#Republic (Russian online journal)

[russianreader]

Running: the Numbers

Istanbul, December 2022. Photo courtesy of Republic […] 500 vacancies for military registration specialists were advertised from late September to last December last year, according to HeadHunter. Previously, this specialization was considered a rather rare and generally not very sought-after profile in the personnel departments of Russian organizations (private and public). For comparison:…

[starblightbindery]

Editor's Note from my bind, Designs of Fate, an anthology of Star Wars stories by Patricia A. Jackson.

Patricia A. Jackson is a criminally underrated Star Wars author.

I’ll explain.

Growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was challenging to be an adolescent Star Wars fangirl, particularly an Asian American one. Back then, fandom meant negotiating male-dominated online message boards where identifying as a teenage girl meant inviting a ‘fake geek girl’ grilling at best and sexual harassment at worst. Most of the published Star Wars books were about Han, Leia, and Luke. Han and Leia were in their thirties and the parents of three children...not super relatable for preteen me. As far as character development was concerned, our “Big Three” had established characterizations coalesced firmly on the side of good. For our heroes, there was no moral ambiguity as, novel by novel, they tackled the galactic Threat of the Week.

Bildungsromans, those books were not. When Jackson started writing Star Wars in the 1990s, there were no women Jedi or protagonists of color. If you wanted stories with original characters coming of age, your primary recourse was the West End Games’ Star Wars Adventure Journals and their published anthologies, Tales from the Empire (1997) and Tales from the New Republic (1999). I remember avidly poring over my dogeared paperback copies and stalking the internet for scans or transcriptions. Although I never played the D6 role-playing game, the short stories from the Star Wars Adventure Journals helped me envision that a character like me—a young Asian girl coming into her own—did have a place in Star Wars after all.

As evinced by the vitriolic reactions towards John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran during the production of the sequel trilogy, Star Wars fandom can be a hateful environment for proponents of diversity and inclusion. A small but irritatingly loud faction of fascist-leaning, cishet, white male fans are actively hostile towards fans who advocate for change; they are more troubled by the presence of queers, women and BIPOC than our absence. Because of the ubiquity and popularity of Star Wars in America’s cultural milieu, the sentiments from these self-appointed gatekeepers have been—and continue to be—amplified by right wing extremists, and, to some extent, even by the Internet Research Agency as tools of Russia’s psychological and cyber warfare against the United States. During his Ph.D. candidacy with the Department of Information Studies at UCLA, Morten Bay, PhD., studied negative tweets about The Last Jedi and found that 50.9% of negative tweets were “bots, trolls/sock puppets or political activists using the debate to propagate political messages supporting extreme right-wing causes and the discrimination of gender, race or sexuality.”

“Russian trolls weaponize Star Wars criticism as an instrument of information warfare with the purpose of pushing for political change,” he wrote, “while it is weaponized by right-wing fans to forward a conservative agenda and for some it is a pushback against what they perceive as a feminist/social justice onslaught.”

The creation and inclusion of characters with minoritized identities in Star Wars is, therefore, an act of resistance. As far as I’m aware, Patricia A. Jackson was the first woman of color and Black author to write for the Star Wars expanded universe. Jackson has described the fan environment in the 1990s thusly; like many minoritized fans of color, she would be given pithy justifications such as "Well, there’s no Africa in Star Wars, so there are no Black people." Jackson noted, aptly, "That was just translation for “’You don’t matter. You don’t need to be here.’” Jackson's work for West End Games, particularly her sourcebook The Black Sands of Socorro, is a subversion of those expectations.

Before anyone else did, Jackson showed fandom that dominant mayo masculinity did not have to be the only way to tell Star Wars stories. Her stories existed before the prequel trilogy and three decades of Star Wars publishing, before FanFiction.net, Archive of Our Own, or Wattpad. She is the forerunner for BIPOC writers in Star Wars, followed by other luminaries like Steven Barnes, Daniel José Older, Nnedi Okorafor, Rebecca Roanhorse, Ken Liu, Greg Pak, Alyssa Wong, Sarah Kuhn, Saladin Ahmed, C.B. Lee, Justina Ireland, Alex Segura, Zoraida Cordova, Greg VanEekhout, Mike Chen, Charles Yu, R.F. Kuang, Sarwat Chadda, Sabaa Tahir, and Renée Ahdieh.

Jackson had and continues to have an incredibly prescient understanding of what makes a good Star Wars story. Any of the stories in this anthology could find a home as an anime short from Star Wars: Visions (2021). Ideas from Jackson’s Star Wars short stories have appeared in later media, sometimes decades later. Whether convergently evolved or directly influenced, the parallels are astonishing: Kierra, the snarky feminine droid consciousness who inhabits Thaddeus Ross’s ship, is a spiritual predecessor to L3-37, Lando Calrissian’s snarky feminine droid companion from Solo (2018) who ends the film uploaded to the Millennium Falcon. Jackson addressed concepts like slavery and Force healing predating the prequel and sequel trilogies. In “Idol Intentions,” she created an adventuring academic on the hunt for artifacts long before Kieron Gillen brought Doctor Aphra to life. Squint and the upturned red salt on the planet Crait in The Last Jedi becomes flying red soil on the planet Redcap. Dark haired, dark side tragic emo boy starcrossed with a fiery girl Jedi?—I think Jackson understood intuitively the appeal of this trope to a woman-dominated contingent of fandom well before “Reylo” topped Tumblr’s fan favorite relationship charts in 2020.

Jackson’s work is also significant for deepening world building. Much like how Timothy Zahn introduced analysis of fine art to Star Wars with his villainous art connoisseur Grand Admiral Thrawn, Jackson’s stories introduced concepts such as the evolution of Old Corellian, the acting profession, and Legitimate Theatre. These elements added verisimilitude to the expanded universe; it makes sense that different cultures in Star Wars would have archaic languages, folk songs, and old stories of their own from even longer ago in galaxies far, far, away. More recently, the franchise has started to flesh out in-universe lore in Star Wars: Myths and Fables (2019) by George Mann. Still, Uhl Eharl Khoehng in “Uhl Eharl Khoehng” (1995) remains the finest example of mise en abyme in any Star Wars related work.

Themes from Jackson’s Star Wars works, particularly around Drake Paulsen and Socorro, also connect contemporaneously with our real world. When the Seldom Different is essentially ‘pulled over’ by Imperial authorities in “Out of the Cradle” (1994), stormtroopers lie about Drake Paulsen having a weapon as a pretense to terrorize the teenager. It’s a collision of space opera with Black youths’ past and current experiences of police brutality and state-sanctioned violence. Accordingly, this capricious encounter is the rite of passage that jars Drake out of his childhood. I cheered when I read The Black Sands of Socorro (1997) and saw that the Black Bha'lir smuggler’s guild is named for a bha'lir, depicted in the book as a large...panther. Few Star Wars expanded universe authors—particularly in the 1990s—leveraged their influence to center characters of color or to allude to racial justice movements. Jackson did both.

For this anthology, I have copy edited and also taken the liberty of, when applicable, substituting some gendered or sanist language with more contemporaneous wording.17 The stories are otherwise intact. It would be remiss of me if I did not note; however, that one of the stories, “Bitter Winter” (1995), has sanist and ableist tropes that could not be contemporized without making dramatic changes to the story. In this story, the fictional disease brekken vinthern drives those impacted to violence; while it’s real world correlate of major neurocognitive disorder can include symptoms of aggression and agitation, extreme violence is rare and people with this condition are also at great risk of being harmed by violence. The tropes “Mercy Kill” and “Shoot the Dog” are depictions of non-voluntary active euthanasia, typically from the perspective of the horrified “killer” placed in an impossible situation. These tropes frame murder and death as “putting someone out of their misery” while downplaying any alternatives (ie: sedation to alleviate suffering, medical attention, or, say, ion cannons to render a ship inoperable without killing.)

Like in our society, the societies in Star Wars have consistently framed mental illness pejoratively. There are certainly valid critiques of the utter inadequacy of health care in Star Wars. Ableism is ubiquitous in entertainment media, and even with it’s problematic tropes, “Bitter Winter” remains one of the more humanizing depictions of a mental health condition in Star Wars fiction. I have included it in this anthology as a rare example of moral ambiguity in the franchise.

With the exception of “Fragile Threads” and “Emanations of Darkness,” the stories here are presented not in published order, but in chronological order as they would have occurred in the Star Wars universe. Ordering the stories chronologically helped clarify timelines; it also allows the anthology to begin with “The Final Exit,” which was a fan favorite back when it was first published. I’ve interwoven the Brandl family stories with Drake Paulsen’s coming of age adventures, as the Paulsens are such a strong foil to the Brandl family.

Since “I am your father” dropped in 1980, Star Wars has been big on Daddy Issues—intergenerational trauma, parental relationships, broken attachments, identity development, and initiation into adulthood (or, as Obi-Wan Kenobi would put it, “taking your first steps into a larger world.”) With Drake, we see that Kaine Paulsen is a father who is gone but ever-present. With Jaalib, we see that Adalric Brandl is a father who is ever-present but clearly far gone. Drake knows his Socorran roots; he has community and found family. Fable’s identity is adrift; she was torn from her roots after her fugitive Jedi mother’s death. Jaalib’s roots are scaffolded by disingenuous artifice. There is a diametric interplay of identity formation and parental legacy in these short stories that captures classic themes from Star Wars. And, the stories challenge readers to consider how we interact with shame, guilt, and obligation. Through the morally ambiguous dilemmas that are her oeuvre, Jackson’s characters discover who they are and where they stand.

While the thrill of having an Imperial Star Destroyer drop out of hyperspace is pure Star Wars energy, Jackson’s stories also disrupted what fans had come to expect. Published online as fan fiction, “Emanations of Darkness” (2001) polarized fans of the previous Brandl stories, particularly with Fable’s decision to throw her lot in with Jaalib and his father. At the time, Star Wars fan commentator Charles Phipps noted how the story dealt with the insidiousness of the dark side by taking potential heroes and crushing them. “Star Wars, I've never known to leave a bitter taste in my mouth,” he wrote, stunned. “I don't like what it's brought out in my feelings or myself...Bravo Brandl, you have your applause.” Although the Brandl stories were written and published before Revenge of the Sith (2005), Fable and Jaalib’s relationship mirrors the relationship between Padmé Amidala and Anakin Skywalker, down to both Jaalib and Anakin selling their souls to the same Emperor in hopes that will spare the women they love.

The prequel trilogy introduces the Jedi Council’s detached approach to attachments—don’t feel it, emotions like fear or anger are to be shunned, else suffering will follow. Anakin Skywalker’s broken attachments to his mother and Padmé lead him to turn against his values; his inability to integrate or tolerate his attachments is his downfall. It’s the same in the Brandl stories where, trauma bonded, Fable and Jaalib cannot let each other go. While Jaalib credits this as how he was able to preserve a bit of himself while under the Emperor’s thrall, his inability to extricate himself from his father’s influence or to let go of Fable ends up dooming her.

This is why I was thrilled to discover “Fragile Threads” (2021) on Wattpad twenty years later. In this story, Drake Paulsen helps his lover Tiaja Moorn save her sister, at the cost of losing their relationship when she decides to remain on her homeworld. Drake doesn’t fight her decision, he accepts it. He can hold onto that connection to Tiaja, just as he knows he will always be connected to Socorro, his father, and the Black Bha'lir. Drake can love freely because he knows what Luke Skywalker told Leia in The Last Jedi: “No one is ever truly gone.” He is able to straddle the fulcrum of attachment and love without letting it consume him, and that is balancing the Force.

Contemporary fandom discourse is also a struggle with attachment; the parasocial relationships we form with characters and stories are similar in process to how we attach to the important people in our lives. We imbue with meaning and carry these stories with us. As Star Wars storytelling enters its fifth decade, the divide between affirmational fandom (allegiance to manufactured nostalgia) and transformational fandom (allegiance to iterative and transgressive fan engagement) has factionized fandom. When Star Wars is seen as a totemic object, right wing fans have agitated for a return to a mythic past where white men were centered and morality was Manichean. From where I stand, at the heart of this debate is whether or not the reader or Star Wars is permitted to “grow up”—to leave the cradle, to evolve new identities and explore shades of grey.

