#Greek Cypriot violence

[kyreniacommentator]

TRNC Foreign Ministry condemns attack on Turkish Cypriots in Southern Cyprus

Statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus regarding the attack on Turkish Cypriot youths in the Greek Cypriot Administration of Southern Cyprus: We strongly condemn the attack on a group of our youths on 18 February 2024 during their trip to the Troodos region of the Greek Cypriot Administration of Southern Cyprus (GCA). Continue reading TRNC Foreign…

[thedansemacabres]

The Almost Lost Relationship of Adonis and Dionysus

[ID: An image of the seats at the Theater of Dionysus in Athens. The sun shines on the pale steps, illuminating them slightly. Beyond the stairs, there is nothing else in the theatre and it acts as an empty scene.]

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ADONIS IS KNOWN FOR BEING CAUGHT BETWEEN PERSEPHONE AND APHRODITE, and this eventually being the cause of his death—Artemis, Ares, Apollon, or perhaps all send a boar to gore Adonis and end the affair between him and Aphrodite. However, of course, there is always more to this story: that being the continuation, the romance of Adonis and Dionysus. This will serve as a small introduction to a relatively unknown aspect of Adonis’ mythology, especially in the perspective of Adonis representing infertile life compared to Dionysus’ fertility. 

PANYASSIS, AND THEN PLATO

Apollodorus contains one of the earliest tellings of Adonis’ death from the 5th century poet Panyassis, who states that Adonis died twice—once when Persephone obtained him, and another when he was gored by a boar. However, continuing Panyassis’ fragment, Plato Comicus states that Adonis’ death was caused by Aphrodite and Dionysus, not Aphrodite and Persephone: 

O Kinyras, king of the hairy-assed Cypriots, Your child is by nature most beautiful and most marvelous Of all humans, but two divinities will destroy him, She being rowed by secret oars, and he rowing them. (fr. 3)

By desiring and loving Adonis, Aphrodite and Dionysus later cause his demise. This is one of the earliest mentions of Adonis and Dionysus, whilst grim, does lead us slightly into the romance of Adonis and Dionysus. Another myth—or perhaps a continuation of this one—presents another tale, as recorded by Plutarch. 

PLUTARCH’S FRAGMENT 

Plutarch presents a differing story: that Dionysus fought with Aphrodite for Adonis and won. In discussing the ethics of food, particularly eating swine, he invokes this in a lost text written by Phanocles: 

Εἰδὼς θεῖον Ἄδωνιν ὀρειφοίτης Διόνυσος ἥρπασεν, ἠγαθέην Κύπρον ἐποιχόμενος. Knowingly, mountain-roaming Dionysus carried away the divine Adonis, after approaching the Holy Cyprian with hostile purpose. Plutarch, Quaestiones Convivales

One of the many reasons he cites for pigs being less than ideal animals for consumption is that they gored Adonis—which, in hypothesis, could be a reason that some Aphrodisian cults avoided consuming pork, but this is merely my own thinking. 

This fragment gives little context to the motives of Dionysus in this myth, the reaction of Aphrodite or Adonis. Despite this, the wording is of intrigue to me of several parts:

What does knowingly mean? The translation phrases it as Dionysus knowing, but knowing what? Or does this refer to Adonis knowing that he would be carried off—as in the original ancient Greek, it is placed as “knowing, divine Adonis.” 

Adonis here is called a god, theos, which may refer to his apotheosis, which was of contention in ancient Greece.

“Hostile purpose”, ἐποιχόμενος, also refers to the passing of wine. So, instead of violence, he may have given Aphrodite wine in “exchange” for Adonis. 

There is also something to be said of the similarity between Adonis being carried off with Dionysus carrying Ariadne away from Noxus. There were also contentions about the divinity of Ariadne, with some myths declaring her dying and another conflating her with Aphrodite—similarly to Adonis, who Plutarch mentioned previously could be identified with Dionysus.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE 

As remarked in the Adonia in Context, Adonis’ divinity was a contested question—with some remarking him as nothing sacred, while others entreating him as a deity. I personally have come to understand him as divine, returning from the underworld, especially as he journeyed there with Persephone. That within itself—returning to and from the underworld—is no task for mortals, even if it was divinely sanctioned by Zeus. If he did die when he was first received by Persephone, does this imply a cycle of resurrection that eventually led to a state in between, or an odd sense of immortality? 

There is also the notable comparison of Adonis and Dionysus mirroring Ariadne and Dionysus, in which they are taken by Dionysus and become his lovers. In my own practice, this does come into Adonis being in our modern terms in a polycule with the god. Fascinatingly, Ariadne’s own divinity was of debate, perhaps remarking her as a parallel to Adonis himself. There is certainly something to be said of Adonis being a sterile god with the fertility god Dionysus, continuing the paradox of Dionysus. Adonis represents the ancient Greek man that was infertile and as such did not mature into a proper member of the polis, and Dionysus is the great disrupter of the polis. 

As a personal practice though, there is always the option for others to honour them as I do—as divine lovers—and in my personal practice, Dionysus is the one who eventually “wins” Adonis. And as someone extremely unconventional and a “failed” man in the eyes of my biological family, Adonis is the perfect comfort as the failed adult who succeeds into immortality. 

References

Edmund P. Cueva, (1996). Plutarch’s Ariadne in Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe. American Journal of Philology,

Jameson, M. H. (2019). 2. The asexuality of Dionysus. In Cornell University Press eBooks (pp. 44–64). https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501733680-007

Plutarch,  Quaestiones Convivales, stephpage 612c. (n.d.). http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0007.tlg112.perseus-grc1:612c

Reitzammer, L. (2016). The Athenian Adonia in context: The Adonis Festival as cultural practice. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/45855

Seaford, R. (2006). Dionysos. Routledge.

[beardedmrbean]

Tensions surged between UN peacekeepers and Turkish Cypriot security personnel on Friday in Cyprus. The discord, as highlighted by the peacekeeping mission, was incited by unsanctioned construction in the buffer zone overseen by the United Nations.

Eyewitness videos unveiled UN peacekeepers being aggressively accosted by individuals in Turkish Cypriot police and military uniforms. These footages also displayed bulldozers relocating UN trucks, cement bollards, and barbed wire within the zone that separates the island. Based on UN accounts, friction escalated when international peacekeepers intervened to stop crews from building a road projected to impinge upon the UN buffer zone. This road is intended to link Arsos in the Turkish Cypriot north to Pyla in the Greek Cypriot south, where the island’s recognized government is headquartered. Footage procured by the media depicted a considerable number of Turkish Cypriots confronting a smaller contingent of Slovak and British UN soldiers. As these peacekeepers formed a barrier, some faced direct physical assault, including blows to the face. Three soldiers sustained minor injuries, as confirmed by the UN. In a statement, the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) vehemently condemned the violence against its peacekeepers and the damage to UN assets by the Turkish Cypriot side. The incident, occurring near Pyla within the buffer zone, saw peacekeepers curbing the unauthorized construction. UNFICYP underscored that threats to their peacekeepers and property damage are serious breaches of international law. Conclusively, UNFICYP urged the Turkish Cypriot side to respect the mission’s mandate, calling for an immediate retreat of all personnel and equipment from the buffer zone, reaffirming their commitment to maintaining stability in the area.

[mightyflamethrower]

We know the multifaceted strategy of the monstrous Hamas operation of Oct. 7

In precivilizational fashion it wished to kill and mutilate the most vulnerable of all Israeli civilians and thus to shock the world that it was capable of—and proud about— anything, from decapitation to necrophilia. Such animalistic savagery, in the reckoning of Western therapeutic society, was supposedly to be seen as forced upon Hamas murderers by the “occupation.”

The killers felt they would shock the Israelis into concessions given their eagerness to commit the unspeakable. They took captives for tripartite reasons: to barter children and the elderly for their kindred terrorist murderers in Israeli jails; to use captives to force the Israelis to grant cease-fires and pauses in their retaliation; and to bank them as shields to protect Hamas kingpins from retaliation.

Hamas invaded during a holiday in the early hours, in a time of peace, and on the iconic 50th-annivesary of the Yom Kippur surprise Arab attack. Their aim was to prove that  Israeli soil was for the first time porous and 2,000 killers could enter sacred Israeli ground with impunity and kill in one day more Jews civilians than at any day since the Holocaust.

The terrorists shot thousands of rockets into Israel to overwhelm Iron Dome and terrify the entire civilian population.

