"'Close to Hockenheim, in Walldorf, I started karting…'" - may 15, 2024 📷 @.sebastianvettel / instagram

People asked to drop the Danger Days tl from my last post so I’ll do that.

*Disclaimer: Not canon at all this is just my personal idea and take on like. How all that happened. Based on what they said in the videos and comics sort of.

*Disclaimer 2: I have not read National Anthem and I don’t care if this doesn’t line up with that.

Zones Timeline

1947:

- Cold War begins.

1987: Dr. D is born (hey legend).

1991:

- Cold War does not end.

1996:

- 1st Helium War starts.

- NATO and the Warsaw countries exchange declarations of war.

- Most of Eastern Europe is destroyed first, followed by the Middle East. Russia remains intact, as do a few Western European countries. Not including Great Britain or Germany.

- Other countries fall into isolation in fear of being the next targets of war, and either disappear into themselves or join pacts with one another. Some disperse entirely.

1997:

- America dissolves into civil unrest after attacks on the mainland result in various important political figures’ deaths.

- A number of American states cede from the nation and become The Confederacy of California, as per their secession being definitely illegal, and they take the states of California, Nevada, Arizona, and Wyoming.

- Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas are disputed.

- The rest of the states are assimilated into The Federal Republic of The United States, however they are in constant political battles between themselves because now everyone either wants out of the nation or they want control of it.

1997-98:

- Technology stagnates, but still advances. Just nowhere near as fast as it did in our lives.

1998:

- 1st Helium War ends.

- Cherri Cola is born.

- Tensions between the COC and the FRUS are high strung but not hostile.

- This is generally considered peacetime, if peacetime can be defined as you and the person you just fist fought in the bathroom being forced to sit next to one another in the principal’s office. Alone.

- A company specializing in chemistry and weapons manufacturing under the name of “Better Tech” rises in the COC and the FRUS.

2000:

- 2nd Helium War starts.

- Jet Star is born.

- War is declared on the FRUS by the COC, and various military campaigns take place in the disputed states.

- Better Tech supplies resources to both sides in a kind of double entendre situation where neither side knows they’re actually being played.

2001:

- Party Poison is born.

2006:

- Kobra Kid is born.

- Fun Ghoul is born.

- Helium Wars end when a series of nuclear bombs are dropped around the Rocky Mountains.

- The FRUS is never heard from again, and radio/electronic communication is disrupted by damage to the earth’s electromagnetic field.

- Better Tech rebrands themselves to Better Living Industries and gain influence over the COC government with the aim of salvaging the country and fixing the physical damage done by the war as well as the mental trauma of the citizens.

2010:

- BLi attempt to take control of Latin America but are flushed out by rebellion, and Mexico’s border is closed.

- Canada follows suit soon after, and America is officially cut off. Trapping everyone who remains there within the country (legally).

2012:

- Pig Bombs drop, eliminating Texas and New Mexico, whose governments were still kind of functioning independently after Helium 2 and building resistance against the COC.

- Fires of 2012 destroy Phoenix but leave Las Vegas intact. All remaining military units are pulled to Los Angeles.

- This is where BLi’s intense propaganda machine starts working to cover up all the crap they do. Working in tandem with how technologically challenged most people are at that point.

- BLi take what’s left of the lower 48 and establish Battery City as the new capital of America. Their borders define the nation as California, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona.

- However, BLi becomes notoriously bad at maintaining and “cleansing” their proclaimed territories; and most of the area outside of Zone 3 sees little to no substantial BLi presence at all.

- Dr. Death Defying makes his first radio broadcast as a rebel.

2013:

- Analog Wars begin.

- Battle of Utah takes place wherein Salt Lake City is destroyed in a series of Killjoy v. BLi battles.

- Destroya was used for its first and only time during this battle, and was abandoned in Zone 3 during BLi’s retreat.

2015:

- Analog Wars pause after significant damages to both sides prompt an unofficial ceasefire, giving way to a long period of relative inactivity.

- BLi uses this time to build its presence in everyday life, establish the Zones, and advance it’s scientific research and development.

2028:

- The Girl is born.

- Girl’s mom is Drac’d

2029:

- The Girl is found by Killjoys.

- Analog Wars start up again when her existence is uncovered.

2029-35:

- These years see the most one on one fighting between kj factions and BLi since the Analog Wars first started.

- Generally remembered as a sort of Zones Renaissance due to the re-popularization of art, media, and philosophy within the killjoy community.

- Who had fractured off in the years after the armistice and became very detached from one another rather than a collective movement.

2035:

- The Killjoys die.

- Analog Wars officially end.

2036-47:

- The schools of thought built up during the renaissance period fade into the background once again as their figureheads either die off or become irrelevant.

- This is the era in which the Val Velocity era of killjoys grow up in. They were all born well after the Helium and Analog wars began and ended, so they have little to no connection to the values or customs of pre-war life.

- Its very Lost Generation-y in that everyone just kind of wants to party and forget about how their lives suck underneath all the glitter.

2047:

- California Comics events.

- Cherri Cola dies.

- Dr. D dies (rip legend).

- BLi is destroyed.

In February 2024, creature enthusiasts and popular media outlets celebrated what has been described as the 200-year anniversary of the formal naming of the "first" dinosaur, Megalosaurus.

There are political implications of Megalosaurus and the creature's presentation to the public.

In 1824, the creature was named (Megalosaurus bucklandii, for Buckland, whose work had also helped popularize knowledge of the "Ice Ages"). In 1842, the creature was used as a reference when Owen first formally coined the term "Dinosauria". And in 1854, models of Megalosaurus and Iguanodon were famously displayed in exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London. (The Crystal Palace was regarded as a sort of central focal point to celebrate the power of the Empire by displaying industrial technology and environmental and cultural "riches" acquired from the colonies. It was built to house the spectacle of the "Great Exhibition" in 1851, attended by millions.)

The fame of Megalosaurus and the popularization of dinosaurs coincided at a time when Europe was contemplating new revelations and understandings of geological "deep time" and the vast scale of the distant past, learning that both humans and the planet were much older than previously known, which influenced narrativizing and historicity. (Is time linear, progressing until the Empire is at this current pinnacle, implying justified dominance over other more "primitive" people? Will Britain fall like Rome? What are the limits of the Empire in the face of vast time scales and environmental forces?) The formal disciplines of geology, paleontology, anthropology, and other sciences were being professionalized and institutionalized at this time (as Britain cemented global power, surveyed and catalogued ecosystems for administration, and interacted with perceived "primitive" peoples of India, Africa, and Australia; the mutiny against British rule in India would happen in 1857). Simultaneously, media periodicals and printed texts were becoming widely available to popular audiences. For Victorian-era Britain, stories and press reflected this anxiety about extinction, the intimidating scale of time, interaction with people of the colonies, and encounters with "beasts" and "monsters" at both the spatial and temporal edges of Empire.

---

Some stuff:

"Shaping the beast: the nineteenth-century poetics of palaeontology" (Laurence Talairach-Vielmas in European Journal of English Studies, 2013).

Fairy Tales, Natural History and Victorian Culture (Laurence Talairach-Vielmas, 2014).

"Literary Megatheriums and Loose Baggy Monsters: Paleontology and the Victorian Novel" (Gowan Dawson in Victorian Studies, 2011).

Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution (Martin J.S. Rudwick, 2010).

Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle (Lukas Rieppel, 2019).

Inscriptions of Nature: Geology and the Naturalization of Antiquity (Pratik Chakrabarti, 2020).

"Making Historicity: Paleontology and the Proximity of the Past in Germany, 1775-1825" (Patrick Anthony in Journal of the History of Ideas, 2021).

'"A Dim World, Where Monsters Dwell": The Spatial Time of the Sydenham Crystal Palace Dinosaur Park' (Nancy Rose Marshall in Victorian Studies, 2007).

Articulating Dinosaurs: A Political Anthropology (Brian Noble, 2016).

The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856 (Ralph O'Connor, 2007).

"Victorian Saurians: The Linguistic Prehistory of the Modern Dinosaur" (O'Connor in Journal of Victorian Culture, 2012).

"Hyena-Hunting and Byron-Bashing in the Old North: William Buckland, Geological Verse and the Radical Threat" (O'Connor in Uncommon Contexts: Encounters between Science and Literature, 1800-1914, 2013).

And some excerpts:

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When the Crystal Palace at Sydenham opened in 1854, the extinct animal models and geological strata exhibited in its park grounds offered Victorians access to a reconstructed past - modelled there for the first time - and drastically transformed how they understood and engaged with the history of the Earth. The geological section, developed by British naturalists and modelled after and with local resources was, like the rest of the Crystal Palace, governed by a historical perspective meant to communicate the glory of Victorian Britain. The guidebook authored by Richard Owen, Geology and Inhabitants of the Ancient World, illustrates how Victorian naturalists placed nature in the service of the nation - even if those elements of nature, like the Iguanodon or the Megalosaurus, lived and died long before such human categories were established. The geological section of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, which educated the public about the past while celebrating the scale and might of modernity, was a discursive site of exchange between past and present, but one that favoured the human present by intimating that deep time had been domesticated, corralled and commoditised by the nation’s naturalists.

Text by: Alison Laurence. "A discourse with deep time: the extinct animals of Crystal Palace Park as heritage artefacts". Science Museum Group Journal (Spring 2019). Published 1 May 2019. [All text from the article's abstract.]