To me, Jackson’s stories are a reminder that characters of color and complex moral dilemmas have always been a part of Star Wars. We have always been here. No other Star Wars author has been as exquisitely aware of the significance of storytelling; how it can help people challenge existing beliefs and discover themselves. Since the beginnings of the expanded universe, Patricia A. Jackson has spun yarn, and those fragile threads have tethered readers like myself to a galaxy far, far away.

Ol'val, min dul'skal, ahn guld domina, mahn uhl Fharth bey ihn valle. (Until we next meet, may the Force be with you.)

[mariacallous]

This story originally appeared in Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems, and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It was published in collaboration with Earth Island Journal.

The floatplane bobs at the dock, its wing tips leaking fuel. I try not to take that as a sign that my trip to Chirikof Island is ill-fated. Bad weather, rough seas, geographical isolation—visiting Chirikof is forever an iffy adventure.

A remote island in the Gulf of Alaska, Chirikof is about the size of two Manhattans. It lies roughly 130 kilometers southwest of Kodiak Island, where I am waiting in the largest town, technically a city, named Kodiak. The city is a hub for fishing and hunting, and for tourists who’ve come to see one of the world’s largest land carnivores, the omnivorous brown bears that roam the archipelago. Chirikof has no bears or people, though; it has cattle.

At last count, over 2,000 cows and bulls roam Chirikof, one of many islands within a US wildlife refuge. Depending on whom you ask, the cattle are everything from unwelcome invasive megafauna to rightful heirs of a place this domesticated species has inhabited for 200 years, perhaps more. Whether they stay or go probably comes down to human emotions, not evidence.

Russians brought cattle to Chirikof and other islands in the Kodiak Archipelago to establish an agricultural colony, leaving cows and bulls behind when they sold Alaska to the United States in 1867. But the progenitor of cattle ranching in the archipelago is Jack McCord, an Iowa farm boy and consummate salesman who struck gold in Alaska and landed on Kodiak in the 1920s. He heard about feral cattle grazing Chirikof and other islands, and sensed an opportunity. But once he’d bought the Chirikof herd from a company that held rights to it, he got wind that the federal government was going to declare the cattle wild and assume control of them. McCord went into overdrive.

In 1927, he successfully lobbied the US Congress—with help from politicians in the American West—to create legislation that enshrined the right of privately owned livestock to graze public lands. What McCord set in motion reverberates in US cattle country today, where conflicts over land use have led to armed standoffs and death.

McCord introduced new bulls to balance the herd and inject fresh genes into the pool, but he soon lost control of his cattle. By early 1939, he still had 1,500 feral cattle—too many for him to handle and far too many bulls. Stormy, unpredictable weather deterred most of the hunters McCord turned to for help thinning the herd, though he eventually wrangled five men foolhardy enough to bet against the weather gods. They lost. The expedition failed, precipitated one of McCord’s divorces, and almost killed him. In 1950, he gave up. But his story played out on Chirikof over and over for the next half-century, with various actors making similarly irrational decisions, caught up in the delusion that the frontier would make them rich.

By 1980, the government had created the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge (Alaska Maritime for short), a federally protected area roughly the size of New Jersey, and charged the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) with managing it. This meant preserving the natural habitat and dealing with the introduced and invasive species. Foxes? Practically annihilated. Bunnies? Gone. But when it came to cattle?

Alaskans became emotional. “Let’s leave one island in Alaska for the cattle,” Governor Frank Murkowski said in 2003. Thirteen years later, at the behest of his daughter, Alaska’s senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, the US Congress directed the USFWS to leave the cattle alone.

So I’d been wondering: What are those cattle up to on Chirikof?

On the surface, Alaska as a whole appears an odd choice for cattle: mountainous, snowy, far from lucrative markets. But we’re here in June, summer solstice 2022, at “peak green,” when the archipelago oozes a lushness I associate with coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. The islands rest closer to the gentle climate of those coasts than to the northern outposts they skirt. So, in the aspirational culture that Alaska has always embraced, why not cattle?

“Why not cattle” is perhaps the mantra of every rancher everywhere, to the detriment of native plants and animals. But Chirikof, in some ways, was more rational rangeland than where many of McCord’s ranching comrades grazed their herds—on Kodiak Island, where cattle provided the gift of brisket to the Kodiak brown bear. Ranchers battled the bears for decades in a one-sided war. From 1953 to 1963, they killed about 200 bears, often from the air with rifles fixed to the top of a plane, sometimes shooting bears far from ranches in areas where cattle roamed unfenced.

Bears and cattle cannot coexist. It was either protect bears or lose them, and on Kodiak, bear advocates pushed hard. Cattle are, in part, the reason the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge exists. Big, charismatic bears outshone the cows and bulls; bear protection prevailed. Likewise, one of the reasons the Alaska Maritime exists—sweeping from the Inside Passage to the Aleutian chain and on up to the islands in the Chukchi Sea—is to protect seabirds and other migratory birds. A cattle-free Chirikof, with its generally flat topography and lack of predators, would offer more quality habitat for burrow-nesting tufted puffins, storm petrels, and other seabirds. And yet, on Chirikof, and a few other islands, cows apparently outshine birds.

The remoteness, physically good for birds, works against them, too: Most people can picture a Ferdinand the Bull frolicking through the cotton grass, but not birds building nests. Chirikof is so far from other islands in the archipelago that it’s usually included as an inset on paper maps. A sample sentence for those learning the Alutiiq language states the obvious: Ukamuk (Chirikof) yaqsigtuq (is far from here). At least one Chirikof rancher recommended the island as a penal colony for juvenile delinquents. To get to Chirikof from Kodiak, you need a ship or a floatplane carrying extra fuel for the four-hour round trip. It’s a wonder anyone thought grazing cattle on pasture at the outer edge of a floatplane’s fuel supply was a good idea.

Patrick Saltonstall, a cheerful, fit 57-year-old with a head of tousled gray curls, is an archaeologist with the Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak. He’s accompanying photographer Shanna Baker and me to Chirikof—but he’s left us on the dock while he checks in at the veterinarian’s where he has taken his sick dog, a lab named Brewster.

The owners of the floatplane, Jo Murphy and her husband, pilot Rolan Ruoss, are debating next steps, using buckets to catch the fuel seeping from both wing tips. Weather is the variable I had feared; in the North it’s a capricious god, swinging from affable to irascible for reasons unpredictable and unknowable. But the weather is perfect this morning. Now, I’m fearing O-rings.

Our 8 am departure ticks by. Baker and I grab empty red plastic jerrycans from a pickup truck and haul them to the dock. The crew empties the fuel from the buckets into the red jugs. This will take a while.

A fuel leak, plus a sick dog: Are these omens? But such things are emotional and irrational. I channel my inner engineer: Failing O-rings are a common problem, and we’re not in the air, so it’s all good.

Saltonstall returns, minus his usual smile: Brewster has died.

Dammit.

He sighs, shakes his head, and mumbles his bewilderment and sadness. Brewster’s death apparently mystified the vet, too. Baker and I murmur our condolences. We wait in silence awhile, gazing at distant snowy peaks and the occasional seal peeking its head above water. Eventually, we distract Saltonstall by getting him talking about Chirikof.

Cattle alone on an island can ruin it, he says. They’re “pretty much hell on archaeological sites,” grazing vegetation down to nubs, digging into the dirt with their hooves, and, as creatures of habit, stomping along familiar routes, fissuring shorelines so that the earth falls away into the sea. Saltonstall falls silent. Brewster is foremost on his mind. He eventually wanders over to see what’s up with the plane.

I lie on a picnic table in the sun, double-check my pack, think about birds. There is no baseline data for Chirikof prior to the introduction of cattle and foxes. But based on the reality of other islands in the refuge, it has a mix of good bird habitats. Catherine West, an archaeologist at Boston University in Massachusetts, studies Chirikof’s animal life from before the introduction of cows and foxes; she has been telling me that the island was likely once habitat for far more birds than we see today: murres, auklets, puffins, kittiwakes and other gulls, along with ducks and geese.

I flip through my notes to what I scrawled while walking a Kodiak Island trail through Sitka spruce with retired wildlife biologist Larry Van Daele. Van Daele worked for the State of Alaska for 34 years, and once retired, sat for five years on the Alaska Board of Game, which gave him plenty of time to sit through raucous town hall meetings pitting Kodiak locals against USFWS officials. Culling ungulates—reindeer and cattle—from islands in the refuge has never gone down well with locals. But change is possible. Van Daele also witnessed the massive cultural shift regarding the bear—from “If it’s brown, it’s down” to it being an economic icon of the island. Now, ursine primacy is on display on the cover of the official visitor guide for the archipelago: a photo of a mother bear, her feet planted in a muddy riverbank, water droplets clinging to her fur, fish blood smearing her nose.

But Chirikof, remember, is different. No bears. Van Daele visited several times for assessments before the refuge eradicated foxes. His first trip, in 1999, followed a long, cold winter. His aerial census counted 600 to 800 live cattle and 200 to 250 dead, their hair and hide in place and less than 30 percent of them scavenged. “The foxes were really looking fat,” he told me, adding that some foxes were living inside the carcasses. The cattle had likely died of starvation. Without predators, they rise and fall with good winters and bad.

The shape of the island summarizes the controversy, Van Daele likes to say—a T-bone steak to ranchers and a teardrop to bird biologists and Indigenous people who once claimed the island. In 2013, when refuge officials began soliciting public input over what to do with feral animals in the Alaska Maritime, locals reacted negatively during the three-year process. They resentfully recalled animal culls elsewhere and argued to preserve the genetic heritage of the Chirikof cattle. Van Daele, who has been described as “pro-cow,” seems to me, more than anything, resistant to top-down edicts. As a wildlife biologist, he sees the cattle as probably invasive and acknowledges that living free as a cow is costly. An unmanaged herd has too many bulls. Trappers on Chirikof have witnessed up to a dozen bulls at a time pursuing and mounting cows, causing injury, exhaustion, and death, especially to heifers. It’s not unreasonable to imagine a 1,000-kilogram bull crushing a heifer weighing less than half that.

But, as an Alaskan and a former member of the state’s Board of Game, Van Daele chafes at the federal government’s control. Senator Murkowski, after all, was following the lead of her constituents, at least the most vocal of them, when she pushed to leave the cattle free to roam. Once Congress acted, Van Daele told me, “why not find the money, spend the money, and manage the herd in a way that allows them to continue to be a unique variety, whatever it is?” “Whatever it is” turns out to be not much at all.

Finally, Ruoss beckons us to the plane, a de Havilland Canada Beaver, a heroically hard-working animal, well adapted for wandering the bush of a remote coast. He has solved the leaking problem by carrying extra fuel onboard in jerrycans, leaving the wing tips empty. At 12:36 pm, we take off for Chirikof.

Imagine Fred Rogers as a bush pilot in Alaska. That’s Ruoss: reassuring, unflappable, and keen to share his archipelago neighborhood. By the time we’re angling up off the water, my angst—over portents of dead dog and dripping fuel—has evaporated.

A transplant from Seattle, Washington, Ruoss was a herring spotter as a young pilot in 1979. Today, he mostly transports hunters, bear-viewers, and scientists conducting fieldwork. He takes goat hunters to remote clifftops, for example, sussing out the terrain and counting to around seven as he flies over a lake at 100 miles per hour (160 kilometers per hour) to determine if the watery landing strip is long enough for the Beaver.

From above, our world is equal parts land and water. We fly over carpets of lupine and pushki (cow parsnip), and, on Sitkinak Island, only 15 kilometers south of Kodiak Island, a cattle herd managed by a private company with a grazing lease. Ruoss and Saltonstall point out landmarks: Refuge Rock, where Alutiiq people once waited out raids by neighboring tribes but couldn’t repel an attack from Russian cannons; a 4,500-year-old archaeology site with long slate bayonets; kilns where Russians baked bricks for export to California; an estuary where a tsunami destroyed a cannery; the village of Russian Harbor, abandoned in the 1930s. “People were [living] in every bay” in the archipelago, Ruoss says. He pulls a book about local plant life from under his seat and flips through it before handing it over the seat to me.

Today, the only people we see are in boats, fishing for Dungeness crab and salmon. We fly over Tugidak Island, where Ruoss and Murphy have a cabin. The next landmass will be Chirikof. We have another 25 minutes to go, with only whitecaps below.

