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mariacallous · 10 months

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Three months ago, Saudi Arabia kick-started a concerted regional effort to reengage and normalize Syria’s regime within the Middle East and, Riyadh hoped, farther afield. On April 18, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian capital of Damascus. Just one month later, on May 19, the Arab League embraced one of the world’s most notorious war criminals for the first time since 2011.

While Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s decision to reengage triggered this regional shift, its roots lie a little deeper. The United Arab Emirates began restoring relations with Assad’s regime in 2018, and it has pushed hard for others to follow suit ever since. More recently, Jordan and its king, Abdullah II—long a close and reliable U.S. ally—have emerged as a key architect of the plan to normalize Assad, drafting secretive white papers for dissemination across the region as well as in Moscow and Washington. Underpinning Jordan’s vision was the idea that only by reengaging the Assad regime could diplomacy achieve meaningful concessions from Assad and, in doing so, Syria would be oriented back onto a path toward stability and recovery.

With more than half a million people dead, after nearly 340 chemical weapons attacks, 82,000 barrel bombs, dozens of medieval-style sieges, and much more, the region’s decision to reembrace Assad was no insignificant thing. It has also not been a unanimous decision, with Qatar a strong opponent, followed closely behind by Kuwait and Morocco. But the Middle East works by consensus, not unanimity, and Mohammed bin Salman’s decision to pivot has changed everything.

Beyond the region, the prospect of normalizing Assad remains a deeply distasteful proposition. Europe shows no sign of following suit, nor does the United States, although some senior White House officials have privately greenlighted the region’s pivot. For some within the administration, Middle Eastern crises such as Syria’s are viewed as essentially unresolvable, peripheral to U.S. interests, and not worth the effort. At the same time, according to two regional and two European officials who recently conducted separate meetings in Washington, all of whom spoke to me on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic conversations, one senior Biden administration official has taken to lauding the U.S. role in achieving “the most stable Middle East in 25 years.”

Notwithstanding the factual issues with such a claim, it is likely based in large part on the recent wave of so-called de-escalation across the region, as adversarial and rival governments have reengaged and papered over their differences. The durability of these developments remains unclear, but for many in the region, the normalization of Assad’s regime is part and parcel of this de-escalation. As such, it came as no surprise when one Biden appointee, Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf, called on regional states in March to “get something” in return for their efforts. In retrospect, there can be no doubting how consequential that statement was in triggering concerted regional normalization and significantly weakening Washington’s claimed posture toward Assad.

It has now been three months since the Saudi visit to Damascus set in motion the region’s reembrace of Assad. In mid-August, regional states plan to convene a follow-up summit to discuss progress and next steps. According to officials from three regional states, the entire summit is up in the air. Why? Because every problem in Syria has significantly worsened since April. If regional states were issued a report card, it would barely deserve an F.

Aid Access

A core goal underpinning the region’s normalization of Assad was a desire to see Syria stabilize. For more than a decade, the international community has supported a humanitarian aid effort across Syria worth tens of billions of dollars, meeting the needs of millions of people. The most vulnerable 4.5 million live in a small corner of Syria’s northwest, which is home to the world’s most acute humanitarian crisis. On July 11, Russia vetoed an extension of the United Nations’ 9-year-old mechanism for cross-border aid provision into the northwest, severing a vital lifeline and plunging the area into a profound and unprecedented state of uncertainty.

Days after Russia’s veto, the Assad regime announced an offer to open aid access to the region but added a set of conditions that made the offer practically impossible to implement. Even if the regime’s scheme were somehow implemented, the flow of aid would be a fraction of what was possible under the previous arrangement. For two years, the regime has sought to prioritize cross-line aid delivered from Damascus, and in that time, 152 trucks have been sent. In the same two-year period, more than 24,000 trucks arrived cross-border. As things stand, there is now no mechanism to provide unhindered aid to northwestern Syria and no serious effort to create one. So much for the idea that engaging Assad would bring forth concessions.

Captagon

One issue that Saudi Arabia and Jordan had been most concerned about emanating from Syria was the trade in captagon, an illegal amphetamine produced on an industrial scale by prominent Assad regime figures. Between 2016 and 2022, more than a billion Syrian-made captagon pills were seized around the world, most in the Persian Gulf. In engagements with Assad’s regime, regional states have sought to convince Assad to put an end to the trade.

Given the regime’s central role as well as the stunning profit margins involved—one pill can cost several cents to produce but sells in the Gulf for $20—Damascus’s promise in May to regional governments that it would curb the captagon trade was at best a laughable claim. Nevertheless, Jordan just welcomed two of the most notorious and internationally sanctioned regime officials—Assad’s defense minister and intelligence chief—to Amman to discuss combating drug trafficking, only to be forced to shoot down a drone carrying drugs from Syria just a day later.

Meanwhile, data I’ve collected monitoring regional seizures shows that a massive $1 billion worth of Syrian-made captagon has been confiscated across the region in the last three months, in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Iraq, Turkey, and Jordan. Even more significantly, German authorities just discovered a Syrian-run captagon production facility in southern Germany along with approximately $20 million worth of pills and 2.5 tons of precursor chemicals.

Refugees

Regional states also hoped that reengaging with Assad’s regime would open a path for refugee returns to Syria. After all, the presence of large numbers of Syrian refugees in neighboring countries—3.6 million in Turkey, 1.5 million in Lebanon, and 700,000 in Jordan—is placing an increasingly untenable strain on host countries.

Yet the logic behind regional hopes is inexplicable. All of the most significant reasons why Syrian refugees refuse to return are associated with regime rule. Indeed, new U.N. polling of Syrian refugees released just days after Assad’s participation in the Arab League summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, revealed that just 1 percent were considering returning in the next year.

By so actively normalizing Assad’s rule, regional states have given many among that 1 percent reason to reconsider. What’s more, refugees are now voting with their feet, taking perilous journeys toward Europe at an exponential rate—with the rate of Syrian migration north now at least 150 percent higher than in 2021. Now faced with this bleak reality, host states are enacting policies to coerce refugees to leave, with Lebanon’s U.S.-funded armed forces resorting to forcible expulsions and Jordan declaring that financial support for Syrian refugees will soon end.

Economic Collapse and Violent Escalation

In the past three months, Syria’s economy has precipitously collapsed, with the Syrian pound having lost 77 percent of its value. When the Saudi foreign minister visited Damascus in April, the Syrian pound was worth 7,500 to $1, but today, that number is 13,300.

Having been welcomed back into the regional fold while simultaneously benefiting from U.S. and European sanctions waivers in the wake of the February earthquake, Assad’s economy should not look like this. The fault here lies with the regime itself, which has proved systematically corrupt, incompetent, and driven by greed rather than the public good. Fiscal mismanagement and the prioritization of the illegal drugs trade have killed the Syrian economy, potentially for good.

As the region yearns for a stable Syria, ruled by a strong but reformed regime that welcomes refugees back home, the past three months have told a starkly different picture—one of escalation. Nearly 150 people have been killed in the southern governorate of Daraa since April, furthering the area’s status as the most consistently unstable region of the country since 2020.

In mid-July, regime forces besieged villages south of the town of Tafas that it accused of harboring opponents, before demolishing 18 homes as punishment. Since its violent submission to the regime five years ago, Daraa was meant to exemplify Assad’s self-described plans to “reconcile” areas formerly controlled by his opponents. But reconciliation in Daraa has been anything but, and the region is now rife with insurgency, terrorism, organized crime, and a chaotic mess of political infighting.

Meanwhile, the regime has also escalated its attacks on the opposition-controlled northwest. Not long after Assad walked the red carpet into the Arab League summit in Jeddah, Russia resumed airstrikes in northwestern Syria for the first time since November 2022—launching nearly 35 in June alone. Along with Russian jets, pro-regime artillery fire also surged from May into June, resulting in a 560 percent increase in fatalities in the northwest in June, from five in April to three in May to 33 in June. That marked escalation included the resumption of mass casualty regime bombings of civilian targets, including one attack that destroyed a market on June 25, leaving at least 13 dead. Civilian rescue workers also returned to being explicit targets, including the “double-tap” attack that targeted White Helmet personnel on July 11.

Terrorism

Regional normalization of Assad’s regime has also dealt a deep and likely irreversible blow to nearly a decade of international efforts to counter the Islamic State. For years, the United States has relied on the cover provided by regional partners such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia to sustain the vital U.S. military deployment in northeastern Syria, but those partners are now declaring their support for the expansion of Assad’s rule nationwide, including via the removal of foreign forces.

Worse still, having long been among the most generous donors to counter-Islamic State operations, Saudi Arabia failed to donate anything in the recent annual ministerial conference—which was hosted in Saudi Arabia itself. Assad’s normalization has also gravely undercut the leverage of the U.S.-partnered Syrian Democratic Forces to determine or negotiate their long-term survival. Russia and Iran have also been empowered, with reports of Iranian attack plotting and daily Russian violations of a long-standing deconfliction arrangement in order to challenge and threaten U.S. aircraft.

While the U.S.-led coalition’s ability to sustain the only meaningful counter to the Islamic State in Syria has been shoved into a tight and uncomfortable corner, the terrorist group also appears to be benefiting directly from Assad’s new status. As Assad was taking his seat in the Arab League in May, the Islamic State was in the midst of its most aggressive and deadly month of operations in regime-controlled areas of Syria since 2018.

Between April 1 and July 1, the group conducted 61 attacks and killed 159 people in regime-run central Syria—amounting to 50 percent of all attacks and 90 percent of fatalities achieved in 2022. The Islamic State has returned to controlling populated territory (albeit temporarily) in regime areas of Syria, and it defeated a six-week offensive in March and April by Syrian regime forces that was backed by the Russian air force and Iranian proxies. In late July, the Islamic State expanded its reach into Damascus, killing at least six people and wounding 23 others in a bomb attack in the Shiite district of Sayida Zeinab.

Assad’s Diplomatic Veto

Finally, the regional normalization of Assad—which the Arab League said was supposed to be “conditional” on securing regime concessions—appears to have wrecked any hope for meaningful diplomacy aimed at genuinely resolving Syria’s crisis. According to senior U.N. officials who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations, Assad himself has conveyed to U.N. leaders in recent weeks that he has no intention to reengage with the U.N.-run Constitutional Committee or in any step-for-step negotiation process, whether coordinated by the U.N. or regional states. The prospect for a diplomatic resolution to Syria’s crisis may have looked bleak six months ago, but regional engagements with the regime since April appear to have killed things altogether.

The regime’s stance toward cross-border aid should serve as a clear indicator of the extent to which Assad feels irreversibly empowered since being welcomed back by much of the region. Even convincing Assad to issue a small prisoner amnesty as a show of goodwill appears to be a non-starter.

The picture here is stark and irrefutable. The chorus of warnings that reengagement with Assad would backfire were ignored, and the consequences are now clear for all to see. That regional states’ plans for a follow-up summit are up in the air speaks for itself. To meet amid such calamitous developments would be folly. Syria is now entering a deeply dark period of uncertainty, with a crashing economy, rising levels of violence, heightening geopolitical tensions, and a poisoned diplomatic environment. The fault here lies in many different corners, but as usual, it will be Syrians who suffer the costs.

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captainrayzizuniverse · 6 months

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Harry understands politics better than the majority of his fans. There will be one teocratic Islamic republic of Palestine. All Palestinians will be liberated. All Palestinian lands. As long as Iran exists there will never be Two States one of which is an Occupier of Palestinian lands. Why can't you understand that? Arafat was KGB. Soviet Union aka Russia together with Iran and China will finish what Soviet Union started and erase Israel. Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Axis of Resistance will liberate all Palestinians. Palestine with Jews living in Palestine. Do you understand why Russia gave that Ultimatum to US and NATO in December 2021? It is a win-win for the Moscow-Tehran-Beijing Axis. Why do you think Putin is so happy after all those recent high-level meetings with Iran, Hamas in Moscow and China? When they win as US/NATO will capitulate in Ukraine/Europe, in the Middle East, Central Asia, South China Sea/Taiwan, having already lost Africa, Latam. BRICS will dethrone the dollar and thus democracies. That is new world order that Putin was talking about a few days ago, that will be the 21st century under dictatorships. China plans for 100 years. US/NATO/EU already lost. Democracies already lost. Netherlands is only another domino falling. It is work camps next. Some rainbow coloured.

I'm always anxious with anon ask so I never answer but this one...man you sound just like my uncle I swear. I'd ask if you were Amo Nabil but he passed away in january so that's a definite no. There are very little things things I agree with but you're coming at it from an aggressive political pov that i'm not interested in... i'm just not that invested in politics to give my uninformed opinion about it tbh. Growing up in Lebanon I hear these theories on the daily and I bow out of every conversation. And just know, i'm very much anti-hezbollah/Iran regime/Asad so don't even go there with me.

But I don't understand the beginning sentence about harry? Any examples? You are reducing fans' intelligence with this baseless claim. The guy is the definition of selective solidarity at best and I use the word solidarity loosely.

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thetldrplace · 8 months

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Italy in the Central Middle Ages: 1000-1300 - Oxford History of Italy

1 Cities and Communes Communal Italy generally refers to the urbanized areas in Lombardy and Tuscany during this time. Self-governing communes emerged around 1080-1120. But by 1200, these communes were struggling to accommodate the aspirations of the popolo, groups excluded to that time by the established regimes. By 1300, the problems had gotten so bad that signori, single families, were often in charge.

The communes drew on notions from the late days of the old Roman times. They arose as the larger states collapsed or were simply in absentia. By 1000, the German overlords were often not present to impose authority. Bishops often acted as de facto authorities. The Italian kingdom had ceased to function in any meaningful sense, and the cities were left dependent on themselves. The bishops themselves were undermined by this, but the real change happened with the reform movements that saw a desire that the church would turn from worldy affairs.

This didn't happen overnight, it was a slow transition, but by 1150, communes had been established in all the major towns and cities of Lombardy and Tuscany. They set up assemblies, elected officials, sought to unify territories surrounding the town centers, and kept legal materials. The relatively close proximity helped to spread the ideas from one to the next.

The unweildiness of the large assemblies as the cities grew made smaller councils more effective. There was also a fairly large bureaucracy involved. By the end of the 12th century, many of the communes had sought a podestà- a supreme official with enough responsibility to get things done. The podestà was originally a short-term office, but in short order, powerful families were fighting each other for control. Many of the podestà were therefore brought from other cities, to avoid factional favoritism. But increasingly, there was a hostile environment and military duty was an important factor of the leadership.

Since the cities were the centers of what was happening, that was where the elites went to exercise power and be seen. They were building huge towers in order to broadcast their wealth and power.

But against this set of elites, a new class of merchants that had been excluded from authority was rising up. They formed guilds in order to exercise enough political power. These societas popoli, or the popolo, achieved a measure of power by the mid 1200's. They sought to break the hold of the nobles on office holding by introducing their own candidates. They also sought more equitable taxation, and thirdly, they wanted to restore law and order, by curbing the disturbances of competing wealthy families.

By the 1300's the power of the old families had been damaged and new families were rising to prominence. These signori sometimes rose to power through coups, but they often worked their way up through the system. Some of them stayed for longer times and through time the position became life-long. As this happened, there was little defense of the commune- the people, as they had back when Rome changed from Republic to Empire, wanted a strong man who could deliver strong rule in a crisis.

2 Law and Monarchy in the South Medieval southern Italy and Sicily were the gateways through which western Europe received Byzantine and Arabic art, architecture, and scholarship. Translations of important works from Greek and Arabic into Latin took place here.

Southern Italy shouldn't be treated as a frontier of Europe or a part of the Italian entity. Much of its history is a reflection of power relationships in a larger context, and it can't be understood without putting it in the context of the history of the Mediterranean. Given that the cities of southern Italy were coastal, and separated by mountain ranges, their connection was by the sea. In the middle ages, southern Italy were more a part of the Mediterranean than continental Europe.