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[There was a] fundamental European 'time revolution' of the nineteenth century [...]. In the late 1850s and 1860s, Europeans are said to have experienced ‘the bottom falling out of history’, when geologists confirmed that humanity had existed for far, far longer than the approximately 6,000 years previously believed to represent the entire history [...]. ‘[S]ecular time’ became for many ‘just time, period’: the ‘empty time’ of Walter Benjamin. […] The European discovery of ‘deep time’ hastened this shift. [....] Historicism views the past as developments, trends, eras and epochs. [...] Victorians were intensely aware of ‘historical time’, experiencing themselves as inhabiting a new age of civilization. They were obsessed with history and its apparent power to explain the present […].

Text by: Laura Rademaker. “60,000 Years is not forever: ‘time revolutions’ and Indigenous pasts.” Postcolonial Studies. September 2021.

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At the time when geology and paleontology emerged as new scientific disciplines, [...] [g]oing back to the 1802 exhibition of the first Mastodon exhibited in London’s Pall Mall, […] showmanship ruled geology and ensured its popularity and public appeal [...]. Throughout the Victorian period, [...] geology was as much - if not more - sensational than the popular romances and sensation novels of the time [...]. [T]he "rhetoric of spectacular display" (26) before the 1830s [was] developed by geological writers (James Parkinson, John Playfair, William Buckland, Gideon Mantell, Robert Blakewell), "borrowing techniques from [...] commercial exhibition" [...]. The discovery of Kirkdale Cave in December 1821 where fossils of [extinct] hyena bones were discovered along with other species (elephant, mouse, hippopotamus) led Buckland to posit that the exotic animals [...] had lived in England [...]. Thus, the year 1822 was significant as Buckland’s hyena den theory gave a glimpse of the world before the Flood. [...] [G]eology became a market in its own right, in particular with the explosion of cheaper forms of printed science [...] in cheap miscellanies and fictional miscellanies, with geological romances [...] [...] or [fantastical] tropes pervading [...], "leading to a considerable degree of conservatism in the imagery of the ancient earth" (196). By 1846 the geological romances were often reminiscent of the narrative strategies found in Arabian Nights [...].

Text by: Laurence Talairach-Vielmas. A book review published as: “Ralph O’Connor, The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802 - 1856.” Review published by journal Miranda. Online since July 2010.

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Dinosaurs, then, are malleable beasts. [...] [T]he constant reshaping of these popular animals has also been driven by cultural and political trends. [...] One of Britain’s first palaeontologists, Richard Owen, coined the term “Dinosauria” in 1842. The Victorians were relatively familiar with reptile fossils [...] [b]ut Owen's coinage brought a group of the most mysterious discoveries under one umbrella. [...] When attempting to rise to the top of British science, it helped to have the media on your side. Owen’s friendship with both Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray led to fond name-dropping by both novelists. Dickens’s Bleak House famously begins by imagining a Megalosaurus, one of Owen’s original dinosaurs. Both novelists even compared their own writing process to Owen’s palaeontological techniques. In the scientific community, Owen’s dinosaur research was first [criticized] by his [...] rival, Gideon Mantell, a surgeon and the describer of the Iguanodon. [...] Naming dinosaurs was a powerful way of claiming ownership [...]. Owen [...] knew the power of the press [...]. [M]useum exhibits [often] [...] flattered white patrons [...] by placing them at the apex of modernity. [...] Owen would not have been surprised to learn that the reconstruction of dinosaur bones is still an act that is entangled in politics.

Text by: Richard Fallon. "Our image of dinosaurs was shaped by Victorian popularity contests". The Conversation. 31 January 2020.

Events 5.5 (after 1940)

1940 – World War II: Norwegian Campaign: Norwegian squads in Hegra Fortress and Vinjesvingen capitulate to German forces after all other Norwegian forces in southern Norway had laid down their arms. 1941 – Emperor Haile Selassie returns to Addis Ababa; the country commemorates the date as Liberation Day or Patriots' Victory Day. 1945 – World War II: The Prague uprising begins as an attempt by the Czech resistance to free the city from German occupation. 1945 – World War II: A Fu-Go balloon bomb launched by the Japanese Army kills six people near Bly, Oregon. 1945 – World War II: Battle of Castle Itter, one of only two battles in that war in which American and German troops fought cooperatively. 1946 – The International Military Tribunal for the Far East begins in Tokyo with twenty-eight Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. 1955 – The General Treaty, by which France, Britain and the United States recognize the sovereignty of West Germany, comes into effect. 1961 – Project Mercury: Alan Shepard becomes the first American to travel into outer space, on a sub-orbital flight. 1964 – The Council of Europe declares May 5 as Europe Day. 1972 – Alitalia Flight 112 crashes into Mount Longa near Palermo, Sicily, killing all 115 aboard, making it the deadliest single-aircraft disaster in Italy. 1973 – Secretariat wins the 1973 Kentucky Derby in 1:592⁄5, an as-yet unbeaten record. 1980 – Operation Nimrod: The British Special Air Service storms the Iranian embassy in London after a six-day siege. 1981 – Bobby Sands dies in the Long Kesh prison hospital after 66 days of hunger-striking, aged 27. 1985 – Ronald Reagan visits the military cemetery at Bitburg and the site of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where he makes a speech. 1987 – Iran–Contra affair: Start of Congressional televised hearings in the United States of America 1991 – A riot breaks out in the Mt. Pleasant section of Washington, D.C. after police shoot a Salvadoran man. 1994 – The signing of the Bishkek Protocol between Armenia and Azerbaijan effectively freezes the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. 1994 – American teenager Michael P. Fay is caned in Singapore for theft and vandalism. 2006 – The government of Sudan signs an accord with the Sudan Liberation Army. 2007 – Kenya Airways Flight 507 crashes after takeoff from Douala International Airport in Douala, Cameroon, killing all 114 aboard, making it the deadliest aircraft disaster in Cameroon. 2010 – Mass protests in Greece erupt in response to austerity measures imposed by the government as a result of the Greek government-debt crisis. 2023 – The World Health Organization declares the end of the COVID-19 pandemic as a global health emergency.

The last trading day of Hong Kong stocks in 2023 was very weak and the market closed just shy of 17,000. After the Hang Seng Index opened 22 points higher, it rose as much as 51 points to reach a high of 17,095 points. Afterwards, the market's upward trend was unsustainable and fell as much as 93 points to 16,950 points. It finally closed at 17,047 points, up 3 points; the tech index did not rise or fall, closing at 3,764 points. The main board transaction volume exceeded HK$75.1 billion.

In one year, the Hang Seng Index has fallen by 2,734 points or 13.8%. It has fallen for four consecutive years, the longest falling wave in history. It has fallen by more than 10% for three consecutive years, which is the first time since 2000 to 2002. The tech index fell 364 points or 8.8%. On a quarterly basis, the Hang Seng Index fell 762 points, or 4.3%; the tech index fell 156 points, or 4%, falling for three consecutive quarters.

The mainland stock market rebounded, the U.S. dollar fell, the yuan strengthened, and with the support of the window dressing effect, the Hong Kong stock market barely stayed above 17,000 on the last trading day last year. As most of the funds were closed and there was a strong wait-and-see atmosphere, the market turnover was only over HK$70 billion. The market expects that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates in the first quarter of 2024, and funds will have the opportunity to flow into non-US dollar markets. However, the trend of Hong Kong stocks still depends on the progress of the mainland's economic recovery, especially due to the drag on the real estate market, which may take a long time to improve. It is believed that Hong Kong stocks will have little momentum to rise next year, and the Hang Seng Index is expected to fluctuate between 16,000 and 18,000 points in the first quarter.

Trading in the foreign exchange market was quiet last Friday, with the U.S. dollar index falling as much as 0.16% to 101.066, the Euro rising 0.21% to $1.1084, and the yen once falling 0.35% to 141.91 per dollar. For the whole year, the Bloomberg U.S. Dollar Spot Index fell 2.7%, its worst performance since 2020. Most of the decline came from the fourth quarter, reflecting rising market expectations for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates next year. Among the major currencies, the pound appreciated by more than 5% against the U.S. dollar last year, the strongest since 2017, and the Swiss franc soared by 10% against the U.S. dollar, the strongest since 2010. On the other hand, the yen fell by more than 7% against the U.S. dollar.

Before the holidays, European stock markets remained stable, with British, French and German stocks closing up 0.14%, 0.11% and 0.3% respectively. To sum up, in 2023, the three major indexes of Britain, France and Germany each gained 3.78%, 16.52% and 20.31%.

Investors made profits by selling before the New Year holiday. On the last trading day of 2023, the U.S. stock market retreated from its historical high of 37,710 points. After opening slightly lower by 8 points, the Dow once rose by 49 points, reaching a market high of 37,759 points. , but soon fell back, once falling 171 points to a low of 37,538 points; the S&P 500 index rose slightly by 0.11% to 4,788 points in the early stage, continuing to approach a record high; the Nasdaq, which is dominated by technology stocks, fell by up to 0.93%.

At the close of the U.S. market, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 20 points, or 0.05%, to 37,689 points; the S&P Index fell 13 points, or 0.28%, to 4,769 points, rising 24% for the year; the Nasdaq closed down 83 points, or 0.56%, to 15,011 points.

For the whole year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average still rose 13%, the Nasdaq jumped 43%, and the S&P Index climbed 24% throughout the year.

Investors are relatively optimistic about the outlook for U.S. stocks. With the expected soft landing of the economy and expectations of interest rate cuts, U.S. stocks are expected to reach a higher level. However, considering that U.S. stocks have accumulated considerable gains and the market has been overbought for a long time, it cannot be ruled out that it will need to consolidate at high levels in the short term before challenging record highs again.

2023 / 32

Aperçu of the Week:

"Bureaucracy is inherently Kafkaesque."

