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spann-stann · 2 years

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Setting Blurb: Timeline

· 20XX’s: The Third World War, global societal collapse, and rise of prominent strongmen/warlords.

• 20XX’s-2200′s: Several warlords band together and form the League of Autonomous Communities, a quasi-feudal confederation. The most prominent of the warlords is elected Emperor of the first ruling dynasty. Early members of the First Dynasty further consolidate the power of the Emperor.

• 2200′s-2300′s: Early space exploration, colonization of Luna and Mars and primitive orbital habitats. End of the First Dynasty and the first Great (Servile) Revolt.

• 2300′s: Consolidation of the Second Dynasty and perfection of “The System” that regulates human society.

• 2300′s-2400′s: More advanced orbital habitats constructed, the smallest members of the League (population wise) and breakaway movements are encouraged to settle them.

• 2400′s-2500′s: The Emperors of the Second Dynasty give extensive “land grants” to various prospectors in the Asteroid Belt.

• 2500′s-2600′s: Construction and settlement of the first “modern” habitat in Earth’s orbit, the last Emperor of the Second Dynasty commissions an entire "swarm" of habitats to be constructed.

• 2600′s: End of the Second Dynasty and the second Great Revolt. Rise of the Third (Han-Ashanti) Dynasty.

• 2700′s: Settlement of Venus and the Gas Giants begin. Plans begin to construct a series of habitats near Sol itself.

• 2700′s-2800′s: Increasingly advanced habitats are constructed in droves. More and more Terran citizens of the League migrate to the new habitats. Rewilding of large areas of the Earth begin. Settlements on Mars begin projects to terraform the red planet.

• Early 2800′s: Concerns about intelligent life beyond the Sol System, as well as some groups petitioning for Extra-solar exploration and colonization lead to the conversion of several First and Second Dynasty-era habitats into vessels capable of traveling long distances. The first extra-solar vessels depart the Sol System. Following the departure of the expeditions, the Solar System is invaded by Crystalline aliens.

• Late 2800′s: The Crystalline invaders are defeated in a massive space battle above Saturn. Large portions of the Earth are scarred from the war. Entire communities were forced to evacuate the damaged Earth's surface. Completion of the Heliopolis 1 habitat swarm near Sol. The Emperor and his attendants make their residence there.

• 2900′s: Colonies established in the Alpha Centauri and Sirius systems reestablish contact with Sol. Vessels headed to other nearby stars “disappear” and pave the way for contact with alien life.

• 3000′s: The Third Great Revolt and the end of the Third Dynasty. Rise of the Fourth (All-Altai) Dynasty and expansion of the Heliopolis habitat cluster. Expeditions to the lost colonies’ destinations lead to the discovery of the extra-dimensional “Fay”. Forays into wormhole experimentation lead to the development of microwormholes that allow for communication between the Sol System, long-range vessels, and the fledgling extrasolar colonies.

• 3000′s-3200′s: The Transhuman Wars, a series of rebellions launched by League members that experimented with genetic and cybernetic modifications in secret (in violation of Imperial Law). The destruction the Wars wreaked across the Sol (later renamed Sol Invictus) System, and the resulting unpopularity of the Fourth Dynasty leads to the simultaneous Fourth Great Revolt and War of Restoration.

• Late 3200′s: Rise of the Fifth (Dix-Nipponese) Dynasty and the reconquest of several League territories that revolted against the Fourth Dynasty and declared independence.

• 3300′s-3400′s: Extensive settlement of the Solar Gas Giants begins, with habitats constructed in both orbit and in the atmospheres of the planets. The first self-sufficient extra-solar colonies are inducted as fully-fledged members of the League. Other encounters are made with the Fay as contact with other “lost” expeditions from the early 3000′s are made. More additions are made to the Heliopolis habitats, resulting in an artificial ring (of sorts) that circle Sol Invictus.

• 3500′s: Development of Fast-as-light (FAL) propulsion begins. The last terrestrial League members on Earth have finally migrated to their awaiting habitats in planetary orbit. Earth is made into a giant preserve/pilgrimage site.

• 3600′s: Present day. Fifth dynasty is entering a decline, and the likelihood of another Great Revolt is increasing. Fay-related phenomena also spike as more lost expeditions are discovered.

#setting #my setting #timeline #worldbuilding

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on-noon · 2 years

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WTW Pumpkin Palooza Day#03: Crystal Ball

Crystal Ball - Outline a scene, act, or your entire WIP

So heres the plot i guess (definitly subject to change):

Walvryn and Leofric's mom dies

Walvryn joins the military, the space fighter pilots

Leofric starts to get radicilized into anti-genetic engineering, anti-implants ideas online and makes a video of him cutting out his implant

Walvryn completes training

Leofric starts a breakaway colony, that's not allowed, so there's a war

Walvryn's dad contacts her

Walvryn's ship gets hit, she's really injured (and Leofric now wants to go see her, but can't shes on a military base)

Walvryn turns down the offer to train pilots, and leaves the military, lives with her father and his family for a bit

Walvryn decides she neeeds to spend some time with Leoffric, and so goes to live with him

the war ends i guess? and Leofric's side loses

taglist: @saltysupercomputer

#wtw community #wtw event #archives of flying and falling through war

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ridley-was-a-cat · 3 months

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What I Watched This Week – 1/14 – 1/20

Onimai: I’m Now Your Sister! – Back when this series about a guy turned into a middle school girl by his scientist sister was airing in winter of last year, I watched the first episode, and it evoked the way grown men leered at me when I was in middle school so vividly that I was honestly disgusted. Now that the r/anime awards jury nominated it for Anime of the Year over shows like Pluto, Skip and Loafer, or Tsurune, I wanted to watch it to be a more informed hater. Having seen the whole thing now, I can see why it was popular. It’s wonderfully animated, the character designs are pretty cute, and the cast is entirely likeable. By the end of it, I was even enjoying myself, as it was basically a 2000s-era cute girls doing cute things anime with the occasional dirty joke. However, I do still have a million problems with the way it sexualizes 13-year-old girls, and remain contemptuous of the decision to shortlist it as the best of the year. I don’t begrudge anyone for enjoying the smut they enjoy, but the sexuality on display here is so one-way and nonconsensual that celebrating it with a mainstream award feels like normalizing something ugly. 6/10

Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Similar to Onimai, I watched this after the awards jury nominated a later entry from the series as an anime of the year pick to see what all the hype is for this ridiculous-looking show about horse girls. The horse girls in question are the reincarnations of famous racehorses from our own world, who largely look like normal girls aside from horse ears on their head and horse tails on their backsides, but can run as fast as horses. P.A. Works adapted this from a gacha game, leading to a mix of dozens of cute girl characters wandering in and out of the plot that you get with gacha adaptations, and a story centered on a starry eyed, gung-ho ingenue with big dreams who gets humbled by reality before picking herself back up and succeeding, like you get with P.A. Works originals. It’s fun and all, but it’s a little vapid. All of the story beats were expected and predictable, the idol singing was a little troubling considering how Japanese athletes are currently trying to do away with that sort of thing in women’s sports, and nothing really wowed me. I’ve heard, though, that season two goes extra hard, so I’ll definitely be watching that next. 7/10

Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz – I liked but didn’t love Gundam Wing, but figured I might as well just watch this movie and finish off the series. Taking place a year after the events of the series, as humanity is destroying weapons and mobile suits to show their commitment to peace, a breakaway group tied to Treize Khushrenada’s faction kidnaps Relena and threatens to drop a space colony on Earth. My main complaint about the series was the way it jerked around every four or five episodes replacing the people in power with coup upon coup. Separated into a movie, one of those storylines works a lot better, and it was satisfying to watch the guys come back to stamp out the smoldering embers of the previous war. The animation was mostly 2D cel animation with painted backgrounds, but there was some 3D CGI that was just extremely 1998 and charmingly janky. It’s not one of my favorite Gundam entries, but it was a pleasant enough time. 7/10

#anime #backlist anime #onimai #uma musume #gundam wing #endless waltz

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legendarycollectorengineer · 10 months

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Is Mars in the midst of a 'Planetary Liberation War'?