All these tactics was aimed at long-term strategic goals: stop the Abraham Accords; obey the directives of Hamas’s Iranian terrorist masters as payment for their arms; discredit the radical Palestine Authority and Arab moderate nations as anemic in their opposition to the supposedly shared hated Zionist entity; and prompt an Israeli response that by necessity would involve collateral damage to human shields, and schools, mosques, and hospitals atop subterranean Hamas headquarters.

Yet if we know their despicable methods, aims, and strategies, why did they think the civilized world would support their barbarity or at least excuse it?

One, Hamas assumed anti-Semitism was prevalent throughout the West and was canonical in the Middle East. Palestinian authorities count on the fact that being an enemy of the Jews of Israel wins them empathy of the world and creating their own unique rules of passive-aggressive victimhood.

So Palestinians demand to be the only “refugees” in the world—not Greek Cypriots, Eastern European Germans, and Prussians, Kurds, Armenians, and certainly not a million Jews cleansed from the Arab Middle East.

Israelis are to be “settlers,” not millions of Middle Easterners who surge and settle into the West, form resistance communities, sneer at integration and assimilation, and use Western liberality to protect and project their own illiberality.

Second, Hamas relies on useful Western idiots. It understands its terrorists repel the majority of Americans. But it figures Western and globalist institutions—academia, the media, popular culture—in their wealth, ignorance, and self-importance, alleviate guilt and find resonance by mouthing the shibboleths of the “underdog.”

In particular, Hamas understands that the Palestinian cause has fused with the leftwing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion industry. Thus Hamas becomes the Middle-East counterpart to BLM, aggrieved minorities, and, more preposterously, the trans/gay/feminist movement. Meanwhile, Israelis are recalibrated as the demonized Western “colonialist” white supremacists.

Third, the Islamic expatriate populations of Europe and the U.S. have soared. In the strange logic of the Middle Easterner in the West—on a green card, or a student visa, or either as an illegal alien or a first-generation immigrant—he will envision the magnanimity of Americans and Europeans who offered him refuge from the violence, hatred, tyranny, racism, sexism, terrorism, and violence of his homeland all too often as weakness to be manipulated, not as generosity to be appreciated much less reciprocated.

Middle Eastern expatriates brag of their growing numbers and the political clout that Islam accrues in liberal democracies, without a clue of their hypocrisy of supporting illiberal tyrannies whose violence drove them out to the West in the first place.

So, we watch Middle Easterners in the U.S. trying to ruin iconic events such as crashing “Black Friday” shopping, disrupting the New York Thanksgiving parade, or tearing down American flags on Veterans’ Day.

Only in America would the Iranian terrorist theocracy’s ex-ambassador to the UN, Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, be accorded a professorship at Oberlin or a former top diplomat for the Iranian regime Seyed Hossein Mousavian land a coveted billet at Princeton.

From such perches these expatriates are free to promote pro-Hamas, Iranian, anti-Semitic—and Anti-American—agendas. They consider their hosts not so much tolerant as stupid, in the sense that any American expatriate in Iran who whispered criticism of the theocratic regime would either be hanged or used as a barter hostage. Why would those whose careers were devoted to demonizing and harming the United States from their coveted billets in Iran even wish to move to the Great Satan, while keeping warm relations with their theocratic kingpins in Tehran?

Four, behind all these considerations, is the reality of terrorism and the fear it instills in the West, given the 21st century history of Middle Easterners slaughtering thousands of Americans and Europeans. In crude terms, Hamas and its terrorist affiliates signal us, “damn Israel or be prepared for another 9/11.”

Five, Hamas is a death cult, an updated terrorist version of the more organized SS—with the qualifier it broadcasts rather than hides its savagery.

Radical Palestinians brag that they love death more than Israel loves life. So they count on Israel giving up three convicted terrorists to get back one elderly or young Israeli captive, on targeting civilians with rockets while Israelis drops leaflets warning of their bombing attacks, on coercing human shields that they assume Israel will avoid, on sanctioning raping, mutilating, and beheading in a way Israel would never conceive of reciprocating in kind, and on and on.

So will all these tactical and strategic methods work? For all the UN, media, and globalist support for Hamas, still perhaps not.

October 7 was a declaration by Hamas that all barbarity imaginable was now fair game. Yet its sheer evil has unleashed the IDF that perhaps not even Joe Biden, hostages, and “world opinion” can permanently stop.

For all the boasts about loving death, it was Hamas who cowardly murdered the unarmed, scampered back to the safety of their tunnels, and used their own kindred Gazans to shield them from death—delivered to them by supposed nerds who love life too much.

Europeans also have had it with unlimited immigration from the Middle East. Restrictionist politicians throughout Europe are ascending as never before, in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Holland, Spain, and Sweden.

They all reflect growing public anger that Europeans are hated by the very people who seek them out and wish to destroy their Enlightenment institutions by manipulating and discrediting them.  The thousands who hit the streets to cheer on October 7 and damn their hosts only confirm a growing global consensus—in the West, Latin America, Asia, and even throughout the Middle East—that admitting migrants from Palestine or Gaza, or their supporters, is a veritable death wish.

Pro-Hamas protestors calling Joe Biden “Genocide Joe” and boasting about the Arab or Muslim vote in Michigan is incoherent. Not only do harassing Thanksgiving shoppers and parades, disrupting iconic American holidays and events, swarming highways and bridges, and preying on Jews alienate Americans. But also taking credit for ensuring Biden’s defeat will only distance the Democratic establishment, such as it is, from its embarrassing, loud, but ultimately relatively impotent Islamic constituency.

Shouting for mass death “From the River to the Sea” does not endear the pro-Hamas crowd to half of their fellow Democrats, much less unabashedly strutting their anti-Semitism. The current overt support for Hamas, in other words, has revealed to the nation the bankruptcy of the entire pro-Hamas/DEI base of the Democratic Party and will do much to ensure a conservative president in 2024.

And that president will likely deport anyone on a green card or student visa promoting Hamas terrorism, or violating U.S. law, while ensuring a travel ban from terrorist supporting regimes in the Middle East. Such measures will win overwhelming public support, despite media and academic outrage.

Strategically, Iran, Hamas, and the Palestinians may seem to have flummoxed Israel into endless concessions by metering out hostages for serial pauses. But again, no Israel government can retain power by allowing the mass murdering Hamas to survive and so it will not.

Despite all the blood-curdling rhetoric of Hezbollah and Iran, neither will attack Israel or U.S. assets in force, given no American president could afford not to retaliate disproportionately. And “disproportionately” would mean rendering Iran’s military and Hezbollah to something akin to the current status of Hamas.

So for now, Hamas and its American-residing apologists are full of themselves and feel they are leveraging and manipulating the West. But such haughtiness may be a delusion. Hamas in the Middle East and its enablers in Europe and America have done more to harm the Palestinian cause and the idea of Middle Eastern immigration to the West than at any time since 9/11.

It is hard to anger Westerners, but continue the death chants, the violent demonstrations, the creepy anti-Semitism, and the proud support for the Hamas bloodwork of October 7, and they will be surprised at the growing anger of otherwise postmodern Europeans and distracted Americans.

Just as Israel realizes that there is no living with Hamas killers, so the West is learning that it can no longer sustain universities that despise the culture that nourishes it or Middle Eastern immigrants, visiting students, and residents that use the gift of freedom and tolerance to promote their abhorrent anti-Semitism, violence, intolerance—and, yes, hatred of their generous hosts.

We said never again. Did we mean it???

