventing an ISIS return. All that means ISIS, in whatever future form, has a new lease on life. A series of ISIS jailbreaks occurred after Trump’s green light for the Turkish invasion led the United States’ Syrian Kurdish partners to prioritize their own survival. Like Baghdadi out of Camp Bucca, new generations of ISIS leadership may have made their way out of the Syrian prisons. The U.S. is hardly the only actor that matters here: the unconcluded Syrian civil war helps set the context for whatever comes next, and the U.S. has never been able to shape events within that war. Nicholas Rasmussen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center from the dawn of the anti-ISIS war until 2017, tweeted that Baghdadi’s death was a “big blow” to ISIS but “may not leave us safer from ISIS attack.” Trump’s pullback from northeastern Syria has troubled American strategists. The persistence of the war on terrorism, which set the context for that pullback, troubles them less. At a Reuters forum in September, I asked former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis why military officers never put forward a theory of victory in the war on terrorism. He responded that terrorism was a persistent reality, “an ambient threat,” and so was an American response. “This desire to have the war over, I understand it, but this is a war that springs from root causes that will have to be addressed at the same time we’re fighting,” Mattis said. “It will be there throughout our lifetimes.”Terrorism, as old as human history, will indeed be present throughout our lifetimes. But that elides the choice America makes to wage a war against it that only makes jihadism worse. While the bombs drop, American officials never get around to addressing Mattis’ undefined “root causes,” because some of those root causes are the bombs themselves. And all that means Baghdadi’s death gains the U.S. as much as the broader war on terrorism does: ultimately nothing, only a fleeting feeling of national pride briefly concealing the worsening wreckage of a generation. Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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whatsgodgottodowithreligion-blog · 6 years

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Will The Circle Be Unbroken?

In the chapter titled “The Steeple And The Damage Done”, I discuss the myriad sins of the Catholic Church - not only has the church marginalized, demonized and otherwise ostracized many of its believers/followers, it has turned a blind eye to many societal atrocities: from Wounded Knee to the Crusades, from The Inquisition to the Holocaust (the Vatican’s unholy ties to the Third Reich during WWII have been widely chronicled) to its ignoble history of sexual abuse by church clergy. Singer Sinead O’Connor’s seismic episode of tearing up the picture of Pope John Paul II on SNL over twenty-five years ago was viewed as not only heretical, but disrespectful, and an unfair indictment of the Catholic Church. Of course, genuine heretics always show us what we are unwilling to see, and so, O’Connor’s brave gesture (bolstered by her own memories of being abused in her childhood) turned her into a pariah overnight - essentially imploding her musical career over a ‘crusade’ no one was ready to lobby for.

Frankly, scandals involving sexual impropriety by church clergy have always been the elephant in the sacristy - one only has to objectively examine the timeline of sex abuse within the Catholic church and its subsequent denial by church hierarchy to see that periodically, the general public becomes outraged to hear of priests having inappropriate sexual contact with children and/or adolescents of church members. And similarly, we are told that someone (or likely everyone) within the church hierarchy was aware of this abuse, but either turned a blind eye, or cloaked themselves in denial of having any foreknowledge of such abuse occurring within their midst. Media exploitation (motivated by both perverse titillation and viewer ratings) spurs on charges, litigation and frequently, prosecution of those trespassers. And since we, as a society are ‘all about the children”, those who have been exposed as pedophiles become the devil incarnate, and looked upon as the lowest form of human life.

But while we revel in self-righteous condemnation and demonization of sex abusers, we fail to recognize that both the abuser and the abused are broken souls in need of healing. I remember listening to a talk by Ken Keyes, Jr, author of the personal transformation tome, The Handbook To Higher Consciousness. He began by stating the basic truth that all our actions and behaviors as human beings are motivated by a desire to either gain love or to compensate for a lack of love. All the attendees to his lecture were in agreement. Once they had accepted this ‘truth’, he then challenged them to see it in a situation that made many uncomfortable: “What about the child molester?” he asked, “Isn’t the child molester trying to gain love?” Few in the audience had the understanding to explore the truth in that statement - after all, we are conditioned to view the world through our dichotomies placed upon it: good/evil, right/wrong, righteous/heinous. We cannot accept the idea that even in the context of such sin, behind that sin is a person trying to fulfill a basic emotional need, a need all human beings have - to feel loved and validated.