On April 30, Elena Danaan, a former professional archeologist whose claims of contact with extraterrestrials from the Galactic Federation of Worlds have gained widespread attention, delivered a bombshell report about an ongoing series of military raids on Mars that aim to destroy the bases of a rival extraterrestrial alliance:

the Draconian Empire

the Orion Collective

These extraterrestrial bases were created to suppress the indigenous Mars population, manage the operations of human colonists associated with a German breakaway group called the Dark Fleet (aka Nacht Waffen) and oversee major Earth corporations that have relocated to Mars.

According to Elena, the Galactic Federation has begun helping liberate Mars from the influence of the Draconians and Orions by supporting indigenous Martians with supplies, weapons, and tactical information.

The Federation has also been assisting a local resistance movement that exists in the human colonies that have been established on Mars.

https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_alien/alien_galacticfederations53.htm#Thor%20Han%20Eredyon

#Extraterrestials #Mars #Secret Space Project #Cabal #NWO

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dwa340 · 1 year

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Debate 1: Connection to the Readings

The Paquete Habana Case

The case was originated by two fishing vessels from the Spanish colony of Cuba, the Paquete Habana and the Lola, leaving on separate voyages in April 1898. Both were eventually taken prisoner by merchant vessels that were part of the American blockade of the island, which had been implemented—unbeknownst to the crew—amid escalating tensions between the two nations.

The Paquete Habana decision by the US Supreme Court was a significant one in terms of US acceptance and application of international law. The Court determined that the taking of fishing vessels as spoils of war was against customary international law, which is incorporated into American law and is therefore enforceable.

This can further raise an important question:should international law be not just political but enforceable as well as laws in order to, for instance, evaluate the legality of state action?

It leads to the discussion of customary international law (CIL).

Customary International Law (CIL)

According to Basak Cali, there are two constituent elements of CIL are state practice and opinio iuris (or juris). The generation or evolution of norms of CIL does not require the individual and explicit consent of each state, and under CIL, no state has sole authority to enact new laws or change existing ones; rather, CIL is the result of a collection of states acting collectively and deliberately.

The goal of CIL is to develop normative structures and rules that will limit and assess state behavior, but these structures and rules are ultimately derived from state behavior. Particularly, the creation of CIL runs counter to the fundamental tenets of realist and rationalist scholarship on international relations. Though contrasting with the creation procedure of CIL which states act collectively no matter how powerful or poor they are, the main criticism is that CIL is nothing more than legalese and concerns that it merely serves as a reflection of the methods strong states employ to pressure weak states into acting in accordance with their agendas. This criticism echoes with the debate for the Ukraine War.

The Ukraine War and CIL

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10710

The article discusses Russia's argument on its justifications on international law. Russia claimed it was acting in self-defense of separatist areas in Ukraine's Luhansk and Donetsk regions, which it had recognized as independent states three days before its invasion. But the two areas don't seem to meet the traditional requirements for becoming a state under international law. Legal experts say that the areas can't be considered states because their "independence" was achieved through force, they don't control all of the land they claim to own, and they depend on Russia for economic, financial, political, and military support. Even if the regions could be considered states, observers say that jus ad bellum principles of necessity and proportionality would require Russia to limit its military intervention to actions that protect only these breakaway regions, not a full-scale invasion to "demilitarize" all of Ukraine.

It also connects with the compliance of CIJ. As the textbook points out, CIL is highly communicative, and its primary function in international relations is to analyze legal motivations and assess the legality of state action. Since state action is not always transparent to allow people to understand their motivations, it leaves a blurred area for legal judgment and space for Russia to argue that they haven’t violated international law.

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xtruss · 1 year

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Review: The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire by Ryan Gingeras – ‘Fall of the Sultans’

This Epic Account of Ottoman Decline and the Birth of Modern Turkey is a Tour de Force of Accessible Scholarship

— Fara Dabhoiwala | Thursday 29 December 2022

By the end of 1918, after four increasingly grim years of warfare, revolution was in the air across Europe. Thrones wobbled; rulers abdicated. In the space of months, the great, centuries-old dynasties of the Romanovs, Habsburgs and Hohenzollerns were all toppled from power.

At the eastern edge of the continent lay the vast, ancient empire that the Ottoman sultans had built up since the 14th century. At its height, around 1700, it had stretched across north Africa, Arabia, Mesopotamia and around the Black Sea, also encompassing Greece, the Balkans and the Danube valley, stopping just short of Vienna. But in the course of the 19th century, as its economic and military power declined, many of its outermost lands were lost to conquest or insurrection. Local nationalist movements, and rival colonial powers such as Russia, Britain and Austria-Hungary, stripped away Greece, the Balkans, Bulgaria, Macedonia, the lands around the Black Sea, and all of its African possessions. When the Ottomans sided with Germany in the first world war, the British and French gradually captured all of the Middle East. After the war, humiliatingly, they even occupied Istanbul itself.

Gingeras’s book compellingly charts the chaotic meltdown that followed, until the empire was abolished in 1922 and succeeded by the new nation state of Turkey.

As the territory shrank, its internal politics were increasingly riddled with divisions and conspiracies, as different groups of reformers and revolutionaries struggled for power, and over the fundamental question of what kind of nation they were. Should they regard the great European powers as sources of enlightenment and assistance, or as hostile, rapacious colonisers? And what was the essential character of their own Ottoman people?

The latter question had grown ever more intractable as, decade after decade, vast numbers of Muslim refugees arrived in Anatolia from the empire’s crumbling outer regions, fleeing rapes, mass killings, starvation and forced conversions. Within the first few weeks of the Greek war of independence in 1821, the rebels massacred 20,000 local Muslims. Russia’s conquest of the north Caucasus displaced perhaps a million; the end of the Balkan war in 1913, more than half a million more.

The rise of militant nationalisms on the periphery in turn fanned Ottoman Muslim hostility towards the millions of Christian Armenians, Greeks, Kurds and Arabs who lived in the Turkish heartland. From the 1890s onwards, successive brutal attempts by imperial governments to crush Armenian separatism and root out supposedly “disloyal” populations led to mass killings, culminating in the Armenian genocide of 1915, in which a million or more people perished. Hundreds of thousands of other Orthodox Christians were purged from government service, driven from their homes, forcibly relocated or expelled. For centuries, the empire had been renowned for its religious, ethnic and linguistic pluralism. Now, increasingly, “Turkish” national identity came to be defined in exclusionary terms.

The only way to get a look behind the scenes of our brand new magazine, Saturday. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend.

In May 1919, the allies allowed Greece to seize Izmir (or Smyrna) and its hinterland – ancient Greek territory, but also the main imperial port on the Aegean. The following year, under the Treaty of Sèvres, the sultan would accept various other expropriations, including the principle of new breakaway Armenian and Kurdish states in eastern Anatolia. In disgust at these shameful concessions, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a senior commander, resigned from the Ottoman army in the summer of 1919, and began an organised military and political campaign to oust foreigners from Anatolia.

After the fact, Atatürk and his followers would depict the foundation of Turkey as a triumph of clear-sighted modernisation over the perfidy of western powers and the reactionary forces of the sultanate, which together had weakened the nation by pandering to “minorities” such as the Greeks and Armenians. That it was “natural” for a multi-ethnic empire to be carved up into nation states was also the accepted view in the west.

As Gingeras shows, the reality was far messier, more contingent and frequently tragic. Many leading modernisers were hostile to the nationalist movement, as were different groups of Muslim minorities and conservatives. Even the basic notion that the empire itself should be succeeded by a different kind of polity was, in 1918, far from obvious or widely desired. Exactly how and why it nonetheless came about is a horrifically bloody and complex tale, which Gingeras surveys in a tour de force of accessible scholarship – surefooted, dispassionate and rich in human detail.

• The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire by Ryan Gingeras is published by Allen Lane (£30).

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zaedtalost-writes · 3 years

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SendMeAPrompt - “Bioship” [T for Teen]

Prompt Transcript

Anonymous Said: You are a fighter pilot who is the subject of an underground experiment in which a bioship is created for you to fly. When you are flying it, the ship adapts to your movements like your own body would. However, once in space, the bioship turns against you. [end]

Fic beneath the cut for space-saving (ha!) purposes;

pre-fic apology for it being third-person, but first-person tends to leave me feeling weird due to past experiences, but I hope you can enjoy it all the same!