For thousands of years, the Alutiiq routinely navigated this rough sea around their home on Chirikof, where they wove beach rye and collected amber and hunted sea lions, paddling qayat—kayaks. Fog was a hazard; it descends rapidly here, like a ghostly footstep. When Alutiiq paddlers set off from Chirikof, they would tie a bull kelp rope to shore as a guide back to safety if mist suddenly blocked their vision.

As we angle toward Chirikof, sure enough, a mist begins to form. But like the leaking fuel or Brewster’s death, it foreshadows nothing. Below us, as the haze dissipates, the island gleams green, a swath of velveteen shaped, to my mind, like nothing more symbolic than the webbed foot of a goose. A bunch of spooked cows gallop before us as we descend over the northeast side. Ruoss lands on a lake plenty long for a taxiing Beaver.

We toss out our gear and he’s off. We’re the only humans on what appears to be a storybook island—until you kick up fecal dust from a dry cow pie, and then more, and more, and you find yourself stumbling over bovid femurs, ribs, and skulls. Cattle prefer grazing a flat landscape, so stick to the coastline and to the even terrain inland. We tromp northward, flushing sandpipers from the verdant carpet. A peppery bouquet floats on the still air. A cabbagey scent of yarrow dominates whiffs of sedges and grasses, wild geraniums and flag irises, buttercups and chocolate lilies.

Since the end of the last ice age, Chirikof has been mostly tundra-like: no trees, sparse low brush, tall grasses, and boggy. Until the cattle arrived, the island never had large terrestrial mammals, the kind of grazers and browsers that mold a landscape—mammoths, mastodons, deer, caribou. But bovids have fashioned a pastoral landscape that a hiker would recognize in crossing northern England, a place that cows and sheep have kept clear for centuries. The going is easy, but Baker and I struggle to keep pace with the galloping Saltonstall, and we can’t help but stop to gape at bull and cow skeletons splayed across the grasses. We skirt a ground nest with three speckled eggs, barely hidden by the low scrub. We cut across a beach muddled with plastics—ropes, bottles, floats—and reach a giant puddle with indefinable edges, its water meandering toward the sea. “We call it the river Styx,” Saltonstall says. “The one you cross into hell.”

Compared with the Emerald City behind us, the underworld across the Styx is a Kansas dust bowl, a sandy mess that looks as if it could swallow us. Saltonstall tells us about a previous trip when he and his colleagues pulled a cow out of quicksand. Twice. “It charged us—and we’d saved its life!”

Hoof prints scatter from the river. At one time, the river Styx probably supported a small pink salmon run. A team of biologists reported in 2016 that several Chirikof streams host pink and coho, with cameo appearances of rainbow trout and steelhead. This stream is likely fish-free, the erosion too corrosive, a habitat routinely trampled.

Two raptors—jaegers—cavort above us. A smaller bird’s entrails unspool at our feet. On a sandy bluff, Saltonstall pauses to look for artifacts while Baker and I climb down to a beach where hungry cattle probably eat seaweed in winter. We follow a ground squirrel’s tracks up the bluff to its burrow, and at the top meet Saltonstall, who holds out his hands: stone tools. Artifacts sprinkle the surface as if someone has shaken out a tablecloth laden with forks, knives, spoons, and plates—an archaeological site with context ajumble. A lone bovid’s track crosses the sand, winding through shoulder blades, ribs, and the femoral belongings of relatives.

After four hours of hiking, we turn toward the lake where we left our gear. So far on this hike, dead cattle outnumber live ones, dozens to zero. But wait! What’s that? A bull appears on a rise, across a welcome mat of cotton grass. Curious, he jogs down. Baker and Saltonstall peer through viewfinders and click off images. The bull stops several meters away; we stare at each other. He wins. We turn and walk away. When I look back, he’s still paused, watching us, or—I glance around—watching a distant herd running at us.

Again, my calm comrades-in-arms lift their cameras. I lift my iPhone, which shakes because I’m scared. Should I have my hands on the pepper spray I borrowed from Ruoss and Murphy? Closer, closer, closer they thunder, until I can’t tell the difference between my pounding heart and their pounding feet. Then, in sync, the herd turns 90 degrees and gallops out of the frame. The bull lollops away to join them. Their cattle plans take them elsewhere. Saltonstall has surveyed archaeology sites three times on Chirikof. The first time, in 2005, he carried a gun to hunt the cattle, but his colleagues were also apprehensive about the feral beasts. At least one person I talked to suggested we bring a gun. But Saltonstall says he learned that cattle are cowards: Stand your ground, clap, and cows and bulls will run away. But to me, big domesticated herbivores are terrifying. Horses kick and bite, cattle can crush you. The rules of bears—happier without humans around—are easier to parse. I’ve never come close to pepper spraying a bear, but I’m hot on the trigger when it comes to cattle.

The next morning, we set out for the Old Ranch, one of the two homesteads built decades ago on the island and about a three-hour amble one way. Ruoss won’t be picking us up till 3 pm, so we have plenty of time. The cattle path we’re following crosses a field bejeweled with floral ambers, opals, rubies, sapphires, amethysts, and shades of jade. It’s alive with least sandpipers, a shorebird that breeds in northern North America, with the males arriving early, establishing their territories, and building nests for their mates. The least sandpiper population, in general, is in good shape—they certainly flourish here. High-pitched, sped-up laughs split the air. They slice the wind and rush across the velvet expanse. Their flapping wings look impossibly short for supporting flights from their southern wintering grounds, sometimes as far away as Mexico, over 3,000 kilometers distant. They flutter into a tangle of green and vanish.

From a small rise, we spot cattle paths meandering into the distance, forking again and again. Saltonstall announces the presence of the only other mammal on the island. “A battery killer,” he says, raising his camera at an Arctic ground squirrel, and he’s right. They are adorable. They stand on two legs and hold their food in their hands. To us humans, that makes them cute. Pretty soon, we’re all running down the batteries on our cameras and smartphones.

Qanganaq is Alutiiq for ground squirrel. An Alutiiq tailor needed around 100 ground squirrels for one parka, more precious than a sea otter cloak. Some evidence suggests the Alutiiq introduced ground squirrels to Chirikof at least 2,000 years ago, apparently a more rational investment than cattle. Squirrels were easily transported, and the market for skins was local. Still, they were fancy dress, Dehrich Chya, the Alutiiq Museum’s Alutiiq language and living culture manager, told me. Creating a parka—from hunting to sewing to wearing—was an homage to the animals that offered their lives to the Alutiiq. Archaeologist Catherine West and her crew have collected over 20,000 squirrel bones from Chirikof middens, a few marked by tool use and many burned.

Chirikof has been occupied and abandoned periodically—the Alutiiq quit the island, perhaps triggered by a volcanic eruption 4,000 years ago, then came people more related to the Aleuts from the west, then the Alutiiq again. Then, Russian colonizers arrived. The Russians lasted not much longer than the American cattle ranchers who would succeed them. That last, doomed culture crumbled in less than 100 years, pegged to an animal hard to transport, with a market far, far away.

Whether ground squirrels, some populations definitely introduced, should be in the Alaska Maritime is rarely discussed. One reason, probably, is that they are small and cute and easy to anthropomorphize. There is a great body of literature on why we anthropomorphize. Evolutionarily, cognitive archaeologists would argue that once we could anthropomorphize—by at least 40,000 years ago—we became better hunters and eventually herders. We better understood our prey and the animals we domesticated. Whatever the reason, researchers tend to agree that to anthropomorphize is a universal human behavior with profound implications for how we treat animals. We attribute humanness based on animals’ appearance, familiarity, and non-physical traits, such as agreeability and sociality—all factors that will vary somewhat across cultures—and we favor those we humanize.

Ungulates, in general, come across favorably. Add a layer of domestication, and cattle become even more familiar. Cows, especially dairy cows named Daisy, can be sweet and agreeable. Steve Ebbert, a retired USFWS wildlife biologist living on the Alaska mainland outside Homer, eradicated foxes, as well as rabbits and marmots, from islands in the refuge. Few objected to eliminating foxes—or even the rabbits and marmots, he told me. Cattle are more complicated. Humans are supposed to take care of them, he said, not shoot them or let them starve and die: they’re for food—and of course, they’re large, and they’re in a lot of storybooks, and they have big eyes. Alaskans, like many US westerners, are also protective of the state’s ranching legacy—cattle ranchers transformed the landscape to a more familiar place for colonizers and created an American story of triumph, leaving out the messy bits.

We spot a herd of mostly cows and calves, picture-book perfect, with chestnut coats and white faces and socks. We edge closer, but they’re wary. They trot away.

Saltonstall, always a few leaps and bounds ahead, spots the Old Ranch—or part of it. A couple of bulls are hanging out near the sagging, severed rooms that cling to a cliff above the sea, refusing their fate. Ghostly fence posts march from the beach across a rolling landscape.

Close by is a wire exclosure, one of five Ebbert and his colleagues set up in 2016. The exclosure—big enough to park a quad—keeps out cattle, allowing an unaggravated patch of land to regenerate. Beach rye taller than cows soars within the fencing. This is what the island looks like without cattle: a haven for ground-nesting birds. The Alutiiq relied on beach rye, weaving the fiber into house thatching, baskets, socks, and other textiles; if they introduced ground squirrels, they knew what they were doing, since the rodents didn’t drastically alter the vegetation the way cattle do.

Saltonstall approaches a shed set back from the eroding cliff.

“Holy cow!” he hollers. No irony. He is peering into the shed.

On the floor, a cow’s head resembles a Halloween mask, horns up, eye sockets facing the door, snout resting close to what looks like a rusted engine. Half the head is bone, half is covered with hide and keratin. Femurs and ribs and backbone scatter the floor, amid bits and bobs of machinery. One day, for reasons unknown, this cow wedged herself into an old shed and died.

Cattle loom large in death, their bodies lingering. Their suffering—whether or not by human hands—is tangible. Through size, domestication, and ubiquity, they take up a disproportionate amount of space physically, and through anthropomorphism, they grab a disproportionate amount of human imagination and emotion. When Frank Murkowski said Alaska should leave one island to the cattle, he probably pictured a happy herd rambling a vast, unfenced pasture—not an island full of bones or heifer-buckling bulls.

Birds are free, but they’re different. They vanish. We rarely witness their suffering, especially the birds we never see at backyard feeders—shorebirds and seabirds. We witness their freedom in fleeting moments, if at all, and when we do see them—gliding across a beach, sipping slime from an intertidal mudflat, resting on a boat rail far from shore—can we name the species? As popular as birding is, the world is full of non-birders. And so, we mistreat them. On Chirikof, where there should be storm petrels, puffins, and terns, there are cattle hoof prints, cattle plops, and cattle bones.

Hustling back to meet the seaplane, we skirt an area thick with cotton grass and ringed by small hills. In 2013, an ornithologist recorded six Aleutian terns and identified one nest with two eggs. In the United States, Aleutian tern populations have crashed by 80 percent in the past few decades. The tern is probably the most imperiled seabird in Alaska. But eradicating foxes, which ate birds’ eggs and babies, probably helped Chirikof’s avian citizens, perhaps most notably the terns. From a distance, we count dozens of birds, shooting up from the grass, swirling around the sky, and fluttering back down to their nests.

Terns may be dipping their webbed toes into a bad situation, but consider the other seabirds shooting their little bodies through the atmosphere, spotting specks of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to raise their young, and yet it’s unsafe for them on this big, lovely island. The outcry over a few hundred feral cattle—a loss that would have absolutely no effect on the species worldwide—seems completely irrational. Emotional. A case of maladaptive anthropomorphism. If a species’ purpose is to proliferate, cattle took advantage of their association with humans and won the genetic lottery.

Back at camp, we haul our gear to the lake. Ruoss arrives slightly early, and while he’s emptying red jerrycans of fuel into the Beaver, we grab tents and packs and haul them into the pontoons. Visibility today is even better than yesterday. I watch the teardrop-shaped island recede, thinking of what more than one scientist told me: when you’re on Chirikof, it’s so isolated, surrounded by whitecaps, that you hope only to get home. But as soon as you leave, you want to go back.

Chirikof cattle are one of many herds people have sprinkled around the world in surprising and questionable places. And cattle have a tendency to go feral. On uninhabited Amsterdam Island in the Indian Ocean, the French deposited a herd that performed an evolutionary trick in response to the constraints of island living: the size of individuals shrank in the course of 117 years, squashing albatross colonies in the process. In Hong Kong, feral cattle plunder vegetable plots, disturb traffic, and trample the landscape. During the colonization of the Americas and the Caribbean, cattle came to occupy spaces violently emptied of Indigenous people. Herds ran wild—on small islands like Puerto Rico and across expanses in Texas and Panama—pulverizing landscapes that had been cultivated for thousands of years. No question: cattle are problem animals.