Norman unification From the 7th century, the Mediterranean consisted of three broad cultural regions: Latin Christian western Europe, Greek Christian Byzantine east, and Arab-Islamic north Africa and Spain. Southern Italy was on the borders. In the 11th century when Norman warriors arrived, Calabria was under control of the Byzantine empire. Naples, Amalfi and Gaeta were subject to Byzantium; Salerno, Capua and Benevento were effectively independent Lombards, and Sicily was muslim. The Normans originally were Byzantine mercenaries, but began taking territory in the area. Richard and Robert Guiscard were the first to conquer territory in Sicily and south Italy. After conquering the areas, the Normans were rulers, but a small minority. Politically though, their rule transformed the regions from Meditarranean, to a part of Latin-Christian Europe. When they first conquered, the majority of Sicilians were muslims and Greeks. But their rule brought large-scale migration of Lombards to Italy, which transformed even the language to a latin dialect.

Roger II took over in 1127, and quickly transformed Sicily and south Italy into a major kingdom, by uniting the territories under his strong rule. There were different cultural areas within the territory: western and southern Sicily were mostly muslim. North and eastern Sicily was largely Greek. After the pacification of the territory, he managed to unify the area politically, while still allowing different cultural backgrounds. He was willing to allow existing laws as long as his edicts had priority.

The center of the kingdom was Palermo and its Norman kings. By his death in 1154, Roger II had gained control of the important commercial routes in the central Mediterranean. He had treaties with Genoa and Venice, and peace with Germany. He had peaceful relationships with the Byzantine empire and even England.

After William II died in 1189, his aunt Constance was the legitimate heir of Sicily. She married Henry VI of Germany. This left a period of upheaval for a while. But Henry eventually gave birth to Frederick II, marking the change from the Norman Hauteville house, to the Hohenstaufen German house. When Henry died in 1197, and Constance in 1198, Frederick II was made king... but he was only 3 at the time.

In 1208, when he came of age (14), he undertook the restoration of the kingdom. But he was also declared king of Germany in 1211, so he had to go there to manage affairs for some years. He didn't come back to Sicily until 1220. When he did return, he wasn't just king of Sicily, he was also king of Germany. Nonetheless, he loved Sicily and wanted to stay there. So he set about putting affairs in order. He had been commissioned to go on a crusade, but needing to put his affairs in order in Germany, he put it off. This pissed off the Pope, who excommunicated him. Nonetheless, he left for Jerusalem in 1228. He took a wife who was heiress to Jerusalem, which made him king. He managed a negotiation with al-Kamil and celebrated a diplomatic victory in 1229. This bloodless success apparently didn’t sit well with the Pope, who invaded Sicily: a papal holy war waged against a crusader! Frederick came back to Sicily, kicked out the papal army and made a peace with the humiliated pope in 1230.

But as much as Frederick wanted to return Sicily to the golden days of its past, the conditions inside Sicily and south Italy had changed. The demographics had changed. The coexistence of Muslims and Christians came to an end, and muslim agricultural skills were deported. Palermo was no longer the center of the kingdom either. Frederick's position as king of Germany also meant that he had to mind the politics to the north as well. When he died in 1250, the kingdom was too large to be unified in any meaningful way. He appointed his son to rule, but things didn't get any better.

Charles of Anjou The papacy wanted a different ruler than the Hohenstaufens and anointed Charles of Anjou in 1266. He made an energetic effort to restore order and the kingdom. The basic structure stayed the same as before, but regardless, the situation had changed. As French settlers began to arrive on Sicily, they became the new ruling class, which caused friction between the old and the new. Sicilians became a province and lost their central status. Charles also ruled over a large empire and couldn't focus much on Sicily.

The Sicilian Vespers In 1282, a quarrel between a palermitan and a French soldier escalated to a revolt with a bunch of French soldiers killed. The islanders sought protection from the Pope, but he refused and excommunicated the entire island. They decided to turn to Peter III of Aragon. So he landed in Trapani and was declared king.

This was the break of the kingdom though and Sicily would be a separate entity from southern Italy.

4 The Rise of the Signori The communes of the 13th century recreated the institutions and methods of ancient democracy and anticipated the achievements of modern states in defining and achieving secular goals. Political participation was widened beyond a narrow elite, whose influence was restricted through devices such as secret balloting, short terms of office, and limits on repeat office-holding. The communes produced constitutions, strong administration, and a permanent bureaucracy. But democracy did not bring peace, and the power of division and faction grew stronger.

One of the shortcomings of communal government is the lack of resources. In practice, it relies on communal support and private initiative across a range of public business. But frequent rotation of government and administrative personnel brings confusion rather than participation and impartiality. Citizens avoided public duty rather than participate in it, and attacked government rather than obeying public agents.

The pretenses of communal government were made impossible by four powerful forces:

Class and wealth sought, and won, privilege and preferential treatment at the hands of government in areas such as justice, taxation, and military obligation;

Client/Patron relationships turned state offices to private gain;

Family clans provided a rival focus of loyalty and sought to displace the state itself;

Feudal lordships, seigneuries, of castles lands, dependent tenants and jurisdiction persisted across northern Italy and used the cities penchant for warfare to strengthen their positions in city and country.

The response to this failure was political change, and from the middle of the 1200's, a new breed of political and military leaders, signori, began to dominate.

5 Trade and Navigation The rise of the four maritime republics: Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and Amalfi.

8 The Family Italy during the time period was cohesive, but still diverse. Italian families existed long before 1100, but around that time, we begin to get more source material to work with. In the south, Byzantine and Muslim rule had ceased, but their teachings on the family remained important in Sicily and Calabria. The north/south divide was important too. Northern Italy was becoming one of the most urbanized areas of Europe, but even there, the contrasts between city and rural life were profound. The ancient Roman law of the family still endured. And the Mediterranean honor code was probably strongest in Italy. Honor and shame were deeply embedded in Italian culture, particularly with regards to 'their women'.

In general, the Catholic church and its teachings on the family were the same for all of Europe. Marriage was by consent, divorce was wrong, monogamy the rule, incest was a sin and marriage was prohibited among close kin. Bonds to godmothers, godfathers, and godchildren were important in Italy.

The age of marriage for women was falling, with a floor set at 12. But in Italy, women tended to marry younger. Men were rarely married before 20, and there is evidence of growing age gaps through time. A complicating factor was the requisite dowry, which was a large factor in Italian homes.

The family was an economic unit was important as well, with size and opportunities for family members being dependent on familial wealth. Children in Italy, as elsewhere, were an investment that could guarantee the survival of the family.

The traditional teaching that the family purpose was to bring legitimate children to the world, provide companionship for husband and wife, and help partners avoid vice, were additional frameworks for Italian families.

One purpose of the family was to produce children to keep the family line alive. But this concept of the family meant that some children would be defined as illegitimate, which left them with few legal mechanisms to be included in the family.

A large number of wills gives us a glimpse of family life; many couples were childless, and many more were very small families. Grandparents were rare, meaning most families were two generations. 17% of the testators in Palermo before 1350 were not married, suggesting that not everyone sought marriage.

The law regulated family lives at times, even attempting to legislate personal moralities. In an interesting follow up to the old Lex Oppia, Frederick II (1296-1337) tried to improve morality among his subjects. One of his General Ordinances from 1310, required modest dress for women. The purpose seems to have been again, to reduce ostentatious displays of wealth and expense, which would foster modesty, and importantly, reduce family rivalries. Perhaps he felt the times merited such an approach, but the women bore all the brunt of the law's rigor.

One of the momentous developments during this time was the rise of family names. By 1350, it was nearly universal, except in rural areas. First names were increasingly given after prominent saints, leading to a limit in the pool of names, and also a repetition.

9 Language and Culture The first signs of a vernacular Italian are the Riddle of Verona and some graffiti in the catacombs of Comodilla in Rome, from around 800. Due to the paucity of textual evidence, we can infer that there wasn't a fierce awareness of any difference between Latin and the vernacular.

The linguistic situation was diverse. The coastal areas, more in the south than north, maintained a Mediterranean orientation towards Greek. Sicily had a large Greek speaking population, and after the Muslim conquests in the ninth century, entire parts of Sicily were Arabic speaking. Arabic words also spread north along trade routes. In the north, the Kingdom of Italy was oriented towards the Holy Roman Empire beyond the Alps. In the center of the peninsula, there were pockets of Greek speakers, and south of Rome, a 'Sabine' form existed that dropped the –mb- and –nd- sounds (gamba became gamma; mondo became monno) that spread to all southern Italy.

The most linguistically conservative areas, which kept the final –s of Latin were found in the high Alpine valleys. The Appenine valleys saw innovations such as the softening of intervocalic consonants (acu > ago).

There is nothing to suggest the inhabitants of Italy thought they spoke any type of unified language, an "Italian", if anything, the reverse is true. The lack of an adjective Italian doesn't escape notice. The first conscious affirmation of unity among the spoken languages on the peninsula would be Dante's definition as the 'lingua del sì'.

Between 1000-1300, Arabic fell to complete disuse. The crusades changed the relationship with the Muslim world and closed the door on lexical borrowing from Arabic. Immigration from the north also displaced the use of Greek in Sicily and the south.

Rome had no particular dialect at the time and it was Tuscan that helped create the modern Roman dialect.

10 The Italian Other There is a question still over how much these other peoples: Greeks, Muslims, and Jews, genetically affected the population. Were the effects of the invasions and settlers superficial- in which case they left a relatively stable native population whose genes can be traced back to pre-medieval times? Or did the settlers mix genetically with the local Sicilian and southern Italian populations.

Greeks There has been a substantial Greek population in Italy for a long time. Later Muslim settlers were added to the population. But as they went into decline, many found their way to Greek Christian churches. Not so much by conversion necessarily, but through a slow process of shifting allegiances from the mosque to the church as the obvious focus of social life and moral authority in the community.

The cultural life of Norman Sicily was heavily influenced by Greek models. Greek presence in the north was very limited. Even in Venice, which had long commercial ties with the Byzantine empire, there was no real substantial Greek population. Latins sought to establish themselves in Greek lands, but Greeks didn't seek to establish themselves in Latin lands.

Muslims The Muslim presence in Italy and Sicily was through invasion and conquest. Paradoxically, Muslim culture and splendor reached its zenith under Norman control. This is because prior to Norman control of Sicily, the real cultural centers were located outside Sicily; in either Tunisia or Egypt.

The Islamic world used Sicily as producers of products desired in the Islamic world: indigo, henna, and sugar. Under the Normans, these were ditched in favor of wheat. When the Normans took over, they offered freedom of religion in exchange for the Muslims' acceptance of Christian rule. The aim was continuity and stability. They also adopted Muslim administrative practices.

But through time they were driven into ever tighter corners and eventually, their presence on the island was either driven off or absorbed.

Jews The Jews in southern Italy and Sicily were stabilizing influences. Unlike in the north, where they were forced to the margins of society, in the south they were simply one of many distinctive groups.

The Jews themselves said their history began in the days of Titus, who had settled them in Taranto and surrounding areas.

Much is known of the Sicilian Jews, because we have much correspondence about their activities in trading with Cairo. But the arrival of the Normans undermined the Jewish merchants. The Normans however had no difficulty accepting the Jews as part of the local fabric of society. The Jews were generally Arabic speaking, so they could act as intermediaries between Christian and Muslim.

Within towns, Jews often sought control over animal slaughter, and they cultivated vines. Control over these allowed them to maintain a flow of Kosher products for Jewish consumption.

Frederick II's reign marked a transition in their relationships. Jews were increasingly considered off-limits to Christians. From 1000-1300, Jews lived more in the south. But by the 1600's, they had migrated to the north.

Rome itself had a continuous Jewish communal presence from antiquity.

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blockgeni · 1 year

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Regulator ambiguity and inconsistent enforcement are the two things that tech companies really dislike. The European Union's complete new crypto-asset bill, a world first, has finally passed its final parliamentary obstacle, which is good news for the volatile cryptocurrency industry. The European Commission first presented the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) concept over three years ago. Last June, a political agreement was made on it between the Commission, the European Parliament, and the member states of the union (represented by the Council of the EU). Last month, the Parliament formally adopted the finished product. The Council did the same today, finalizing MiCA. It's likely to go into effect in the middle of the next year. MiCA has received a thunderous welcome from the cryptocurrency industry since it offers a clear set of guidelines that will be applied uniformly throughout the EU, whose IT legislation frequently have an international impact. Last week, Circle EU strategy chief Patrick Hansen tweeted, "Regulatory clarity attracts capital and entrepreneurs from around the world," while displaying statistics showing that continental Europe got 47.6% of cryptocurrency VC investment in the first quarter of this year, up from 5.9% in Q1 2022. He referred to this as "the MiCA effect." MiCA is primarily focused on controlling the issuance and trade of stablecoins in an effort to prevent catastrophes like the collapse of the TerraUSD. Holders will have the right to demand redemption at any time, and those issuing stablecoins will need to have genuine reserves to support them. Electronic money tokens, which are pegged to a single fiat currency, may only be issued by accredited credit or e-money institutions. Regarding cryptocurrencies other than stablecoins, the law mandates that anyone preparing a significant crypto-asset offering in the EU first publish a white paper for investors that covers all relevant topics, including the associated rights and dangers, as well as any potential environmental impacts of the underlying consensus process, which is often a blockchain. Their promotional materials must be completely consistent with this document. Both exchange providers and custodial wallet providers will need licenses. NFTs and central bank digital currencies, both at the national and European Central Bank levels, are not expressly covered by MiCA, yet legal experts believe it may nonetheless have an impact on such sectors in certain situations. The new rule also excludes completely decentralized finance (DeFi) networks for peer-to-peer financial exchanges, although it does enable partially decentralized "DeFi" platforms where an exchange operator makes money. MiCA will require service providers to obtain the names of both parties in each crypto-asset transaction as part of its anti-money laundering requirements. As a result, the EU is well ahead of the U.S. and U.K., whose regulators are currently establishing themselves or, in the case of the U.S., determining which regulator should receive the crypto brief. Hester Peirce, the Securities and Exchange Commissioner, said at a conference last week that it was "really commendable" that Europe was able to complete that task so swiftly. "We are shooting ourselves in the foot by not having a regulatory regime in the United States." Finding some sort of worldwide consensus on crypto standards is now a struggle, but no matter how it turns out, MiCA's effect will be felt strongly. Source link

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ihateliterature · 2 years

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You know what's funny about not being the right Europeans? That you are far enough and not developed enough to be othered and mysticised, but similar enough to not be fetishized

Like, people know France and England and Spain and Italy and Portugal, but they don't know Romania, Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland, Moldova, Slovakia and all the other Balkan and Slav countries. They only know them as vague names or dots in history and pop culture (and that's a big if). Like "oh, Romania is where part of Dracula takes place" or "the Nazis did some shit in Poland" or "Putin invaded Ukraine", but they are not really processing that there are people in all of these countries, people different from them, and cultures that don't gel well with their own and histories that they are not aware of but that are infinitely important for those people. And so we are far away, ideas rather than people, so we become the other, the uneducated Balkan or Slav in a dirty shitty country, the tragic villain raised in a nightmarish orphanage in the Communist Regime, the mysterious villain raised in a castle or big mansion in the mountains, a seductive vampire, a cold blooded mafioso.

We are easy villain material because our languages are not as easy on the ears for a native English speaker as the latin languages (Romanian is a Latin language, but it has a distinctive Slavic and Balkan sound to it so the point stands), because we used to ally with the USSR, our climate is harsher and our countries are not as beautiful

But we are also white. As much as vampires are fetishized, we will never be as fetishized as Asian, African, Romani or Middle Eastern people. Because we look too much like them (Western Europe and white Americans), our women look like their women, so they can't imagine them in the same positions they do women of color and they can't objectify the bodies of the men so easily. So instead of objectifying our bodies they objectify our minds, reducing us to simple minded fools or villains with nothing else to them

And isn't this the point of the eastern European villain? Someone who looks so similar to you but has something inherently WRONG to them? Something DIFFERENT?