David Sheridan, top of his class Top Gun, and one of the most “intuitive” pilots Earth had ever seen. So much so, in fact, he’d been one among five who had been chosen for an experimental project using new technology that had been found on the previously-thought-to-have-been-uninhabited planets orbiting Sol.

Unfortunately, due to the outbreak of chaos and, put simply, civil war and colonial breakaways, this project had been halted; the technology, as it had been found, had been left behind by an ancient and evil race that sought to enforce their code of “survival of the fittest” upon the entire galaxy, and thus, this particular project had been---publicly, at least---scrapped by the incoming regime that took a more “humanitarian” stance towards all things sentient.

However, it was thought, as all arrogant humans do, that it could be controlled if the right person were to control it. Thus, as a black project, this project moved forward.

This project had continued quietly on for months until, finally, David Sheridan was brought back to the testing field.

Within the atmosphere of the Earth, this new ship was quick, agile, and just as intuitive as the pilot himself; everything was running smoothly, and for all the ship’s uniqueness, it blended in quite well with other ships of its size and class to the average eye. Perfectly stealthy for in-atmos practice.

Finally, however, it came time to truly test its viability in space: The true test of Sheridan’s mettle and his ability to handle this semi-symbiotic ship.

Taking the ship out of orbit was a breeze, but the trip wasn’t over yet. David still had to make sure that the ship would function the way it was supposed to, and for the moment, that didn’t seem like one of the ship’s priorities.

Why won’t this thing cooperate?, he thought to himself, straining to make the ship turn in ways that had previously been quite easy to do, It’s not like anything has really changed, has it?

But it had.

As he fought with the ship, attempting to force it to bend to his will, he heard it: A scream in his mind from space-spiders black as death and ten times as ugly, a scream that would strike fear into the hearts of even the most brave.

Shadows.

The ship was trying to assimilate him, to create its unholy bond of man and machine, to carry out the mission that its predecessors had started, though they had long-since left the galaxy.

Though this ship was shaped like many others, it was not, and it was going to cause more problems than it could solve.

Maybe... Radio still functions?

His thoughts, though scrambled, managed to stumble upon the first real idea he’d had at solving his problem, and he wasn’t even certain that it’d work.

Sending a distress call, he tried his best to hold on as long as he could before, ultimately, the ship’s erratic behavior---presumably intentionally---forced him to black out, doubtlessly allowing easier connection with his mind.

“Will there be any charges pressed against him, Captain?” David could hear a voice, just beyond the realm of grasp at this moment, though growing ever nearer. A familiar voice: The voice of his father, John.

“No, I don’t think so. Doesn’t seem like this was totally voluntary, after all.” The captain, Daniels by his guess, who he’d had slight run-ins with before, seemed somewhat amused by this ordeal. “The ship’s been destroyed, though that wasn’t easy with your boy here still inside of it. ”

Yet, again, nothingness. He felt heavy and the silence was growing again.

When he finally came to, or rather, when he could gather his thoughts again, he’d been pulled from the ship. Greeted by the disapproving faces of his parents and, realistically, everyone else who deemed themselves even slightly adjacent to being his parents, the awkward, seething silence was thick enough to cut with only the most tenacious of chainsaws.

“What the hell is wrong with you, David?!” John started in on him the moment he opened his eyes, at which point, Daniels officially bowed out and left the room. “There’s a lot of stupid things in this galaxy to play with, but a shadow vessel?”

“John,” David’s mother, Delenn, interrupted softly, offering an expression that suggested more than her words could have managed that David may not have realized what he was in for, and that he certainly needed his rest.

With a sigh, John nodded, pinching the bridge of his nose. “We will talk about this later. I need to go talk about this with the captain, anyway.”

#Send Me A Prompt [Finished]#Bioship #this unintentionally became #wait for it #Babylon 5 related #much to everyone's actual shock #fricken shadows and vorlons man #never can catch a break with their shit #also no this is not meant to be canon at all #this is just fuckery within the realm and universe of that series #because #vorlons and shadows #it made it EASY

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sugeedevelopers · 2 years

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Sugee Paavan has got the attention which it deserves.

Matunga East is a developed neighborhood in Central Mumbai. It's primarily a domestic colony with vibrant retail requests. The position features a smart character with sizable Gujarati, South Indian, Parsi, and Jain community. It's a posh neighborhood with a blend of Builder bottoms and independent casing. The position also houses the Central Excise and Customs Colony. Many of the crucial systems in the area are Hubtown Harmony, Kesar Horizon & Pratibha. Matunga, because of its excellent connectivity entertainment centers, gets new residential and redevelopment projects very often and one of these projects is Sugee Paavan.

A trade residential palace theatre-defines exceptional residing, Sugee Paavan Matunga, comes with faultless perspectives of the megacity, superbly landscaped areas, lifestyles services and of course, fashionable residing spaces. Flats in Matunga at Paavan are courtesy designed to maximize space, herbal mild and air flow with no negotiations. Buyers have the choice to select from 2 and four bhk residences in Matunga. What’s more, the manicured sundeck theater with a sleek sit- eschewal region is the precise area to take pleasure in a night soiree to let loose all of the pressure after a thrilling day. Sugee Developers have performed a first rate quantity of labor in growing the fee of the actual property marketplace and providing us with Sugee Paavan at Matunga East. Flats in King Circle have functions such as, complete period sliding windows, spacious residing region, bedrooms deliberate thoughtfully, grand peak of ground to ceiling, a sea of mild flooding in each room. New projects in King Circle have a substantial range of current length services and centers particularly health centre, vehicle tower parking, spacious corridors, children play region and sitout areas, landscaped terraces, panorama with wealthy greenery, interiors designed for conscious residing, panoramic view of the city. Sugee Paavan flats in Matunga proposes a grand residing affair to its residents. Flats in Matunga provide you with remarkable connectivity to each important facility. Residents of Sugee Paavan Matunga can attain markets, fitness centres or their place of work in some mins. Sugee Paavan Matunga East is near the playground and faculty, a characteristic your infant will cherish. Sugee Developers have Jain Temple at 2 mins distance, King's Circle Railway Station in 2 mins, Matunga Gymkhana, faculty and faculties at five mins distance, each enjoyment vacation spot in 10 mins, Lower Parel and BKC at 15 mins and Airport at 25 mins distance. New undertaking in King Circle is an airy breakaway designed to foster the bonds of your family. Sugee Paavan Matunga is a residential undertaking made to offer a snug and high priced life-style to its residents.

Ref Note - This Article is already publish on site.google.comURL - https://sites.google.com/view/sugeepaavanhasgottheattentionw/home?authuser=5

#flats in matunga

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sportsworlds-blog · 3 years

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Dune review – blockbuster cinema at its dizzying,

Dune review – blockbuster cinema at its dizzying, dazzling best

Denis Villeneuve’s slow-burn space opera fuses the arthouse and therefore the multiplex to make an epic of otherworldly brilliance

Dune reminds us what a Hollywood blockbuster are often . Implicitly, its message written again and again within the sand, Denis Villeneuve’s fantasy epic tells us that big-budget spectaculars don’t need to be dumb or hyperactive, that it’s possible to permit the odd quiet passage amid the explosions. Adapted from Frank Herbert’s 60s opus, Dune is dense, moody and very often sublime – the ape-man bridging the multiplex and therefore the arthouse. Encountering it here was like stumbling across some fabulous lost tribe, or a breakaway branch of America’s founding fathers who laid out the template for a special and better New World.

Spencer review – Princess Diana’s disastrous marriage makes a powerful farce Read more Timothée Chalamet plays Paul Atreides, your archetypal hero, unsure of his powers and questioning the merits of the mountainous task before him. His father, the Duke (Oscar Isaac), has been handed stewardship of the desert planet Arrakis, source of a magical substance called “spice”, which extends life and fuels spaceflight – all the great stuff. But Arrakis, though sandy, isn't entirely deserted. it's home to vast worms which will get up with little warning, and an oppressed people – the Fremen – who see the spice harvesters as exploiters.

