#newly appointed ministers to
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नवनियुक्त मुख्यमंत्री विष्णु देव साय को नागरिकों ने दी बधाईं
रायपुर, 11 दिसम्बर 2023
छत्तीसगढ़ के नवनियुक्त मुख्यमंत्री विष्णु देव साय से आज यहां राजधानी रायपुर स्थित राज्य अतिथि गृह (पहुंना) में प्रदेश के विभिन्न जिलों से आए पंचायत एवं नगरीय निकाय के प्रतिनिधियों, आम नागरिकों ने सौजन्य मुलाकात कर नई जिम्मेदारी मिलने पर उन्हें बधाई एंव शुभकामनाएं दी। मुख्यमंत्री साय ने शुभकामनाओं के लिए आम नागरिकों का धन्यवाद ज्ञापित किया। इस अवसर पर जशपुर विधायक रायमुनी…
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Devendra Fadnavis | Departments will be handed over to newly appointed ministers in Maharashtra soon: Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis
Devendra Fadnavis | Departments will be handed over to newly appointed ministers in Maharashtra soon: Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis
Nagpur: Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said on Saturday that newly appointed ministers in the state would be given their portfolios soon. He also assured that the government would soon compensate the farmers of the state for the damage caused to the crops due to heavy rains.
Talking to reporters at the airport here, Fadnavis also congratulated Chandrashekhar Bawankule on…
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A cross-partisan group of MPs voted to kill a bill Wednesday that would have allowed parliamentarians to opt out of swearing an oath of allegiance to King Charles — a victory for monarchists eager to preserve the Crown's standing in Canada.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's cabinet and most Liberal and Conservative MPs on hand voted down the private member's bill, while Bloc Québécois and NDP MPs joined some members from the two largest parties — many of them Quebec-based — to vote in favour of legislation that would have diminished Charles's role in Parliament. The final result was 113-197.
The vote keeps Canada's Constitution as originally written. Section 128 requires that every newly elected or appointed parliamentarian swear they will be "faithful and bear true allegiance" to the reigning monarch.
Under Canada's founding document, a member cannot legally assume his or her seat in Parliament until they've taken that oath. [...]
John Fraser is the president of Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada and a prominent monarchist. He has called the legislation "a stupid idea."
He said Canada's longstanding link to the Crown, an institution above the whims of partisan politics, is something to celebrate.
Continue Reading.
Tagging: @newsfromstolenland, @vague-humanoid
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1st press-conference of newly appointed Minister of Propaganda
Facial expressions are priceless. I also like da guy in the bottom left corner who appears like "whaaaaa.."
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The newly appointed chancellor is now telling the Prime Minister to resign??? What a fucking clown show.
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Hermann Goring
This is Hermann Goring, the Reich minister for Aviation, timeline:
1893: He was born in Rosenheim, 12 January.
1895: Albert, his younger brother, was born.
1904: He was sent to boarding school, where the food was poor and the discipline was harsh.
1909: He was sent to a military academy at Berlin Lichterfelde, from which he graduated with distinction.
1912: He joined the Prince Wilhelm Regiment (112th Infantry) of the Prussian army in 1912.
1913: His father died.
1913: He was admitted to officers' school.
1914: The First World War began.
1914: He served with his infantry regiment in the region of Mülhausen, a garrison town just a mile from the French border.
1915: He passed to the newly formed Luftstreitkräfte, the air force of the German Empire.
1915: He and his friend Loerzer were assigned as a team to FFA 25 in the Crown Prince's Fifth Army. They flew reconnaissance and bombing missions.
1915: He received the Iron Cross first class.
1918: When Manfred Von Richthofen, the legendary Red Baron, died Goring succeeded him as his successor.
1918: Highly decorated, he was also awarded the medal for valor Pour le Mérite, the highest German military decoration at the time.
1918: The First World War ended.
1920: He met his first wife, Carin von Kantzow.
1922: Göring went to Munich to study political science at university.
1922: He met Hitler and he joined the Nazi Party.
1923: He was given command of the Sturmabteilung (SA) as Oberster SA-Führer
1923: He married Carin.
1923: He take part in the failed Munich Putsch, and he was wounded in the groin.
1924: He and his wife visited Rome, passing through Florence and Siena. Göring met Mussolini.
1927: Thanks to a general amnesty, he and his wife were able to repatriate.
1928: He was elected deputy to the Reichstag.
1931: His wife died.
1931: He was sent on a mission to the Vatican, where he met Pope Pius XI.
1932: He was elected president of the Reichstag and from that position supported Hitler's bid for chancellor.
1933: He was one of the main actors in the Reichstag fire, used by the Nazis to eliminate any opposition.
1933: He was appointed Minister-President of the Free State of Prussia.
1933: He created the Gestapo.
1933: Adolf Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor.
1933: He was appointed minister for aviation.
1933: He was appointed General der Infanterie by President von Hindenburg.
1933: He built his home called Carinhall in honor of his first wife.
1934: He granted control of the Gestapo to the SS.
1934: He was one of the main instigators of the Night of the Long Knives together with Himmler.
1934: He was appointed Reich Minister for Forestry.
1935: He married his second wife Emmy Sonnemann.
1935: He founded the Luftwaffe.
1936: He was appointed Reich Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan.
1936: He also became responsible for the plan to confiscate the assets of German Jews, which was supposed to finance the rearmament of Germany.
1938: His only child, Edda, was born.
1938: With the help of Himmler's Gestapo, he plotted first against von Blomberg and then with his successor, von Fritsch, causing them both to fall
1938: He played an important role in the Anschluss, the union between the Third Reich and Austria.
1939: He created the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Berlin, with the task of promoting the departure of Jews from all German territories, and placed it under the direction of Heydrich.
1939: Hitler designates him as his successor.
1939: The Second World War began.
1940: Göring was given a renewed mandate to direct the "Four Year Plan" for the next four years, which made him responsible for the war economy.
1940: By a decree on 19 July , Hitler promoted Göring to the rank of Reichsmarschall des Grossdeutschen Reiches (Reich Marshal of the Greater German Reich), a special rank which made him senior to all other army and Luftwaffe field marshals.
1940: He gave directives for the plunder of the occupied territories, mainly France.
1941: It was Göring who gave, on Hitler's behalf, the order to prepare a "final solution to the Jewish problem" to Reinhard Heydrich.
1945: He was arrested by the Allies.
1946: He was tried at the Nuremberg trials.
1946: He committed suicide to avoid execution.
Sources:
Wikipedia: Hermann Goring
Military Wiki: Hermann Goring
❗❗I DON'T SUPPORT NAZISM, FASCISM OR ZIONISM IN ANY WAY, THIS IS AN EDUCATIONAL POST❗❗
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Hanukkah candles in Poland’s parliament were lit again on Thursday after a far-right lawmaker used a fire extinguisher to put them out earlier in the week in an incident that caused outrage.
On Tuesday, Grzegorz Braun of the Confederation party took a fire extinguisher from a wall in the lobby of the parliament and walked over to the Hanukkah candles, creating a cloud of white powder that forced security guards to rush those present, including children, out of the area.
The candles had been lit as part of an annual celebration of the Jewish holiday.
Afterwards, Braun took to the podium in the chamber, where lawmakers had been debating a policy speech by newly appointed Prime Minister Donald Tusk, describing Hanukkah as “satanic” and saying he was restoring “normality.”
On Thursday, as the candles were relit, onlookers, including President Andrzej Duda and a crowd of lawmakers, including the speakers of the two houses of parliament, Szymon Hołownia and Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska, heard that tolerance had won.
“In Polish and Jewish history, we will always light the candles again,” said Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich. “You cannot extinguish us because we stand together.”
Rabbi Sholem Ber Stambler of Chabad House Warsaw said he had seen an “enormous wave of tolerance” over the past two days.
As he sang a Hanukkah song, Ber Stambler then began to light the candles before others joined in.
Parliament speaker Hołownia excluded Braun, who is known for his pro-Russian and anti-European Union views, from the sitting on Tuesday and informed prosecutors about his actions.