Like O’Connor, I have a backstory of abuse - psychological, physical and sexual, and like O’Connor I think the Catholic Church needs to confront the devastating cycle of abuse and denial that continues to damage the souls of those who put their faith in religion and God by way of its pastorate. However, I go one step further to say that both parties are in need of ministering to. I realize this puts me in the minority, but then, I have a bigger understanding of the cycle, or the circle that remains unbroken when we fail to look at the dynamics of abuse. Psychologists and psychiatrists have long pointed out that if we were to look at the backstory of the abuser, we find that somewhere in that continuum, the abuser began as the abused.

One of the most important elements of my own healing journey was to take a sobering look at the upbringing of those who parented me - partly in a search for answers, but also to gain a better understanding as to what would make someone who was responsible for bringing me into existence treat me like I didn’t deserve to be alive. I learned that my mother’s dad was an alcoholic and her mother didn’t have much time for her; my dad was raised by his grandmother, after his birth mother ran off and abandoned him - she bore a child out of wedlock, and had no intention of saddling herself with a child and no husband to help raise him. My great grandmother was a proud Cherokee woman, but she also harbored some extreme ideas about discipline and child-rearing that manifested itself in some horrific beatings visited upon my father.

If a child, any child, who seeks love, acceptance and validation from his parent receives instead anger, violence and criticism, how exactly is that child able to have anything resembling a healthy self concept? And without that self-concept, what can that adult child bring to the table in terms of being a nurturing parent for their children? I was one of seven siblings - I find it nothing short of miraculous to think that two people so devoid of personal examples of love and compassion by their caregivers could ever give out what little emotional resources they had at their disposal to effectively raise seven children into healthy, responsible and caring adults - the harsh reality is, it’s not possible. And I can see the outcomes of such an environment played out in the stories of my adult siblings - which is why, I was not shocked when my sister (the eldest sibling) dropped out of college and left home to join the Army, marry a fellow serviceman (who surprise, turned out to be both an abusive alcoholic and a womanizer) and wind up a widow when one of his many mistresses shot him to death.

Will the circle be unbroken?

Which brings us to the latest sex abuse scandals rocking the Catholic Church and the Vatican, some twenty-eight years after Sinead O’Connor’s public protest against clergy abuse and complicity on national tv. Last week, in light of recent allegations of sexual abuse by two (now retired) Chilean bishops, Pope Francis expelled both Francisco Cox (84) and Marco Antonio Ordenes Fernandez (53) from the Chilean Diocese - their defrocking was one step below total ex-communication, but was no less punitive in the eyes of church canon law. A day before Pope Francis’ announcement, he accepted the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl, considered up until that time a fierce advocate for victims of clerical abuse, but whose own history was rife with instances of foreknowledge of abusive priests during his tenure as bishop of Pittsburgh - a Pennsylvania grand jury report scathingly outlined a well-documented timeline of abuse spanning over several decades under Wuerl’s watch.

In Cardinal Wuerl’s case however, The Pope was considerably more merciful: he accepted the resignation, praised Wuerl for putting “the good of the church before himself”, let him stay on until his replacement was chosen, and allowed the Cardinal to keep his influential offices inside the Vatican. Apparently canon law has a different set of tenets than American law, where if you have knowledge of someone committing crimes and you look the other way rather than reporting it, you are essentially an accomplice to that crime. Perhaps what’s even more troublesome is the official response by Pope Francis to the current spotlight on sexual abuse by clerics:

"The Church must be saved from the attacks of the malign one, the great accuser and at the same time be made ever more aware of its guilt, its mistakes, and abuses committed in the present and the past." Pope Francis wrote. In addition, he implored parishioners to recite a daily rosary during the entire month of October, ending with this petition to St. Michael: “St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of heavenly hosts, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan, and all evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls." In other words, errant clergy have been overtaken by evil - specifically the Devil, and that prayer and vigilance are needed to restore the Catholic Church to its status of holy impunity.