There is also a thing to be said about how western men treat eastern European women, like they are the perfect housewife dream. They view eastern Europe as a perfect land without gays or trans people or feminism or masculine women. No, all women here only ever want marriage and will not accept anything but, they are all perfectly feminine and well groomed and don't get drunk (small vent: really Andrew, really? You've been in Romania for 5 years and you've never seen a drunk woman? Really? What are you gonna tell me next? That the subway line towards Drumul Taberei is gonna get finished before I retire?). They project the idea of the perfect trad woman on the women here just because the countries are more conservative. Well too bad, we also have gays and trans people and feminism and whores and women that don't want marriage and childfree women and butches

Anyway, that's the end of it. Be nice to your Slavic and Balkan buddies and read my boy Emil Cioran when you have the time. His ideas about Big and Small Cultures portray really well a type of nihilism that comes very specifically out of Eastern Europe

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southeastasianists · 3 years

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The tragedy of what appears could be a long-running civil war remains a distinct possibility in Myanmar today. Nevertheless, the term “civil war” itself is inappropriate. Rather Myanmar today resembles Europe during the Nazi occupation. While the sense of occupation by a foreign force had always existed in the ethnic minority areas with their well-armed insurgent organizations, there is a sense today that this is also the case in the Bamar heartland. The occupying army is Myanmar’s own national army (the Tatmadaw) which, from its foundation, has largely functioned as an autonomous state within a state. Those civilians who support the military, such as the members of the USDP, are treaters as collaborators.

Seen even from the conventional paradigm of military coups replacing a democratically elected government the reaction of the international community, and above all the “West”, is disappointing. Yet, once we change perspective to conceive of Myanmar as an occupied country then the reaction of the international community is simply irresponsible. To use a metaphor, Myanmar today is an international orphan. This is not to say, to pursue the analogy, it does not have a family. This ‘family’, in our view, can be divided into three: the kindly, but unengaged aunts, the self-serving and self-indulgent uncles and the feckless cousins.

The kindly, unengaged aunts

The first group, of kindly but unengaged aunts, is a caricature of the United States, the EU and the United Kingdom. Other countries, particularly the other three members of the Quad—Australia, India and Japan—can be considered part of this grouping. Certainly, they rapidly condemned the coup and, in some cases, introduced targeted sanctions against the generals and their immediate families. These were later reinforced to include military-linked conglomerates.

In recent years their political leaderships have heralded a pivot towards the Indo-Pacific with the aim, declared in various official strategy papers, of promoting democracy and confronting autocracy. By not making Myanmar a priority concern in their democratic Indo-Pacific posturing they have revealed the emptiness of these pompous declarations. Is there any post-coup situation in the world today of any greater moral clarity?

The failure of the Australian government to even introduce a basic system of targeted sanctions is puzzling. Cynically, in the context of Sino-Australian tensions doing so would send a clear message to Beijing on the unacceptability of its support for authoritarian regimes, while not being seen to directly criticize the PRC itself. The Morrison governments hesitancy to even provide permanent resident status to the 3,000 or so Burmese students in Australia represents a repudiation of Canberra’s bipartisan principled middle power tradition dating back to Dr Evatt.

This attitude is understandable from Narendra Modi in India in the light of his own autocratic ethno-nationalist agenda. However, it represents the betrayal of the Nehru tradition in foreign policy and, in realpolitik terms, is counterproductive given the continuing aggravation in Sino-Indian relations. Is it really in Delhi’s interest to see Mizoram and Manipur destabilized through a further influx of Myanmar refugees? In the context of Sino-Indian hostility is it in Delhi’s interest to see the PRC providing recognition, and carving out new economic benefits, with the Myanmar junta? It is puzzling why India’s vaunted Look East Policy does not begin with its closest eastern neighbour but, so far, the Indian government has even prevented the Quad from making a clear statement on the release of political prisoners. India abstained in the 18th June vote in the UN General Assembly demanding an arms embargo and he release of political prisoners, unlike the other three Quad members who voted yes. Yet for Quad members, with their principle objective of constraining China, Myanmar is of secondary importance. This, once again is amazingly short-sighted: constraining, but also cooperating with China for mutual benefit, begins in Myanmar.

The United States bears, at least indirectly, responsibility for the coup. It was the leader of the world’s greatest democracy, President Donald Trump, himself who in propagating the Big Lie of a stolen US presidential election in November 2020 provided a rhetorical fig-leaf for would be dictators everywhere to justify their actions. Certainly, in the Myanmar case it gave occasion for Senior General Min Aung Hlaing to play by the Thai playbook and undertake a coup in order to defend democracy against democratic irregularities, corruption, etc. with a vague promise of “free and fair” elections in the future.

The junta is implementing the next steps in the Thai playbook in using a subservient and compliant judicial system to imprison the leaders of the democratic opposition, making Aung San Suu Kyi ineligible to run again. As with the Future Forward Party in Thailand, the banning and dismantling of Myanmar’s National League for Democracy, is just a matter of time.

The Biden Administration’s overwhelming priority is the strengthening and reinvigorating of alliances in Europe and in the Indo-Pacific, to both constrain China and check Russia. Objectively drawing a redline in Myanmar would be a concrete way of achieving these multiple objectives but, alas, with the withdrawal from Afghanistan and other overriding issues, Myanmar remains largely invisible in the “Washington beltway”

In Europe as a result of Brexit, Myanmar no longer has a champion in the “Brussels bubble” and even in the United Kingdom, the PRC’s turpitude in Hong Kong is the key Asian issue, alongside mercantilist policies to promote a Global Britain. Elsewhere in the European Parliament political representatives would rather spend their time making rhetorical points on the Uighur and Hong Kong, than come to the aid of the Myanmar people who overwhelmingly ask for their support.

How can this be explained? We would suggest that the close link in Western eyes between the person of Aung San Suu Kyi and Myanmar’s democratic trajectory has been a double-edged sword. When she was under house arrest and in opposition, she was perceived as incarnating the democratic aspirations of the Myanmar people and maintained these in the arena of public debated. However, when the democratic icon of the 1990s and 2000s fell from her pedestal due to both her autocratic demeanour and, above all, her defence of the Tatmadaw against charges of genocide in the International Criminal Court, concern with Myanmar evaporated. The orphan baby of Burmese democracy was thrown out, so to speak, with the bathwater of personality-centred politics.

Rather than acting decisively on Myanmar, the “kindly but unengaged aunts” have has chosen to delegate the resolution of the Myanmar crisis to the “feckless cousins” of ASEAN discussed below. In Europe this appeals to the somewhat narcissistic encouragement of regional integration elsewhere as well as the hubris surrounding interregionalism. As the world’s most institutionalized regional entity the EU has a rather optimistic view of its oldest regional partner, ASEAN. Yet, to date none of the mechanisms provided in this partnership—such as EU-ASEAN parliamentary dialogue or the ASEAN Strategic Partnership Agreement—have been activated.

The self-interested and self-indulgent uncles

The second part of the family is the self-interested and self-indulgent uncles, namely China and Russia. While it is debatable whether Beijing encouraged the coup, it is clear that since it has been most accommodating in providing recognition to the junta. The PRC has legitimate security, especially energy security, interests in Myanmar and real concerns about instability on its southern borders. The paradox is that these would best be protected under a civilian administration supported by the people of Myanmar than by a Sinophobic and incompetent junta. Yet, as with Modi’s India, Beijing’s ideological blinkers on the benefits of authoritarianism has meant that the PRC is not the loveable country Xi Jinping seeks to project.

Russian behaviour in Myanmar, namely ensuring sales of its weaponry and promoting Putin’s autocratic agenda worldwide, is more perfidious and self-indulgent. Like in the Donbass and Belorussia, Myanmar provides an occasion for Putin’s macho promotion of Russia as a great power. Having largely lost both Vietnam and now India to the West, Moscow is left with Naypyidaw and Vientiane as its last Asian playgrounds.

The feckless cousins

Finally, the third group is the feckless cousins, Myanmar’s Southeast Asian neighbours of ASEAN, to whom the international community has bestowed responsibility to resolve the crisis. In our view, this misconceived sub-contracting is premised on the vague notion of ASEAN’s regional centrality. Yet, it is one thing to pay lip service to “ASEAN centrality” out of diplomatic politeness. It is another thing to actually believe that it can bring results. “Centrality” is a question of positioning and, indeed, by default ASEAN has been the core around which other regional bodies such as the East Asia Summit, the ASEAN Regional Forum, APEC, the RCEP, etc, have been grafted. But “centrality” per se indicates to us nothing about capability or capacity, let alone political willingness.

It took almost three months after the coup for ASEAN on 24th April to organise a summit on Myanmar to which the junta leader, and he alone, was invited. Five months after the coup ASEAN’s promised special envoy has not been appointed both due to internal failure to agree on a candidate and a lack of approval from the junta itself . All ASEAN has achieved so far is to provide de facto legitimacy to the junta and buy it time. At both its emergency summit of 24 April and in the visit of two of its emissaries on 5 to 7 June, ASEAN has given legitimacy to the junta, without even any contact with the democratically elected leaders in Myanmar. It is hard to see how an even-handed dialogue can be organised between the jailers and the jailed, as calls from Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore for the release of political prisoners have gone unheeded.

ASEAN has been successful over 50 years in maintaining peace between its members. However, it has neither the “carrots” nor “the sticks” to bring about change within one of them. For example, under the 2008 ASEAN Charter there are no provisions for any member to be expelled. Above all, the sacrosanct, and self-serving, principle of non-interference will always negate the application of the seventh of the Charter’s purposes and principles: the strengthening of democracy and the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Moreover, not only is there a serious systemic issue, but there is also clearly a lack of political will to promote a return to democracy in Myanmar: the majority of ASEAN members have authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes. What is the interest of the Thai master of coups, ex-General, now PM Prayut, in seeing the Burmese civil disobedience movement succeed? Would it not further encourage the Thai members of the Milk Tea Alliance who periodically occupy the streets of Bangkok to continue denouncing a kindred patriarchal regime? Does the Politburo of the Vietnamese Communist Party want to see netizens succeed in virtually challenging an authoritarian regime? As for Cambodian PM Hun Sen, and Philippines President Rodrigo ‘Digong’ Duterte, aka The Punisher, democratic values are the least of their concerns. Finally, ASEAN is chaired at the moment by the Sultan of Brunei, the last remaining absolute monarch in Asia.

The divisions within ASEAN came into focus during the non-binding vote in the UN General Assembly on 18 June, calling for an arms embargo and the release of political prisoners (item 34-A/75/L.85.Rev. 1). Six ASEAN countries voted yes: Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar itself, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam. The other four—Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand—abstained. Divisions of this kind within a regional entity based on the principle of consensus have only one result: procrastination and a degree of immobilism, otherwise known as the ASEAN Way.

Conclusions

When an orphan’s extended family fails lamentably, fortunately there is an alternative: turning to your friends. In the countries of the “kindly and unengaged aunts” their parliaments—for example the French Senate, the US Congress and the Australian Parliament—pushing for more assertive action from their country’s respective executives. Civil society groups in Southeast Asia increasingly see the combat for Myanmar’s democracy as their own. In the West a vocal Burmese diaspora, advocacy groups, academics and other supporters are pushing to ensure that this orphan is not forgotten. It remains a moot point whether this will lead to concrete and tangible actions, such as the recognition of the National Unity Government, and international intervention of the basis of the Right to Protect will ensue.

#Southeast Asia #Burma #Myanmar #ASEAN #Foreign Affairs #Military Junta

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scripttorture · 3 years

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I have no idea if you can help me, but I am working on a short story that starts after a Sami girl is recovering from being tortured by Christian police after her father is put on trial for witchcraft. This is during the witch trials in Norway. I wanted to focus on recovery in the community and her animistic religion. However, I don’t know what kind of torture she could realistically be recovering from and if, aside from punishment, it should religiously motivated. Do you have any English links?

I put this one off for a long time hoping that the virus situation would improve enough for me to a) have less stress at work and b) be able to access the university library in my town. It doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.

Norwegian history in the 1600s isn’t my strong suit. So my focus here is going to be advice on how to research this. I’ll also include the bits I found and some tortures so common that you can throw them in to virtually any setting without it standing out or being inaccurate.

Before I get any further I don’t know anything about Sami culture. I’d strongly recommend trying to find Sami sensitivity readers if you haven’t already. Because it can be bloody hard to get accurate information on some of Europe’s oppressed minorities and I’d say the Sami fall squarely into that category.

Historical research is fraught with pitfalls and when you’re starting out it can be really difficult to figure out which sources to trust. This only becomes worse when you’re working across a language barrier. And when the focus is torture it gets even more difficult.

Torture has always been a hot button issue.

The fact that virtually every culture has a history of torture doesn’t change that. Cultural ideas about what was ‘more painful’ or ‘more brutal’ or ‘shaming’ have all played a role in what was deemed ‘acceptable’ cruelty. So has the idea of who is an ‘acceptable’ or ‘deserving’ victim.

And that means that misrepresenting the typical tortures of different countries, cultures, religious groups or past regimes has been part of political practice for literally hundreds of years. It is a very easy way to direct people’s hate and elicit an emotional response.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to consider an author’s motivations, biases and abilities when you read historical sources.

Think about whether an author was actually there for the events they describe. Think about their political and religious positions and what they may have to gain by pushing a particular message.

Apologies if some of this comes across as teaching you how to suck eggs, but I know a lot of people don’t get this lesson in their history classes. So sources-

Historical sources can be broadly categorised into primary and secondary sources. A primary source is something produced at the time. A secondary source is something produced later.

Both can be untrustworthy/biased but a primary source gives you information about how events/practices were interpreted at the time, while a secondary sources tells you how they were remembered later.

Primary sources can be things like diaries, court records of witch trials and objects produced in areas like Finnmark (northern Norway where most of the witch trials took place) at the time. Secondary sources might be things like how the witch trials are discussed in Norwegian history books and local history or stories about the witch trials that are told today.

By reading about this in English you’re mostly being limited to secondary sources. The danger here is that secondary sources can misrepresent the time period they’re describing, deliberately or not. Authors make assumptions about how historical people lived, thought, what their actions meant and how their beliefs influenced their actions.

Primary sources can also misrepresent what happened (deliberately or not) but with primary sources they are at least displaying the biases and concerns of the time.

Generally historical research is about the collation and interpretation of primary sources. Which is a lot of work, requires a degree of expertise and often demands fluency in several languages.

That level of work and knowledge appeals to some authors of historical fiction. But it isn’t for everyone. There’s nothing wrong with choosing to rely on history textbooks and the like instead of digging through transcriptions of things written back in the 1600s.

Here’s the problem when you’re doing that for another country: English language sources are often very very biased in favour of other English language sources.

This means if some bored academic in the 1930s made up a bunch of fan theories based on very little evidence it will probably still be used as a source today.

And without having another language (with access to other sources it provides) it can be really difficult to spot that kind of fuckery.

I am not saying that you need to learn Norwegian and believe me as someone with only one spoken language I understand how tackling a new one can be crazy intimidating.

But I think you do need to know Norwegians. Particularly Norwegians with an interest in history.

That’s all general stuff about researching historical periods in different countries.

For torture in particular… I’m not gonna lie it’s a sack of angry snakes.

Both primary and secondary often have considerable motivation for lying about torture. Historical accounts routinely downplay or outright lie about the damage different tortures cause. They are heavily judgemental about victims.

And they run in to exactly the same issues we have trying to study use of different tortures today with the added difficulty that accounts from torturers are preserved far more frequently then accounts from survivors.

It’s only once you start getting to the 1900s that you really start to see multiple survivor accounts of events. For the 1600s as a general period I can think of witness accounts and multiple accounts from torturers or their bosses in various countries. But the testimony of survivors is very very rare.

This is an issue because we know from modern research that torturers routinely lie about what they do.