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 8.14 (after 1930)

1933 – Loggers cause a forest fire in the Coast Range of Oregon, later known as the first forest fire of the Tillamook Burn; destroying 240,000 acres (970 km2) of land. 1935 – Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act, creating a government pension system for the retired. 1936 – Rainey Bethea is hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky in the last known public execution in the United States. 1941 – World War II: Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt sign the Atlantic Charter of war stating postwar aims. 1947 – Pakistan gains independence from the British Empire. 1948 – Beaver drop a Idaho Department of Fish and Game program to relocate beavers from Northwestern Idaho to the Chamberlain Basin in Central Idaho. The program involved parachuting beavers into the Chamberlain Basin. 1959 – Founding and first official meeting of the American Football League. 1967 – UK Marine Broadcasting Offences Act 1967 declares participation in offshore pirate radio illegal. 1969 – The Troubles: British troops are deployed in Northern Ireland as political and sectarian violence breaks out, marking the start of the 37-year Operation Banner. 1971 – Bahrain declares independence from Britain. 1972 – An Ilyushin Il-62 airliner crashes near Königs Wusterhausen, East Germany killing 156 people. 1980 – Lech Wałęsa leads strikes at the Gdańsk, Poland shipyards. 1994 – Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, also known as "Carlos the Jackal", is captured. 1996 – Greek Cypriot refugee Solomos Solomou is shot and killed by a Turkish security officer while trying to climb a flagpole in order to remove a Turkish flag from its mast in the United Nations Buffer Zone in Cyprus. 2003 – A widescale power blackout affects the northeast United States and Canada. 2005 – Helios Airways Flight 522, en route from Larnaca, Cyprus to Prague, Czech Republic via Athens, crashes in the hills near Grammatiko, Greece, killing 121 passengers and crew. 2006 – Lebanon War: A ceasefire takes effect three days after the United Nations Security Council’s approval of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, formally ending hostilities between Lebanon and Israel. 2006 – Sri Lankan Civil War: Sixty-one schoolgirls killed in Chencholai bombing by Sri Lankan Air Force air strike. 2007 – The Kahtaniya bombings kills at least 500 people. 2013 – Egypt declares a state of emergency as security forces kill hundreds of demonstrators supporting former president Mohamed Morsi. 2013 – UPS Airlines Flight 1354 crashes short of the runway at Birmingham–Shuttlesworth International Airport, killing both crew members on board. 2015 – The U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba re-opens after 54 years of being closed when Cuba–United States relations were broken off. 2021 – A magnitude 7.2 earthquake strikes southwestern Haiti, killing at least 2,248 people and causing a humanitarian crisis. 2022 – An explosion destroys a market in Armenia, killing six people and injuring dozens. 2023 – Former U.S. President Donald Trump is charged in Georgia along with 18 others in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election in that state, his fourth indictment of 2023.

[kayla1993-world]

Canada temporarily suspends operations in Sudan as intense fighting continues

Canada is temporarily suspending operations in Sudan government announced Sunday situation in Sudan has rapidly deteriorated, making it impossible to safeguard the safety and security of our staff in Khartoum," Global Affairs Canada said.

Canadian diplomats will work "from a safe location outside the country to support Canadians still in the country government previously announced it had temporarily suspended in-person operations at its embassy in Khartoum.

"The Canadian Embassy will resume operations in Khartoum as soon as the situation in Sudan allows us to guarantee proper service and the safety and security for our staff," Sunday's statement said.

Saudi Arabia said it helped some Canadians escape Sudan on Saturday. Battles between rival military factions in Sudan have triggered a humanitarian crisis, with foreign states seeking evacuations. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the country's armed forces evacuated diplomatic staff and their family members from Sudan.

Sunak paid tribute to what he called a "complex" evacuation after he said there had been a significant escalation in violence and threats to embassy staff.

Britain's defense minister, Ben Wallace, said British troops undertook the rescue operation alongside the United States, France, and other unnamed allies.

The U.S. military also airlifted embassy officials out of Sudan on Sunday, and other governments raced to evacuate their diplomatic staff and citizens trapped in the capital.

Fighting raged in Omdurman, the city across the Nile from Sudan's capital, Khartoum. The violence came despite a declared truce to coincide with the three-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.

"We did not see such a truce," said Amin al-Tayed from his home near state television headquarters in Omdurman. He said heavy gunfire and thundering explosions rocked the city. "The battles did not stop," he said.

Thick black smoke filled the sky over Khartoum's airport. The Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group battling Sudanese armed forces claimed the military unleashed airstrikes on the upscale neighborhood of Kafouri, north of Khartoum. There was no immediate comment from the army.

After a week of bloody battles that hindered rescue efforts, U.S. special forces swiftly evacuated U.S. embassy staffers from Khartoum to an undisclosed location in Ethiopia early Sunday. Although American officials said it was still too dangerous to carry out a government-co-ordinated mass evacuation of private citizens, other countries scrambled to evacuate their citizens and diplomats.

Saudi Arabia on Saturday said the kingdom successfully evacuated 157 people, including 91 Saudi nationals and citizens of other countries. Saudi state TV released footage of a large convoy of Saudis and other foreign nationals traveling by car and bus from Khartoum to Port Sudan Navy ship the evacuees across the Red Sea to the Saudi port of Jeddah.

France, Greece, and other European countries said Sunday they were organizing evacuations for embassy employees and some citizens of allied governments. French Foreign Ministry spokesperson Anne-Claire Legendre said France was undertaking the operation with the help of European partners.

The Greek foreign minister said the country had dispatched aircraft and special forces to its ally, Egypt, in preparation for an evacuation of 120 Greek and Cypriot nationals from Khartoum evacuees were sheltering at a Greek Orthodox cathedral in the capital, Nikos Dendias said.

The Netherlands sent two air force Hercules C-130 planes and an Airbus A330 to Jordan to rescue 152 Dutch citizens in Sudan who made their way to an undisclosed evacuation point Sunday deeply sympathize with the Dutch in Sudan," said Defence Minister Kajsa Ollongren evacuation and the transfer to the assembly point are not without risks."

Italy dispatched military jets to the Gulf of Aden nation of Djibouti to extract 140 Italian nationals from Sudan, many of whom have taken refuge in the embassy, said Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani.

The fighting between the Sudanese armed forces and the powerful RSF has targeted and paralyzed the country's main international airport, reducing the number of civilian aircraft to ruins and gutting at least one runway airports across the country have also been knocked out of operation.

Overland travel across areas contested by the warring parties has proven dangerous. Khartoum is some 840 kilometers from Port Sudan on the Red Sea.

The power struggle between the Sudanese military, led by Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and the RSF, led by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, has dealt a harsh blow to Sudan's heady hopes for a democratic transition than 420 people, including 264 civilians, have been killed, and more than 3,700 have been wounded in the fighting.

Both Burhan and Dagalo, each craving international legitimacy, have accused each other of obstructing efforts to evacuate foreign diplomatic officials Sunday that the RSF had opened fire on a French convoy during its evacuation, wounding a French national response, the RSF claimed it came under attack by military aircraft as French citizens and diplomats made their way to Omdurman after evacuating the embassy said the military's strikes "endangered the lives of French nationals, injuring one of them."

The French Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the details of the rescue operation or the reported shooting for security reasons but said the evacuation was continuing as planned.

On Sunday, the country experienced a "near-total collapse" of internet connection and phone lines nationwide, according to NetBlocks, an internet monitoring service.

"Infrastructure may have been damaged or sabotaged," Alp Toker, director of Netblocks, said in an interview about residents' ability to stay safe and will impact the ongoing."

Hospitals say they are struggling to cope with dead and wounded being stranded by the fighting, according to the Sudan Doctors' Syndicate casualties, suggesting the death toll is probably higher than what is publicly known.

Thousands of Sudanese have fled the combat in other hotspots agencies 20,000 people have abandoned their homes in the western region of Darfur for neighboring Chad is not new to Darfur, where ethnically motivated violence has killed as many as 300,000 people since used to such heavy fighting in its capital.

"The capital has become a ghost city," said Atiya Abdalla Atiya, secretary of the Syndicate Fighting has also caught civilians — including foreign diplomats — in the crossfire attacked an Embassy convoy last stormed the home of the European Union ambassador to an Egyptian diplomat in Sudan, the spokesman for Foreign Ministry said Sunday, without details.

From the Vatican, Pope Francis called for prayers and invocations for peace in the vast African nation am renewing my appeal so that violence ceases as soon as possible and that the path of dialogue resumes," Francis told those gathered in St. Peter's Square.

The current explosion of violence came after Burhan and Dagalo fell out over a recent internationally brokered deal with democracy activists meant to incorporate the RSF into the military and eventually lead to civilian rule.

The rival generals rose to power in the tumultuous aftermath of popular uprisings that led to the ouster of the longtime ruler, Omar al-Bashir, in 2019 forces to seize power in a coup that ousted the civilian troubled new chapter in the country's history.