But if indeed the sin of sexual abuse is being acted upon by clerics possessed by some evil entity, why no mention of exorcism? Such a solution is in perfect alignment with the ideology of spiritual warfare - we are at war with Satan. Satan must be rebuked. Therefore, wouldn’t it be possible for these pedophiles to be redeemed through some sort of exorcism, or intervention of the Holy One to vanquish Satan from their once forthright souls? I am not saying this to be facetious - I am saying this because at least the idea of exorcism allows for some measure of atonement, redemption and reconciliation, which is a whole lot better than just damning abusive clergy to Hell. Perhaps the biggest tragedy in all this is the presumption that the abuser is beyond saving - that the crime is so outrageous, such a blatant atrocity, that the only action required is condemnation, conviction and incarceration.

I am not dismissing the idea that in terms of sexual predators, the instance of recidivism is high, and perhaps so deeply ingrained in the psyche of the abuser that rehabilitation is impossible - yet I am told (constantly by those quoting scripture) that nothing is impossible with God. So is that just another holy platitude I need to discard? Are some souls too damaged to be saved, under any circumstances? And what about forgiveness? Victims of abuse will never heal completely as long as they hold onto anger, resentment and hatred toward the abuser - forgiveness is always done for the benefit of the wronged, not the violator. But some things are unforgivable, they say. Forgiveness condones the abuser, they say. The abuser is evil and should be stoned to death, locked up and raped in a penal environment, stoned and set ablaze, etc. etc. Why bother examining the culture of forced celibacy dispensation, repressed sexual feelings and desires, the eunuch paradigm which fosters shame, guilt and self-loathing? No one is born a sexual predator, but why waste time looking into how pedophiles are born?

The two things which allow the circle to remain unbroken are denial and a lack of compassion for both the victim and the victimizer. We can talk all day about good and evil and how folks are beyond saving, but at the end of the day, what will help not only those adversely affected by sexual abuse, but those who seek out sexually abusive behavior in a desperate but wholly inappropriate search for love and approval? If we are unwilling to ask these questions and look earnestly for answers, nothing will change. Abusers will abuse, the circle will remain unbroken, as will the cycle of suffering. Only until we see the truth in their mutual suffering, will we have any hope of reconciliation and healing.

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sanctus-rp-blog · 7 years

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Oliver Rivers | 22 | Dumbledore’s Army

Bloodstatus: Muggleborn

Wand: Hawthorn, Phoenix Feather, 13″

Career: Auror

Patronus: Vole

Boggart: Overturned Chair

Previous house: Ravenclaw

Aesthetic–

Dog laying in the yard, a bag of gold coins, a cluttered desk, arm in a sling, feet on the table, a tornado, sea water, black cat laying in the sun

Biography–

Oliver was born on May 15th and raised in Brazil, his mother only a teenager when she had him. It was hard at first, but she came from a loving family who gave as much support as they could. A few years later, when she was in her early twenties, she met the man Oliver would know to be his step father. However, Oliver never saw him that way, he just called him dad.

His family was extremely well off due to his dad being a major political influence and his mother being a nurse at the city hospital. He began learning English when he was 8, and though he has a good grasp of it now, sometimes he will struggle and resort to coming up with different phrasings for what he’s trying to say. Though his dad was beginning to teach his son English, he never expected that he would have to become very good at it, until they were forced to England. His father, holding many government secrets, was evacuated one day (with his wife and son, who was 10) due to a threat made by another agency. So, Oliver had to spend the rest of his years in England, and go to Hogwarts instead of the Brazilian wizarding school.