(Elon Musk on Twitter when it was neither his nor X)

Bad News of the Week:

Wirtschaftswunder - the German economy is legendary. Twice it has built a powerhouse with its mix of diligence and discipline and innovation and quality: in the 1950s in post-war ruins, and after reunification with East Germany, whose de facto bankruptcy had to be absorbed and nursed back to health. "Made in Germany" became an international seal of quality. But as is so often the case, legends belong in the past. For the present is rather gloomy, the future questionable.

Because Germany is in an economic crisis. Again. Around the turn of the millennium, according to the Economist, we were "the sick man of Europe," left behind economically by our neighbors. With reforms of the labor market and the social system ("Agenda 2010"), we managed to catch up economically and were in a good position again. Much else was left undone. And now that's coming for us.

Bureaucracy, high costs (for energy and labor) as well as a shortage of skilled workers and an aging population are commonly cited as the reasons why we are struggling - even more than Spain - against external factors such as supply chain problems and dependence on raw materials. Which are problematic enough in themselves. Likewise with inflation. In addition, both digitization and infrastructure renewal have been overslept in recent years. Not to mention dealing with climate change. One could almost say that we have too many bills on the table and too little money in the bank account.

But let's not misunderstand each other: Germany is still doing reasonably well, given the so-called "circumstances". Compared to Great Britain or Japan, for example. But in the day-to-day business of politics, there is far too little courage, spirit of optimism and willingness to take risks to face the coming challenges with confidence. A lukewarm sense of "business as usual" dominates - a legacy of 16 years of Merkel? Yet most of our problems are homemade. Our excessive bureaucracy, for example, is a purely German specialty and can hardly be blamed on globalization.

What can be done? None of our political parties has a recipe for the future. Or does not dare to develop one. After all, you have to take the voters with you. They have no desire for change if it means abandoning habits and comfort. The one golden road that lets us overcome every obstacle without hurting anyone does not exist. Every people has the government it deserves. Always ranting about "those up there" won't get us anywhere. We must start with ourselves. Even if it is unpleasant.

Good News of the Week:

I've always thought that political cartoonists are also excellent commentators. After all, they get to the heart of things with a few strokes of the pen in a picture. One of my favorites, Heiko Sakurai, drew a picture last week that he himself puts into words as follows: "In its (...) European election program, the AfD sees the EU as a failure and advocates its transformation into a confederation of nation states bound only by certain economic interests and a defense against refugees."

So the right-wing populists of the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland / Alternative for Germany) are getting into the election campaign for seats in the European Parliament, so that they can then destroy it from within. Marine Le Pen is already chilling the champagne. The European Union as peace project and community of values, which take responsibility together for each other - abolish. If tariffs are merely not levied and walls are erected at the external borders, the ideal of Europe is dead. Frustrating. So why "good news?"

Because the environmental disaster in Slovenia last week showed us what Europe really stands for. The images were and are horrific: 75% of the small country between the Alps and the Adriatic Sea was affected by unbelievable heavy rains and resulting floods, landslides and mudslides. The outcome is frightening, for example hundreds of bridges were simply torn away - the complete infrastructure no longer exists.

And then came the beautiful pictures: Solidarity among neighbors, willingness to help the unknown, pragmatic politicians. But also relief teams from European countries that were already on site after 24 hours - with makeshift bridges, excavators, generators, helicopters, tents. But above all with commitment. And money. The European Union alone pledged several billion euros from various budgets and as emergency aid. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was there herself. And visibly moved. And the Slovenian prime minister made a remarkable statement: "The European Union is the best thing that has happened to Slovenia in the last 100 years."

That sums it up. Europe is a community of solidarity. The whole is more than just the sum of its parts. Great Britain can sing a song about this, whose economic and social problems are clearly due to the Brexit - at least that's how all political observers outside the country see it. For centuries, wars dominated the history of European nations. That has changed fundamentally. Because cooperation is always better than confrontation. I feel like a European. And it's anything but shameful to say so.

Personal happy moment of the week:

From time to time, I force my kids to watch a movie that I think is important. Or even culturally significant. They are already doing well with this - I could also condemn them to read certain books or visit exhibitions. With Luc Besson's "The Big Blue" or Stanley Kubrick's "2001" they seemed to suffer more, last week they had fun. With "The Big Lebowski" by the Coen brothers. Which my son saw in style with a bathrobe. Apparently we are just a family of cool dudes.

I couldn't care less...

...about opinion polls. To the question "Do you think the U.S. will elect Trump president again?" 69% of Germans answered "Yes, I can imagine that." I'm not sure who I'm supposed to be upset about now. But I'm starting to feel queasy, too.

As I write this...

...the FIFA Women's World Cup is looking to become a European competition. Today, Japan and Colombia were eliminated in the quarterfinals. So Spain, England, Sweden are in the semifinals. And co-host Australia. But they only got further with luck in a penalty shootout against France. My sympathy was first with Colombia (yes, even if they beat Germany) and now with the Matildas from Downunder. You go, girls. No worries!

Post Scriptum

The Left (Die Linke) in Germany is disassembling itself. For years it has been struggling with weak values, barely making it into the federal parliament. And yet it is primarily concerned with its own trench warfare. Currently, its most prominent politician, Sahra Wagenknecht, is being forced to likely found her own party. This would result in a few small splinter groups that would only operate in the shadows. That would be bad.

Okay, I would never be able to vote for the Left. Their program is too radical ("Expropriate banks and key industries!"), too unrealistic ("Dissolve NATO!") or just plain stupid ("Abolish the euro!") for that. But a voice from the left is good for any party landscape. Since the Social Democrats have positioned themselves in the center and the Greens have become liberal, only they remain as a national conscience for the socially weak and against the omnipotence of money. They would be missed.

Vladimir Putin’s Useful Idiots

Too many European politicians are failing to confront Russia

— Europe | Russia, Europe and Ukraine | July 3rd, 2023

Image: Klawe Rzeczy/getty images

In early may Russia’s Ambassador to Germany threw a party to honour Soviet victory in the second world war. Guests at the embassy, a Stalin-era colossus that occupies more German territory than the nearby parliament building, included a host of dignitaries. The last boss of communist East Germany, Egon Krenz, now 86, mingled under the chandeliers with Gerhard Schröder, Chancellor of United Germany from 1998 to 2005 (and, more recently, a lobbyist for Russian energy firms). Tino Chrupalla, co-leader of Alternative for Germany (afd), a far-right party, sported a tie in the colours of the Russian Federation.

The event earned a bit of scorn in the German press, but little other notice. Sixteen months into Russia’s war on Ukraine public opinion in Germany, as across Europe, overwhelmingly views Russia as an aggressor to be shunned, and Ukraine as a defender deserving help. The purveyors of Russian influence now stand diminished. Mr Schröder, for instance, chaired the board of the now-closed Nord Stream pipelines that addicted Germany to Russian gas. Last summer Russia shut the pipes, which mysterious saboteurs then blew up. The ex-chancellor has been bumped from clubs, disinvited from his Social Democratic Party’s functions (though he remains a party member), and stripped of government-provided office facilities. As for Mr Chrupalla, the afd leader’s cosiness with Russia did not just annoy German tabloids. Leaked messages reveal dismay among his own party’s mps.

Yet even if Russia’s effort to project persuasive power across Europe has not quite succeeded, neither has it completely failed. A subculture of what Germans dismiss as Putinversteher—sympathisers who “understand” the Russian leader Vladimir Putin—thrives outside the mainstream. Throughout Europe their whispering forms a leitmotif in the rumble of complaint about seemingly unrelated troubles such as inflation, crumbling public services, overbearing regulations and fears of immigration. The grumblers have only just begun to challenge the scale of their governments’ generosity to Ukraine, which by February this year amounted to more than €60bn ($65bn) in economic and military aid from Brussels and the eu’s individual members (and €70bn if Britain 🇬🇧 is added, a sum roughly equal to America’s contribution). If Ukraine’s fight goes on too long or goes wrong, there are plenty waiting in the wings to take up the blame game.

Europe’s “Useful Idiots”, a cold-war term for unwitting allies of communism, span a wide spectrum. In politics, parties on both the far right and far left disagree on much; over Ukraine these extremes have often converged in demanding an instant “peace” that would in effect reward Russian aggression with land. In the media and academe, intellectuals still seem happy to ignore evidence of Russia’s imperial intent and its drift into criminality, and to bemoan European entanglement in what they parse as a proxy war between America and Russia, or perhaps, speculating more grandly still, between America 🇺🇸 and China 🇨🇳. And in the world of business, despite multiple rounds of Western sanctions, Russia still has plenty of “friends” too.

Mr Putin’s enablers include several European governments. Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary 🇭🇺 since 2010, has been the most obvious. The populist strongman has repeatedly criticised Western support for Ukraine 🇺🇦 and continued Hungary’s imports of Russian gas. His government also refuses to allow the transit of weapons given to Ukraine by Hungary’s fellow members of nato and the eu. Next-door Austria 🇦🇹 has, more quietly but equally profitably, largely sat out the struggle, too, citing its non-membership of nato and self-appointed role as a bridge between East and West, offering little aid to Ukraine even as its trade with Russia 🇷🇺 has surged.

Greece 🇬🇷, another EU 🇪🇺 Member, is complying with the eu’s sanctions, but has balked at tightening any further those on shipping Russian oil, perhaps because Greek firms happen to pocket so much from the trade. Only recently and under heavy American pressure did Cyprus 🇨🇾, an offshore financial haven, shut down some 4,000 local bank accounts held by Russians. Facing less pressure, Non-EU countries such as Turkey 🇹🇷 and Serbia 🇷🇸 don’t even bother to disguise the lucrative back-door service they provide to Russia.