There were laws in most European countries in this period that cover torture. They tend to define a sort of ‘accepted practice’: what torturers were supposed to do and for how long. And don’t get me wrong these are useful historical sources.

But we know from comparing similar torture manuals used in the 1930s (and indeed more recently) to multiple accounts from torture survivors that torturers do not follow their own rules. I see no reason why torturers today would be less likely to follow ‘the rules’ then their historical predecessors.

Looking up the laws of the land at the historical time period you’re interested in is a good place to start. But it won’t actually tell you everything that torturers did and it may not represent the most common tortures.

It will give you a list of things that were definitely used at the time in that place though. Which isn’t a bad place to start.

Look for history books that cover crime and punishment. If you can’t find one broad enough to do that (or give you a helpful summary of laws at the time) then I’ve found that accounts of specific historical figures in the relevant area/time often contain some of that information.

The next major pitfall when researching historical torture is the bane of my existence: euphemisms.

A lot of historical sources use vague or euphemistic terms for different tortures and then leave it up to the reader to figure out what they mean. This was probably perfectly clear at the time but now… less so.

To use an example from something I’ve been trying to research for a while now I can tell you that the Ancient Egyptians definitely used torture. They say as much in surviving accounts of their justice system. They used it to punish, force confessions and attempt to gain information.

They definitely beat people with sticks. They say they did, in multiple accounts. There are also wall carvings and paintings that show prisoners of war and enslaved people being menaced with sticks.

However, I can’t find any definite suggestion that they used falaka, ie beating the soles of the feet with those sticks.

Did they just hit people at random? This seems unlikely from a practical viewpoint as that’s a very easy way to kill someone. Did they ignore the feet and concentrate on other areas of the body? Did they use falaka and also beat other areas? Do I bring too much bias into this question because I’d love to find a historical point of origin for a torture that’s common throughout the Middle East today?

Historical sources often just don’t contain the details we need to be certain about what torture they’re describing. Terminology is often vague. Descriptions can be contradictory. Often the only way to be certain is to come across an illustration or surviving device and even then this does not necessarily represent common practice and either piece of evidence could be contemporary propaganda rather then something that was actually used.

When you’re talking about historical torture it is essential to find multiple sources and make sure they agree.

Vague terminology like ‘water torture’ can cover a host of different sins. Finding a vague term or euphemism multiple times doesn’t even tell you if this was the same practice carried out in different areas or different practices with superficial similarities.

If a source doesn’t give you enough information to be sure don’t use it. If a source suggests the meaning of a euphemism based on no clear evidence from the time period don’t use it.

What I’ve found in my own small collection of books on witchcraft is very sparse on details.

One of the older books I have suggests that there were almost no witch hunts or witch trials in Scandinavia which is complete bollocks. The book was published in 1959, so I’d suggest being wary of English language sources from that date and earlier.

A much more recent (2017) Oxford University Press book on the subject gives an estimated 400-500 executions for witchcraft in Norway during the period of 1601-1670.

This might seem like a small number compared to the thousands that were executed throughout the Holy Roman Empire but it seems a significant number given that the Norwegian trials were so concentrated in a small, sparsely populated region.

Unfortunately this book is a very general overview of the perception of witchcraft and magic throughout Europe from the ancient world to the present. So it doesn’t really give any details of the kinds of tortures a Norwegian accused of witchcraft might endure.

The author of the chapter on the witch trials was Rita Voltmer, University of Trier in case that’s helpful. She has published several papers on witch trials and the use of torture and at least one on witch trials in Norway. However a lot of her work is in German.

These two papers/chapters in particular may be of interest: the english language document on torture and emotion in witch trials and the German paper on Norwegian and Danish witch trials.

Several of the books I’ve got access to confirmed that Norway burnt witches and provided stories focused on shapeshifting and causing storms at sea. They also confirmed the use of torture in witch trials but nothing so helpful as the kind of tortures employed.

I found multiple references to ‘water torture’. One of these implied that the particular torture was waterboarding alla the historical Dutch method. But the same source said this caused vomiting or possibly diarrhoea which seems to imply pumping.

At a guess I’d say pumping is less likely because waterboarding can cause vomiting and so far as I know pumping wasn’t common anywhere in Europe during this period. However absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

‘Water torture’ could also potentially refer to: a temperature torture, near drowning, a method of sleep deprivation or even dehydration. Without more detail it’s really hard to say which of these is being referenced.

I found one mention of ‘burning torture’ a reference that I think referred to tearing the flesh with hot pincers based on the description of a torn wound. However given I only found this referenced once and I’m unsure of the source I found it in, I would not say this is a good one to pick.

Which leaves me with common tortures.

Whatever the time period, whatever the place, beatings the most common torture. Easily.

If your character gets repeatedly hit, whether it’s clean or not, you are not being historically inaccurate. And I’ve got a lot of posts on beatings generally and clean beatings that can help you write that.

Starvation and dehydration are also both really common regardless of culture and time period. So are temperature tortures or exposure though I think different countries have favoured different methods at different times.

Torturous cell conditions were incredibly common across Europe historically. Lack of sanitation, wet cells, inadequate bedding, over crowding and conditions amounting to a temperature torture were all really common. They were also often happening alongside starvation.

I have a masterpost on starvation and tags covering temperature tortures, exposure and prisons. I think the ‘prisons’ tag should give you most of the posts covering poor cell conditions, ‘historical torture’ and ‘historical fiction’ may also be helpful to you.

I’m sorry I couldn’t come up with anything more specific.

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

Edit: So this should be my week off the blog but I’ve seen a lot of the responses to this. Most of them are extremely helpful, thank you to everyone who knows Norwegian that is offering to help.

However: if your instinct is to say that any torturer, historical or recent, is ‘honourable’ and follows a code of conduct then this blog is not the place for you. I don’t tolerate that kind of apologia or people using my work to spread it.

#writing advice #tw torture #tw racism #tw sectarian violence #historical torture #historical fiction #Norway #witch trials #witchcraft #historical research #behaviour of torturers #attitudes towards torture #National Styles #writing victims #writing torture #Sami #the inconsistencies in this field in academia #and the lack of adequate accessible translations #will eventually make me turn into a livid ticking column of smoke

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trillian-anders · 4 years

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amor de mi vida - 1944

pairing: bucky barnes x latinx!reader

warnings: racism, prejudice, fluff, angst, graphic descriptions of concentration camps/gore

word count: 2686

description: Bucky Barnes is a sweet young Brooklyn boy, just on the cusp of manhood, a hopeless romantic that falls in love with almost every girl he sees. when he sets his eyes on a young girl fresh off the boat from Cuba he finds out how hard love can really be.

for @cake-writes 1940s challenge.

note: in this year’s letters bucky goes into detail about what he sees out on the war front, it might be upsetting.

In the middle of Harlem, almost an hour on the train from Brooklyn there was a movie theater you could go to. One that showed the movies of the war effort. Moving pictures that showed Captain America and the Howling Commandos. You could see him there, large and in black and white. Your husband. You cried the first time you saw him in action.

You wrote to him about seeing it. His hair was a little longer than he’d kept it at home. His face was more serious. You could see the dark circles under his eyes that sparked the memory of how he wrote to you about the lack of sleep. How he was always tired now. How the first thing he was going to do after getting home, aside from kissing you and eating dinner at his Ma’s, was sleep.

He’d lost weight. You knew he wasn’t able to eat enough. Not like when he was home. You knew it was something he had to deal with. His last letter talked a little about hunger. The chocolate bars they gave them in their rations, he wrote, were chalky but the sweetest thing he’d had in a while.

He asked if you’d make the dulce de leche you’d made not long before he’d left. Your Mother’s guilty pleasure. He said he could taste it in his dreams. That’s what he wanted, that and his Ma’s spice cake. He wrote about boliche and his Ma’s roast chicken. He wrote about getting ice cream at the soda shop, having a burger at his favorite diner.

You watched a man you couldn’t believe was actually Steve lay out plans on the hood of a war vehicle. Laying out plans for a mission already completed. Your husband, a man you hadn’t seen in two years, fighting tirelessly beside him. You only hoped he would continue to do so. And that this war will end and he will be home soon.

“I wanted to apologize.” Winnie lay her hand over yours, “I was taken off guard by what she said,” Winnie stopped by in the morning bearing a loaf of banana bread wrapped in cloth, still warm from the oven. “I shouldn’t have let her say those things about you.” Truth be told you’d already forgiven Winnie. You could understand that it’s hard, but times were changing. Slowly. But they were.

“Thank you.” For the apology. Winnie cried when you opened the door, it broke your heart a bit. George conveyed her sorrow to you a bit earlier in the week. And the girls came over once or twice to check in and brought food with them each time, undoubtedly made by Winnie.

Bucky and Steve. The Howling Commandos. He didn’t outright say it, but he was doing dangerous work. That you knew. These side missions, these bases they were infiltrating, something to do with a cell called Hydra. A brutal underbelly of the Nazi regime. Something deeper, more sinister with worse intentions.

It made your heart leap in your chest every time there was a knock on the door. The fear that it would be someone from the government coming to tell you that Bucky was gone. That he wasn’t coming home.

But his letters kept coming. Fewer in number than they had before.

It’s harder to write when they’ve got us in the middle of nowhere. He says. They ship the commandos all over Europe. Chasing after Hydra cells. He sends out the letters in a thick stack when he can. Steve met a woman, he says. Margaret Carter.

Bucky says you’d like her. And how when they get home the four of you should go out. A double date. Some realm of normalcy after the horrors he sees out there.

He talks about something truly horrible. They were skin and bones, these kids. These people. Starved half to death. Flies on their bodies as though they were already dead. Taken from the concentration camps and put in these Hydra facilities to be experimented on. Bodies left to rot in the cells with them.

The smell, he says. He doesn’t think he will ever forget that smell.

These aren’t in the letters he sends to his family.

He said he started having nightmares. He couldn’t understand how someone could do something so evil. To hate someone so passionately for what they believed. For who they were. But then again, he hates them for what they believed, for who they were. These monsters who ripped people from their homes and starve, beat, and kill them.

He just wants to be home. He sends a pressed peony on your anniversary.

I love you, he says, more than anything. I can’t wait to see you again.

He acts like he’s not afraid, because he doesn’t want to worry you. He says that the allies are winning, that he’ll be home in no time.

“Are you Y/N Barnes?” Usually you don’t get bothered while out. Most women who shopped at this grocery store ignored you, the rumors of whether you were hired help or housewife circulated, but they were all too afraid to ask. It was impolite after all. And most believed you were the Help regardless.

“Yes, can I help you?” Your english had gotten better but was still heavily accented. The woman behind you had a soft smile, you didn’t recognize her as someone you knew but the younger girl behind her looked to be Becca’s age. The Mother blushed,

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Her voice soft, so those around could not overhear, she stepped closer to you, “My daughter is infatuated with the dress Rebecca Barnes was wearing last Sunday in church and Rebecca says that you’re the one who made it.” You did. It was a soft blue for the oncoming spring. Yellow daisies hand stitched into the skirt.

“I did.” The basket in your hands was growing heavy with the fresh peaches they’d recently gotten in, you weren’t sure where this woman was going with this.

“Would you be able to make my daughter a dress just as fine?” The woman asked, “I’d be happy to pay you.” The young girl, fourteen, looked hopeful behind her mother. “A dress like that would probably be ten dollars in the store? Does that sound fair?”

“What color would you like?” Ten dollars was good money for a dress. You couldn’t say no and the woman and her daughter were both very sweet. You’d worked hard on the dress for seven days before she came to pick it up. Her daughter cooing over the fabric and turning around in the mirror as you made final measurements. The blush pink and white stitching, blush pink roses soft in the hem.

“Thank you very much.” The Mother, handing you the money as payment for the dress now zipped in a garment bag they’d brought. “I’m sure once I wring a little more out of my husband's pockets we will be back for more.”

One dress became another, and another Mother wanted a dress for her daughter, and then the other girls in Becca’s class asking for dresses. Suddenly you were making your own money, not in the factory this time, but enough to keep your fingers busy and give you something to do during the day with the help of Winnie.

Winnie would help you measure and fit the girls. She would help you with the basic stitching when the orders piled up, you would work on the finer details. The small stitching. The tug and pull of forming flowers.

You excitedly wrote to Bucky about it.

Once you were married he didn’t want you working at the factory anymore. “It’s a death trap.” He explained. But people could get away with a lot when it came to immigrants. Poor working conditions, not having the proper ventilation, and the long hours. You were doing the very thing he encouraged you to do all along.

But making dresses for family was vastly different than making dresses for strangers. When prom season came around you were up to your ears in tulle and velvet.

It seemed a little arbitrary, but he praised you for it anyway. You imagined him covered in dirt, out in the heat of summer, blood on his boots and an empty belly, writing this letter telling you how proud he was that you were doing something you loved doing. It felt heavy in your stomach.

Like it was unfair.

But his checks went into the same account you put this money into. And it was good money. A plan for the future.

A woman brought her baby once. A sweet fat little thing. Yes, she wailed and cried, she tugged on your hair and just about ripped the earring out of your ear but it gave a new craving. You wanted to start a family.

You thanked God that you hadn’t gotten pregnant before Bucky left, a baby was hard to handle alone. And with the stress and heartache with him being overseas you weren’t sure you could have handled having a baby going on two years old now. But when he got home, it was something to be brought up. A maternal craving you didn’t know you had.

The summer brought backyard barbecues and trips to the beach. For Bucky it was a little different.

He wrote about some nice things. The countryside. Steve rambling incessantly about his new girl. A village that made them a decent meal. He said that he’d forgotten what good food tasted like. He wrote about how he got to sleep in an actual bed for the first time in a while. About how he got to meet Howard Stark. That Steve knew him. That Stark helped him become whatever he is now. Stronger, faster, a super soldier.

Stark was talking about starting an organization to deal with people like this, Hydra. To keep groups like this from taking root. He offered Bucky a job when he gets back to New York. But that would be a conversation for another day, he writes, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do.

He also wrote about the Russians liberating a camp, how they felt like they were getting closer to the goal. He said this time next year he should be home with you the way it’s looking now. There were a number of hydra bases left, but they’ve spent the better part of a year eradicating them.

These letters that were being read by you now, albeit slowly, but Suzy was no longer looking over your shoulder became brazen, a little racy.

Bucky wrote about how he dreams of you, every night. How you feel against him. How you taste on his tongue. You felt heat grow in your cheeks reading about it. He talked about how he looked at your picture every day, how he craved your lips. How your hair felt in his hands. How your body felt under his.

You wrote back about tracing your fingers over his back, trailing your lips there. The closeness that sex brought you. How it made you feel. A breath apart and panting with it. The reunion was craved by both sides. The longing in the letters was clear. But it quickly turned sour.

There was a husband, he wrote, in one of the villages. He’d gotten to safety. But his wife was taken. There was a Hydra base nearby. These men, he wrote, come whenever they want, whatever time of day they want, and they rob these people who have no means to defend themselves. When they found the base, it was similar to the others. He didn’t want you to know what conditions he was put under, so he never described it to you. But you could assume it was terrible with the way they found the people there.

The man’s wife was dead. And he described how this man fell in the street. The emotion of it, raw and powerful. It broke your heart. He lamented about how the man told him that he’d met his love as a child. He spent his entire life with her. And now she’s gone. He asked what he should do. Because he didn’t know. And he wasn’t the only civilian who experienced loss that day.

The sorrow was palpable, he wrote, there were no songs of victory by the campfire that night. There was no celebration. The village was small enough that everyone lost someone, and it was felt.

The summer closed with the boys back in London, seemingly the home base for whatever missions they’d been working on. And there was something big, or so Bucky eluded to. He couldn’t say to compromise the mission, but it was something big. He didn’t know exactly what would happen, but it was the beginning of the end, the real end. Of Hydra and Nazi Germany.

It gave you hope. Maybe he’ll be home soon. Maybe this war will finally be over and he’ll be home, safe.