If the tale’s real-world relevance wasn't clear enough, Villeneuve has taken the choice to place the local women in hijabs and make the majority of his interiors appear as if North Africa . On their arrival, Paul and therefore the Duke trample the gangplank wearing golden livery, serenaded by bagpipers. they might be a pair of old-style colonials, come to impose civilisation on the natives and fill their coffers with plunder.

But the desert world of Dune features a knack for destroying those that come to tame it, even as the novel itself has claimed some high-profile casualties. Alejandro Jodorowsky tried and did not bring it to the screen. David Lynch’s 1984 version was widely dismissed as a dud, while a TV miniseries that aired in 2000 appears to possess since turned to dust. Even Villeneuve finds himself unable to celebrate a victory just yet. The Dune we've here covers only the primary half the book. Should this crash and burn at the box office, his story looks likely to stay incomplete.

“I’ve been found out to fail,” says the Duke when spice production has stalled and he realises how malign the forces behind him really are. Josh Brolin’s weapons master can’t save him, while Stellan Skarsgard’s bloated, floating baron is plotting a bloody revenge. Paul’s only chance is to embrace his disenchantment and carve out a replacement path, one that leads into the hills. The sand blows and drifts sort of a animate thing . The worms will swallow you whole if given half an opportunity , and poor Paul’s during a hole, wondering what he will do next. “This is merely the start ,” he's assured – and one dearly hopes this is often true.

In the meantime: good heavens, what a movie . The drama is played out with relish by an ensemble cast (Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa) and Villeneuve is confident enough to let the temperature slowly build before the large operatic set-pieces eventually break cover. He has constructed a whole world for us here, thick with myth and mystery, stripped of narrative signposts or maybe much within the way of handy exposition.

He has handed us a movie to map at our leisure and find out on the run: apparently spitting on someone is an gesture of respect, while walking sideways sort of a crab is that the safest thanks to proceed. then we’re on our own, wandering within the desert, wonderfully immersed. It’s a movie of discovery; a call for participation to urge lost.

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queststhroughduality · 1 year

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Kuwinda

#solar system #oort cloud #spiritualbeing #breakaway space colony #space #fantasy #record of lodoss war #theosophy #artificial intelligence #midjourney #ai art #ssp #secretspaceprogram #nachtwaffen #human experience #meditation

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sweatshirtbrigade · 7 years

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World Architecture: A Comparative Review

About the Author

Finbar MacGuffin currently attends the Imperial Academy of the Sciences at Gestalt, majoring in civil engineering and heavy construction. At 16, he is among the youngest students in the history of the program. He was born in citadel at Threshold, capital of the the district of Campbell in the Western Colonies. [Leave this out, Barry; you’re this close to the degree.]

Introduction

Many architectural styles present throughout the planet have parallels to cultures preceding the ancestral Leveler culture as attested in the printed records. In many cases, drawing from these blueprints and designs yielded really remarkably stable structures, often with distinctive profiles and aesthetics that became preferred by a specific modern culture or sovereign state. This paper article provides an overview of the principal architectural styles paradigms adopted by the sovereign states and analyzes their origins and respective strengths.

Meridian

The Meridian Empire known today was formed consolidated from the union of crowns between the two nations entities that once occupied the namesake continent, Gran and Sapiria. The current public and palatial architectural paradigm of the Meridian Empire is derived from the national traditions and industries of the two countries its rich national tradition and industrial prowess, fusing stone, wood, colored glass and metalwork in increasingly ornate artistic designs.

Many cues in Meridian architecture derive from ancestral styles called neoclassical and baroque, one not favored by the Levelers but was well-documented among their predecessors. Public and palatial buildings tended to be ornamented spaces that were vast and cavernous yet understated, with few but lavish furnishings in between.

Flourishes are common in larger buildings and take the form of both organic and geometric ornamentation in the roofs, windows, doorways, and walls. Support structures such as vaults, coffers, pillars, and columns are often just as decorative as they are structural.

Columns, brickwork, and domes are even present in buildings that do not require such structural flourishes, such as skyscrapers built from internal skeletons or steel or reinforced concrete. From the outside, they resemble other, smaller Meridian buildings, albeit with significantly more floors; this adherence to tradition sets Meridian high rise development apart aesthetically from their counterparts in Shinar and the United Federation.

Skyscraper development is mostly restricted to special unobtrusive districts in key commercial cities like Hanlon [I have an apartment there. Spectacular views!], and with few exceptions is seen largely as a novelty rather than a strict necessity. Urban development in Meridian cities typically favored terraced housing, with many neighborhoods comprising of blocked rows of terraced houses homes and shops surrounding manicured garden squares.

Meridian buildings outside of those of the vernacular are rarely arbitrarily built. Urban planning is of immense importance. Well-kept streets, beautiful vistas, and well-directed road and pedestrian traffic serve the key purposes of maintaining social control order

Royal Concord

A continent of immense cultural diversity, Concord had for much of its history been the haven for the surviving ancestral religions, and; their profound impact on the people’s way of life is very prominently displayed in the Royalist school of architecture. The largest and most predominant religion in the region, Islam, is the primary influence of the Royal Concord architectural style.

The architects of Royal Concord used a style that strongly preferred geometric patterns, as attested by the records in their own national libraries. This can be seen is best demonstrated in their preference for carefully laid out complicated patterns in their ornamentation and the near-perfect obsessive geometry of their buildings. Hexagonal and rectilinear plans, elegant arches, and semicircular domed roofs are commonplace.

The chief religion of the Royal Concordians focused on the star Sol, and cities were carefully planned to accommodate and track this star that they may direct worship toward it. Observatories are a frequent feature in many cities and frequently perform double duty as exceptionally large city planning tools.

Theirs was a style focused on creating large, airy spaces, and relied on architectural shapes and features to heat and cool buildings. Stone, brick, and wood were often used in both ornamental and functional tandem. Concordian architecture is especially famous for chiefly utilizes ambient and energy-saving modes of structural temperature control; Concordian homes are relatively cool in summer and warm in winter, needing very little in the way of mechanized central heating or cooling.

Even among wealthy households, Concordian rooms tend to be more compact (palaces have many rooms and often house huge families), with only large common rooms being the few rooms of any considerable size [This is a redundancy], yet are more than likely to be well furnished with both lavish decorations and items of comfort. The sole exception are rooms in public spaces, designed to have plenty of occupants and are thus appropriately sized.

Bufferia Republican Concord

Few examples remain of the vernacular wood cabin constructions that dominated the region known as Bufferia Concord’s separatist western frontier. The Republican government regime that now controls the country region had favored utilizing a unified [and ugly, if you remember what we talked about in class] architectural style to distance their country from the Royalists across the border.

The breakaway Republic of Bufferia republican separatists thus represents a huge leap toward the opposite direction when it came to architecture aesthetic leap backwards. Whereas the Royal Concord style favored a lacy, airy aesthetic, the Bufferian Republican Concordian style preferred large solid-looking hideous [I wanted to keep that in, but the committee didn’t let me] edifices designed to evoke ponderous size. Its chief influences had been Brutalism and Socialist Realism, architectural movements that naturally favored size. and favored by corrupt tyrants.

Much like Meridian and their royalist counterparts, the Republican Concordians put immense value in city planning. For the past 80 years, the Republican regime had been obsessed with maintaining social control through the utilization of public spaces. Communal housing is the norm for the workers in the country outside the higher echelons of government. Homes are small apartments in medium-sized multistory buildings surrounded by large public plazas. Most activities are directed toward common rooms and open public spaces.

Overcompensation is the order of the day in Republican Concordian monumental architecture. Public buildings and open spaces tend to be large, showy affairs. The grandiose imagery created by the monuments is ultimately propagandistic, designed to make individual onlookers seem small and feel insignificant. [I like this!]

United Federation

The United Federation began as a collection of nations rather than a single entity, and thus a variety of styles has emerged across its borders. Prior to the advent of internal unification—the gradual process that marked the creation of the Federation as a functional union—each of the individual cantons of the country favored a specific architectural style.

Pascal, the one with the longest history of bilateral relations with the Meridian Empire, has plenty of Meridian influences, up until sharing many of its aesthetics. Pascalese buildings are frequently beautiful Neoclassical- or Palladian-influenced structures faced with vermilion brick, white stone, or whitewashed clapboard, and crowned with slate tiles.