Braun will also lose half of his salary for three months and all parliamentary expenses for six months as a punishment.
The Confederation party, which tried to focus mainly on economic issues and criticism of the extent of Poland’s support for Ukraine during its campaign for the October elections, has suspended Braun.
However, the party’s co-leader, Krzysztof Bosak, is facing calls that he be dismissed from his position as deputy speaker after he failed to stop Braun from addressing the chamber following the incident.
The New Left party has submitted a motion that he should be fired from the role.
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The Irish Famine was absolutely not a genocide please read a book.
You’re talking to a former history major & current librarian…
In 1948 the United Nations Genocide Convention defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group."
Acts that can be considered genocidal include:
1. killing members of the group
2. causing them serious bodily or mental harm
3. imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group
4. preventing births
5. forcibly transferring children out of the group.
Of course the intent part is difficult to establish, there rarely is a smoking gun of mustache-twirling men writing in official documents they want to induce mass-death just because that typically is frowned upon in polite society and these are good Christian, civilized men running the 19th century's divinely-appointed global hegemon.
But let's run through the definition shall we...
The Irish do constitute a unique ethnic and religious minority within the British Empire. By the mid-19th century they are of course a de jure part of the core British metropole (the 1801 act of union abolished the independent Irish parliament and established the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland). But by dint of their ethnic and religious status they did not enjoy legal equality with Protestant British settlers, a population which starting displacing the native population en-masse with the settlement of the so-called Ulster Plantations in the early 17th century. The Irish language, culture, and religion were all actively suppressed.
So the destruction bit... the famine has long-been characterized as man-made because the policies of the British government actively exacerbated and prolonged the crisis. Even contemporary critics famously apportioned the blame accordingly: "The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine" (John Mitchel, Irish nationalist, 1861). During the initial phase of the famine in 1845, the British government under Prime Minister Robert Peel did supply some aid that ultimately proved inadequate. In 1846 the newly incoming Whig government of Prime Minister John Russell ceased any aid activities due to a commitment to laissez faire economic policy, assuming the free market would solve the issue, spoiler alert it didn't. They refused to limit the exporting of food, actively supporting the economic interests of the British-aligned landowners. Between 1845-1852 approximately a million people (~11.7% of the pre-famine population) die and another 1-2 million flee. In summary you have a government that doesn't care for the mass death, impoverishment, and displacement of a native population of the wrong ethnic stock and religious allegiance... not great!
As I referred to earlier, intent is difficult to establish but given the British government's refusal to follow its own past procedures and contemporary practices, it's at the very least guilty of gross negligence and disregard for human life that specifically targeted an oppressed ethnic minority. I think its fair to characterize that as genocide. Just because the term genocide didn't exist in the 1840s/1850s doesn't mean it's not appropriate or applicable.
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Absolute Zero
Characters: Charlotte Perospero
Reader: AFAB (referred to as a girl by Perospero, but can be read as NB or untransitioned)
Word Count: 6.1k
CW: *dark content*, explicit NS.FW content, noncon, suffocation, throatfucking, nipple licking, oral (receiving)
Summary: Perospero held the reins to your worst fears coming true, and he had pulled until you could do nothing but break.
Ao3 Link
-Thanks to @quinloki for the beta! It really helped polish this up.-
Taking on an Emperor was never a decision to be made lightly, but it was the driving force that pushed you and your brother since you were young. You didn’t have the numbers, but you would amass the necessary strength over the years, rising to power as fearsome pirates in your own right. Between your Colors of Arms and your brother’s Colors of Observation, you co-captained a small but mighty crew, and when the time was right, you began your attacks on Totto Land.
Your personal war with the Charlotte Family started out one-sided–the Emperor barely saw you as a threat back then. But that was all part of the plan. Not taking you seriously meant you could make mistakes and survive, all the while gaining valuable information on their battle tactics. It was your brother’s idea to hold back, not revealing your true strength until you had the right opening. Illness hospitalized him, and left you to lead the crew on your own
“I can’t protect you anymore,” he had lamented, pushing a devil fruit into your hands. “But now you can protect yourself.”
Utilizing your brother’s strategy, you waited for your moment to strike. A few more years of patience, and finally, an opening presented itself in the form of your devil fruit awakening. That event, plus one vital fact, turned your crusade against Big Mom from a slight nuisance into a genuine threat: You learned that transponder snails–and their cousins, territorial sea slugs–went into torpor at subzero temperatures.
With the newly awakened power of your Cool-Cool Fruit, you could act on that information, plunging the seas around Totto Land down to freezing temperatures and neutralizing the sea slugs. Without their warning system, your crew was in the perfect position for quick, explosive guerilla attacks against their forces, testing their defenses and probing for weak spots, then retreating while they were still scrambling in the chaos.
You couldn’t have pulled it off without a man on the inside feeding you intel. Every incursion hinged on his success, as his job was to let you know the movements of the only two pirates you couldn’t handle–Big Mom herself, and the second son, Katakuri. As long as you tracked and avoided them, there was little the rest of the brood could do. You’d tangled with the others with minimal issues. Oven was originally their counter of choice, since your abilities canceled each other out, but he could no longer keep up once yours awakened. Daifuku was easy to manage once you learned you could freeze his genie solid. Cracker’s biscuit soldiers were similarly rendered immobile. A riskier move was when you froze the oils on the surface of your skin so Smoothie was unable to wring you out.
And then there was Perospero…
To you, Perospero was different from his siblings. He was the only one of the Charlotte family you had met in the past. You were a child when you first ran into him, no older than seven. He was in his twenties at the time, newly appointed to Candy Island.
You had been fleeing from some bullies when you turned a corner and ran smack into him. You fell, your pursuers skidding to a halt behind you, frozen at the sight of the new minister towering over you.
Perospero had taken one look at you; the dirt on your clothes and the bruise on your cheek, and raised his voice. “What is the meaning of this? Totto Land is where people live in harmony!” He pointed a finger at your bullies, who all turned tail and fled. Perospero clicked his tongue, then offered you a hand.
"Poor little girl. You picked a fight with someone stronger than you…" He pulled you to your feet, long fingers wrapped around your wrist.
You thought you were in trouble. Perospero’s gaze settled on the tears forming in the corners of your eyes, and a slow smile crept up his face.
You remembered that smile more than anything else. You used to think it was a smile of good humor–oh, children and their antics, and all that. Now you knew him better, recognized that smile for what it really was.
Perospero had formed a piece of candy in his palm, holding it out to you. “Have a candy, perorin! You’ll find it to be the sweetest you’ve ever tasted.”
“For me?” you asked, wiping your face.
“For you.”
You took the candy from his hand and started to leave, but then paused and ran back up to him.
“I want one for my brother, too! He’s sick!” you said. “Please, mister?”
And Perospero, saying how thoughtful you were, gave you another.
That memory made you sick, knowing him as you did now. He didn’t smile because you were a bumbling child. He smiled because he had liked seeing you cry.
It was the same smile when his candy axe cleaved into one of your crewmates, the same smile when he twisted one of the candy arrows embedded into your shoulder, the same smile when he licked your blood from his weapons and remarked on how sweet it was. All his candy was a sugar coating, a saccharine facade hiding a monster. His siblings you only saw as obstructions in the way of your goal, but your enmity toward Perospero was personal.
This time, you thought as your ship accelerated toward his, this time you’d kill him.
“Candy Wall!” Perospero shouted, raising a menacing, spiked wall out of the water. His constructs, while made of candy, looked every bit as solid as you knew they were from experience. The wall that he formed was stronger than steel, meant to cut off your path to his ship.
It wouldn’t be a problem.
Surfing on the back of your first mate, an orca Fish-man, was a strategy you'd devised to overcome your devil fruit weakness. Risky if you were hit, but you had years of practice at that point. You had him bring you within a safe distance from the wall, then leap off his back, landing carefully on one of the spikes.
“Absolute Zero!”