[in-sightpublishing]

Brief Remarks on Cypriot Identity with Marios Prodromou: Member, World Genius Directory (2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/12/08 Abstract Marios Sophia Prodromou is a member of the World Genius Directory. He discusses: Cypriot identity; the Turks; the Greeks; intercommunal violence; the origin of Cypriot self-consciousness; Greek-Cypriots are Christian;…

[baeddel]

dispatch on the unrest in belfast

in the late 1950s a group of British Army soldiers from Northern Ireland became notorious for butchering civilians in Cyprus. they were defending the British occupation from the EOKA, led by (no, really) General Grivas, who wanted reunification with Greece. despite Grivas attempts to prevent it the war quickly became a sectarian conflict between Christian Greek Cypriots and Muslim Turkish Cypriots. it was an extremely bloody conflict fought with civilian lives. for the first time in war the pipe bomb replaced the heavy artillery.

when the British surrendered in 1960 those soldiers returned home and, in order to combat the Catholic civil rights movement, became involved in civilian loyalist organisations like the Loyal Orange Lodge until in 1966 when they formed the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). their innovation was to apply the experience in Cyprus to Northern Ireland to defend a partition which was not, at this stage, actually under attack. that year they carried out a string of random killings on the Catholic Falls Road. the civil rights movement developed into an armed struggle for national liberation, the British Army was deployed to combat it, and the UVF were transformed into anonymous soldiers for apartheid, armed by the South African regime, among others, and receiving clandestine support from the British.

pictured: Gusty Spence, first prince of loyalist terror, flanked by his retainers

when Gusty Spence, the leader of the UVF, was caught and imprisoned, he gradually lost control of the organisation. by the end of the 70s it had turned from a politically motivated death squad into an organized crime syndicate and was competing with several other paramilitary rackets, especially the UDA who still control the drug trade in Protestant areas. when Gusty Spence got out of prison he and several other former UVF brigadeers would join the Progressive Unionist Party, which combined loyalism with socialism. they were instrumental in negotiating the ceasefire known as the Good Friday Agreement in the 90s.

the sectarian killings died down but never disappeared. the far-right DUP, led by arch-reactionary Ian Paisley and maintaining secretive associations with both the Loyal Orange Lodge and the UVF (alongside Paisley’s several failed attempts to create his own paramilitary organization known as Third Force), became the dominant unionist party and the dominant party in Stormount, while Sinn Feinn, the political wing of the Provisional IRA, had become the leading republican party throughout the 1980s. apart from a few weak gestures they both agreed on a bunch of austerity cuts and fought tooth and nail against abortion and so on, reiterating the “carnival of reaction north and south” in microcosm.

throughout the 2000s a lot changed. the sectarian Royal Ulster Constabulary was disbanded and replaced with the dysfunctional Police Service Northern Ireland. the loyalist paramilitaries generally decomissioned as requested. it seemed like things were changing. by 2011 the final report of the Independent Monitoring Comission was cautiously optimisitc, writing that “In our first year [2004], each week there were on average four victims of paramilitary violence, some in sectarian incidents. In the last six-monthly period on which we reported the number was about a third of that and none were sectarian” (IMC, pg. 14). but already in 2003 Peter R. Neumann, a researcher on terrorism and partisan conflict, predicted that “the current peace process may not be the ending of the conflict but the suppression of it into the politics of threat and coercion” (Neumann, Britain’s Long War, pg. 1). fifty years after Marcuse was worried about ‘repressive desublimation’ in America, we were finally enjoying the good old ‘disciplinary society’ in Northern Ireland.

the loyalist paramilitaries went through a profound involution, becoming ethnoreligious dictatorships with exclusive police authority over the communities they claim to represent, battling among each other for control over housing estates. they possessed exclusive control over the black market, forced all businesses to pay them protection, and controlled most commercial services (taxi cabs, window cleaners, and so on). they exiled troublemakers, wounded lawbreakers, and murdered their opponents. your neighbours are taken away in the middle of the night and no one asks what happened. you wake up to breaking glass and gunshots, but no screams. then the paramilitaries appropriate the house of their victim and lease it out themselves. the IMC make an uncharacteristically wry remark that this is just “one amongst many ways in which paramilitaries continued to do what they had always done, namely doing violence to their own communities.” (IMC, pg. 14)

The Comission writes that “when we started we observed a scene from which terrorism against the organs of the state had largely disappeared,” yet “as we close we see classic signs of insurgent terrorism” (IMC, pg. 15). the very next year, in December 2012, the UVF and UDA were able to mobilize a huge crowd of Protestants in a campaign of civil disobedience over the removal of the Union Jack from City Hall. this was the first time since the partition that loyalism had taken on the appearance of a genuinely popular movement, looking more like Catholic civil rights marchers of the 60s than Black & Tans. the transformation of loyalism into a form of militant political activism with its own demo circuit was one of a few significant changes of the last decade (we won’t have time for the others in this post). throughout the 2010s they carried out agitprop, pamphleteering, posting up placards and organizing protests against the traitors, touts and frauds at Stormount, even training their own professional activists like Jamie Bryson, all soliciting Protestants to help them protect their cultural identity, heritage and the usual hogwash.

the sedition intensified when, on the 11th of July, 2018, in order to protest ... something, all over Co. Down and Belfast masked and armed volunteers hijacked busses and cars and burned them out, blockaded the roads with burning tires, and hid pipe bombs in the wreckage (BBC). but there was no pretension that this was an act of popular will. it all happened before 5am, and the UVF immediately contacted the police and the press to claim responsibility.

now on the seventh day of violent unrest in Belfast we find this tendency reaching its fullest expression. the events are widely reported on as ‘riots’, but the attacks are identical to the UVF sedition in 2018 and, anyway, require a level of organization which only a paramilitary possess. the difference is that in this instance, like in the Flag protests of 2012-2013, the paramilitaries were able to mobilize ordinary Protestants. but how mobilized are they?

“When the hostage espouses the cause of the terrorist ... then another justice is active than the justice of the law, other scales than the scales of justice.” (Baudrillard, Cool Memories V 2000-2004)

whenever an ordinary person is beaten, shot, exiled or killed by the UVF, our neighbours do not, as we do, hide under their beds and pray. instead, very often, they celebrate. they regard acts of terror as occasions for saturnalia; they come out into the street and cheer, they open buckfast or bacardi, they call their friends to let them know, and in their voices one hears earnest excitement. after the involution of terror we can no longer really blame this on the red mist of bigotry. it makes no difference to armoured Protestants whether the victim is enemy or friend. the order of the spectacle wins out over the mode of terror.

if one looks closely at the events in belfast, common people are present but they are spectators, not participants. elderly women and babies in prams along with their families line up along the sidewalk to watch and cheer while the professionals blow things up. if this is a riot, it’s a strange kind of riot. in some sense The Belfast Riots Did Not Take Place. the pipe bomb returns to Belfast as a simulation of the pipe bomb of the Troubles, already a simulation of the pipe bomb of the Cyprus Emergency, a retaliation to an attack that hasn’t happened yet. but pay close attention to the redirection that has taken place; the bomb is thrown, not into the window of a Republican bar, like the petrol bomb that killed Matilda Gould, but into a line of riot police, like the pipe bomb at the Haymarket riot.

so, what’s next?

some commentary has been made about the fact that the military has been deployed to settle the unrest. this seems like something new, perhaps the first time since the Good Friday Agreement. but, in fact, the military were already deployed in Northern Ireland from the beginning of COVID-19 to support the health services and supply logistics (BBC). it’s significant that they were not called in for the 2012-2013 Flag protests or the ‘Day of Disorder’ in 2018. the state of exception brought about by the pandemic has possibly adjusted the scales. furthermore, the military, previously arming and collaborating with the UVF, are now being deployed specifically to prevent them.

the IMC reported that very few of the killings, by 2011, were sectarian. the Flag protests were sectarian only indirectly, affirming the Protestant ‘siege mentality’, but the enemy was Stormont and not the specter of armed republican revolution. the 2018 disorder had no sectarian content at all. conversely, the incident which incited this week’s Belfast Riots was much more explicitly sectarian. it’s a lot of horseshit: they (prominently, the DUP) wanted Michelle O’Neill, Deputy First Minister and member of Sinn Feinn, arrested for violating COVID restrictions to go to a funeral. the riots began the day the PPS decided not to prosecute. the contention is that COVID restrictions are being unequally enforced between Protestants and Catholics. a paranoid inversion of the real inequality was typically a justifciation for sectarian violence during the Troubles. in one of the most violent moments of the riot the Lanark Way peace wall, separating the Falls and the Shankill, was set on fire and breached, Protestant rioters storming the Catholic street and attacking its residents (the Guardian).

is this the last gasp of an old order of sectarian violence, quickly being replaced by a new kind of reactionary populism? or are these the early ripples of a new, increasingly violent sectarian resurgence? will the tensions between the UVF and the British Army continue to escalate, or will the civil war transform into an ethnic conflict, like in Cyprus? we cannot anticipate the outcome. but the last 6 days seem like significant ones to me. we should remain sensitive to the changes that are coming.