Some countries have twisted seemingly noble intentions into policies that warm Mr Putin’s heart. Citing its vaunted neutrality, Switzerland 🇨🇭has wielded arcane local laws to block the supply of arms to Ukraine, including 96 mothballed Leopard tanks sitting in Italy that happen to belong to a private Swiss firm. Scoring repeated own goals with freedom-of-speech principles, police in Sweden 🇸🇪 have permitted public burnings of the Koran. This has hugely irked Muslim-majority Turkey, which wields a veto over Sweden’s bid to join North Atlantic Terrorist Organization (NATO). And Mr Putin has gleefully trolled the Swedes. On a trip to Dagestan before the Eid holiday at the end of June, he had himself filmed tenderly holding a Qura’n, as he explained that Under Russian Law It is a Crime to Desecrate Holy Things.

Yet even solid-looking bricks in the would-be European wall of support for Ukraine can crumble. Slovakia 🇸🇰, for instance, has been a vital conduit for Western aid and recently pledged its fleet of 13 Soviet-era Mig-29 fighter jets to the Ukrainian air force. But polls show that the party of Robert Fico, a Russophile leftist who has blamed “Ukrainian Fascists” for provoking Mr Putin, looks likely to win national elections scheduled for September.

France 🇫🇷 is a linchpin of both nato and the eu. But a French parliamentary panel recently scolded Marine Le Pen, the closest challenger to President Emmanuel Macron in last year’s election, for parroting Russian propaganda following its annexation of Crimea in 2014. Ms Le Pen strenuously denies that her defence of Mr Putin had anything to do with the €9m in loans her party received that year from Russian-controlled banks. She has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but last October, seven months into the war, she declared that sanctions on Russia were not working.

In Italy 🇮🇹, although the hard-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is a strong supporter of Ukraine, Matteo Salvini, who leads the second-biggest party in her coalition, is another opponent of sanctions and, at least up until the invasion, was a declared fan of Mr Putin’s.

Germany 🇩🇪, like France, seems a strong pillar. Yet the afd, bluntly described by the head of the country’s internal intelligence agency as a propagator of Russian narratives, has been surging in the polls. It is now in a dead tie for second place with the ruling Social Democrats. At the opposite political pole Sahra Wagenknecht, a telegenic leftist and at-all-costs peacenik, says pollsters tell her she could win 19-30% of a German national vote. Although public support for helping Ukraine remains strong, the trend is drifting downwards.

Useful-idiot narratives are surprisingly resilient. Their main points—that nato “provoked” Russia’s repeated attacks on and eventual invasion of Ukraine, that Ukraine is an artificial entity created on land that is rightfully Russia’s, and that America pours oil on this fire to sell weapons and sustain its global hegemony—echo in various ways. One is what Italians call benaltrismo or whataboutery: nato attacked Serbia in 1999 and Libya 🇱🇾 in 2011, plus America invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, so what’s the big deal if Russia misbehaves? Another variety is dietrismo, the notion that there must be some “inside” story behind events. Writing in the New Left Review, Wolfgang Streeck, a German Sociologist, posits that the hidden purpose of the crisis is to set the stage for putting a fearful eu under the thumb of a pumped-up nato.

What seems to link Europe’s far right, far left and “intellectual” opposition to Western policy is something simpler, however. It is a hoary, cold-war-style anti-Americanism. The East German-born Mr Chrupalla, for instance, insists the Amis have profited from Ukraine’s war by forcing Germany to switch from piped Russian natural gas to costlier liquified gas shipped from America. This is a trap, he hints, because imported American energy is so much more expensive that German manufacturers will have to shift production to America. Ms Wagenknecht, his left-wing rival, believes America forced the war on Russia by attempting to pull Ukraine into its “sphere of influence”.

At a recent political rally near Berlin Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, found himself heckled by a chorus of beefy peaceniks shouting “Warmonger!” Normally polite, soft-spoken and unflappable, Mr Scholz roared back into the microphone that it was Mr Putin who wanted to destroy and conquer Ukraine. “If you loudmouths had even a little bit of brain, you would know the real warmonger!” (Bullshit By Braindead Americans’ Puppet Olaf Scholz) ■

— This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline "Vladimir Putin’s Useful Idiots"

"Conservatism", the new Radicalism?

All of us are in a period of time; when all things break loose; when the old ways of thinking seem to be shattered into fragments; when dissensions become heated, concentrated and increasingly antagonistic; when political collaborations, which were easily possible previously, disintegrate into crisp shards, with lights shining and reflecting on which even the smallest medium possible could carry intense arguments and opinions much heavier than its weight and try to melt down the disapproving sides.

What used to be conservative is lost, as conservatism is NOT part of the political spectrum. Conservatism and radicalism must be pieced together to make a system function normally —“Sicherheit”, which means the combination of safety, security, stability and certainty. It is essential to distinguish conservatism and the political “right-wing”, which is by concept not part of conservatism.

Over the course of life, your views might change over time, but the collective of all our ideas is still balanced. For instance, there has been a gradual shift in which part of the political spectrum people believe in the slogans of emancipating full “individual freedom” (which currently means the complete freedom of economy without regulations, or the complete freedom of speech regardless of whether it actually contains content that harms the freedom, completing the shifting from left to right of the concept “freedom”), but the hypothetical middle ground between it and its opposite (complete and instant equality which can only be achieved through state-control, which takes away “freedom” as according to the above context) remains the same. There is a level of certainty in which a society operates.

Politics can not infiltrate, but can only adapt “to”. We have witnessed the trend of the world shifting from the right (WWII), to the left (1960s to 1970s), to the right (1980s), to the left (1990s to 2000s), and then back to the right again (2010s to 2020s), but the dancing within the political spectrum doesn’t affect what a society truly is.

For instance, the UK has traditionally maintained neutral (maybe slightly radical) since the Norman Conquest (partly due to the Magna Carta, which King John forcefully agreed to in 1215, exhibiting the power-balance aristocrats have against the monarchy and partially leading to Britain being the first country to relinquish feudalism and embrace capitalism in the 17th century); East Asian nations have exhibited deep conservative tendencies for more than 2000 years; conversely, France has always been completely radical and anti-conservative since the founding of the new republic or maybe even earlier.

The demand that society has for conservatism or radicalism has almost always been a fixed state, without which the supplies and offers of it would be pointless; the manifestation of what those in power try to convey to the citizens will comply with the already existing agreements of values within a society (Gesellschaftswerte-Vereinbarungen), which is formed into normality through several hundred years of cultural, economic and political evolution.

The way we process information hasn’t changed in the new ages. What has changed is the self-conception of how we should process information. The way we communicate hasn’t changed in the new age. What has changed is the self-conception of the reasonable usage of communication methods.

This is the true hazard that the new age is bringing — a spirituality-weakness. AfD, the newly-found right-wing party in Germany, is gaining ground in polls. There are different explanations for this, which can be broadly divided into those who blame the CDU and FDP, those who see it as a reaction to the government’s work, and those who are satisfied with what the AfD itself presents in terms of content. The rise of AfD is a concrete manifestation of our spirituality-weakness in terms of the self-conception of values, beliefs and ways of living. We do not know what we want, politicians do not know what they want, and even the AfD itself doesn’t know what they want except to be on the complete opposite side of every change that is happening in Germany.

The right is on the rise everywhere in the world. Some are labelling them as “conservatives”, just because they stand against changes and maybe “want to get back to old ways of living”. That’s a total misconception of what “conservatism” means. Conservatism labels its truth as one of the truths, while radicalism labels its truth as the only truth. Conservatism embraces change, while radicalism can be the opposite to change.r

The wave of the right shouldn’t be labelled as a pure "conservative" movement, but a new form of radical social movement in itself. The "conservatism" is the new radicalism.

The separation of the left and right into two radical social movements completely changes the picture that has been kept silent for millenniums: the decreasing demand for conservatism-radicalism. Our new self-conceptions of reasonable communication and information processing methods lead to the degradation of a possible middle ground. The transcendental orientations that gave rise to second-wave feminism, civil rights protests and anti-war campaigns in the 60s/70s now cease to exist. Politicians will try to please both the left and the right, each time coming closer to the death of conservatism and ultimately the death of the old democracy.

The rejection of the current system is already happening in France: anarchy, but it’s not the only possible form. Globally, there are three possible outcomes of the disintegration of a democratic process: anarchy, extreme nationalism and authoritarianism.

I fear this is where we are leading now. Theories always exist on how we can stop it: we should stop self-believing the concept that we don’t need politicians in charge even though they are always part of a system that preserves prosperity and civilisation, and that we should not believe in politicians as they care absolutely nothing about ordinary people. However, even if every one of us realises this, the changes are already happening so fast in the world that it’s like a non-stop train.

The old conservatism dies, and the new radicalism of the right takes its place. This is the grim new reality of the world.

King Charles Inherits Untold Riches, and Passes Off His Own Empire

As prince, Charles used tax breaks, offshore accounts and canny real estate investments to turn a sleepy estate into a billion-dollar business.

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By Jane Bradley and Euan Ward

Sept. 13, 2022Updated 6:46 a.m. ET

Leer en español

LONDON — King Charles III built his own empire long before he inherited his mother’s.

Charles, who formally acceded to the British throne on Saturday, spent half a century turning his royal estate into a billion-dollar portfolio and one of the most lucrative moneymakers in the royal family business.

While his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, largely delegated responsibility for her portfolio, Charles was far more deeply involved in developing the private estate known as the Duchy of Cornwall. Over the past decade, he has assembled a large team of professional managers who increased his portfolio’s value and profits by about 50 percent.