[Barry, this section seems overly long and could count as a distinct article on its own. If you’re still keen on writing about this, we can grant you a separate article for the journal that focuses on the comparison of Federation and Imperial Meridian architectural aesthetics.]

Other places known for neoclassical influence in architecture is Jejima. Both northern and southern entities prefer a style of Neoclassical- and Baroque-influenced construction called Antillean suited for the continent’s predominant warm weather. Chief differences between the north and south are the materials utilized. Northern buildings are typically made of stone or adobe, and are plastered with a light-colored insulating stucco that is decorated accordingly, whereas southern buildings are built with a stone or brick foundation or ground floor, with subsequent floors being made of breezy, airy wood. A variation of the Antillean used by the Northern Jimans, only completely made of wood, is utilized in the Principality of Barrie.

Exterior and interior ornamentation are both high priority in both Pascalese and Jiman architecture. This is not universally the case in other Federation cultures. Belisarians favor an austere, minimalist vernacular style of plaster and lacquered wood, whereas fired mud brick, flat roofed architecture (a variant of a much older style called Sahelian) is preferred by cantons of the Mainland’s equatorial coast. The Rads typically utilize an architectural aesthetic (fittingly) known as the Federal style, a less ornamented derivative of the neoclassical styles utilized by the Pascalese.

Teslan architecture comes in two forms; semi-permanent tents its people once used before transitioning to a modern, settled state, and the square-shaped desert block houses they built afterward. The distinct shape of the tents still dominates the appearance of modern buildings in the canton and elsewhere.

Unique shapes are also present in the upturned eaves, intricate timber framing, and hipped-gabled roofs of the Poldevians, a style much like the ones utilized by the Belisarians in their temples and feudal strongholds, albeit with much more prominent and distinctive ornamentation. The Poldevians were a martial, imperial culture and originally favored expressions of social order as expressed in architectural and urban planning much like in Meridian, as expressed in the government districts surrounding their imperial cities. Specific styles utilized in Poldevian cities include the linear Zakumen, prevalent in the frigid islands, and the dense Lingnan, which predominate the crowded urban landscapes of its capital in the mainland.

Contrasting this is the vernacular architecture of the Chapekians and the Shires, which favored timber-framed buildings with the same stone or masonary foundations used in Jejima. Timber-framed housing was also popular in areas like Stephensonia and, to a limited extent, the Shires, which have also largely adopted the Palladian and Neoclassical styles used by Jejima and Pascal.

The Federation’s modern architecture, however, is unique in its preference for reflective materials like steel, aluminum, and glass. It is today the most popular and recognizable of Federation architecture, shown through the ubiquity of geometric modern and postmodern styles, reminiscent of large glass shards, visible in all its cities. The Federation had been built on infrastructure, and its gradual move toward less ornamental architectural styles reflects this.

Moreover, the spread of the modern and postmodern styles had been the subject of contention within the cantons itself. While many are happy with the appearance of the structures as is, many others claim that the genericized appearance of the buildings lack both soul and national character. [Spot on!] Many postmodern structures, especially in the Canton of Pascal, have been built at the expense of older traditional buildings. Critics have also lambasted the trends of façadism, a faux-historicist compromise wherein a postmodern building incorporates the restored façade of a demolished traditionalist structure.

Republic of Shinar

Shinar began as a colony of Meridian, and its older buildings reflect the aesthetic influence of the Meridian Empire. This is exemplified by the former Winter Palace at Babel [The traitor’s capital!], once a retreat for the Meridian Imperial family. One of the few remaining Meridian architectural structures in the former colony [Barbarians.], today it serves as both a museum and as the headquarters of the newly opened Meridian Imperial embassy.

Prior to the revolution, the Shinarians were experimenting in wide-scale skyscraper development, utilizing a style called Art Deco. Although this style is hardly unique to the Shinarians [Plagiarists.], it has become so ubiquitous within the country’s densely overpopulated southern megalopolis that it has become a recognizable mark of Shinarian [”]culture.[”]

The southern Shinarian cities are immensely built up overpopulated areas dominated by colossal skyscrapers with many skywalks surrounding them. They are the world’s most crowded densely populated urban spaces, carrying more people per square kilometer than any city before or since. [It’s fine on it’s own, but try to spin this as the bad thing that it likely is.]

The resultant urban canyons and the shadows cast by the skyscrapers and elevated rails and highways that dominate them blot out the sun completely in some places [”Urban planning” my @$$.]. Shinar’s nighttime urban landscapes are dominated by the intense otherworldly glow of multicolored lighting, especially prominent in the lower levels far removed from the old urban core Meridian-built old city.

Barry

Excellent first draft. Review and apply my changes to the initial article, then talk to me again. With a bit of work, we should be ready for the panel defense in two to three weeks’ time.

Yours,

Professor Rosamund Croft, CEng, MIIMMechE Imperial Academy of the Sciences, Gestalt

Citizen in the Service of His Majesty, Frederick III Blackheart, By Grace of the Ancestral Peoples, Emperor of Meridian

#Sweatshirt Brigade #world building #architecture #aesthetics #design #architectural styles and paradigms #nations #propaganda #Character: Finbar MacGuffin #Character: Professor Rosamund Croft #World Building June 2017

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on-noon · 2 years

Note

1, 7, and 19 for the WIP development ask game!

1. What's the log line for your wip?

Walvryn, an exhausted space pilot has to fight against her brother's army.

7. What are the main emotions of this wip?

not good ones. some anger will probably show up, but loneliness and grief might be the main ones

19. Describe the setting of your wip

future! and they have wormholes. Leofric and Walvryn will be from a big city on an out of the way planet, most of the story takes place on a military base, that's a space station or the base on the ground (partly). also Leofric's breakaway colony on a previously unimportant farming planet, but that now is desperately trying to build bunkers on

words written for this ask: 126

total words for motivation experiment: 5941

project worked on: still that story from a prompt. it's over 3k words now

#ask game reply #motivation experiment

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novemberdingo-blog · 6 years

Text

RP Storylines

Ya know I’ve had an RP going for about seven gods damned years now... and holy fuck has it been a ride...

Part 1: In the Beginning

Romance Dawn: kind of just getting to know our characters. Establishing the world...

Here There be Dragons... and Vampires: here’s where he introduced his dragon and stuff and I introduced my idea of vampires, long story short just space furries infected with a virus that makes them dependent on blood.

For a Price: introduced the mayor of the town to his new bodyguard, who was an assassin that failed and ended up working for him. If you can’t beat them, join them. It’s here where two other characters meet, Jenny a Boa, and immagrant from a foreign land is here searching for someone by the name of Urban, a cobra, and ends up living with a family of demons (not bad ones jeez) and decided to stay with them while she searches and falls for one of the family’s sons Micheal.

Part 2: of gods and men

Daughters of Fate: introduced two Ammy, Shi, and the concepts of gods. Which would become a big part. Anyhow Ammy and Shi are twins and the only surviving daughters of the God of Fate, not mentioning their adopted brother, Legionnaire, basically a bunch of souls in one body after some tradegy that Fate has taken in as his own.

Macinations of the Fallen: Ammy and Shi get wrapped up in a plot with the Guardians of Fate, Demi-gods that serve the God of Fate, who were deceived into attacking the others by a Furry-made Fales Fate, in order to gain control of the Book of Fate. In steps the actual God of Fate (their father), and her their mates Luki and Ryder. Who poison the False Fate and kill it.

Redemption: Basically Fate gives his powers to Legionnaire as his successor, the guardians of Fate move on to live their lives, and all is well... after this once of the guardians settles down establishing a family,

Part 3:The Kingodom in the Sky

The Runaway Princess: Jenny, the Boa from before is suddenly one evening visited by another Boa, escorted by a Royal guard, here to take her home. Here t is revealed that Jenny is the Runaway daughter of a foreign kingdom the Aolla kingdom, and her mother has died. Poisoned by an assassin and her father has sent out for her to call her home, she brings Micheal along as he is her mate. Once there the kingdom is in a sense of disarray due to the queens death, the archipelago that makes up the kingdom is distraught with the fact their loving queen has died. They arrive at the The flying city that is the capital of the kingdom, to quite the fancy reception.