[kyreniacommentator]

Ersin Tatar’s statement means the UN is only interested in TRNC accepting RoC wishes

Introduction by Chris Elliott… The UN came to the island of Cyprus in 1964 to stop the violence and ethnic cleansing attempts by Greeks and Greek Cypriot communities on the Turkish Cypriots and create security for the Cyprus Issue to help both communities but nothing ever changed. The UN led the way in doing very little to be impartial and treat both sides as equal and their latest attempts to…

[scripttorture]

Hello! I've browsed this blog a bit and came across the idea that torturers often develop mental illness because of their repeated exposure to the violence/trauma of seeing another person in pain, which I'd never considered before. A) Do you believe torturers can therefore be a type of victim as well, depending on the circumstances, and therefore deserving of compassion/therapy? B) Can you point me to more information about this/what kinds of mental illnesses develop in torturers? (1/2)

C) Do you think it's possible for a mass murderer/torturer character to have a realistic, satisfying redemption arc? Do you know any media that's pulled it off believably? Thank you so much for taking the time to read/answer this if you do! And for this excellent resource!

-

The most accessible sources that cover this are O’Mara’s Why Torture Doesn’t Work (good grounding, start with him), Rejali’s Torture and Democracy and the appendices to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth where he describes treating two torturers.

 The most current research is about 600 pages of print on demand untranslated French. If you’re fluent in French (I am not and lock down etc has got in the way of me getting this translated) Sironi Comment devient-on tortionnaire?

 Broadly speaking the symptoms appear to be the same as those survivors and witnesses develop.

 And I will go into this in more depth later but keep in mind there is not anywhere near enough research on torturers for us to be entirely sure about most of this. I’m working with the best information we have right now.

 The other two questions are subjective and sort of complicated. By definition a lot of this is going to be my opinion because well that’s what you’re asking for.

 I think we need to be really careful about describing torturers as ‘victims’.

 Yes they’re put in this situation by social structures beyond their control. It is not their fault that they weren’t given training or support in their job. It’s also not their fault that we have this global message that violence is effective or that so many workplaces are unnecessarily pressured/stressful. Most of the time they are drawn in to abusing others because of the social groups and structures within the organisation they join.

 Oversight (with a drive to eradicate torture), funding, training and clear consistent messages about the right way to handle difficult situations would probably prevent most cases of torture.

 This does not change the fact that on an individual level each of them chose to hurt other people.

 Some of them will have made that choice understanding there was a threat to their own safety if they did not. Some of them will have made that choice just because it was what everyone else was doing. Some of them genuinely believe what they did was the ‘right’ decision at the time.

 They still made that choice. And given that we have records of people in similar positions refusing, even when it put them at risk of attack or death, I don’t have a lot of sympathy with the choice torturers made.

 The fact I’m a pacifist factors into this. Consider my biases.

 Torturers typically show a very low understanding of the impact their actions have had on other people.

 They might regret their actions but this is typically framed in a very self-centred way. They usually don’t express more then cursory regard for the victims. They regret it because they’re suffering now, because they have nightmares, because they can’t keep a job. And oh it’s all so unfair.

 I don’t know why this is the case. But it’s a feature Sironi described in interviews about her work. And I’ve seen it over and over again in interviews with torturers.

 Yes torturers suffer. The symptoms they develop are terrible and have a lasting impact on their lives. They typically can’t hold down jobs and struggle to re-integrate into society in any meaningful fashion.

 And yes I believe they should be treated. I believe that anyone with a disease or condition which requires treatment should have access to care and treatment. Whoever they are. Whatever they did.

 I believe that as fellow human beings torturers are entitled to a degree of compassion. When I say that torture and mistreatment are wrong I mean it. My position doesn’t change just because the theoretical victim is a former torturer.

 I do not think that treatment and compassion should be dependant on a person being suitably victimised. For me the only thing it depends on is their need and their humanity. In the literal physical sense of them being a human.

 But we tend to think of ‘victim’ as a simple category that doesn’t overlap with mass murderers.

 And I don’t believe the position of torturers is that simple.

 Especially when so few of them are charged. Torture trials are rare. Convictions are rare. And sentences are short.

 And their victims deserve justice too.

 I feel conflicted about calling torturers ‘victims’ because of this complex reality. And because in fiction we have a tendency to focus on the torturers prioritising their voices over the survivors. I feel like presenting torturers as simple victims of society could risk adding to that.

 For me the focus has always got to be the survivors.

 And I think all of this feeds into how we handle redemption arcs.

 I don’t think that writing redemption arcs for villains, even torturers or mass murderers is ‘wrong’. In fact I think that it can be a really good idea. Showing how toxic the environments these people are in is a good thing. Puncturing the way it’s romanticised is a good thing. And showing a way out of it, even if it’s imagined, is not a bad thing.

 But if we’re going to do that in our stories then I think we need to think about what redemption means and in whose eyes the character is redeemed.

 There’s also a small problem: we don’t really know what recovery for torturers looks like.

 There isn’t enough research on them. Partly because of lack of interest but partly because the low conviction rates means sample sizes are small. We’re talking about a limited number of individuals who are jailed and we can’t really ‘prove’ that individuals who weren’t convicted were torturers. We don’t really know what the long term outcomes are, what treatments might be effective or- Much of anything.

 Studies on torturers are typically based on very small numbers of individuals. (For a long time Fanon’s work was the only example of a mental health professional talking about torturers specifically. He saw two of them.) They are not statistically sound. And a lot of resources were simply journalists or mental health professionals compiling notes on the handful of individuals they talked to.

 Everything I say about torturers is based on things like interviews, a handful of studies that have flaws and anecdotal evidence. Unfortunately as of right now it’s the best we’ve got.

 Personally I don’t think there’s enough research on torture generally. Or enough attempts to collate relevant research from other fields. But that’s a rant for another day.

 Let’s get back to that central question: what does redemption mean?

 I think that it’s pretty easy to write a character changing for the better. You can build up the character’s level of insight into what they’re doing/did over the course of the story. You can show them choosing to stop. You can show them shifting to oppose their former allies.

 But bundled up in the idea of a redemption arc is this: is it enough? And who is it enough for?

 I don’t think survivors should be obliged to forgive former torturers. I also don’t think they’re likely to interact positively.

 I’ve talked about this now and again when asked about the difference between legally defined torture and abuse. Because of the organised and widespread nature of legally defined torture there are usually communities of survivors. And communities that are collectively moving through a recovery process because even those people who weren’t directly attacked are likely to be witnesses, carers and relatives or friends of survivors.

 These things echo down generations.

 Cyprus gained independence from the British in 1960, my father is too young to have any real memory of the violence during the colonial period. But he referenced it in arguments with my English mother during my childhood. There are people throughout China today who won’t buy anything Japanese because of Japanese war crimes there during World War 2. There are people who won’t eat fish from the Black Sea, because the bodies of their ancestors were thrown into that sea during a genocide over a hundred years ago.

 I know that as a both a Greek Cypriot and an English person there are people all over the world who will not want anything to do with me based on what my people have done to theirs. And the fact I wasn’t alive at the time does not really factor into it.

 What I’m trying to illustrate here is that this is much bigger, broader and more complex then individual acts of forgiveness.

 Survivors are a highly varied group of individuals. And each torturer can have thousands or tens of thousands of victims. Expecting each impacted individual, and any witnesses and all their family members and friends, to forgive these people is… let’s say ‘unlikely’.

 So does redemption require forgiveness from the wounded party? Is there any possible action that can atone for the sheer scale of these atrocities?

 If we play a simple number game causing this level of harm can be achieved in months or years, but saving the equivalent number of lives takes decades of skilled, dedicated work. If we look at concepts like wergild or jail as ‘paying your debt to society’ then how do we measure something like torture where the numbers are so big?

 I haven’t seen a piece of fiction seriously tackle these questions. But then again I also haven’t actively looked for that fiction.

 I feel like a lot of fictional redemption arcs judge a character to be sufficiently redeemed based on audience sympathy and the main cast forgiving the character. They don’t typically go on to broaden the scope of the narrative and question whether any one else impacted by the former villain’s actions also sees the character as redeemed.