A single touch, and the temperature of every molecule in that wall plummeted, freezing through. With your other hand, you swung your warhammer, and the wall shattered like glass on impact. Right as the frozen candy’s splintering reached your perch, you jumped again, landing boldly on the deck of Perospero’s ship.
He couldn’t defeat you. Not with your devil fruit awakened. Your repeated bouts had proven that, and your confidence was at an all-time high. This was your opening: any more attacks on Totto Land, and Big Mom would be forced to come into play. You had to break through the defenses now if you wanted to make landfall on Candy Island and complete your goal. Everything that you’d worked for, the lifetime of conflict, it all came down to today.
You smirked at Perospero, waiting for his shitty grin to fall. Instead, it widened. Immediately, you realized something was wrong, the hairs on the back of your neck standing up. He knew he wasn’t a match for you. Then why was he acting like he wanted you to board his ship?
The wall was a trick, you realized. He was luring you there all along. The reason quickly became apparent when Charlotte Katakuri stepped out from around the corner.
Oh, no.
He wasn’t supposed to be in this section of Totto Land! Your intel was wrong–or maybe someone had fed you false information. If you made it out of this alive, that someone was going to eat a bullet. But that was a pretty big fucking “if.”
The fight was brief, and all of it was spent barely dodging lethal blows that would shatter you like candy. He moved far too fast for someone so huge. You could hardly get an opening, and when you did, his body warped around your strikes. It was impossible not to grow frustrated as he predicted your moves before you could make them, and that led to you slipping up, making more mistakes, almost dying with every near-miss.
Finally, you failed in your panic to dodge, scrambling backward from another sledgehammer blow. Katakuri paused, looking down at you.
“Y/n of the Raging Winter,” he rumbled. “Against me…thirty seconds is admirable. But it ends now.”
His leg stretched out as it swung into your head. The last thing you remembered before impact was your brother’s voice, calling out for you.
Then darkness.
You woke up in a bed lined in plastic.
Your head was throbbing with dull pain, and it took a while for you to grasp at your thoughts. You turned your head. The rest of the room was lined in plastic, too.
Right then, you knew you would die in that room. Plastic lining like that was only used for butcher jobs–you knew that much from your underworld connections. Though this plastic was thin and clear, almost like candy wrapping.
The plastic creaked as you tried to get up, but you couldn’t lift your torso very far, finding your wrists bound above your head in shackles, sturdy and attached to chains going to the floor. Your ankles were bound the same way. There wasn’t much extra length in the chains, only letting you move your limbs a few inches in any direction. The shackles were rock-solid and slightly transparent, like molten glass. You frowned, leaning as close as you could to one of your wrist chains to sniff them. Hard candy–Perospero’s work. A thin band of seastone around one of your arms ensured you couldn’t use your devil fruit to escape.
You let your head fall back onto the pillow and wondered. Would Big Mom drain the rest of your life force, and that would be it? A quick, painless death? Unlikely, given the room you were in. They would torture you here, reveal your motives for attacking them, and then chop you up into little pieces to dispose. This was your end: utter failure of your mission.
As a pirate, you’ve had many close calls in the past, but you never expected to fail. You were too invested in your mission, too certain of its just cause. You could only hope your crew was able to get away in time, at least. You had forced them to honor an agreement to abandon the mission if you were captured. After all, your mission was only for your benefit. There would have been no riches awaiting you had you succeeded.
A slow hour passed, anxiety building in your gut all the while. The Charlottes were known for their unforgiving nature with their enemies. You were sure their tortures would get creative. Perospero had threatened multiple times to solidify you into candy, after all, and lick you away until nothing remained.
The sound of footsteps made you tense, every sense focused on them getting closer.
Speak of the devil. Perospero moved into the room as if floating, looming above you like a technicolor reaper. He was impossibly tall and seemed even taller up close, towering above you, his bright colors and patterns doing nothing to offset the wickedness of his delighted expression.
“Y/n of the Raging Winter,” he said, “user of the Cool-Cool Fruit and recurring thorn in Mama’s side.” He savors the moment, nearly leering at you. “How delightful to see you finally brought down. Having regrets, perorin?”
“Something like that,” you said flatly. Regrets that you had been defeated, anyway–you would never regret fighting back against Big Mom. Making that elaboration didn’t matter, though. He knew.
“Kuh kuh kuh…”
“Where’s my crew?” you demanded.
A flash of tension crossed his face. “Captured, like you.”
You didn’t believe him, not with that little change in expression. They had escaped–you could always read him.
But Perospero could read you, too and the relief evident on your face.
“Didn’t miss that, hm?” he mused. “No matter. We have you. Once we kill you, your brother won’t be much longer for this world with his illness, and your crew will disband. Just like that, another problem dealt with.”
“How do you know he’s sick?” you said, stomach knotting. Your brother was far away from Totto Land–there was no way they could have known that. Unless… Unless they knew who you really were.
Perospero grinned slowly. “He’s been sick for a long time, hasn’t he?’
“How do you know?!” you raised your voice.
“Now, now, perorin. Don’t get so worked up. We have a long night ahead of us, after all.”
“Damn you, Perospero! You already have me caught! Just tell me before you kill me!”
“What are you so concerned about?” he cackled. “That we know his location? He’s not worth hunting down, not when he has so little time left anyway.” If the Charlottes knew that information, it could only mean one thing. Perospero’s grin widened as the truth dawned on you. “That’s right, perorin. We know about your family. Once we realized you were a former Totto Land resident, finding the rat in our midst was easy.”
“Leave them out of this,” you said icily. “They didn’t know anything about this.”
“Oh, don’t worry. They were very cooperative with questioning,” Perospero said, laughing when you snarled and pulled against your chains. “They didn’t know anything about you and your brother’s decision to attack us…but they did smuggle you out of Totto Land when you were kids, didn’t they? They still went behind our back and broke the law. Why is that, I wonder?”
“I’ll kill you!” you shouted. “I’ll freeze you solid and shatter you to pieces, Perospero!”
He ignored your outburst, continuing. “Perhaps…it was your brother’s terminal diagnosis?”He clicked his tongue pityingly. “Poor thing. Just a kid when he was only given ten years left to live. That’s why you parents had him smuggled out, isn’t it? So he didn’t have to give up any of his lifespan as tax, and could live out the rest of his short life. They had you go with him so you’d be together. How sweet.”
Bringing his hands together, Perospero formed a knife out of candy. It was proportionate to his size, over a foot long and gleaming in the bright light of the room, more like a short sword compared to you. The first pangs of fear slithered through your gut and settled.
“You and your brother decided to become pirates in order to ‘rescue’ your family from Candy Island, didn’t you? I’m impressed you made it as far as you did.” He cocked his head at you. “I had always wondered what I had done to make those eyes of yours so angry...”
Agonizingly slowly, he approached the bed, each step ramping up your nerves until your fear grew into terror. You did what you could to keep it from reaching your expression. You wouldn’t show weakness, wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
"I guess a quick death is asking for too much?" you said casually, but he noticed the way you didn’t take your eyes off the knife.
“Kuh kuh kuh! Trying to be brave, are we?” He bent over you, grinning ear to ear. “How cute.”
He brought the knife to your cheek. You turned your head away as much as possible, but he followed your movement, pressing the sharp tip into your skin until it shallowly pierced through, making you wince. He angled the blade flat against your skin and slid it down, smearing warm blood down your cheek and neck.
“Such a pretty color, perorin! A beautiful raspberry red,” he crooned, raising the knife to his tongue and taking a lick, “and just as sweet.”
Then he lined up the razor edge of the blade with your throat. You froze, heart pounding in your ears as you got tunnel vision. This was it. Every pirate was ready for death. You had faced it before. But this time was different, because this time, you were helpless. It’s okay. It’s okay, you told yourself. Be brave. It would be over soon.
The seconds ticked by, seemingly turning into minutes and keeping you on edge the entire time.
Perospero pulled the knife away. Your eyes flicked to him, seeing him studying your reaction.
“Don’t toy with me, Perospero!” you snapped, enraged and terrified. “Get it over with.”