A few genetic studies explore the uniqueness of Chirikof cattle. Like freedom, “unique” is a vague word. I sent the studies to a scientist who researches the genetics of hybrid species to confirm my takeaway: the cattle are hybrids, perhaps unusual hybrids, some Brown Swiss ancestry but mostly British Hereford and Russian Yakutian, an endangered breed. The latter are cold tolerant, but no study shows selective forces at play. The cattle are not genetically distinct; they’re a mix of breeds, the way a labradoodle is a mix of a Labrador and a poodle.

Feral cattle graze unusual niches all over the world, and maybe some are precious genetic outliers. But the argument touted by livestock conservancies and locals that we need Chirikof cattle genes as a safeguard against some future fatal cattle disease rings hollow. And if we did, we might plan and prepare: freeze some eggs and sperm.

Cattle live feral lives elsewhere in the Alaska Maritime, too, on islands shared by the refuge and Indigenous owners or, in the case of Sitkinak Island, where a meat company grazes cattle. Why Frank Murkowski singled out Chirikof is puzzling: Alaska will probably always have feral cattle. Chirikof cattle, of use to practically no one, fully residing within a wildlife refuge a federal agency is charged with protecting for birds, with no concept of the human drama swirling around their presence, have their own agenda for keeping themselves alive. Unwittingly, humans are part of the plan.

We created cattle by manipulating their wild cousins, aurochs, in Europe, Asia, and the Sahara beginning over 10,000 years ago. Unlike Frankenstein’s monster, who could never find a place in human society, cattle trotted into societies around the world, making themselves at home on most ranges they encountered. Rosa Ficek, an anthropologist at the University of Puerto Rico who has studied feral cattle, says they generally find their niche. Christopher Columbus brought them on his second voyage to the Caribbean in 1493, and they proliferated, like the kudzu of the feral animal world. “[Cattle are] never fully under the control of human projects,” she says. They’re not “taking orders the way military guys are … They have their own cattle plans.”

The larger question is, Why are we so nervous about losing cattle? In terms of sheer numbers, they’re a successful species. There is just over one cow or bull for every eight people in the world. If numbers translate to likes, we like cows and bulls more than dogs. If estimates are right, the world has 1.5 billion cattle and 700 million dogs. Imagine all the domesticated animals that would become feral if some apocalypse took out humans.

I could say something here about how vital seabirds—as opposed to cattle—are to marine ecosystems and the overall health of the planet. They spread their poop around the oceans, nurturing plankton, coral reefs, and seagrasses, which nurture small plankton-eating fishes, which are eaten by bigger fishes, and so on. Between 1950 and 2010, the world lost some 230 million seabirds, a decline of around 70 percent.

But maybe it’s better to end with conjuring the exquisiteness of seabirds like the Aleutian terns in their breeding plumage, with their white foreheads, black bars that run from black bill to black-capped heads, feathers in shades of grays, white rump and tail, and black legs. Flashy? No. Their breeding plumage is more timeless monochromatic, with the clean, classic lines of a vintage Givenchy design. The Audrey Hepburn of seabirds. They’re so pretty, so elegant, so difficult to appreciate as they flit across a cotton grass meadow. Their dainty bodies aren’t much longer than a typical ruler, from bill to tail, but their wingspans are over double that, and plenty strong to propel them, in spring, from their winter homes in Southeast Asia to Alaska and Siberia.

A good nesting experience, watching their eggs hatch and their chicks fledge, with plenty of fish to eat, will pull Aleutian terns back to the same places again and again and again—like a vacationing family, drawn back to a special island, a place so infused with good memories, they return again and again and again. That’s called fidelity.

Humans understand home, hard work, and family. So, for a moment, think about how Aleutian terns might feel after soaring over the Pacific Ocean for 16,000 kilometers with their compatriots, making pit stops to feed, and finally spotting a familiar place, a place we call Chirikof. They have plans, to breed and nest and lay eggs. The special place? The grassy cover is okay. But, safe nesting spots are hard to find: Massive creatures lumber about, and the terns have memories of loss, of squashed eggs, and kicked chicks. It’s sad, isn’t it?

This story was made possible in part by the Fund for Environmental Journalism and the Society of Environmental Journalists and was published in collaboration with Earth Island Journal.

[thenuclearmallard]

One Man's Fight Against Slavs-Only Apartment Rentals in Moscow

"You have to solve this problem. Otherwise, I will sue, no matter how much it costs me."

By Evan Gershkovich

Feb. 27, 2018

Alexander Ryumin / TASS

The threat was typed in a fit of rage, an emotional outburst that spilled forth after weeks of frustration.

"You have to solve this problem," Emil Allakhverdiev demanded in a viral Facebook post last month. "Otherwise, I will sue, no matter how much it costs me."

Allakhverdiev, 26, was directing his public frustration at Yandex, Avito and the Center for Real Estate Information and Analytics (CIAN), among other Russian apartment rental companies. Hunting online for an apartment in his native Moscow, the English teacher of Azerbaijani descent had run into a ubiquitous fixture: disclaimers that apartments will be rented to ethnic Slavs only. 

The practice, aimed squarely at Central Asian immigrants, is one that Russian human rights advocates say has been prevalent in the capital for as long as they can remember. And because it is so entrenched, even Allakhverdiev’s singular Facebook post, they say, represents a step in the right direction.

"It feels like a new moment," Alexander Verkhovsky, the director of the Moscow-based SOVA Center, which tracks nationalism and xenophobia in Russia, told The Moscow Times. "Battling against discrimination requires citizens to be active and lawyers who will litigate strategically and attract media attention."

Although Allakhverdiev has yet to follow through on his threat to sue, he has forced the issue under Russia’s media spotlight. Before speaking to The Moscow Times, he shuttled between appearances on the state-run Moskva 24 channel and the independent Dozhd TV network.

"My primary aim is to bring attention to this problem," he explained in a central Moscow cafe one recent evening.

Emil Allakhverdiev

Facebook

Before setting out on his apartment search three months earlier, Allakhverdiev lived with his mother and rented from a friend. Previously, he hadn’t encountered much racism in Moscow, but the search, he said, had shown him how common it really is.

"It’s not just the disclaimers that you see in one out of every three ads," Allakhverdiev said. "It’s also the real estate agents who, after hearing your last name, just hang up the phone."

In a phone interview, Roman Babichev, who heads the leasing department of the Moscow-based Azbuka Zhilya real estate agency, defended the practice. The goal, he said, is less about keeping apartments in the hands of ethnic Slavs than it is preventing migrant workers from Central Asia and southern Russian republics from turning apartments into "hostels."

"It’s not discrimination," Babichev argued. "People who come from Central Asia, from the Caucasus, from Chechnya and Dagestan" — two predominantly Muslim Russian republics — "will say they will only have three people living in the apartment, but soon 10, 12 people have moved in."

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"This is based on years of experience," he added.

Migrant workers from struggling former Soviet republics have long flocked to Russia in search of better wages to send back home. More than a third of Tajikistan’s GDP in 2015, for instance, was earned by workers abroad, 90 percent of which came from Russia. In 2017, authorities estimated that there were about 10 million foreign laborers in the country.

Last spring, Russian researchers at the Robustory data journalism blog found that roughly 16 percent of the ads on CIAN discriminated on the basis of ethnicity or nationality. In their report, the researchers laid out the ads with disclaimers in map form, showing users where it would be easiest to find an apartment.

"This discrimination is not a secret to anyone who lives in Moscow," Vladimir Avetyan, one of Robustory’s researchers, said in a phone interview. "What we wanted to do was to visualize it so that the phenomenon would not just be discussed anecdotally."

Eva Mizrabekyan, 46, was born in Azerbaijan and moved to Moscow in the late ’90s when her Armenian husband found work at a restaurant. In a phone interview, she said she dreaded when the time would come for the couple to find a new apartment.

“My husband is light-skinned, so sometimes we wouldn’t have any problems right away if he went to see the apartment alone,” Mizrabekyan said. “But when it was time to sign the agreement the landlord would find out our name and start cursing and would either try to raise the price or back out altogether.”

“Thank God we found a nice landlord, and for the past seven years we haven’t had to move,” she added.

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In a statement to Dozhd TV regarding Allakhverdiev’s complaint, CIAN defended the disclaimers on its website.

"Such ads do indeed exist just as, for example, there are disclaimers on ads that say the apartment is ‘only for married couples’ or for those ‘without children’ or ‘without animals,’" the company said. "These disclaimers save our users time."

The company also pointed to Russian law, noting that, while it is clear on employment discrimination, for example, it does not "restrict renters in how they want to manage their private property."

Pavel Chikov, director of the Agora human rights organization, says that the practice is illegal. "The Russian constitution says that you cannot discriminate against people because of their race or ethnicity," he said. 

Verkhovsky of the SOVA Center, however, disagrees. Discrimination according to Russian law, he said, is the barring of someone from their rights. "Nowhere in our law," he explained, "does it say that it’s a person’s right to be rented an apartment from another person." 

Regardless, to fight the issue, he continued, will require people like Allakhverdiev to demand that discrimination be more thoroughly considered in the courts.

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Several days after the interview at the cafe, Allakhverdiev told The Moscow Times that his Facebook post had been removed for containing "open aggression against people on racial, national and religious grounds as well as ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability." 

The social media platform’s algorithm that removes posts had been hijacked by Russian nationalists sending in complaints, Allakhverdiev suggested. Facebook did not respond to The Moscow Times' requests for comment.

Allakhverdiev also shared screenshots of comments on his original post and messages in his inbox from Russians urging him to leave the country. All of it had made him "want to throw my hands up in the air."

But it wasn't all negative. Others had reached out, too, including some offering him their apartments, and a human rights lawyer who suggested Allakhverdiev file a formal complaint to the Moscow’s prosecutor’s office as an intermediary step before suing. And going to court, Allakhverdiev said, remained an option.

Still, the stream of hate seemed to have taken its toll. 

"I am a Russian citizen and Moscow is my home," he said. "Now it doesn’t feel like it so much anymore."

[nicklloydnow]

“In the hours after Yevgeny Prigozhin's army of ex-convicts and mercenaries halted their advance on Moscow, the Kremlin set out to seize full control of the global empire built by the notorious military entrepreneur.

Russia's deputy foreign minister flew to Damascus to personally deliver a message to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad: Wagner Group forces would no longer operate there independently. Senior Russian foreign ministry officials phoned the president of the Central African Republic, whose personal bodyguards include Wagner mercenaries, offering assurances that Saturday's crisis wouldn't derail Russia's expansion into Africa. Government jets from Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations shuttled from Syria to Mali, another of Wagner's key foreign outposts.

(…)

Russia, which for years denied any association with Wagner, appears to be trying to take over the far-flung mercenary network managed by Prigozhin and his lieutenants. After Saturday's failed mutiny, it isn't clear how much it can or how quickly.

"Wagner helped Russia build its influence, and the government is loath to give it up," said J. Peter Pham, former special envoy for the West African Sahel region. "Wagner gave the state deniability. The question is whether they can manage its complexity and deal with additional scrutiny."

At minimal cost and at an arm's length, Wagner helped the Kremlin amass international influence and collect revenues, managed by Prigozhin's holding company Concord and a network of shell companies that helped funnel funds to the Kremlin, according to Western officials and documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Wagner companies generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year in Africa, a crucial source of funding to maintain both Russia's influence on the continent and to finance operations in Ukraine, Western officials said. The group's sources of income include exports of Sudanese gold to Russia, as well as diamonds from the Central African Republic to the United Arab Emirates and wood to Pakistan, these officials said.

(…)

Wagner's mercenaries - backed by political strategists, financiers and geologists to prospect for mineral resources - have become entrenched in Mali, Syria and the Central African Republic. The group has offered help suppressing antigovernment protests in Venezuela and Sudan. Prigozhin's associates had planned a secret trip to Haiti, as late as February, to offer their services to the government, which is struggling to keep control of Port au Prince, according to classified U.S. military documents leaked onto the videogame chat group Discord. Haiti's foreign ministry didn't return a request for comment.