 One of my stories has a former torturer as a major character and I think they are a sympathetic character in many ways. I think that my readers would empathise with them through a lot of the story (which takes place decades after they stopped torturing).

 They’re a mentor figure to some of the younger cast members. They’ve acted as a protector to them and taught the younger generation a lot about the minority culture they themselves are from. And they do genuinely care about these people that they helped to raise, consistently sacrificing to protect these ‘kids’. (The ‘kids’ are 30s-20s at the time of the story.)

 But they’re also incredibly self centred. They don’t really interact with or have a lot of sympathy for the people they hurt. And while this particular family loves and forgives them society at large views them as a monster. Albeit one that is now leashed.

 Is this a redemption story? Is this character redeemed? I genuinely don’t know. In fact that’s part of my interest in writing the story: trying to work out if there is a point, as this character grows, develops and helps others, when I believe they’ve done ‘enough’.

 I think that redemption means different things for different people. A satisfying redemption story is different for different people. And if we can disagree so strongly about it with much simpler, smaller scale crimes then where does that leave us with torture?

 There isn’t a simple answer or a one-size-fits-all writing solution. There can’t be.

 My approach is to try and use the story to see if I can find an answer. Even if it’s only a limited one. For me the story itself is a forum for exploring human complexity and difficult ethical questions.

 I don’t think we have a good solution for how to deal with these people in reality yet. But I do hold out hope that a good solution is possible. Fiction is an arena where we can safely explore possible solutions.

 I guess in the end I’m not sure if there’s any story or arc that will work for everyone. I don’t think there are any hard rules for writing anything and I don’t think there’s ever a way to please everyone.

 Redemption and forgiveness are complicated topics. I think we do a much better job when we engage with that complexity then when we assume a character just has to do a, b and c in order to achieve it.

 When you consider someone to be truly redeemed is an ethical question that I can’t answer for you. I don’t think I should. The chances are you’ll know when you think your character has done enough.

 Just be open to the fact that it won’t be enough for everyone. Consider reflecting that with the characters, because that can make for truly powerful moments.

 In Midnight’s Children Shiva never forgives Saleem, even though Saleem isn’t responsible for Shiva ‘losing’ his life and family because they were both infants at the time. And damn there are a lot of flaws in the movie adaptation but that scene between them in the jail, when Saleem throws that in Shiva’s face hits hard. It shows us so much about both characters.

 And I think that’s a better way to approach it then trying to figure out if a character is redeemed yet: figuring out how they’ve progressed, how others respond to that progression and why.

 I hope that helps :)

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[newstfionline]

Monday, April 26, 2021

California ponders slow growth future (AP) In 1962, when California’s population of more than 17 million surpassed New York’s, Gov. Pat Brown celebrated by declaring a state holiday. In the coming days, when the U.S. Census Bureau is expected to release the state’s latest head count, there probably will be no celebrations. Over the past decade, California’s average annual population growth rate slipped to 0.06%—lower than at any time since at least 1900. The state is facing the prospect of losing a U.S. House seat for the first time in its history, while political rivals Texas and Florida add more residents and political clout. The reality behind the slowed growth isn’t complicated. Experts point to three major factors: declining birth rates; a long-standing trend of fewer people moving in from other states than leaving; and a drop in international immigration, particularly from Asia, which has made up for people moving to other states. California is in the throes of a yearslong housing crisis as building fails to keep up with demand, forcing more people onto the streets and making home ownership unattainable for many. The state has the nation’s highest poverty rate when housing is taken into account. Its water resources are consistently taxed, and the state has spent more than half of the past decade in drought. Freeways are jammed as more people move to the suburbs, and worsening wildfires are destroying homes and communities.

Armenians Celebrate Biden’s Genocide Declaration as Furious Turkey Summons US Ambassador (Newsweek) Armenia celebrated President Joe Biden’s recognition of the massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I as genocide on Saturday, as Turkey summoned the U.S. ambassador and strongly condemned the move. In acknowledging of the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians as genocide, Biden went further than his predecessors in the White House after years of careful language on the issue. The move risks fracturing America’s relationship with Turkey, a longtime U.S. ally and NATO partner. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan sent Biden a letter praising his statement. Meanwhile, officials in Turkey quickly denounced Biden’s remarks and summoned the US Ambassador to Ankara. In a statement, Turkey said its foreign minister, Sedat Onal, has told ambassador David Satterfield that Biden’s remarks caused “wounds in ties that will be hard to repair.” Onal also reportedly told Satterfield that Turkey “rejected it, found it unacceptable and condemned in the strongest terms.”

Ahead of Geneva talks, Cypriots march for peace (Reuters) Thousands of Cypriots from both sides of a dividing line splitting their island marched for peace on Saturday, ahead of informal talks in Geneva next week on the future of negotiations. With some holding olive branches, people walked in the bright spring sunshine around the medieval walls circling the capital, Nicosia. The United Nations has called for informal talks of parties in the Cyprus dispute in Geneva on April 27-29, in an attempt to look for a way forward in resuming peace talks that collapsed in mid-2017. Prospects for progress appear slim, with each side sticking to their respective positions. Greek Cypriots say Cyprus should be reunited under a federal umbrella, citing relevant United Nations resolutions. The newly-elected Turkish Cypriot leader has called for a two-state resolution. Cyprus was split in a Turkish invasion in 1974 triggered by a brief Greek-inspired coup, though the seeds of separation were sown earlier, when a power-sharing administration crumbled in violence in 1963, just three years after independence from Britain.

World’s Biggest Covid Crisis Threatens Modi’s Grip on India (Bloomberg) As India recorded more than 234,000 new Covid-19 infections last Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held an election rally in the West Bengal town of Asansol and tweeted: “I’ve never seen such huge crowds.” The second wave of the coronavirus has since grown into a tsunami. India is now the global coronavirus hotspot, setting records for the world’s highest number of daily cases. Images of hospitals overflowing with the sick and dying are flooding social media, as medical staff and the public alike make desperate appeals for oxygen supplies. The political and financial capitals of New Delhi and Mumbai are in lockdown, with only the sound of ambulance sirens punctuating the quiet, but there’s a growing chorus of blame directed at Modi over his government’s handling of the pandemic. “At this crucial time he is fighting for votes and not against Covid,” said Panchanan Maharana, a community activist from the state of Odisha, who previously supported Modi’s policies but will now look for alternative parties to back. “He is failing to deliver—he should stop talking and focus on saving people’s lives and livelihoods.” Modi is seen by many as a polarizing leader whose brand of nationalism that promotes the dominance of Hindus has appalled and enraptured the nation. Whether the pandemic will dent his appeal remains unclear.

ASEAN leaders tell Myanmar coup general to end killings (AP) Southeast Asian leaders demanded an immediate end to killings and the release of political detainees in Myanmar in an emergency summit Saturday with its top general and coup leader who, according to Malaysia’s prime minister, did not reject them outright. The leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations also told Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing during the two-hour talks in Jakarta that a dialogue between contending parties in Myanmar should immediately start, with the help of ASEAN envoys. Daily shootings by police and soldiers since the Feb. 1 coup have killed more than 700 mostly peaceful protesters and bystanders, according to several independent tallies. The messages conveyed to Min Aung Hlaing were unusually blunt and could be seen as a breach of the conservative 10-nation bloc’s bedrock principle forbidding member states from interfering in each other’s affairs. But Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said that policy should not lead to inaction if a domestic situation “jeopardizes the peace, security, and stability of ASEAN and the wider region” and there is international clamor for resolute action.

Sunken missing Indonesian submarine found broken into pieces (Reuters) A missing Indonesian submarine has been found, broken into at least three parts, at the bottom of the Bali Sea, army and navy officials said on Sunday, as the president sent condolences to relatives of the 53 crew. Navy chief of staff Yudo Margono said the crew were not to blame for the accident and that the submarine did not experience a blackout, blaming “forces of nature”. A sonar scan on Saturday detected the submarine at 850 metres (2,790 feet), far beyond the Nanggala’s diving range.

At least 82 die in Baghdad COVID hospital fire (Reuters) A fire sparked by an oxygen tank explosion killed at least 82 people and injured 110 at a hospital in Baghdad that had been equipped to house COVID-19 patients, an Interior Ministry spokesman said on Sunday. “We urgently need to review safety measures at all hospitals to prevent such a painful incident from happening in future,” spokesman Khalid al-Muhanna told state television, announcing the toll.