“Where’s the fun in that, perorin?” He pressed the knife lightly into your skin, making your neck sting. You closed your eyes, waiting for the sudden slitting of your throat, the deep pain that would surely follow.
It never came.
Your eyes flew open when Perospero grabbed the collar of your shirt, lifting it from your skin, and started to slice through the fabric. His candy knife slid through the clothes like butter, threads severed and falling away from your torso. The chill of the air was sobering, a dim realization that of course it wouldn’t be over so soon–why did you think you were chained to the bed like this?
Still, you couldn’t fully bring yourself to believe it, not even when he cut through your bra, some part of your terrified mind trying to protect you with blatant denial. Only when he’d cut your pants and was at your underwear did you find the nerve to speak.
"Hey… Hey! Perospero, you're…you're not gonna…" You couldn’t bring yourself to say it out loud, but your quivering voice filled in the blanks well enough.
"What? Rape you?" Perospero said nonchalantly as he cut through your underwear. He pulled at the torn remains of your clothes, sliding them off your body one piece at a time and savoring your reaction. “What did you think would happen when you lost to us? Did you think there would be no consequences?"
Panic immediately began to set in. "Okay, h-hold on,” you stammered as he pulled your pants free, “maybe we can work something out. I have a stash hidden on–"
"You mean the 'secret' cellar on Mint island? We already looted it."
Your heart pounded as the gravity of what was about to happen fully came down. You scrambled to think of something else. “I can–I can call in a favor, there’s a guy that owes my crew literally millions of berries–”
Perospero’s laugh cut you off. "Kuh kuh kuh! Bargaining already? You must be desperate, perorin." He pulled off your shirt.
You began to feel dizzy, nausea twisting up your gut. “Come on, Perospero. Don’t do this.”
“Maybe if you beg me, I won’t,” he said, pulling off your bra next and dropping it on the floor. “Go on. Beg. Say, please don’t do it, Peros.’”
Don't cry.
You didn’t really think he’d stop. But you’d take the humiliation if the chance was so much as there.
“P-Please don’t do it, Peros.”
“You need to say it with more meaning, Y/n.”
“Please!” You could no longer keep the panic out of your voice. “This is beneath you!”
“I don’t think you really believe that.” He pulled off your underwear last, and you were completely bare before his hungry, roaming eyes. There was no room to be embarrassed, you were far too scared.
Tears stung at the corners of your eyes, your throat getting tight. “Think of your sisters!”
Perospero’s hand settled on your thigh, squeezing. He didn’t respond, merely watched you go out of your mind in panic as you tried to think of something else. He watched not just the exposed parts of your body, but your face, committing every waver of your expression to memory, the glistening of your eyes and the trembling of your lower lip.
“I met you as a kid!” you practically screamed. “You saved me from some bullies! You gave me candy!”
“Are you trying to appeal to my humanity?” he said, and laughed cruelly. “Poor little girl…You picked a fight with someone stronger than you.”
The tears broke free once you knew you couldn’t talk him out of this. His eyes narrowed in sick glee.
“There it is,” he said. “All the times we’ve fought, Y/n, I’ve never once seen you afraid, no matter what our forces threw at you. How gratifying it is to finally see it now.”
He bent over you, his tongue stretching out of his mouth like a separate creature, touching your stomach before sliding a wet, warm trail up your body, between your breasts and up your neck. You pressed your head back as it lapped up your throat. If he hadn’t made his intent obvious, you’d have wondered if he was going to eat you.
“Please, stop! I won’t attack your family ever again! I’ll give up on my mission for good. I’ll… I’ll quit being a pirate!”
“I’m sure you would.”
“Don’t stoop to this!” you shriek, wincing as he licked up your body again, cleaning the blood from your face.
“I’m not stooping to anything, perorin. I’m a pirate enjoying my spoils.”
“Just kill me!"
“Oh, you’re still going to be killed, my sweet. Just not tonight.”
“Don’t,” you pleaded, his tongue coiling around your breast and squeezing to make your nipple stick out, the tip of his tongue poised over it like a snake. “Don’t!”
He lowered his tongue to brush against your nipple in one long sweep, wet and bumpy. Your entire body jerked as if electrocuted, the stimulation jolting through you. “Ah!”
“You’re the sensitive type, hm?” he said, delighted in his newfound discovery.
“No, I–!”
His tongue brushed over your nipple again, cutting you off. You bit your lip as it licked you again and again, his eyes on you as you fought and failed to keep still, twitching with every pass.
“All that fear, all that adrenaline…it just heightens the senses, doesn’t it?”
“Stop!”
Perospero was right–being on edge like that just made you more aware of your body. Your nipple quickly grew stiff under his persistent licking, and the sensation traveled straight through your body and right down to your cunt. Right when you thought you could at least get used to it, he switched to your other nipple, licking and prodding it until you thrashed to try to get away from the feeling.
“Peros! Please, please stop!” you cried.
“But we’ve only just started, my dear!” he trailed his hands down your sides, squeezing at your hips and thighs lecherously. “You’re quite the morsel…I’m going to enjoy taking my time with you.”
He started batting your nipples back and forth with his tongue, quickly and steadily, one at a time. No matter how much you jerked or angled your body away, he followed you. The stimulation was inescapable, and you’d always been particularly sensitive in your chest. Despite everything, despite how much you just wanted to die right then, you felt yourself growing wet.
“It–It’s too much!”
“Just this? Kuh kuh kuh! I thought you’d be a little more resilient, to be honest. Making so much noise already… Has it really been that long for you? You didn’t give your crew a taste?”
Perospero curved his tongue so it rubbed over both your nipples at the same time, making you gasp and arch your back.
“Not both…” you moaned.
“You like that, do you?” he mused, slowing the movements of his tongue, tantalizing and drawing it out.
“Perospero, please,” you whimpered. “No more. You–nngh–you don’t have to go any further.”
“Ah, but then you wouldn’t learn your lesson, perorin.” He massaged your thighs in false comfort. “Besides, I’m well aware of my tongue’s effect on people. I wonder…perhaps you’re afraid because I’ll find out how you really feel?” One of his hands trailed over the curve of your thigh and toward your center.
You immediately started thrashing again, trying to get away from him, but it was no use. He gripped your hip with his other hand and held you down, and with the other, he slid a long, thin finger through your folds. A thin rope of slick connected the tip of his finger to your cunt, and Perospero grinned at the sight.
“Kuh kuh kuh! You’re not being very honest with me, little morsel,” he crowed, then slipped his finger inside you. You gasped at the intrusion; it was far longer than any of yours and reached deep inside you and there was nothing you could do to stop it. Perospero curled his finger, pulling a startled moan out of you. “How does it feel?”
“Please, s-stop!”
“Wrong answer.”
Suddenly his tongue left your breasts and slithered into your mouth. He snaked it deep down your windpipe, cutting off your air. You gagged and choked, twisting and writhing to get away as he shoved it even deeper. The panic from the lack of air gripped you, cutting off all other sensation and making you thrash, your eyes watering and lungs burning.
Perospero removed his tongue from your throat, and you coughed and gasped, sucking in air desperately.
“Are you ready to be honest?” he asked.
You hesitated, you didn’t want to play along, even if you knew you should.
Hesitation was a mistake you would never make again. Perospero gleefully shoved his tongue back in your throat, choking you once more. This time he stayed there even longer, probing it even deeper, forcing it down until it physically could go no further. With his tongue practically in your lungs, he started thrusting it back and forth, fucking your windpipe while you thrashed for air.
The minute that passed felt like an eternity, and when he finally withdrew from your body and you finally caught your breath, you sobbed.
“Tell me how it feels,” Perospero repeated.
“It feels good,” you sobbed.
“Was that so difficult, perorin?” he said, going back to licking your breasts. You were too fresh from the torture for it to feel good anymore, so you only layed there, sniffling. Perospero’s grin faltered–breaking you was no fun if you were growing used to it. He uncurled his tongue from your nipples, drawing it back and forth across your front as it went lower. You noticed, your voice small when it spoke up.