(…)

The fate of Wagner operations now hinges on whether the Kremlin can simultaneously marginalize Prigozhin and maintain the empire he built on three continents. Some national security officials, sizing up the prospects, say Washington may have an opening to regain influence on a continent where Russia and China have been digging in.

(…)

After years denying any Kremlin connections to Wagner, Putin said on Tuesday that the group had been financed by the Russian state for the year ending in May. In the Central African Republic, the Russian defense ministry - which first sent Wagner there in 2018 - is paying for 3,000 of Prigozhin's mercenaries, said Fidele Gouandjika, the nation's presidential security adviser.

(…)

In Russia, Wagner's men have until July 1 to sign contracts with the Defense Ministry. Prigozhin, whose plane landed Tuesday in Belarus, has repeatedly said his men would reject the contracts. He hasn't said whether or not he would try to keep control of Wagner's foreign operations while in exile.

Wagner's Telegram and communication channels, which went dark on Saturday, are back online, said Lou Osborn, an analyst at All Eyes on Wagner, an open-source research group. They are largely all carrying the same message, Osborn said, that Prigozhin is being hailed as the man who could topple Putin.

To counter such an idea, Russia's deputy foreign minister Sergei Vershinin flew to Damascus over the weekend to urge Assad to stop Wagner fighters from leaving Syria without Moscow's oversight, people briefed on the conversation said. A statement issued by Assad's office after the meeting said they discussed coordination, especially in "light of recent events."

(…)

Russia has told Wagner fighters and workers to stay at their posts, according to a U.S. intelligence officer, and that refusal to carry out their duties would bring harsh reprisals.

Since Putin launched his war on Ukraine, Wagner has taken aggressive steps to expand its footprint in Africa and beyond. At the start of the year, Wagner posted new recruitment ads for experienced fighters, trumpeting its expansion on the continent.

In January, Wagner held talks about sending a military force to Burkina-Faso, a West African nation also threatened by jihadists and which had decided to expel French troops. The group's propaganda outlets signaled it was setting its sights next on Ivory Coast, a potential foray into Africa's Atlantic coast.

The U.S. shared intelligence in February that purported to reveal a Prigozhin plot to help rebels destabilize the Chad government and potentially kill the president, an important Western ally.

A U.N. report this year said Russian instructors were working with local soldiers in the Central African Republic to gain control over regions known for artisanal diamond mining. The goal was to form a corridor from Wagner-controlled regions through Sudan, the reports said, on to the mineral-trading hub of Dubai.”

“The United States on Tuesday (Jun 27) imposed sanctions aimed at disrupting gold mining activities that fund the Wagner Group in Africa, vowing to hold the mercenaries accountable for abuses days after they staged a mutiny in Russia.

(…)

The Treasury Department announced sanctions against Midas Resources, which operates mines in the Central African Republic, and Diamville, a gold and diamond purchasing company in the country - and said both were controlled by Prigozhin.

The sanctions - which will block any US assets and criminalise transactions with the companies - also targeted a Dubai-based company, Industrial Resources General Trading, that was accused of handling finances for Prigozhin's dealings in Diamville.”

[beardedmrbean]

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — French naval forces in January seized thousands of assault rifles, machine guns and anti-tank missiles in the Gulf of Oman coming from Iran and heading to Yemen's Houthi rebels, officials said Thursday.

While Iran denied being involved, images of the weapons released by the U.S. military's Central Command showed them to be similar to others captured by American forces in other shipments tied to Tehran.

The announcement comes as Iran faces increasing Western pressure over its shipment of drones to arm Russia during its war on Ukraine, as well as for its violent monthslong crackdown targeting protesters.

Regional tensions also have heightened after a suspected Israeli drone attack on a military workshop in the central Iranian city of Isfahan on Saturday. Previous cycles of violence since the collapse of Iran's nuclear deal with world powers have seen the Islamic Republic launch retaliatory attacks at sea.

The seizure occurred Jan. 15 in the Gulf of Oman, a body of water that stretches from the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, through to the Arabian Sea and onto the Indian Ocean. CENTCOM described the interdiction as happening “along routes historically used to traffic weapons unlawfully from Iran to Yemen.”

A United Nations resolution bans arms transfers to Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who took the country's capital in late 2014 and have been at war with a Saudi-led coalition backing the country's internationally recognized government since March 2015.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the seizure, identifying the forces involved as elite French special forces. Two officials with knowledge of the interdiction, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they did not have permission to speak publicly on the operation's details, similarly identified the French as carrying out the seizure.

The French military did not respond to requests for comment about capturing the weapons.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani in an online message rejected the assessment Tehran supplied the weapons on the vessel and described the accusations as “politically motivated.” Iran's mission to the United Nations told the AP that Tehran ”adheres to the resolutions adopted by the U.N. Security Council related to Yemen."

While France maintains a naval base in Abu Dhabi, it typically takes a quieter approach in the region while maintaining a diplomatic presence in Iran.

Iran has long denied arming the Houthis, though Western nations, U.N. experts and others have traced weaponry ranging from night-vision scopes, rifles and missiles back to Tehran. In November, the U.S. Navy said it found 70 tons of a missile fuel component hidden among bags of fertilizer aboard a ship bound to Yemen from Iran. Houthi ballistic missile fire has targeted Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the past.

Images taken Wednesday by CENTCOM and analyzed by the AP, showed a variety of weapons on board an unidentified ship apparently docked at a port. The weapons appeared to include Chinese-made Type 56 rifles, Russian-made Molot AKS20Us and PKM-pattern machine guns. All have appeared in other seizures of weapons attributed to Iran.

CENTCOM said the seizure included more than 3,000 rifles and 578,000 rounds of ammunition. The released images also showed 23 container-launched anti-tank missiles, which also have turned up in other shipments tied to Iran.

The war in Yemen has deteriorated largely into a stalemate and spawned one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. However, Saudi-led airstrikes haven't been recorded in Yemen since the kingdom began a cease-fire at the end of March 2022, according to the Yemen Data Project.

That cease-fire expired in October despite diplomatic efforts to renew it. That has led to fears the war could again escalate. More than 150,000 people have been killed in Yemen during the fighting, including over 14,500 civilians.

[samarkhandstatemedicaluniversity]

The III-International Olympiad of students of medical universities "Samarkand-2020" was held at Samarkand State Medical University State Flag of the Republic of Uzbekistan State Emblem of the Republic of Uzbekistan NEWS home News The III-International Olympiad of students of medical universities "Samarkand-2020" was held at Samarkand State Medical University The III-International Olympiad of students of medical universities "Samarkand-2020" was held at Samarkand State Medical University 19.12.2022 1063 Share   On December 16-17, the III-International Olympiad of students of medical universities "Samarkand-2020" was held at the Samarkand State Medical University. More than 3,000 students took part in the international student Olympiad under the guidance of their more than 120 mentors in online and traditional format from 76 higher medical educational institutions in France, Poland, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Belarus, Turkey and Azerbaijan.   First Deputy Minister of Health of the Republic of Uzbekistan Amrillo Inoyatov, Rector of the Samarkand State Medical University Jasur Rizaev, Rector of the Tajik State Medical University named after Abu Ali Ibn Sino Mahmadshokh Kurbonali Gulzoda (Dushanbe, Tajikistan), Rector of the Izhevsk State Medical Academy Aleksey Shklyaev (Izhevsk, Russian Federation), Director of the Eurasian Research Center for Health and Social Sciences of the University of Health Sciences Feyzioğlu Aynur (Istanbul, Turkey), Editor-in-Chief of the journal "ANATOMICÁ" Barno Ikramova, Rector of the St. Petersburg State Pediatric Medical University Dmitry Ivanov (St. Petersburg, Russian Federation),director of "HRV - simulation" Arnaud Cosson wished victories to the participants and successful work of the international student forum.   The Opening Ceremony was followed by a "Contest of Greetings" for the participating teams of the Olympiad, as well as a "Start-up" competition for young scientists' projects. The presentations of the students and the presented scientific and practical developments were highly appreciated by the members of the international jury.   The main work of the Olympiad was held in 70 sections i (at Самаркандский государственный медицинский институт) https://www.instagram.com/p/CmtItn-MIkO/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[qqueenofhades]

So I’ve been thinking about the end of empires lately, the way they behave, the patterns that emerge, things like that. Yes, I know. What a lovely topic. Lol. My brain likes punishment. Shhh. Anyway, I was wondering what we have learned from past ended empires that could help us understand today’s world? Do you have thoughts? Any book refs on this? Thanks qqueen!

Aha, okay, I'll give this a crack. I'll try not to get bogged down in too much pedagogical woolgathering about how it is defined, determined, decided, or otherwise applied as an analytical concept, but we'll say that an "empire" is a geographical, political and territorial unit that comprises multiple countries/regions, is united under one relatively centralised administration, ruled either by one all-powerful figure or a small circle of powerful elites (usually technically answerable to the former), and held together by military, financial, and ideological methods. The basic model, as established by the Romans: take their sons to serve in the army, make them pay their taxes to you, and worship Roma, the patron goddess of the city, alongside their own preferred religion. Simple, straightforward, and lasted for five hundred years (almost a thousand if you count the Roman Republic which preceded it). We hear a lot in Western history classes about the "Fall of Rome," which is usually presented in popular narratives as the moment when everything went to pot before the "Dark Ages." Is this true? (No.) If so, did it happen because, as is often claimed, "barbarians/savages were attacking Rome and overthrew it?" (No.)

The collapse of the Western Roman Empire is way more than we can get into in the course of one ask, and there are other fallen empires to consider: for example, the Aztec, Ashanti, Russian, and British ones. It's a subject of debate as to whether modern-day America should be termed an empire: it fits most, if not all, of the historical criteria, but is an empire only an empire when it declares itself to be one? The long and sordid history of American imperialism, whether it's a rose by any other name or otherwise, is covered in American Empire: A Global History by A.G. Hopkins, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr, and A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn. All are worth looking into.

Overall, I think the basic similarities for what makes an empire fall would include:

it geographically overextends itself (Roman, British)

it is attacked by foreign rivals and internal enemies (Roman, Aztec, Ashanti)

it becomes massively financially indebted and deeply politically unstable (Roman, Russian)

it resorts to heavy-handed attempts to punish dissatisfaction among its people, spurring popular resistance (Aztec, Roman, British, Russian)

it is emerging from a period of long war internationally and internally that has strained it militarily (Roman, British, Russian)

it simply gets devastatingly unlucky thanks to a combination of unforeseeable external factors (Aztec, Ashanti)

And so on. Basically, the administrative bureaucracy gets too big to manage itself, the ever-increasing financial exactions can't pay for the necessary wars to maintain and expand its borders, people become dissatisfied both outside and inside the imperial system, and since no human institution or nation-state lasts forever, down it comes. However, I would caution against too much insistence on a total or categorical end of any of these societies. You've probably heard of Jared Diamond, who wrote uber-popular bestsellers including Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse, focusing on how human societies survive, or not, from an eco-scientific perspective. However, Diamond is not a trained anthropologist, archaeologist, or historian, despite writing extensively about these subjects (he's a professor of geography at UCLA) and a whole bunch of eminent historians and anthropologists got together to write "You're Full of Shit, Jared Diamond," also known as Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire.

This book basically blasts Diamond (as he deserves, frankly) for removing all social/cultural factors from his analysis in Collapse and only focusing on ecology/science/environment. Geographical determinism can shed light on some things, but it's very far from being a total explanation for everything, completely divorced from the human societies that interact with these places. For example, did the Easter Island society of Rapa Nui collapse because the Polynesian people "recklessly" overexploited the environment (Diamond) or the impact of European diseases, colonialism, slave trade, and other direct crises, combined with the introduction of the non-native rat to the islands? (Spoiler alert: The latter. You simply can't write about these societies as if they're just places where things somehow happened thanks to natural processes, entirely outside of human agency and cultural/social/political needs.)

Anyway, the silver-lining upside, especially in an incredibly gloomy political milieu where the current American system was nearly overthrown by the last president and hordes of his fascist sympathisers (as they were talking about on Capitol Hill today, incidentally), is that the usual story of human societies is resilience rather than disappearance. None of the empires listed above, with the exception of the Aztecs (conquered by the Spanish, decimated by smallpox, and resisted by internal indigenous enemies) totally vanished. Their structures and ethos often just got a change of paint and name and carried on. For all the ballyhoo about the "Collapse of Rome," the Western Roman Empire had been an almost entirely ineffective political entity for years and the capital had already been transferred to Ravenna well before 476. There were outsider attacks, but Rome had weakened itself by a constant succession of military coups, palace intrigue, too-heavy taxes, and a simply too-vast area to effectively control. The Eastern Roman Empire, however (aka the Byzantine Empire) carried on being a major political player straight through the medieval period and only ended in 1453, with the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II's conquest of Constantinople.