Struggling to stay afloat during the pandemic, people turn to strangers online for help (Washington Post) The pandemic has been disastrous for millions of families across the United States. Roughly 8.5 million jobs have not returned since February 2020. Meanwhile, more than 564,000 people have died of the coronavirus, and 100,000 small businesses closed permanently in just the first three months of the crisis. The government has provided help, including through multiple relief packages that sent out three rounds of stimulus checks and extended unemployment benefits. But for many people it hasn’t been enough—or come quickly enough—to avoid eviction, put food on the table and cover a growing pile of monthly bills. Enter crowdfunding, which has taken off more than ever in the past year as a way to supplement income. Sites like GoFundMe, Kickstarter or even Facebook allow people and businesses to establish a cause—or set up a page laying out why they (or someone they are raising the money for) need money, and what the cash will go toward. After demand spiked last year, GoFundMe in October formalized a new category specifically for rent, food and bills. More than $100 million had been raised at that time year-to-date for basic living expenses in tens of thousands of campaigns during 2020—a 150 percent increase over 2019. But a year into the pandemic, some individual crowdfunding campaigns are reporting little success raising donations to cover basic expenses. As pandemic fatigue worsens, it’s getting hard to raise cash for basic expenses this way. Daryl Hatton, CEO and founder of FundRazr said when he browsed through the campaigns for basic expenses, most were getting little or no donations. “I saw a whole bunch of zeros,” he said. Crowdfunding still tends to work best when people have a compelling story to tell.

Older people are the one group egalitarians discriminate against (Quartz) Young people have always been critical of their elders. What’s noteworthy about the way millennials and Zoomers talk about Baby Boomers today isn’t their disdain but its particulars: They resent the older generation because they feel shortchanged, deprived of promising futures. Gen Z, for example, famously channeled their frustration with the generation they hold responsible for issues like climate change and wealth inequality into the simple, sarcastic meme “OK boomer.” Vaccines aside, these economic frustrations are grounded in reality. At the same time, younger people’s systemic objections to the distribution of wealth and power in the US can wind up curdling into ageism. A new paper, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, highlights the importance of guarding against this bias. Over 80% of Americans between the ages of 50 and 80 say they experience ageism in their everyday lives, according to a 2020 poll from the University of Michigan. “I think many people overlook ageism as a form of prejudice in American society,” says Ashley Martin, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University, who co-authored the paper with Michael North, an assistant professor at New York University. “It is often overlooked as an “ism” altogether, not only being condoned but often even promoted.” The paper identifies a surprising link between ageism and egalitarianism. The more participants in the study supported the principle of equality for all, the more likely they were to be biased against older people.

[camillasgirl]

Duchess of Cornwall will visit the Republic of Cyprus and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

The Republic of Cyprus – Wednesday 18th March to Saturday 21st March

Their Royal Highnesses’ visit to The Republic of Cyprus will be the first Royal visit since Her Majesty The Queen visited in 1993. The programme will celebrate the historic ties between the United Kingdom and Cyprus, our shared membership of the Commonwealth, and our dynamic forward-looking relationship in areas such as education and science.  This visit will also recognise the UK’s role as the largest troop contributor to the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus.

Their Royal Highnesses’ visit will focus on the capital, Nicosia, and will also include rural visits to the nearby Troodos mountains, and to Larnaca district, where Their Royal Highnesses will celebrate traditional Cypriot culture, food, and crafts, and Cyprus’ unique heritage. The Prince and The Duchess are also expected to engage with UK military personnel based in country, including British UN peacekeepers and members of the Mercian Regiment of which His Royal Highness is Colonel-in-Chief.

Their Royal Highnesses’ programme will include a visit to the UN Buffer Zone to acknowledge the peacekeeping work being undertaken by the UN and highlight initiatives which are building links between the communities of Cyprus, meeting both Greek- and Turkish-Cypriot community members.

The Prince of Wales will attend a meeting of the Commonwealth Blue Charter Champions from across the Commonwealth. His Royal Highness will also meet religious leaders from Cyprus’s diverse religious communities. The Duchess of Cornwall, as Patron of Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, will visit a partner organisation which has recently participated in the charity’s Battersea Academy to see how the organisation is implementing its learning in Cyprus. Her Royal Highness will also continue her work to highlight the issue of domestic violence and rape around the world and engage with organisations working to support survivors.

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan – Saturday 21st March to Wednesday 25th March

Their Royal Highness’s return to Jordan underlines the importance Her Majesty’s Government places on its close ties with Jordan, which is underpinned by the long-standing, warm relationship between the two Royal Families.

The visit will centre on the historic capital city, Amman, and also take in a number of other sites of cultural, religious and environmental significance across the country. The programme will see Their Royal Highnesses tour a unique hillside town, once part of the Greek and Roman Decapolis.  The Prince of Wales will also visit an ecologically rich National Park.  In the City of Salt – Jordan’s first historical capital – Their Royal Highnesses will meet the Jordanian winner of the Global Prince’s Trust International Award 2019, who has worked to develop sustainable tourism and opportunities for the local community. Their Royal Highnesses will learn about The Prince’s Trust International’s work in the country and meet some of those who have benefitted from it.

The Prince and The Duchess’s visit will highlight how Jordan continues to host over a million refugees fleeing from conflict, and how they have integrated into the community. Their Royal Highnesses will visit organisations, including the International Rescue Committee, of which The Prince has recently become Patron. The International Rescue Committee supports refugees in transitioning from camps to local communities and assists them in finding employment.

Their Royal Highnesses will be accompanied at various points of the tour by members of the Jordanian Royal Family and will see Jordan’s renewed focus on increasing job opportunities for young people, particularly in the engineering and tourism sectors. His Royal Highness will visit a youth training and apprenticeship scheme, which is supported by Jaguar Land Rover and Crown Prince Hussein’s Technical University. Their Royal Highnesses will visit organisations helping to preserve traditional crafts and tailor them to today’s market, including the Turquoise Mountain Foundation which was founded by The Prince of Wales. They will see how young Jordanians are being trained in modern vocational skills to enable them to compete in the global market.

Their Royal Highnesses will also visit sites of religious importance and The Prince will participate in an interfaith discussion to emphasise the diverse, tolerant and integrated nature of Jordanian society, highlighting the importance placed on religious freedom, led by His Majesty King Abdallah II, the Custodian of the Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Jerusalem. The Duchess will see the work undertaken by Her Majesty Queen Rania of Jordan to protect vulnerable children and mothers, as well as educate parents about child protection and safeguarding.  Her Royal Highness will also visit a UNICEF-supported school offering educational programmes for teenagers and young women no longer in formal schooling, and a Women of the World (WOW) event that promotes the empowerment of women from all walks of life.

[kingsmanne]

      𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑   𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐄𝐓        //        repost, don’t reblog !

𝚋𝚊𝚜𝚒𝚌𝚜   !

FULL NAME.   andromeda byrne NICKNAME.   anne GENDER.    female HEIGHT.   170cm AGE.   34 ZODIAC.  virgo   SPOKEN LANGUAGES. mother tongues: welsh, english // well-moderately well: french, spanish, iraqi arabic // conversational-understanding most of it: german, russian, cypriot greek // passive and bad: latin, ancient greek   

𝚙𝚑𝚢𝚜𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚕 𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎   !

HAIR COLOR. dark brown, going black EYE COLOR.   grey-green SKIN TONE.   pale BODY TYPE.   athletic + mesomorph; tendency now going to an hourglass figure with muscles, but still with the slender frame of someone who’s puberty was shaped by rigid dance training and not eating enough. VOICE.   clear and crisp, cool and precise, rather deep and feminine, a well polished accent where sometimes the singsong and tapped R’s of her native accent shines through.  DOMINANT HAND.  right POSTURE.   upright. straight. the posture of someone who was punished when slouching; moves like a sylph. SCARS.    several smaller scars all over her body, minimal one under right brow, large abdominal scar on her right side. TATTOOS.   //  BIRTHMARKS. //    MOST NOTICEABLE FEATURE(S).  dominant jawline and high cheekbones. cold stare.

𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚕𝚍𝚑𝚘𝚘𝚍 !

PLACE OF BIRTH.   holyhead, wales HOMETOWN.   holyhead, wales SIBLINGS.   alexander byrne, died 2014 PARENTS.  olivia byrne-davies (status unknown), john byrne

𝚊𝚍𝚞𝚕𝚝   𝚕𝚒𝚏𝚎   !