Communication was tight for the rest of the year. Something you chose to ignore by making the girl’s fall and winter dresses. Throwing yourself into your dress orders, an entire room in the house, one that would, god willing, be a room for one of your future children, covered in crushed blue velvet and rich greens and reds. You’d gotten a beautiful champagne colored tule you couldn’t help but buy along with some frivolous ribbons and playful buttons to change up the looks of the back of the dresses.

It was something easy to focus on, mindful and relaxing tasks that took your mind off of the fact that letters were fewer than ever and your husband was thousands of miles away doing truly dangerous work.

The Barnes household was buzzing with activity. All morning preparations for Christmas dinner, straight after Church you found yourself in the Barnes’ kitchen peeling potatoes, cutting carrots, and trussing a turkey.

Softly in the background was a memory of last year. I’ll Be Home for Christmas. The optimism of last year drowned with the optimism for next year. Bucky said he feels like it will be over soon. And hopefully it will be.

There was a stack of presents accumulated from last year's Christmas and birthdays, and the year before’s. Waiting for him to open.

“Maybe he’ll be home by his birthday.” Ginny was twenty and beautiful, now with a steady boyfriend you were sure would propose any day now.

The room was light and hopeful. George Barnes was stringing cranberries with Rebecca and Suzy, and now eighteen-year-old Ruth was reading a letter that had just arrived for the family.

“They got to see a USO show before going back out.” Ruth reads, “Dinah Shore.” You looked at her confused. You didn’t know who Dinah Shore was. “She sings ‘Yes, My Darling Daughter’, she was in ‘Thank Your Stars’.” You shake your head, never having heard the song or seen that movie before. Ruth shrugs, a smile on her face, “She’s blonde and pretty.” As an explanation to why they would have Dinah Shore try to raise the morale of the troops. A laugh was shared. “He said that he’s never going to eat another can of beans for the rest of his life.”

You focused on placing the turkey in the oven. There was some unfound jealousy at the thought of your husband screaming and shouting, hollering at a woman sent to perform for them. It was dumb, but it was there.

You tried to remind yourself about his last letter, the one he’d written before he left for his mission. He’d written enough to stagger out some letters, but you were afraid they were going to stop coming all together. You felt like you were being silly having jealousy about some woman who you didn’t even know. And it quickly went away as you thought about maybe this time next year. Maybe it’ll be all over. And that extra spot at the table will be filled.

You could only hope.

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#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #latinx!reader #latina!reader #1940s!bucky barnes #1940s au #the falcon and the winter soldier #steve rogers #captain america #sebastian stan

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sailorgreywolf-german · 3 years

Text

Warning Shots

Characters: Prussia, Germany

Summary: Prussia attempts to prepare his brother to go to Versailles to sign the armistice after the disastrous war.

Word Count: 5.5K

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The room was deliberately silent, the intense kind of silence that could only be described as oppressive. Prussia was keenly aware of it, but it was difficult to find the words to break it. His brother was sitting by the dying fire, his demeanor deflated. His blonde hair was unkempt and his arm was still bound beneath his coat, the damage from the mortar not healing as quickly as it should. His eyes were glazed over as he contemplated the patch of the rug in front of him.

The sight of the young man so broken rendered Prussia speechless. He had not intended any of this and there was no way for him to remedy it. The feeling of impotence and the rage that accompanied it was boiling in his blood. For all his effort, all his care and training, he had failed yet another brother. The spark of optimism and nationalism that had lit his brother's eyes when the war had begun was gone, replaced with the cold, distant grey of resignation.

Prussia was pacing the room, and the sharp sound of his boot heels against the floor were the only accompaniment to the scene. Even the fire did not have the energy to crackle or pop as it slowly ebbed into embers. Each of them were alone within their own regrets, their own recollections of what had happened. Prussia had gone East and been able to break through the front. He had been able, through a stroke of genius, to topple Russia's precious tsarist regime and expose the man to the agony of Civil war. He had assumed himself victorious when he returned with the treaty of Brest-Litovsk in hand. One part of the war had been easily won and their territory had been extended, which was all they had sought from this war.

But, the situation he had returned to was nothing more than a war of attrition, both sides wearying of the constant fighting. It was his brother's responsibility to handle the Western Front, and that front had turned into nothing but carnage. Prussia, in all his years of war, had never seen anything comparable. Those trenches were not the way that war should be fought. They were the stuff of Dante's inferno, like the never-ending purgatory of the ambitious country. Only fatigue had ended it all.

Now, even the victory that Prussia had won in the East was at risk and he could do nothing. He was not even privy to the decision. Finally, the frustration seized his voice and he gave expression to his thoughts, "This is an insult. We deserve a say in the peace, but they make us wait here while they talk in Versailles."

Germany looked up slowly at his older brother, pain and the fatigue of the years of war clear on his face. There was a tinge of red that stained the whites of his eyes. It looked as though he had been crying, but Prussia had not seen it. Was he hiding it for fear that his brother would think him weak? His voice was that of a broken young man as he spoke, "I'm sorry, Gil. I'm so sorry. I lost the war, and now the allies can punish us."

There was an unbearable weight in each word that Prussia wished he could alleviate. He would do what he had to as a brother to comfort him. He walked over to the couch and stood right in front of the blonde. He said, his voice ringing of the confidence he didn't not truly possess, "Don't apologize to me. You've done nothing wrong."

Those deep blue eyes, still slightly red, looked up at him unbelieving. The unmistakable sound of restrained tears permeated Germany's voice as he responded, "Yes I did! I wanted so badly to win glory like you did. But, I'm not you. No matter how hard you tried to teach me, I lost without you." He paused for only a moment to pull in a deep shuttering breath. Then, he continued, "You were wrong. I'm not ready to be a country on my own."

This final painful realization seemed to break the last of his discipline and glassy tears started to roll down his cheeks. A physical pain was growing in the middle of Prussia's chest. He couldn't watch this; he couldn't hear these words. The boy he had raised to be a strong military country was crying in front of him, trying to wipe away the tears with his single good hand.

The albino took a firm step forward and reached out. He put both of his hands firmly on his brother's face and tilted it back up so that they were looking directly at each other. He spoke deliberately and slowly so that Germany could understand every word he said, "Listen to me, Ludwig. You did not lose. We still had troops on French soil. We still have all the land Russia gave up to us. This was an armistice, not a capitulation. If I ever hear you say you are not ready to be a country again, I'm going to make you run laps until you collapse."

His own voice could no remain calm and even as he spoke words of comfort. On the last sentence, he could hear a break in his own decidedly stern tone. But, it was worth it when he saw a small smile appear on his younger brother's face. It faded quickly, but there was hope in it all the same. There was also a degree of wit in his response, "You know how many laps that would be, right?"

Prussia decided that it was enough progress to release his brother's face and sit down next to him. It was always disorienting how he had to look up at his younger brother. Since Germany had become a country, he had grown out of an adolescent body. Prussia could only infer that he had inherited his mother's height and build, because he was far shorter than his brother. He could see the clear shadow of his father in Germany's broad shoulders and towering height, there was a striking similarity in the face as well.

He responded to the question with a small smile of his own, "I know, and I also know that I've brought stronger soldiers than you to their knees." But, this levity could not last. The first comment the albino had made was still hanging in the air, not yet properly addressed. Germany's face fell again as he said, "When I agreed to the armistice, France said this was how it was done. He said that the victor always decides the term of the peace."

This information was certainly new to Prussia, and it was blatantly untrue. He understood, with a sense of revulsion, what exactly had happened. France had used his brother's inexperience to enact his own vendetta. Prussia had no doubt that the man still held a grudge for the peace that Prussia had forced upon him the last time they had fought. Trying to hide how angry this news made him, the albino said, "That is completely untrue. The idea that he won is a farce. If he wants to say he beat us, I suggest he have troop in Berlin first. But ask him if I made him sit on the sidelines when his emperor was defeated."

He gritted his teeth so that nothing more caustic could spill out. But, Prussia was raging on the inside. He had had the honor to give Talleyrand a spot at the table at the Congress of Vienna, despite the fact that the coalition had soundly crushed Napoleon. Now, Francis didn't have the decency to do the same. If the Frenchman thought that he could expect Prussia to passively sit by during this insult, then he was completely wrong. Both of the albino's hands curled into fists. Germany noticed the action and put his own hand on top of one of his brother's fists. He said, apparently deciding that he should not be the one doing the comforting, "Please just be calm, Gilbert. I made my own decision. Now we just have to wait for the terms. I'm sure they will be fair."

The albino responded with an incredulous scoff and stood back up. There was too much warring inside of him right now to be still. He said, explaining his initial reaction, "How little you know about European politics, little brother. Without us there to defend ourselves, they will pick our bones clean like vultures." Germany blinked at him, disbelief clear in his eyes. Then he said, "But why would England and America let France take advantage of this?"

The naiveté in his eyes was painful to Prussia. He knew how wrong his little brother was. He had been at far to many peace conferences to believe in such fantasies. A blind eye could be bought with the promise of land or power. It would be too easy for France to sweep the others aside and take whatever revenge he wanted to. Prussia's hands remained clenched in tight fists as he thought about what his former friend was probably doing at this very moment. France's grudge over the ostentatious way Germany had been crowned an empire was enough for him to want to bleed them dry. It was the typical, vicious, vindictive nature of European politics to demand more flesh than was owed.

Prussia finally spoke once the thoughts stopped rushing in his head, telling his brother the sad truth, "They probably have no interest in restraining him. It's best that you learn now: None of Europe will defend you." The albino had looked away to continue pacing as he spoke. It was a nervous habit that was better suited to a military encampment. In this setting, it seemed strange. At least his brother was used to it. He turned back to Germany to see how the words had impacted him. These were the truths that Prussia had hoped his brother need never experience. Now, it was his fault for not preparing his brother to face them. But, there was a light in the blue eyes as Prussia met them.

Then the younger spoke, and it explained his expression, "But you've always been here. Even when I don't deserve it." Prussia was torn between the urge to smile or shake his little brother. Instead, he forced himself to sit back down on the couch and put his arm around his brother. This was the best thing to do for now, for Germany's sake. He said, "Of course, Ludwig. What kind of awesome brother would I be if I left you alone?"

He meant to lighten the mood, but the words still sounded bitter to his own ears. He had failed in his duties as a brother once, he wouldn't make the same mistake. Germany still seemed to be struggling to express himself. He finally just said, "I'm sorry for everything. I made so many mistakes." Prussia tightened his hold on his brother's shoulder, wishing that this would actually be comforting. He just wanted his brother to stop apologizing, This war wasn't his fault, and whatever was coming was not either. But it was easy to see how Germany blamed himself, it was natural that a young country should take his first draw hard.

Prussia spoke again, trying to calm the blonde like he had used to when Germany had been little, "No matter what happens next, I am still proud of you. You fought as hard as you could; it's not your fault that war has become so ignoble." It was difficult to make the words sound completely sincere when Prussia was still seething. But, it was more painful to watch Germany break down. It wasn't Germany's nature to be so emotional; Prussia hadn't had to comfort him like this since he was very young.

This was supposed to have been a glorious war to help Germany really establish himself as a country, but now it was all falling apart. Germany leaned over so that some of his weight was resting on his brother. It was a familiar gesture from when he was a young child, he seemed to find physical contact comforting. The tension of the moment was broken when a door behind them opened. A third person, who was just a mortal, entered the room and spoke immediately, "We just received a phone call from Versailles. It is time for you to sign the treaty."

Prussia gritted his teeth, trying not to say what he would prefer the others do with their treaty. This was farce, revoltingly unfair farce. Considering what the outcome of this would probably, Prussia wished he could leave his brother here. It would hurt him to see the injustice that was coming. The albino got to his feet anyway, resigning himself to the Sisyphean task of shielding his brother from whatever was to come.

The trip to Versailles was marked by the same uneasy silence that had pervaded since the mortars had fallen silent. In the car, as the gleaming garish palaces of Versailles became visible on the horizon, Prussia reached over and put his hand on top of his brother's hand, which had clenched itself into a fist. He worked small circles on the back of Germany's fist, trying to relax the muscles. He said, trying to hide the edge in his own voice, "Everything is going to be fine."

Germany turned his head and his blue eyes met Prussia's red. There was a certain shine to his eyes that spoke of tears threatening to spill out again. His reply was curt, most likely because he was trying to keep his voice from breaking again, "I hope so." Prussia could hear the fear beneath the facade. He had taught Germany how to hide emotion behind a disciplined military front, and that technique did not fool him. But, he would let his brother act strong now. It would be better to show an unaffected face to France, England, and America. They did not need to see how much their mockery of a treaty affected Germany; it would only make them take further advantage of the situation.

As the manicured lawns came into view on either side, Prussia felt a rising sense of disgust. He had never liked this place. It wreaked of pretension and a false superiority. Why did France think he had the right to exert control over nature the same way he tried to control the rest of Europe? Both of them were lies. Sanssouci was far more beautiful because it understood its own restrictions. It also had the discipline and grace of the man who had built it. Versailles was an ugly, sprawling, ostentatious metropolis by comparison. It always caused an unpleasant taste in his mouth. He had only chosen to crown Germany an empire here as a gesture to wound France's pride.

Coming back to this place was a sick twist of fate that could be nothing but intentional. France knew what he was doing, and he knew what this would symbolize. Prussia stepped out of the car, and fought back the urge to walk on the grass to ruin the artifice. He glanced over at his brother, and saw that the muscles in the blonde's jaws were tense as they held a firm clench. It was clear that he was channeling all of his emotions into keeping himself silent and stoic. It was better like this for now. Prussia promised himself that he would do the same.

It did not take them long to find the hall of mirrors. The way was far too familiar. They had both walked it before, not so long ago. The atmosphere had been different, but the place was the same. Prussia noticed that his brother kept glancing at his as though he was expecting emotion of some kind. But, Prussia would not show it. If he broke, then Germany certainly would. Regardless, the emotion he was repressing was not sadness, it was anger and outrage. It was a soldiers skill to be able to act against his own rage. Losing your head in the middle of battle would only lead to loses.

France's voice carried into the hallway, his arrogance dripping from every word. There was a light hearted laugh in his voice that he had no right to. Did he really think he had won something? Prussia's knuckles turned white as he grabbed the golden doorknob and turned it. It was all he could do to keep himself calm. Germany walked past him into the room. The blonde's footsteps carried unmistakable heaviness. Prussia felt himself recoil a little. How had he failed again? Why hadn't he protected Germany the way he had promised to? If France stepped over the line again, he would pay for it.

The albino followed his brother into the room. It was brightly lit, and the mirrors on the wall reflected the light back in all directions. France was sitting in a chair speaking to England, who seemed to be bored of the conversation. There were a smattering of other smaller countries seated near the walls. Like scavengers, they wanted to gain from the scraps of the confrontation. None of them were actually important.

The Frenchman was speaking in his native language, but Prussia understood the words perfectly. Fritz had spoken beautiful, eloquent French and it had not been a chore to learn the language to understand him. France seemed to have forgotten that the albino spoke the language, because even as he turned to look at Prussia, he said, "I bet I can get the boy to beg my forgiveness before we're done."

The albino's jaw muscles were beginning to ache from how much he was attempting to hold back his passion. He could not respond to France's inflammatory comment. There was a slight comfort when England responded, in English, "Just do your job Francis, you've gotten enough out of this already." Their bickering was exceptionally usual, and did little to help the situation.

Prussia decided that it would be better to interrupt them, "Where is your third? Has your bickering finally driven your bastard child away?" The absence of America was interesting though. If the boy had stormed out, then Prussia felt a slight sense of respect for the boy. At least he held to his loudly proclaimed ideals. England threw a glare at France before turning back to Germany and saying, "It's not important. We have finalized the treaty and you two just need to sign it."

Germany took a solemn step forward, as though walking to his own execution. But, Prussia said sharply, "No, Ludwig." He turned back to the pair of blondes facing them, "We will sign nothing until we get a chance to read it." France grimaced and said, "Why do you have to read it? It's your punishment and you don't get a say!" England snapped at him, "They have every right to read what they're agreeing to. Give them the document, frog."