His parents always knew their son was special, so it didn’t surprise them when he got his Hogwarts letter. His dad was extremely excited as he was heavily involved in the relations between the muggle and wizarding worlds back at his job in Brazil. He didn’t mind being away from home, and he was hardly homesick. Both of his parents worked long hours, so it wasn’t as if he was used to seeing them a lot anyways. He found it exciting to see all these kids with the same abilities he had, and getting to learn more about what he could do. When he began attending school, his English improved with the help of his classmates.

When he came home for Christmas in fourth year, he was in for a huge surprise. His mother was pregnant again. He couldn’t believe, after all this time of being an only child, he was going to be a big brother. Quite frankly, his parents couldn’t believe it either. The pregnancy was nothing more than unplanned. Months later, Oliver had a baby brother named Daniel. He thought he would get annoyed with the presence of a baby and a toddler, but that wasn’t at all the case. Oliver had always had an innate desire to care for and protect things, and now he had the perfect person for it. Oliver made sure to explain to Daniel exactly why he always left for the school year, and when he was of age he would do simple charms to entertain the much younger boy, who was always fascinated by magic. He always made sure to stress how being normal was perfectly fine, since he would always see the disappointment in Daniel’s eyes when he couldn’t perform the spells.

As for Oliver’s participation in the war, he was never the type to be scared away. When 7th year rolled around, he said he was going to school despite the impending war. There was a long family conversation about it, and his family (who was still under the highest protection given his father was still working for the Brazilian government, just stationed in Europe) said they would be fine. Daniel insisted to spend the year with his grandmother back in Brazil, and with everything going on, they let him. They felt it would be best for the 4 year old given the circumstances. Sadly, muggle protection wasn’t enough for the couple.

He wasn’t told about his parents’ murder until a week after it happened, and still has no idea what became of their bodies. The story that was told to him was that the aurors suspected the murder tone a part of a Death Eater initiation, since there were several other muggle families murdered the same day in the same area. He wanted to shut down entirely, to just crawl into a hole and sit there, but Oliver had always been spiteful, there was no way in hell he was going to let them get away with killing his family so easily. He wouldn’t let anyone push him around, so he turned that sadness into anger and that anger into drive. He felt that if he fought, there was a possibility he’d die. If he didn’t fight, dying was a Guarantee. When he found out for a fact that Daniel was alive, it gave him more the reason, because no brother of his would be left without someone he loved to care for him.

Oliver could easily identify with the younger kids, as he saw Daniel in them. Every time they were tortured, he couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand watching the innocence flee from their eyes, so he took it instead. It hurt like hell, but he knew they wouldn’t kill him. That would make him a martyr, and they wouldn’t want that.

He formulated a plan and dug secrets from the desks of the professors to find out exactly what happened to his parents. He found the names of the Death Eater who tore his family apart and searched for his photographs in the school archives. It was a man who’d escaped from Azkaban, and he found their mugshots in the Daily Prophet from when they were incarcerated. Oliver burned his images into his mind. He was going to find him, and he was going to kill him. But while he did find them in the midst of the Battle of Hogwarts, as he pointed his wand at the man’s face he found he couldn’t do it. It wasn’t fair. When you die, it’s over. It’s done. He wanted them to suffer as he was.

“So, are you going to kill me boy?”

“No, you deserve to suffer. Death is just the end, life is suffering.”

He cursed the ceiling, causing the heavy stone to fall on the man’s legs, shattering all that was there. He would never be able to walk again. He always knew he had the ability to be dark, he just never thought he would ever actually act on it. Oliver still sees the anguish in the man’s face, it haunts him in his dreams to think he could have done such a thing as he thinks of himself as a genuinely good person, but he doesn’t regret it. When Flitwick asked him if he was the one who’d caused the injury, Oliver simply nodded. He never spoke of the incident again.

Oliver was almost killed in the Battle of Hogwarts. He was never the best dueler, and he was convinced it was spite that got him that far, but near the end he was hit in the chest by a curse and rendered unconscious. If it weren’t for Pomona Sprout finding him and healing him in time, he probably would have died. He left the Battle with a large scar just over his sternum and a great bond with the herbology professor who saved his life.