OCCUPATION.   tailor spy CURRENT RESIDENCE.   london CLOSE FRIENDS.    // RELATIONSHIP STATUS. single.    FINANCIAL STATUS.  well-off, upper middle class. DRIVER’S LICENSE.   yes. CRIMINAL RECORD.   no record. VICES.   alcohol, drug use.

𝚜𝚎𝚡   &   𝚛𝚘𝚖𝚊𝚗𝚌𝚎   !

SEXUAL ORIENTATION.  bisexual PREFERRED EMOTIONAL ROLE. distant. PREFERRED SEXUAL ROLE.  very dominant. LIBIDO.  low-moderate TURN ON’S.   choking + breath play, self-confidence bordering on arrogance, violence, generally roughness. TURN OFF’S.  looking into her eyes. seriously, don’t. clinginess, wanting to talk about feelings, cuddling in the afterglow. feeling vulnerable and open. RELATIONSHIP TENDENCIES.   as kingsman agents aren’t supposed to have relationships, anne never had the proper ability to really develop any relationship tendencies. her one and only relationship she had before kingsman was when she was a teenager and it was almost boringly normal. anne has a tendency to devote herself to a person if she can trust them enough, be open about herself, but it’s a very long road until there, considering she doesn’t want to be open and vulnerable. but she is loyal to a fault and would never betray them, and do almost everything for them. if a relationship would be allowed, but so it means she’s married to her job.

𝚖𝚒𝚜𝚌𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚊𝚗𝚎𝚘𝚞𝚜   !

CHARACTER’S THEME SONG.  cat power - hate // starsailor - way to fall // kmdfm - professional killer HOBBIES TO PASS TIME.    reading scientific journals (nerd), exercise. LEFT OR RIGHT BRAINED.    left brained PHOBIAS.   drowning + open waters, being left behind. SELF CONFIDENCE LEVEL.  depending. very confident of her skills and abilities, but emotionally close to no self-confidence. VULNERABILITIES.  her past, mainly, considering that she doesn’t speak of it and what followed, and how much it really impacted her and that she will psychologically and physically never be the same. It also caused issues with violence and anger, which she doesn’t control when triggered enough. suffers from severe trauma. her brother, still.

    𝚃𝙰𝙶𝙶𝙴𝙳:   @warlocked thanks! <3        𝚃𝙰𝙶𝙶𝙸𝙽𝙶:    @loyaltyvalue @rottweilerrr @hislegacy @hatshaw and you!

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 8.14 (after 1900)

1901 – The first claimed powered flight, by Gustave Whitehead in his Number 21. 1914 – World War I: Start of the Battle of Lorraine, an unsuccessful French offensive. 1917 – World War I: The Republic of China, which had heretofore been shipping labourers to Europe to assist in the war effort, officially declares war on the Central Powers, although it will continue to send to Europe labourers instead of combatants for the remaining duration of the war. 1920 – The 1920 Summer Olympics, having started four months earlier, officially open in Antwerp, Belgium, with the newly-adopted Olympic flag and the Olympic oath being raised and taken at the Opening Ceremony for the first time in Olympic history. 1921 – Tannu Uriankhai, later Tuvan People's Republic is established as a completely independent country (which is supported by Soviet Russia). 1933 – Loggers cause a forest fire in the Coast Range of Oregon, later known as the first forest fire of the Tillamook Burn; destroying 240,000 acres (970 km2) of land. 1935 – Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act, creating a government pension system for the retired. 1936 – Rainey Bethea is hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky in the last known public execution in the United States. 1941 – World War II: Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt sign the Atlantic Charter of war stating postwar aims. 1947 – Pakistan gains independence from the British Empire. 1959 – Founding and first official meeting of the American Football League. 1967 – UK Marine Broadcasting Offences Act declares participation in offshore pirate radio illegal. 1969 – The Troubles: British troops are deployed in Northern Ireland as political and sectarian violence breaks out, marking the start of the 37-year Operation Banner. 1971 – Bahrain declares independence from Britain. 1972 – An Ilyushin Il-62 airliner crashes near Königs Wusterhausen, East Germany killing 156 people. 1980 – Lech Wałęsa leads strikes at the Gdańsk, Poland shipyards. 1994 – Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, also known as "Carlos the Jackal", is captured. 1996 – Greek Cypriot refugee Solomos Solomou is shot and killed by a Turkish security officer while trying to climb a flagpole in order to remove a Turkish flag from its mast in the United Nations Buffer Zone in Cyprus. 2003 – A widescale power blackout affects the northeast United States and Canada. 2005 – Helios Airways Flight 522, en route from Larnaca, Cyprus to Prague, Czech Republic via Athens, crashes in the hills near Grammatiko, Greece, killing 121 passengers and crew. 2006 – Lebanon War: A ceasefire takes effect three days after the United Nations Security Council’s approval of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, formally ending hostilities between Lebanon and Israel. 2006 – Sri Lankan Civil War: Sixty-one schoolgirls killed in Chencholai bombing by Sri Lankan Air Force air strike. 2007 – The Kahtaniya bombings kills at least 500 people. 2013 – Egypt declares a state of emergency as security forces kill hundreds of demonstrators supporting former president Mohamed Morsi. 2013 – UPS Airlines Flight 1354 crashes short of the runway at Birmingham–Shuttlesworth International Airport, killing both crew members on board. 2015 – The US Embassy in Havana, Cuba re-opens after 54 years of being closed when Cuba–United States relations were broken off. 2021 – A magnitude 7.2 earthquake strikes southwestern Haiti, killing at least 2,248 people and causing a humanitarian crisis. 2022 – An explosion destroys a market in Armenia, killing six people and injuring dozens.

[omniatlas]

NEW MAP: Eastern Mediterranean 1964: Independence of Cyprus and Malta (21 Sep 1964) https://buff.ly/2JIwqvR In 1955 Greek Cypriots began a campaign of violence against British colonial rule, calling for the unification of Cyprus with Greece, but were opposed by Turkish Cypriots. Eventually a compromise solution was reached whereby, in 1960, Cyprus gained independence as a bi-national state and the British retained naval bases in the south of the island. As the UK reduced its forces in the Mediterranean, it found it had less need for Malta, which was granted independence in 1964. The Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet was itself disbanded just three years later, after more than 342 years of existence. #easternmediterranean #history #welovehistory #welovemaps #map #1960s #20thcentury #modernhistory #1964 #historyofcyprus #cyprus #historyofmalta #malta #unitedarabrepublic #september #september21 #middleeast #southwestasia #britishempire #cyprusdispute #enosis #maps #newmap #historyteacher #historybuff #historygeek #historynerd #worldhistory #cartography #geopolitics (at Nicosia, Cyprus) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz8wSVcgCYi/?igshid=pohwe3a9guk9

[silentambassadors]

Cyprus has long been recognized by the various world powers as a strategic and important possession, having been fought over and occupied by various empires and states up until the Ottoman takeover in the 1500s, and British annexation in the 1880s.  The majority of Cypriots are Greek-speaking, however, which meant that the primary political (and occasional physical) fight was between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots about whether to unite with Turkey or Greece.  After having gained independence in 1960, the violence escalated in the 1970s, leading to the establishment of a Turkish Cypriot state in the north of the island - a state whose legitimacy is recognized only by Turkey.  There still exists a UN-administered demilitarized zone between the north and south, which, depending on the current level of animosity between the two, can be either rather stress-free to cross (as it was for this stamp enthusiast in 2003), or the site of the continued violent struggle by both sides to dominate the other.  The current stalemate has held for some time, with recent discussion of reunification, but thus far nothing definitive has been decided.

Stamp details: Stamp on top: Issued on: July 1, 1881 From: Nicosia, Cyprus MC #9

Second row: Issued on: August 16, 1960 From: Nicosia, Cyprus MC #194-196

Third row: Issued on: May 1, 2004 From: Nicosia, Cyprus MC #1033

Stamps on bottom: Issued on: January 27, 2010 From: Nicosia, Cyprus MC #1172-1173

Recognized as a sovereign state by the UN: Yes (since September 20, 1960) [the Republic of Turkey does not recognize the Republic of Cyprus as a sovereign state, referring to it as the Greek Cypriot Administration of Southern Cyprus] Official name: Republic of Cyprus; Κυπριακή Δημοκρατία; Kıbrıs Cumhuriyeti Member of the Universal Postal Union: Yes (since November 23, 1961)