Even the Ashanti Empire still exists today, as a small independent kingdom within the modern African country of Ghana. The Russian and British empires no longer exist under that name, but few would deny that those countries still retain considerable influence in similar ways. When people talk about the "collapse" of societies, especially non-Western societies, it also produces the impression that they did in fact just disappear into thin air, often as no fault of the invading Westerners. (Sidenote: I suggest reading "Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native" by Patrick Wolfe in the Journal of Genocide Research. The whole thing is online and free.) How many times have we heard that, say, the Mayans/Mayan Empire "vanished," when there are up to seven million Mayan speakers in modern Mexico? If you're insisting that they're gone, of course it's easier to act like they are.

Anyway. I think what I'm trying to say here is that in terms of lessons for the modern world:

empires always (always) fall;

this comes about as some combination of the above-mentioned factors;

however, the societies previously organised as empires almost never disappear, so the end of an empire does not necessarily mean the end of its attendant society, culture, countries, etc;

empires often re-organise as essentially similar political units with different names and can maintain most of their former status;

empire is an inherently unequal and exploitative system that often relies on taxonomies of race, gender, power, and class, with the usual suspects at the top and everyone else at the bottom;

empire is usually, though not always, related to active colonialism and military expansion, and as soon as it cannot sustain this model, it's in big trouble;

the idea that human societies just disappear solely as a result of inadequately correct economic choices and/or ecological determinism is a lot of shit;

And so on. The end of an empire isn't necessarily anything to fear, though it can, obviously, be incredibly disruptive for those living within the country/countries affected. And until we learn how to move, as a species, permanently away from political and ideological systems that give so many resources to so few people and nothing to so many others, we're going to continue to experience this cycle.

[bustedbernie]

My mother loves French history, especially the post-Bastille revolution time. Every time she sees people talking about guillotines online, her first response is basically "the people who built those guillotines eventually ended up under them!" Then she goes on to how there were like 3-4 revolutions and they were all horrific. And that our ancestors were almost killed by communists in the Russian revolution. So my old progressive history buff mum hates "revolution now!" leftists too lol

Indeed. Victor Hugo wrote “Dernier Jour d’un Condamné” (Last day of a condemned man) in the form of a journal of a man waiting execution in the 19th century. Hugo was against the death penalty at a time when the death penalty was well-supported in France. It’s a very haunting short piece of literature that I think everyone interested in 18th/19th century France should read but also a good work for confronting the vile facts of the death penalty. They don’t understand the guillotine, the death penalty, or revolution. I hope they pick up Hugo sometime.

Stravinsky I believe also had his quote about how he believed revolution worked much like it does in math. You leave the origin, turn the wheel, but then arrive right where you started. His own alienation from Russia pushed him into some scary philosophical places before he settled in the USA, but his point on revolution seems apt to a degree. I’ve just never been convinced that we can make progress this way, even if the anger, sadness and grief behind it is most often very real and visceral. 

Not to mention the somewhat unrelated aspect that the guillotine is sometimes talked about in France the way some of the people in our lives here might talk about the electric chair. Even today, the death penalty remains a controversial and split topic in French politics, and when Mitterrand abolished it, it was very controversial. As much as this site likes to present France as some right-wing nation, it’s pretty interesting in that political discussions are often very much 50/50 and very contentious (I find a lot of similarities in French and American thought in many ways, maybe this is a symptom of living in a Republic??). In any case, just the way the topic of the death penalty pivots on these strange axes is interesting and I just don’t know how any progressive can embrace it in any form. For most of its history, the guillotine served the same purpose as injection/hanging/electric chair in the USA: a brutal, definite punishment that fell heavily (no pun intended) on certain demographics more so than others.  As for the revolutionary period, it is called “The Terror” for a reason. It was not glorious, it was disorganized and terrifying. 

[asinfovision]

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This program also helps students connect with other Medical aspirants who are going to the same destination to pursue MBBS in Russia. At the same time, it helps parents build a community for cooperation and open discussion.

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All travel arrangements for the students are made by Rus Education. We arrange the flight, ensure students have all the required documents for travel, escort the students to the airport. We don't leave it there, at the designated airport, students are received by Rus Education representatives who guide them from the airport to the University Campus and initiate the process for students to settle at the University.

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Proper arrangements are made for the students before they reach the university. Hence to avoid any difficulty and make it a better place for students to settle.

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Besides supporting students in getting to the university for MBBS in Russia, Rus Education also helps students throughout their journey at the Medical University in Russia through our representatives.

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To conclude, Rus Education is committed to help students from the day we get their first call till they become qualified doctors. We have helped thousands of medical students become qualified doctors, we believed we can help you too. To study MBBS in Russia, get in touch with us at www.ruseducation.inor contact 1800-833-3338.

[russianreader]

The Church Militant

Archbishop Pitirim of Syktyvkar Archbishop Pitirim of Syktyvkar has called on his parishioners to rally not around Christ, but around Putin, calling the West “the enemy of the human race.” “After [hearing] the appeal made by His Eminence the President (on supporting the war – ed.), I considered it my duty to appeal to all the clergy, monastics, and God-loving laypeople of the Syktyvkar Diocese…

[taekwando1danblackbelt-blog]

Sandesh Lamsal - Academic Qualification, Sports, Lifestyle, Achievements, Publications, Contact

Name : Sandesh Lamsal

Date (Place) of Birth : 1994/08/17 (Dang, Nepal)

Nationality : Nepalese

Parents : Ganesh Lamsal & Sushila Lamsal

Current Place of Stay : St. Petersburg, Russia

Academic Qualification:

1) School Leaving Certificate - Nepal (2011)

2) Diploma of Computer Software & Hardware course - Nepal (2012)

3) Higher Secondary Education - Nepal (2013)

4) MBBS : 6th Year - Russia (2020)

Sports :

1) 1 Dan Black belt - 2014 - World Taekwando (kukkiwon)

2) 2 Dan Black belt - 2018 - World Taekwando (kukkiwon)

Lifestyle :

Sandesh Lamsal is from Dang, Nepal and resides in St. Petersburg, Russia. Sandesh worked as a medical representative of an Ayurvedic Company in 2013. After gaining 1 Dan black belt of Taekwando in 2014, he started to work as a Trainer in Dang Nepal. On the same year, he worked as a teacher in one of the schools in Dang. After that, in 2015, he got a scholarship in MBBS from the Russian government and went to Russia for his further studies. He gets a chance to work as a diplomat and was appointed as the Representative of Nepal in St. Petersburg and Leningrad region, where he creates a team and organizes many programs to promote Nepal, Nepali culture and tourism in Russia. He later starts to be active in different social media platforms, and currently he is a social media personality, international volunteer and blogger along with a medical student & the Representative of Federal Republic of Nepal in St. Petersburg and Leningrad region. Appealing to the international audience, Sandesh posts content including Transitions, Acting, Sports, Health, fitness, beauty tips and Lip Sync videos. He has a very good fan base in social media including TikTok, Likee, Helo, Tangi, Instagram etc and his profile has been verified on most of them. Sandesh has created a lot of videos on social awareness and public welfare. He has collaborated with a lot of Indian artists and his contents were featured in many of the social media platforms and shared by popular Bollywood artists. Not only that, he is an UN online volunteer and contributes his best for the welfare of the people. He is among a few of the people who got a chance to serve people from the whole world during the FIFA Confederation Cup in 2017 and the FIFA World Cup in 2018. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Sandesh has advocated for social distancing, prevention and safety measures by creating videos for the social media platforms and his followers.

Achievements :

1) Representative of Nepal in St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region (2015 - Now)

2) Medical Volunteer - Confederation Cup 2017

3) Medical Volunteer - World Cup 2018

Publications :

1) Magazine "Consul" # 2 (43), (2016) "Sandesh Lamsal: I am happy to come back here."

http://www.magazineconsul.ru/archive/43/

2) Journal "Ecology of Thinking" "S. Lamsal on the basic principles of the ancient philosophy of yoga" (May 2017).

http://ecologyofthinking.ru/ekologiya-myishleniya/dharma/5600.html

3) Journal “Royals” - My thoughts about the Monarchy and Kings of Nepal (2017)

https://issuu.com/evgenylarin9/docs/royals_magazine___3-2017

4) Journal “Pulse” - New Year Celebration in Consular Office of Nepal, St. Petersburg (2017).

https://www.1spbgmu.ru/images/home/universitet/izdatelstvo/Pulse/2017/Pulse_5_22.05.2017.pdf

5) Organizer and Lector of program “ Nepal-fest : Nepalese Culture Charity Festival”(2016)

https://theoryandpractice.ru/seminars/90676-o-nepale-iz-pervykh-ust

Follow him :

Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/sandesh.1994

Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/lamsalriyan

Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/c/SandeshLamsal

Twitter : https://twitter.com/sandesh__1994

[arcticdementor]

I’ve been thinking that the US is in a May 1968 moment, but that’s probably too optimistic. A reader who is a prominent Washingtonian (he identified himself, and I verified it; I’m not using his name to protect him) wrote this morning to say that he and a number of people he know are leaving the city for good in the wake of this past week’s violence.

…

This reader, who is white, lives in one of the nicer neighborhoods in the city. Thinking of that girl in his neighborhood, I thought of this from Live Not By Lies, about how the Russian Revolution advanced years before actual fighting broke out, when the parents of the privileged refused to stand up to their children:

Most of the revolutionaries came from the privileged classes. Their parents ought to have known that this new political faith their children preached would, if realized, mean the collapse of the social order. Still, they did not reject their children. Writes Slezkine, “The ‘students’ were almost always abetted at home while still in school and almost never damned when they became revolutionaries.” Perhaps the mothers and fathers didn’t want to alienate their sons and daughters. Perhaps they too, after the experience of the terrible famine and the incompetent state’s inability to care for the starving, had lost faith in the system.

It’s happening here now. Trump is our Nicholas II: too weak and indecisive and lacking in credibility to do a damn thing about it.

Meanwhile, I’m hearing that there are conservative Americans in the DC area who are talking about attempting to emigrate to one of the Visegrad countries (Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland). They see no hope anymore here. I am reminded of this piece from Mark Bollobas that I published in 2018. He is the UK-born son of two Hungarians who fled communism in the 1960s and took refuge in Britain. Now, as an adult who lived for a time in America, he has returned to his parents’ home city, Budapest, to raise his own family.

…

Read it all. Bollobas has ancestral roots there, though, and can speak the language. He didn’t grow up in Hungary, but culturally, he can relate to the place. If I were in government in one of the Visegrad countries, I would start working on a program to entice emigration from dissatisfied Americans who have something to contribute, in terms of human capital and financial capital, to my country. When I was in Budapest last fall in a group meeting with Viktor Orban, he told us that conservatives should always consider Budapest their home. I expect there will be no small number of Americans who can afford it, and who can work from anywhere online, who will want to know more.

Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, a white city council member is challenging the people of the city to put up with home invasions and break-ins for the sake of racial change

…

If you are a Minneapolis home or business owner, the handwriting is on the wall.

Meanwhile, the scandal at The New York Times is turning into a watershed for American journalism

…

I expect a number of disgusted conservatives to follow suit. Everybody knows that the Times is a liberal paper, but this newsroom coup is turning it into an illiberal left-wing paper. This has been coming for a long time, in both journalism and academia. Some years ago, I published a comment by a conservative academic who said that he is the lone conservative in his department, but he feels safe under the leadership of the old-fashioned liberal who is department head. But when that Boomer generation retires, it’s over. The Millennials and Gen Zers behind them are Jacobins, he said.

The Jacobin generation is taking over the Times now. They will also be consolidating power within other media institutions, under the guise of racial justice. Anyone who is not willing to swear allegiance to the Social Justice left has no future. Do you want to spend your career propagandizing? Similarly with academia: how many ideological re-education programs can you tolerate? How much ideological poisoning of scholarship and teaching are you prepared to submit to? It’s coming.

How many lies are you willing to tell, or assent to, to participate in this rotten system?

What sacrifices are you prepared to make to live in truth, and not by lies?