“W-Wait–”
But he didn’t stop, grabbing your knees and spreading them further apart, then pulling his tongue back to lick a long stripe up your cunt, his wide tongue spreading out your folds as it went.
This time, your legs twitched, and you made a small, helpless noise of protest.
“There we go,” Perospero crooned, “that’s better, isn’t it?”
You turned your head away, ashamed. How he adored that look on your face, feeling his pants strain at the sight.
He dove back in, lapping at your center and reveling in your taste. He always knew your slick would be as intoxicating as your blood, and had long fantasized about this moment. Your little whimpers made it all the more sweet. The wet, squelching noises of his licking filled the air as he molested you with his tongue.
Perospero drew his tongue back, then licked your cunt starting from the base of his tongue and going to the very tip in one long, drawn-out pass, until you had no choice but to moan, hips bucking off the bed.
“You love this, don’t you, perorin?” Perospero taunted, holding a hand up to his ear to better hear your response.
You didn’t dare refuse him this time. “I love it,” you whimpered. “Please stop, Perospero…”
“You should be grateful, you know. I could be torturing you right now. Cutting you up as slowly as I’m licking you…” He flicked his tongue across your clit, pulling another moan from you. “The final chapter of your life will be pleasure–isn’t that lucky? Come to think of it, I like the sound of that.” Perospero grabbed your cheek harshly, forcing you to look at him. “I’m not just going to rape you. I’m going to make you cum. Your final memories before you die will be of how good it felt when I forced myself upon you! Say ‘thank you, Perospero.’’”
“T-Thank you, Perospero.” You turned your head away as soon as he let go, though your gaze snapped right back to him when he started undoing the buttons to his clothes. “Wait. Wait!”
He shrugged off his cloak before unzipping his pants and pulling them down with his boxers. His cock sprung free, rock solid and already leaking, and you started to fight your restraints again. Perospero’s size was proportionate to his height–that was, to say, he was huge compared to you, far bigger than anything you were meant to take. He pumped himself with a pleased sigh, coating himself in his precum, then pulled you down as far as your restraints would allow, your hips at the edge of the bed and your core presented to him. He rubbed his cock between your folds, slowly and tauntingly, lubing himself up further.
“No way. You’re way too big!” you protested, squirming from the sensation. “Please, Perospero, it’s not gonna work–please, don’t!”
"You sound so cute when you beg, Y/n. I can't get enough."
"Please, please, I'm sorry!"
But he didn’t stop, only lined himself up with one hand, the other holding tight onto your thigh to keep you from moving away. There was immediate resistance as he started pressing in, but he kept going anyway, forcing your body to accommodate. You cried out in pain, eyes squeezed shut.
“It hurts–!” you cried.
“Shh…” Perospero shushed you, “you’re doing so well, sweetheart. Just a little more.”
He forced himself the rest of the way in, pulling you down by the thigh until he was entirely sheathed in your heat, relishing in the sound of your cry and the snug tightness of your cunt.
“Ahh… You’re such a little thing, aren’t you, perorin?” he said, rubbing up and down your hip. “This tightness is just divine…”
“Hurts,” you breathed again, your delicate flesh stretched out impossibly wide around him. Perospero held the reins to your worst fears coming true, and he had pulled until you could do nothing but break. Your breathing was shaky and labored as you tried to keep yourself from crying out again.
“These are your consequences, Raging Winter,” he said. “But if it hurts so much, I’d better help you adjust, no?”
With that, he started to move his hips, pulling out a few inches before pushing back in. Despite what he said, there was no gentleness to his movements; he started up a brisk, harsh pace, splitting you open on his thickness. He grabbed your hips and squeezed harshly, pulling you to meet his heavy thrusts, a grin etched his face as yours twisted up in pain.
“So good,” he panted, digging his nails into your flesh, “I’ve dreamed of this day for a long time, and it’s better than I ever imagined! Kuh kuh kuh!”
Closing your eyes only brought the pain into focus, so you turned your head away, quiet tears slipping down your cheeks as he ruthlessly violated you.
“Ah, but you don’t seem to be enjoying yourself. How thoughtless of me.”
Perospero bent over you, grabbing your face with both hands and forcing you to look at him. His eyes narrowed as he slowed his thrusts considerably, rocking his hips against yours with a gentleness you didn’t know he was capable of. In any other context, it would have been a lovemaking pace, and his tongue swept over your lips as he looked into your eyes.
Cruel. That’s what it was. Somehow even worse than just hurting you, this was a perversion of everything good and right. His deep, languid strokes eased you open, and the pain that used to be there started to tip over into something worse: You started to adjust.
Just when you thought you were at rock bottom, Perospero had figured out a way to bring you even lower, and when you felt the first stirrings of pleasure, your eyes widening in horrified realization, he knew he finally had you. After all the times you’d fought him, all the times you’d frozen his candy constructs and shattered them, all the times you’d overpowered him–he finally had his vengeance. If your wrath was frigid, his would be absolute zero, and you would suffer in your ecstasy.
“Y/n,” Perospero crooned, grinding his cock against your g-spot..
“D-Don’t,” you whimpered. “Please don’t make me say it, Peros.”
“Now, don’t be like that. You sing so beautifully, perorin.” He squeezed your breasts, sliding his tongue down to lick at your nipples, and the combined stimulation had you tighten up and moan. “Just like that, sweet thing. Let it out.”
“Ahh… n-no…”
But he had found your weak spot, fucking you rhythmically while licking at your nipples, and you couldn’t stop yourself from growing even wetter, making it easier for him to take you, nor could you stop the gasps and whimpers from spilling past your lips.
Perospero started to groan and gasp too, especially as his new attentions had you tightening around him so wonderfully. Laid out beneath him, against everything you believe in, you felt something start to build, a tension winding itself tighter, and it seemed like he was feeling it too. He slowed his pace even more, if only to draw out your torment and his pleasure, and then, reaching some breaking point, he started to go faster and faster, moans rising in pitch.
“Ah! Look at you, formerly such a nuisance and now treating me so well,” Perospero said. “How does it feel, perorin?”
“Feels good,” you moaned, the terror at your coming peak evident on your face, a mixture of revulsion and pleasure that made him throb.
“That’s a good look on you. Now, relax… It’s almost over. I’m gonna cum in that sweet little cunt of yours.”
“Not inside,” you protested weakly.
“Don’t fret, my sweet. You won’t be alive long enough for my seed to take.”
“Please–”
He grabbed your face again, his eyes wild and dark. “Not only am I going to fill you up, perorin–I’m going to make you cum with me.”
Perospero adjusted his hips to tap even deeper, if possible, continuing his assault on your nipples. You could feel the impending orgasm approach and tried everything you could to stop it, pictured every disgusting thing you could, tried to imagine anything but your body succumbed. But you were already in the worst situation you could ever picture yourself in, and it still didn’t stop.
If your orgasm was inevitable, then you wouldn’t cum with him. You absolutely refused to experience that with him, because of him, to give him that satisfaction was unacceptable. If you were gonna cum, you would cum right then instead. Switching strategies, you lifted your hips to meet his thrusts and instead focused on the pleasure, focused on how full you felt, how his tip nudged your g-spot every time he hilted inside you, and a few moments later, you tipped over the edge, your orgasm rippling through your lower half with a shuddering cry.
Perospero didn’t falter, didn’t seem upset that you spoiled his fun. Just like back on the boat when he trapped you, his grin only seemed to widen. “Kuh kuh kuh! Oh, my. You came too soon. No matter…”
He increased the strength behind his hips, picking up his pace just slightly. You weren’t worried until he stretched his tongue down to lick at your clit. A startled cry erupted from your throat; suddenly his relentless thrusts pushed past overstimulation and started to build a second time. He never waned in his licking, nudging and circling and rubbing your swollen bud until you were veering on the edge a second time.
Perospero groaned deeply and you cried out, the both of you cresting your peaks close to the same time, and he spilled inside you, one final act of complete and total assertion. Euphoria and despair tore through your body all at once, pulsing and horrible. He collapsed on top of you, his torso pressing your face down, and he stayed there as you both caught your breath.