The Frenchman's eyes were daggers as they fell first on the Englishman, and then on Prussia. He was making it perfectly clear that he knew who his enemy really was. He paid no mind to Germany, because he knew the man was young and naive enough to accept anything. It had been a mistake for Prussia to leave his brother alone to negotiate the armistice, but he was going to rectify that now. If France wanted a fight, he was going to get one.

France deliberately stood slowly, making Prussia wait for him. It was an old trick of diplomacy. The one who could control the speed of the conversation had the power over the negotiations. But, this trick was cheep, and the Prussian would not let it fluster him. He tapped his foot impatiently on the ground as France leisurely walked over to hand him a copy of the treaty to the albino. The sound echoed off the walls, and more than one of the leaches in the room winced at the sound.

The Frenchman finally reached Prussia and fixed his gaze directly on the other's face. His expression was meant to be a clear warning, but the albino met it unwaveringly. He had sacked Paris more than once and seen France on his knees; he did not fear this man. What seemed like an eternity ago, they had been friends. Those days were long gone, and the pair now stood in a cold, tense silence. They were close enough that either of them could have drawn a knife and plunged it into the other's flesh.

The blonde finally broke the tension when he thrust the paper into the albino's hands. His voice was devoid of all levity when he spat, "Here. Read it all you want. It's no worse than what you did to me." Prussia snatched away the document so quickly that the paper almost tore. Out of the corner of his eye, the albino could see his brother's look of utter shock. Prussia could not turn back now; he could not let France intimidate him. A warrior, a knight never backed down from an inferior opponent.

He looked down at the document and read over it quickly as France looked on, a small smirk on his face. Prussia got through the majority of it quickly. It was far from standard, but it was what Prussia had been expecting. With each article rage crept its way up the albino's throat. He could taste it hard and metallic on his tongue. This was an more than an affront, it was an attack. Who was France to reduce the size of the army? The army that had made Prussia great, that had allowed Germany to be unified.

It only got worse as he read. He was struggling to keep his face blank. If France knew how much this hurt, he would glory in it. But, as he flipped through page after page, the treaty took even more that it had no right to. The lands Prussia had won against Russia were not up for debate. The reparations were far more than he had asked of France. But, as he reached Article 231, all the rage he had been feeling overwhelmed him. This simple insult, written as though it was innocuous, broke through the dam of discipline. The anger washed over him in curiously cold waves. The rage that animated him in battle was hot, but this was cold and remarkably certain. Prussia said, his voice flatter than it had been all day, "You want us to admit guilt for the war? That's low, even for you."

He looked directly at France, the sight of the man's face brought back hundreds of years of affronts and insults. One stood out among all the rest. Prussia remembered in sharp detail what France's rapier had done to his little brother. He remembered the stink of the quagmire of blood and wet earth Holy Rome had been left in. He remembered brushing back pieces of blonde hair off of his little brother's cold forehead as he realized the devastating truth.

The Frenchman seemed to detect the shift in Prussia's manner, but he did not seem to know what to make of it. Yet, his arrogance continued to rule him, and he said, "You are guilty. You goaded Roderich into war." Prussia took a small step forward, and he spoke, "If you want a reason for this war, look in the mirror."

Then, he dropped the stack of papers that constituted the treaty. They hit the floor and the loosely bound pages flew in every direction. Gasps echoed around the room as the onlookers realized what was happening. No one looked more throughly appalled than Germany, who looked like he couldn't quite comprehend his brother's action. But, Prussia knew he was speaking out to protect his brother's honor. He would never let his brother sign a document that took the blame for the entire war.

Prussia took a side step and walked around France, who was looking dumbfounded. He then addressed the entire room, "Do any of you really believe that I started this? We are all guilty, and you know it." He turned slightly so that he was able to hurl more words at France, "If that was the case, Francis, why did you have fortifications on your border? You wanted an excuse for a fight as much as I did."

The albino could hear his blood pumping in his ears. He could feel every eye on him. He continued, "You all wanted a chance to fight. We all have our ambitions for power or land. All of us had the weapons ready to fight. I doubt any of us were actually fighting for Serbia." The feeling of finally laying bare the truth that had existed in European politics for centuries was intoxicating. These were the words that no one dare speak.

Prussia continued to speak, even though he could hear the whispers and gasps of the assembled countries, "I wish I was the belligerent tyrant you want to paint me as. You would all be kissing my boots by now. If you want to find the reason for this war, look to your own actions."

He caught the eyes of England, and the look in the green eyes was judgmental. Without a word, the British man condemned this entire speech. But, he would not escape scrutiny either. The albino turned his attention to him next, "Oh, but you hide your intentions behind pretty words like neutrality and self determination. If you want countries to determine their own fates, then ask India what he actually wants. But you wouldn't dare risk your precious empire for your professed ideals. You are both terrible hypocrites."

Another round of gasps went around the room, although there were some slight smiles from some of the colonies. They were glad to hear their precious, thwarted ambition spoken. That was enough to make Prussia smile and say, "You don't hate me because I'm different than the rest of you. You hate me because I'm honest about what I want. I'm your mirror and you hate seeing what you all really are. We are all thirsty for each other's blood."

Having finally, apparently recovered from Prussia's flippant refusal, France rounded on Prussia. His blue eyes were alight with a rage that seemed to match the albino's in strength. He said, "Don't you dare play the victim, Gilbert. You have attacked me over and over again to satisfy your own ambition. I tried to be your friend and you took advantage of it."

The albino could scarcely believe that France could lay the failing of their friendship at his feet. He was not the one who had rend the bond between them with the chaos of war. Prussia squared his stance in front of the blonde and met his condemning gaze unflinchingly. He wanted France to see his eyes and know exactly who he was dealing with. This blonde peacock could not possibly understand what Prussia had given up for the power he had now. It was easy for a man who had been handed an easy life by Rome and Charlemagne to condemn ambition. And yet, France had always stomped his feet like a petulant child when he lost.

Prussia smirked, "Tell me, Francis, when did you stop wanting my friendship? Was it when I became a threat instead of someone to pitied?" France snarled back at once, "I should have stopped you from walking over the rest of this continent decades ago!" The albino took a step forward, and sneered, "Do you really think you could have?"

England could no longer sit back with idle judgment. He appeared in Prussia's field of vision at France's side, his usually pasty white face bright red. Prussia didn't fear him either. England was a small man with a very large navy. Attempting to reassert order, the Englishman said, "You are both being childish! Just sign the treaty so we can put this entire unfortunate business behind us."

Prussia scoffed again; it was so predictable that England would make himself look like the perfect gentleman. He said, voicing his contempt, "You know I'm right, Arthur. Or are you that deluded?" The scowl deepened on the Briton's face. There was some satisfaction in seeing both France and England frustrated with his resistance.

But, the soft touch of a hand on Prussia's shoulder stopped him from elaborating. He turned to look at the source of the touch. His brother had put his hand on his shoulder. Germany's eyes were painfully pleading, the blue was begging for understanding. Prussia bit his tongue immediately, unwilling to continue if he was hurting his little brother. There was an ache in his chest as he met his brother's eyes, and it hurt enough to silence him. The younger spoke, using German to make sure they only understood each other, "Please stop, Bruder. I can't fight anymore."

Prussia's eyes passed over his brother's bound, injured arm and his worn face. All this European fighting was hurting him, and Prussia had been doing more of it to defend him. No matter how angry the albino was, this was not worth it. Germany continued to speak, "I'm not as strong as you. I wish I could be."

Prussia took a deep breath to calm himself. His duty was to be a good brother, so he would shelve his grudge for now. When he had given Germany the title of empire, he had trusted him. So, he nodded and said, "Do what you think is right." He glanced back at France, who was glancing from him to Germany, waiting for one of them to speak. Prussia fought back the urge to hit France. It would not be productive, but it would make him feel better. But, he would let Germany speak for them both.

The younger said, "We will sign the treaty." A sickeningly triumphant smile spread across Frances face, while England let out a relieved sigh. The Frenchman, unable to contain his smugness, said, "It's good to see that one of you has sense."

Prussia clenched his hands again, channeling all his anger into them. He wanted to snap back, but he was restraining himself for his brother's sake. France walked over to where the treaty was laying on the floor, and he looked as though he was about to bend and pick it up. But, then he stopped himself. Prussia had a sinking feeling as France turned to look at him with that same triumphant smile. His playful lilt sounded incredibly out of place when France said, "Ludwig, you should pick this up so you can sign it."

Germany looked uncertainly at Prussia. He was clearly confused, but Prussia understood perfectly. France wanted Germany to submit to further humiliation. But, England stepped in. The Briton stormed over to the scattered pile of papers and said, "Bloody hell, Francis. I have had enough of your games."

With that, he angrily bent down and picked up the entire document. He stomped over to a table that had apparently been set up for the formal signing. There were fine pens, still completely untouched, sitting on the table. England turned again and with the air of a school master chastising his students, said, "Now, sign the damn treaty. No more petty arguments from anyone."

Germany took the pen and put his signature on the last page of the offensive document, all in complete obedient silence. Prussia knew he must do the same, but he hated it all the same. France was making a mistake that history would undoubtedly repudiate. Prussia would not let himself forget this, and the next time he invaded Paris he would not be kind.

The albino's steps were dignified and measured as he approached the repugnant document. He did not dare look at France, lest he lose his temper again. The pen was smooth against the callouses of his sword hand. A tiny crack showing in his soldier's discipline, Prussia looked directly at his French rival and said, "You should be careful who you call a monster." He flicked his wrist casually and finished his signature, the ink looking like the blood of Judas on the page. Then he said, "Because, someday you might find they've actually become one. Then you'll be the one begging for mercy."

#hws prussia #hws germany

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brandilovevip · 4 years

Text

What I Believe About Coronavirus

It’s been a HOT topic on Twitter...

So what do I think is really going on and what do I think about Coronavirus?

Read on.

WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON

When health events like this happen ( and they happen often )

there is always some fear and trepidation. In recent times however it has become an obsession in the media to track and breathlessly report the number of deaths especially with the flu and/or any other viral outbreak. They don’t do this with any of the actual leading causes of death in the USA which are:

1. Cardiovascular Disease deaths each year 647,457 2. Cancer deaths each year 599,108 3. Accidents deaths each year 169,936 4. Respiratory Disease deaths each year 160,201 5. Stroke deaths each year 146,383

So every flu season, despite the flu not making the top 5, we are fed a steady diet of fear and mounting death. When you add in a “rogue” virus like the Chinese Wuhan Coronavirus, things get really out of hand. You would think that they believe The Walking Dead and Outbreak are documentaries.

This FEAR drives ratings and the progressive left’s globalist agenda. This agenda is the agenda of 90% (+) of the global media, the EU , China etc. There are few countries left in Europe and Asia that don’t want globalism. They have already been pacified. The great spirit of America however has not. Donald Trump’s election was a shock to the globalist agenda which is clearly on display in the democratic party. They are now out in the open as unabashed, socialist/communist “progressives”

meaning… globalists.

There are a number of “conservative” publications out there that believe that Covid-19 was created in a lab an purposefully unleashed. I do not believe that is the case, although I do think it is possible. I do however believe that they had foreknowledge of the virus and it’s potential spread & impact.

Why do you believe this Brandi?

Because of Event 201. If you haven’t read about this, you need to educate yourself. This ACTUALLY took place. The “players” and sponsors should be looked at closely.

Only a few months ago, in OCTOBER 2019, Johns Hopkins, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum (a fraternity of self-professed globalists) ran a “pandemic simulation” called “Event 201” specifically focused on CORONAVIRUS. Not Ebola, or Swine Flu or even Avian Flu – but CORONAVIRUS. The simulation features the spread of coronavirus in South America, blamed on animal to human transmission (pigs). The conclusion of the exercise was that national governments were nowhere near ready.

Event 201 played out almost exactly as you see it in the world today. Even their propaganda pieces are eerily similar.

Some very disingenuous or perhaps rather stupid people have been arguing that this kind of thing is “normal”, claiming that we are “lucky” that the elites have been running simulations in advance in order to “save us” from a viral outbreak.

I believe that Event 201 was not a simulation but a war-game, played out to study the possible outcomes of an event the globalists already knew was coming. They played it out to see how to use it to their advantage.

In their simulation 65 million people died worldwide. A number they knew was false but it would certainly scare the sheep into submission.

Does anyone really believe that Event 201 is pure coincidence? Does anyone really believe they left up their “findings” for any other reason than to frighten readers?

But what do globalists have to gain directly from a coronavirus pandemic beyond simple chaos that can be exploited?

Interestingly, a representative from Johnson and Johnson, one of the companies that may end up designing a “vaccine” for the Coronavirus, suggested during Event 201 that a “centralized” global economic authority in charge of funding and procuring vaccines for various nations in crisis was an option for solving the pandemic.

The reason why globalists want a collapse is simple – They need crisis in order to manipulate the masses into accepting total centralization, a global monetary system and global governance. They are also rabid believers in eugenics and population reduction.

Regarding a “centralized” global economic authority and a global monetary system ... did you notice the Democrats included language pertaining to a digital currency in their bloated, globalist agenda filled coronavirus bill after pulling the rug out from under America.

The US and China are still currently in the middle of a trade war. This trade war has been demonized by Democrats and RINO’s alike. And despite it being the right thing for America, the Phase 1 deal was always a joke because it demands that China quadruple its purchases from the US within the next 1-2 years. This was never going to happen.

The Chinese cannot be trusted. They are the most evil, unfeeling regime in the world. They are cold , calculated and intelligent. They have made, through money, slaves of many of the worlds largest, most influential and wealthiest corporations and people.

Now, because of the impact of the Chinese Wuhan Coronavirus, there is no chance that China will meet the requirements of the Phase 1 deal as China’s economy will slow under the weight of the pandemic.

Coincidence?

If Trump continues tariffs against a nation in the state of a viral emergency, he will look like a monster. If he doesn’t continue the lockdown and one person dies thereafter, he will look like a monster. They have him in an almost impossible situation. He knows it, which is why he looks so somber & frustrated.

Another advantage of the viral crisis is that the globalist establishment will undoubtedly blame “climate change” for its impetus. Even though there is absolutely no concrete evidence linking human carbon emissions to climate change or viral outbreaks, given enough public fear, globalists will attempt to link the things together as if it is a proven fact.

Not only will they have a rationale for an economic collapse THEY created, but they can also present a virus as an “act of nature”, and use it as a rationale for implementing carbon controls. (ALSO PRESENT IN PELOSI’s DESPICABLE BILL)

So what is really going on:

The globalists are using COVID-19 to their advantage to wrestle back control and complete their globalist mission. They know that if Donald Trump gets re-elected their horror of a dream is over.

BUT BRANDI THIS IS A DEADLY VIRUS, YOU ARE BEING STUPID.

It is a deadly virus. It is highly communicable. But is neither as deadly or communicable as the fear mongers want you to believe. I’m not going to go through all of the FACTS here. But I would encourage you to read this excellent article:

http://archive.is/yuaUq

If the USA follows the pattern in SIMILAR countries with similar population demographics and geography then we should see maybe 250,000 total who have contracted this and a death rate of 1.5% for total deaths around 3,750

We have all been around death. Iv’e lost most of my family and it’s always gut wrenching. But if the numbers hold true, the 3750 deaths due to Coronavirus are about 5x less than the number of homicides we have every single year.

Where do I agree with the trolls that bombard my Twitter account?

I agree that we need to have a far better protocol in place for WHEN pandemics happen and I believe we need to make a HUGE investment into our healthcare system. Some things I would love to see them consider:

1. Everyone wears masks during a “Pandemic Protocol” I know , I know… surgical masks don’t stop the virus from getting in.. but if EVERYONE is wearing them it does stop a lot of the virus from getting OUT. Japan has an 80% adoption rate for masks. They have major population centers and yet.. their numbers remained low.