Meet the family: here I basically introduce her brothers and sisters. Her father, the guard, all that Jazz.

All Hail the Queen: after the burial and the hunting of the assassin the queen is finally put to rest, in a small quaint village where she was born. Thus Jenny, the middle daughter and most trusted of the kids, is put to the head of this matriarchal kingdom, as the queen. Micheal her king... but deep below in some ruins... all is not well...

Part 4: TheDawnTheDawnTheDawnTheDaw-

False gods: Deep below, in the ruins of the old kingdom, an explorer and Ace, a child of one of the previously mentioned guardians of Fate. Starting hearing whispers, following the whispers they find a machine, a huge, glowing clockwork mechanism, spinning constantly, and it speaks to the Demi-god Ace. Telling him that to release it, to give the Dawn to those below... the machine freezes and unfolds to reveal a fox, with intricate glowing marks on him. A false god. That was the downfall of the previous kingdom, but the savior of the current.

There Down below: after waking up, Dawn, the fox and false God of Fate is named by the family Ace is from. After venturing back to where they woke Dawn, he can hear something below, without warning the floor falls out from below them and they plummet, far, far below. To a sea another archipelago of islands. Deep below the surface. A island chain that borders with colony of Hell itself, and the kingdom of tigers that holds them at bay. Here Dawn makes his way to the frigid south of the ocean, where he passes through two gates with massive statues overlooking them, (kinda like the ones from the never ending story) and is bestowed true godhood by a unknown figure. After returning to the surface world, the kingdom above finally unite with their ancestors in the kingdom below.

part 5: Deadmans Gun

The Old war: basically, Alex, one of the space vampiresz explains to his new lover, one of the dragons from the opening part. details a 1000 year war that they had with a species of space dragon, and how they had to bring other species that were oppressed under the space dragons into an alliance to win, this establishing the Vampiric Empire, of space vampires. He then goes on about how the family he loved and had was murdered one night by assassins. And he returned to earth to simply live out his life in solitude. And it was a miracle that he found his former wife and kids alive due to the empire miracles all these years later.

What once Slept: character I never mentioned are deployed to spy on possible targets for a mass killer, someone who has evaded the vampiric empires police and has been killing high officials, when they arrive at the next target hey go undercover. When the attack happens, sirens blare as the assassin misses their target but gets the information she wanted from them, she turns and leaves killing all who try and stop her, including one of his characters (a non-vampire), I left him dying and bleeding on the ground from a punctured lung, as the assassin turns and wanders out, the others to busy trying to save his life. In the end. He was turned vampiric to save him, much to his own disdain.

The sins of the empire: the doctor they were sent to guard, finally tells them what he told the assassin, this was all about how the empire had killed Alex’s family and taken his lover, and cloned her, over and over against her will so they would never have to lose their best assassin, Katherine, in stasis for thousands of years being cloned she finally woke up due to a mistake of the staff, pissed off. She went on a rampage, killing the lab staff down to the last one, and then beginning her hunt, she then hunted down all those responsible for taking away her family. And killing any clones of herself she can find.

The Lucid Dream: the team catches up to her on earth, though any assassination attempt she was going to try on her clone here (the ones Alex had foun years later) was stopped, because she ran right into a big dragon, Chaos, Alex’s new lover previously mentioned. After a emotional exchange, she basically tells Chaos that she’ll leave everything as it is and leave, knowing that he survived is enough, but to never tell him about terrible fact that his family, the ones he found, are just clones, not the real thing. She then leaves to go start her new life. A life free of the empire, of war, of it all.

Part 6: Redemption of a Demon

Welcome to hell: this part pretty much details the hierarchy of hell, their feud with angels, and it’s here I introduced Aisling Bloodletter, a daemonette and survivor of a disgraced clan, the only survivor of a clan that tried to steal the power of the devil himself. She was a child and was spared. Knowing that she would not try the same. Now she seeks to rebuild her clan, and after proving herself to the lord of hell she is granted the ability to rebuild her clan. Choosing many would be slaves as her family she mothers children, and begins to rebuild it.

Sins of our Fathers: here it details what exactly her father did, and connects it to his (my RP Partners) family of demons from the beginning who were put to stamp out her clan and purge them. The children she mothered have grown and are beginning to bring honor back to her clans name.

City of Outcasts: it is here I introduced a City of nephilim, a city that acted as a hub of sorts and a safe haven for demons and angels, the nephilim are children of demons and angels, and more powerful than either, but the leader of the city Loken, does not want to war, only defend himself and his people. And fend of attacks from both demons and angels.

Part 7: Shadow of War

Drums: deep below, in the sea beneath the Aolla empire attacks from the breakaway colony of hell ramp up, the tiger kingdom and the Aolla Kingdom fiend them off with ease but the ferocity of them surprises everyone... and within hell, Aisling can feel something her entire family can feel the beat of drums in the distance. Something is going on within that breakaway colony...

Requiem: breaking into the colony Aisling and a Rain, her second in command in her revived clan break into a mosoleam in the middle of the colony. There the find her Father Tomb, open, and she gets almost killed by her revived father who was both proud by the status she had achieved, and angry that she took his clan from her and sought to take back his place by bloodshed but if it wasn’t for the intervention of Legionaire, acting as the new god of Fate... changing Aislings Fate, she would have died there. After escaping Rain and Aisling report to the lords of hell what exactly has happened, and what will happen. Her father has risen from his grave by unknown means. And he will come for her...

That is where our story is now. Aisling and the others await her fathers next move... what will happen... well it’s being written one day at a time...

There is a lot in the RP that has been taken from games, other sources of media, but a lot of it is original... and yes every character is furry, yes I am a furry.

#furry #roleplay

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iuniversallystudentperfectionme · 4 years

Link

Last year October, about a week after the nation space that we have generously agreed to refer to as Nigeria, celebrated her 59th independence from colonial rule, I found myself at the Athens Democracy Forum, Athens being of course that former nation-state that claims the honour of pioneering a system of governance that we all today celebrate under the name – democracy.

I have no intention of challenging Athens on her claims. What is of note in that claim is simply that the Greeks consider this system of socio-political arrangement of such primal validity, despite numerous challenges and setbacks, that they continue to flaunt it at the rest of the world as the ideal to which all of humanity should aspire.

What is even more striking is that much of the rest of the world continues to fall in line, join in the exercise, and propagate its virtues.

Two weeks after that conference, I was back on this soil of our own continent on an allied interrogation of history generated concepts. The venue of the second encounter was Dar-es-Salaam, the occasion, the bi-annual Conference on African philosophy.

My remarks today derive largely from issues raised by those earlier exchanges. There is a coincidence of timing and relevance for our present gathering here, both thematically and historically, a coincidence that almost qualifies as a gift of Providence, since all three encounters are geared towards the historic search of humanity for existential choices based on the exercise of collective wisdom.

I do not speak of wisdom as an abstract pursuit, a lofty aspiration that exists in a rarefied realm of its own, but wisdom as the very manifestation of the human ability to seize both phenomena and experience by the throat and squeeze them of any lessons they have to offer us in amelioration of human existence.

That claim is justified by the very theme of this encounter: NEVER AGAIN. It is not the first time most of us here have heard that expression. It is, unfortunately, also not the last time such an exhortation will echo in human caucuses, structured and/or casual, organized or improvised.

It is both sentiment and pragmatism, an admission of an error, of an anomaly, of a less than desired expectation of ourselves, what we believe we are capable of, what deficiencies in judgment we consider we are capable of transcending.

It is, to sum up, indication of our capacity for vision, a refusal to be stuck in a mode of thought that discountenances the possibilities of human transformation, of possibilities of transcending present limitations.

That resolve may emerge from individual or collective experience. Let me bring it down to the most mundane, accessible level. Let us say, in a foolhardy moment, we have exceeded the dictates of prudence in spending, overshot one’s budget.

What do we swear when the moment of realization descends? Never Again! Or perhaps – a more literally sobering experience – who still recalls his or her first hangover the morning after a night of over-indulgence? The very first words that emerge in that first flush of sobriety? Again, the two words: Never Again!