You closed your eyes, wallowing in the aftermath of it all and beginning to feel nauseous. Perospero’s shifting made you open your eyes, and he curled over to whisper into your ear.
“Maybe I’ll convince Mama not to kill you, perorin. Then I can keep you as my toy. You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” you lie, the thought bringing fresh tears to your eyes. Perospero licked them from your face before pulling out and climbing off of you to get dressed. Before he left, he looked over his shoulder, watching his cum drip from your abused center with a smile.
“Sweet dreams, my dear.”
Then he left you there, battered and exposed. For the first time in many years, you felt a sensation you’d thought you’d forgotten. The stagnant, sex-tainted air of the room clung to your clammy, sweaty skin.
For the first time since you’d eaten your devil fruit, you felt cold.
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National personification
The UK has Britannia. France has Marianne. The US have Uncle Sam. National personifications, summing up supposed collective qualities and passing on a message, both to citizens and foreigners alike. Instantly recognizable by just about anyone. To be found everywhere, from city halls (busts, frescoes, tapestries) to subway walls (Army conscription posters - of course it rings a bell!).
Romania has this:
This is Revolutionary Romania, as seen by C.D. Rosenthal, an Austrian painter who found both friendship and an avid clientele among the Romanian young rebels who tried and failed to overthrow the corrupted Ottoman rule, in 1848. Following them in exile and probably also spying on their behalf, Rosenthal was finally arrested in Budapest and tortured to death by the Imperial authorities: a normal occurrence in troubled times. His memory went on and on and on, because the same friends were soon to come back home and become ministers, bankers, newspaper owners: a modern democracy slowly emerged.
This is his most famous portrait and it quickly became our Britannia of sorts. Ceaușescu had it placed in his office, for inspiration - it did not help much, though.
The woman painted by Rosenthal holds the red, yellow and blue flag and is dressed in a Southern peasant costume, as it was worn at the time. She gazes with strength, determination and confidence towards a future that spells free press, parliamentary elections, industrialization and capitalist speculation. In real life, she is Maria Rosetti, a personal friend and sponsor of his. The wife of C.A. Rosetti, an authentic Prince of Genoese and Greek stock, one of the leaders of both the rebellion and the future Liberal Party. Also a many times removed relative of this blogger - but let's not insist. 😉
There is a catch, however, in all this fine and dandy story. Our national personification, the woman I just mentioned, is Scottish. Her life begins in Guernsey in 1819, as Marie Grant, the daughter of Captain Edward Grant, a ship-owner businessman and member of the Clan Grant of Carron and Spey and Marie La Lacheur, a French Huguenot woman.
These people, who fought as Jacobites at Prestonpans and Culloden and whose motto was 'Stand Fast':
Marie came to Wallachia, or what is now the Southern part of Romania, around 1837, following her younger brother, Effingham Grant, who just managed to find a lucrative job as the private secretary of another Scot (Glaswegian, even), Robert Gilmour Colquhoun, the newly appointed British Consul-General. At the time, these were long term postings, not unlike a long sojourn on a space station of sorts: Colquhoun remained in Bucharest from 1835 to 1854, when he eventually was posted to Bosnia.
Because she needed to support herself, Marie found a well paid live-in job as a governess for the family of Ion Odobescu, a high ranking Police honcho (also a far removed relative, this time on my maternal grandmother's side - the world is really, really small). The rest was easy enough: having met Rosetti through her brother, they fell in love, eloped to Plymouth and got married there, for what was to become a life long equal political and business partnership. Because they owned several newspapers, she is our first female journalist. A truly remarkable woman, a philanthropist and an indispensable voice advocating for the dispossessed. Effingham went on to establish the biggest foundry in the country, along with a real estate company, a tobacco manufacture, an orchid greenhouse and a bread factory - all prospered beyond any expectations. A heavy traffic steel bridge in Bucharest still bears his name. Enduring legacies.
For those brave enough or bored enough to look for more, here is the best detailed account on her I could find, based on Guernsey sources (but not only): https://www.priaulxlibrary.co.uk/node/386 .
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On March 5th 1759 the lexicographer and church minister John Jamieson was born in Glasgow.
I know most of you will not have heard of Jamieson, but his publication, Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, is credited with keeping the language alive. He was a bit of a polymath though and learned in many fields.
The language I am talking about here is Scots, the Scot’s Tongue as it is often referred to, If you have read some of my posts I like to dig out documents etc from days gone by, a most of these are written in Scots, you only have to read the poetry of Robert Fergusson or Rabbie Burns, the vast majority which is written in the language, or up to modern times if you have read any of Irvine Welsh’s books, you will know that as a language it is distinctly different to what is termed as “proper English”
Anyway a bit about the man, Jamieson grew up in Glasgow as the only surviving son in a family with an invalid father, he entered Glasgow University aged at the staggeringly young age of just nine! From 1773 he studied the necessary course in theology with the Associate Presbytery of Glasgow, and in 1780 he was licensed to preach.
Jamieson was appointed to serve as minister to the newly established Secession congregation in Forfar, and stayed there for the next eighteen years, during which time he married Charlotte Watson, the daughter of a local widower, and started a family. Their marriage lasted fifty-five years and they had seventeen children, ten of whom reached adulthood, although only three outlived their father. He next became minister of the Edinburgh Nicolson Street congregation in 1797 where he guided the reconciliation of the Burgher and Anti-Burgher sects to a union in 1820.
In 1788 Jamieson’s writing was recognised by Princeton College, New Jersey where he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity. His other honours included membership of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries, of the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh, of the American Antiquarian Society of Boston, United States, and of the Copenhagen Society of Northern Literature. He was also a royal associate of the first class of the Royal Society of Literature instituted by George IV.
Jamieson’s chief work, the Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language was published in two volumes in 1808 and was the standard reference work on the subject until the publication of the Scottish National Dictionary in 1931. He published several other works, but it is the dictionary he is best known for.
He had a particular passion for numismatics, and it was their mutual interest in coins which led to the first meeting between Jamieson and Walter Scott, in 1795, when Scott was only twenty-three and not yet a published author. Jamieson was also a keen angler, as the many entries relating to fishing terms in the Dictionary attest; and published occasional works of poetry, including a poem against the slave trade which was praised by abolitionists in its day. Entries provided by Scott include besom, which he described as a “low woman or prostitute,” and screed, defined as a “long revel” or “hearty drinking bout”. I wonder how many Scottish females have been called “a wee besom” by their mothers with neither really knowing it’s true meaning!
Jamieson’s association with Walter Scott was a two way thing, he wrote a Scots poem ‘The Water Kelpie’ for the second edition of Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.
It was through his antiquarian research that Jamieson developed his practice of tracing words (particularly place-names) to their earliest form and occurrence: a method which was to be the foundation of the historical approach he would use in the Dictionary.
Jamieson wrote on other themes: rhetoric, cremation, and the royal palaces of Scotland, besides publishing occasional sermons. In 1820 he issued edited versions of Barbour’s The Brus and Blind Harry’s Wallace.
Revered by authors including Hugh MacDiarmid, who used it to shape his poetic output, Jamieson’s dictionary has long been regarded as a crucial groundwork which kept alive the Scots language at a time when it was in danger of falling into obscurity.
John Jamieson died on July 22nd 1839 and has a fine gravestone in St Cuthbert’s graveyard in Edinburgh, as seen in the fourth pic.
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For the past 25 years, Japan’s central bank and government have found common cause in trying to end deflationary pressures that have been seen as a drag on economic growth. Now that they are succeeding, the verdict is in: People don’t like it.
Under standard economic theory, high levels of deficit spending coupled with ultra-low interest rates should almost inevitably lead to higher rates of inflation—usually a problematic outcome for most economies. But Japan has become the poster child for the risks of the opposite problem, persistent price and wage deflation.
Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was a strong advocate of action by the Bank of Japan (BOJ). “Addressing the deflation problem would bring substantial real and psychological benefits to the Japanese economy, and ending deflation would make solving the other problems that Japan faces only that much easier,” he said in an address to the Japan Society of Monetary Economics in May 2003, when he was still just a member of the Fed board. At stake, he said, was not just the economic health of Japan “but also, to a significant degree, the prosperity of the rest of the world.” His worries of a similar deflationary trap in the United States were one of the reasons he would later propose as Fed chairman the massive quantitative easing, or QE, program following the 2007-08 global financial crisis.
To achieve this, the BOJ first tried ultra-low interest rates and, when that failed, zero interest rates and finally negative interest rates. In addition, there were various programs to encourage lending, including special funding to banks that lend to smaller companies with growth potential and to banks that increased their lending by a certain amount. The lending initiatives ran into two primary obstacles: Japanese banks only want to lend money to companies that don’t need it (big companies in Japan sit on massive cash holdings), and with such low rates, the cost of initiating and servicing the loans outweighed the profits in terms of interest payments.
The ultimate plan to defeat all this came from the affable Haruhiko Kuroda, appointed in 2013 by newly elected Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as the head of the BOJ. Kuroda, a former Finance Ministry official who was therefore an outsider within the central bank, threw caution to the wind. He would, he promised, create 2 percent inflation in two years by doubling the BOJ’s balance sheet.
Moving beyond the Fed’s QE, Japan would have QQE, adding in the idea of qualitative to quantitative easing, meaning that the bank would not buy just government bonds but also riskier assets. The result was indeed a massive expansion in the balance sheet, in effect monetizing the government’s steady diet of fiscal overspending equal to around 30 percent of the total budget each year. Even though the balance sheet more than quadrupled over Kuroda’s 10-year term, the idea of a “virtuous cycle” of higher wages driving higher prices remained elusive for almost all of his tenure, with the consumer price index stuck around zero.
This was to change but not because of any central bank policy. Instead, it was due mainly to the world’s recent No. 1 game-changer: COVID-19. With higher import costs and supply chain disruptions, higher prices, albeit at a modest level by global standards, became visible in virtually every sector of the economy. By January 2023, the consumer price index jumped to 4 percent, the highest level since 1981 and well over the 2 percent target set by the BOJ. Within this, hotel prices have surged, rising 63 percent as foreign tourists again pack central Tokyo and Kyoto. For Japanese shoppers, much of the impact has been in the form of “shrinkflation” as food producers try to hide the higher costs. A bag of coffee in central Tokyo can still be found for around $4—it’s just that the same package now holds 40 percent less coffee. No wonder major food packaging companies saw their earnings jump 33 percent last year.
As a result, stagnant wages finally have started to show signs of movement as a shrinking workforce, good economic growth, and skills shortages have bid up salaries. Wages in October 2023 were up 1.5 percent year-on-year, and union workers logged average increases of 3.6 percent in their spring round of labor negotiations.
So why isn’t everyone happy? The reality is that the two growth lines have resulted in a steady decline in real wages adjusted for inflation. According to government figures, real wages fell for 20 consecutive months up to November 2023, registering a 3 percent decline year-on-year.
“People are not stupid,” said Jesper Koll, a global ambassador for the Monex Group and one of Japan’s best-known economists. “The 30 years of deflation have come to an end, but are the Japanese people getting the kind of inflation they want?”
Indeed, while deflation has had policymakers gnashing their teeth as Japan became relatively poorer (some tech jobs pay better in Vietnam than in Japan today), it was good for salaried workers who saw their pay rise modestly while prices would fall around 1 percent annually. The new scenario is more complex. As workers in any inflationary economy can attest, wages almost always rise more slowly than retail prices. One BOJ official in the pre-Kuroda days in 2012 said privately that their surveys showed people preferred deflation even as the central bank was trying to stamp it out.
The sticker shock of rising prices has been an unwanted blow to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who is facing a crisis in confidence for no clear reason—except that people don’t seem to like his administration. Kishida and U.S. President Joe Biden could no doubt commiserate on that front.
Last fall, when the government’s approval ratings fell below the “danger zone” of 30 percent—the figure that often heralds a party search for a fresh face as prime minister—Kishida started handing out cash that the government didn’t have, offering subsidies to limit the impact of higher prices in energy and utilities. Even this backfired badly, raising allegations that he was trying to buy his way back to popularity.
“What people are frustrated with is that he increases spending all the time but has no program to pay for it. The Japanese people are rational with their money—they don’t go out on spending sprees,” Koll said.
Kishida, who took office in October 2021, now has support of just above 20 percent by most polls, with two-thirds of respondents saying they disapprove of his administration. This would normally make him ripe for removal by the party elders who effectively control the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). That has been the model ever since the party was founded in 1955 and helped the LDP to remain in power for all but six years since then.
But Kishida may well survive for a while. The latest in a string of scandals also involves other senior figures in the LDP over potentially illegal fundraising, which has had the effect of shrinking the pool of potential successors. There is also no clear replacement for Kishida who would satisfy both the more liberal and hawkish wings of the party, part of the reason he got the job in the first place.
Another open question is whether Kishida—or a successor—will get to actually see an end to the 25 years of deflationary pressures. The latest inflation figures show a softening in price increases, with core inflation (without fresh food prices) rising just 2.5 percent in November 2023, its lowest in 16 months. That may be good news for consumers, but it has some economists skeptical over whether the economy has really turned the corner toward self-sustaining wage-price increases or if the new figures point to a consumer slowdown that would lead to a downturn. The focus will be on this spring’s union wage negotiations, where both the workers and the government are hopeful that increases will finally put workers ahead of inflation, at least for now. The companies that would have to pay for this have shown less enthusiasm.
But some economists remain skeptical. “I would venture that the wage hike to come during next spring’s negotiations won’t quite reach the level expected,” Takahide Kiuchi, an economist at the Nomura Research Institute and a former BOJ board member, wrote in a November report. He said this may prompt the BOJ to hold off on any changes to its negative rates. Japan remains the only country to maintain ultra-low rates as other advanced economies have switched to tighter money policies as inflation surged.
At the same time, Kiuchi noted, delaying for too long means the bank’s balance sheet will continue to grow as it buys bonds to keep yields at zero or below. This will increase the risks to its own financial position if interest rates rise in the future, since the massive holdings would plummet in value. With the balance sheet now larger than Japan’s annual GDP, the implications could be severe, a polite way of saying that it would face insolvency. If that happened, the government would be forced to bail it out. But the government is already using the BOJ to pay for its own financial excesses.
It’s all enough to leave the average Japanese yearning for the good old days of deflation.
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“now as your newly appointed prime minister of canada i decree we put to death the oil lobbyists and their constituents!”
* cheers irrupts *
“to death! to death! to death!”
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The origins of the Italian national flag dating back to the French revolution
Since a couple of days ago our Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, was caught unprepared on the meaning of the colours on the Italian flag by the Senior United States senator Chuck Schumer, I thought it could have been interesting to dive more into it, to see if there's something else beyond the three theological virtues, which the flag is attributed to nowadays. And surprisingly there is! Sources dating back to the last decade of the 18th century show a strong link between the Italian tricolour and the cockades used during the French revolution.
According to the archivist and historian Nicola Ferorelli (1877-1951), during the month of August 1789 is some Italian towns, people were spotted protesting against high food prices, wearing green leaves as cockades in an attempt to imitate the parisians who took the Bastille:
"Si sa inoltre, con uguale certezza che, durante il mese di agosto 1789, a Fano ed a Velletri prima del giorno 16, a Roma fra il 16 e il 28, ed a Frascati non più tardi del 30, il popolo minuto commise atti vandalici e compì minacciose dimostrazioni, usando foglie di alberi per coccarda. A Roma si mossero circa ventimila transteverini muniti di armi, recando foglie di lauro al cappello, e chiedendo e ottenendo immediatamente il ribasso del prezzo dei generi di prima necessità col dire che avrebbero imitato i parigini se non fossero stati subito accontentati."