Today, the Duchy of Cornwall owns the landmark cricket ground known as The Oval, lush farmland in the south of England, seaside vacation rentals, office space in London and a suburban supermarket depot. (A duchy is a territory traditionally governed by a duke or duchess.) The 130,000-acre real estate portfolio is nearly the size of Chicago and generates millions of dollars a year in rental income.

The conglomerate’s holdings are valued at roughly $1.4 billion, compared with around $949 million in the late queen’s private portfolio. These two estates represent a small fraction of the royal family’s estimated $28 billion fortune. On top of that, the family has personal wealth that remains a closely guarded secret.

As king, Charles will take over his mother’s portfolio and inherit a share of this untold personal fortune. While British citizens normally pay around 40 percent inheritance tax, King Charles gets this tax free. And he will pass control of his duchy to his elder son, William, to develop further without having to pay corporate taxes.

The growth in the royal family’s coffers and King Charles’s personal wealth over the past decade came at a time when Britain faced deep austerity budget cuts. Poverty levels soared, and the use of food banks almost doubled. His lifestyle of palaces and polo has long fueled accusations that he is out of touch with ordinary people. And he has at times been the unwitting symbol of that disconnect — such as when his limo was mobbed by students protesting rising tuition in 2010 or when he perched atop a golden throne in his royal finery this year to pledge help for struggling families.

Today, he ascends to the throne as the country buckles under a cost-of-living crisis that is expected to see poverty get even worse. A more divisive figure than his mother, King Charles is likely to give fresh energy to those questioning the relevance of a royal family at a time of public hardship.

Laura Clancy, the author of “Running the Family Firm: How the Monarchy Manages Its Image and Our Money,” said King Charles transformed the once-sleepy royal accounts.

“The duchy has been steadily commercializing over the past few decades,” Ms. Clancy said. “It is run like a commercial business with a C.E.O. and over 150 staff.” What used to be thought of as simply a “landed gentry pile of land” now operates like a corporation, she said.

Some Key Moments in Queen Elizabeth’s Reign

Card 1 of 9

Becoming queen. Following the death of King George VI, Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary ascended to the throne on Feb. 6, 1952, at age 25. The coronation of the newly minted Queen Elizabeth II took place on June 2 the following year.

A historic visit. On May 18, 1965, Elizabeth arrived in Bonn on the first state visit by a British monarch to Germany in more than 50 years. The trip formally sealed the reconciliation between the two nations following the world wars.

First grandchild. In 1977, the queen stepped into the role of grandmother for the first time, after Princess Anne gave birth to a son, Peter. Elizabeth’s four children have given her a total of eight grandchildren, who have been followed by several great-grandchildren.

Princess Diana’s death. In a rare televised broadcast ahead of Diana’s funeral in 1997, Queen Elizabeth remembered the Princess of Wales, who died in a car crash in Paris at age 36, as “an exceptional and gifted human being.”

Golden jubilee. In 2002, celebrations to mark Elizabeth II's 50 years as queen culminated in a star-studded concert at Buckingham Palace in the presence of 12,000 cheering guests, with an estimated one million more watching on giant screens set up around London.

A trip to Ireland. In May 2011, the queen visited the Irish Republic, whose troubled relationship with the British monarchy spanned centuries. The trip, infused with powerful symbols of reconciliation, is considered one of the most politically freighted trips of Elizabeth’s reign.

Breaking a record. As of 5:30 p.m. British time on Sept. 9, 2015, Elizabeth II became Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, surpassing Queen Victoria, her great-great-grandmother. Elizabeth was 89 at the time, and had ruled for 23,226 days, 16 hours and about 30 minutes.

Marking 70 years of marriage. On Nov. 20, 2017, the queen and Prince Philip celebrated their 70th anniversary, becoming the longest-married couple in royal history. The two wed in 1947, as the country and the world was still reeling from the atrocities of World War II.

Losing her spouse. In 2021, Queen Elizabeth II bade farewell to Prince Philip, who died on April 9. An image of the queen grieving alone at the funeral amid coronavirus restrictions struck a chord with viewers at home following the event.

The Duchy of Cornwall was established in the 14th century as a way to generate income for the heir to the throne and has essentially funded Charles’s private and official expenses. One example of its financial might: The $28 million profit he made from it last year dwarfed his official salary as prince, just over $1.1 million.

Piecing together the royal family’s assets is complicated, but the fortune falls generally into four groups.

First, and most prominent, is the Crown Estate, which oversees the assets of the monarchy through a board of directors. Charles, as king, will serve as its chairman, but he does not have final say over how the business is managed.

The estate, which official accounts value at more than $19 billion, includes shopping malls, busy streets in London’s West End and a growing number of wind farms. The royals are entitled to take only rental income from their official estates and may not profit from any sales, as they do not personally own the assets.

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The estate’s profits, valued at about $363 million this year, are turned over to the Treasury, which in return gives the royal household a payment called a sovereign grant based on those profits — which must be topped up by the government if it is lower than the previous year. In 2017, the government increased the family’s payment to 25 percent of the profits to cover the costs of renovating Buckingham Palace.

The latest sovereign grant received by the royals was around $100 million, which the family, including Charles, has used for official royal duties, like visits, payroll and housekeeping. It does not cover the royals’ security costs, which is also paid by the government, but the cost is kept secret.

The next major pot of money is the Duchy of Lancaster. This $949 million portfolio is owned by whomever sits on the throne.

But the value of that trust is dwarfed by the Duchy of Cornwall, the third significant home of royal money, which Charles has long presided over as prince. Generating tens of millions of dollars a year, the duchy has funded his private and official spending, and has bankrolled William, the heir to the throne, and Kate, William’s wife.

It has done so without paying corporation taxes like most businesses in Britain are obliged to, and without publishing details about where the estate invests its money.

“When Charles took over at age 21, the duchy was not in a good financial state,” Marlene Koenig, a royal expert and writer, said, citing poor management and a lack of diversification. Charles took a more active role in the portfolio in the 1980s and began hiring experienced managers.

“It was at this time that the duchy became financially aggressive,” she said.

In 2017, leaked financial documents known as the Paradise Papers revealed that Charles’s duchy estate had invested millions in offshore companies, including a Bermuda-registered business run by one of his best friends.

The final pool of money, and the most secretive, is the family’s private fortune. According to the Rich List, the annual catalog of British wealth published in The Sunday Times, the queen had a net worth of about $430 million. That includes her personal assets, such as Balmoral Castle and Sandringham Estate, which she inherited from her father. Much of her personal wealth has been kept private.

King Charles has also made financial headlines unrelated to his wealth but tied to the charitable foundation that he chairs and operates in his name. His stewardship of the foundation has been marred by controversy, most recently this spring, when The Sunday Times reported that Charles had accepted 3 million euros in cash — including money stuffed in shopping bags and a suitcase — from a former Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani.

How the World Reacted to the Queen’s Death

Queen Elizabeth II’s death elicited an array of reactions around the globe, from heartfelt tributes to anti-monarchist sentiment.

In Britain: As Britons come to terms with the loss of the woman who embodied the country for 70 years, many are unsure of their nation’s identity and role in the world.

In the U.S.: In few places outside Britain was the outpouring of grief so striking as in the faraway former British colony, which she never ruled and rarely visited.

In Scotland: At a time of renewed mobilization for Scottish independence, respect for the queen could temporarily dampen the heated debate.

In the Commonwealth: For nations with British colonial histories, the queen’s death is rekindling discussions about a more independent future.

In Africa: Though the queen was revered by many on the continent, her death reignited conversations about the brutality the monarchy meted out there.

The money was for his foundation, which finances philanthropic causes around the world. Charles does not benefit financially from such contributions.

“He’s willing to take money from anybody, really, without questioning whether it’s the wise thing to do,” said Norman Baker, a former government minister and author of the book “ … And What Do You Do? What the Royal Family Don’t Want You to Know.”

Mr. Baker described Charles as the most progressive, caring member of the royal family. But he said he had also filed a police complaint accusing him of improperly selling honorary titles.

“That’s no way to behave for a royal,” he said, referring to an ongoing scandal over whether Charles had granted knighthood and citizenship to a Saudi businessman in exchange for donations to one of Charles’s charitable ventures.

Charles denied knowing about this, one of his top aides who was implicated stepped down, and the authorities began investigating. The king’s representatives did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Charles has also courted controversy with his outspoken views and campaigning. He has lobbied senior government ministers, including Tony Blair, through dozens of letters on issues from the Iraq war to alternative therapies. Though English law does not require it, royal protocol calls for political neutrality.

In his inaugural address on Saturday, the king indicated that he planned to step back from his outside endeavors. “It will no longer be possible for me to give so much of my time and energies to the charities and issues for which I care so deeply,” he said.

Ms. Clancy, the author, said the new king, in theory, would be expected to drop his lobbying and business ventures entirely.

“Whether that will pan out is a different question,” she said.

Sarah Hurtes contributed reporting from Brussels.

Stalin’s Holocaust in Ukraine which The New York Times ignored

July 16, 2020

Between 1932 and 1933, the Soviet Union deliberately starved to death somewhere between 7 and 10 million people, mostly Ukrainians, in an act of genocide known as the Holodomor. But almost no one outside of the Soviet Union knew about this holocaust for decades. The film “Mr. Jones” directed by Agnieszka Holland and starring James Norton and Peter Sarsgaard shows us why.