2. Have tests ready. Jesus. Everyone on the planet seemed to have more tests than us. That’s embarrassing. Test everybody.

3. Isolate & quarantine the most vulnerable to death, first.

4. Immediately close borders and international travel

5. If needed, in extreme situations impose a reasonable self isolation and social distancing period not to last longer than 21 days.

6. Have teams at CDC ready to collaborate with local and international physicians to discuss treatment modalities & vaccines.

7. Build regional medical facilities in conjunction with private, non profit health care systems to handle sudden increases in medical emergencies.

This closing down of the country however and spreading fear the way they have is grotesque and evil. Do you think it’s any less horrible to die from Cardiovascular Disease , Cancer an Accident, stroke, suicide or murder? No. Death is horrible and sad. But it is in fact part of life. I don’t want to die, I’m not looking forward to death but I do know that at some point, it will occur.

I’m ever thankful that in addition to my thirst for facts vs fear, I also have contacts across the medical landscape. In every single case, they tell me the same thing. If you don’t smoke, If you don’t have major underlying medical conditions and are in good health… then you have very little to fear even if you do contract the virus. Yes, it may have a 1.4% - 2.0% death rate but those numbers are skewed toward those 65+ and those with major medical issues. Regardless of age if you are generally healthy, you are looking at a death rate equal to or less than the common flu.

And they also tell me that if you do get it, demand that you be treated with the combination of Hydroxychloroquine and a Zpack unless there are contraindications.

Lastly…

Some things that have become perfectly clear:

1. Socialized Medicine would be a Disaster 2. Open Borders = Complete Insanity

References:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

http://archive.is/yuaUq

https://www.europereloaded.com/how-viral-pandemic-benefits-the-globalist-agenda-event-201/

https://docplayer.net/11605196-Foreign-affairs-april-1974-the-hard-road-to-world-order-richard-n-gardner-volume-52-number-3.html

https://www.technocracy.news/globalization-faces-disaster-with-supply-chain-leaving-china/

https://meaww.com/wuhan-coronavirus-warned-2017-lab-wuhan-deadly-diseases-escape-lab-level-4-safety-scientists

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politicaltheatre · 4 years

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Dissent

We’ll know soon enough what kind of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett will be. Senate Democrats will stall the proceedings as much as they can and try to drag things out so a confirmation vote can’t be taken until after the election, but we must accept that the odds and senate protocols are against them.

Publicly, Democrats up and down the ticket are claiming that their fear is that a Barrett confirmation will kill the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the middle of a pandemic, and they very well may be right. That, however, isn’t their true fear.

The one they’ll voice when Barrett gets in front of them and the TV cameras is that she would support her benefactor Donald Trump in any lawsuit his people file in their attempts to decide the election through the courts, which they most certainly will do.

Trump’s already said as much. It’s part of his campaign pitch. He’s boasting about it at rallies. He’s counting on it.

As stupid as he often appears, and as stupid as he is about so many things, Trump understands corruption. He lives it and breathes it. He is a bona fide expert in it, so we should listen.

What he, Mitch McConnell, and others who embrace corruption understand is what far too many of us refuse to admit, which is that there is no such thing as an independent judiciary, that there is no such thing as an impartial judge.

This is not to suggest that Judge Barrett is corrupt. The awful truth of it is that she doesn’t have to be. She is reliably right wing, which is more than enough.

Barrett clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia. Like her mentor, she believes that the law does not exist to protect the weak from the strong. It does not exist, in their world, to reduce or correct imbalances of power. It is, instead, an instrument and only that, one by which the capable may exercise their will over others.

As brilliant as he was and as brilliant as she may be, theirs is the law of the school debate team. To them, winning isn’t about being right, it’s about domination. You can be wrong, morally and reprehensibly, but know the law and know how to wield it as a weapon and you will dominate your opponent time and again.

It is the triumph of short term thinking. To those embracing this view, there is nothing beyond that victory, no consequence beyond it, and no effect on the world beyond it.

If you think they’re wrong, prove it. Challenge them. Bend precedent to your will. Apply the logic of allowable facts. Prepare better. Go for the jugular. Destroy your enemy or meekly and silently accept your defeat.

Theirs is a faithless law, even more so because it divorces the law from the humans its verdicts, opinions, and decisions affect.

It is strange, then, but not surprising that Republicans and their surrogates have preemptively sought to place resistance to Barrett’s nomination on her religion. Their hope is to obscure the beliefs that truly make her dangerous, the irony being that Catholicism is not truly at the root of it.

Yes, there are strains and sects of Catholicism that preach the virtues of authority and hierarchy. These are the ones that sided with the fascists in their rise to power in Europe and protected sexually abusive clergy for so very, very long.

There are, however, also dissenting branches, including the one currently led by Pope Francis, that preach compassion and the virtues of equality. It was the former that led to those centuries of abuse and institutional corruption; it is the latter, we should all hope Catholics and non-Catholics alike, that will redeem the Church of both.

So, while Barrett’s affinity for a brand of Catholicism that embraces authority and power as chief virtues may inform her legal opinions, it is not what motivates them. That motivation, again, would be an honest, sincere belief that the right to demand accountability resides exclusively with those who have the power to demand it and the resources to dominate those in their way.

Trump may not have thought this through as thoroughly as that. McConnell may not have either, for that matter. All McConnell cares about is having judges in place who will protect him and corrupt people in power just like him. All Trump cares about is having judges who will protect him and him alone.

Oh, and that this pick is big “fuck you” to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and everyone who adores her still. Trump loves that, too.

What Ginsberg represented, more than simply being a woman with the gumption to tell men like Trump and McConnell that they were wrong, was the power of dissent.

Dissent is more than just an exercise in freedom of speech, it is an act of empowerment, both for those voicing their disagreement and for the institutions in which they voice them. The purpose of dissent is to improve the institution, to save it from the corruption that would bring it down.

Ginsberg believed that whatever was wrong in the United States, it could and should be saved. To suggest that something could and should be improved is not disloyal but courageous. To criticize an institution is not pessimistic but the opposite, because to criticize it you must believe than it has the ability to improve.

That wish for the institution to be saved and to succeed is essential to dissent. It cannot be dissent without it.

By that measure, a lot of kinds of protest are dissent, and a lot of others very much are not. Refusing to wear a mask in a store, for example, is not dissent. Driving your car through a protest is not dissent. Silencing a reporter is not dissent. Cheating on your taxes is not dissent (Actually, cheating on anything is not dissent. Breaking the rules just because you want to win is despicable).

All of these examples undermine the communities in which we live. They pit us against each other and as a result weaken the bonds we need as a society in order to survive.

So, dissent is essential, it is part of our immune system, and in a democracy it is everything.

The legal right to dissent is relatively new to the human experience. Just a few centuries ago, speaking out against an authority’s decision was almost (and literally) unheard of. The opinions and decisions of powerful men and women from monarchs and clerics down to local landowners were absolute. To challenge them was treason and heresy. The penalty for either was the same: a painful, public death.

Around the world today we see example after example of authoritarian regimes denying the right to dissent and punishing it. Whether they are nominally Capitalist, such as Russia or Turkey, or nominally Communist, such as China, suppression of dissent is what truly determines what kind of life those they rule must lead.

To be left wing - truly and properly left wing - is to hold oneself accountable to others because we want them to be accountable to us. The ability to voice and listen to dissent is what makes that work.

With every non-unanimous Supreme Court decision, there is a majority opinion and a minority, “dissenting” one. There may also be concurring opinions to either. They are published together. It is the majority opinion that rules, but the reason for the inclusion of the others is that they may persuade those reading them to change their minds. In this way, each voice on the Court matters, each mind, and each opportunity to influence the voices and minds of those the Court serves.

The Supreme Court is the last federal institution where majority rule still holds true. The Electoral College and Senate disproportionately favor rural, right wing voters and have increasingly done so for decades. That makes this appointment the natural result, and with it will come things the Left correctly fears.

Barrett may very well support overturning decisions on the ACA and Roe v Wade, but, perhaps more disturbingly, she may support overturning the decisions that equalized LGBT rights and banned forced prayer in schools.

Again, this will not be because she is Catholic but because she believes that those in power, be they school boards or business owners, have the right to decide who has rights within their schools and businesses and who does not. If you don’t like that, you’ll just have to gain power yourself, or find a new school, or a new job, or a new bakery.

It will likely be a long time before Justice Barrett has to write a dissenting opinion. It will take the retirement or death of at least one of the right wing justices, and that may not happen for a decade or more.

There has been talk of Democrats stacking the Court with left wing justices. This would be a tragic mistake. Even talking about it is a mistake. If the Democrats did it next year, the Republicans could do it when they took power, and so on, and so on, and so on.

Meanwhile, it would corrupt and erode any confidence in any legal opinion issued by the Supreme Court or any of the lower courts, and with that whatever last shred of trust Americans had in government would be gone.

The better solution, one long overdue, would be to fix the imbalance of power in the Electoral College and the Senate. This would be done by admitting the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as states and by splitting California into two or three states.

Doing so would add eight or ten senators and at least two voting representatives. This would not only repair some of the imbalance between right wing and left wing voters in this country, it would make it easier to pass new amendments to the Constitution, such as preserving the right to abortion, mandating health care as a right, setting term limits for all federal judges, and eliminating the Electoral College once and for all.

There would be resistance to this, of course. There would be dissent. And those offering genuine dissent should always be listened to. We fail to do so at our own expense.

Dissent is one of the prices we pay for democracy. It is sloppy. It is chaotic. It takes work and it takes time. However, much like our own immune systems, it must be flexible and robust to withstand change and adapt to new conditions.

That is the world Ruth Bader Ginsberg fought for. That is the world we should fight for, too.

- Daniel Ward

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foreverlogical · 4 years

Link

President Donald Trump fumed in his remarks to the press last week: “What they’ve done is a disgrace, and I hope a big price is going to be paid. A big price should be paid. There’s never been anything like this in the history of our country...”Trump’s fury wasn’t directed at Russia’s interference in the U.S. elections, but instead at the Obama administration’s efforts to investigate the Kremlin’s malign operations. And his account of a phone call earlier in the day with Russian President Vladimir Putin suggests—as the Kremlin quickly inferred—that as Trump confidently wraps up the “Russia hoax,” Putin can be confident Trump’s in his corner, if not in his pocket.There’s Nothing Generous About Putin’s Coronavirus Aid to US

During that phone call, as Trump told reporters, he told Putin the investigation of Russia’s interference in the U.S. elections by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller was a “Russia hoax.” And since Russia is under heavy economic U.S. sanctions for its election-meddling, such a dismissive description would seem a clear signal Trump wants that restrictive regime to come to an end. If there was no meddling and it was all part of a conspiracy by Barack Obama, why would you punish the falsely accused Putin?Trump’s remarks, coming amid a flurry of questions about COVID-19 at a press opportunity with the governor of Texas, had started with a musing about sharing ventilators with Moscow, then Trump pivoted to elaborate on a theme mentioned nowhere in the official readouts of the call by the White House or the Kremlin.“And that was a very nice call,” said Trump. “And remember this: The Russia hoax made it very hard for Russia and the United States to deal with each other. They’re a very important nation. We’re the most powerful nation; they’re a very powerful nation. Why would we not be dealing with each other?”“But the Russia hoax is—absolute, dishonest hoax,” Trump continued. “Made it very difficult for our nation and their nation to deal. And we discussed that. I said, ‘You know, it’s a very appropriate time.’ Because things are falling out now and coming in line, showing what a hoax this whole investigation was. It was a total disgrace. And I wouldn’t be surprised if you see a lot of things happen over the next number of weeks. This is just one piece of a very dishonest puzzle.”One of those “things” that are “falling out” is the attempted dismissal of criminal charges against Mike Flynn—Putin’s dinner companion at a gala for the Kremlin propaganda organ RT television in December 2015. Trump’s overtures sounded very good to Kremlin ears. The upending of an investigation into the Russian election interference implies the end of sanctions against the perpetrators, if Trump can work his will on Congress.While the tidbits revealed by the American president were notably absent from the White House and Kremlin readouts, which also omitted any mention at all of the said commentary about Russia’s election interference, the Kremlin did note the “satisfaction” of both presidents at the conclusion of the phone call. Exchanges between the two leaders have become, in fact, unusually frequent in 2020, and Russian analysts have taken notice. Indeed, they have offered up some extremely ambitious predictions, anticipating that the standoff between the United States and Russia eventually will play out bigly in the Kremlin’s favor.

Vitaly Mankevich, international-relations expert and the president of the Russian-Asian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, told Komsomolskaya Pravda—one of the most popular newspapers in Russia—that “the United States will abandon excessive pressure on Russia, since it does not pose an existential and ideological threat to Trump’s America (unlike the USSR during the Cold War). The White House will probably even try to pull Russia over to the U.S. side, offering investments and lifting sanctions.” Mankevich further predicted “a decrease in American activity in the Baltic states, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East.”Perhaps the tastiest bargain of all would be the anticipated handover of Ukraine to the Kremlin, in exchange for Russia’s support of the United States in its brewing conflict with China. Komsomolskaya Pravda concluded: “The United States may give Ukraine to Russia in an exchange for an alliance against China.” While Ukraine obviously is not Trump’s to give, the country is heavily dependent on the U.S. assistance for its very survival. Information revealed during the impeachment proceedings laid bare President Trump’s callous disregard toward Kyiv, combined with his overt longing to cozy up to the Kremlin. On a larger scale, Vitaly Mankevich predicted the disintegration of NATO and the opportunity for Russia to re-establish a hold over Eastern Europe unseen since the times of the Soviet Union. Of course, Mankevich emphasized, “this scenario is relevant only if Donald Trump is re-elected for a second term in November of 2020.”The ongoing motivation for Russia’s continued election interference explains why the English-speaking Kremlin-controlled networks have latched on to reports that aim to discredit former Vice President Joe Biden, while also presenting the U.S. democracy as “a sham,” with no one worth voting for. Destroying faith in the U.S. electoral process is one of the most important goals of the Kremlin’s anti-American propaganda. Another aim is to exacerbate the divisions in American society, but Trump is aptly accomplishing that—with or without Russia’s help. Trump’s re-election would provide a bouquet of benefits for the Kremlin and Biden’s considerably higher poll numbers are discussed with concern in the Russian state media.While the English-speaking bullhorns of the Kremlin have zeroed in on Tara Reade’s allegations against the highest-polling presidential candidate, the Russian state media back home quietly acknowledged that the timing of Reade’s disclosures clearly indicates an effort to undermine the candidacy of Biden. During his eponymous evening news show, host Vladimir Soloviev dismissively described Reade’s disclosures as a typical pre-election ploy, designed to erode Biden’s support (crude even by Kremlin standards). But that has not deterred the English-language state media from pushing the Reade accusations in hopes they’ll successfully torpedo Biden’s chances.The main incentive for the Kremlin’s ongoing support of the Trump presidency was eloquently summed up by Karen Shakhnazarov, CEO of Mosfilm Studio and a favored pundit on Russian state television: “Trump is a weak leader—and that is great for Russia. It’s also good for China.” Describing Trump as a synthesis of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin—Russian leaders of the past associated with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the weakening of Russia— Shakhnazarov expressed his hope that Trump would bring about the destruction of the United States of America, akin to what happened to the USSR.But let’s return to the matter of ventilators that segued into Trump’s musings about his phone call with Putin.“I suggested if they need—because we have a lot of ventilators—if they need ventilators, we’d love to send them some, and we will do that at the appropriate time. We’ll send them some ventilators.”Question: “Did he take you up on it? Did he say—”Trump: “Yeah. We’ll be doing that.”On this matter, the Kremlin’s commentators were far from enthusiastic. The absurdity of buying ventilators from Russia in April, only to offer U.S. ventilators to Russia in May, laid bare the propagandistic nature of such exchanges. And there’s this: Faulty Russian ventilators of the same make and model have caused fires and killed coronavirus patients in at least two Russian hospitals to date. It is unclear whether the potentially faulty Russian ventilators are currently being utilized in American hospitals, or sitting in storage as dormant metaphors of the Kremlin’s Trojan gifts.