The trouble of course is that humanity tends to forget such lessons too soon, and will be found pursuing the same course of action again, all over again and again.

We become inured to what we consider our capacity for recovery, even boast of our increasing resistance to the effects of the night before.

However, we know only too well that, side by side with that seeming capacity for recuperation, there is a steady erosion of the physical constitution that comes from excess. Sooner or later, the liver – among other vital organs – will take its revenge.

That latter analogy is quite deliberate. Power intoxicates and, in that drunken state, human beings become mere statistics. Some people remain in a drunken stupor for years, alas, intoxicated by the sheer redolence of power and cheap access to the instruments of force.

And so I evoke that analogy to bolster those sober and anxious voices that warn, from time to time, that no nation has ever survived two civil wars.

The claim that no nation has ever survived two civil wars may not be historically sustainable but, it belongs to that category of quest that I have referred to as the pursuit of wisdom – in his case, we may equate it with the wisdom of not holding a bank note over a flame just because the Central Bank claims that it is fireproof. Or attempt to hold an exposed electric wire, just because NEPA is notorious for electrical incapacitation.

Correspondingly, our analogy is sternly directed as a mirror to those contrary voices which boast: “I have fought a war and put my life on the line to keep this nation one, and I am ready to do it all over again.”

That bravado, by the way, conveniently overlooks the reality that a parallel, often more devastating toll in human lives and lingering trauma is also exacted from untrained, unprepared non-combatants, burdening the future with a more unpredictable, indeed even irreversible hangover.

And that introduces us conveniently to my second conference in Tanzania for which my contribution was titled: WHEN IS A NATION? – with the sub-title, Power, Volition and History’s Reprimand. I believe you have begun to grasp the connection.

If not, let me remind you that Tanzania was one of the five nations that recognized the breakaway Republic of Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War.

Finding myself in that setting, among products of a very special historical formation – pre- and immediately post-colonial African - despite variations in detail, if was an opportunity to interrogate what, if any, could be considered a philosophical or ideological extract from a human event that consumed – it is estimated – two million and a half lives within two years. One of the preoccupations of philosophy is of course to immerse its processes in what actually makes humanity – tick.

So, there we were in Tanzania, a crucial player in the Nigeria – note, I do not say Biafran but – Nigerian tragedy.

Regarded as a progressive nation, with a track record of support for liberation causes both within the continent and outside – such as the Palestinians struggle for nationhood - serving as a front-line buffer against apartheid South Africa and thus incurring punitive attacks from that racist enclave, Tanzania nonetheless chose to go against the tide of opinion within the then Organization of African Unity.

She recognized a secessionist state at a time when such a position was not only unfashionable, but was even regarded by many as an act of race treachery, a rupture of the not-for-discourse, not-for-consideration political ‘absolute’ named: African Unity.

Yes indeed, that was the conjure word: African Unity. Unity as in non-fragmentation, non-divisible, was a proposition in transcendentalism, an Absolute.

A modern continent, offspring of multiple rapes – or indecipherable trading treaties - and externally imposed distribution lines, was to be weaned on the milk of a foster mother named – African Unity

So let us consider the implications of that collective position.

In objective terms, what exactly was it? A historic irony, I propose. We are introducing here a very plain issue that goes to the heart of national coming-in-being of any people, that issue being a polarity between volition and – dictation.

Perhaps you will now admit the relevance of my commencing reference to that other conference that occupied itself with the ancient socio-political system known as – democracy.

The Yoruba have a proverb for that implicit lesson in contradictions - it goes: won ni, amukun, eru e wo, o ni at’isale ni. Translation: The knock-kneed porter was told: that load on your head is skewed. His reply was – ah no, the problem lies at the base, at the beginning, not, in the consequence.

And so, the question is thrown open as a fundamental proposition: is democracy itself not vitiated, not a sham where the roots of coming-in-being of a people spell dictation, coercion as opposed to – choice? Volition? Consent and Participation? Those are the building blocks of Democracy.

Democracy is manifested in act, not in the rhetorical flourish. That is the irony to which I refer, an irony that commenced when the Organization of African Unity adopted the very protocol of the inviolability of national boundaries – that is, the sacrosanctity of given boundaries, dictated, imposed, arbitrary and artificial boundaries, and its members resolved to defend those boundaries to the last drop of our blood.

Now, a pause here is mandated. Tomorrow, I know that I shall open the pages of the newspapers and read that Wole Soyinka has advocated the breakup of Nigeria. One reporter will deduce that from an underlying principle I have just enunciated, jot it down in his or her notebook, and others will copy that conclusion verbatim.

Too bad for the nation’s Intelligence Quotient – known as I.Q. I have long given up, and will proceed – as I always have – on my own terms, with my uninterrupted dialogue with history, and in my own mode of expression.

Those who wish to catch up can do so in their own time. My extract from that Civil war remains what it always was - a simple self-interrogatory: Have we been had? Absolutes tend to resound with a clarity, an exclusionist proceeding that does not tax the brain.

Absolutes readily corral even millions into a comfort zones of unquestioning receptivity, simply from fear, or even just from the way they sound, not for the implications of their content.

Absolutes however remain what they are – glorified sound-bites such as: The sovereignty of this nation is non-negotiable. Yes, what exactly does that mean? We know what it meant for the first-comers at the helm of affairs in the Organization of African Unity.

It meant: to each his own, as exists at this moment of history. This is a club of leaders, let us keep things the way they are by respecting one another’s turf. No trespassing. No adjustment of givens. No agitation. No negotiation.

Again, I warn against reductionism. I do not belittle the passion, the sincerity, the dedication to the liberation of the continent from external control as diligently pursued by a number of those leaders.

I do not belittle the ideological determinism of a handful, the will to transform, to catch up the rest of the world and redress the history of enslavement – both by the Eastern and western worlds, the humiliating racism for which we are on the receiving end, even till today.

I do not for a moment underestimate the self-sacrifices and `I do not ignore the vision of a few individual leaders.

I do insist however that that protocol of sacrosanctity of colonial boundaries was a self-serving power mechanism of internal control and domination that had nothing to do with a structured, programmatic concern for the African masses who bore the brunt of effects of colonialism and its later, camouflaged successors – including internal colonialism.

And thus I continue to ask: Have we been had? Are we still being well and truly had? Do we continue to lay ourselves wide open to be cheaply had? Well then, consider the state of the world, at that very time that the conference in Tanzania was holding, just last October.

Let us take a look over the continental wall and instruct ourselves. That conference was taking place, sixty years of modernity after the Nigerian civil war, simultaneously with an ongoing upheaval in a distant continent, Europe, in a former colonial power, Spain.

Yes, that power, Spain, was embroiled in a secessionist move by a province known as Catalonia. The initial, dramatic proclamation took place in Catalonia’s own provincial parliament earlier that year, echoing that other allegedly retrogressive move thousands of miles away on this very continent, in this very nation, in a region abutting the Bay of Biafra – that is, history was being replayed a full sixty years after the precedent that was set in the Bay of Biafra.

In between of course, need I remind you of the dismantling of the monolith known as the Republic of Soviet Unions – with the nearly forgotten acronym of USSR?

Hindsight or foresight, irrespective of what triggers off recollection, it is all part of our humanity to call history to account from time to time, and most especially in those moments when its obscured fault-lines are exposed. And so we proceed to an even closer scenario – closer that is, even intertwined with our own history as former colonials – the United Kingdom, a fellow Commonwealth nation.

I refer to the attempted breakup of that once colonial power whose policies in the first place certainly contributed to a violent, devastating resolution on the Nigerian testing ground. The Brexit movement is taking place within a loose organization, so one can claim it is not quite the same as that ugly word, “secession”.

However, Brexit did lead, with remorseless logic, to a renewal – repeat, renewal of the calls for Scottish independence. It is a recurrent agitation that actually resulted in a referendum in 2014 – just six years ago - after a motion in the Scottish Parliament.

That motion, like Brexit, obtained the assent of the union government in Westminster. The UK government under David Cameron, found that it had to campaign hard to swing the votes for a “No”.