After the battle, Oliver returned home. It was much quieter than he remembered, but at least the investigators from the ministry has the decency to clean it up after the attack. Everything was the same as when he left it, but he didn’t see his dad sitting in his armchair, or smell his mom’s cooking. Oliver thought that after they’d won, he’d feel happy, accomplished, but he didn’t. He felt far from it.

He was completely lost.

He began to regain a bit of purpose when Daniel and his grandmother came home. If it wasn’t for his brother’s need of him, Oliver would have no idea what he would have done. It gave him a direction, and replaced his purpose to fight with a purpose to protect, console, and provide. His grandparents tried to tell the boy that his parents were on vacation, but Oliver knew that lie wasn’t going to last long. Daniel deserved to know the truth. He broke the news as gently as he could, saying that their parents were taken by monsters and that they weren’t coming home. It was hard for the five year old to digest, but after days of living it, he began to understand that he was never going to see their parents again.

Oliver still felt that there were dark wizards out there after the mass prosecution, and that he should be one of the ones to help bring them down. He feels that he is personally tied to these Death Eaters, and has a vendetta against them. In his mind, it made him a perfect candidate. He also needed to make enough to provide for two, as he is now the sole caregiver to his baby brother after graduating from Hogwarts.

He is furious over the Death Eater’s release, as for over half of them, he was on the team who located them and brought them into custody. His previously thawed out fire is back, and he’s ready for justice to be served, again.

Personality–

Pre-war Oliver and Post-war Oliver are almost two completely different people. Before the war, he was known for his positive attitude and constant joking around. He was very laid back and only got nasty when he felt he had to in order to defend his dignity. The rest of the stuff he just let roll off his back. Always the adventurous type, he would occasionally skip class in order to go exploring the castle (especially in the early years) and may or may not bring someone with him. Oliver loved being with people, but certainly didn’t mind being by himself. Most of the outings with friends were orchestrated by someone else, as in his earlier years, Oliver was never fit the mold as a ringleader.

He has always been competitive and stubborn, which was why he tried out for the quidditch team every time there was an opening. However, he has no talent in the sport, but that didn’t let that stop him from trying. He is not afraid of failure, and actually just sees it as an opportunity to improve. He’s never been naturally intelligent, and has an awful memory when it comes to concepts, so in order to achieve the grades he did he put in many more hours of work than the majority of his classmates. However, he never did so until the start of his eighth year, since he was so laid back and didn’t have a mind for consequence. Oliver has no problem asking for help, and has formed strong bonds with many of his old professors because of it.

He isn’t typically mean, but when he snaps, there is no holding back. He believes that once the mutual respect is broken and the line has been crossed, then it doesn’t matter how far over the line he goes. Oliver is very ‘all or nothing’. This applies to his passions as well. When it comes to the people he loves he is incredibly jealous. When he feels threatened by another activity or person (that he feels has the ability to pull his friend/family member/partner away from him) he becomes incredibly bitter and stressed and develops a tendency to act out. He’s never had a problem expressing his anger, no matter whether it is justified or not.

Oliver grew up in a very religious (Catholic) family, and was devoted in his faith, but the war has changed all that. He believes in a higher power, and always will, but after seeing war has come to the conclusion that he has abandoned them. In the first year after the battle, Oliver was extremely bitter and couldn’t trust anyone, although over the other four years, that has decreased and he is much more himself, despite now being very on edge with the sudden release of Death Eaters. He still wears his emotions on his sleeve, so everyone knows what the effects of war have done to him. He’ll snap at anyone he doesn’t know well due to a minor inconvenience. With those he holds close however, he tries to put on a brave face to be the same old Oliver he was… sweet, caring, laid back.

Connections–

Hestia Carrow - enemy Anthony Goldstein - childhood friend Penelope Clearwater- co-worker/annoyed by Michael Corner - best friend

OLIVER RIVERS IS TAKEN, AND HE IS PORTRAYED BY FRANCISCO LACHOWSKI.

#harry potter rp #lsrpg #skeleton rp #oliver rivers #francisco lachowski #takenm #takenda #taken

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