The film is based on the true story of freelance Welsh reporter Gareth Jones. In the midst of the Great Depression and the global economic turmoil that came with it, Jones is concerned about the situation in Germany where Hitler has just risen to power. He’s convinced that the Nazis are a threat to the rest of Europe. But given the economic realities of the times, there’s no way Britain could afford another war. The only solution Jones sees to the imminent threat of Hitler and the Nazis is an alliance with Stalin and the Soviet Union who are, according to all the news reports, not simply weathering the crisis, but actually flourishing.

Jones arranges a trip to Moscow with the intention of interviewing Stalin and assessing the Soviets’ ability to hold off a hostile Germany, but when he gets there, he discovers a new mystery. Things aren’t quite right in Moscow. Surveillance, dodging questions, travel restrictions, questionable arrests, suspicious deaths. And hushed whispers by foreign reporters of “something big” happening in Ukraine.

Jones manages to get some unsupervised time in Ukraine—an area that was supposed to be the Black Earth Region, the breadbasket of Europe—and finds horrific conditions. The people there are starving. The grain they’re forced to grow on the newly-collectivized farms is confiscated, along with everything else edible. The people are resorting to eating tree bark and even cannibalism.

This is what the reporters in Moscow were whispering about. This is what New York Times Bureau Chief (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Walter Duranty attempted to distract him from in Moscow. And when Jones finally makes it back home and begins to speak and write about what he saw in Ukraine, it’s what Duranty and the rest of the foreign press corps in Moscow promptly discredit through The New York Times and their home newspapers despite knowing that Jones is telling the truth.

The Communist Party, led by Stalin, managed to cover up millions of deaths – a true holocaust – through a combination of censorship, intimidation, and the willful complicity of people like Walter Duranty and The New York Times. Although the press largely ignored the Holodomor nearly a century ago, Mr. Jones offers serious lessons that force us to reflect on the state of journalism in 2020.

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Mr Jones – trailer for the 2020 movie

Wikipedia: Gareth Richard Vaughan Jones (13 August 1905 – 12 August 1935) was a Welsh journalist who in March 1933 first reported in the Western world, without equivocation and under his own name, the existence of the Soviet famine of 1932–1933, including the Holodomor.[a]

Timothy Snyder (Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, 2010): "The basic facts of mass hunger and death, although sometimes reported in the European and American press, never took on the clarity of an undisputed event. Almost no one claimed that Stalin meant to starve Ukrainians to death; even Adolf Hitler preferred to blame the Marxist system. It was controversial to note that starvation was taking place at all. Gareth Jones did so in a handful of newspaper articles; it seems that he was the only one to do so in English under his own name ... Though the journalists knew less than the diplomats, most of them understood that millions were dying from hunger. ... Aside from Jones, the only journalist to file serious reports in English was Malcolm Muggeridge, writing anonymously for the Manchester Guardian. He wrote that the famine was "one of the most monstrous crimes in history, so terrible that people in the future will scarcely be able to believe that it happened."[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Jones_(journalist)

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Ukrainian’s Father in Russia Didn’t Believe Him

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Politico magazine   February 28, 2022 ‘Yes, He Would’: Fiona Hill on Putin and Nukes
 Putin is trying to take down the entire world order, the veteran Russia watcher said in an interview. But there are ways even ordinary Americans can fight back.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/02/28/world-war-iii-already-there-00012340

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holodomor-Chicago.jpg

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

Holodomor

Early estimates of the death toll by scholars and government officials varied greatly.[13] A United Nations joint statement signed by 25 countries in 2003 declared that 7–10 million perished.[14] Current scholarship estimates a range of 4 to 7 million victims,[15] with more precise estimates ranging from 3.3[16] to 5 million.[17] According to the findings of the Court of Appeal of Kyiv in 2010, the demographic losses due to the famine amounted to 10 million, with 3.9 million direct famine deaths, and a further 6.1 million birth deficits.[18]

Whether the Holodomor was genocide is still the subject of academic debate, as are the causes of the famine and intentionality of the deaths.[19][20][21] Some scholars believe that the famine was planned by Joseph Stalin to eliminate a Ukrainian independence movement.[10][22] Others suggest that the man-made famine was a consequence of Soviet industrialisation.[23][24][25]

...

Despite the crisis, the Soviet government actively denied to ask for foreign aid for the famine and instead actively denied the famine's existence.[87]

...

Many teachers of Ukrainian language were arrested and exiled from the region. By 1932, all Ukrainian language education establishments were closed. The professional Ukrainian theatre in Krasnodar was closed. All Ukrainian toponyms in the Kuban, which reflected the areas from which the first Ukrainians settlers had moved, were changed. The names of Stanytsias such as Kiev was changed to "Krasnoartilyevskaya", and Uman to "Leningrad", and Poltavska to "Krasnoarmieiskaya". The physical destruction of all aspects of Ukrainian culture and the Ukrainian population, and the resultant ethnic cleansing of the population, the Russification, the Holodomor of 1932–33 and 1946–47 and other tactics used by the Union government led to the catastrophic fall in population that associated themselves with Ukrainian ethnicity in the Kuban.

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Bohdan Klid and Alexander J. Motyl, Holodomor Reader: A Sourcebook on the Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. Toronto: CIUS Press, 2012.

The Holodomor Reader is a wide-ranging collection of key texts and source materials, many of which have never before appeared in English, on the genocidal famine (Holodomor) of 1932–33 in Soviet Ukraine. The subject is introduced in an extensive interpretive essay, and the material is presented in six sections: scholarship; legal assessments, findings, and resolutions; eyewitness accounts and memoirs; survivor testimonies, memoirs, diaries, and letters; Soviet, Ukrainian, British, German, Italian, and Polish documents; and works of literature. Each section is prefaced with introductory remarks. The Reader is an indispensable guide for all those interested in the Holodomor, genocide, or Stalinism.

HREC is a project of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) of the University of Alberta

https://holodomor.ca/resource/holodomor-reader-a-sourcebook-on-the-famine-of-1932-1933-in-ukraine/

"'That is of course something special in front of a home crowd…'" - may 8, 2024 📷 @.sebastianvettel / instagram

Teams intro for The Edge Of Control (Part 1)

OK this is gonna be a big image post, brace yourselves! I’ve written mini biographies of the racing teams in my fictional F1 series: CONSTRUCTORS OF THE 2021 FORMULA ONE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP: (in 2020 championship finishing order)

1. Silverstream Grand Prix

First Grand Prix: 1953 Based in: Frankfurt, Germany Team Principal: Victor Montcrieff (Swiss)

Drivers: #11 Marcus Harding (GBR) #54 Erik Jensen (NOR)

After disappearing from F1 after a fatal accident in 1958, German road car company Silverstream returned to F1 as a works team in 2010, having supplied engines to various teams since the mid-1990s. After spending their first four seasons as a midfield team, their domination of the turbo-hybrid engine regulations has seen Silverstream break numerous records across Formula One.

Silverstream are the current champions in Formula One, winning all but one of the championships held since 2014. Their star driver, Britain’s Marcus Harding, is now a five-time champion of the world, and looking to topple the all-time records of the legendary German, Stefan Richter. However, he has admitted to losing passion for the sport in recent years, and rumors are circulating that he’s considering retirement at the end of 2021. With no immediate replacement for Harding on the table and underwhelming teammate Erik Jensen unable to match Harding’s talent, Silverstream’s dominance could be in jeopardy…

Author’s notes: This team is pretty blatantly inspired by the Mercedes F1 team with some shifting of the dates, and the car remains silver unlike the modern Mercedes, which was black in 2020/21. Marcus Harding is based on seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, while Erik Jensen is a sort of combination between ex-McLaren driver Heikki Kovalainen and Hamilton’s recently departed teammate Valtteri Bottas.

2. Scuderia Rossolini

First Grand Prix: 1950 Based in: Florence, Italy Team Principal: Roberto Persanni (Italian)

Drivers: #5 Daniel Albrecht (GER)  #36 Marco Bianchi (ITA)

Rossolini are without a doubt the most famous racing team in Formula One, and perhaps the entire world. When you mention the name Rossolini, it's hard not to picture the brand's trademark bright red supercars or their racing heritage, stretching nearly three quarters of a century across the history of motorsport. Founded in 1946 by the enigmatic ex-racing driver Enrico Rossolini, Rossolini has been a member of the Formula One grid for every single season in championship history, the only team to do so.  Rossolini’s competitive history has gone up and down with the history of the sport, but they remain the most successful team in F1 history, with 14 Constructors and 16 Drivers’ World Championships. After a recent midfield slump in the mid-2010s, they have remained at the front of the pack ever since. Often the only team dueling with Silverstream for the World Championship, they last won with three-time champion Daniel Albrecht in 2017.

The signing of Italian junior phenomenon Marco Bianchi made headlines in 2019, as the young hotshot subsequently won three races in his second F1 season and defeated the experienced Albrecht, who snapped back at the comments about his age with allegations of favoritism. 2020 did nothing to dispel the tension, and coming into 2021 the tension between drivers is so hot you could ‘could boil a kettle at room temperature’.

Author’s notes: Again, this is pretty obviously based on Scuderia Ferrari, right down to the red colours! The car in The Edge of Control is a full-body Rosso Corsa red (the famous Italian ‘racing red’) with the stripes of the Italian tricoloure. Daniel Albrecht is based on multiple drivers but he is closest to former Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel; Marco Bianchi is also based on several drivers but in terms of his role is closest to Charles Leclerc, current Ferrari driver.

Marco’s name comes from two drivers who were tragically killed in racing accidents; Italian MotoGP rider Marco Simoncelli, killed in Malaysia in 2011, and French Formula One driver Jules Bianchi, killed in Japan in 2014.