A lawyer reader told me this morning that the Benedict Option may soon be the Benedict Imperative. I asked him to explain. He responded:

There is a plausible (though not inevitable) scenario where we get a legal and cultural regime that fully adopts critical race theory, the obliteration of any stable definition of the family (this is already happening in the courts everywhere), and that does what it already says it believes to dissenters from the ascendant sexual ethic. All of these things operating at even 30% of capacity (and backed up by a privately imposed social credit like system), would make life increasingly difficult for those who won’t give a pinch of incense to Caesar on these things. Under this scenarios, the small-o orthodox Church and its members would get much smaller and poorer, and BenOp would lose the “option” part, as it would be the only plausible path forward.

…

The imperium is crumbling. What replaces it will be worse, no doubt, but the conditions that made the imperium sustainable no longer obtain.

What does it look like to you, from where you sit this afternoon? What is the future for you and your family?

[2020goofball-blog]

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[mini-pretzel]

alright dude yea EVERY NUMBER FOR SWEETHEART ASKS

… what have i signed up for?

//cracks knuckles

grab a juice box, grab a snack.

we’ll be here for a while. what have i gotten myself into

1. Talk about your first love. 

oh jesus. i actually recently found my old journal lol

from way back when. 2009 i think? i was 13 or some shit. jesus. ok. so my first love was actually over the internet.

yeah, i know. nowadays we’re spoiled with tinder n shit, but back in 2009, all we had was myspace and msn and i met this fucker on skype.

i was so ahead of my time.

anyway, it was october 25, 2009.

here’s a snippet from my journal entry:

well i met a guy on skype. he’s a month younger cause my b-day is on oct 14 and his is on nov 18. but i don’t mind it.

yoooo i was into younger guys even at 13, jfc hahhaa //kill me jk hmu

and then on the next page hahahhaa omg

december 2, 2009

well me and ___ are no longer together. well we never began. he broke my heart two times already. going in depression. please don’t bother. first love, ha!

omfg damn, two months. yeah, that lasted long. also old me: ur so dramatic lol

also i was a feisty lil fella, jeez.

2. What’s the most beautiful songs you’ve ever heard in your opinion? 

this one

3. How’s your heart feeling right now?

a lil stressed. im like, hoping i can get through all of these questions without my computer crashing. pray 4 me.

4. What kind of self care is your favorite to do? 

ok, first thing to note, i fucking love self care. like, too much if im honest.

baths with bubbles and nice smelling scents, lotions, a face mask, taking my time with washing my face and hair and putting on the cutest clothes after. also snacks, always snacks.

when im feeling like spending money: massage. full body. best thing ever. i treat myself to it at least once a year for my b-day.

5. What’s your skincare routine? 

ok so i just got a new skincare line. it’s from nature republic. i have a cleanser, a toner and a moisturizer. it’s fairly simple (unlike 9 steps in korean ahhahha, but like i’ll probably get there in time) also i have a peel mask that smells like bananas that i put on twice a week to get rid of dead skin cells. oh and sometimes i do korean face masks, too.

6. How did you get to be so beautiful?

answered that q here

7. Do you have any stuffed animals?

NO! //hides them all away

8. Best trip you’ve ever been on?

thailand. my parents took me w/ them on their honeymoon.

lol idek why either. trust me.

i was just there for the swimming, riding elephants, getting food poisoning and downing two banana splits in one afternoon. good times.

9. Favorite thing about your room? 

i live in a jungle. but also in an art gallery cause my mom buys paintings online and resells them, but it’s become such a habit for her they are literally EVERYWHEREE I CANNOT.

also sorry mom i keep forgetting to water the GAZILLION plants THAT YOU HAVE MOVED INTO MY ROOM FOR SOME REASON. they’ll be dead by the time ur home. srry ilyyyyy.

also tae hmu if u want some paintings. i got way too many.

10. Opinion on love? 

dude. idk. i mean. it’s definitely not something one can describe easily or fully grasp.

im still waiting for my big love to come along, so like, we can talk about that when we get there.

otherwise, i’ll say this quote that i heard in a song:

give your heart, but keep your head.

11. Are you affectionate? 

with certain people. im weird.

with some people im like no, don’t touch me pls. i bite and scratch.

and with others you cannot get them out of my death love grip.

12. Who do you look up to? 

i look up to bts a lot. they’re doing a lot of good and they’re very respectable artists.

but i also look up to a lot of writers on here because i want to create worlds and writings like them. i won’t tag them cause rip them trying to find why i tagged them in this long ass post haha.

13. Favorite poet? 

@psycho-slytherin

lol sorry bae

ur gonna have to scroll to find out why i tagged u. and then go red and yell at me. hahah.

i also like silentium! by Fyodor Tyutchev

also everything by pushkin (esp ‘i loved you’ fuck that one gets me every time). seriously. that man isn’t called the golden poet in our country for nothing.

i actually don’t read a lot of poetry nowadays unless its my own or my friends’

but im open to recommendations

14. Song that makes you happy? How about one that calms you down when you’re in a bad place?

answered here!

15. Do you play an instrument?

lol no. i was almost taught the piano (lol rip me, i wanna kill my younger lazy ass self) and i dabbled into learning the violin. but that’s like a whole story and a half hahahaha.

16. Do you do art? Using what (pencil, watercolor, etc)?

i used to pencil draw, nothing special tho. a lot of naked ppl lol. butts n boobs were my fave. also pecks whoo.

17. Do you dance? What style of dance? 

i don’t! but i want to. i’ve been looking into dancing schools. i might do hip hop n stuff. see if i have the rhythm, i can’t tell from just jumping around my room lol

18. What’s your zodiac sign? Do you believe in astrology? 

im a libra yo. diplomatic and indecisive af.

i kinda do? there’s some sense there, but it’s too vague. i think ppl need to look into their charts to really grasp their character.

and for some it may not be true at all, so like. idk. we’re all just doing our best here.

19. Favorite old film? 

a russian film that i always watch over the new year. my mom would always joke that the new year doesn’t start till we watch it lol

the irony of fate

20. What’s your hairstyle? 

idk

u

tell

me

21. What weather is the most beautiful, in your opinion?

cloudy but warm. so there’s not too much sun but u can enjoy a nice walk outside without getting rained on.

22. What upsets you most about the world? 

i only have two hands but there are so many cats and dogs. i cannot pet all of them.

23. Are you in love right now?

answered ;)

24. Do you have a crush? If so, talk about them!

here u go

25. Do you have pets? Talk about something sweet about them! 

i don’t! but i wish i did i would shower them with my love.

but @the-trth-untold dogs are the cutest and @psycho-slytherin cats make my day. pls spam meeeee. also i love @paristae cat too.

26. Do you have a lucky number? 

yup. 22.

27. Have you ever wished on a star? What about on a fallen eyelash? 

i’ve never seen a fallen star, so no.

but i’ve wished on a fallen eyelash, always.

28. Do you believe emoji spells to work? 

emoji spells??

bruh i’ve never even heard of it till this ask wtf is that shit

bruh i mean if it works for ppl all power to them??? idk i never tried it

29. Do you believe in magic in general? 

i believe in magic tricks. but magic died for me when santa stopped existing.

30. What’s the most beautiful thing in life, In your opinion?

here

31. Opinion on the color pink? What about baby blue? 

gorgeous colors. i quite like mauve pink and deep dark blue tho.

but baby blue looks amazing on some folks. oof.

32. What instrumental sound is your favorite? 

piano. always.

33. Do you like the sound of wind? What about the sound of rain? 

answered :)

34. Who makes you happy? 

bts and all of my mutuals

35. What makes you happy? 

sleep, food, music, writing, cuddles. and forehead kisses.

also more listed here

36. Imagine your ideal life, the life you wish to make, what will that look like? 

i live in a nice apartment. doesn’t have to be expensive, just nice and clean with wooden floors and spacious windows.

i have all the necessities that i need and im never lonely.

i have also touched countless hearts by my books and am able to live comfortably just from my works.

haha. you said ideal, right?

also have someone to spend it with. someone i’d write poetry about daily. a bestfriend first and foremost before a lover.

37. Do you wear makeup? If so what’s your favorite type of makeup or specific makeup product? Favorite store to buy makeup?

answered this fella here

38. Do you wear dresses? If so what’s your favorite dress you own? 

i used to have dresses. but not anymore.

i liked the long sleeve sweater black one i had with a low cut. it was gorgeous. i dont have much of boobage but i always felt like i was sexy in it.

39. Ever been heartbroken? How do you deal with it? 

yep. you just kind of take it one day at a time. some days will be better than the last. some days you’ll cry a little harder and some days you move on a little further. it takes time. make sure you have good people around you so you don’t fall into depression.

40. Who’s your closest friend? What do you love about them? 

ah, to be honest i don’t have a closest friend. i’ve always been the kind of person that always had friends around her but never anyone too deep. and i kinda wish i did. i just don’t know who would come to fill that spot. people always leave, so i kind of gave up assigning that spot. i think the people that want to be in that spot will show themselves and tell me. otherwise i will not assume or assign.

41. Introvert or extrovert? 

introvert. but i have my moments. i can be charming and friendly when i want to.

42. Do you like MBTI? What’s your MBTI? 

i had to look it up cause i forgot what it was lol

i took the test a while back: im infp.

there’s not a lot of us, apparently. which is cool. shout out to all infps out there!

43. Would you be a fairy, a mermaid, a vampire, a siren, or an angel? 

hmmm. what kind of fairy tho? lol

maybe vampire? idk i’d be a sexy immortal lady that’d bite innocent boys and girls that just want to have a good time lol

44. What’s the best song a friend has ever introduced to you? 

this oneee

45. Parlez-vous français? 

no~

46. Most beautiful place you’ve been to? 

butchart gardens

47. Where/when do you truly feel at home? 

here

48. Does smiling put you in a better mood? Try it right now, you’re smile is gorgeous! 

kdjfalkfjdlkdsaf //hides

this ask is flirting with me…

well that’s as much action as im going to get this new years eve lol

49. Favorite shoe you own?

my sweet rose gold kicks, yo.

50. Can you walk in stilettos? Do you like them? 

lol no. i cannot. and i do not. im not made for heels. im tall enough as it is.

51. Do you feel loved? 

every time i talk to my mutuals yes //cry

52. How do you express love to those you care about? 

by saying cute words and by clinging to them like a koala.

53. Favorite term(s) of endearment? 

sweetheart, dear, idk im just like anything honestly. love, baby. go crazy.

i also love mean terms like idiot and stuff. or nicknames that hold inside jokes, something between the two of you only.

54. Most romantic thing someone’s ever done for you? 

hasn’t happened yet. so yeah. any takers? lol

55. When is the happiest you’ve ever been? 

reading a good book for the first time. or just experiencing something new that i end up loving for the first time. nothing can replace that first feeling.

56. Are you happy right now? 

happy im almost done hahhahahahaa. ha.

no but srsly i am

57. What makes you smile? 

stupid jokes. puns. someone laughing and showing themselves fully.

58. Do you laugh a lot? 

i mean. i think so? i try. i make jokes a lot and laugh at myself if that counts?

59. What’s your favorite kind of aesthetic? 

ughhhh comfy bf aestheticcc

60. Do you want to marry for love or for some other reason (like money)? 

i have a sour view on marriage. so only if i love someone hard enough. but even then i don’t know if i’ll do it. it hurts too much to think about marriage and wedding rings for me.

61. What would your dream wedding look like? Do you want to get married? 

see above.

62. Favorite flower?

orchid.

63. Favorite artist?

claude monet.

64. Favorite music artist?

bts lol

no surprises there.

65. How kind do you think you are? Is kindness important to you? 

its not something for me to decide. i try to be kind to everyone, but how it is interpreted is different for everyone. i’d like to think i’m kind.

and yes, very important. especially being kind to yourself.

66. Ever made a playlist for someone? 

yes i have. i love making playlists for people. i don’t get asked that enough.

67. Do you have anything you do to physically comfort you when your sad? Such as a favorite blanket? Or a relaxing bath? 

music. music always helps. and tea.

ideally i’d love for someone to massage my scalp, but hahah no one’s been able to do it the right way. when it’s done right i melt and forget about everything.

68. Early bird or night owl? 

night owl.

moonchild, lol

69. Morning routine? 

wake up, look in the mirror, look away from the mirror, go back to bed.