[Eng]:
"Furthermore it is known, with equal certainty that, during August 1789 in Fano and Velletri before the 16th, in Rome between the 16th and the 28th, and in Frascati no later than the 30th, the people committed acts of vandalism and menacing demonstrations, using tree leaves as cockades. In Rome around twenty thousands Transteverians [people residing in Rome] marched with weapons, showing laurel leaves appointed to their hats, and demanding and immediately getting price reduction on goods of primary necessity, threatening they would have imitated the parisians in case their requests hadn't been immediately fulfilled."
-Ferorelli N., La vera origine del tricolore italiano, Rassegna storica del Risorgimento vol. XII (1925)
Moreover Ferorelli gives proof, cockades carrying green, white and red colours were worn by the citizen of Genua, mistakenly believed to be the colours used by the French revolutionaries. The reason behind the misunderstanding relies in the fragmented and sometimes incorrect news the Italian press received from France:
"Si sa per giunta, anche con la massima certezza, che, nel 21 agosto dello stesso anno [1789], gli inquisitori della repubblica di Genova, riferivano in una loro relazione al governo, di essere state viste delle persone passeggiare per la città e con la nuova coccarda francese bianca, rossa e verde introdotta da poco tempo a Parigi."
[Eng]:
"It is known, with the utmost certainty, that, on the 21th of August of the same year [1789], the inquisitors of the republic of Genua, wrote in a report to the gouvernament, that people wearing the new white, green and red French cockades shortly introduced in Paris were spotted walking through the city."
-Ferorelli N., La vera origine del tricolore italiano, Rassegna storica del Risorgimento vol. XII (1925)
A military insigna carrying the green, white and red colours was adopted as official flag for the the newly formed Legione Lombarda (Lombard Legion) in 1796, whose members were Italian patriots and soldiers favourable to Napoleon Bonaparte, but it's with the establishment of the Cispadanian Republic (7th January 1797) that we have the first example of use of the tricolour as symbol for national union. As the intellectual and journalist Giuseppe Compagnoni stated in his proposal on the very same day of the Republic proclamation:
"Si renda universale lo stendardo o bandiera cispadana di tre colori verde, bianco e rosso e questi tre colori si usino anche nella coccarda cispadana, la quale dovrà portarsi da tutti."
[Eng]:
"An universal banner or flag with three colours green, white and red should be set and these colours should be used in the cispadanian cockade, that should be worn by everyone."
-Rossi L., "Origini della bandiera tricolore italiana"
More or less significative variant of the cispadanian flag were used during the foundations of new states in the Italian peninsula, until March 1861, when on the 17th, the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed, whose official flag was the three vertical-striped tricolour belonged to the former Kingdom of Sardegna, the official prototype of the one currently used in Italy.
#italian history#italy#frev#french revolution#origins of the italian flag#thank you Desmoulins I guess#my posts
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“The freedom to piss on the cement of Empire [...].”
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The dry semi-desert that is South Africa’s Karoo began as an ice cap on the supercontinent Pangea [...]. The Karoo ice cap was kilometers deep and peaked between 359 and 299 million years ago. [...] Another hundred million years after Pangea split [...], the Karoo became home and then graveyard to dinosaurs of the Jurassic Era [...]. [V]olcanic extrusions and kimberlite pipes threw skywards the purest form of carbon: diamonds. [...]
The discovery of diamond-bearing rock in the northern Karoo in 1869 propelled the [British] Empire into inventing new aspects of the technosphere, in which metal mining structures, wooden beams, steam engines, long guns, and the [...] [bodies] of migrant laborers were employed to reconnect the volcanic residues of the Late Cretaceous with the economic and political landscapes of South Africa and Britain. [...] Profits from the sale of Late Cretaceous diamonds from ninety-one million years ago fed the formation of cities, corporations, and institutions in England and her Cape. [...] [T]he entrepreneur Cecil John Rhodes amassed a personal fortune from the diamond rush, taking control by means fair and foul of claims around the Big Hole of Kimberley, where the largest kimberlite volcanic pipe extrudes. Appointed prime minister of the Cape Colony in 1890, Rhodes set about establishing a legal infrastructure that favored mining and a social infrastructure that established race-based disenfranchisement, creating a class of black laborers who would serve the emerging white-owned mining houses. [...] In the 1900s, the Carboniferous Era from around three hundred million years ago entered South African politics via South African’s coal-fired power stations. In the 1960s, the newly independent Republic of South Africa [...] sought energy autonomy in order to pursue formal policies of race-based segregation, and commissioned geological surveys for coal, oil, and uranium. [...]
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“Colonization=‘thingification’” wrote the postcolonial philosopher Aime Cesaire.
For Cecil John Rhodes, nature was a spectacle that could be kept in a zoo; the university was a project to be “funded from the stomachs of k*firs”; migrant laborers in the diamond mines were required to wait two weeks before leaving, while the contents of their colons were collected and painstakingly searched for ingested gems. Under colonial regimes of extraction of labor and minerals, Africa became a laboratory for the necropolitical: relations of life for relationships of ownership and death. [...]
His estate set up the University of Cape Town and his statue was erected in 1934: a two-ton bronze effigy of the man set on a concrete plinth in a pose that calls to mind Rodin’s The Thinker. In the view of the statue’s gaze there was Rhodes Highway, Rhodes Drive, Rhodes High School; to the statue's right was Rhodes Memorial, and to its left his zoo; on the far side of the old Cape Colony would be built Rhodes University.
Memorialized thus as the archetypal Reasonable Man, the aura of his realism must have been surreal to those who had suffered under his rule. [...]
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[I]n 2015, academics, students [...] in and alongside the University of Cape Town found themselves confronting a performance of the execrable on March 9, 2015, when [a] student [...] threw excrement -- nightsoil from a shack settlement -- over Rhodes’s statue to call for the university’s decolonization. Rhodes’s statue was removed on a flat-bed truck exactly one month later [...]. His two tons of bronze dangled briefly from a crane, severed from its concrete plinth, then was carted off for safekeeping in an undisclosed location. [...]
Geologies of morals and morals of geology: the Karoo Ice Age, frozen and global, and Rhodes’s Karoo Age, an era of extractive economy that sacrificed life and created sacrifice zones. One lasted a hundred million years, the other a hundred and fifty. Both changed the relations between geology and life. [...]
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Amid the Rhodes statue’s formal removal on April 9, 2015, a construction worker -- a deconstruction worker, really -- took a moment to piss and loudly announce he was doing so on the stairs leading up to Rhodes. It was his own moment in a month-long protest beginning with the shit-throwing. A moment to seize the possibility of vulgarity that breaks the lines of authority, the fountain of piss flagrantly rejoins the flow of water through all bodies and all spheres.
The freedom to piss on the cement of Empire asserts that the body of the construction worker and the body of the shack-dweller inhabit the same earth as the Empire, and that cement, ultimately, is a political subject. As is diamond-bearing kimberlite, and gas-bearing shale. [...]
Colonization made predatory claims on the earth’s geological flows and processes without regard to the reciprocities through which they were formed in the earth’s spheres.
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Text by: Lesley Green. “The Changing of the Gods of Reason: Cecil John Rhodes, Karoo Fracking, and the Decolonizing of the Anthropocene.” e-flux Journal Issue #65. May 2015. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]
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The final chapter of No One Hurts Me Like You Do has been posted to Ao3!!
Summary:
When Azkaban closes, Bellatrix has to complete the remainder of her sentence under house arrest, monitored closely by the newly-appointed Minister of Magic; Hermione Granger.
Hermione’s weekly visits to ensure Bellatrix is abiding by the rules, soon turn into a hate-fuelled affair and a discovery about herself that takes her by surprise. She hates herself for letting the witch get under her skin, but finds it impossible to walk away.
#bellatrix black#bellamione#bellatrix lestrange#bellatrix x hermione#fanfiction#ao3 writer#hermione granger#perpetualmusefanfic#bellamione fanfic#bellamione fanfiction#andromeda tonks#andromeda black#harry potter#sapphic fanfic#sapphic
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