Some here may recall that even Lawn Tennis had a cameo role in that drama since the referendum took place close to the Olympics, and collateral anxieties built up – would Andy Murray compete as a Scot, or as a Brit? If only such weighty issues of governance and nation-being could be reduced to benign proportions such as the uncertainties of the game of tennis!

On a personal note, let me reveal here that I was in that very parliamentary house not long after the failed referendum where I addressed the International Society on European Enlightenment. It gave me the greatest pleasure to sympathize with members of the Scottish parliament on their abortive act of secession.

Closer home of course we have undergone the break-up of Ethiopia and Eretria, after decades of human wastage. There is of course the resolution of a Sudanese separatist uprising in negotiated divorce. When – or if at all - will a verdict be objectively delivered on whether this was ‘one giant step forward for humanity’, or one harrowing step for socio-political retrogression? What matters for those of us committed to a humanist mode of thought is this: a direction was finally agreed upon in favour of the survival of Sudanese humanity, the termination of its decades-long agony, and the annulment of the unwritten pacts of mutual decimation.

Let my comments during a eulogy to our own home grown secessionist leader, Odumegwu Ojukwu, who was once violently excoriated, later absorbed, after his military defeat, into the bosom of a “united” family – let those comments stand for some of the wider implications that derive – not to all, necessarily – but indisputably from some such events of dubious associations, even of the most benign. My eulogy went as follows:

“On that day, May 30, of the year 1967, a young, bearded man, thirty-four years of age in a fledgling nation that was barely seven years old, plunged that nation into hitherto uncharted waters, and inserted a battalion of question marks into the presumptions of nation-being on more levels than one.

That declaration was not merely historic, it re-wrote the more familiar trajectories of colonialism even as it implicitly served notice on the sacrosanct order of imperial givens. It moved the unarticulated question: “When is a nation?” away from simplistic political parameters – away from mere nomenclature and habit – to the more critical arena of morality and internal obligations.

It served notice on the conscience of the world, ripped apart the hollow claims of inheritance and replaced them with the hitherto subordinate, yet logical assertiveness of a ‘people’s will’. Young and old, the literate and the uneducated, urban sophisticates and rural dwellers, civilian and soldier – all were compelled to re-examine their own situating in a world of close internal relations and distant ideological blocs, bringing many back to that basic question: Just when is a nation?

Throughout world history, many have died for, but without an awareness of the existential centrality of that question. The Biafran act of secession was one that could claim that a people had a direct intimacy with the negative corollary of that question. Their brutal, causative circumstances – I refer to the massacres, the deadly hunts – could provide only one answer to the obverse of our question, which would then read: When is a nation not? In so doing, he challenged the pietisms of former colonial masters and the sanctimoniousness of much of the world. He challenged a questionable construct of nationhood, mostly externally imposed, and sought to replace it, under the most harrowing circumstances, with a vital proposition that answered a desired goal of humanity – which is not merely to survive, but to exist in dignity.

Even today, many will admit that, in that same nation, the question remains unresolved, that more and more voices are probing that question – when is a nation? – from Central Africa through India/Pakistan to Myammar and the Soviet Union – enquire of Cherchnya and the siege of Beslan!

Innumerable are the casualties from contestations of that facile and unreflective proposition that whatever is, is immutably ordered, which confers the mantle of divine ordinance on those spatial contrivances, called nations, even as they continue to creak at the seams and consume human lives in their millions.

Such arch-conservationists, sometimes imbued with a high sense of mission, see only a sacrosanct order in what was never accorded human approbation, as if it is not its very human occupancy that confers vitality on any inert piece of real estate.

Julius Nyerere was too astute not to know that his gesture of recognition was futile. That leaves us one extract – arguably others, but I wish to fasten on just one – symbolic.

Translated into the language of propulsive thinking, impelled to extract a lesson from an unrelenting cycle of human wastage, that lesson would read: Humanity before nation. Indeed, Nyerere’s justification of his action implied as much. And, when we finally met, during a North-South conference that took place in Lisbon after his retirement, at a critical phase of the anti-apartheid struggle, he reaffirmed the rationale behind his decision.

Well, it does not matter whether r or not that alone constituted the rationale for his position – we know he was a politician, and political motives are predictably multiple and interchangeable. What does matter for us today, is the imperative of a ‘revisionist’ attitude, even as a purely academic exercise. For example, ask ourselves questions such as: What price ‘territorial integrity’ where any slab of real estate, plus the humanity that work it, can be signed away as a deal between two leaders – as did happen between Nigeria and the Cameroon.

You seek an answer to the claims of territorial integrity? Ask the fluctuating refugees on Bakassi islands just what is the meaning, for them, of ‘territorial integrity’?

Again, I feel obliged to emphasize that this has nothing to do with whether or not one side was in the wrong or right, nothing to do with accusations of a lack of vision, of pandering to, or resisting the wiles and calculations of erstwhile colonial rulers, or indeed, taking sides in a Cold War that turned Africans into surrogate players and the continent into prostrate testing ground for new weaponry.

No, we merely place before ourselves an exercise in hindsight – with no intention however of denying credit to those who did exercise foresight - we propose that the loss of two million and a half people, the maiming and traumatization of innumerable others and devastation on a thitherto unimaginable scale, by a nation turned against itself even as it teetered on the edge of modernity, provokes sober reflection.

That’s all. Sober reflection. A re-thinking that is unafraid, especially as such scenarios, considered in some cases even worse, more brutish, have since followed. Need one recall Rwanda’s own entry into that contest in morbid pathology, one that surpasses the Biafran carnage when comparatively assessed in duration and population parameters? All remain active reminders to haunt Africa’s collective conscience – the existence of which, I know, is an optimistic presumption - and appears to elude the ministrations of politicians and/or ideologues, or indeed theologians.

I propose that we borrow a leaf from our brothers and sisters in the Diaspora. I have no qualms in reminding this, or any other Nigerian audience that, such is the ingrained slave mentality of the contemporary progeny of those who sold those exiles into slavery in the first place, that some in this nation actually consider it a duty, even honour, to take up cudgels on behalf of the denigrators of our own kind, of our own race.

Thus, they proceed to insult those who respond in their own personal manner to such racists, however powerfully positioned and no matter where on this globe – but let that pass for now. My intention is to jog your memories regarding that spate of serial elimination of our kind – the African-Americans - by white police in the United States at that very time, an epidemic that merely actualized the racist rantings of the current incumbent of the White House as he powered his way to the coveted seat in the last United States elections.

The African-Americans, tired of being arbitrary sacrificial lambs, the victims of hate rhetoric, went on nation-wide protest marches, carrying placards that read: Black Lives Matter.

Adopting that simple exhortation enables us to include the millions of victims of failed or indifferent leadership on this continent who are more concerned with power and its accruements, who see the nation, not as expressions of a people’s will, need, belonging, and industry, but as ponds in which they, the bullfrogs of our time, can exercise power for its own sake. It is they who militate against ‘nation’, not – I shall end on this selective note – not the products of migration from purely nominal nation enclaves who perish daily along the Sahara desert routes, who drown in droves in the Mediterranean.

They are the ones who confronted the question with, alas, a fatalist determinism. They asked themselves the question: When is a Nation? And the answer of those desperate migrants is clearly read as: not when we left where we called home! As long as our humanity opts for unmarked graves in the Sahara desert, or in the guts of the fishes of the Mediterranean, their answer remains to haunt us all.

Yes, indeed, let us internalize that Africa-American declaration as statement of a living faith, an expression of our humanity that may compel leadership to pause at critical moments of decision, thereby earn ourselves some space where we can re-think those bequeathed absolutes that we so proudly spout, gospels of sacrosanctity, pre-packaged imperatives or questionable, often poisoned “truths” that incite us to advance so conceitedly towards the dehumanization, and decimation of our kind.

Any time that leadership, on whichever side, is about to repeat yet again the ultimate folly of sacrificing two and a half million lives on the altar of Absolutes, any absolute, we should borrow that credo, paint them on prayer scrolls, flood the skies in their millions with kites and balloons on which those words are inscribed:

African Lives Matter!

Wole Soyinka Column Opinion AddThis : Original Author : SaharaReporters, New York Disable advertisements : from All Content https://ift.tt/2RhQNE5

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