70. Night routine? 

SHOWER N NICE SMELLING LOTIONS. AND SKINCAREEEEEE OOOOF.

also fresh sheets.

71. What is the most lovely quality a person could have in your opinion? 

answered here

72. Do you cry often? Does crying help you get the emotions out? Do you feel better after? 

i only cry when i watch or read something. and it does help. i always feel better after. but i tend to keep my emotions hidden away, the negative ones at least.

73. Do you like hugs? 

i love hugs. come hug me, bro.

u must smell nice tho.

74. When was the last time you kissed someone?

august.

75. Are you small or tall? 

tall. 175cm.

76. Do you like wholesome memes? 

answered

77. Favorite thing about the past? 

cd players. chia pet commercials. flip phones. mom jeans.

78. Do you ever wonder about the future? 

all the time. esp mine. i have no idea what the fuck im doing.

79. Have you ever lived in a different country than you currently live in? 

yep. i’ve lived in america and canada before. and traveled a lot.

80. Do you like plane flights? Airports? 

i don’t mind flying. and depends on the airport. some are better than others.

81. Sunrises or sunsets? 

sunrises. every day is a new day~

82. The beach or a forest? 

bitch- i mean beach. :)

83. What time of day do you tend to be in the best mood? 

any time i am eating. or sleeping. or reading.

im so close to being done omg. this is fun tho.

84. Do you push yourself to act together and in a good mood even when you aren’t? 

always. ain’t nobody gonna deal with that baggage lol

85. Favorite kind of tree? 

japanese maple tree

86. Do you care about the health of the Earth? 

i mean i don’t even care about my health that much tbh, i need to work on that.

87. What did you like most about your childhood, if anything? 

that i got to travel and learned english very young.

88. Do you read a lot? What’s your favorite book? 

answered here

89. What are you most nostalgic for at the moment? 

old school disney

90. What’s your favorite personality trait you have? 

answered this bad boi here

91. List at least ONE thing you love about your appearance. 

eyes. have to work on my ass tho. squats baby.

92. When was the last time you truly felt calm, without much of anything to worry about? 

after a massage.

93. Do you worry a lot? 

eh, i worry enough, i suppose. there’s just some stuff you can’t control.

94. The dazzling lights of the city or the relaxing countryside?

dazzling lights of the city. especially in the evening. and in the winter. ahhhhh. someone hold my hand and walk with meeeeee.

95. Ever changed the shoelaces on one of your shoes? For what reason? 

no i haven’t had that pleasure, lol

maybe next year

96. Favorite pastry? 

BUTTER. CROISSANT.

97. Do you like doing little acts of kindness? 

yes. uwu

98. How’s your day/night going? 

well im finally done with this ask holy shit, and i need to resume writing my namjoon fic so… fantastic. i also have noodles. whoooo.

thank you for reading this whole damn mess of an ask.

ily

[anneesfolleshq]

Bonjour et bienvenue!

Paris welcomes you, our Forger, Séphora Zuckermandel! May we say, you’re the spitting image of Jenny Slate! Please make your presence known within 24 hours, and do have a look at our checklist before setting out into the city on your own.

                                                                                  À bientôt!

MUN

Name/Alias: Jem

Preferred Pronouns: she/her

Age: 21

Timezone: EST, and I generally will check in online every day

MUSE

Chosen Skeleton: The Forger

Muse Name: Séphora Zuckermandel

Muse Age: Thirty Six

Chosen FC: Jenny Slate

Muse Occupation: Art Dealer

Muse Affiliation & Frequent Haunts:

Is really all that prudent to linger outside of the studio when there��s work to be done? The reflexive answer might be that Séphora never ventures out of Montmartre as nothing utilitarian necessitates it, but Séphora is anything but utilitarian. Montparnasse glistens with the charm of other-worldly enchantment, and Séphora (as if she was a dutiful anthropologist) studies the sights in minutiae. Starry-eyed and smiling, she can be found slinking through the crowds of Cafe Etoileor Le Gnome Qui Rit. But of course, her professional character will always be a staple in the halls of Bateau Lavoir, and the aura follows her to Sacre-Coeur’s Basilica as she sketches the architecture, and all the way to Street Market as she haggles with the vendors for miscellaneous… painting supplies.

Direct from Le Petit Journal:

When do you think they’re going to change the name from Zuckermandel and Son to Zuckermandel and… Daughter? It’s been more than a year since the art dealership has come under new ownership, with the original protege leaving the family business for undisclosed medical reasons. Despite all doubts that a woman could successfully inherit the business, Séphora Zuckermandel has turned Zuckermandel and Son into one of the most esteemed art sellers for the discerning connoisseurs of Paris.

BIOGRAPHY

[ CW // mentions of parental death ] Fatalistically, Séphora’s life had been outlined before she was born. Cliché and entrenched, isn’t it? That the daughter of a wealthy art dealer would unknowingly utilize the social tapestry of her family to enrich herself. I was always painting—she thinks. From an early age: the point at which I could sit upright and pay attention to the canvas that was placed in front of me. That kind of enrichment was how you got child prodigies, as Michael and Miryam learned with Elias—Séphora’s older brother who, by the time Séphora had been born, was reading Descartes and Kant instead of playing with the boys in the yard. Practice, patience, and encouragement. Discipline, however, was rather lacking—as Michael was always too busy with the family business to stand guard as a firm sentinel, and in his place, Miryam was a dilettante who had a hard time compelling herself to stay anchored to domestic life. This, of course, changed when Séphora was born.

Spoiled and dotted on, it was apparent that the precocious baby born in January was more enthralling than her moody older brother (what do you expect after exposing a child to existentialism?). The private tutors that homeschooled the Zuckermandel children had nothing but praise for brilliant little Séphora, who, to nobody’s surprise, was inclined to the arts more than any other subject. Elias arbitrarily diverted his interest from philosophy to mathematics to spite his parents, but the concept of logic that had been so rigorously ingrained in him was only a precursor to his affinity for numbers. Michael and Miryam, though disappointed, were never worried that Elias wouldn’t find his way in life. Comparably, Séphora never suffered from indignation, as her moments of weakness were the result of gentle rejections from her parents when voicing her juvenile needs. Her bubbling tears all she needed to convince them otherwise.

But such sweet droplets couldn’t force her parents to enroll her in the arts academy when she had come of age. Galvanized by Elias moving to the city to go to university, a compromise was met: they would ship her off as well, to one of the finest programs for young women’s higher education. Arts academy adjacent. The best we can do… considering the circumstance. It was enough to placate Séphora for the time being, as the glamour of independence and the attention of her peers was enough of a distraction from the easel. Which, she did bring one—and it sat empty for several months in her dormitory. Collecting dust and getting better use as a coat hanger.

What would end Séphora’s detour from fate was the chain of events that transpired over a lackadaisical weekend—nothing wild, or out of the ordinary. In fact, she had done this all before. An art gallery opening, and a picnic on the grounds of the museum lawn. While most of her peers were more concerned about what they were wearing, who they were going with, Séphora found herself left to converse with the paintings. Garish, bright, new. They said they were inspired by the French—wild and untamed swaths of color that ran through the room like a bull in a china shop. Was it appealing to draw like a child? Séphora couldn’t help but snicker and gawk. The halls of mythology and heroes felt more like home than the thrill of new fads. There’s a way art is supposed to be—she thought to herself. An order to the madness.

Such an order, especially of worldly concern, would come crashing down with the outbreak of war. Of course, her family had moved to Paris just a few years prior, urging her to stop dragging her feet and finish up her studies to come live with them. Elias isn’t in Hamburg anymore, he’s helping Michael with the business—there’s a better market in Paris! Séphora, frankly, did not care. If it’s a market in paint splatters, then I’ll just sneeze on a napkin and sell that instead. Reunion would be delayed by four long years. She was cut off from her family’s support and forced to sell cheap landscapes to anyone who would buy them. It wasn’t glamourous, and it certainly wasn’t the kind of painting she wanted to be doing, but the war put her exactly where she needed to be. Befriending the neurotic researchers and students who weren’t fit to fight—who were left to guard the vaults of antiquity for the motherland. The last line of defense. When the tides of war receded, Séphora was one of the first women admitted to an arts university, and when her family heard what she had done they almost disowned her.

From the starry-eyed girl who didn’t take no for an answer, Séphora had sharpened herself in the echelons of prestige and pedagogy. The handsome men of her youth who were keen on playing a perpetual game of cat and mouse were replaced by frigid stoics who were slightly more concerned with objects of antiquity than they were with a woman in their midst. Séphora learned that no matter what the encounter, or the circumstance, they all had a profound mistrust (maybe even dislike) of women. Beyond cerebral discussions of the spiritual will of art, or an iconography of German artwork, Séphora knew she had a dwindling desire to stay locked up in the ivory tower she had broken into. The worsening conditions in the Weimar Republic convinced her further to swallow her pride and move to Paris.

There was a dream she had—over and over again. A showing of the work she had made in Germany at the Beaux-Arts, and her family selling coveted Zuckermandel portraits with her signature. Séphora, even as an adult, spent more time indulged in an unrealistic dream than she did in the logistics of landing on her feet in a city like Paris. Nothing could have prepared her for the shock of Cubism. Sure, there was talk of what was going on in Germany with the Bauhaus and the wild Russian artists who had been scarred by the revolution, but Séphora couldn’t comprehend how the bastion of classical artwork had been tainted by the rubbish of the modern world. While her measly landscapes and modest bible scenes would have at least sold to the commoner in Germany, no one in Paris cared for Séphora Zuckermandel’s homey works. After much fanfare and resistance—being dragged along kicking and screaming—Séphora succumbed to the reality that was the modern world. She resented all the abstract artists under her breath as they were featured in her family’s showroom, with Séphora herself relegated to the back to manage inventory and preservation.

The silver lining of it all was that Séphora could still have her affair with the old masters—sometimes a beautiful Ingres would pass through. Or a dignified Rubens and Rembrandt. It was only once that she held an immaculate Titian in her hands, and instead of feeling joy or bewilderment she choked up with an immeasurable sense of loss.

Such wallowing and sweet tears would continue, if only long enough to mourn the passing of Michael and Miryam Zuckermandel. As Séphora stood in the office, with her hand on her weeping brother’s shoulder, she reasoned with herself that something had to change. I was meant for art, she thought. I was born at the wrong time—just a little too late…

Despite all indications that it was Séphora who was going to quit and leave the business, Elias beat her too it, suffering from a nervous breakdown and leaving for a sanitorium in the countryside. That traitorous bastard! What was Séphora to do, tasked with caring for a room filled with things she absolutely hated? Sell it, of course—at a discounted price. Gutting the inventory to fund her own dismal painting career that never took off. At least, not in the sense that she had ever anticipated.

The series of events is muddied, and even in recollection Séphora can’t make sense of when and how she executed the idea of forging a Da Vinci. A tangent in a book she read at university, her own yellowing paints drying out faster than she could use them, and the old canvas that had been so generously donated despite Séphora repeatedly telling the patron she did not deal in junk. Of course, there was a bottle of wine involved in there somewhere, and Séphora, thinking her little work of art was just hilarious, decided to display her joke along the windowsill display. A genuine Da Vinci! Won’t everybody love that?

And they did, much to Séphora’s dismay.

So, fatalistically, Séphora became the artist she was meant to be. Not an Angelica Kauffman posing beautiful allegories, or an Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun rendering the likeness of European nobility. Not even one of her contemporaries who she genuinely admired—a Mary Cassatt with an ephemeral tenderness that had eluded all the artists of western history before her.

Séphora became a forger, an artificer. Perhaps it was foolish of her to think that the only way people would like her paintings was if she signed her name and not someone else’s.

POTENTIAL PLOTS/CONNECTIONS

Séphora is a curious person who, due to her artistic training, is drawn to all sorts of “visuals” (especially if they’re novel). Of course, a lot of those novel things don’t belong on paintings, but she does love sketching the day to day of Paris, and she could meet people whom she is secretly (or not so secretly) sketching.

Anyone who’s looking to buy a painting, whether that’s the avant-garde stuff or something a little bit more classical. Maybe someone could have an original Séphora Zeuckermandel from when she was painting in Germany and they actually like or love her original work.

I would love connections with other characters that have nothing to do with art or history, as she tends to be a bit of a flirt to both genders and will go out to various cafes and clubs on her own just for the fun of it. She needs something to distract her from her… not so legal or moral business!