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anexplanationofunfortunateevents · 5 years

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Don’t ever tell me anything about my business. ‘Kay?

Have you ever watched an old gangster movie and heard a reference to someone having “made his bones”? It’s not a whimsical reference to growing up physically. To become a made man, you had to participate in a contract kill. That’s not just a hazing ritual. It’s an insurance policy. You’re not allowed on the crew until they know they can implicate you in a murder.

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Otherwise, Mikey whacks Donnie while Junior hides in the backseat.

It’s a mess.

Donald Trump may be extremely ignorant about everything decent people might want to be good at, but he has a ton of practice at sucking people into his life of crime, and there’s no reason to think Pence is an exception. In fact, Pence is the person who Trump would most want to implicate, because he has the most to gain from turning on Trump. This alone would be enough to justify the House’s investigation of Mike Pence for his involvement in Trump’s attempt to extort the president of Ukraine into helping him steal the 2020 election.

This creates kind of a mutual assured destruction situation. White House “Acting* Chief of Staff” Mick Mulvaney and America’s Giamope Rudy Giuliani have both outright said they know too much for Trump to throw them under the bus. It’s possible that they haven’t entirely thought this through. Blackmailing the president is, uh, frowned upon, and by implying that they’re doing it successfully, they’re advertising that Trump is susceptible to blackmail. But you see how it works.

Naturally, Pence has taken the same obstinate line as the rest of the regime – no puppet, no puppet, you’re the collusion, lying deep state Democrat fake news, blah blah blah – and he’s good at making his lies look and sound boring, so you really have to stop to appreciate just how ludicrous his denials are.

Pence’s anonymous spokesperson’s gaslighty, who-me story is that:

Although at least two of his staffers were listening in on the call with President Zelensky, they did not tell Pence about it. This means Pence’s staff actively undermines him by keeping important information away from him. Oh, and also, the vice president has security clearance, so keeping this information from Pence necessarily meant keeping it from everyone else. What Trump did on that call with Zelensky is a crime. Knowing about a crime but concealing it is also a crime. Neither had been fired before one of them gave congressional testimony in early November, so if Pence is telling the truth, he was entrusting important national security duties to at least two people who were .... at least uncomfortably crime-adjacent.

He expects us to believe that he didn’t understand that Giuliani was putting the screws to the Ukrainian government to open investigations to Trump’s political benefit. In May, Giuliani told the New York Times that was exactly what he planned on doing. Also in May, Pence’s scheduled visit to Ukraine for President Zelensky’s inauguration was abruptly canceled. He didn’t ask why? He didn’t fucking Google “Ukraine” to try and figure it out? Even if Pence doesn’t believe anything he reads in the Failing New York Times, Giuliani had made the same pitch on Fox News a month earlier. And yet he was still in the dark about all this by late July.

When he did take a belated trip to Europe, he went with national security advisor John Bolton, who was legitimately outraged at this whole thing and who is not a man for hiding his displeasure. I mean, sure, maybe Pence totally ignored the other Americans in the delegation and only came out of his cocoon of silence for meetings with foreign dignitaries. He would still have noticed that Zelensky was acting pretty odd for a person who was having what Pence claims he believed was a normal conversation. Maybe he would have even asked the national security staffer who went with him on the trip, who could have told him exactly why Zelensky was rattled because she was listening in on the call.

Oh, and Zelensky never raised any specifics during his calls with Pence. Calls! Plural!

Most damningly, you have to believe that Pence is still completely incapacitated. That he’s responding to incredibly compelling testimony from respected State Department employees by promising to help Trump “fight the swamp” because he is just a poor blustering fool who has been ill-used and misled. Put yourself in the tight glass slippers of this naive Disney princess of a hypothetical vice president. Imagine you really were in the middle of all this stuff and didn’t realize there was anything wrong with it. You were as shocked as anyone to find out about this call where Trump bargained with Zelensky to “do us a favor, though.” There is absolutely no way you would fail to realize that you were implicated in this scheme. And once you have a realization like that, you have two choices: you can resign in protest and tell the world everything you know, or you can stick around and be damned with the rest of them. But somehow this epiphany has eluded Mike Pence every day for over a month? Fucking spare me.

And that’s just the work Pence would have to do to be so aggressively ignorant about the extortion of Ukraine. There are so many more high crimes and misdemeanors that we don’t have the time to investigate like this! How does he do his job while staying innocently oblivious to all the impeachable offenses that are actually happening? How does he get into the office every day without tripping over stray crimes? “Hm, Mother, maybe we should have the cook send us breakfast in bed? Pancakes? Just make sure you get a side of bacon, they always accidentally put a plate of felonies on the tray instead. So I hear!”

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Pence’s circle is usually pretty successful at using his simple-mindedness to deflect accountability for the administration’s day-to-day malevolent wackiness. And in a pinch, they’ve managed to convince the press that, gosh darn it, he was conveniently derelict in reading this or that specific memo. But this is next-level. This isn’t “the vice president is such an incurious buffoon that he makes W look like a fucking Rhodes scholar.” This is “the vice president is literally a Westworld host”: no matter what he reads, hears, or says about Ukraine, it doesn’t look like anything to him.

Or you could go with the only logical explanation, which is that he knew.

In one sense, Pence is not anything special. Horrible vice presidents are an American tradition. If you can manage to avoid having sacks of dirty cash brought to you in the West Wing, profiteering off of a war you incited, or shooting a man in Jersey just to watch him die, you’d be at least a mid-tier VP. But Pence being implicated in the crimes for which Trump is being impeached is different. The American government generally prefers to avoid directly and explicitly rewarding someone for a crime they have committed. If you’re convicted of killing someone, you can’t inherit their house or collect their life insurance. You can’t inherit the White House because of the high crimes and misdemeanors that you aided and abetted! You just can’t!!

And yet, this motherfucker really thinks he’s going to do just that.

*"Acting White House Chief of Staff” is not a real thing. Mulvaney isn’t temporarily holding the job for the actual chief of staff. He’s not waiting on confirmation or anything.

#mike pence #donald trump #impeachment #ukraine

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newagexheroes · 4 years

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Bucky & Sarah | Reunited

The knock on the apartment door doesn’t startle Bucky as much as it confuses him. They don’t get many visitors as it is but in the middle of the day like this? Something wrong here. Bucky ignores it. Hopefully whoever is at the door will either leave or realize they’ve gotten the wrong apartment and go away. That doesn’t happen though. No, instead they knock again and Bucky has to fight the urge to roll his eyes. He forces himself away from the couch he had settled on, the book he had been reading tossed onto the coffee table. There are two ways this could go, one it’s a civilian and they’ll head off after Bucky shoos them off or it’s someone here to attack him. Bucky clenches his metal fist as he approaches the door, and he uses his right hand to unlock the door. When the door isn’t forcibly kicked in, Bucky takes it as a sign that it’s just a civilian. So he opens the door just a crack to tell them they’ve got the wrong apartment but words die on his tongue the moment he sees who’s on the other side. Sarah Rogers. It had been a while now since it was Sarah’s turn to step through Magik’s portal. He had been avoiding Sarah like the plague. He refused to talk to her for more than a few minutes and wouldn’t be alone in a room with her. Now here she was standing outside he and Steve’s shared apartment that sad look on her face that she tried to hide with a smile.

“Come in,” Bucky speaks a bit gruffly but steps aside so that Sarah can make her way in. He’s going to fucking kill Steve for giving her this goddamn address. “I’ll make you tea.” He doesn’t let Sarah get a word in edgewise. He wants to busy himself, find ways to avoid this conversation or any conversation with Sarah. She looks at him like he’s still the boy she knew back in the thirties and he can’t stomach that. Bucky can’t have her think he’s a good man, her son’s protector. That boy died a long time ago and though try as he might Bucky isn’t sure he’ll ever be the boy she once knew. He can’t disappoint her like that, not Sarah. Not the woman who took him in as another son, seen him at his prime -- his shining years. The man that stirs lemon into her tea now is broken, slowly being pieced back together with pieces of a puzzle that have long been scattered and lost. Sarah, the ever polite, makes her self comfortable as Bucky busies himself in the kitchen. The air is stiff filled with words that neither of them seem to be able to say. It doesn’t get any better until Bucky’s bringing over the tea, left hand hidden is pocket as he gingerly hands over the steaming cup with his right. He stands over for a moment before sitting in the armchair that is across from her instead of on the couch.

“Thank you,” Sarah speaks softly and Bucky merely nods. She takes a few more sips before setting the cup down gingerly on the coffee table. “I think we need to have a conversation, one that’s long overdue.”

Bucky shifts a bit in his seat, does she know? Of course, she would, she’s Sarah. Sarah somehow knows everything, so much so that it’s almost disconcerting to Bucky that she seems to be a goddamn mind reader. Sarah hangs her head, staring at her hands in her lap. The look of sorrow on her face makes Bucky uneasy. Old instincts rear their head and ache for him to reach out and soothe her.

“I know Steve must have told you. So I understand why you’re avoiding me,” Her voice is ragged and Bucky realizes she’s trying not to cry. “I’m so sorry.” The woman whispered brokenly and he doesn’t think they’re on the same page. “You’re allowed to be angry with me, Jimmy. Your life wasn’t mine to take, not like that. I put you in danger too when you were nothing but a good boy. -- I didn’t mean to…” Sarah looks up finally, blue eyes rimmed with tears. Bucky can’t stand it. His fist clenches in his pocket so hard he’s afraid he might shatter the metal itself.

“No! -- No.” He doesn’t mean to yell, but he does and it clearly startles Sarah. “This ain’t about the TB. I don’t -- Shit that wasn’t your fault. How were you to know you passed that onto us?” He’s almost relieved that this isn’t what he thinks it’s about but Bucky knows she doesn’t believe him. He doesn’t blame her, his actions don’t really match up with a man that’s not angry with her.

“I should have known -- Steve was sick enough as it was already and even the healthiest people got it. I was bein’ selfish and that got you killed.” As the woman speaks Bucky shakes his head.

“You saved me.” The words spill from his mouth before he can stop them and Sarah’s teary face only grows confused and Bucky knows he’s done it. He can’t get out of this not now. He’s got to tell her because it isn’t just killing him but it’s killing Sarah as well. He’s got her convinced that he hates her. That’s not what he wants, not even a little bit. He’s selfish and a jerk. Bucky wants her to think of him as an innocent but can’t stand to look at her when she does look at him that way. His heart is hammering in his chest and he swears if his palms could get sweaty from nervousness they would. He’s not looking at her anymore, he can’t. “I’m not the man you think I am, not anymore.” His words are barely above a whisper and as if on cue his metal arm whirls.

“I ain’t your boy -- not your Jimmy.” Bucky takes in a deep breath. He’s trying to steel himself but since he’s been working on expressing emotions more freely they feel closer to the surface than anything else. His right hand comes up to unzip the hoodie he was wearing and he closes his eyes as he sits forward on the chair. He slowly but surely shrugs the fabric off, revealing a bright sliver arm that reflects off the light. He knows that Sarah tries to hide her gasp but with his enhanced hearing, Bucky hears it. Sarah shifts closer, she’s still on the couch.

“Please don’t -- touch it.” He finally opens his eyes and those tears are back. He knows for a different reason.

“What happened?” And at her words he laughs, it’s humorless and broken. What didn’t happen would be a better question. So much happened to Bucky and some of it he knows he doesn’t remember. It comes back in foggy dreams and dizzying nightmares. It comes back in echoing screams and haunting ghosts.

“It was the war. -- I got drafted in the 107th after you died here. There was this organization called,” The word gets stuck in his throat and his entire body shutters “Hydra. At the time they worked closely with the Nazis to make weapons and they captured our regime. -- They experimented on us, injected us and tortured us with terrible things. I don’t remember much but Steve found me, saved me.” He remembers that like a storm in the distance, far but sure. It was the first time he’d seen Steve after the serum, big and broad. The hero Bucky had always seen. “Thought that was the end of it -- went on a tour with Steve around Europe fightin’ off the bad guys.” He smiles a bit fondly at the memories of the Howling Commandos, that part was good. Sarah smiles too but it fades as Bucky’s smile fades. “A tour went wrong. I supposed to be dead. I fell off a train on a goddamn mountainside. That’s when I lost my arm..”

What happens next is like bile in his stomach. It burns his throat and tears start to threaten to burn his eyes. Sarah’s face fades in and out of his vision. The room is dark and damp, he can feel the sweat on his brow and vomit threats to spill from his mouth. His heart is racing and he feels woozy.

“Jimmy?” The voice brings Bucky out of his daze and Bucky can’t hide the sob.

“They hurt me so bad, Mama. They made me do bad things.” The tears come freely now, head hanging to his chest as his hair hides his face. “Hydra found me cause I survived and made me into a… monster.” He looks at his arm in disgust as he finally raises his head again. “They took my memories.” He draws in a shaky breath. “Electrocuted me -- ‘hiccups’ -- until I couldn’t remember my own name and -- ‘sniffle’ -- it worked. I was their puppet -- the fist of Hydra. They put a gun in my hands and told me to shoot and I did. I killed because it was -- ‘hiccups’ -- my job. I killed good people and their families -- I took over entire countries-- I assassinated a president. Anyone who was a threat to Hydra, I killed without any remorse. They turned me into a brainwashed killing machine.” He can’t look at Sarah not now that he’s sobbing like this. He killed so many people, all of their blood on his hands. “They tortured me for fun they got bored. -- And when they didn’t need me they’d freeze me like I was a popsicle. I wasn’t --’hiccups’- human.”

He covers his face now. He can’t catch his breath and he almost wishes he hasn’t told Sarah. He wishes he had kept his distance and pushed her away so he didn’t have to hurt her. He’s a murderer and now she’s going to look at him like everyone else does -- as a monster. Bucky doesn’t have to look up to know that Sarah is crying. He knows she’s got her hand over her mouth, trying to muffle the sound. She used to do the same thing when she thought she was going to lose Steve. Except now she had lost, she’d lost Bucky. What he doesn’t expect is her hands to pry his away from his face.

“Don’t touch me, please --- please don’t touch me.” Bucky sobs, trying but failing to pull his hands away from hers. He’s a super soldier and yet he can’t seem to break the grip of a mother. He wants to push her away but Bucky wouldn’t dare touch her. The hand that was touching his flesh hand comes to the back of his neck and pulls him until his forehead is on her shoulder and that’s when the cries become worse. He feels like a child, snot running down his face as his entire body shudders as her hand comes to rub his back like she would do when he and Steve were children. “They took all my memories of you and Stevie.” He whispers brokenly and Sarah shushes him.

“You are no monster, James Barnes.” Her voice is just as broken as his voice was and it only makes Bucky sob harder. “You didn’t choose to do those things, they aren’t your fault.”

“But I did them.”

“No, they did them. They just tried to put the blame on someone else.” Sarah nudges the side of Bucky’s face until he picks his head up. She’s got that look on her face, the one she’d get when she heard someone make fun of her son. It’s fierce and protective. The woman takes the metal hand and presses a kiss to each of the cold fingers and Bucky’s entire form shakes as she does so. “You are still my son, do you understand me. I love you no less, not an ounce. And I am not afraid of you.”

The words hit Bucky like a ton of bricks and he wraps both his arms around her slender frame. He hides his face into her shoulder once again and Sarah rubs his back. “I’m sorry I hid from you. I’m sorry -- I’m sorry.” The words fall from his mouth as the woman shushes him again.

“You don’t need to be sorry, stop that.” They stay like that for a little while. Sarah holds her second son, helping him through the sobs that possess his body like a man in grief. She doesn’t tell him but she’s angry. Not at him but at the world for daring to try and take his light away from him. She’ll also thank Tony later for giving her the address to the apartment.

#self para ;; bucky #self para ;; sarah

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