3. Riedel Rennsport

First Grand Prix: 2005 Based in: Graz, Austria Team Principal: James Arnold (British)

Drivers: #51 Nicolas Theunis (BEL)  #90 Pietro Acosta (ARG) 

Riedel Rennsport have certainly impressed the paddock in the short time they've competed in Formula One. After parent company Riedel Energy Sports decided the high-octane arena of F1 was the best place to market their energy drink and extreme sports products, they bought out the financially struggling Aurora Motorsport outfit at the end of 2004 and rebranded it for 2005.

The team stayed roughly in the midfield for their first few years, although after driver Johanna Klein's near-fatal, career-ending wreck in the 2006 Belgian Grand Prix, the team hired ex-Aurora driver, the Australian David Sharp, for 2007. Sharp had a reputation for incredible qualifying pace and an ability to outperform poorer machinery: Sharp eventually won the 2010 title as Riedel fought to the forefront of the grid.

In recent years, Riedel are focusing all their energy on their junior academy graduate: Belgian wonderkid Nicolas Theunis. Despite winning several races and breaking ‘youngest driver records’ everywhere, the team have failed to find a second driver good enough to match Theunis: always remaining a step behind Silverstream and Rossolini. They're hoping their new signing, veteran Pietro Acosta, will be up to the task.

Author’s notes: Riedel draws inspiration from multiple teams, but the most obvious is Red Bull Racing. Like Red Bull’s dark blue, Riedel’s dark purple and gold livery has remined pretty much unchanged. Nicolaus Theunis is a sort-of combination between Max Verstappen and former McLaren driver Stoffel Vandoorne, while Acosta is pretty much an original character.

(closest I could find to purple, just imagine that metallic purple on the entire car)

4. MacIntyre Engineering

First Grand Prix: 1966 Based in: Wellington, New Zealand  Team Principal: Charles Quirke (New Zealander)

Drivers:  #8 Alan Worrall (AUS)  #27 Imogen Kane (GBR) 

Technically, MacIntyre Engineering was founded far before 1965, in a shed in Renwick, a sleepy little town on the South Island of New Zealand. The headstrong and enigmatic William MacIntyre, or Will as he liked to be known, was a keen racing driver, and despite building his own modified car from scratch, amassed a modest collection of junior series racing trophies, including a win in the 1958 New Zealand Grand Prix, a non-championship Formula 2 event.

After success in Formula 1, MacIntyre founded and drove for his own team in 1966, and which won both titles in 1969 and 1971. MacIntyre remained at the front of the grid for much of the 1970s and 1980s, dominating the late 80s and early 90s with Brazilian driver Thiago da Silva. Despite world titles in the late 90s, the team endured a nearly a decade of championship drought under the dominant Rossolini team. Their last title came in 2008 courtesy of Marcus Harding; the team entered a crushing slump in the mid-2000s after a switch to the underdeveloped and slow Nippon engines.

However, there has been a slow resurgence to the top of the midfield in recent years as Nippon have majorly improved their engines. With Riedel race winner Alan Worrall signing alongside junior star Imogen Kane, the first woman of colour to win the F2 championship, MacIntyre may finally reclaim the championship crown. Author’s notes: MacIntyre takes most of its inspiration from the story of McLaren, F1′s legendary New Zealand founded team. As a kid who grew up with the legends of Bruce McLaren and his papaya orange ‘flying kiwi’ cars, I made sure to pay tribute with this bright orange team! Alan Worrall is based on one of my favourite drivers, Daniel Ricciardo, while Imogen Kane is another original character.

5. Esprit Autosportif First Grand Prix: 1977 Based in: Lyon, France Team Principal: Archibald Painecure (French)

Drivers: #15 Julio Balcazar (ESP) #91 Jean-Pierre Gerard (FRA)

Esprit is one of France’s biggest producers of road cars, with the company building and selling an estimated four million cars a year. It was only natural that such a large and high-profile brand would compete in Formula One. Esprit’s early years were mostly characterised by the team’s introduction of turbocharged engines to F1. Esprit’s early turbocharged engines were very fast but incredibly unreliable, accounting for many spectacular explosions and crashes. They improved and were challenging for podiums and race wins by the early 1980s, but the death of their promising junior driver Remi Lacroix in 1985 caused the team to abruptly pull out of the sport mid-season.

Esprit supplied engines to the Chatillon team from 1994 to 2001, and finally purchased the team outright for the 2002 season. A gradual increase in pace from the midfield to the front saw the team winning the double championship with Spain’s Marc Navarro in 2005 and 2006. Esprit was also notable for being the first team to win a race with a female driver since 1995, when Italian driver Alessia Faverani won the 2004 Monaco Grand Prix.

Under new management, the modern Esprit team have risen from the back of the grid to be solid contenders in the midfield. Alongside young French driver Jean-Pierre Gérard, Esprit have brought Navarro out of retirement to contest the 2021 season. Time will tell if this move will improve the team's fortune, or ruin it. 

Author’s notes: Esprit is based mostly on the real-life Renault, Ligier and Benetton teams and currently occupies the spot of Renault. Without the 2021 Alpine transition, the car remains the traditional banana yellow campaigned by Renault in racing disciplines world-wide. Jean-Pierre ‘JP’ Gerard is based on French F1 drivers Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, while Marc Navarro is based on veteran world champion Fernando Alonso.

Watch out for Part 2 featuring the other five teams soon!

1.24.22 Headlines

WORLD NEWS

Burkina Faso: Mutinous soldiers say they detained president (AP)

“Mutinous soldiers said they detained Burkina Faso’s president on Monday, a day after rebellious troops seized a military barracks, setting off a series of gunbattles in the capital of the West African country. It was not clear who was in control of the country, which was once a bastion of stability in the region but has been beset by an Islamic insurgency and internal political turmoil in recent years.”

Germany: One dead in gun attack on German students (BBC)

“A lone gunman has killed one person and seriously injured three others inside a lecture hall at Heidelberg University, before shooting himself dead. German police said the shooter had used a "long gun", and fired shots around the amphitheatre "wildly". The bloodshed triggered a large operation at the university's campus in the Neuenheimer Feld area. Police asked people to avoid the area so rescue workers and emergency services could move around freely. German media reported that the gunman appeared to have no religious or political motive.”

Ukraine: NATO outlines ‘deterrence’ plan as tensions with Russia soar (AP)

“Tensions soared Monday between Russia and the West over concerns that Moscow is planning to invade Ukraine, with NATO outlining potential troop and ship deployments, Britain saying it would withdraw some diplomats from Kyiv, and Ireland denouncing upcoming Russian war games off its coast as unwelcome. The Western alliance’s statement summed up moves already announced by member countries, but restating them under the NATO banner appeared aimed at showing its resolve.”

US NEWS

George Floyd: Trial begins for cops accused of violating Floyd’s rights (AP)

“The federal trial for three former Minneapolis police officers charged with violating George Floyd’s civil rights as Derek Chauvin pinned the Black man’s neck to the street began Monday with opening statements, after a jury of 18 people was swiftly picked last week. J. Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao are broadly charged with depriving Floyd of his civil rights while acting under government authority. All three are charged for failing to provide Floyd with medical care and Thao and Kueng face an additional count for failing to stop Chauvin, who was convicted of murder and manslaughter in state court last year.”

Education: Justices to hear challenge to race in college admissions (AP)

“The conservative-dominated Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a challenge to the consideration of race in college admissions, adding affirmative action to major cases on abortion, guns, religion and COVID-19 already on the agenda. The court said it will take up lawsuits claiming that Harvard University, a private institution, and the University of North Carolina, a state school, discriminate against Asian American applicants. A decision against the schools could mean the end of affirmative action in college admissions.”

Wildfire: PG&E’s criminal probation to end amid ongoing safety worries (AP)

“Pacific Gas & Electric is poised to emerge from five years of criminal probation, despite worries that nation’s largest utility remains too dangerous to trust after years of devastation from wildfires ignited by its outdated equipment and neglectful management. The probation, set to expire at midnight Tuesday, was supposed to rehabilitate PG&E after its 2016 conviction for six felony crimes from a 2010 explosion triggered by its natural gas lines that blew up a San Bruno neighborhood and killed eight people.”

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

Some of Europe’s richest countries lay in disarray this weekend, as raging rivers burst through their banks in Germany and Belgium, submerging towns, slamming parked cars against trees and leaving Europeans shellshocked at the intensity of the destruction.

Only days before in the Northwestern United States, a region famed for its cool, foggy weather, hundreds had died of heat. In Canada, wildfire had burned a village off the map. Moscow reeled from record temperatures. And this weekend the northern Rocky Mountains were bracing for yet another heat wave, as wildfires spread across 12 states in the American West.

The extreme weather disasters across Europe and North America have driven home two essential facts of science and history: The world as a whole is neither prepared to slow down climate change, nor live with it. The week’s events have now ravaged some of the world’s wealthiest nations, whose affluence has been enabled by more than a century of burning coal, oil and gas — activities that pumped the greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that are warming the world.

“I say this as a German: The idea that you could possibly die from weather is completely alien,” said Friederike Otto, a physicist at Oxford University who studies the links between extreme weather and climate change. “There’s not even a realization that adaptation is something we have to do right now. We have to save people’s lives.”

“We’ve got to adapt to the change we’ve already baked into the system and also avoid further change by reducing our emissions, by reducing our influence on the climate,” said Richard Betts, a climate scientist at the Met Office in Britain and a professor at the University of Exeter.

That message clearly hasn’t sunk in among policymakers, and perhaps the public as well, particularly in the developed world, which has maintained a sense of invulnerability.

The result is a lack of preparation, even in countries with resources. In the United States, flooding has killed more than 1,000 people since 2010 alone, according to federal data. In the Southwest, heat deaths have spiked in recent years.

Events 9.2

44 BC – Pharaoh Cleopatra VII of Egypt declares her son co-ruler as Ptolemy XV Caesarion. 44 BC – Cicero launches the first of his Philippicae (oratorical attacks) on Mark Antony. He will make 14 of them over the following months. 31 BC – Final War of the Roman Republic: Battle of Actium: Off the western coast of Greece, forces of Octavian defeat troops under Mark Antony and Cleopatra. 1192 – The Treaty of Jaffa is signed between Richard I of England and Saladin, leading to the end of the Third Crusade. 1561 – Entry of Mary, Queen of Scots into Edinburgh, a spectacular civic celebration for the Queen of Scotland, marred by religious controversy. 1649 – The Italian city of Castro is completely destroyed by the forces of Pope Innocent X, ending the Wars of Castro. 1666 – The Great Fire of London breaks out and burns for three days, destroying 10,000 buildings, including Old St Paul's Cathedral. 1752 – Great Britain, along with its overseas possessions, adopts the Gregorian calendar. 1789 – The United States Department of the Treasury is founded. 1792 – During what became known as the September Massacres of the French Revolution, rampaging mobs slaughter three Roman Catholic bishops, more than two hundred priests, and prisoners believed to be royalist sympathizers. 1806 – A massive landslide destroys the town of Goldau, Switzerland, killing 457. 1807 – The British Royal Navy bombards Copenhagen with fire bombs and phosphorus rockets to prevent Denmark from surrendering its fleet to Napoleon. 1856 – The Tianjing incident takes place in Nanjing, China. 1859 – The Carrington Event is the strongest geomagnetic storm on record. 1862 – American Civil War: United States President Abraham Lincoln reluctantly restores Union General George B. McClellan to full command after General John Pope's disastrous defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run. 1864 – American Civil War: Union forces enter Atlanta, a day after the Confederate defenders flee the city, ending the Atlanta Campaign. 1867 – Mutsuhito, Emperor Meiji of Japan, marries Masako Ichijō, thereafter known as Empress Shōken. 1870 – Franco-Prussian War: Battle of Sedan: Prussian forces take Napoleon III of France and 100,000 of his soldiers prisoner. 1885 – Rock Springs massacre: In Rock Springs, Wyoming, 150 white miners, who are struggling to unionize so they could strike for better wages and work conditions, attack their Chinese fellow workers killing 28, wounding 15 and forcing several hundred more out of town. 1898 – Battle of Omdurman: British and Egyptian troops defeat Sudanese tribesmen and establish British dominance in Sudan. 1901 – Vice President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous phrase, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" at the Minnesota State Fair. 1912 – Arthur Rose Eldred is awarded the first Eagle Scout award of the Boy Scouts of America. 1935 – The Labor Day Hurricane, the most intense hurricane to strike the United States, makes landfall at Long Key, Florida, killing at least 400. 1939 – World War II: Following the start of the invasion of Poland the previous day, the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) is annexed by Nazi Germany. 1944 – The last execution of a Finn in Finland will take place when soldier Olavi Laiho is executed by shooting in Oulu. 1945 – World War II: The Japanese Instrument of Surrender is signed by Japan and the major warring powers aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. 1945 – Communist leader Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam after the end of the Nguyễn dynasty. 1946 – The Interim Government of India is formed, headed by Jawaharlal Nehru as vice president with the powers of a Prime Minister. 1957 – President Ngô Đình Diệm of South Vietnam becomes the first foreign head of state to make a state visit to Australia. 1958 – A USAF RC-130 is shot down by fighters over Armenia when it strays into Soviet airspace while conducting a sigint mission. All crew members are killed. 1960 – The first election of the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile. The Tibetan community observes this date as Democracy Day. 1963 – CBS Evening News becomes U.S. network television's first half-hour weeknight news broadcast, when the show is lengthened from 15 to 30 minutes. 1968 – Operation OAU begins during the Nigerian Civil War. 1970 – NASA announces the cancellation of two Apollo missions to the Moon, Apollo 15 (the designation is re-used by a later mission), and Apollo 19. 1984 – Seven people are shot and killed and 12 wounded in the Milperra massacre, a shootout between the rival motorcycle gangs Bandidos and Comancheros in Sydney, Australia. 1985 – Sri Lankan Civil War: Sri Lankan Tamil politicians and former MPs M. Alalasundaram and V. Dharmalingam are shot dead. 1987 – In Moscow, the trial begins for 19-year-old pilot Mathias Rust, who flew his Cessna airplane into Red Square in May. 1990 – Transnistria is unilaterally proclaimed a Soviet republic; the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev declares the decision null and void. 1992 – The 7.7 Mw  Nicaragua earthquake affected the west coast of Nicaragua. With a Ms–Mw disparity of half a unit, this tsunami earthquake triggered a tsunami that caused most of the damage and casualties, with at least 116 killed. Typical runup heights were 3–8 meters (9.8–26.2 ft). 1998 – Swissair Flight 111 crashes near Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia; all 229 people onboard are killed. 1998 – The UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda finds Jean-Paul Akayesu, the former mayor of a small town in Rwanda, guilty of nine counts of genocide. 2009 – The Andhra Pradesh, India helicopter crash occurred near Rudrakonda Hill, 40 nautical miles (74 km) from Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh, India. Fatalities included Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy, the Chief Minister of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. 2010 – Israel-Palestinian conflict: the 2010 Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are launched by the United States. 2013 – The Eastern span replacement of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge opens at 10:15 PM at a cost of $6.4 billion, after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged the old span. 2019 – Hurricane Dorian, a category 5 hurricane, devastates the Bahamas, killing at least five.

Opinion | This Ramadan Showed How France Isn’t Comfortable with Muslim Athletes

— Opinion By Rokhaya Diallo | April 22, 2023

Jaouen Hadjam fights for the ball during the French L1 football match between AJ Auxerre and FC Nantes in France on April 16. (Arnaud Finistre/AFP/Getty Images)


PARIS — In nominally secular France, Muslims who participate in public life always seem to struggle with observing the month of Ramadan in peace.
Nowhere has this been clearer than the world of sports, and particularly football, a point of national pride. But all too often, a national pastime quickly becomes an opportunity for officials to stigmatize Islam, a religion as French as any other.
Ramadan, of course, is the holy month when Muslims are expected to fast every day from sunrise to sunset. But sadly, it’s far more difficult than it should be to follow this command and to play soccer in France.

For starters, Nantes cut its new Algerian defender Jaouen Hadjam because he refused to stop fasting during home games. “There is no controversy,” said Antoine Kombouare, the team’s manager, defending his decision. “It is not a punishment. I set rules. It’s his choice, and I respect it.”
In a separate incident, the French Football Federation (FFF) sent a message to all referees. The FFF said: “It has been brought to the attention of the Federation of match interruptions following the breaking of the Ramadan fast. These interruptions do not respect the provisions of the statutes of the FFF.”
Events such as these put France at odds with our neighbors.
In Britain, for instance, the Premier League allows players to have a quick break for a bite. In Germany, the head of referees announced last year that he would support any club that would allow a Ramadan break. The Netherlands’s championship has also allowed players to break their fast, and no controversy followed when Italy and Spain likewise permitted athletes to eat according to their faiths during a match.

But not in France — France is somehow always the exception.
Once more, our country’s troubled relationship with anything related to the observance of Islam in public life sparks a controversy. “In 2023, a match can be stopped 20 minutes for any number of reasons, but not for a drink of water,” lamented football player Lucas Digne.
France has a peculiar approach to secularism — as we call it, “laïcité.” Under the auspices of our secularism, the FFF bans any “political, religious or ideological” discourse. They even threaten those who don’t respect that ideal with “disciplinary proceedings or prosecution.” But in what kind of society, truly, is drinking water or eating a snack a form of proselytism?
Worst of all, this is not even an accurate reading of France’s brand of secularism, which maintains not only the separation of church and state, but the neutrality of the state. As reiterated by Nicolas Cadène, a laïcité expert, football players, as private citizens who play for teams managed by private companies, do not have to be “neutral.” It would be absurd to insist that they separate themselves from their beliefs once they are on a field, as if the field somehow transforms them into different people or removes them from their individual identities.
This is not the first time the FFF has decided to go against an athlete’s most basic individual rights. The organization, for instance, does not allow female players to wear a hijab on the field, which contradicts FIFA’s global policy of allowing athletes to cover their heads as long as they match the color of their jerseys.

Granted, women wearing the hijab have long been seen as an issue in France. In 2004, France banned “ostentatious” religious signs, understood to include the hijab, in public schools. In 2010, it became the first European nation to ban face coverings — such as the niqab, which covers a woman’s face. And women who wear the headscarf regularly face unwarranted scrutiny in any form of public life.
In recent years, the French athletic brand Decathlon marketed a runner’s hijab only to be attacked by government ministers in French President Emmanuel Macron’s cabinet. Before that, there was the controversy over the “burkini,” a swimsuit that allows observant Muslim women to go swimming in public while also respecting modesty. In the wake of devastating terrorist attacks in 2015 and 2016, the swimsuit was depicted at the time as being tantamount to a national security threat, even by left-wing politicians.
The irony is that each of these cases — wearing a hijab to run, putting on a burkini to swim or playing soccer while observing Ramadan — show Muslims participating in public life, not withdrawing from it. This is not “separatism.” This is citizenship in the truest sense of the word. If only the French elite could understand that.
As Paris is set to host the next Olympic Games in 2024, the stance of a prominent French sports federation does not exactly make the City of Light look the most enlightened — at least when it comes to welcoming athletes from a variety of diverse cultures.